Web developers have a fond love for open source tools not only because these tools are generally free of cost, but they can be modified in any way the developer sees fit. That is actually where the free in free/open source software comes from. While .NET and other paid technologies and tools do have their place on the Web, it really is open source tools and applications that power it. There are thousands of great open source applications and picking the best among them is really hard since so many people have...
In part one of Baking a New Site With a Sprinkle of SEO, we covered some of the more important things a developer can do to help their sites find their way into the top positions of the search engines. This week, we look at more advanced steps you can take to really help catapult them up to the top. Advanced: canonical tags ... You may have heard about Google’s recent algorithm updates such as Panda and Penguin. Well, one of things Panda concerned its self about was not how much sugar cane it was getting,...
The web development industry is one that is always growing because of how we use the web. No longer do we expect the Internet to simply host a digital pamphlet for a business. The expectations nowadays are for a site to be rich with content, provide the means for visitors to interact and be dynamic in every interaction. With the demand at an all time high, freelance web developers may think that there is little they could do to harm their career. Unfortunately, there are many ways that people in this industry...
Many websites nowadays make use of sliders to highlight different content or pages but these slide shows usually appear at the top of the home page. Anyone who deals with content knows the power that images have to keep a reader engaged. In fact, most content creators try to scatter images throughout their text for this very purpose. But what happens if you marry the two concepts together? Taking the slide show concept and inserting it into the content of a web page... Begin by opening up the HTML of your...
Knowing if your website is working properly is the first step in catching potential problems before they blow up. But unless you have time to check your site every five minutes or you want to wait for your visitors to tell you there’s a problem, you need some kind of monitoring service. Monitor Scout provides web-based monitoring that lets you know when your site is having problems, twenty four hours a day and seven days a week. You’ll know about issues before your visitors notice, and in time to fix...
A faster website leads to happier visitors. While you can make a million changes to your site’s code to speed up load times, there are some things that are just beyond your control. Things like network issues between where your site is hosted and where your visitors are. So what can you do to overcome things like network latency? Easy! You can use a service like MaxCDN which is a Content Distribution Network. We recently teamed up with MaxCDN to deliver even better performance to our blog. MaxCDN delivers...
Some experts say search only drives 30 percent of a website’s traffic. While that may seem insignificant, that 30 percent often makes up visitors who are looking for the products, services or information specific to your company so losing them could have a significant impact on how well an organization performs. In part one of this series we looked at some things that web developers need to consider when it comes to search engine optimization, but now it’s time to step up to the plate. Let’s roll...
Web applications remain the largest security risk for any company. The reason is two-fold. First, most software services have moved to a web based environment giving malicious hackers a much larger landscape to attack. Second, most organizations put a majority of their resources, i.e. dollars and manpower, into network and perimeter security leaving the web unguarded. In most cases, it is up to the web developer to secure sites as best they can. Those who know how to patch known vulnerabilities in...