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I normally would not post this kind of thing here, but my hosting company, A2 Hosting, is offering a 40% discount on hosting purchases for the month of July. The coupon code is economystinks (expires 7/31/09). That will get you a technically unlimited, reputable shared hosting account for around $4.77/month. There have been a few hiccups along the way, but I've been very pleased with their support.
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Since my last post on web fonts, a pair of new websites have launched related to the cause. One is proposing a big step forward, while the other is a nice resource.
Typekit from Small Batch Inc. aims "to develop a consistent web-only font linking license." According to their blog:
We've built a technology platform that lets us to host both free and commercial fonts in a way that is incredibly fast, smoothes out differences in how browsers handle type, and offers the level of protection that type designers need without resorting to annoying and ineffective DRM.
With a free version promised from the outset, it sounds like a great offering. However, the mentions of a "low-cost way to grow" and "scalable professional version" leaves me a little apprehensive. I'm not making any judgments until they launch the service, but facing recurring charges for the unforeseeable future doesn't sound like the best solution.
Next, The League of Moveable Type (no relation to the blogging platform) simply provides "well-made, free & open-source, @font-face ready fonts." The fonts are available under a Attribution Share Alike Creative Commons license for personal and commercial use. Most members just want to see what you do with their fonts, but a credit in your website's colophon couldn't hurt. The files themselves are either TTF or OTF—so, you'll just need to convert an EOT for Internet Explorer using WEFT.
David Bliss at Odopod recently posted a rundown of how his company handles Flash and SEO. He used the term "progressive enhancement" to describe the technique. According to Wikipedia:
Progressive enhancement is a strategy for web design that emphasizes accessibility, semantic markup, and external stylesheet and scripting technologies. Progressive enhancement uses web technologies in a layered fashion that allows everyone to access the basic content and functionality of a web page, using any browser or Internet connection, while also providing those with better bandwidth or more advanced browser software an enhanced version of the page.
This strategy is something I've been employing for a while, but without the terminology to succinctly describe it. As Bliss mentioned, with SWFObject, SWFAddress and the Flash Search Player from Google, it's becoming easier and easier to confidently sell SEO and Flash together. Next time you pitch a client, wrap this process up as "progressive enhancement." It would be nice to make the term an industry standard.
Designing for many people doesn't mean designing for the lowest common denominator.
Back in April, I launched a redesign for RVA Magazine. I collaborated with Richmond, VA designer Gabriel Ricioppo of Brandbuilt on the project. RVA is one of the most widely known culture magazines in the Richmond area. Their old website didn't allow them to adequately showcase the massive amounts of content they generate on a weekly basis. I went with Drupal to deliver the amount of functionality the magazine required while staying on budget. The site also utilizes quite a bit of third-party services: Twitter, Flickr, Vimeo, Yahoo! Pipes, ShareThis and Issuu.
Nearly two months after launch, the RVA staff is still publishing tons of weekly content, their sustained traffic is up over 100% and they're regularly the first result when searching for RVA on Google.
E-dreamz, an interactive firm in Charlotte and where I interned at during college, recently published a blog post discussing the "similarities between Twitter and Inbound Linking strategies." Simply put, Twitter has mutated into another way for businesses to hock their wares, while the real draw of the service is from nothing of the sort.
For me, Twitter is the asides between the conversation. Quick commentary and reflection, no matter how mundane, is what has made Twitter successful socially. Twitter is not a notification service for your latest blog post—that's RSS.
Setting up a Twitter account doesn't automatically create the appearance that a business is "connected" to its customers either. As Merlin Mann commented in a recent podcast from SXSW (I'm paraphrasing): setting up an account on Twitter does not make you Zappos—putting resources behind serving your customers makes you Zappos. It takes time and effort, like everything else.
You should consider spending less time talking, and more time prototyping, especially if you're not very good at talking or PowerPoint. Your code can be a very persuasive argument.
I'm a big fan of music. I'd like nothing more than to make a living developing websites for bands and helping them cultivate their online presence. Only one thing stands in my way: bands don't normally have a lot of money. If most local bands spend more than a couple thousand dollars on a website, it's just not going to be cost effective for them. Since the budgets are normally tight in comparison to the work involved, it's usually best to think creatively. With a little ingenuity, content management for band websites could be run completely off a few third-party services. The three services I've been looking at are Virb, Muxtape and Reverbnation.
Virb just launched a new version of their website, after an 18-month overhaul. Of the three, Virb seems to be the current, best option for the design conscious. As expected, you can manage news, tour dates and upload music. Additionally, Virb offers unlimited audio uploads, an RSS feed for news and a highly customizable, clean audio player, however no RSS or iCal feed for tour dates. While the social networking aspects are currently in place, using Virb as a band CMS is still not completely there. However, a Virb API and Virb Push service are in development, which could provide direct access to content on Virb band profiles.
Muxtape recently relaunched after completely switching gears. It's currently a public beta and invitation only, but there are seemingly big things going on behind the scenes. As hinted at on the Muxtape website and a blog post from lead developer, Luke Crawford, Muxtape is vying to become a one-stop shop for bands. It could potentially handle everything a band could require, but that capability has yet to materialize.
As it stands, Reverbnation is the most complete resource. In addition to providing the basics, the service provides FanReach mailing list management, distributed media tracking, street teams and digital distribution. They provide RSS feeds for news and tour dates. However, the provided widgets and embeds are not customizable and, frankly, pretty ugly. It's not so much that they're the most hideous widgets out there, but that they can't be integrated nicely into a design.
I realize there are many other things to consider for bands, but I'm looking at these services stricly from the standpoint of providing basic content management. To make this type of thing work, you essentially just need RSS feeds or an API. The overall idea is to update one place and have that information distributed to the various endpoints through some kind of syndication and custom widgets. It would be greate to have everything in one place as well as have some control visually, which is why I will probably wait on Virb or Muxtape to get a little further along.
One caveat is the management of photos and video. I always recommend utilizing Flickr and Vimeo (or YouTube), because I like the services and they are completely open. Virb already supports feeding in photos and video from said services. I'm sure Muxtape will follow suit. Reverbnation, however, is pretty closed, as they want to be a turnkey operation for bands. That makes Reverbnation a turnoff, in my opinion. I think bands should use every venue to promote themselves. If a photo on Flickr or a video on Vimeo leads someone to buy an album, I think it's worth managing those types of media separately. Especially, if everything is feeding into your website anyway.
Most of us are aware of how to specify media types to serve different stylesheets; the two types most used being 'print' and 'screen'. However, it wasn't until I researched a way to specify stylesheets by device that I stumbled across Media Queries.
Media Queries is currently a working W3C draft and part of the CSS3 effort, even though it was originally submitted in 2001.
A media query consists of a media type and zero or more expressions to limit the scope of style sheets. Among the media features that can be used in media queries are 'width', 'height', and 'color'. By using media queries, presentations can be tailored to a specific range of output devices without changing the content itself.
An example of how to write a media query:
<link rel="stylesheet" media="screen and (color)" href="example.css" />Since this is a CSS3 feature, most browsers aren't going to support it yet. However, it works with Safari and should fail gracefully elsewhere. If you need to serve an iPhone-only stylesheet just set media to:
only screen and (max-device-width: 480px)In December, I followed along as 24 Ways published their web geek advent calendar. It was one of the more helpful sets of "tips n' tricks" articles regarding web development and I recommend checking it out if you have not.
One article that was particularly interesting to me was Sitewide Search On A Shoe String by Christian Heilmann. Heilmann essentially explained how to build a sitewide search utilizing Yahoo! BOSS (Build Your Own Search Service). However, I am not a Yahoo! fan and more interested in getting something like this working with Google Search.
The idea was forgotten until I searched for something on Serious Eats, one of the better foodie blogs around. Serious Eats uses the Google Custom Search API and integrates the search results directly into their own page style. Exactly what I was after.
I hope to rework the search functionality on Silent Uproar this year. There are tens of thousands of items posted on Silent Uproar and this type of solution suits the content perfectly. With over 50% of our traffic coming from Google Search, it just makes the most sense; Google clearly has the best search service, so it benefits me to utilize their technology. I realize this isn't the best solution for every website, but it's better than not including search services in a project—especially if you have a lot of static pages.
On a related note, I was reading back through Jeff Atwood's The Importance of Sitemaps from last year. In the post, Atwood discusses how Google drives over 50% of the traffic to Stack Overflow, which parellels Silent Uproar quite well. He then goes on to talk about how sitemaps can help boost that traffic further. Putting two and two together: since Google Custom Search utilizes Google's index to display results, it would seem that creating sitemaps would give Custom Search a leg up. Low and behold, a quick Google search later and we have Sitemaps offer better coverage for your Custom Search Engine from Google's Webmaster Central Blog.
You still have to put the work into implementing Google Custom Search. However, do it once and you can use it over and over. If anything, it makes creating a sitewide search seem a lot less daunting.