For the unenlightened, SlideshowPro (SP) is a Flash-based slideshow-authoring system that delivers full-featured, high-end, Flash-based slideshows. Websites featuring SP slideshows present content in sophisticated fashion, inspiring users with elegant captions, beautiful transitions, and intuitive navigation. However, many visitors are unable to experience SP slideshows because they lack the requisite Flash support. SlideshowPro-based slideshows currently require Flash 7 or better to function. And, although Flash 7 is quite common, it is far from ubiquitous. In the “worst-case” scenario, Flash-challenged visitors will […] Continue reading »
In his excellent book, Search Engine Optimization for Dummies, Peter Kent explains that many search engines actually get their search results from one (or more) of the larger search engines, such as Google or The Open Directory Project. Therefore, the author concludes that it may not be necessary to spend endless hours registering with thousands of the smaller search sites. Rather, the author provides a brief list of absolutely essential search sites with which it is highly recommended to register. […] Continue reading »
Optimizing your website for the search engines involves many important aspects including keyword development, search engine registration, and SEO logging. This Perishable Press tutorial scopes yet another critical weapon in the SEO wars: establishing and evolving an effective link campaign. We will begin our article by focusing on incoming and outgoing link strategies, proceed with a few tips for internal links, and then conclude with some ideas for getting links. Continue reading »
Let’s face it. Websites are as transient as the wind. Developers and designers spend countless hours producing sites that may exist online for mere months or even less before being restructured, redesigned or removed completely, forever disappearing into eternal nothingness — or, even worse, into the sterile void of a search engine database. Clearly not the best situation for designers looking to maintain a complete record of their online work. Continue reading »
Speed up your workflow by launching your favorite programs in one click using batch (.bat) files. Continue reading »
Apparently, article posting is painfully slow on 2-ish versions of WordPress. Indeed, we finally got tired of waiting several minutes every time we published, saved, or edited a post. After a bit of research, reading through countless complaints and suggested remedies, several key methods began to emerge. And, after taking the time to implement them, we have definitely enjoyed an substantial decrease in time required to publish, save, or edit posts. Continue reading »
Fast-loading pages reduce errors, conserve bandwidth, and please visitors. One way to decrease loading times and enhance performance involves maximizing image display efficiency. Your mantra for achieving image efficiency should be “reuse, optimize, and preload.”. While each of these methods plays an important role, this article will focus on methods for preloading images. Consult your server error logs to identify web pages that may require image help. Note: preloading images does not reduce bandwidth! It only decreases apparent load time, […] Continue reading »
In this article, we discuss two practical methods for compressing CSS documents with PHP and/or .htaccess. See also: Compress CSS and JavaScript with PHP at WP-Mix. Continue reading »
Here are the validation services currently provided by the W3C, as listed at W3C Quality Tips for Webmasters. Continue reading »
Welcome to Perishable Press! This article covers a plethora of search-engine optimization resources. For more excellent SEO information, check out the Optimization archive. If you like what you see, I encourage you to subscribe to Perishable Press for a periodic dose of online enlightenment ;) Continue reading »
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the business of every serious webmaster. The process of optimizing a website for the search engines involves much more than properly constructed document headers and anchor tags. Websites are like trees: their roots are the growing collection of content presented through the branching universe of the World Wide Web. Or something. The point is that optimizing a website requires nurturing the site itself while also ensuring proper exposure to the requisite elements of the internet. Continue reading »
Keywords play a vital role in search engine optimization (SEO), and — if used properly — have the potential to increase the flow of traffic to your site. It is beneficial to maintain an active list of keywords for each of your websites. Each list should be a continually evolving set of important, relevant keywords. The idea here is to develop a consistent practice of actively seeking better keywords, thereby producing your very own customized keyword library. Continue reading »
Search engines loathe crawling through convoluted lines of code. Oceans of complex JavaScript scare away the priceless indexing and archiving efforts of most major search engines, which will generally abort a crawl upon encountering such mess. The good news is that search engines actually do not deploy JavaScript, so it is possible to use JavaScript to hide those miles of messy code by using the fundamental document.write function. Continue reading »