PHP page redirection SEO friendly way

Posted on May 31, 2012 by Alex Wells

When redesigning a website or adding / removing pages it is important that any old URLs are forwarded on correctly so that users are not left with dead links and search engine spiders scanning your site do not penalise you for non working links.

So how do you forward on pages in a way that works correctly for search engines as well as users?

with PHP

<pre><?php
header (“http/1.1 301 Moved Permanently”);
header (“Location: http://www.domain.com”);
?></pre>

JavaScript

<pre><script type = “text/javascript”>
<!—
Window.location = http://www.developerdrive.com/
//->
</script></pre>

HTML

1	<meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="5”; url=http://www.developerdrive.com/">

With all of these redirects the important thing to remember is not to try and trick the search engines as if you get found out (and you will) they will penalise your site as a result

Source: http://www.developerdrive.com/2012/05/search-engine-friendly-page-redirects/

Blog post by Alex Wells
Working as a Website developer I love nothing more then working waist deep in code, I have specific interests in PHP and WordPress development but mostly working with local businesses to provide them with a website that meets their needs. Contact me if you have a project in mind and would like to get an input from an experienced website developer.

What are Domain names, and how do i chose one?

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Alex Wells

Domain names are vital to how the web works and we use them each and every time we visit websites, but what are they and how do you choose one?

To understand what a domain name is and why they are important we need to look at how the world wide web works, a simple website is made up of a set of files (text, images, sound etc) that are stored on a web server which is a computer connected to the internet with the specific job of hosting websites. Each web server has a specific address called an IP address, these are unique to each server on the internet and let users connect to a specific web server.

These IP addresses are like post codes each one is a way of refering to a unique web server on the internet, take this website for example the ip address of google.co.uk is 74.125.224.151 if you type this IP address into your browser it will load the website (give it a try and see). The problem with IP addresses is they are not very friendly, easy to remember or descriptive of the content that’s on the website, the solution to this problem is domain names. A domain name is a user friendly way of referring to the web servers IP address by giving it a name.

When a user types in a domain name it will be used to look up the IP address of the web server so that the user can connect to the website, there are some limitations to the content of domain names but all in all they are allot more user friendly then IP addresses.

How to select a domain name

Now we know what a URL is next we will look at how to chose one, domain names should be easy to read and remember so it’s best to go with something short and recognizable such as your name (eg. Alex-Wells.co.uk) or something that describes who you are what you do or your product (eg. AirportTaxis.com or BirthdayCards.net)

It will Benefit your SEO strategy if you choose a domain name with some keywords in it as google will give you points for it, for example the domain name usedcars.com will get extra points for the search term ‘used cars’ but it’s a balancing act stuffing lots of words into your domain name will make it hard to read & understand and on top of that google will detect you are trying to stuff lots of keywords into your site and you will lose any SEO points.

Once you have chosen the domain name you want you will need to select an extension, this is the bit at the end for example the .com or the .co.uk

Which one you choose is upto you (check out the possibilities and their intended uses here) but if you are a UK company a .co.uk would be best followed by a .com as these are the two that people are used to seeing and using, if they are already taken you could opt for having a .net but failing that I would suggest thinking of something new.

There are several websites that will let you search for domain names and register them for you, I use www.123-reg.co.uk to register domains but prefer Heart Internet’s domain search

If both the .com and the .co.uk domains are available I would suggest registering both to ensure no one else can.

Importance of Colour In Web Design:14 Useful Free PDFs for Web Designers

Posted on May 18, 2012 by Alex Wells

A list of 14 PDF ebooks with information on colour and web design, bookmarking to read through when i have some spare time!

http://designbeep.com/2012/04/24/importance-of-color-in-web-design14-useful-free-pdf-ebooks-for-web-designers/

if you get chance to read and find them useful let me know.

What are the most popular Content Management Systems (CMS)

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Alex Wells

With more and more users wanting to update the content of their websites themselves there has been an increase in the number of Content Management Systems (CMS) available for web developers to use, but with so many available which one should you use?

In this post we will look over the top 3 freely available CMSs that are in use today so that you can ensure your website is powered by a system that is not only secure but also maintained and updated. Whats the main benefit of using a popular publicly maintained CMS? Using one will mean that any security threats identified will be patched in the next version of the CMS all you need to do is ensure you keep it updated which with the modern systems is easily done in a few seconds via the admin area.

Using a popular CMS means that if you need to find a new web developer or move creative agency you will be able to find someone else who will be able to update the website, you wont get this flexibility with a bespoke CMS. It also means that you wont be left with an out of date system if for example your web team decide to stop supporting your CMS as the system is maintained by volunteers contributing to the open source code. This coupled with the fact that thousands and thousands of websites around the world are using any one of these CMSs means that there will always be someone willing to update the system as there is money to be made in maintaining open source code (for example wordpress.org which is free to use is maintained by wordpress.com a commercial version).

WordPress

Lets start by looking at the most popular CMS around, WordPress is used by 16.4% of websites (source) and out of websites that use a CMS 54.2% are powered by this open source CMS. Moving forward 22 out of every 100 new active domains in the US are running WordPress (source) shows that WordPress is here to stay.

There are 2 versions of WordPress the first is their commercial outfit using the software to provide users with blogs at wordpress.com – users can sign up for a free blog but need to pay for extras such as a custom URL (domain name) or for storage space.

the second version of WordPress is the open source CMS which is the same ‘software’ as the .com version however it has all of the features enabled such as custom themes and the ability to install widgets making it a much more powerful CMS. This version requires you have your own website hosting set up which supports PHP and also needs a MySQL database. If you are not sure check with your website host as many like http://www.heartinternet.co.uk/ not only offer WordPress support but include a simple to use installer that means you can have WordPress up and running in a matter of seconds.

The best thing about WordPress is how popular it is, this means that there are thousands of themes and plugins available to extend your website quickly and easily, take a look at the WordPress.org theme gallery for some of the freely available themes you could install on your website. Not all website projects will be suitable for out of the box themes but the amazing thing about WordPress is anyone can create their own theme or even edit an existing one which means that if you cant find what you are looking for you can built a perfect bespoke theme to meet any of your needs.

With a theme in place the next thing to look at is the plugins available, head over to the WordPress.org plugin directory to search through thousands of free plugins containing all of the functionality you could need, from social media plugins to shops it has everything. Just like the themes anyone who knows how to code in PHP / HTML / CSS will be able to create their own plugins to ensure the website has the features it needs to meet the clients needs.

Another thing worth mentioning is the admin area of WordPress is very intuitive and easy to use which is why its my CMS of choice.

Joomla

Joomla is another vastly popular CMS that has been written in PHP and since version 1.6 it is using object oriented programming bringing it right up to date with modern programming standards.In march 2012 Joomla reached a milestone with over 30 Million downloads! this hugely popular CMS is used by websites around the world including several governments showing that it is more then capable. You can get Joomla via their offical webiste www.joomla.org or instal it via Heart Internets one click install. Joomla has themes available as well as having a large extension library

Want to know more about creating themes, extensions? or just about setting up and using a website CMS based on Joomla take a look at their extensive documentation http://docs.joomla.org/ and forum.

Drupal

Next up we have Drupal another freely avaliable open source CMS that has been built on PHP, sold as the perfect CMS for large websites it is more then capable of running websites with a single page to websites featuring a vast database of information.

Drupal can be extended with pre made extensions (more information) and you can even make your own extensions and release them for other peoples to use. Drupal websites can also make use of free themes – use the offical search feature to locate themes just watch out for which version of drupal you are using.

Drupal offer links to developers that have contributed to the project which means if your project needs help you can turn to people who know their stuff via Drupal training dont forget to check out the online forums and documentation for help if you need it.

What are website wireframes?

Posted on May 10, 2012 by Alex Wells

Wireframes have been around for years and chances are you have been creating them for all sorts of projects – not just web / website related ones. It is essentially a name given to the process of drawing out rough sketches of what the website will look like, so all of those pencil sketches you have been doing when thinking about your website, poster, business card etc could be classed as Wireframes.

There are varying levels of wireframes from the simple diagram showing how many columns the website will have to the complex coloured designs that overlaps with fully fledged website design, however as a tool the middle ground provides the most benefit to the project team. This method of representing the design in its simplistic form enables the whole project team to review the structure of the page and make changes quickly as the changes can be implemented in a fraction of the time required to adjust a full website design. It also enables members of the team who have a good understanding of the project but not design to produce a visual guide for the designer to work from – this could be the client who wants to define the structure of the site before paying for a full design or a web developer ensuring the website has a sound SEO strategy in place.

The speed at which the design can be reworked means the project team can create an initial wireframe of the site which is submitted for review by the internal project team or even the client to gain feedback, with the results the wireframe can be updated to address the feedback. If you are familiar with Agile Programming wireframes allow the same methodology to be applied to the design process.

Looking past clients changes wireframes give the website developer input on the design ensuring that it is functional and works with the sites SEO strategy, it also means that all elements on the page go through a review process so ‘design’ features that look good but add several hours of additional development time can be removed to make the project more streamlined.

What tool should you use to create a website wireframe?

While it is possible to use software you already know (word, powerpoint and photoshop for example) there are some dedicated wireframing tools available, my favourite is Pencil which is a free program that runs on Mac, Windows and even Linux it is also available as a firefox plugin. I would suggest downloading the independent program so that it is not affected by Firefox updates.

Being free and available on all the major platforms it is the perfect tool to aid the creation of wireframes by the creative team as all members of the team (and even the client!) will be able to edit the wireframes if required.

Example of the Pencil interface

Resources

33 Great Examples of Web Design Sketches – some really nice examples of hand drawn wireframes showing that you dont need to use a computer to achieve good results!

Show how many queries wordpress needs to do and how long they take

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Alex Wells

this bit of code for wordpress lets you see how many queries your pages are making and more importantly how long they are taking to do

1	<?php echo get_num_queries(); ?> queries in <?php timer_stop(1); ?> seconds.

this will let you identify wordpress websites that are under performing and help you locate and correct the code thats causing the errors.

source:

http://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-show-number-of-queries-and-page-load-time-in-wordpress/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wpbeginner+%28WordPress+for+Beginners%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

How to use short codes in the widget area for wordpress websites

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Alex Wells

this useful bit of code will let you use shortcodes in your text widgets for your sidebars in wordpress:

1	add_filter('widget_text', 'do_shortcode');

add the code to your functions.php in your themes folder

source:

http://www.wprecipes.com/how-to-add-shortcodes-in-sidebar-widgets

M11 Business Link

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Alex Wells

M11 Business Link is a property website I worked on while working as a website developer at Simpsons Creative, the project was to show the benefits of the office development located close to Bishops Stortford.

The website project involved updating the old M11 Business Link website to the new design created by the in house design team at Simpsons Creative, the website was also updated with a bespoke web app ensuring that mobile visitors to the website are able to view the site in a style that suits their needs.

The mobile version of the website has been built using HTML, CSS, PHP and JQuery.

To View the web app visit http://www.m11businesslink.co.uk/iphone on your mobile phone or have a look at the preview below. (please note the preview is not fully functional and the web app is best viewed on an actual iPhone)

The website does a good job of informing users of the office space its location (close to Bishops Stortford) and the facilities available.