evolt.org - Workers of the Web, Evolt!

Do You Really Need a Website?

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 09:01:38 -0600

With so much user-generated content around these days, do businesses really need their own websites to establish an online presence? Erika asks some tough questions.

When Wikis Go Bad

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 06:42:19 -0600

Over the last few years the use of wikis has become really popular. For every wiki evangelist I have met, I have also come across as many who hate wikis. I’ve used them extensively and I too have gone through a love-hate relationship with the wiki.

Having recently done some work on the evolt.org wiki, I decided to write down some of my thoughts about why sometimes wikis are phenomenally successful, and others just never seem to work. Like a lot of similar issues, none of this is rocket science.

Save the Validators

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 03:51:56 -0600

Any front-end web developer knows how much the World Wide Web Consortium validators have done not just for our markup skills, but for the web itself. Due to the cost of operations these heavily-used and much-appreciated tools are now in jeopardy.

De top-10 leugens die klanten vertellen

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 06:43:17 -0600

Oorspronkelijke titel/original title: Top 10 Lies told by Clients

Als je commercieel aan de slag gaat, dan is zorgen dat je je werk goed doet maar een klein deel van je taak. Regelmatig zie ik treurige voorbeelden van mensen die met goede bedoelingen aan een opdracht beginnen, en vervolgens verschrikkelijk voor de gek worden gehouden, omdat wat zij zien als een uitdaging en als iets dat ze met liefde doen, door de tegenpartij wordt gezien als iets heel anders, helemaal niet romantisch of geïdealiseerd, maar rauw en simpel.

10volt: Help Move Us Forward!

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 06:42:43 -0600

December 14, 2008 evolt.org turns ten years old. 10! We've been busy upgrading our hardware, software, content, and vision, and we could use your help. What could evolt.org offer you that similar communities do not? What do we do well, and what can we do better?

Optimizing by Color: How Color Can Affect Site Activity and Performance

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 03:52:44 -0600

Improving your use of color may open the door toward improving of the effectiveness of your site or portal. Our research shows that simple color-changes can improve click-through rates, registration numbers, and community activity.

This conclusion derives from research at LeerWiki.nl, a Dutch community for learning and earning. We have tested how different color schemes affect visitor behavior with regards to site goals, in order to optimize the use of color. This article outlines our research process and results.

The List Tip Tradition

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 02:01:23 -0600

Tipping is an evolt.org discussion list tradition; the way a list member voluntarily "pays" for an off-topic, chatty, or high noise-to-signal post.

CMS Trench Warfare: An Introduction

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 23:07:08 -0600

I have been working with large organizations to create or move web and intranet sites from static HTML pages to the company's chosen CMS. My role is that of liaison between the IT department (or whoever manages the project) and end user. By default, my clients tend to be in clerical roles: the folks in the trenches. My job is to evangelize the product, explain the process, present, instruct, coach, and guide clients in web architecture basics and design best-practices, and in use of the chosen software.

Design for iPhone: a device that thinks different

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 19:02:55 -0500

One Saturday afternoon, I agreed to take my daughter to the AT&T store, just to LOOK at an iPhone... touch one... explore a little. MISTAKE. I should have duct-taped myself to the mast — and my wallet to my ass — because next thing I knew (after daughter demoed it as expertly as if she'd been using it all her life) we were walking out of the store with a brand new iPhone 3G. You'll love our coverage, the AT&T salesman assured as he packed the phone into a bag, only for us to discover upon arriving home that we had no reception within a quarter mile of our house.

Dang! I thought, now we have to move.

A Very Simple and Effective Captcha

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 08:01:22 -0500

I have a very simple anti-bot spam technique that works extremely well. It requires no javascript, cookies or complicated server weirdness, is fully accessible, has no hidden fields, has negligible overhead and takes just a moment or two to implement. It requires that the user fill out one field with a number, so it's good for anti-bot but will not prevent human spammers. In three years, I have yet to receive any spam on any of the many sites that I have installed this on. Sites that were being bombarded with hundreds of spams daily suddenly became quiet and good emails get though.

Simulating Apache asis feature with very simple CGI

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 23:11:57 -0600

Apache's asis feature, provided by mod-asis, is a very simple way of sending static HTTP headers along with static content. Many installations of Apache have this disabled (the default) and those of us not on Apache are out of luck. This combination has led to this simple and useful feature being overlooked by most web developers.

Search Engine Friendly URLs with IIS and Classic ASP

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 14:38:03 -0600

A few years ago, I needed a Content Management System (CMS) for my site Voor Beginners and its English counterpart For Beginners. One of the requirements was, that the CMS should use "search engine friendly" URLs. This is fairly easy to accomplish with Linux and Apache; however, another requirement was that the CMS should run on the Windows platform... In this article, I will show how you can "simulate" the effects of .htaccess and mod_rewrite using Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) and classic ASP.

Google Algorithm Update Analysis

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 23:13:16 -0600

Anybody who monitors their rankings with the same vigor that we in the SEO community do will have noticed some fairly dramatic shifts in the algorithm starting last Thursday (July 5th) and continuing through the weekend. Many sites are rocketing into the top 10 which, of course, means that many sites are being dropped at the same time. We were fortunate not to have any clients on the losing end of that equation however we have called and emailed the clients who saw sudden jumps into the top positions to warn them that further adjustments are coming. After a weekend of analysis there are some curiosities in the results that simply require further tweaks in the ranking system.

Working with hierarchical data in SQL using Ancestor tables

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 23:10:56 -0600

This document describe an approach to SQL queries of hierarchical data using ancestor tables. Multiple inheritance are allowed but cycles are not allowed for this approach to work.

How to Get Listed in the DMOZ Directory

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 08:35:54 -0500

I'm a little confused. As an internet consultant specializing in search engine optimization, I believe that it is a good idea to submit your site to DMOZ (a.k.a. ODP or the Open Directory Project) --in fact, Google even encourages you to do so! However, being an ODP editor myself, I can tell you from personal experience that perhaps only 10-20% of all the site suggestions we receive actually follow our guidelines...