Archive for April, 2008

I’m still kicking myself over a big mistake I made recently. A few months ago, I made some major changes to The Site of Requirement, my Harry Potter analysis and news site. I installed a copy of WordPress, moved all of the content into it, and reworked the design to take advantage of CSS instead of tables. After a few weeks of work, it was running smoothly again. My mistake? After finishing all of that work, I didn’t back it all up. I neglected to make a new backup over the following months as well.

Recently, the host the site is on put some new servers in place, and started migrating the sites to the new machines. I was unaware of this until the site stopped working. What I at first thought was just outdated DNS settings that needed to be updated proved to be far worse. The host had lost all of my files during the switch, as well as most of the database. The best they had was an older version of the database.

The backup I have contains the site before my move to WordPress, as well as a directory containing the WordPress installation, with about 80% of the work done. I should be able to get the site back up in a few days, but a few months of news posts will be AWOL, unfortunately.

The lesson here? Backup your website. Bad things will happen. Whether it’s accidental data loss, or some %@$&*# sabotaging your site. Be prepared. Make regular backups.

Edit: The database loss wasn’t as bad as I thought, luckily. I didn’t lose much at all. However, I still have to deal with the missing files.

Photo by Wysz

Daniel Scocco of DailyBlogTips.com recently authored an ebook called Killer Domains. I read it recently, and it was pretty good. It teaches you what goes into a good domain name, then walks you through brainstorming domain ideas. Also included are lists of prefixes and suffixes to try tacking on to a keyword, in an effort to get a short and memorable domain, and a collection of resources that come in handy when researching and registering domains.

As the ebook states, all of the three and four-letter domains have already been registered, and the five-letter ones are being taken pretty fast. (Lucky for me, I managed to get a good 5-letter domain…) While it may be tempting to run out and register a short domain like qqzkr.com, don’t do it. Find a domain that fits Daniel’s “7 Characteristics Of Good Domain Names.” Get a short, brandable domain that people won’t have trouble remembering or spelling. (more…)

I was looking through ProBlogger’s archives a few days ago, and I came across this interesting post.

A - Z of Professional Blogging Tools

The huge list is, as the title suggests, an alphabetized collection of links that will benefit most bloggers, whether they are trying to make money or not. You may already be aware of some (or a lot) of the resources, but there should still be enough to keep you busy for awhile.

Noupe has done it again. Their latest post, Using CSS to Do Anything: 50+ Creative Examples and Tutorials, is a truly monster-sized list.

The list includes

• The styling of lists
• Forms, and their child elements
• Various navigational menus
• CSS Image Galleries
• Rounded corners
• Speech bubbles
• Drop Caps
• And more

It’s an enjoyable list to skim through, and there are some valuable resources there. Is Noupe trying to become the next Smashing Magazine? Sure, not all of their posts are huge lists, like Smashing is famous for, but they put so many of them out…

• CSS Bits - Vol 2 - Date Stamps
• NETTUTS - With the success of PSDTuts.com, Eden Creative Communications has launched a new site to cover non-gfx tutorials. The two they already have up (a PayPal form, and a DOM Tab box) look promising.
• 25 Ways To Improve Your Site In 5 Minutes
• Custom JavaScript Dialog Boxes - A JavaScript library for creating modal dialogs with JavaScript. Personally I prefer to use FaceBox, a useful jQuery plugin, but this is a good standalone solution.

I was stumbling around yesterday, and I found this interesting site: RetailMeNot.com is a big database of online coupon codes. They even have a large collection of codes for web hosts. I’m sure there are other areas of the site that may be beneficial to bloggers.

You can easily get 10% off some decent web hosts, if you know what you’re looking for, though you should be prepared to spend awhile looking. (Or you could just input some company names into the search box, if you want to be lazy.)

RetailMeNot.com also has a handy search box on their homepage that allows you to search for coupons by domain, as well as bookmarklets and Firefox extensions to help you find deals as you surf.

A tagline is a short line of text that runs underneath your site’s name. It says something about your site, and adds to the first impression. In my opinion, the best taglines are both humorous and descriptive. (Of course, humor may not be appropriate for some sites, but it still pays to be descriptive.) Your tagline should sum-up your blog in one sentence.

Taglines are by no means exclusive to websites. Traditional publications use them, corporations have them, and even movies have taglines. Who hasn’t heard (or heard references to) “Think Different” or “Yo Qiero Taco Bell”? What about “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”? Just run a Google search on “tagline” and you’ll find plenty of corporate taglines. Or look at IMDB.com, and you’ll notice that they list the lagline(s) for all your favorite movies.

If you don’t already have a good tagline for your website, get one. Here are a few noteworthy examples:

• We smash you with the information that will make your life easier. Really. [Smashing Magazine]
• News for nerds. Stuff that matters [Slashdot]
• The Art of Technology [Ars Technica]
• Shoppers Bite Back [The Consumerist]

For more funny taglines, check out The Best Website Taglines Around the Internet.

Consider adding a tagline. Whether you decide to be funny or not, be sure to check out Copyblogger’s guide to writing taglines.

Pullquotes are used in most magazines, and many websites have adopted the use of them. They are named thus because they are short excerpts pulled from the article, and highlighted to draw your attention. This technique it great for long, wordy articles, since you can break-up the flow of the text a little, and highlight a noteworthy part of the text.

They are named thus because they are short excerpts pulled from the article, and highlighted to draw your attention.

Pullquotes on websites are generally blockquotes with a specific class assigned. Some CSS magic is applied to the class, and you have your pullquotes set-up.

I don’t use pullquotes too often, but I have classes defined nevertheless. (See my example pullquote above? It will look like a plain, unstyled blockquote if you’re reading this in an RSS reader. Visit the permalink page for the full effect.)

Here is my CSS:

.rpullquote, .lpullquote {
padding: 5px;
width: 202px;
margin-top: 8px;
margin-bottom: 8px;
border-top-width: 2px;
border-bottom-width: 2px;
border-top-style: solid;
border-bottom-style: solid;
border-top-color: #990100;
border-bottom-color: #990100;
font-size: 15px;
text-align: center;
line-height: 1.1em;
font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-style: italic;
font-weight: normal;
background-image:none;
}

.rpullquote {
float: right;
margin-left: 10px;
}

.lpullquote {
float: left;
margin-right: 10px;
}

As you can see, the first rule controls the visual aspect of the pullquotes, and the following two are used to float the pullquotes to either the left or the right. Feel free to tweak the styles to fit your stylesheet better.

Now, whenever you want to create a pullquote, just follow these steps:

1. Copy the text you want to quote.
2. Paste it into a new blockquote tag.
3. Add class="rpullquote" or class="lpullquote" (right and left, respectfully) to the tag.

Matt Mullenweg has just redesigned his blog. First impression: “My eyes!” The oranges, greens, and blues are really shocking if you were expecting the old, more tame design.

(more…)

Digg, Flickr, Google. What so they have in common? They’re all misspelled. Digg obviously comes from “dig” and Flickr is obviously just “flicker” without the e. Then we have the story of Google. As the legend goes, Larry Page and Sergey Brin were going to call the site Googol, but a fateful typo gave the site its unique and memorable name.

The three sites mentioned above have had great success, despite having domains that aren’t spelled correctly. The key is to be obvious. Make the misspelling noticeable, so people can tell you did it on purpose. By having a domain like this, you can have a short name that people will remember.

Digg is a great example. It’s only four letters, and that extra g really adds something. It’s effortless to remember the extra g, and you find yourself adding the extra letter in when you don’t need it. (I keep typing “digg” instead of “dig” now. Thanks a lot, Kevin Rose! You’ve etched your brand name into my subconscious.)