In an increasingly online world, the question “Do I need a website?” is one which you should consider carefully. The main thing to think about is the purpose of the website you may make. If it is for personal use, then a social network such as Twitter or Facebook may be better. However, if the purpose is to promote an idea or product, then you may be better suited to having a website which potential customers can access quickly. There are sites, as you can see from this infographic, which allow you to build your own website efficiently with little cost. If you require more advanced or tailored programming, it may be necessary to hire a team of developers, which this chart can help you decide on. If you think that the best idea would be to create your own website, Basekit offers a huge range of content that can be included easily. This infographic can make your thought process more clear, and was designed by people who know the best use for each solution. If you’re sure you need a full on site why not create your own website for free with Basekit – who produced this infographic. Get [...]

It is my belief that for anyone who is passionate about writing and not so keen on developing websites, WordPress is the best content management system (bit of website software) to build and manage a website. WordPress is great because it is fully open source (so no cash needs to be handed over to use it) and there is a very active community which supports the software. Although some SEOs and webmasters believe that WordPress works “out of the box” perfectly well, I do like to use a few plugins to give it a boost and enhance the CMS. Here is a list of the main plugins that I use. I do not use them all on all websites, but do use them all somewhere or other. Some are handy to have, some are vital, some simply save time and others can improve your website in ways you just could not imagine (OK, I am getting over excited, they are just all OK really). Here are my recommended plugins for enhancing and WordPress blog. Broken Link Checker http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/broken-link-checker/ – Checks for broken links, also for redirects (and fixes them, careful of aff links!). Broken link checker really is an amazing [...]

Last night I noticed that on one of my sites there were hundreds of duplicate files being crawled. These files were all generated by the WordPress Theme as it appended a version number to the end of each javascript file each time an edit was done. However, there was nothing in place to “remove” old version numbers, so I had a whole bunch of virtual files, all identical, all being crawled. As I felt that this could be deemed duplicate content by Googlebot (I was actually looking at the access logs of the site to see if Googlebot had been as the last 2 articles I had written had not been indexed) I decided action was needed. Magazine Basic by Bavotasan.com I had spent some time (days, weeks?) editing and modifying my WordPress theme (I am not going to name the theme that created all the silly file names in case I upset someone, again….) so was a little reluctant to update it. But I threw caution to the wind (I do that a lot, as well as added little remarks in brackets) and decided to use the trusty old (and regularly updated) Magazine Basic theme by Bavotasan.com. It is actually the theme that [...]

Just came across this – Drupal Gardens - http://www.drupalgardens.com/ Like Ning, but using Drupal. More like WordPress.com really, but using Drupal. Many people have a free website for their personal blog or business. Generally they opt for WordPress.com, Blogspot.com, Google Sites or just make do with a Facebook page these days. Drupal is an open source content management system that is very popular amongst web developers as it is easy to install, easy to learn and highly configurable. Like WordPress.org, you can bolt on modules (like plugins, add-ons etc) to enhance the site. If installed on your own domain it is a very powerful CMS. With Drupal Gardens there is a choice of themes, all the usual Drupal features – pages, stories, forum, plus gallery and comments. At the moment you cannot install extra modules. It seems a good place to build a free site, if you are into that sort of thing. I set up an experimental blog here: http://howtoloseweight.drupalgardens.com/ It took me about 30 minutes to set that up, although most of the time was spent writing the first blog post (and yes, I know that it has not been proof read and is full of grammatical errors). In fact, I wrote a [...]

BBC News is looking extremely sleek today. At first I thought I was on the wrong page! I always read their Health News pages and today was pleasantly surprised by the vibrant and modern new look. The BBC have decided to remove the old fashioned left sidebar and now have all their navigation along the top of the page. The right hand side shows features, most popular news of the week and also has relevant links to video material on iPlayer. They have provided a guided tour of their new layout which helps to explain where things are and why they have moved. The design aims to be cleaner and provides more space for better quality pictures and videos. Alongside each story they now show other relevant stories. Each video page displays a better quality and larger video with links to other videos. This will possibly revolutionise the way the BBC share its news content. They are now provide social networking links to that we can share the news easier with friends and family. Well done BBC! Right, now time for a Webologist.co.uk makeover! Suggested Reading:BBC Starts Sharing Video with Commercial NewspapersGoogle Plus + Google Circle In The NewsThe Times [...]

An interesting discussion has been kicked off by Kim over at Cre8asiteforums.com – what types of website should be emotionally engaging, which should be minimalist, clean, “professional”? And what is meant by “professional style” in web design? A site for Children will look very different from one for stock brokers, but both will surely be “professional”. Personally I prefer clean, minimalist sites. I think that the web template should be just like a frame to hold navigation, advertising (annoying at times but essential) and little else. The flair and passion should be in each article. Using images and other media within articles is the simplest way to add passion to a website, without changing the entire theme. This of course allows for a website to be have both serious and more playful sections without risk of upsetting and readers. Grumpus makes a very good point for the web designer that works alone: Playful and amusing are one way to go. Appealing to my sense of logic is engaging as well – which your articles do, in spades. For every right brained user you turn off by being “boring” you have a left brain user who you have turned on by [...]

Sometimes the easiest way to make a quick and dramatic change to a website is to change the font. There are several popular font families that work well together to keep the appearance of your website the same across a range of different operating systems and web browsers. Her we provide a list courtesy of Ampsoft.net. Windows fonts / Mac fonts / Font family Normal style Bold style Arial, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif Arial, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif Arial Black, Arial Black, Gadget, sans-serif Arial Black, Arial Black, Gadget, sans-serif Comic Sans MS, Comic Sans MS5, cursive Comic Sans MS, Comic Sans MS5, cursive Courier New, Courier New, Courier6, monospace Courier New, Courier New, Courier6, monospace Georgia1, Georgia, serif Georgia1, Georgia, serif Impact, Impact5, Charcoal6, sans-serif Impact, Impact5, Charcoal6, sans-serif Lucida Console, Monaco5, monospace Lucida Console, Monaco5, monospace Lucida Sans Unicode, Lucida Grande, sans-serif Lucida Sans Unicode, Lucida Grande, sans-serif Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua3, Palatino6, serif Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua3, Palatino6, serif Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif Times New Roman, Times, serif Times New Roman, Times, serif Trebuchet MS1, Helvetica, sans-serif Trebuchet MS1, Helvetica, sans-serif Verdana, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif Verdana, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif Symbol, Symbol (Symbol2, Symbol2) Symbol, Symbol (Symbol2, Symbol2) [...]

Just found this fantastic tutorial on adding widget areas to any WordPress theme. I successfully set up a new widget area below the content of my posts on another blog I write for in about 5 minutes. Addwidget Area to Theme: Step 1. In the index.php file in your theme directory, add the following code to an area where you would like a new widget area. Directly below the content is a good idea if you wish to place adverts, or further reading there. Note we have had to wrap this line of code so it displays. Careful of too many spaces. <div> <?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar('Post Widget') ) : ?> <?php endif; ?> </div> Step 2. Then in the functions.php file add the following line, directly below the current widget code: register_sidebar(array('name'=>'Post Widget',)); Step 3. Finally, to style the wdiget, add this code to the style.css file: .widget_post { background: #FFFFFF; margin: 0px; padding: 10px; width: 600px; } It really is as simple as that. When you next go to the widgets area in your WordPress control panel, you will see an option for “Post Widget”. There is a more detailed explanation on StudioGrasshopper’s website. Source: Studiograsshopper.ch [...]

We are proud to announce that we have been chosen the host the MotleyHealth.com logo competition. MotleyHealth.com has decided that it is time to upgrade their current logo, and have decided to search for a new logo by way of a competition. The logo should be on the theme of Fitness, Strength and Weight Loss. It should be a similar size to the current logo, and fit in with the site colour scheme. Jon Wade from MotleyHealth.com has scribbled his idea for a new logo, which is based on an image of a man bench pressing, while another spots. This is the doodle that Jon produced earlier while going through some ideas: The name MotleyHealth.com and the tag line, “Fitness Strength and Weight Loss” should both be present in the logo. The Prize So, what is the prize? The prize is simple – the winning designer will be awarded free advertising for life (or the life of Webologist) for their web design company on the sidebar of Webologist. Advertising can be by way of a suitable text message or a banner (either a 125px square or a 234px by 60px half banner in the side bar). Entries should be emailed [...]

If you are moving a site to a new server, or building a site for a client, and wish to test it before updating the name servers, then this task is very simple to do, especially if you have a Linux PC. All you need to do is add a line in the etc/hosts file like this: 00.00.000.000 www.test_the_domain.com Where 00.00.000.000 is the IP address of the new server. From now on whenever you look at www.test_the_domain.com in a browser you will see the version on the specified server rather than the version where the name servers at the registrar point to. This is possibly one of the most useful and yet most basic testing tools when rebuilding a website for a client, as it gives you an easy way to view and test the site while you are building it without comprimising the live version. The new site can be built and tested fully before updating the name servers and putting the new site into the “production environment”. It can also be done on a Windows machine, just reboot the pc after amending the hosts file (there is no need for a server restart on Linux). Locatation the hosts [...]

One thing that I struggled with for ages was posting code to a blog, as the code would invariable be processed, meaning that it could not be shown. However, a bit of googling revealed that there are several online solutions which convert php or html code into blog safe code. This one is very simple and easy to use. I used it on the previous post. http://www.onlinetools.org/tools/htmlizerdata/ Suggested Reading:Can You See the Rel Me?How to Disguise Your Email Address – Email ObfuscationProblem with permissionsTransfer Blogger FTP to WordPress MySQL SiteAdding Author Authority (rel=”author”) To WordPress – Plugin Required?

Yesterday I managed to successfully transfer a Google Blogger generated blog over to a WordPress platform. The blog (actually 3 blogs) are hosted on my own domain (like this) and not on Blogspot / WordPress.com. But you can transfer from Blogger blogspot to WordPress.com if you desire too. With WordPress it was actually very easy to do a transfer of all blog posts, comments and labels over to WordPress, as there is a built in import script that allows imports from several blog platforms as well as RSS feeds, Technorati tags and other social bookmarking sites. The only problem that I had was that I wanted to keep my Blogger generated URLs in tact, so that all links and search engine listings would continue to work OK. This was actually very easily done, with a small piece of code to modify the import file. So, how is it done? Firstly, I downloaded my entire Blogger blog using FTP to my pc, so that if anything went wrong I had a back up at hand. I then downloaded the latest version of WordPress (2.5.1) and uploaded it into my blog directory. I set up a new database in phpmyadmin, and then [...]

OK, I attempted a Drupal upgrade as soon as I made a test area for my Drupal CMS installation, and managed to get it wrong from the start. So, to recap, here are the upgrade instructions from Drupal (after backing up): Log on as the user with user ID 1 Place the site in “Off-line” mode Disable contributed modules and switch to a core theme (Bluemarine or Garland). Remove all of the old files and directories from the Drupal installation directory. Unpack the new Drupal files and directories into the Drupal installation directory. Copy the backed up “files” and “sites” directories to the Drupal installation directory. If the original .htaccess or robots.txt files have been modified, copy the backed up versions of these files to the installation directory as well. Verify the new configuration file to make sure it has the latest and correct information. Re-install contributed modules. Run update.php by visiting /update.php When I just attempted to upgrade, I leapt into step 6. So now starting again, following the above process Suggested Reading:Restoring a Drupal MySQL Database using phpmyadminHow To Backup and Restore a Drupal InstallationMod rewrite / clean urls for Drupal on Ubuntu Apache ServerJoomla Installation Using Putty [...]

The first time I looked at Linux was when I used a Knoppix Live CD. The reason I used the CD was actually to rescue some files from my wife’s hard drive after her windows installation died. While browsing through the applications on Knoppix I was quite impressed with the Bluefish HTML/web designers editor. Ubuntu comes with Screem, which looks OK, but not as impressive as Bluefish. Anyway, I just installed Bluefish. What prompted me to blog about this is that a few weeks ago when I first installed Ubuntu only my old pc, I felt really uneasy with using the terminal to do anything. I am starting to know my way around, and can even remember several different commands without having to look them up. But the point I am making, is that I have just installed Bluefish, and it was so straightforward. I have installed several new applications on my Ubuntu system this weekend, but only now it struck me that it now actually seems easier to install application on Linux than on Windows. To install Bluefish, all I had to do was type: sudo apt-get install bluefish Simple. I did not have to search for the Bluefish [...]

Making websites is easier than ever. With free web editing tools such as NVU, an adundance of code shared online and free FTP tools and cheap webhosting, building and publishing websites is easier than ever. Here are a few of the main tips I have used over the years. Open Source Templates – The easy way to start building your own Web Pages I have been dedicating the last month or so to setting up a home LAMP server, to host PHP/MySQL sites and static sites and blogs using FTP. Now I need to get back to the busines of creating web pages. By far the easiest way to build a site for the first time is to use a ready made template. Many blogging services such as Blogger and WordPress provide simple templates ready to use with a Blogspot or WordPress hosted blog. These same templates can be used on your own domains, however they are often lacking a little in design and style, and of course, a unique template is essential to make you site stand out. So, how to start? Open Source of course. There are many sites on the internet that collect and distribute offer open source templates. [...]