10/4/08
I just got back from the 2008 Webmaster Jam Session in Atlanta, GA. Good times and brain overload. I took lots of notes and thought I’d share the most important tidbits with others…if you were there you’ll get this…if you didn’t attend, well, make sure you attend next year so you’ll know what all of the following means!!!
Here we go…my top notes from the 2008 WJS.
- J. Cornelius likes to wear black…and pimp his software…maybe the black helps him pimp.
J. Cornelius’ Website - John Moore doesn’t care what men think that women think…he says size matters.
John Moore’s Website - Jason Beaird: If Bob Villa, Mike Holmes, and Bob the Builder had a sleepover, they’d watch Jason build an entire house…with nothing but a reciprocating saw.
Jason Beaird’s Website - Nathan Smith likes to say “dude”. As a matter of fact, he’ll probably name his upcoming baby boy “Dude”. Either that or when the baby pops out, Nathan’s only reaction will be…”dude!”
Nathan Smith’s Website - Christian Heilmann likes puppies
Christian Heilmann’s Website - Jina Bolton loves airplanes and thinks sleep is overrated
Jina Bolton’s Website - James Craig likes to hear computers talk to him.
James Craig’s Website - Ethan Marcotte loooooves slide animations. Especially ones with fire.
Ethan Marcotte’s Website - Todd Dominey is taller than he looks in his twitter pic…
Todd Dominey’s Website - Ben Chesnut likes monkeys
Ben Chesnut’s Website - Jason Ford smiles….A LOT
Jason Ford’s Website - Jeff Croft is an “a-hole”. Ok, not really, but he likes for people to think he is…so just go with it…ok?
Jeff Croft’s Website - Christina Warren doesn’t think Jeff Croft is an “a-hole”…I think she only said that cause she was sitting beside him.
Christina Warren’s Website - Garrett Dimon disagrees with Christina Warren
Garrett Dimon’s Website - Dan Rubin hides his “online side” from his mom
Dan Rubin’s Website - Rob Weychart has an entire chess set stashed in his beard. Srsly.
Rob Weychart
And finally…
I know I left out some, so jump in the comments and share what you learned at the 2008 Webmaster Jam Session!
09/8/08
One of the most common mistakes I see many web developers make is trying to hide webpages from search engines while making it incredibly easy for people to discover those pages. Your eyes may start to glaze while reading this, but stay with me…this will save your booty at some point. The first and most common mistake is the use of a robots.txt file. Basically what this file does is tells spiders (search engines) what files and directories to scan. You can usually see if a website has one by simply adding a /robots.txt after their domain name. For example, you could see Google’s by going to http://www.google.com/robots.txt, which reveals numerous directories they don’t want search engines to scan…interesting stuff if you’re into that sort of thing.
So…how can this be a bad thing? Well, take a look at Google’s robots.txt again and notice how they disallow directories, which is the proper way of doing it. The mistake that some websites make is to disallow actual pages. It could say something like:
Shane Eubanks
