Little Asterisk

Hey Anwii, I've just noticed your topic here on How to SEO and wanted to congratulate you on coming up with such a topic and writing good content so far. I hope you continue with your "quest" although you haven't yet reached number one; but if you stop now, there's no way to know if you ever will! There are a few things that bother me, though, and I just wanted to get them out there: 1. The titles. While you've chosen good titles and they would be picked up by Google as fairly relevant, unfortunately you've only increased their size, whilst their importance remained the same as "regular" text (if you check the source of the website, you'll see that the titles are marked up like so: <span style="font-size: 21px">How to SEO</span> If we wanted them to be more important from a SEO aspect, it would be better to do something like this: <h1>How to SEO</h1> 2. The body copy. You're writing a fine tutorial, but readers can see when you repeat words too often, especially when they're set in bold and, possibly, underlined. Yes, I'm talking about "How to SEO." It IS important from an SEO standpoint, but you shouldn't terrorize your readers just because of it. On a normal website, you really should try NOT to repeat words just for the sake of SEO. It's more important to write fluid, "regular" text. 3. Also, I've noticed that bold words are marked up as <b> tags, while I believe that <strong> tags would be more relevant from an SEO standpoint. W3C states <b> and <i> tags are purely presentational tags, respectively. <strong> and <em> tags, on the other hand are structural elements (a simplified version on http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ ). I hope you understand I'm not trying to say anything is wrong with your posts, but just that a forum like Xisto, where you haven't got full control over your content and markup, isn't perfect when trying to make the best SEO decisions. ------------------- Finally, I have a question for you: In one of your posts, you've written the name of one of your competitors with a "DOT" instead of ".", and said that's because you don't want Google to pick up on it and give them a better PR. But doesn't Google only index links that have an anchor tag applied to them? So I believe that, while "google.com" wouldn't be indexed, "google.com" would. What do you think? Sorry to have bothered you so much, but I just felt inspired to write something here considering I didn't for a while now, and your topic seemed really interesting. Thanks, Littleasterisk

Oh, and also a recent article on thinkvitamin for web_designer regarding freelance work: http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/search Hope this helps ~ LittleAsterisk

It's no problem if you both want to be a web designer and developer, however be sure to mention your assignments on different projects in your portfolio. For instance, if you worked on a CMS for Amazon you'd put Amazon in your portfolio and write something like "Custom CMS Development" next to it. ~ LittleAsterisk

Hmm... A lot of freelancers nowadays have trouble finding work because there's simply too much competition out there. Since it seems you don't yet have a developed portfolio, I'd suggest you to try and sign up for a service like 99designs.com (well, not like; sign up for 99designs.com! ), where you can submit your design to various "public" projects. Why am I suggesting this path? As you stated yourself, you'd need reviews for someone to hire you "professionally." Although you're basically doing work *for free* when making designs on 99designs.com, for you as a starting web designer that's not so bad. Once you get one of your designs accepted, you both get money and a new item to showcase for your portfolio! The benefits of this system are that your potential employer doesn't have to review your portfolio and you can submit the designs regardless of your experience. Hope this helps a bit! ~ LittleAsterisk

Okay, but remember... You've asked for it. If you give away knowledge on your industry, won't this harm you? Say you're a really good programmer. And I don't mean just that you can type code, but that you actually know all the logic behind it, and that you understand how to apply your knowledge for the purposes of improving application's performances. And let's suppose there's almost no one like you -- let's say you're the "king" of "codetopia". So, companies like Microsof, Apple, Ubisoft and similar want you to work for them. Because you're good. If you're paranoid and you think someone's going to take away your job if you share your knowledge with him, you'll keep the things you know for yourself. No one will probably like you -- not even the companies you work for -- because it's somewhat expected of you to give away knowledge. On the other hand, let's say you do share your talent with the world and (for instance) start a blog/website where you write about your experiences. This is very good for you because: 1. You get exposure. People get to know you. 2. Potential employers see your talents and are more likely to hire you. 3. Other people learn from you, and are more eager to give you their knowledge. And even so, you remain the "guru" at what you do. Because you knew coding first. You became the "CEO of XXXXXXX" (Some company) first. Other companies are more likely to hire you because of that. So, how does that relate to our conversation? If "someone" is very unlikely to share their way of making money, he's a real *bottom-hole*. Unless what he does is illegal, there is no logical reason (but their own unsupported fear of losing money) to hide that. But then again, a lot of people generally are *bottom-holes*... I'll be sure to let you know if I find a better solution to explain my thinking. ~ LittleAsterisk *

CSS tricks' Chris Coyier had a post published recently on "blogs that copy your site's content." In other words, other guys publishing word-to-word what you've written. The conclusion(s) he's come to are: 1. YOU have published that content first, therefore YOU first have access to it. 2. YOUR blog has more credibility. Because it does not steal content from others. 3. Incoming links from these sites will do a few things to improve your Google Page Rank. While not all are directly related to this "money-make-quick" stuff, points 1 and 2 still stand. The guy who first started making money blogging probably still does so, and he makes the most because he's (1) been there longest, (2) knows best from his own experience, (3) teaching others HOW to blog. This basically means that a lot of "fresh" bloggers will already be using his knowledge on their blogs, which gives him respect (karma or something, call it whatever you want) WITHIN the community. I remember someone once asked a question like "If you share tips on your [industry/work/something-like], won't that leave less work for you?" (in the sense of people rather doing their own thing then hiring you to do it for them). The short answer is: no, it won't. People who seek for advice on your industry are most likely not interested in buying your services. They just want to learn. On the other hand, someone looking for (say) professional body copy written is more likely to hire you if he sees you know what you're doing (via the advices you share, etc.) than if he just reads about you. He was never interested in learning HOW to write in the first place. (P.S. I have a rather chaotic way of thinking, as you see, and you perhaps won't understand some of the stuff I tried to say. Apologies for that in advance. I tried to separate my thoughts using a horizontal rule there, but it doesn't seem to work. Shout if you'd like for me to explain some of this.)

Why not? I know a way to make money. But then again, it requires effort to make it so I don't suppose that's what people (referring to a "metaphorical someone" who usually asks these kind of questions) want to hear. If they want to make it playing games or watching TV, all are welcome to give it a shot. But when people start making money in one of these ways, they usually aren't satisfied with monetary rewards. ~ LittleAsterisk *

Yeah, I believe Google's given a much bigger relevance to pictures found on pages 2, 3, 4 etc. because we don't have to click anymore to display them. Now I find that I can easily scroll to page (for instance, let's say...) 5 while I used to refine my search already on page 1 or maybe 2.

Hey, hey, hey! Not to mistake WYSIWYG "coding" with front-end! I do all my coding "by-hand," which will say I "lay my own divs down." (In other words, I code in Notepad++ or the "hardcore" Vim, and sometimes employ Dreamweaver -- but never, never ever for WYSIWYG ). And perhaps I have overreacted a bit with the "errors" but I'm currently working on multiple things so there's a lot of debugging left for me to do and I don't really need to think about building a CMS at this moment. Okay, I'll be sure to give it a try then.

And here we come to the problem. While I could probably try to build a CMS just for me (and I will do that in case I don't find a matching fit), there's just: 1. Too much work. 2. Too much nerve-wrecking around the most idiotic things. 3. Too much chance for a mistake. I also tend to put more trust into people who "do" CMSs for a living than into myself, because I enjoy front-end programming more than the back-end. As for tweaking Wordpress/Drupal, that would just take too much work, because (let's go with a list again ): 1. I would need to learn the file structure 2. I would need to pick functions that are important for the most basic functionality 3. I would need to do a lot of testing. And also, 4. I would most probably screw up something, which would again make me go into the nerve-wrecking cycle. And I don't want that. ♠ ♥ ♠ ♥ ♠ ♥ ♠ ♥ ♠ ♥ Once again, I enjoy front-end programming over back-end.

A small digression from the original topic: Remember how we started talking about Ruby somewhere in the discussion. No? Check the last post. Well, anyhow, Nettuts+ has published the first of many parts in a series of Ruby development so I suggest you check it out in case you'd like to learn a few things. The first part is titled "Ruby for Newbies" and covers basically only the download process and a few basic rules of Ruby. ♠ ♥ ♠ ♥ ♠ ♥ So, why are you still here? Go check it out. https://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/ruby-for-newbies-installing-ruby-and-getting-started--net-15116

I've already seen this Indexhibit app, but thanks anyway since I've forgotten about it since. To answer your second question in short, making things "hard" doesn't make them more geeky. But stripping them down to the bare essentials might. And they definitely will not replace Wordpress or Drupal or Joomla or anything similar to them, no. All of these CMSs you've listed are excellent systems, probably with no or very little flaws. They're the sort of stuff you'd use in your "normal" website installation, give to your clients or use by yourself. However, since I want to have a really simple blog/CMS I don't require any additional functionality. I just want to show XY posts on my homepage, and I'll have no problem hard-coding paragraphs, headings and what have you in HTML markup. So I don't see why should using Wordpress (~7MB, requires a database) be better than, say, Stacey (~2MB, no database required) when they are both easily understandable, have "custom keys" (which I need) and do the "same job." Once again; you could argue Wordpress has an easier/prettier interface, better text editor (which I don't use anyway since I write "locally") or a bigger (huge) community - which are all true - but I don't need any of these. So, to repeat myself once again: I'm not trying to use a clunkier or uglier or harder CMS just so I can brag how I'm using a "geeky" content management system, but because that's all I need. I hope you understand my thinking here. If not, shout and you shall be heard.

Okay, so I'm looking for help from my fellow members right now. Me being the real geek I am, I also want to use a geeky CMS for myself. While Stacey would probably do, I am wandering whether there is something even more geekier? The only real feature I need is the following two features:1. that it displays recent posts on the homepage without me manually editing it, 2. that it is a flat-file content management system ( no databases ), and...3. that it supports "clean" URLs.I will easily take care of the other stuff. Now, for a more detailed explanation...While Wordpress is easily the best CMS out there, a bit of thinking got me to this point: when I start this next project, all I will need is that the header and footer stay the same throughout all pages - and that the latest post displays on the homepage. Everything else, I will handle. So why use the magnificent Wordpress for such a small and easy task?! The answer is simple: not to use Wordpress at all...I will: insert the META description and keywords,I will: insert the title,I will: write all extra code necessary.So that is what I want from my next CMS. As I said -- Stacey would do, but does something even smaller and quicker exist out there?

Hmmm, I didn't quite get it if you're still offering free hosting for 3-6 months, but be very well aware of the fact that the FreshBooks ( https://www.freshbooks.com/ ) guys offered around 50 free invoices as a trial for their invoicing product, which proved to be a big mistake because most of their users did not have 50 clients to start with! Now they offer (I believe) only four or so. Much better revenue that way! I'm just saying... Be careful with what you give away (well, you and anyone else reading this ).

@mahesh2k Thanks for the CMS! (P.S. Where does your nickname come from? ) ========= And now, for another CMS from me: http://www.posterous.com// - I don't know how I could've forgotten about this one... Really simple image/text/video posting, you send it there and it does all your work. Just simple blogging stuff, for instance Dustin Curtis uses it ( http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ ) and also Jeffrey Zeldman ( every now and then, on http://zeldman.posterous.com/60-free-wordpress-themes ). And... Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/ - Also a micro-blogging service, they set it all up and all you need to do is blog. I think Tumblr is a lot better, and you can learn more about it by buying a book or reading this "Why Tumblr is kicking Posterous *bottom*" article on Business Insider That's it from me for now!