Simplify the Web

It has been a while since an update has been given on our system and its progress to, as Pinky and the Brain would put it: "To Try And Take Over The World"

Our aspirations are modest at best...:-)

Anywho; our system for managing content (page pro live) continues to grow as we rework and refactor some of the code to enhance the system in general and allow for a more extensible and versatile system.

For those that have been waiting, the system now has been broken out to leverage only the blog system as well, offering two products essentially, a blog system AND a CMS or just a Blog system. Stay tuned on how we are going to be offering this service / system and how you can better take advantage of the system and its use to you.

We have done posts before on this topic. Easy Blog Integration 1, Easy Blog Integration 2, Easy Blog Integration 3, and Easy Blog Integration 4. It's been almost six months now since the last update, (July 3rd, 2008), let's see how we are doing now.

As of the end of this year, 2008, we are currently in first place on google for the search phrase: Easy Blog Integration. We have had a pretty successful year overall and this experiment seems to have gone very well for us. Again, as we continually work to point out, with a simple approach to design and development, keeping your code clean and not bandaided, and making sure your content says what you want it to say, you can easily manage your natural search listings without the headache of paying tons of money for Search Engine Optimization.

Approach your site and its design from a wholistic approach and not a one off and you will be able to be found easier, quicker and for longer than you would with a simple Seach Engine Optimization firm who charges you a ton of money for a few pages that will need to be updated in the future because the competition has worked its way on top of your results.

Keep a cool head on things when working on your content and your design and you will naturally float to the top!

I read a LOT of blogs and web pages every day. One of the things I'm drawn to, of course, are the websites of other designers and design companies. I probably check out too many...it could be considered a sickness.

One of the reasons I look at them is to make sure that I'm offering the best products and service that I can. Since a well-known internet newsletter just recommended SnapPages, I thought I'd check them out. They offer web hosting with a website builder that's really easy to use. They have lots of cool widgets that anybody could add to their website to make it cooler than usual. Sites built with SnapPages seem to look pretty nice.

The verdict? Not Smart.

Why not? Simple: an effective website is more than pretty pictures and neato widgets. The purpose of most websites is to serve the needs of the organization it represents...and, most of the time, that means bringing in visitors. Because that's true, the first consideration when making a website isn't the easy Google Maps integration (it's not that hard normally anyway)...it's the CODE.

An average website with bad code is almost invisible to people searching for what they offer, and an average website with good code can show up on the first page. Yes, a nice design and fun stuff on a website will keep visitors around longer...but you have to get them there first. Unfortunately, while SnapPages makes it easy to make a website, they also make it easy to make a BAD website.

The first thing I do when checking out a site is - of course - notice the layout and graphics. If it looks decent, I then view the HTML code underneath the design to see how effective it will be at bringing in visitors. SnapPages gave several examples of good websites, and the first one I looked at showed the crucial flaw in their system: the code doesn't validate. As history shows, valid and semantic XHTML + CSS is the best way to bring in visitors.

Individuals looking for an inexpensive way onto the web should like SnapPages. Organizations looking for results should run away from companies like SnapPages as quickly as possible. I'm not putting them down...they fill a necessary niche on the web. I have no problem with SnapPages at all.

You, however, deserve better.

I was working on a query recently in Oracle and couldn't find this answer anywhere on the internet, so I figured I'd put it here for future reference.

Joins - Right, Left, Full OUTER

Joins in Oracle default to inner if you don't do them right, yep, they don't error, they just default to inner. So if you are trying to get an outer join to work and you are getting less results than you know you should, look for a missing (+).

Here's a demonstration:

select a.Hello,b.World from first_table a, second_table b
where 
a.greeting = b.greeting(+)
and b.holiday(+) = 'C'

You can't pull from a table and use the join unless you join all the criteria as well. It's really basic in this query, but gets more complicated if you are hitting multiple tables.

Helpful notes from today's Basic HTML class in Denver, CO are now online. You'll be able to copy and paste a Doctype, Stylesheet link, and Metatags from that page.

Go there now. Read it. Realize that, without having been to the seminar, some of it might not make perfect sense. Contact us if you have questions.