News
Google is Watching your Code
Many people sometimes don't realize how much well-written code matters in respect to how a search engine will treat your site. Well, let us tell you that we've seen first hand the degree to which this is the case.
A recent website that is a good case study for this is a personal one for a friend of ours. A screen shot of the original site code can be seen below. Make note of the use of 'font' tags and some of the rather odd 'meta' tags. The code is also lacking proper indentation and is of mixed alphabetic cases. It's not that he did anything completely bad when he made the site many years ago, it's just that it's based on old standards that aren't completely adhered to. The net result was that when you would search for him on Google, the site wouldn't appear anywhere in the results. Amazing, huh? Perhaps it was some other problem such as directory structure, no robots.txt file, or some random glitch? No, it wasn't. It was Google's (and Google alone as it showed up on Yahoo and MSN) refusal to index the site based on the what it thought of as less than perfect code.
We worked over the same content for the site, cleaned up the structure, and it is now up at www.dinko.org. There is nothing amazing about the design and we built it to look like a typical site these days. If you happen to look at the code though, you will notice strict adherence to XHTML 1.0 Strict definitions. Everything is lowercase. The proper 'meta' tags are there as well as a whole slew of other things.
So, what was the end result? Two weeks after putting the new version live, you could actually find it on Google. A month after putting the new version live, his site comes up as the number one result when you search for him. You can try to say that other factors were at work, but based on the results we saw, it emphasizes the fact that you need to watch your code to design a site properly.
A recent website that is a good case study for this is a personal one for a friend of ours. A screen shot of the original site code can be seen below. Make note of the use of 'font' tags and some of the rather odd 'meta' tags. The code is also lacking proper indentation and is of mixed alphabetic cases. It's not that he did anything completely bad when he made the site many years ago, it's just that it's based on old standards that aren't completely adhered to. The net result was that when you would search for him on Google, the site wouldn't appear anywhere in the results. Amazing, huh? Perhaps it was some other problem such as directory structure, no robots.txt file, or some random glitch? No, it wasn't. It was Google's (and Google alone as it showed up on Yahoo and MSN) refusal to index the site based on the what it thought of as less than perfect code.
We worked over the same content for the site, cleaned up the structure, and it is now up at www.dinko.org. There is nothing amazing about the design and we built it to look like a typical site these days. If you happen to look at the code though, you will notice strict adherence to XHTML 1.0 Strict definitions. Everything is lowercase. The proper 'meta' tags are there as well as a whole slew of other things.
So, what was the end result? Two weeks after putting the new version live, you could actually find it on Google. A month after putting the new version live, his site comes up as the number one result when you search for him. You can try to say that other factors were at work, but based on the results we saw, it emphasizes the fact that you need to watch your code to design a site properly.
Not the most attractive of beacons to a spider.
Taste is Placed
A short film, 'taste' placed at the Rogue Ale Film Festival. The prize? A case of beer and the respect of our peers.
For those unfamiliar, the film is about a man, a woman, breakfast and his dog, which happens to be the most adorable mini dachshund you've ever seen.
taste
For those unfamiliar, the film is about a man, a woman, breakfast and his dog, which happens to be the most adorable mini dachshund you've ever seen.
taste
Gentlemen, Start your Forks
Belden Place is completed and fully functional. All the restaurants have menus and pictures which was something unheard of previous to this conglomerated site. Quite a place that Belden! We can't wait for Bastille day on July 14th there when everyone get just a little bit French for the sake of having a drink or ten.
www.belden-place.com
www.belden-place.com
Hudin Relaunch
A relaunch of the venerable hudin.com. Home to news, photos, tea reviews, and all kinds of things. Portions were pulled more in to spec and the design was made lighter and happier. Plus, there's the puppy and who doesn't like puppies?
www.hudin.com
www.hudin.com
OS X.3.9 Issues - The Not Booting Fix
Here are the instructions:
Start up in Single-User mode by holding down the command (Apple) key and the 's' key while you press the power switch. You can let go the keys when you see white text on a black background. When this has finished you will see a prompt ending in '#', although there may be other messages. Type: /sbin/fsck -fy followed by a return, at the prompt and wait a few seconds for 8-10 lines of output. If the last line says repairs were carried out, repeat this command until you get a message 'The volume appears to be OK'. Then continue with
/sbin/mount -uw /
cd /Library/Preferences
rm com.apple.loginwindow.plist
rm com.apple.windowserver.plist
cd /Library/Caches
rm -r *
cd /System/Library
rm Extensions.kextcache
cd /System/Library/Caches
rm -r *
reboot
Start up in Single-User mode by holding down the command (Apple) key and the 's' key while you press the power switch. You can let go the keys when you see white text on a black background. When this has finished you will see a prompt ending in '#', although there may be other messages. Type: /sbin/fsck -fy followed by a return, at the prompt and wait a few seconds for 8-10 lines of output. If the last line says repairs were carried out, repeat this command until you get a message 'The volume appears to be OK'. Then continue with
/sbin/mount -uw /
cd /Library/Preferences
rm com.apple.loginwindow.plist
rm com.apple.windowserver.plist
cd /Library/Caches
rm -r *
cd /System/Library
rm Extensions.kextcache
cd /System/Library/Caches
rm -r *
reboot