After a very long hiatus - I'm back online with the site upgraded to MovableType 4.1.
It's been a bit of an ordeal to swap the templates to the new version - overwrite upgrade my bottom! - but the site it back up and running, so now I can restyle it and find out what customisations I can do.
But less about me and on with the blogging.
I've been busy with real world stuff for a while now - and should be telling you all about what I do on occasion.
Mainly I've been looking into Internet Marketing for various clients - and on my researches, came across this site which has a load of videos for free - not a bad thing!
12 Hours Of Marketing Coaching For FREE - Click Here
Some of it is a bit old, but still useful, especially if you're starting out.
Just read a brilliantly simple article about why Paris Hilton is the person that she is:
The most valuable commodity today is attention. And there are many ways to get it. From sex videos to stupid pet tricks to talking bad about Muslims. The real trick is what you do with it once you have it.
...and why every webdesigner should pay attention to her! (Which is what she wants in the long run...)
Well, after a hiatus doing personal things - I've come back to the site and begun again on writing up some new articles.
Also while away, I wondered how the site was fairing after not updating it's design in six months and how it fairs in the world wide web.
A really useful tool I found is Sitescore by Silktide, pretty useful for general SEO techniques, general checking of your site for compatibility and for how it ranks in search engines. This site fairs pretty well, though I need to get more links from other places, which means getting my finger out and writing up some good articles and tutorials for you all. It also came in useful for another site I run Lincolnshire Wolds Railway's, as I had not thought about a few simple tweaks that should improve it's search engine placement which Sitescore pointed out for me.
CSS Tweak is a web based CSS optimization tool. It will take any CSS file and optimize the syntax, grouping your style declarations into shorthand where possible. It can also remove comments, and strip whitespace for maximum compression.
One of the things I've worked on with my MT instalation is to reduce the CSS file to the bare minimum. I've already chopped the extraneous code, and have reduced whitespace as much as is readable. So from the base 15k I've dropped it to 8k, and could get it smaller. I've also been thinking about gzipping it using server compression, but wondering whether to just take the bandwidth over the server CPU usage (which I could get charged for).
read more | digg story
"Mollio is a simple set of html/css templates. The aim was to create a set of page templates that use css for layout as well as some sample basic content which has also had some css applied. It's definitely a work in progress. More sample content and layouts are planned to be added."
This is a very nice design, that I think I'll use on one of my clients sites. Nothing worse for me than when I've gotten a site looking nice and the client goes and clutters it up with content not originally in the brief!
read more | digg story
Experiments by the BBC Programme 'Get Smarter in a Week' show that making simple changes to your lifestyle can help with memory, decision-making, & confidence, by improving your brain's functioning.
I've always had an issue with sleeping properly, so I think I'll set the recorder for these while I'm at the theatre.
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"In no particular order 55 reasons for me to do tableless websites using valid XHTML for markup, CSS for layout and Flash sparingly, only as an ingredient." - I think it's a nice list to begin a discussion with (as if it was needed, heh!).
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Goals of updating the interface: remove UI elements that aren't useful to majority of users - increase usability of elements that are useful - increase focus on web content.
Always a good thing in my mind - one of the best moves I did was switching to Firefox, and I always persuade most of my clients to switch as well. The amount fo IE6 or even worse IE5 users out there is frightening.
They'll be expecting me to build sites using tables next!
read more | digg story
Interesting one, I use Adsense on most of my websites, which generates a few pence a day (be nice if it was a lot more) and the latest Adsense option that looks like it willbe coming soon, is Video Ads using the normal Adsense Javascript insert code.
I visited the site that's started all the buzz, but couldn't see any Ads, a gap where it might have been... so couldn't get a screen grab - I'll keep an eye out for this, but when it comes down to it, would video inserts fit with the site(s) esepcially since most of the videos wouldn't be contextual.
Here's how to make "light graffiti" out of disposable digital cameras - once the camera is modded it will display images/words automatically and run for about 2 days.
I'm definately going to have to have a go at this!
Well, it's one way to advertise yourself isn't it?
And yet another reason not to log on inside Movable Type.
Just testing the Qumana Editor software, which can post directly to your blog via your desktop - all you need is an internet connection and away you go.
First problem I can see so far, but that's mainly due to me not reading through the manual yet, is the ability to set a difference between intro text and the read more stuff.
EDIT: and another nice thing, apart from a spell check, and the fact that it is free, is being able to download a post and edit it. another downside, is that it doesn't trigger the Publicity/Remote Interfaces part of MT on a new entry. So I would have to manually trigger the fact that I have added a new post, which also means losing out on letting Sixapart I have added new content as well.
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