Viewing Thread:
"Machie would like a php poll please"

I'm back! I hope you're all doing well. =)

It's time I finished my website! So if it's okay I'd like to post some questions in this thread and as always would greatly appreciate any help/input. ^^

To keep Hmmm happy and to not waste valuable knowledge, I'd like to repost any information that would be useful to other webmasters on Freeola.

I can't guarantee anything, but any help deemed extremely useful might win you a GAD. ;)

Completed Questions

none :(

New Questions

1) Using TITLE for links
We've all used ALT before for images but I've never used TITLE before for links. Should I be using them? I heard it helps search engines but you shouldn't really use it on every link. I notice Freeola doesn't use them.

2) Linking your own pages
I read on Digg the other day that search engines were going to get tough on duplicate content. It talked about how you do links on your sites and that search engines would see these URLs (see below) as different sites when obviously they are the same page.

http://www.freeola.com/chat/index.html
http://www.freeola.com/chat/
http://freeola.com/chat/

I noticed I've been doing this on my site. So how should I be doing my links? Also for my navigation I just use the even more simple URL.. "/chat/", "/forum/" etc, should I change them and use the full URL instead?

3) Switching to em
I decided to switch to em after all. Something about IE not letting pixel sizes resize which I suppose is a bit unfair to the user who'd like some control. I brought this up before but it seemed complicated.

At the moment I have font-size: 62.5%; for the body tag. Which is about 10px? So 1em is 10px and 1.2em is 12px. As 10px is too small I have to change the size in the other tags (h1, h2, p etc). So am I doing it right? Also I don't understand this bit about the heading tags wanting to be 12px. So 2em is 24px.

Another thing, the website said browser default text size is 12px (or was it 14? I forget) but for my FireFox it seems to be 16 (and normal size to me). So I'm a little worried using em and having less control might make my text look smaller on other peoples machines.

And finally if I use em, do I have to stop using px when I set margin and padding values? I notice some people use em to do this.

4) Keeping your CSS clean
I've been cleaning my CSS file lately and it looks less cluttered and easily manageable. My site is made up of several different areas and each one has many different css elements.

Obviously I don't want to put all of them into one CSS file so what would you suggest? I suppose I could have a different CSS file for each area of my site (content-area1.css, content-area2.css), or I could have a CSS file that imports the global setting CSS file and either of the area CSS files. How would I make one? Is it as simple as..

@import url('global-settings.css');
@import url('area1.css');

Actually, ignore the first option, it would involve me having to edit all CSS files just to change one global setting.

Machie wrote:
> It did seem like something you'd suggest ;) well my own fault
> for not listening sooner.


Hmmm... wrote(many times):
> My recommendation would still be to launch it and react to the
> traffic volumes if it becomes an issue.
>
> I would be very surprised if a new site achieves 100,000
> visitors a day! If it does then you'll be able to generate
> enough revenue to solve your hosting problems. A win-win
> situation.

I won't embarrass you with your reply :¬)
Did I mention you can easily search these forums...

Hmmm... wrote:
> As I said it all to do with "standards" - see W3C
> etc.

If only everyone followed the stands, things would be a lot easier :(

> Good idea, wish I had thought of that...
> !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :�P

It did seem like something you'd suggest ;) well my own fault for not listening sooner.

Garin wrote:
> I'd write you a poll script but I'm lazy.

That'd be great Garin, thank you so much ^^, whenever you have a spare moment if possible, I really appreciate this. I already owe you a lot for the help you've given me over the last 2 years. =)

Okay now to just focus on the comic and the rest of the content. ^_^ Still no word from that guy from Openads yet. =/

I'd write you a poll script but I'm lazy.

Machie wrote:
> Hello Hmmm =) Oh I didn't know that, I wonder why FF does that.
> Okay I'll make sure to use Title tags with ALT for images.
> Cheers for that.

As I said it all to do with "standards" - see W3C etc.


> I finally decided to start small and then expand my site. It
> seemed like a good idea I'm surprised no one suggested it to me
> a year and a half ago. =)

Good idea, wish I had thought of that...
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :�P


Search Freeola Chat

Hmmm... wrote:
> Hi Machie,
>
> Title tag

Hello Hmmm =) Oh I didn't know that, I wonder why FF does that. Okay I'll make sure to use Title tags with ALT for images. Cheers for that.

> Polls
> What happened to the Poll script you had settled on before - the
> Urusei
> Machie thread shows you discussing the poll presentation
> so I assumed that you were happy with your script?

I was at the time but I umm kinda misplaced some of the original files and like always the site I got it from has disappeared. =( Pollnow doesn't exist according to Google now. *sigh*

So I thought I'd try a php poll thinking it would be easier.

> Are you still launching your Language site or is it now Anime or
> both?
> I see you have Ani****.com is that the one to watch now?

They're two separate sites, yep that's the one, the travel/language site is on standby (for when I am traveling). Ani****.com involves me drawing a lot so I've been busy with that for the last few months. Plus my girlfriend from Singapore has been here. =)

So yeah I just need this poll and openads (decided not to go for the comments thing anymore) and I'll be online in no time. I finally decided to start small and then expand my site. It seemed like a good idea I'm surprised no one suggested it to me a year and a half ago. =)

Hi Machie,

Title tag
FWIW Firefox will display Title tags as 'tool tips' when you 'mouse over' but won't display 'tool tips' for ALT tags in the same way that IE does. So if you are using an image for navigation (or something similar) and want your visitors to see a 'tool tip' then you could use a 'title'.

NB.I use a plugin to enable ALT tags to be displayed in FF - but that's going against the 'standards'.


Polls
What happened to the Poll script you had settled on before - the Urusei Machie thread shows you discussing the poll presentation so I assumed that you were happy with your script?

Are you still launching your Language site or is it now Anime or both?
I see you have Ani****.com is that the one to watch now?


Search Freeola Chat

Thanks for the help Hmmm and cjh =) very helpful as always. I've made some changes and not gone to silly with the Title thing. A site that I "borrow" ideas from has though... title="About">About</a>, title="Blog">Blog</a>. Bit pointless really. =/

I spent the last 2 days trying to get Openads working for me again. Have you guys ever used it before? I had this problem trying to change the invocation codes for my ads and it would give me a 403 error. Something about mod_security causing a problem or something. I've got it fixed now but I had to turn off some things in the .htaccess file.

SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off

Not sure whether this is a good thing or not so I asked one of the main guys who helped me before. Still waiting for him to get back to me. He did say in a comment that it would be fixed with the next release which came out 2 days ago, but it didnt fix the problem. The developers even had a list of changes you could make but that didnt work either :S Hopefully he'll come back to me and tell me if the .htaccess change is okay or whether I did something wrong when I tried to fix the problem using their suggestion.

Till he gets back to me I have to occupy myself with another problem thats been haunting me... a poll.

Since I've moved to the dark side I thought I might as well have a php poll to go with my php openads. After all it must be far easier to find a php poll than it was to find a cgi poll that did what I wanted. >_< boy was I wrong.

I checked hotscript and some of the free ones they had and I couldnt really find what I wanted. It's so annoying that a lot of these scripts date back 6 years and don't exist anymore. =(

Do we have any php users on the forum anymore? Do you know any good scripts I can use to add a poll to my site that can either show the results on the same page or on another page (preferably). I don't really want anything too fancy but atleast stop people voting multiple times.

A poll and Openads are the only things I'll be needing to get my site online. =) Actually I'm still unsure whether to have a comment system or not. I'd love feedback but I'd be worried about attracting trolls like the thousands on YouTube.

1) Using TITLE for links

I would suggest using the title attribute on links that aren't easily self explanatory. For example, a link for contact us, help & support or products are pretty self explanatory, and you can expect users to know where they'll end up, whereas other links, like a more info link for each product may not be as helpful on a page that lists more than one item. For example:

<ul>
<li><a href="/contact-us/">contact us</a></li>
<li><a href="/support/">help &amp; support</a></li>
<li><a href="/products/">products</a></li>
</ul>

<h2>iPod Classic</h2>
<p>Short description about the iPod Classic ...
<a href="ipod-classic/" [B]title="More info about the iPod Classic"[/B]>more info</a>
</p>

<h2>iPod Touch</h2>
<p>Short description about the iPod Touch ...
<a href="/ipod-touch/" [B]title="More info about the iPod Touch"[/B]>more info</a>
</p>

<h2>iPhone</h2>
<p>Short description about the iPhone ...
<a href="/products/iphone/" [B]title="More info about the iPhone"[/B]>more info</a>
</p>

2) Linking your own pages

I can't say how all search engines will react to this, but the best way to deal with multiple URL's that point to the same content is to pick the one you wish to be the default, and use the permanent redirect HTTP header for the rest, using either PHP, or more reliably, .htaccess, if your host allows it.

So, using your example, we could end up with the first two URLS permanently redirecting to the third.

For your navigation, the current set-up you're using sounds fine.

3) Switching to em

Font sizing isn't really something I'm all knowing about, but within the <body> element, I default to font-size: medium;, and take it from there, using em for margin and padding unless I need the precision of the px setting.

4) Keeping your CSS clean

I'd personally use:

@import url('global-settings.css');
@import url('area1.css');


Hi Machie did they let you out early?


In theory you should be using 'Title' and 'ALT' tags - well if you want to and are interested in 'standards'.

Most people just use ALT tags as Search Engines quite like them, but they should be reserved for 'alternative text' for accessibility use etc.
Google will give you more info than you want on the pros and cons...


Search Engines are already pretty strict on duplicate content. But the examples you give aren't strictly duplicate content. Search Engines are clever enough to see that those are all links to the same page and not separate pages with copied content.
You can use Google Webmaster Tools (was Webmaster Console) to tell Google whether you prefer www or non-www.

i.e.
http://www.machies_spoof_site.com OR http://machies_spoof_site.com

Again - I've found that the Search Engines will work this out themselves after a few weeks when they've indexed a few inbound links etc.


Text size: Not easy... I'm still using px, but then I do most things wrong.


CSS: I would just break things up to be manageable and don't try to over complicate things.


Did your worries about being 'Dugg' etc. cause hosting problems for you or did the site hold up to the traffic?



Search Freeola Chat

I'm back! I hope you're all doing well. =)

It's time I finished my website! So if it's okay I'd like to post some questions in this thread and as always would greatly appreciate any help/input. ^^

To keep Hmmm happy and to not waste valuable knowledge, I'd like to repost any information that would be useful to other webmasters on Freeola.

I can't guarantee anything, but any help deemed extremely useful might win you a GAD. ;)

Completed Questions

none :(

New Questions

1) Using TITLE for links
We've all used ALT before for images but I've never used TITLE before for links. Should I be using them? I heard it helps search engines but you shouldn't really use it on every link. I notice Freeola doesn't use them.

2) Linking your own pages
I read on Digg the other day that search engines were going to get tough on duplicate content. It talked about how you do links on your sites and that search engines would see these URLs (see below) as different sites when obviously they are the same page.

http://www.freeola.com/chat/index.html
http://www.freeola.com/chat/
http://freeola.com/chat/

I noticed I've been doing this on my site. So how should I be doing my links? Also for my navigation I just use the even more simple URL.. "/chat/", "/forum/" etc, should I change them and use the full URL instead?

3) Switching to em
I decided to switch to em after all. Something about IE not letting pixel sizes resize which I suppose is a bit unfair to the user who'd like some control. I brought this up before but it seemed complicated.

At the moment I have font-size: 62.5%; for the body tag. Which is about 10px? So 1em is 10px and 1.2em is 12px. As 10px is too small I have to change the size in the other tags (h1, h2, p etc). So am I doing it right? Also I don't understand this bit about the heading tags wanting to be 12px. So 2em is 24px.

Another thing, the website said browser default text size is 12px (or was it 14? I forget) but for my FireFox it seems to be 16 (and normal size to me). So I'm a little worried using em and having less control might make my text look smaller on other peoples machines.

And finally if I use em, do I have to stop using px when I set margin and padding values? I notice some people use em to do this.

4) Keeping your CSS clean
I've been cleaning my CSS file lately and it looks less cluttered and easily manageable. My site is made up of several different areas and each one has many different css elements.

Obviously I don't want to put all of them into one CSS file so what would you suggest? I suppose I could have a different CSS file for each area of my site (content-area1.css, content-area2.css), or I could have a CSS file that imports the global setting CSS file and either of the area CSS files. How would I make one? Is it as simple as..

@import url('global-settings.css');
@import url('area1.css');

Actually, ignore the first option, it would involve me having to edit all CSS files just to change one global setting.