All Questions
37,479
questions
20
votes
2
answers
296
views
Are there any standards for marking the age suitability for website content?
As a responsible webmaster I want to mark some of my content as unsuitable for certain age groups, there's nothing illegal or pornographic but it does feature bad language and violence that might be ...
- 481
10
votes
3
answers
203
views
How do I ensure that my content is sent via gzip in Apache?
Is there some setting that I can search for in Apache configurations to make sure that all pages, CSS, and JavaScript are sent via gzip?
Are they located in different places for different Operating ...
- 900
60
votes
11
answers
144k
views
How to add SMS text messaging functionality to my website?
I want to add the ability to send reminders to people via email and SMS for specific events that they have signed up for on a web application that I am building. The email part is not difficult, but ...
14
votes
5
answers
299
views
How do I test the usability of my website?
How do I evaluate my website from a usability standpoint?
- 2,430
8
votes
4
answers
1k
views
How can I neatly embed Flash in a page in a way that is cross-browser compatible?
When I receive Flash objects from my designer, it comes with an example HTML page which includes both <object> tags and <embed> tags as well as a whole heap of JavaScript. If I copy and ...
- 1,457
7
votes
2
answers
161
views
Why should I develop my applications using the MVC design pattern?
MVC seems to be very popular these days, but the "education overhead" of newly learning a chosen MVC framework seems to be quite high. Why should I choose to invest the time to do this, rather than ...
- 1,457
3
votes
4
answers
181
views
What is the target time to have visitors spend per visit?
Looking at Google Analytics, It seems that people spend approximately 3.5 minutes per average on my web site, per visit. That's approximately enough time to read one article and perhaps leave a ...
- 6,486
11
votes
7
answers
753
views
When should I use a CSS framework?
What are the best practice scenarios for using a CSS framework? When is it better to "roll your own" CSS from scratch rather than using frameworks?
- 1,457
15
votes
2
answers
314
views
How do you format SEM URLS to properly track results using analytics engines like Google analytics?
If I were to purchase some advertising space on a website- what should I add to the end of the URL to track the results of that campaign in a tool like Google Analytics?
Is capitalization important?...
- 681
83
votes
8
answers
7k
views
Should I include "www" in my website's URLs? What are the pros and cons?
What are the pros and cons of having http://www.example.com/ vs http://example.com/?
For example a problem I'm aware of is that if I use a domain without www I can't set a cookie for the current ...
- 2,545
67
votes
5
answers
7k
views
What are the most important things I need to do to encourage Google Sitelinks?
My website used to have sitelinks and now it doesn't. It's very possible that it's due to changing the website to a sidebar design instead of having an "interstitial" type landing page which limited ...
- 863
6
votes
2
answers
283
views
How can I cause a browser to download a new copy of a web page when it thinks that its cached copy is still valid?
Sometimes when I make small changes to a website, I notice that certain browsers are very stubborn about downloading the page again. Both F5 and CTRL-R are worthless and the only way to fix it is to ...
- 557
23
votes
5
answers
63k
views
Which special characters are safe to use in url?
Which special characters are safe to use in url?
- 335
3
votes
3
answers
113
views
What potential issues do I need to be aware of in a multi server/clustered environment?
I have been working on a website with a client for some time now and the site itself has grown massively in popularity. We are now at the stage where the single machine we have hosting the site is ...
- 468
3
votes
2
answers
96
views
Strict XHTML doctypes
I was wondering about the consequences of building a site that's compliant with XHTML1.0 Strict. I have developed a lot of sites using the transitional doctype, and read about the consequences of a ...
- 223
35
votes
9
answers
617
views
What are the minimum steps that I should follow to ensure that my web site is accessible?
I am trying to follow a very important standard that I must admit I have ignored up until recently. I want to make sure that my pages are accessible to a large portion of people that have disabilities....
- 6,486
31
votes
6
answers
527
views
If I don't want to set any special behavior, is it OK if I don't bother to have a robots.txt file?
If I don't want to set any special behavior, is it OK if I don't bother to have a robots.txt file?
Or can the lack of one be harmful?
- 588
5
votes
3
answers
2k
views
What are the advantages of using country specific top level domains?
For instance, do country-specific sites and/or search engines give more weight to sites under a specific country level TLD?
Or, do country-specific TLDs exist just to increase the WWW namespace and ...
- 1,788
4
votes
6
answers
2k
views
Adding RSS/ATOM feed for a completely static web site
I am helping a friend to bring a very large, completely static web site out of the stone age. One thing I'd like to add immediately is a RSS/ATOM feed.
He does not like working with any kind of CMS. ...
- 6,486
8
votes
3
answers
529
views
What are the benefits of RDFa?
I've seen some blogs etc. about this new technology: RFDa, but is there any benefits in using it now. From what I understand, it's mainly used by search engines and other crawlers, but have Google, ...
- 626
1
vote
1
answer
60
views
Do all the seach engines rank the same way?
I know the algorithms that is used by search engines can't be exactly the same. But do I need to take bing and other search engines into consideration when building a site, or will my site be ...
- 626
15
votes
3
answers
3k
views
How do I get Google to show links to my site hierarchy in search results?
I have recently noticed that for some websites, Google is linking to different locations in the site hierarchy instead of just the destination page URL. For instance, searching for "Malibu Rum Drink ...
- 4,143
11
votes
4
answers
7k
views
What is the ideal self hosted search engine? [closed]
I have an internal (intranet) site that is comprised of several blogs and forums, hundreds of static pages, lots of PDF files and several other document types. Its been glued together loosely over the ...
- 6,486
11
votes
5
answers
537
views
What are the best user data collection and gathering tracking tools?
I know of a few tool that help markets gather data about visitors, Google Analytic, CrazzyEgg, and KISS Insights.
What are other notable tools to help track information? What do you use?
- 2,026
11
votes
6
answers
3k
views
Is it necessary/useful to build a sitemap for a small website?
I've created several small scale websites, usually for small businesses. They usually contain some information about the company, a contact form, and sometimes a few dynamic parts : news, pictures, ...
- 1,587
34
votes
5
answers
2k
views
Is it better to put hyphens in a domain name?
Both in terms of SEO and user friendliness, is it better to put hyphens in a multi-words domain name or not ?
For example, is www.stackoverflow.com better than www.stack-overflow.com ?
- 1,587
15
votes
5
answers
271
views
Other than Google, how do I decide which search engines to optimize for?
Google has extensive tools for webmasters, and good SEO seems to be directed at Google first and foremost. But what other search engines should I be worrying about?
I could look at my logs, but then, ...
- 8,558
129
votes
8
answers
38k
views
How should I structure my URLs for both SEO and localization?
When I set up a site in multiple languages, how should I set up my URLs for search engines and usability?
Let's say my site is www.example.com, and I'm translating into French and Spanish. What is ...
- 8,558
17
votes
2
answers
2k
views
Web hosts for controversial (yet legal) content
A lot of web hosts will take down a site at the first hint of trouble. What sites can I use to host controversial (yet legal) content?
(Examples of such content might be a whistleblower site or an ...
delete
23
votes
6
answers
820
views
How do you load test your application?
What is the most effective way to load to load test your app? The main point is to determine how many users you could support at a single time with the application still running at a reasonable speed.
- 335
11
votes
4
answers
5k
views
Should I combine js/css files into a single file?
Both YSlow and Google's Page Speed add-ons recommend combining script (and style) files into a single file each to reduce the number of HTTP requests, and I can certainly see the point of this when ...
- 522
4
votes
1
answer
142
views
How much of the world's website traffic is attacks?
Does anyone have any statistics on how much of the total of the world's website traffic is
malicious? Every day I am amazed by the number of requests for .dll and similar things which don't appear ...
121
votes
13
answers
13k
views
URLs: Should I use hyphens, underscores or plus symbols?
Which is better for search engines?
example.com/my_cool_page.html
example.com/my-cool-page.html
example.com/my+cool+page.html
delete
40
votes
6
answers
4k
views
Are the different types of SSL certificates a bit of a scam?
I'm looking into getting a few SSL certificates for domains to cover the following:
autodiscover.example.com
remote.example.com
www.example.com
Wildcard certificates are too expensive, so I'm going ...
- 4,964
4
votes
2
answers
363
views
How can I detect links which point to domain squatters?
I know how to find dead links which go to 404 pages. However, these days, not many links actually go dead, but instead they end up going to a domain squatter.
Is there any way to find out whether a ...
delete
19
votes
7
answers
7k
views
Are "trustmarks" such as McAfee Secure worth the cost?
There are a number of services that will scan a website for vulnerabilities and allow the display of a trustmark image if the site passes their tests. This allegedly increases the level of trust a ...
- 1,764
2
votes
2
answers
4k
views
How can I parse Amazon S3 log files?
What are the best options for parsing Amazon S3 (Simple Storage) log files? I've turned on logging and now I have log files that look like this:
...
- 8,558
4
votes
2
answers
111
views
Geolocate service I can use?
I can access very accurate geolocate info from Google Analytics, but is there any way to access the geolocate information of Google or otherwise for an IP address, from a computer program, like a web ...
delete
13
votes
4
answers
230
views
What are some resources for learning the ins and outs of .htaccess?
What are resources for learning the various things I can do with .htaccess?
3
votes
4
answers
331
views
How can I tell which of my pages got adsense clicks?
How can I tell which of my pages got adsense clicks?
delete
7
votes
1
answer
195
views
Anywhere to get a list of referrer spammers?
I do my own log processing using my own self-written analyzer. That means I have to deal with the continual nuisance of referrer spammers. Is there anywhere I can get an up-to-date list of referrer ...
delete
6
votes
2
answers
218
views
What's a landing page?
The marketing team says I need a landing page. What is that and why should I bother?
- 1,764
2
votes
1
answer
91
views
What's the quickest/cheapest way to get URL rewriting implemented?
Related to another question - if you need to get URL rewriting implemented ASAP, what are some methods that you've used or know of that can speed this up?
- 4,964
2
votes
1
answer
119
views
How can we determine how much to spend on advertising our site?
We're considering pay-per-click advertising to bring traffic to our website. How should we go about determining how much to budget? Any other considerations we should be aware of?
- 1,764
5
votes
6
answers
837
views
Do keyword-based filenames and URLs really matter?
We've developed a dynamic web application which uses URLs such as product.cfm?id=42 but our marketing team says we should use search friendly URLs and put our keywords into the URLs (so it would be ...
- 1,764
8
votes
3
answers
231
views
What are some great tools to use for keyword research?
We've been told SEO is important and that we should conduct keyword research so that we can rank better? What is that and what tools will help me in the process?
9
votes
8
answers
3k
views
Can anyone recommend a good HTML 5 book?
Specifically about canvas. I have been looking around for a few good one.
6
votes
5
answers
210
views
What are the good blog/rss feeds about SEO? [closed]
What are good blogs or RSS feeds about Search Engine Optimization ?
6
votes
1
answer
124
views
How much attention should I pay to page-load metrics?
My site scores a D in YSlow. How important is it that I get it up to say a B or an A?
I feel the page already loads quickly. I tested it at home on a modest 512k connection and it loaded in an ...
- 4,964
12
votes
2
answers
382
views
Effective methods of reducing bandwidth (and thus page load times)?
What are the most effective methods when it comes to reducing the amount of bandwidth a website needs to render a page?
Aggressive caching? Minifying JS/CSS? Gzip? CMS? Sprites?
- 4,964