Log Everything (And I’m Not Talking About Weblogs)
Posted on November 12, 2007
Filed Under Web Programming | Leave a Comment
More specifically, log anything that could impact your visitor’s experience if it all goes horribly wrong… and make sure you are keeping sufficient detail.
The most obvious case would be the error codes in your basic access log. If many people are getting a 404 on a particular page then you know something is wrong. Perhaps you moved the page and your visitors have bookmarked it or are following an external link to the old address. In this case you now know that you need to redirect your visitors. If the page has never existed then you’ve likely created an incorrect link somewhere in your site. Look in the access logs for the page your visitors were on before they requested the non-existent page then view the source of that page and search for the incorrect link.
Remember, humans are capable of being stupid in far more creative ways than any computer (although the computers can repeat it faster)
An example…
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Launching Operation SaturatEng – Because I *Could* Care Less
Posted on October 29, 2007
Filed Under Operation SaturatEng | 4 Comments
I always find it amazing how successful certain memes can be. Amazing and, in the case of some memes (could care less, loosing etc), depressing.
I find “I could care less” to be the worst given that just a moment’s thought surely makes it clear that it actually means the opposite to what the poster meant to say.
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Does Google Need A Disclaimer?
Posted on October 25, 2007
Filed Under seo | Leave a Comment
There has been a lot of discussion recently about Google’s latest update and specifically about drops in PageRank (see Greg Boser, Andy Beard, Daily Blog Tips, TechnoSailor and, for a list of other discussions SearchEngineLand). Many assuming that it is some sort of penalty.
Many years ago I worked in a casino. Very few people who entered the casino were under any illusions. They knew that the amount they left with could be, and probably would be, less than they entered with. My day job now is as a programmer in the financial services industry. In fact, I work for a stock broker at the moment. An industry that has possibly one of the best known disclaimers around – Remember, the value of your investment can go down as well as up.
I have never really understood why such a disclaimer seems necessary. It just seems obvious from the very nature of the investments that the value can go up, or it can go down, and it can do either of these for reasons that are completely out of your control. Most people on losing in a casino do not claim that the casino is doing anything it shouldn’t be. Most people when the stockmarket drops, affecting their investment, don’t claim that it is a conspiracy by the stockbroker. The latest brouhaha over PageRank though seems to show that it is not obvious to everybody.
So perhaps Google needs a disclaimer next to that little green bar – “Remember, PageRank can go down as well as up.”
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Phacebook?
Posted on October 19, 2007
Filed Under Data Protection, Uncategorized | 2 Comments
(One word of warning before getting on with the post, don’t bother going to look at the .com of the title. It’s your bog standard parked page.)
I’ve just finished reading Sugarrae’s Updated Unofficial and Smartass Guide to Using Facebook. A great resource. Having only recently signed up to Facebook, and, with a baby in the house, having had little time to set it up so far, this guide will definitely speed up my getting in to Facebook.
However…
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You’re Just Not Important Enough!
Posted on October 17, 2007
Filed Under Uncategorized | 1 Comment
You’re not important enough. I’m not important enough. In percentage terms almost nobody is important enough.
It’s worth remembering next time you have an impulse to declare Google broken.
This posting was prompted by an, admittedly funny, recent parody – What if… Google had to be designed for Google. It got a lot of attention from many blogs and social news sites. I don’t have a problem with the parody itself but it brought out of the woodwork those who mistakenly believe that it holds some sort of deep truth.
The sort of tactics identified in the parody are not what have to be done to rank in Google they are only what you need to do to rank better in Google if you are not important enough.
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You Shouldn’t Be a Web 2.0 Developer If You Don’t Find These Funny
Posted on October 12, 2007
Filed Under Web 2.0, Web Design | 4 Comments
I recently came across a cartoon (first link below) that made me laugh out loud. I showed it to several colleagues and they all laughed out loud as well. Yet it was absolutely clear that if I showed it to my wife it would be absolutely meaningless to her (”…and you find this funny?” was the exact quote 
). The cartoon requires certain technical knowledge without which it is just not even faintly amusing.
Now, there are plenty of “You know you might have done too much…” lists on the internet. But perhaps more useful would be the opposite – “You know you haven’t done enough if…”. So I’ve put together the start of a list for web 2.0 developers.
And, I’d also add, you also shouldn’t be a web 2.0 developer if you don’t understand why you shouldn’t be a web 2.0 developer if you don’t find these funny.
- Exploits of a Mom
- Robot Exclusion Protocol
- Dear DBA
- Graphic Designer’s Judgment Clouded By Desire To Use New Photoshop Plug-In
- Community Creatures
- Microsoft Obsecurity
- SEO Jokes
If you’ve got any more then please post them.
11 Ways To Overextend The “Keyword Seasoning” Metaphor!
Posted on October 8, 2007
Filed Under content, seo | Leave a Comment
While I’m at it, I might as well also over extend “x ways to…” 
.
In the “Focus Pages” to do, I wrote
Sprinkle your keywords like seasoning – lightly.
At the time I thought the metaphor was ripe for overextension. So here we go…
- Sprinkling seasonings lightly can make your dish tastier for the critics (search engines).
- A mixture of seasonings that goes well together can be tastier than putting in more of a single seasoning.
- Dumping the seasonings in with too heavy a hand can give your consumers (visitors, and maybe search engines as well) indigestion.
- Make sure your seasonings are well stirred throughout the dish.
- Who wants a five course meal all the same? Use differing, but complementary, seasonings on different courses (pages).
- Ensure the seasonings you use are palatable (understandable), to your consumers. (Are we overextending yet
) - Don’t add poison. (Well, duh!)
- There’s a time and place for just dumping random seasonings together to see what they do but you don’t serve that experiment up to guests to your home(page). Not unless you really wanted to discourage them from coming back anyway.
- Make sure your seasonings have not passed their use by date.
- Make sure every group that likes the seasonings you’ve used knows that you use them and, hopefully, recommends you to their members. (We must be by now, surely )
- Sometimes it is better to grow your own seasonings. Sometimes you should use the same as everybody else. It takes experience to know which is best in a particular situation.
Have I missed any?
Email Validation Regular Expression
Posted on October 4, 2007
Filed Under Web Programming, email | 6 Comments
When I was looking for a regular expression to validate email addresses the examples I found tended to fall into two camps. Camp one were simple, easily confirmed, regular expressions that just as obviously did little beyond insisting on an @ in the middle. Camp two were more complicated than I wished to reverse engineer and did not display their derivation so that I could check what I was using, often not listing their trade-offs either.
Therefore, I developed my own and, in order to help those with similar requirements, I present it here, along with its known trade-offs and its derivation (in reverse order).
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How To Reduce Spam and Bouncebacks, Organise Your Email And Still Keep The Convenience Of A Catch-All!
Posted on October 1, 2007
Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Well, it’s a long title and it’s likely to be a long post… even by my standards.
A few weeks back I had a major, and unexpected since I started using SPF, run of undeliverable bounce backs from somebody else’s spam run as I reported in “Does SPF Make You A Target“.
My email provider suggested that the way to avoid this and other spam was to turn off the catch-all option on my account. Nope, sorry, the catch-all option is far too useful. The ability to give every company and website I deal with a unique address is too valuable. It allows me to see who sells on an address and to block an abused address with blocking any other email. I deal with sufficient businesses and websites that going into my email administration to set up a new address every time I need one would just be too much hassle.
So I had to come up with another way… Read more
Another Way Of Segmenting Your Visitors
Posted on September 26, 2007
Filed Under Web Design | Leave a Comment
The first to do on Website To Dos is Decide Upon Your Goals And Audience. In the case of Website To Dos itself the goal is to raise the average quality of web development, especially when it comes to those obscure but important technical bits. The most obvious way to define the intended audience then is: Web Developers (amateur or professional). Along with that probably comes a whole mess of stereotypical views on what other segments they are going to fit in to.
But a post I’ve just come across probably describes the site’s audience well and in a way I had not even considered before. Read more
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