The Apheus Blog

I’ve been using computers for more than 25 years, so I’ve seen lots of innovations in that period of time. I’ve worked with a host of computer connection technologies – everything from networks to SCSI. But when USB (Universal Serial Bus) came out in the mid-1990′s, the game began to change. USB has to be one of the easiest connection methods for both PC and Mac users. There’s nothing better than plug n play!

I look back over the last few months at some of the items that I’ve added here in my home office and I reflect on the various degrees of installation. I bought a Brother HL-2170W laser printer about six months ago. This is a printer that connects to my wireless network and doesn’t require a huge warm-up time like my big HP Color LaserJet 8550N. I wanted this particular laser printer because I could place it anywhere in the house and print from any of my computers. Great convenience, great price. The problem was properly setting it up for my network (which ironically required the use of a USB cable). It took me what seemed like forever to get the printer setup on my network. The problem was that even though the HL-2170W was designed as a wireless printer, the manufacturer really didn’t provide a set of clear instructions on how to actually configure all of the settings. After a great deal of research on the internet, I was able to figure out what I needed to do and it was actually pretty simple.

In contrast, I just recently purchased an HP Deskjet F2480 all-in-one printer, scanner, and copier and the installation was much easier – which I completely attribute to the ease of USB. And this got me thinking – USB has to be one of the nicest pieces of technology out there that actually works. Looking around here at my desk, I see a host of USB devices: an external hard drive, a drawing tablet, a wireless keyboard and mouse (connected via USB), a flash drive, a flash card reader, and the aforementioned printers. All of these items connect to my computer system through the wonder that is USB. By this time, you have be thinking, “Bob, you’re a nerd.” That may be a very accurate statement since I’m sitting here typing out the praises of USB, but you have to admit that it really has simplified things over the last 15 years.

Even though there are external connection technologies that have emerged that are faster (such as FireWire), for some reason USB continues to remain the most popular. Perhaps people just hate to change, but maybe its because the big technology companies actually got something right. There are billions of USB devices sold annually and I don’t see that number going down anytime soon. USB is easy enough for just about anybody to understand – you just plug it in and it works. It’s nothing like the SCSI chains I can remember building years ago.

I think USB will continue to evolve as it already has and it will be a mainstay for computer users for years to come. Call me a nerd if you want, but I love USB!

For whatever reason, the fine people at Firefox have decided to remove the “Properties” menu item from the right-click menu of their latest version 3.6. Maybe I use the Properties menu a little more than the average person, but I just had to have this feature back

The Properties menu gives you access to all kinds of important details about various elements on a webpage. For example, if you right click on image and choose “Properties” you can view the ALT text of the image, its file location, image dimensions, and more.

As a web designer, I use the Properties menu quite frequently to examine various webpage elements. Fortunately, somebody came up with a handy add-on that puts the Properties menu back in the right-click menu.

There’s more to building a website then just slapping some graphics together in an HTML document and saying, “Here ya go!” Believe it or not, there are a lot of web designers out there that do just that. While many are fine graphic artists, they lack the understanding of search engine marketing and how code plays an important part in determining rankings. Building a website that is search engine friendly is extremely vital if you ever expect your website to become visible in search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

How to Build a Search Engine Friendly Website

One of the easiest ways to build a search engine friendly (SEF) website is to hire a professional web designer. If that’s not in your budget, then you might want to follow some of these key points:

Include Page Titles

One of the most annoyingly simple mistakes I often see are webpages without titles. Titles are super easy and every page should have one. They should also be descriptive to the content of the page and shouldn’t be used as a means of keyword stuffing (although you should definitely include some keywords). On a static HTML webpage, the page title will be placed between the head tags.

Include Meta Tags

The importance of meta tags has been topic of speculation and disagreement for many years. There are several types of meta tags, but for the purpose of this blog post, I’m only going to discuss two: description and keyword meta tags. Meta tags appear in between the head tags.

The description meta tag is a few lines of descriptive text that helps explain the contents of a particular webpage. Don’t go overboard with the description meta tag – keep it simple and to the point – don’t put the bulk of your content in a meta tag. A couple of sentences should suffice. In my opinion, the description meta tag is the more important of the two. If written well, this is the text that will appear in Google search results (Google reserves the right to change the text that appears in their search results). It should contain a few relevant keywords related to the webpage – but don’t try to stuff keywords in here! If you do, you’ll be penalized.

The keyword meta tag is less valuable than it used to be. Google has said that they completely ignore the text in the keywords meta tag. This is because a lot of people abuse this meta tag to stuff irrelevant keywords into a webpage. Even so, I still use keyword meta tags and use them properly. I list various keywords and key phrases that help describe the content of the page. Keep keywords to a minimum and you should be fine.

Clean HTML Code

Keeping your website’s HTML code clean is very important. A website must be able to be as easily read by a search engine spider as it should human eyes. Many websites now use strictly CSS designs to help improve load times and create a consistent look. Clean code can help make your website search engine friendly by eliminating lots of the garbage normally associated with old design techniques. Search engines can’t read javascript, so making drop-down menus with CSS is the preferred method. W3C compliant code is always good, but isn’t necessarily a requirement. Most browsers will still read a webpage even if the code is broken (although the end results may not be what you had expected). I use the Firefox Web Developer Toolbar Add-on to check most of the websites I design. I’m always looking for three green checks – passing Standards Compliance Mode, No CSS Errors, and No Javascript Errors. Of course, utilizing a program such a Dreamweaver will help eliminate many errors before you ever publish your website. Clean code also helps eliminate cross-browser errors, which are those that only appear when using specific browsers. For example, I test the websites I design in Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari, and Google Chrome. I also test my websites using multiple computers with different operating systems. Of course you could also use a service like BrowserShots to perform a similar task.

Search Engine Friendly URL’s

Like title tags, making search engine friendly URL’s is a pretty simple task when designing static webpages. A URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the “address” for your webpage on the internet. SEF URL’s should be easily read by both humans and computers. For example, a webpage named page1.html isn’t as descriptive as a one named search-engine-friendly.html. I like to call search engine friendly URL’s by another name – pretty URL’s. Whenever possible, URL’s should be created so that they match the content of the webpage. When using multiple words in a URL, I always prefer to use a dash (-) in between the words. Several years ago, the underscore (_) was a popular way of separating words, but this method has given way to the dash.

When saving documents for use on the internet, especially webpages, avoid using document names that include spaces or include special characters. These special characters get converted into ISO URL encoding strings. So if I were to name an HTML document search engine friendly.html without the dashes, it would appear in the address bar of the browser as search%20engine%20friendly.html. It’s not as pretty as a simple dash and can be harder for people to read. Again, it is very important that the name of the document match the content of the page! If you name a page “computers.htm” and the page talks about car repair, then you’ve missed the boat as far as search engines are concerned.

If you’re using a content management system (CMS) or ecommerce software, it may be a little more difficult to manage your URL’s. However, most dynamic website software now includes functionality to implement search engine friendly URL’s. While this may not come standard with the software, there are usually add-ons or features you can add to improve the readability of your URL’s.

Add ALT Tags to Images

Search engine spiders can’t “read” images in the traditional sense. What our eyes see on the screen isn’t always what a search engine sees. Search engines can’t read text that has been included in an image, so its important to use text whenever you can. But, you have to make your website look good by using images. Where do you draw the line? I can remember when the internet didn’t have images – everything was black and white and was only text. Honestly, those old websites can still teach us something about the importance of text. I love the Web Developer Toolbar Add-on for Firefox. It allows me to disable all of the CSS styles on a page and hide the images. When you do that, you get to basically see the content of a webpage the way a search engine sees it. If a page is made up of all graphics, guess what? The search engine probably isn’t going to see much at all – which could really hurt you.

A good designer can achieve a balance between graphics and text to give your website an optimal appearance. Whenever an image is used on a webpage, it should always include an ALT tag. I prefer to call it a tag, really even though it is an attribute for an element in an HTML document. An ALT tag is alternative text for an element on a page. Every image should include an ALT tag. The ALT tag should accurately describe the image as a short word or phrase and should never be used to stuff keywords onto a page.

While we’re on the subject of images, make sure that your images are named accordingly as well. For example, an image named fish.gif is much more descriptive than an image named gr3.gif. While I’m not quite sure if this has any bearing on SEO or SEF preferences just yet, it is handy to name images appropriately. I would imagine that properly named graphics could only help and can never hurt.

Appropriate Use of Header Tags

Header tags (H1, H2, H3, H4, etc.) are the tags titling important sections on a webpage. Every webpage should include one (and only one) H1 tag. This should be the first header tag on the page and all other header tags should follow below it using a common outline method. For example:

• Header 1
  • Header 2
    • Header 3
    • Header 3
  • Header 2
    • Header 3
    • Header 3
  • Header 2
    • Header 3
    • Header 3
      • Header 4
      • Header 4
    • Header 3

Now, you don’t have to go crazy and include dozens of header tags on a page, the example above just gives you a rough idea of how header tags should be utilized and the appropriate structure they should maintain. A header should be descriptive about the content it is heading. For example, at the top of this section on header tags, I’ve included an H3 tag called Appropriate Use of Header Tags. Include one or two keywords when writing a header tag, but never try to stuff keywords in a header tag.

Good Linking Techniques

One way to really shoot yourself in the foot is to always say “Click Here!” or “Read More” or something along those lines. While sometimes the phrase “click here” can be appropriate, its not very descriptive to search engines. When I’m talking about good linking techniques, what I’m really referring to is the text you use to wrap an href HTML tag around. For example, if I wanted to link to a webpage that talks about affordable website design, then I should make sure that the text at the heart of the link leading to that page reads “affordable website design” or something similar. It doesn’t have to be an exact match, but it should be appropriate and it is much more descriptive than simply saying “click here.”

In addition, every webpage on your website should be linked from at least one static link somewhere on the internet (preferably from your own website). If you design a webpage and nobody knows how to get to the page, then there’s no point in designing the page and putting up on your server – nobody will ever be able to find it! One of the easiest ways of making sure every webpage on your website can be found is to include your pages in a sitemap. The only exception to this rule would be for marketing purposes, such as a specific landing page designed for use with Google AdWords or something along those lines.

Final Thoughts on SEF

While these guidelines for building a search engine friendly website are a start towards search engine optimization, it is by no means a complete guide to SEO. Search engine optimization is a vast and complex subject that could fill volumes of text with various techniques, tools, and tricks. Making something search engine friendly helps build a strong foundation upon which SEO can be performed. Apheus can help build your search engine friendly website, just call us at 1-800-946-3079 and we’ll be more than happy to assist with all of your SEF website design needs.

I must say that I’m slightly disappointed in Grisoft – the makers of AVG antivirus software. I’ve successfully used the free version of their software for several years and have praised their product, turning many free versions into paid versions for them. But recently, I have to question: what is going on with AVG updates? The last two major automatic updates have caused major problems with my computer system at home. Basically, AVG updated itself in the wee hours of the morning and afterwards I was unable to access the internet or my POP email. What a drag!

I’m not the only person experiencing this problem. Many people I know personally that use AVG have had the same problem. A quick search of various AVG forums reveals that this is definitely not an isolated incident. The solution to the problem:

1. Completely uninstall AVG.
2. Download the latest version.
3. Install the new version.

I realize that the free version of AVG doesn’t come with any warranties, but come on! Since I updated to AVG 9, I’ve experienced several update issues. Back in the old days of version 7, we had trouble just getting the software to update itself automatically, now this? It doesn’t instill much confidence in an otherwise very good product. I’ll continue to use AVG and I will continue to recommend it to friends and family, but I will be keeping my eye out for another free antivirus program. Sorry, AVG…

It’s just one of those little things that most people don’t normally notice. When your computer starts up, you will probably recognize the familiar Windows start up sounds. But, did you know that those little beeps when you first push the power button actually mean something?

When your computer performs a power on self test (POST), it basically runs a short diagnostic to make sure that everything it needs to run is present and functioning correctly. Most computers will start up with no beeps or a single beep, giving you the satisfaction in knowing that your computer is functioning and has just passed its POST (depending upon your BIOS, you may get a different set of beeps).

But what happens if your computer doesn’t pass its POST? Well, your BIOS is setup to help you isolate the source of the hardware problem with a series of short and long beeps, which are known as beep codes. Different BIOS manufacturers have different beep codes, so you’ll have to first determine what type of BIOS you have on your mainboard. The most common types are AMI, Award, and Phoenix.

If you get a strange set of beep codes, then you are going to want to write them down and call your preferred computer technician. It helps computer techs to know what the problem is when you call them up rather than just saying, “my computer won’t start.” Press the power button and wait for the mainboard to sound off. Some mainboards are very quick, so an extra set of ears may be helpful in counting the beeps, especially if there are a lot of them. Write them all down, using dots and dashes – kind of like Morse code for your computer. Long beeps get a dash while short beeps get a dot. All of this information is extremely helpful to your computer technician. He’ll probably want to confirm the beep codes himself when he visits, so don’t be offended.

You can look up the BIOS beep codes yourself by looking at the charts below or call your IT guy. He’ll be able to decode the dots and dashes and tell you what may be the problem. Multiple problems can sometimes be difficult to diagnose, so while these charts have been setup to be a general troubleshooting guide, they should not be considered accurate for all problems in every situation.

AMI BIOS Beep Codes

Award BIOS Beep Codes

Phoenix Beep Codes

Phoenix BIOS beep codes are a series of beeps followed by a pause, then another series of beeps. In the chart below, the pauses are indicated by a dash (-) and the number represents the number of beeps. The following Phoenix BIOS beep codes are for version 4 or greater. Please note that many of these beep codes (in addition to the problem indicated) may also indicate a general mainboard failure or a problem that isn’t even listed.

Most IT guys take pride in being able to fix any computer problem that may crop up over time. But sometimes you run across that one little problem that doesn’t seem to have a real solution, no matter how hard you try. Such was my luck today. My Achilles’ heel for the day was an eMachines W3611 with an Intel 945G chipset on the mainboard. What was irritating was the fact that the when I first got my hands on this computer, it booted directly into Windows Vista without any trouble. I gave the computer back to the client and said, “I can’t find anything wrong.” But something most definitely was wrong. After about an hour, the client brought the computer back, but this time with all of the symptoms (the same symptoms I hadn’t been able to duplicate before). This time I was able to see the problem first hand.

The computer would POST then immediately go to the BIOS settings screen. Normally, you have to hit F2 or some other function button in order to gain access to the BIOS at start up, but not in this case. When you exited out of the BIOS screen (either saving or not saving the settings) it would immediately take you to a black screen that said Turn power off and reinstall the jumper in Normal mode position. Well, Mister Jumper – that sounds like an easy fix. The only problem was that the jumper to clear the CMOS was already in the correct place (between pins 1 & 2). After doing a great deal of tinkering with the jumper setting, CMOS, components, battery, etc. – I was stumped. Everything on the computer seemed to work fine, except for the same darned error that popped up every time the computer powered on. Again, this was very irritating since the computer started up fine for me when I first looked at it.

I’ve worked with a lot of computers over the years – some well maintained, but most of them in horrible condition. This computer was actually in pretty good shape with no visible problems. I pondered the problem for several hours and began pouring over the online computer help forums.

Generally, when you can’t figure something out on your own, a quick Google search will reveal that hidden answer. To my surprise, the forums were absolutely useless! In fact, most of the answers pointed to the a little yellow jumper. Well, I can tell you that the little yellow jumper wasn’t the problem. Something else was going on, but do you think the forums were any help? Of course not – they just made me realize that there are a large number of people who post to the forums that are condescending, rude, and incapable of admitting that they don’t know the answer to a problem. Well, not wanting to be one of those people I just described, I’ll admit when I’m beat! I don’t know what is causing this problem other than most likely there is an error with the Intel mainboard.

I even contacted a friend of mine who works in the IT field and he also pointed to the possibility of a faulty mainboard. While I would like to say I can fix almost any computer problem, I have to admit when I’m beat. In this case, I have to chalk it up to hardware failure until I can determine “if” there is another solution. It’s never easy to tell someone that their computer has died, and this case will be no different. You can’t win ‘em all…

I recently ran across a problem with the DNS from my ISP. One of my clients moved their main website from one server to another and I waited for the DNS to propagate. And I waited and waited and waited some more. After four days, I was starting to get worried. Generally, the rule of thumb is that it takes a maximum of 48-72 hours for a domain name to become fully propagated across the various domain nameservers (DNS) on the internet. I contacted my ISP and they resolved the issue, but I was still bothered by the wait time and I know other people in the world must have experienced the same issue at one point or another. That’s when I decided to look into this whole DNS issue with my ISP. Let’s be honest – most people don’t care whether or not their using their ISP’s DNS or not. And probably 99.9% of the people out on the internet don’t even know what a domain nameserver is or does. I happen to be in that .1% that does know and care.

I work with a lot of websites and pointing domains from one server to another is a pretty common practice. I know from past experience that after pointing a domain to a new server, it’s often available within four or five hours. Because I’m in the website design and development business, getting an updated DNS is very important to minimize downtime when moving websites. So I started looking into the problem and the solution was much easier than I had anticipated – use a third party DNS! I started looking around and I found that there were two services out there that could really help me out. One was OpenDNS and the other was Google Public DNS. Both services are free, so I decided to try them out and compare them to my ISP.

The first service I tried was OpenDNS. I was a little confused when I first signed up for the OpenDNS Basic, but I quickly found that they offer a huge number of features that could be very useful. OpenDNS Basic has content filtering, phishing protection, botnet protection, stats, logs, shortcuts, and more. With all those features, I was impressed. With OpenDNS, you gain additional protection from problem websites, which is always a good thing. I think they’ve done an excellent job of creating a service that many people can really enjoy having – especially with that zero dollars price tag. The only problem I had is that I thought my computer was slightly slower when “looking up” websites. Perhaps it was just my imagination, but I’ll get to the DNS speed test results later.

My next test was with Google Public DNS. Google apparently launched the service in December 2009, but I hadn’t heard about it until I started looking into it. You don’t have to sign up for anything at Google, you just plug in your numbers and away you go. There are no fancy features like you’ll find with OpenDNS and that may appeal to some people. Again, Google Public DNS doesn’t cost anything, so that is always a pleasing feature. Beyond that, everything is no-frills. The Google DNS seemed to function without any problems, although it seemed to be a little slower than what I was used to.

I decided to test the speed differences between my ISP’s DNS, OpenDNS, and Google Public DNS using a program called namebench and another program called DNS Benchmark. Depending upon the time of day, configuration of the test, and the program used, my ISP generally beat OpenDNS and Google in response times.

Just from experience, I knew that my ISP was slighter faster than either of the other nameserver services. However, since my primary concern is with how often the DNS is updated, I needed to do a little more research. Each nameserver has its own update frequency specified by the person who installed the DNS and the Time to Live or TTL settings. While I don’t know the exact interval my ISP updates their nameservers, I do know from experience that it can sometimes take several days to resolve a proper domain. Again, since I frequently move websites from one server to another, I need quicker access.

OpenDNS seems to resolve their DNS’s rather frequently and they also have a neat tool called CacheCheck that can actually force them to update their DNS before the TTL expires. That is a really neat feature! I couldn’t find any information on how often Google updates their cache, but I’ve seen reports on the internet that they take slightly longer than OpenDNS. From what I can tell, OpenDNS and Google Public DNS refresh their caches far more frequently than my ISP.

So what am I to do? My ISP is definitely faster, and many other testers have discovered the same results. However, I need a DNS that resolves a recently moved website more quickly than my current ISP. Based upon my own DNS performance tests and the features benefits, I’m going with OpenDNS. If I decide later that I don’t like the service, then I always have the option of switching back to my ISP or choosing Google instead. Right now, I think I’ve made the right decision.

Apheus recently joined the site seal revolution by adding the Spam Free service. We are committed to making sure that any email address or other personal information you provide to our company will never be used in spam. Email marketing is a tricky thing, especially when it comes to trust.  Opt-in rates continue to drop because of the fear of spam.  Most marketers will just try to claim their list is free from spam by saying something like, “We hate spam as much as you do and will never share or spam your email address.”

There is, however, a solution.  A way to actually prove your list has a clean track record when it comes to spam called the Spam Free Seal.  Basically it’s a seal that you place on your site that links to a status page with instant proof you don’t send any spam to your list.  Pretty cool.