Useful Information - Websites, Tips, etc.
Introduction
This page contains useful websites with important information on how to create successful websites.
Installing a Local Web Server
A local web server is essential for offline testing of dynamic webpages and websites with server-side includes. Information on local web servers (which one to install etc.) can be found on the following websites;
- www.jimpix.co.uk - some useful info about installing a local web server.
- WAMP - a free open-source software bundle for Windows users. WAMP stands for Windows, Apache, MySql and PHP/Perl/Python. More info on WAMP can be found at Wikipedia along with info on MAMP & LAMP (Mac & Linux OS).
- XAMPP - cross-platform server which can be used with Windows, Linux, Solaris and Mac OS X. XAMPP is an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. More info on XAMPP can be found at Wikipedia.
- Apache - the web server which is included in WAMP and XAMPP.
- MySql - popular database server.
- PHP - popular programming language used for building dynamic websites.
Navigation
Making your site easily to navigate and user-friendly.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
- Robots.txt - a text file placed at the root of your website that tells search engine robots (also known as spiders and web crawlers) which pages to index and which not to index. A robots.txt file can be easily created in Notepad using entries like the ones found at searchtool.com.
- Avoid Duplicate Content - this could negatively affect your search engine ranking. When more than one URL points to the same page or when the same content appears at different URLs, this could be regarded as duplicate content and ranking penalties could be applied to your website. It is only considered duplicate content when large blocks of the same (or very similar) text appear at different URLs. Quotes and small snippets of text are not deemed as duplicate content. More information can be found at Google's webmaster central blog.
Domain names like the following: yoursitename.com and http://www.yoursitename.com are viewed as separate URLs. To avoid ranking issues add the following lines to the .htaccess file (replacing yoursitename with your domain;
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yoursitename.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yoursitename.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]
If you don't have a .htaccess file, create one in Notepad, save it as .htaccess, add the above three lines and upload it to your website.
Free Useful Tools
- Sitemaps - XML sitemaps make it easier for search engines to find and index data efficiently and correctly. This does not improve the ranking of a website, but does improve the accuracy of a ranking. To generate a XML sitemap, you can use the free Google XML sitemap generator (for sites with under 500 pages) or other third-party software. An article about the importance of sitemaps can be found at webconfs.com.
- Google Webmaster Tools - this is a free and easy way to see how Google views your site. Can also help you spot problems so you can fix them. Google is one of the most popular search engines, so this is a good tool to use.
