Web page design: delimit file and folder names with hyphens, not underscores

Use hyphens, not underscores, in file and folder names.

Search engines read a hyphen in a web page file name as a space.

• Example: Web-Standards-Design.html is read as Web Standards Design

The resulting set of words provides useful keywords for the search engine.

Conversely, search engines don’t do anything with underscores.

• Example: Web_Standards_Design.html is read as Web_Standards_Design

This one long word is not a useful keyword for the search engine, and won’t do anything to boost your web page’s page rank.

Likewise, use hyphens in URLs.

• Example: http://www.example.org/Web-Standards-Design/index.html. The folder name is read as Web Standards Design

Use file and folder names that are keyword rich.

From the book Building Findable Websites by Aarron Walter:

Separate keywords in file and folder names with a hyphen rather than an underscore to ensure that search engines can read each word individually rather than as one large word. For example, most search engines will read a file named my-page.html as “my” “page,” whereas my_page.html would be read as “my_page,” which is not likely to match a search query. Google recently updated its system to recognize individual words in file names separated by an underscore. Since other search engines could be tripped up by the underscore, stick with hyphen-delimited keywords in your file and folder names to be safe.

Web page design: the importance of a good title and description

Open a browser and go to Google.

Type these keywords: web standards

I’ve already done this. You can see the results: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=web+standards&btnG=Google+Search

You will see that the first item in the results list has:

• Title: The Web Standards Project
• Description: The Web Standards Project is a grassroots coalition fighting for standards which ensure simple, affordable access to web technologies for all.

Where did Google get the title and description?

Answer: from the HTML document’s <title> element and the <meta name=”description” content=”…”> element.

See for yourself: go to http://www.webstandards.org/ then select from the browser’s menu View >> Page Source. Look at the <title> element and the <meta name=”description” content=”…” /> element.

Lessons Learned:

• When creating a web page, be sure the <title> element’s value contains keywords that signify the key concepts in your document (and are the words that someone doing a Google search would use).
• When creating a web page, be sure the <meta name=”description” content=”…”> element’s value contains a description that would get a person interested in looking at your web page (Google shows your description in the results page, and if it’s well written then it will motivate the user to click on the link and view your web page).

Largest ransom ever: enough gold to fill a room 22 feet long by 17 feet wide to a height of over 8 feet

In 1532 the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro captured the Inca emperor Atahuallpa at the Peruvian highland of Cajamarca. Pizarro proceeded to hold his prisoner for eight months, while extracting history’s largest ransom in return for a promise to free him.

The ransom was enough gold to fill a room 22 feet long by 17 feet wide to a height of over 8 feet.

After the ransom was delivered, Pizarro reneged on his promise and executed Atahuallpa.

– Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond

Status will get you nowhere

If you’re trying to show off for people at the top, forget it.  They will look down at you anyway.

If you’re trying to show off for people at the bottom, forget it.  They will only envy you.

Status will get you nowhere.

Only an open heart will allow you to float equally between everyone.

– Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

Searching is a multi-billion-dollar industry … finding the right signals of quality is the key

When evaluating a page to assign rank, search engines look at a host of signals of quality that might provide clues to what a page is about and the value of its content.

One such signal of quality that we can safely identify is the number of inbound links to a page from reputable sources. If a page has a number of good inbound links to it, then it is likely that it has high quality content and therefore should be ranked high when displaying relevant search returns.

This particular signal of quality is what allowed Google to rise to the top in the business of search engines while other search algorithms were looking at less reliable signals of quality. Obviously, looking at the right signals of quality is of utmost importance in the multi-billion-dollar search industry. [My comment: Wow! It makes sense now that I think about it, but until I read this I never really thought about "searching" as being such a valuable thing: "multi-billion-dollar search industry."]

– Building Findable Websites by Aaron Walter

My recipe for pretty healthy Sticky Toffee Pudding

Here is the traditional recipe for Sticky Toffee Pudding: http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_8781,00.html

As you can see, it uses a lot of butter and sugar.

Last night I made a modified version of the recipe. I must say, it was quite possibly the best tasting dessert I have ever had!

Pretty Healthy Sticky Toffee Pudding

• 1/2 c. pastry flour
• 1/2 c. plus 1 tbsp. white flour
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 3/4 c. finely chopped dates
• 1 1/4 c. boiling water
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1/4 c. canola oil
• 1/3 c. granulated sugar
• 1/4 tsp. stevia
• 1 large egg
• 1 tsp. vanilla

Toffee Sauce

• 1/2 c. canola oil
• 1/2 c. heavy cream
• 1/2 c. packed brown sugar
• 1/4 tsp. stevia

Pudding (cake) Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Butter an 8-inch square glass pan.
2. Mix the flours and baking powder in a bowl.
3. In a separate bowl, pour the boiling water over the dates, and stir in the baking soda.
4. In a third bowl mix the oil, granulated sugar, stevia, egg, and vanilla.
5. Gradually beat in the flour mixture into the oil mixture.
6. Add the date mixture to the batter and mix.
7. Pour into the prepared baking dish.
8. Bake until the pudding (cake) is done. The recipe above says to bake for 35 minutes, but I had to bake it for 52 minutes.
9. Remove from oven, remove the pudding (cake) from the pan, and put it on a pan that you can put in the broiler.
10. Spoon about 1/3 c. of the toffee sauce evenly over the top.
11. Place pudding (cake) under the broiler for 1 minute, until the topping is bubbly.
12. Serve immediately, with whip cream on top, and toffee sauce drizzled on the whip cream.

Toffee Sauce: (prepare this while the pudding (cake) is in the oven)

1. In a sauce pan combine the oil, heavy cream, brown sugar, and stevia.
2. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly.
3. Once it’s at a boil, reduce heat to medium, and cook for 8 minutes, stirring constantly.
4. Turn off the heat, and let sit while the pudding (cake) finishes cooking. It will thicken (that’s good).

Use the Geo-Tag Generator to put location — geo — data in your web pages to enhance regional search requests

This web site provides a free online tool that automatically generates HTML <meta> tags containing geo (lat/lon) data:

http://www.geo-tag.de/generator/en.html

It has a form that you simply fill in with your data and out pops the <meta> tags. For example, I filled in the data for Boston and here are the <meta> tags that were automatically generated:

<meta name=”DC.title” content=”Boston” />
<meta name=”geo.region” content=”US-MA” />
<meta name=”geo.placename” content=”Boston” />
<meta name=”geo.position” content=”37.09024;-95.712891″ />
<meta name=”ICBM” content=”37.09024, -95.712891″ />

Here’s a section of the web page which describes the value of embedding geo metadata into your web pages:

What are Geo-Tags for?

According to a survey of The Kelsey Group (Princeton, NJ, USA) from the year 2004, 25% of all commercial online searches are local searches. It understandably makes little sense to look for a baker and find one who has his shop in a completely different town. Today search engines are already able to handle regional search requests, gathering city and street names from the text content of the explored web pages. Geo tags will simplify this task since they provide machine-readable information about country, region and exact latitude/longitude coordinates.

Simplify the markup in your webpage, and increase its search engine rank

“Search engines look for semantic markup with a high ratio of content to code.” [Building Findable Websites by Aarron Walter]

For example, this is not good design:

<div>

<div id=”Main”>

<p>Hello World</p>

</div>

</div>

The outer div is providing no benefit.  It can be more simply expressed as:

<div id=”Main”>

<p>Hello World</p>

</div>

This provides a higher ratio of content to code (tags).  And from the quote above, search engines rank higher documents with a higher ratio of content to code.

Assume it’s “easy until proven difficult”

I saw this phase in a book I am reading¹: “easy until proven difficult”

It occurs to me that oftentimes I approach a task assuming that it is complex and difficult. The result is I solve the task in a complex fashion. It is only later that I see how to simplify it. Then, after removing all the complexities that I unnecessarily added, I realize that the task was actually simple. Perhaps if I go into a task assuming that it is “easy until proven difficult” I can bypass adding unnecessary complications.

[1] Logic for Dummies by Mark Zegarelli

Massive scalability: you want many to work together, without telling them to work together

“To scale massively you don’t want to store anything centrally. You want many to work together, without telling them to work together: decentralized synchronization to achieve information accessibility.”

– Tim Kehoe