HM2K.com

I get asked this question time and time again. People seem to believe that the use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) will help with their Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Well, does it?

The short answer is no. The long answer is as follows…

To begin with we will look as to why CSS has nothing to do with SEO by looking at the most popular Search Engine’s webmaster guide lines.

• Google’s Guidelines on SEO’s
• Google’s Guidelines on Site Design
• MSN Search
• Yahoo!

You will quickly notice that none of these pages contain anything about CSS, this is because you will find that search engines don’t even read CSS.

Once you realise that the search engine probably doesn’t even download your CSS file, you soon realise that the style of your page actually has no affect on your efforts to SEO. The search engine is more interested in the HTML, (ie the content). Most of the time, the search engine will actually strip the tables or divs when it processes the page as they serve no purpose for indexing pages. See: Poodle Predictor

It is argued that using CSS forces you to use clean HTML code, and therefore CSS does help with SEO. I partially agree to this, however you have to remember that search engines are backwards compatible, and still read table layouts all the same. Still this argument is flawed as its the HTML that is optimised, the style of the page still has no impact on SEO, infact you could do away with the CSS file all together, and it will still rank the same on search engines.

One of the things I notice recently about the industry is the way people seem to work these days. Often web design, web development and SEO cross, and people don’t clearly define them seperately.

A web designer is someone who designs and does not code (think of an artist), therefore a web designer must use a graphics package (such as photoshop) to design their web site layout. These applications use (very bad) html table layouts to produce the pages. They would not use CSS as this is “programming”. Yes, thats right CSS is NOT designing.

A web developer is someone who minipulates the web design to give the website its functionality. Once they have a design from the web designer, they would begin optimising the code and perhaps only then would they begin to use CSS.

Search Engine Optimisation is NOT web design, its mainly about marketing but usually requires some web development.

The main reason for using CSS over a table layout is because tables are there to provide a method to display tabular data, not to form a layout for your web page. It is also good practice that you seperate the page content from the page style as this allows for more flexablility, and because CSS is used it forces you to have clean HTML as you are more organised. See “Why tables for layouts are stupid”

One of the major benifits to everyone for using CSS is with regards to bandwidth, as using a table layout is more code, than a layout created for use with CSS. One of the down sides, is that your beautiful CSS page style may not work properly on older browsers, where as a table layout would. One of the other major benifits of using a layout that is designed for use with CSS over table layouts is that it allows you to put your contents BEFORE your navigation (as long as the browser supports it). There are plenty more pros and cons of using CSS, but they all have nothing to do with SEO, as the style of the page means nothing to a search engine.

In summery, using CSS is definatly a better way to develop websites, but it doesn’t matter to the search engine whether you use CSS or not, they still view the page exactly the same, as it is the HTML that is important.

Still don’t believe me? Try this: Completly block search engines from reading your CSS file all together (using robots.txt), and see if you rank any differently on the search engines.

css-seo.html 1137526215.html

I have been on the lookout for a decent FTP Deamon/Server that runs on windows. Its not very often that I do require one, but every so often having one does come in handy.

I have tried the following software:

• Serv-U - Over the years I have used this quite a few times, I never really liked it, and it costs over $49.95. I’m going to look on…
• PureFTPD - Although there is a win32 release, its difficult to work with, no easy way to configure your server, it does not run in the background without 3rd party software, even though it does have a tray icon, but all in all its fairly useless — I couldn’t even locate the config file. This thing is designed on and for Unix, not Windows, as I found.
• warFTPD - After much clicking around their website, I managed to actually download this software, only to be faced with a load more screens of clicking in the installation. The software installs to places you don’t want it to, and it asks questions you don’t really want to answer during installation. I decided to give this one a miss before the installation was complete.
• Gene6 - Its good, the trial only lasts 30 days though and it costs over £30, I just don’t think its worth the price. Changing the port was difficult at first, but I figured you needed to add a domain first, and it worked, its a bit of an odd setup, but it worked.
• RaidenFTPd - Costs over $19.95, however it was really really easy to setup. The problem was that the shareware splash screen was so annoying I could not seem to rid of it, it would not let me continue only quit, so I uninstalled it.
• guildFTPd - This one was yet another dirty piece of software, hard to use and navigate, so much so you need to read their guide on it. I could not figure out how to change the port from 21 to another port. However it does turn out to uninstall very quickly and easily.
• BPFTPd - Apparently its based on the old Gene6, it has a 15 day trial. Costs $34.95.

…and after all that I still have not got a decent FTP server for windows.

http://www.hm2k.org/news/1136292279.html

The thing that has been bothering me recently most of all, even more than online spam and junk mail, are telemarketing calls. I recently had an increase of unwanted telemarketing/telesales calls.

So I went stright onto the BT website, and went to their contact phone numbers list, I then called the “Malicious Calls” number on 0800 661 441.

They advised me to call two numbers, the first was BT Privacy at Home Service on 0800 121 8000. They told me to first signup to the Caller Display service (which is completly free, and takes about 24 hours to become active), and to register with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS), you can also choose if you want BT to call or not (I chose no).

You can also register with the Silent Call Guard on 0870 4443969 registration is free, lasts for one year and takes no more than 28 days to become effective.

Although I HAVE signed up to all these services, I have to wait 28 days for anything to happen so I am STILL getting calls.

Did you know?

• Most telemarketing companies use a tactic called “predictive-dialing”. Basically what this means is that their computer auto-dials your number, assuming it will take you about 2 rings to pick up, before switching you over to the next available telemarketer when you do pickup, so as not to waste the telemarketers’ time while waiting for you to pick up, after all, time is money to them.
• Due to “predictive-dialing” if there are no availible telemarketers, the computer will hang up.
• Also due to predictive-dialing, you get a delay before someone says anything, apparently often they wait until you say “hello” twice before they pickup, therefore DO NOT say “hello” twice, as dialers register a single hello as an invalid number.
• Finally, when you suspect you are getting one of these calls (usually calling from an unknown or withheld number) simply pickup, and do not say anything, if you hold on the line, you may eventually hear a message that is designed for answering machines explaining that you have received a call from whoever is calling.

So I have decided to take matters into my own hands, the following list is simply a collection of things you can do while you wait for these services to come into action.

• Ask the caller to remove you from their database and put you on their “DO NOT CALL” list.
• You can report the caller to UK Data IT who will research it for you.
• Read the Ofcom Silent Calls FAQ - useful if your not sure what to do.
• Enigma Anti-Telemarketing Software v1.2 - An american based peice of software to make logs of callers.
• How to stop telemarketing calls - A useful website with information about telemarketing calls.
• Anti-Telemarketing EGBG counter-script - A counter script to use on telemarketers.
• Dealing with Telemarketing Slime - Counter-Telemarketing Tactics - Telemarketing Scum Page.
• Telemarketing Blocker - A free Caller ID screen software that retrieves caller’s telephone number using your voice modem.
• JUNKBUSTERS Anti-Telemarketing Script - Another counter script, american based.
• Telemarketing - A wikipedia definition.

Note: This document is aimed at UK anti-telemarketing only, I have no idea about outside of the UK apart from what I have read.

telemarketing.html

I have been looking for a decent FTP client for years, and now I think I have finally found it!

Here are some other FTP clients I have tried over the years.

• LeechFTP was good, I used it for years, but they have stopped developing it, and bitbeamer that was suposed to replace it never happened.
• BulletProof FTP is good, I have used it for years, but I get the feeling its not worth $29.95, especially when its something that should be free.
• FlashFXP is a pain as they are ALWAYS updating it and there’s about a million different versions, it costs $25.
• SmartFTP is free, but it just doesn’t cut it in the real world, its useless at times and difficult to use.
• CuteFTP I never liked, its over priced (at $59.99) and over rated.

The answer is here at last…

FileZilla has the answer, its free, its open source, its up-to-date and it works. (Although it would be good if you could import settings from other clients)

Well its either that or using the ftp command provided with windows.

Note: Since I wrote this I have been told to check out SmartFTP v2, as I am told it is far better than v1, and its free!

http://www.hm2k.org/news/1133012808.html 

These days I find myself buying all sorts of things off of ebay.

The problem I have found in the past is that I cannot keep track of the items I am bidding on, and then forget about them, consequently ending up with nothing.
I set out to find a FREE method of tracking eBay auctions. An application that allows you to snipe would be good too.

My first port of call was freshmeat.net, where I found:

• BidNobble - This piece of software looked great, however I soon find out that it doesn’t actually work correctly.
• eBay Agent - This was a nice application written in Perl, which could be run from a server however with no decent frontend.
• bidwatcher - This application was okay, the problem was it was slow, and this didn’t work properly either.
• Bid Monkey - Written in python, I tried this, I didn’t like it at all.
• JBidwatcher - Another java based Bit watcher, that is very poorly designed, and difficult to work with.

I crawled the internet for other applications out there, only to find they don’t REALLY exist.

In the end the best thing I found was a Google Gadget for Google Desktop called eBay Auction Watch. This plug-in is fantastic, its just a shame you’re forced to use it with Google Desktop considering it uses so much system resources.

Just before Christmas, I decided I was going to get an MP3 player for my girlfriend as she wanted a new mp3-player, as her 40gb one was too much and now old, so she was looking for something with around 4gb or 8gb of storage space.
A friend suggested there were tuns of 4GB MP4 Players on ebay, I questioned him and said, I wonder why they are going so cheap, his reply was thats because there are so many. I figured something wasn’t quite right, but as the sellers had over 98.99% positive feedback I figured it seemed like a half decent deal.

Read the rest of this entry »

For some time I have been meaning to update my website, I had decided long ago that if I did create a new site it would use the wordpress engine, as I didn’t like the updates of the engine I used previously, which was cutenews.

On the 12th of August 2006 I purchased back HM2K.com after not having it since 2002, I decided to use this for my new site.

Before I created a new site I wanted to decide on a purpose, giving the site more focus resulting in a more successful website. After some time I realised what it was that I wanted to do with my website.

I wanted to make it a central point where I could document my (almost daily) research. As part of my work I find myself doing a lot of research, gathering information on many issues, perhaps information that does exist, but with limited coverage or such. The purpose of the site would be to report my findings on my website, not only for my personal use but to assist others.

In addition to this I would place details of my projects and articles I have written in the past.
And so the new site was born.

Enjoy!

Welcome to HM2K.com,

This is the first post.

A new year, a new site.

More posts to follow, need to get the site content and theme finished first.