Category Archives: General

Downtime Pages: Don’t Disappoint Your Users

You’re working on some changes to your website, so you put-up a message saying that the site will be down for a few hours. Your users won’t like it, but it’s necessary sometimes.

If you have to block access to your site while you work on it, make sure you include important information like, for instance, an estimate of how long the site will be down.

When you take your site down for maintenance, it’s also a good idea to give your users something to do. Give them some links, YouTube videos, etc. Make sure that, despite not being able to access your normal content, their visit was worth their time.

Here’s an example of a good downtime page:

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“Why Digg is Blocked”

WhyDiggIsBlocked.com Is this a parody…or is it another maniac who thinks ad-blocking should be illegal? Looking at the two sites, WhyFirefoxIsBlocked.com and WhyDiggIsBlocked.com are very similar. The designs are nearly identical, featuring the same blue-and-gray header. The sites both offer code to block visitors…

Poll End: Is ShareThis 1.0 better than ShareThis 2.0?

The poll asking whether you like the new ShareThis 2.0 or ShareThis Classic, which is luckily still available to anyone who wants it, has ended. There have been some interesting results: 43% said “What’s the difference?” Either a lot of people aren’t very observant,…

In Response to “Things I Want Gone from the Web in 2007″

Lorelle VanFossen recently penned an informative article cataloging some of the things she wants “gone from the web in 2007.” I agree with most of her points, like killing pop-up windows out-of-control advertising music on websites not “splogging” Some of the points, like “validate…

What Do YOU Want Us to Talk About?

Marco of Ruelicke.net and I will be talking about a blog-related topic on the upcoming pilot episode of BlogCast. The only problem is neither of us have decided on a topic yet. So, here’s my question for all of you: What do you want…

Renaming Your Blog

What if you decide to go in a different direction with your blog? It happens. What if everyone hates your blog’s name? Is your blog’s name too long? It’s okay to rename your blog, but be sure to think it through. First of all,…

Is ShareThis 1.0 Better Than ShareThis 2.0?

What do you think? Alex King just released the new version of the great ShareThis plugin, but I don’t like it as much. Here are my main reasons: It’s a lot slower, as it uses JavaScript to load the collapsible DIV’s contents from ShareThis.com.…

6 Time-Wasters For Webmasters

Need a break from your design work? Tired of writing? Have some fun for a change! With these resources you can play for as little or as much time as you want. Desktop Tower Defence – Build a maze of towers to keep the…

And the Winner is…

Imar Krige of Blogsolid.com has won the podcast naming contest. The name picked, however, was not Imar’s suggested “Webmaster-Cast” (though I also liked that name). Imar was chosen at random after I chose the name “BlogCast” for the upcoming podcast. Imar was chosen at…

Podcast Name Contest Ends Soon….

Just a reminder: The contest to name Webmaster-Source’s new podcast ends on November 3rd. So get your name submissions in while you can! For those who are new, here’s a quick recap of the contest: Think of a name for a podcast about blogging,…