This article I recently wrote for Ezinearticles.com admittedly hits the surface of a very large topic, but it might serve as an introduction to marketing with pay-per-click advertising for someone.
Read the article: 5 Easy Steps to Test a Business Idea for Under $1000
October 28th, 2006
Though I review technical books and write about CSS and PHP/MySQL code snippets, my favorite and most read writing centers around practical day-to-day business and marketing issues. If you are new to the Design Notes blog, I think you will enjoy the following posts, which I think are among the best I’ve written:
Of course, there are few things I enjoy more than reading and reviewing books, plus I get some occasional Amazon referral cash from them. So take a minute and check out my recent book reviews.
If you are planning to design or redesign a Web site yourself or by hiring a Web designer, you may find my free e-book, No-Nonsense Guide to Creating Your Web Site Design Plan.
Thanks for reading Design Notes!
October 28th, 2006
I’m new to PHP running in Safe Mode, but since I started using Media Temple for a client I have had to take some time to understand the common workarounds. For those of you unfamiliar with PHP Safe Mode, it locks script permissions down tightly and only allows a script to execute or modify a file it “owns”. This means that many of the tasks typically run from a browser that modify the file structure of a Web site are no longer possible.
Thankfully, PHP allows users to set up a PHP as CGI folder and run the scripts from that folder with full permissions to access the site’s directory structure. Exactly why this is more secure escapes me. Larry Ullman’s forum has an interesting thread discussing exactly how to set this up.
There’s also a useful article in Media Temple’s knowledge base.
October 26th, 2006
Sometimes there’s a piece of CSS you just have to use for one browser and hide from the rest. In a case like that, you will need a hack or filter. Today, I found an interesting chart that shows various filter hacks and which browsers they target. Take a look: http://centricle.com/ref/css/filters/
October 25th, 2006
Yesterday, I needed to select a list of albums from a database searching on a list of instruments the artists played. This worked fine as long as there were not multiple artists playing the same instrument, in which case, the album was repeated in my list for each instance of the selected instrument.
To fix the problem, I needed to select that album as DISTINCT even though my search string was repeated. I found a code snippet that I modified to achieve this on the MySQL site here:
the whole query for retrieving an array of rows with one field distinct (no repeats) is:
select *, count(FIELD) from TABLE group by FIELD having count(FIELD)>=1;
October 24th, 2006
There is a new breed of Web designers learning CSS web design techniques instead of transitioning from table based Web design. For them, tools like the Yahoo! UI Library CSS Grids page will be very valuable. There is an active support community which should offer an environment where a beginner can navigate some of the difficulties of learning CSS.
The library shows how to create multiple Web layouts from a single CSS file, enabling newcomers and old-timers alike to harness more of the power and efficiency of Cascading Style Sheets.
Update: Nate Koechley has written an informative tutorial on using the Yahoo! UI Library to create CSS grids. There are several functioning examples provided. I found this tidbit thanks of Stylegala.
October 16th, 2006
On my first forays into HTML/CSS design, Javascript was still viewed as almost completely evil by many in the accessible design community. So when I started to read the ppk Quirks Mode Web site, I wasn’t completely sure Peter-Paul Koch was writing safe and accessible code. Now he has removed all doubt about exactly what he’s achieved as a Javascript scripter.
ppk on Javascript is a clearly written project based presentation of the basic principles of Javascript programming for the Web. The book is organized around each principle and each section features working code examples with a complete explanation of exactly how and why they work as they do.
Written in a style that is accessible to the CSS design community, this book will be sure to expand the number of Web designers who embrace unobtrusive Javascript as a usability enhancement tool.
Book Details
Related Resources
Help out the book and this blog by digging this post!
October 4th, 2006
A client contacted me a few days ago and requested that I add a few additional SPAM impediments to his Wordpress blog. These improvements were based on a post over at Shoe Money that has some excellent pointers.
Based on my quick investigation, it seems that suggestions 5 and 1 offer the most promise and the least complication.
Suggestion #5 is to block No Referrer Requests. Depending on your server configuration, you may need to play with the suggested .htaccess rule. I changed it from the original:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} POST
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} .wp-comments-post\.php*
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !.*shoemoney.com.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^$
RewriteRule (.*) ^http://whereyouwanttosendthem.com/$ [R=301,L]
The following rule is my modification, because the whereyouwanttosendthem.com url was not working correctly … simply appending to the end of the blog url instead of redirecting the page.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} POST
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} .wp-comments-post\.php*
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !.*myblog.com.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.myblog.com [R=301,L]
Suggestion #1 is excellent and simple. Rename your wp-comments-post.php file to anything you choose. Change the links that refer to this file in your comments.php template file and away you go. If you’ve implemented suggestion #5, you’ll need to change your .htaccess rule to reflect the new wp-comments-post.php file.
This is an excellent post by Shoe Money and the whole thing is worth a read!
October 3rd, 2006
CSS Web design, e-commerce Web design, and internet marketing issues from the desk of Harvey A. Ramer at Design Delineations.
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