Daily Twaddle

Google offers ways for website owners to get the most out of Google’s search results. I signed up for a Google account and I use a ton of their products, but Google just showed me the value of the Webmaster Tools.

I received an email from Google about my website having malicious code on certain pages. What? I logged into Webmaster Central and found out that Google will display a “warning” page instead of my suspicious page. Whoa! The reason is because that page contained 34 trojan viruses, 15 malware programs, 2 atomic bombs, and the killing curse. Well, the trojan horses are true, but I can’t remember the rest of the crazy stuff.

Basically, if you went to that page, my website would put viruses on your computer that install programs. Maybe the programs steal your information, maybe they watch your activity. Who knows! What do I do!

Somehow someone hacked into my server files online and put a script into my page to wreck havoc on would-be users. I found the script and deleted it and now Google is happy.

But… what if I didn’t use the Webmaster Tools? I’d be screwed! I have more than 100 pages on my website. I haven’t looked at some pages in years! Google totally surprised me with this fantastic service. Thank you!

∴ If you have your own website: Start using Webmaster Tools.
∴ If you use the internet: Make sure your browser warns you of suspicious websites. Check your preferences.

Note: Mom, I already monitor your website with Google’s Tools. Don’t worry.

Annoying or Helpful… zat is zee keston…

Carol kindly brought up this subject although I’ve been mulling over the idea in my head for a while now. She asked for my blog to automatically open a new browser window when she clicks on a link to a different website (also known as an external or offsite link). She’s not the first internet user to request this feature.

More and more websites make their external links open new windows as a way to keep the user on their website longer. It seems logical and every client I’ve worked with so far asked me to make this happen.

But… the web design community preaches that doing this will upset and annoy the user (you Carol). If that is true… they why do my users keep requesting this feature? It seems like the community speaks “as if” without any actual research.

What the Community Says

Site Point Says: Disorients novice users, breaks the back button, clutters the taskbar, and disrespects by assuming user desire. Jenn Says: Even novice users expect links to other sites to open a new window. Plus, all the newest browsers use tabbed browsing so clutter is a non-issue. And if we let an external link open in the current window, we assume the user desires this.

Blogging Without A Blog Says: Some users want to go back to the original website, so if the different website opens in a new window, they save a click. Jenn Says: This makes sense, I’m always looking for a way to save a click (right clicks included). But, users with disabilities (blind, etc.) will probably have issues using their special browsers.

I guess it basically comes down to creating a positive user experience. I want to engage my readers, not annoy them. So, instead of assuming let’s have the Daily Twaddle readers decide! Carol, we already know your preference, but you should vote anyway.

By the way… if you’re looking for a script to open new windows on your own website… check out this thread at Six Apart.

If your name is Carol, this post will bore you.

I’m working with a client to build his website for the launch of his new business. I decided to build the site with WordPress so that he can update the content himself.

In doing so, I found two incredibly useful WordPress plugins.

The first cforms II, is the most robust and easy-to-use contact form plugin I’ve seen. And I must have tried six of them. This one is so user friendly, customizable with templates, and easy to install (just paste a tiny line of code in whichever post/page/text widget you want).

Not only can you customize the look and content of the form, but you can customize what happens after the user submits the form. Redirect to another page? Display custom pop-up messages? Copy (CC:) you, the user, your mom, and your dog? Awesome.

Next…

We have WP-Super Cache. Yeah - it’s super. This plugin generates a static html file from my WordPress blog files. This speeds up the loading time of this blog tremendously. Actually, I’m not sure about this particular blog (dailytwaddle) since I just installed this plugin three minutes ago. But, it doubled the loading speed on my client’s site. SWEET!

We’re not really waiting for the bus. And we’re not even at a bus stop.

I’m actually working on a website for a professional Forrest Gump impersonator. He’s a motivational speaker that just moved to Montana. He’s actually the official Forrest Gump for the Bubba Gump Shrimp Factory. Cool right?

We did a photo shoot in the park downtown and here is a photo of us. Just for fun.

Photo courtesy of my main squeeze.

First of all… let me give you some background information on Alexa. Alexa is a website that provides information on the web traffic to other websites. Webmasters use Alexa’s statistics to analyze the popularity of their own website. So basically, a high Alexa rating means a lot of people like your website.

When I checked my awesome stats at Alexa, they offered me a T-shirt that shows the supreme awesomeness of the Daily Twaddle. I took a screen shot so you can see it. Humorous no?

At least Technorati shows me my popularity in real numbers instead of a world percentage. I get a whopping “2″ with them.

Let me walk you through my thoughts on choosing a major for my bachelor’s degree…

When I first tossed around the idea of returning to college to finish my degree, I decided to go to an online school since I live in the boonies of Montana. I found a great school that offered a “web application degree” - right up my alley.

Then, Roch decided to return to school with me and wouldn’t it be fun to go to a traditional university together? Yes, well, the University of Montana didn’t have the degree I wanted, so I settled with international business since I planned on learning French anyway. But… international business is not an option on it’s own, so I had to ad marketing. Marketing sounded easier than Accounting. Notice how I kept drifting from what I really want to do?

Then I looked into Montana State’s programs and they offered a Graphic Design degree. Cool, I would love to add that to my repituare. But unfortunately, I needed to pay for four years of school - even after the one year I spent at UofM. I didn’t have that kind of cash just lying around. Plus, it was a “fine arts” degree and I don’t know that I could have appreciated the beauty of a mangled piece of rusty steel. I’m not the artsy-type. The worst part is after I would have taken the basic art classes, I would have submitted my portfolio with only a 60% chance of getting accepted into the program. Shenanigans!

Okay, I reconsidered my original idea of the online school. Well, they dropped the Web Application degree in favor of a Software Architecture degree. Interesting. The courses looked crappy to me, so I chose the general IT program because I could pick from any of the tech courses. But guess what? I chose almost all the courses from the Software Architecture program!

That is my new degree of choice - Software Architecture from an online university. I wonder if I’ll want to keep working freelance or get a job with a company when I’m done? Who knows? I do know that I should be able to finish my degree two years from now. That will be so exciting.

We’ve come a long way from scrolling text and the annoying <blink> tag. But why do we let our advertisers annoy the crap out of our visitors?

Some websites have so many advertisements that it’s hard to find real content. I surf the net without cookies, javascript, flash and image animations. This sucks for site owners who want good general statistics about how people navigate their site. It also sucks for me because I might be missing some good content in an effort to block the crap.

But I understand that people need to make a living. I just wish there was a better way. So, to make me feel better, I’m going to vent about all the website advertising that annoys me by writing a top-10 list.

1. Lying ads: “you’re a winner!”, “you have new messages.”
2. Ads that resize my browser window.
3. Ads that flash or blink.
4. Too many ads - page takes forever to load.
5. Ads between pages I navigate (skip this advertisement).
6. Floaters. Those stupid windows that obscure content.
7. Ads with noise. They usually scare the crap out of me.
8. Articles written on 10 pages (one paragraph on each page) in order to show me more damn ads.
9. Ads that look like links that belong to this site, but in fact, take me to some advertisement site.
10. Ads in the middle of the page - right smack in between one article’s paragraph and the next.

Of course, these are just the advertisement annoyances. I could go on and on about websites in general (coming soon, logo not a link to the homepage).

Let’s be smart and stop using intrusive advertising that pisses me off!

When I first created my web design website, I added two stylesheets - a printer friendly and a low-vision friendly. They’re totally ugly, but I wanted to stick with function, not beauty.

I noticed the other day on campus that students stop to read flyers with color photos. They skip right over the plain font flyers, or even the ones with pictures printed in black and white. I guess a picture really does tell a thousand words.

When designing my website I wanted to steer away from a cluttered image-filled look, to a nice clean soft-colored site. After looking at it yesterday, I decided the colors actually look old, like they’ve been yellowed from the sun.

Anyway, I found some sites (listed below) that let you change the page style, but not all of them do it for accessibility features. In fact most of them seem to do it just for fun. Maybe Jenn doesn’t like to have fun? All work and no play makes Jenn… you know the rest.

By the way… DON’T click your back button if you want to change the style back. Just choose a different style (probably “default”) from the page you’re on!

Stage 38 (my website)
Collingwood College
Carmel College
MVA Resource Guide
Romance at Cambridge
Elena of Valhalla

My question is… are alternate screen stylesheets useless?

A rainy day! Just in time for Spring!

I love this picture of the wet leaves and I’m a big fan of umbrellas (I hate getting rained on you know). So here we are.

I styled the “logo” in Web 2.0 - the current look of the web propelled by Apple. I added the photo border on the edge with photoshop, then warped the whole image. I love drop shadows even though they’re out of style and this way I could have a shadow without the traditional drop-shadow-look. The header looks great. It looks like I can peel the photo right off the page!

I’m using the default Kubrick theme for simplicity. I just added some styles. Linking the logo to the home page was a little tricky. I used my faithful transparent.gif for the effect. I added a regular paragraph to the main index template for the intro description at the top. Maybe I should make it an H tag for proper mark-up?

Tell me what you think and happy reading!

Have you ever wanted to show code in your web page or blog without interpretation by the browser?

This is what I want you to see:

<img src="<?php gravatar("R", 40); ?>" alt="" />

Who has time to translate each character-code into proper mark-up? You don’t have to! Chris Brewer makes it easy with his “Display HTML Sample Code.”

Just paste your HTML code into the text box and click “clean.”

Righteous!