New Media


Web writing includes the ability to format, and structure information for the constantly evolving web user experience.




















The CMS


Download my CMS Power Point Presentation Covering Drupal, Joomla and Mambo
(wordpress is not mentioned in this presentation though they are now my top choice )

Firebug Tutorial

Joomla Tutorial.

How is Green Web Design Possible

There is a growing consumer trend toward responsible and conscious businesses, “thinking green” and growth in what is now refereed to as “the green sector” has changed from what may have sounded two years ago as another marketing tool; consumers today are now taking it much more seriously and companies are now seeing green in green, through increased appeal, just ask Toyota. Making profit and being responsible translates to all fields, especially the computer industry, where solid state devices, energy savers on PCs and renewable server energy have become hot trends. Web design is no exception to this trend in green computing and there are many practical things a web company can do to reduce the damage that computers inflict on the environment. How much damage can web surfing do? To put it simply, allot. To start with, the amount of energy it costs to run a single computer 24/7, is not much, but collectively it is tremendous. Second are servers, which are the hosting computers that keep the Internet going, they are where your computer is going to when they view websites, these machines run constantly, and can never be turned off, unless you want your site to go down, backup servers are often used as preventative measure in that case. Take this Quote

Escalating use of power-hungry data centers are helping to boost the emission from electricity-producing plants contributing to global warming, Gartner said in a recent report. In addition, increasing consumption, along with rising prices, could help energy costs reach more than 50 percent of an overall IT budget in the next few years, from less than 10 percent today.(InformationWeek.com)”

Simple measures such as using power saving on your computer, or dimming your screen can be done on the users end. On the server side, replacing white pixels on the screen with black in the design of the site, can actually save a significant amount of energy. Onm LCD screens the savings are lower around 0-3 % savings on power. On older style CRT moniters it will have a 18-88% saving. On earth day 2008 Google painted its screen black to illustrate this statement. When pressed to make their site black regularly, they responded with creating http://www.blackle.com a black Eco friendly version of Google. LCD monitors should also be used by any green web designer as they take up much less energy then the older clunky models, unpluggping peripherals such as printer, fax, webcam, external hard drive, and all sorts of other engery “vampires” that may not be needed at the moment is also important. We also use a Kill-A-Watt device to determine energy loads from our devices and keep them to a minimum. Powering down your servers and Computers at night so they are either off, hybernating or asleep is also a responsible and thrifty decision. Of course there are the obvious non tech related consciouse decisions such as riding a bicycle, using recycled paper and using natural light in the office.

Lastly choosing hosting companies (if you are willing to pay the slight extra fee) that use renewable energy or carbon offsets is another choice, an example of one of these companies is Dreamhost, which uses carbon offsets.

Link popularity has assumed tremendous importance for getting good ranks in Google now a days. In fact, what started as a friendly reciprocal link exchange program among various webmasters has now become a sub-industry within the search engine and SEM industry itself, with thousands of link farms popping up every day, claiming to provide 100s of "quality industry-related links/trade leads" for huge sum of money! links are important but you can't be stupid about strategy.

 

New Media

A warning to anyone interesting in building a site, there is lot's of black magick and marketing nonsense surrounding SEO, definitely more bad ones then good ones and even some that may negatively effect your efforts. Make sure anyone you deal with seems like they have a solid grasp on technology and are just as versed in the creative/technical aspect of the web as they are at marketing.

If you got this far you have been instructed to look at my writings and knolwedge on SEO, I can show you numeroouse evidence in the form of charts graphs and screenshots, as well as access to my own analytics software, so that you may see the positive impact I can have on your site. With the help of an intelligent and honorable SEO such as myself, taking steps to increasing the quality of both your marketing approach, content/writing and layout of your site. the traffic and ranking you desire will fall in line. With a quality analysis of your site, a strategy tailor made to you can be made to make this a reality.

 

Social Bookmarking

Reddit is one of the top social bookmarking sites with an emphasis on more of an intellectual audience then its counterpart Digg. Here is a general breakdown of the demographics: http://www.quantcast.com/reddit.com/demographics. It was bought out after two years by wired magazine. A power user is defined by how many karma points he has. The more successful stories a user submits the more karma points he gains. Karma points and equivalent to the amount votes a story receives minus the amount of down votes. Reddit is has a very simple layout without the complex friend or community features of other social bookmarking sites, it has a very simple plain text look to the page. This simplicity keeps excessive alliances from being formed and from spam and marketers from gaming the system. Stories that do well on Reddit, are politics, technology, pictures and funny or quirky news. Reddit' s stories are ranked algorithmically similar to Google or other search engines and the algorithm is constantly being modified to keep the results genuine and accurate. To write a story for Reddit, one must know how to write a concise but informative headline as well as target the content to the audience. Reddit is made up of various sub-Reddit's politics, economics, technology, entertainment, ect. The stories that do best from these sub-Reddits make it to the front page of the main site. Stories make the front page by a variety of factors including how fast and how many people up vote the story, minus how many people down vote the story. Other factors include popularity of the sub reddit, the more popular the sub Reddit the more competitive. If a story is popular in a sub Reddit that is a smaller category (programming or entertainment for example) that story will more easily make the front page then a story with equal votes in a more competitive category like, politics, the front page likes variety. Example of Ron Paul raising the most money online shows the power of reddit.

Stumbleupon The demographics of Stumbleupon are slightly more female to male then most of the other social network sites though there are many fake profiles popping up as males posing as attractive women to boost popularity. The community features are elaborate, with the ability to personalize ones profile excessively and network/interact with other users. Stumbleupon is a unique and particularly powerful social bookmarking site for sending traffic because it sends a continuous stream of traffic over time rather then one single spike over 1-3 days. Traffic comes in waves as new users stumble upon the site. Stumbleupon users install a Firefox or I.E plugin, called the Stumbleupon Toolbar, a button allows users to find a new randomly chosen site within their given category by clicking the button. They get to vote by giving a thumbs up if they like it and want to see it again, thumbs down if they don' t want to see it again. These thumbs up and downs are the equivelant of Diggs or Votes on other sites, and they are weighted by various factors including authority of user, time frame of the votes, user preferences ect. See

Examples of stories I have promoted

http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/79n1u/cnc_machining_a_beretta/ made to the front page of technology- mid November

http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/76ulu/2020_argues_that_hippies_should_not_vote/
made it to the front page of politics then reddit.com,
for Headcount.org

http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/73i6j/ctunnel_gives_up_logs_after_stating_because/ made to the front page of reddit for my blog

http://www.reddit.com/r/environment/comments/7brdp/finally_greening_in_the_manufacturing_sector/  front page of technology

http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/79ubf/mobile_robot_does_cnc_machining/ for cnc blog

http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/7oc4o/get_rid_of_10_facebook_friends_for_a_free_wopper/ made it to number 1

http://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/79veb/where_did_your_bailout_tax_money_go_bonuses_of/ ny post 1 on politics

http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/71q4q/upvote_if_you_think_wallstreet_should_sell_some/ this is post i did initially to boost my account
front page of tech




 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Google has a revolutionary slogan don' t be evil. When I first heard it I thought it was exactly what the business world needed and couldn' t be happier about it. Myself as well as many others were amazed and impressed with this new business model. It certainly worked, though it indirectly created a whole field of marketing that managed to spiral into the depths of sketchy darkness, internet marketing and SEO; a field unlike any other, millions of dollars a year spent on manipulating and improving, ones rank in the search engines or SERP and the near useless pursuit SEO jargon. Rather then focusing on developing quality content and a quality website, the focus has shifted toward a game of manipulation and tricks. The SEO field can be as shady as just about any field out there, and because of the concept of rank being equal to inbound links, it invites all sorts of dirty tricks, that are of a completely new breed, in the world of technology.

Some link building tactics that classify as white hat and are honest, down home marketing include, looking at your competitors and see which one of them is a reference or informational article of some sort, See who is linking to them using site explorer and if you have similar content target these link sources now or in future articles by reaching out and forming relationships. Many people today who study search engine s field today look at search engine s as a system to game, to play and beat. Google is a service just like any other, they got where they are today by delivering the highest quality search results.  People come there pretty certain they are going to find what they are looking for.  So why not play with the search engine s rather then against them and actually try to deliver what people want, that may be a well written, well researched article or report, lots of well organized, easy to search pictures, articles, videos, or other content.  The best example of this and also the most difficult is a unique, new idea.  By putting work into a creating quality site, the pull of the masses will do the rest.  We are living in a Pull economy these days, where people are getting their media through specialty outlets specific to what they are looking for, consumers are seeking out the content and finding what they want, rather then having things spoon fed to them by the five top television networks, this was a successful tried and true model in the past, but the internet is rapidly changing all of this  Before the internet revolution particularly Web 2.0, people were fine with whatever was on their T.V or at the few  newspaper stand. Today consumers go on the internet and demand specified content to come to them, we are changing from content being push to pull.  To increase ones ranking time is crucial, developing results methodically and gradually or (organically) like a seed given proper care will grow.  This care can be implemented through analytics and other research tools to see what people are coming to your site for, then expanding on those keywords or phrases by creating more content on those topics and keeping it well organized and complete. For example if your analytics is showing an increased number of people searching for a specific keyword you could write a blog entry on the subject or something to that degree. Don’t let keywords be too distracting, focus on pleasing people first, then the search engine bots, ultimately the goal of these machines/bots is to emulate human intelligence and they are getting closer every day.  The old method of advertising using heavy repetition, is becoming outdated as the internet complexifies things.  Previously few media outlets used to control content, and now are feeling a loss of control.  This will continue to be the case if corporations stick to outdated models, as survival tactics Madison Avenue and other big media outlets are increasingly adapting, getting more involved websites and launching sites like Hulu, Viacoms answer to You Tube.

 

SEO and SEM are two of the catch phrases of the web 2.0 new millennium. You will hear the term thrown around a lot, often because its definition is broad or ambiguous and constantly changing. Basically it means, techniques used to boost your search engine “ranking”,  or where your website appear in search engine results. Also using your ranking and other factors to properly market yourself and increase visibility on the web. Studies show that around 80 percent of Google users do not go past the first ten-fifteen results. This has created an extremely aggressive market for obtaining this top position. Many SEO “experts” have often been given a bad reputation by the unethical use of what is called “black hat” techniques (taken from old westerns where bad guys wore black hats). They try and fool search engines through various methods into ranking them higher. This may have worked years ago to some extent, but currently this almost always hurts your ranking, as Google has been programmed to look for these tricks. This should be avoided altogether. The best idea is to stay up-to-date on what the “best practice” is for SEO, and stick to these guidelines. This is often called organic growth, because it is similar to watering a plant. Slowly and surely your work will pay off, but it will not work overnight. Any company that claims to be able to do this instantly is a fraud! Google warns against this, but many people get tempted by the allure of quick results. This never works and these people stole your money. As with everything on the internet and the business world itself, one must use discretion as to how to market and who to work with. The two most important practices of SEO follow.

Quality Written Content

Google as well as most respected SEO agencies agree that QUALITY CONTENT, is the number one way to boost your site. This means lots of relevant, original TEXT as well as rich media. Most importantly, lots of written quality TEXT. Relevant and original text is the most effective for boosting your ranking. Quality content is like food for search engines, they gobble it up when they see it, displaying you in their search results. Often an experienced SEO who also has talent in writing can help provide this content. It is good to keep in mind many things when writing this material. In addition to relevancy, the KEYWORDS and KEY PHRASES that the text will be centered on and keyword density is also important, though a mistake is made when this becomes the focus of the article. This begins to detract from the quality of the content. Usually if one is writing quality content that is focused on the subject, it will naturally have an acceptable keyword density. Google uses extremely advanced mathematical algorithms to look for this kind of content. They keep the heart of these mathematical expressions top secret, though much of it is revealed to the public. There are also many other white hat approaches to working with text including, using bold, italics, the use of heading or h1 tags and other titles. An experienced SEO will know all of this. Again, it is wise to only use the most current and ethical best practices for search engine optimization as this has proved to the be the most effective. There is no substitute for hard work to create a rich and deep site, with quality, relevant well written content.


Links, and Link Building
live concerts
Another Central SEO theme is the use of linking and Link Building. Generally speaking Google and Yahoo considers a link from one site to another as a vote from site A to B, though Search Engines do more then tally up all the votes for one specific site, they analyze the quality of the site the inbound link is coming from, its relevancy to the subject and so many more factors kepy top secret in Silicon Valley. Search engine robots often find sites by “crawling” from site to site using links as the web that connects sites together. Inbound links are considered to be the best for your search engine ranking, as they are viewed by search engines as a “vote” from that site for yours. Many factors come into play as to the “importance” of this vote, including whether this link is reciprocated (viewed as link exchange, still very good but not as good), as well as if the site is a good or “bad neighborhood” , if this site is a very low ranking site, spam site or link farm this will not mean much. Another thing to consider when reaching for inbound links is whether or not the linking web page is relevant to your site. If you have a site about computer chips and a gardening site is linking to you, it will not carry as much weight.
Now that we have inbound links covered, link exchange and outbound links are also worth mention.
That’s it for now folks, I use many tools in SEO in addition to morals, quality writing skills, and in-depth knowledge. I also use the Fire Fox add-on SEO Quake, Web CEO, and Google Analytics. These are basically the industry standard of SEO tools and most anything outside of that is not only extraneous but dubious. Pat yourself on the back for reading this through to the end, I tried to make it concise and dense with valuable information. There is still much left uncovered, and this section will be constantly evolving as the internet constantly involves as well.


 



All Media, Content and Images © Alex Borsody