So, how do you learn about what things to look out for when searching for a web hosting company?

One of the questions that I had when I first started looking into blogging was the cost of servers. Should I go with a shared server? What about a VPS? I sure can’t afford a dedicated server, I knew that much! I didn’t want to get stuck with a poor quality host, so I read a lot of cheap hosting reviews.

So while looking around I was often times just left up to decide on my own what I thought. But, with my little experience at the time, was I making a wise decision? I wished that I had a good site to help me understand the issues related to web hosting a little better.

I recently found a site while doing some keyword research that is a nice site with some great information related to web hosting tutorials. Having read some of the information that they have on this site, I wish I had it when I first started blogging and learning about servers. It is worth a look around as you might learn something new, or find that tip that could help you prevent a future problem.

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Why? Well, the last slap down from Google seemed to be directed at the blogs that sold text links, even though some of them didn’t. But now with the do-follow crowd growing in popularity, is the “do-follow” movement putting your site at risk of getting “Google Slapped”?

I have been playing around with Blogger for about a month for a couple of niche sites that I am working on. Nothing serious, just some testing for free we’ll call it. One of the things that I have noticed today while working on one of my blogs was the comment form has changed.

Before today, there were three options for you to leave a comment on a blogger/blogspot blog. You could sign in with your Google username and password and leave a comment showing your username. You could leave an anonymous comment. Or you could click “other” and it would allow you to enter your name and URL.

If you notice, the “other” selection is now gone.

“So what?” you might be saying.

There is speculation that Google is getting ready to put the slap on blogs that “do-follow” in their comments. Some people feel that the “do-follow” on a blog is seen as the same as selling text links on a high PR blog to help lower PR blogs.

Is this true? Not sure. I haven’t found anything to confirm that this is why google changed the comment form on their blogger platform. Does that mean that I’m full of it? Nope, as these are just my thoughts and opinions from thinking about why they would do this, and from reading a couple of other theories and thoughts about it.

Grizzly has written The Death of Do Follow which goes into a lot more detail about the inner workings of why this could signal the end of the “do-follow” movement. It is a good read, and I highly recommend his blog also for topics dealing with Adsense and Marketing.

Only time will tell if Google is getting ready to slap the do-follow crowd or not. I hope they don’t because this could signal the beginning of “no-follow” on all links on a blog or site. Talk about big brother watching you.

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This is the third and last article on the series and I am going to show you how to create hidden skip links for your site. If you want to show your skip links, there are numerous methods to do so, and I won’t cover them here as each site design is unique. The basic code will still apply so you will need to style it to fit into your site accordingly.

I will use my site here as the example for creating and styling hidden skip links. The method used relies upon semantic xHTML code with CSS for the styling. All we are going to do is add a couple of id’s to an unordered list and move it off screen. We will also make it accessible so that it will appear if “active” to the user.

Create the list

When we are ready to incorporate skip links into the site, take a look at how your code is written. Do you have each section prepared for the skip link to function? Is your main content area clearly separated from your sidebar? What about your footer and your navigation?

This is where it is critical to use good semantic markup with clearly identifiable id’s for your site. Remember, however, that an id can only be used once on a single page.

Here is how my list looks for ejcross.com:

<ul class="access">
	<li><a href="#content">Jump to Content</a></li>
	<li><a href="#navbar">Jump to Navigation</a></li>
	<li><a href="#footer">Jump to Footer</a></li>
</ul>

Now, there isn’t much to it, just an unordered list of items. One note is that you want to make sure that this list is the first thing on your page, just below the opening <body> tag. This will allow for it to be the first item shown to screen readers and other mobile devices so that they don’t have to go through all of your content or navigation to be able to use the skip links.

Also, while we are talking about the opening <body> tag, let’s go ahead and put id="top" here. This will be for a skip link that you can place at the bottom of your site in the footer section, or at the bottom of your content area. This will allow for people to quickly navigate to the top of your page or site without having to scroll if your article is long. This should be a visible link.

What does it mean?

Let’s break the code down a little bit to explain what it is doing.

<ul class="access">
	<li><a href="#content">Jump to Content</a></li>
	<li><a href="#navbar">Jump to Navigation</a></li>
	<li><a href="#footer">Jump to Footer</a></li>
</ul>

The beginning <ul class="access"> that is assigned can be titled anything you like. I just called it “access” for my purposes of remember what it is describing.

The list items are the skip links. This is where you will tell the link to direct to a specific portion of your site. The first option I want to offer is a skip to content. The internal link specifies a location of #content and on my main content area, I have the <div id="content"> to “catch” this internal redirect.

When you place a “#” sign prior to an internal link, it is telling the browser to look into the rest of the code of the site and find the “id” that matches it. This is where the ease of semantic code will really help. If you already have an id in use for your main areas, then just match the newly created skip link list to redirect to them.

You can repeat this process of adding or deleting items to your main skip link area, and then matching them to specific areas of your site.

As for the visible skip link that goes on the bottom of your page, the <body id="top">, you can add a skip link to the section of your footer or bottom of your content area that says “top” or something else that signifies that it is a link that will take the person back up to the top of the site or page.

It would look like this:

<a href="#top"> top </a>

Pretty simple stuff so far? Let’s style the hidden links next!

To the CSS

As for the CSS that I use on my main skip link section, all we are doing is moving the “access” div off of the screen, and making it visible when it is “tabbed” upon. Let’s look at the CSS:

ul.access, .access {
	position: absolute;
	top: -9000px;
	left: -9000px;
	z-index: 9;
}

With this part of the CSS, we are giving the hidden skip link an absolute position off screen to the left of 9000 pixels. You can set this to what ever you desire, but this is a nice number to ensure it is out of sight. The z-index also ensures that it will remain visible above anything that might be over top of it.

Now for some CSS magic to make it reappear when it is active on the page:

ul.access a:focus, ul.access a:active {
	position: absolute;
	top: 9005px;
	left: 9005px;
	background: #690;
	color: #fff;
	padding: 5px;
	font-weight: bold;
	border: 2px solid #000;
	width: 10em;
	z-index: 9;
}

With this coding, all we are doing is telling it to reappear when the link receives focus, or is “active” for Internet Explorer. As you can see we are telling it to show up 9005 pixels from the left and 9005 pixels from the top. Remember, in the prior code to hide it we were telling it to hide by 9000 pixels, so in essence we are positioning this link area 5 pixels from the top and left.

The rest of the styling is for color, border and other styles that you can adjust or modify to integrate it more into your site.

In conclusion

I hope you have enjoyed this series on skip links and have found it useful and easy to integrate into your own site. If you have any questions, please let me know. This simple method will allow for better usability and accessibility for your site and only takes a few moments to put it into action.

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In part two of this series dealing with skip links, I would like to discuss two theories that can divide designers and developers over whether skip links should be visible or not on your site.

Hide them off screen

The first theory is that there is no problem with hiding your skip links to sighted users. Screen space is a precious commodity in the design world that is rich in graphics and visual aspects of a site’s design. By hiding your skip links with CSS, you are still making them visible to users that might need them, such as screen reader technology. Also, by hiding them, you are leaving them accessible to tabbed navigation users that visit your site.

Another aspect that is growing in popularity is the use of web enabled mobile devices such as PDA’s and cell phones. These devices can also benefit from skip links, although designing your site with a mobile device style sheet is a better option. Having hidden skip links with PDA’s and mobile devices can create some problems and these are discussed in the next section.

One of the popular screen reader technologies is the Lynx Browser. If you are using the Firefox browser, there is a great plugin called the Yellowpipe Lynx Viewer that will allow you to see what your site looks like to a Lynx Browser user. This is a great tool to drop into your Firefox development and testing “bucket” as it will reveal what order your code is “seen” in by users of the Lynx browser. If you’re not using the Firefox browser, you can also use an online version of the Lynx browser by visiting delorie.com.

By hiding your skip links off screen with CSS, you are still providing accessibility and usability features for those users that need them. However, this leads us to an interesting discussion in the next theory of why they should be visible.

Keep them visible

The second theory about skip links is that they should be visible to all users and visitors of your site. In an interesting older article entitled “Skip Link Pros and Cons“, Mike Cherim and Gez Lemon debate the issue of whether to hide or show skip links.

Gez Lemon’s point of view is that if you have skip links and hide them, then you are limiting the usability aspect of the skip link. If a user comes to your site and doesn’t know that a feature is available to them, such as a skip link, then they might not know it and be able to use it.

To quote Gez from the article:

People with mobility problems benefit from mechanisms to bypass groups of links. For people using user agents that don’t provide mechanisms to navigate around a well-structured document, or people unaware that their user agent has those capabilities, then it’s commendable that some developers/designers implement them for their users. Hiding them makes no sense, as it totally depends on the user being able to understand the mindset of a developer that wants to “tick off” a problem, without much regard as to whether or not the solution is discoverable and usable.

With the growing popularity of mobile browsing, I can see that this is a very good point to consider. Mobile devices have smaller screens, and unless you have a mobile device style sheet, you could possibly be limiting the number of users that can access your content easily. Having visible skip links for mobile devices will allow those users to quickly skip to the area of the site that they desire to find, without going through numerous other links and content.

A great book on designing for mobile web devices can be found by visiting Cameron Moll’s site Mobile Web Design.

Mike Cherim’s view is that as long as the skip links are included, you are already one step ahead of most site’s for accessibility and usability issues. Even though they are hidden, the users that benefit the most from them will be able to access them.

So, the solution is?

This really depends on you and your site. There are many sites out there that use either hidden or visible skip links in their designs. The choice is ultimately up to you on whether you show the links, or hide them off screen with CSS. I would suggest using the skip links that most sites use on the bottom of long pages of content, or just someplace in the footer that allows for a user to click on a skip link that will take them back up to the top of the page.

As a developer or designer, the choice is up to your client. You can argue both points of whether to show them, or hide them as they are both valid arguments. Whether you choose to do either is up to you, but at least you have them in your site which is a great usability and accessibility plus for your design.

In part three of this series, I will show you how to code the links into your site using CSS and discuss the best practices for coding them to allow for validity and accessibility.

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In this first article of three parts, I will describe what a skip link is and how is can improve your site with minimal effort. Skip links can be placed into any site, not just a Wordpress blog. The benefits will make your site more accessible and improve usability for all users.

Let’s get started!

To get started, scroll back up to the top of this page and press the “Tab” key. Go ahead, I’ll wait for you.

Great! You’re back! Did you see the green box in the upper left corner? It should have looked like this:

I have chosen to hide the skip links on this site to only appear when they are “active” or gain focus by using the “tab” key. However, they will also be one of the first things visible to a screen reader. This allows for a user to quickly navigate to the portions of the site that they want to quickly move to, such as the main content or navigation.

Other sites, such as Roger Johanssons 456 Berea Street have chosen to show their skip links.

Many sites also incorporate skip links on the bottom of their site, or long content pages that point back to the top of the page. This saves a lot of scrolling time, easily allowing for a user to move back to the top of a page in one click.

So why use skip links?

One of the main reasons to use skip links, whether you have them hidden or not, is to increase the accessibility and usability of your site. The skip link allows a “Tab” key user or screen reader user to quickly move to another part of the page. These links also depend on how your site is coded, such as if your main navigation is before or after your content sections.

If your content is before your navigation in your code, such as the case on a lot of right sided navigation sites, you would want to include a skip link to the navigation of the site. If your navigation is before the main content of the site, you might not want to include it, but it won’t hurt if you do.

Skip links are just internal links for your site that allow the user to “skip” to a certain portion of your site without having to go through the same content over and over again for each page.

Let’s take a quick look into what I have for mine here at ejcross.com.

<ul class="access">
	<li><a href="#content">Jump to Content</a></li>
	<li><a href="#navbar">Jump to Navigation</a></li>
	<li><a href="#footer">Jump to Footer</a></li>
</ul>

Not much to it! Just a simple unordered list of internal links. I also use a skip link at the bottom of this site that will allow for a quick return to the top of the page.

An example

Let’s say that you have a user come to your site that uses a screen reader to hear the content. Imagine if you can that user has to listen to all of the content on your main page before they can then get to the main navigation to hear what the options are. How long do you think they will be on your site? Will they come back?

Skip links should be the first thing on your sites coding, just after the beginning <body> tag. This way, when each page is loaded, the user has the option to skip to the navigation, main content section, or where ever else you decide you want to allow your users to skip to.

Another example would be for someone that has dexterity issues with a mouse. As the internet user population increases in age, using a mouse can be difficult for someone with arthritis. Maybe using the “Tab” key is a better option for that user. You wouldn’t want to alienate a user that can’t use a mouse, would you?

So, by placing the skip links on your site a “Tab” user can then select the link to the section that they wish to quickly access, and be able to do so easily.

What is required

If your site is using good semantic markup, creating skip links will be easily accomplished. This site has the major sections divided by div’s with id’s such as header, content, sidebar and footer to help divide and control the layout. This article isn’t to debate the issue of CSS or semantic markup, maybe that will be another article later.

By using an internal link, all you are doing is creating a link to a specific portion of your page layout. If you are using id’s to specify a certain portion of your site, then you are almost done!

When someone comes to the skip link and select it, they are taken to that certain portion of your site. If they are wanting to get to your navigation area, instead of having to go through all of the other links and content in your content area, they are now able to “skip” to the navigation.

In conclusion

This is the first part of my series on using skip links. I hope you found this article interesting and insightful and do plan on coming back for the other two parts in the series. I will discuss the debate on whether skip links are really useful and should be visible or not, and in part three, I will show you more on how to code skip links into your site for maximum benefit.

© ejcross.com - visit ejcross.com for more great content.

I am working on a 3 part series about using skip links for your site. In this 3 part series, I will look at defining what skip links (or jump links) are and how they work, the debate over using them, and finally how to implement them in your site to improve accessibility and usability.

I hope you will enjoy this series, and the first post should be live Thursday morning!

Keep informed about this and other posts with my RSS feed.

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Some of the applications showcased are online calendars with and without database support, how to style your calendar with CSS, and even FREE calendars you can download to your desktop. There are also links to sites that will let you print a calendar for a month or year in advance. There is also links to calendar tutorials on how to set up an online calendar and use it to maximize your productivity.

I use a couple of different calendars currently for both personal and professional reasons. First, I use a calendar for one site that allows several users to post important dates that is then accessible to numerous people through the companies website. This makes communication easy as the employees are able to easily see when important meetings and dates are coming up and plan their schedules accordingly.

On another site that uses Wordpress, I am using a calendar function to allow for postings of future events that can then allow people to sign up for classes.

You’re not just limited to keeping your dates all to yourself with online calendars. This is the neat feature of using an online version, as you can set permissions to share it with other people, such as friends and family. Your calendar can then work for you to save from numerous phone calls and emails on trying to set a date that works for everyone if you are trying to get together for that family function or a night out on the town.

This article is really a great resource for anyone that is looking to expand their knowledge and utilize an online or downloadable calendar to be more productive.

You can read the full article by visiting the Smashing Magazine site: Online Calendars and Date Pickers.

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When I first registered this domain name, it was registered without the www portion in front of it, so that when someone visits ejcross.com they come upon my site. The one issue that I became aware of while monitoring site statistics was that people were also using www.ejcross.com to get to this site. This got me curious about whether there was any search engine optimization problems that this would create.

What I found out

While there are and can be some problems with using a site that doesn’t have a WWW in the domain name, there is also confusion and lots of discussion about whether or not it affects a sites page ranking.

The problem lies in the fact that people still assume that to gain access to a site, you still have to put a WWW into the site url. This is not the case, and more and more sites are not using the WWW in their name. While there are sites that still use it, there are sites that don’t. This is an argument that I won’t go into, whether or not to use WWW. However, I hope to offer some advice on how to correct your sites redirection in the instances of when someone types in WWW or not, depending on how your site is set up. So, I hope that I can clarify some of the information.

NOTE: It appears that Wordpress version 2.3 does this automatically, and takes care of this issue for you. If you have version 2.3, then don’t worry so much about this, but double check it to be sure.

What type of redirection is best?

There are generally two types of redirection that we will look at. One is a 301 redirection, which is known as a permanent redirection. A 301 redirect is good for search engine optimization. If you are looking to redirect your site, specifically to define if you are using a WWW or not, this is what you want.

The reason you want a 301 redirect is because when a page is served to a browser or search engine spider, if it sees a 301 redirect, it recognizes it to be permanent. It will index this fact and continue on about its merry way.

The second type of redirect is a 302 redirect. This is considered a temporary redirect, and can cause problems with search engine optimization. The reason this can cause problems is when the search engine spiders see a temporary redirect, it still saves the old url location in the index of the search engine along with the new “temporary” one. If your site was set up with a www.domain.com url, and you have used a 302 redirect to change it to a domain.com location, it still sees both.

For this reason, a 301 permanent redirect, is the best method to solve the duplicate content problem with the search engines.

Redirect by Plugin

Wordpress has several plugins available, each with their own capabilities. The one that I am using on my site, and several others that I manage, is the WWW Redirect Wordpress Plugin by Justin Shattuck.

The great feature of this plugin is that you just drop it in, activate it, and set two parameters. That is all you have to do for your 301 redirect (that’s the good one). The parameters allow you to determine if you want the WWW in your url, or not. The second parameter allows you the option of showing the “/index.php” on the end of your main site page.

Here are a plugin that helps to define issues encountered with the trailing “/” issue:

Permalink Redirect Wordpress Plugin

I haven’t played around with this one, so I’m not sure how useful it really would be, but if you have issues with the trailing “/”, such as index.php/ , then this plugin might be worth looking into.

By .htaccess file

Another method of completing a 301 redirect is by modifying your .htaccess file. Not everyone has direct access to this file, but if you do and a plugin won’t work for you, this might be the best way for you to accomplish the task.

NOTE: Your server must have the MOD_REWRITE function turned on for this to work!

To redirect from http://domain.com to a http://www.domain.com just open your .htaccess file and place this into it:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.domain.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

To redirect from http://www.domain.com to http://domain.com then you would add this:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^domain.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

Of course, you would want to change the “domain.com” to reflect your own site url. Your .htaccess file would look something like this:

# BEGIN WordPress

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

# END WordPress

Your .htaccess file might, or might not be different. This sample is based upon a default wordpress installation. Errors in the .htaccess file can, and often will, cause your site to not be available, or even crash. When in doubt, check with your hosting service. I claim no special knowledge about using the .htaccess file, so please check with your host if you need support on how to do this.

By hosting

There are numerous other methods that are available on your host through various settings that can be configured and changed. Research what your host can do for you through their help files, or configuration settings. Always be sure to back up your site and test it completely to ensure that your site is working as you expect.

Remember also that Google is your friend with this. Each site and host is unique, and what might work for one site might not work with yours.

I hope this helps to clarify a little more about the WWW or not issue. What are your suggestions or what has worked for you?

© ejcross.com - visit ejcross.com for more great content.

When I established this site, I wasn’t too aware of the fact that there was a difference between http://www.ejcross.com and http://ejcross.com. Lot’s of people might be confused about this as well. So you might ask, what’s the big deal?

When search engines index your site, they look at the main page that it submitted or linked to from other sites. When they would find this site, Google for example would find http://ejcross.com as the main page. The problem this creates, and from my site statistics on how people link to me and find me through search engines, is that there are instances of http://www.ejcross.com in the results. You might not think this is a big deal, but it can be and often is for search engine optimization of a blog.

When Google and other search engines compare the results from a search to that of links on other pages and submissions to the search engine, they see two different sites! This can seriously affect and hurt your page ranking, and could possibly lead to your site being penalized as having duplicate content.

I wasn’t really aware of this until I came across this Wordpress plugin that takes that worry away. Justin Shattuck has written a simple and powerful WWW Redirect Wordpress plugin that will allow you to perform a 301 redirect to the style you prefer. If you want your site to show up with the WWW in it, you can specify that, or the traditional Wordpress way of not having the WWW.

The great thing about this plugin is it allows for people that already have your site bookmarked, digg-ed, technoratied and stumbled to still find you without suffering the possible consequences of having duplicate content from the search engines.

You can also allow your site’s home page to show up with or without the “/index.php” at the end of the main page.

This is a really neat little plugin, so I hope you find it useful for your site’s optimization.

© ejcross.com - visit ejcross.com for more great content.

The Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form v.2.0WP is a Wordpress plugin that really secures your contact form on your site. This plugin has a ton of features, like an easy configuration page that allows for simple setup for your Wordpress blog. The Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form also is written to be extremely accessible, so that screen readers and other accessible technology devices can still use it.

This form also has 16 security measures in place to help alleviate spam and hacking of the form, which is great. One of the problems that I still see while surfing the internet is people that put their email address directly on their site. While Google and other search engines use spiders to index your site, so do spammers. However they use spiders to harvest email addresses that are hard coded into the site, thereby allowing them to spam your email address.

I have been using this form now for several years on my sites, and I can honestly say that I have never received a spam contact through this form. It works like a charm, and I hope you find it useful for your site as well.

You can get the Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form v.2.0WP from Mike Cherim’s Green Beast site, and find lots of configuration settings, tutorials, and support on his site.

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