Programming

Whilst we have known this for a while, on Friday Google officially announced that site speed is a factor in how websites are ranked.

Often little more than an afterthought, a "Thank You" page is an opportunity to leave a good impression on your customers, cross-sell them relevant products, and reassure them that their order has processed OK.

This report from Snow Valley is an excellent guide to what makes a Thank You page work, and what to avoid.

Here are some common pitfalls:

Internet Explorer 6 was launched on August 27, 2001.

Over nine years later and despite two major updates it lives on. Internet Explorer Six was never a very well built bit of software. It's security is poor at best (some say the least secure software on the planet), it lacks support for modern web standards and increases development time. Nothing works on IE6. Well, it does - but only after hours of re-writing perfectly good, standards compliant code in just the right way to work on this lumbering dinosaur of a system.

Well, this will go on no more.

Your choice of web host has an affect on your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) campaign. This post looks at what factors matter for SEO when you choose a host, and how you can use this information to find a host that's right for you.

Why does hosting matter?

Search engines look at a number of factors when they rank websites, and these are aimed at making sure:

I hate clutter on websites. There's nothing worse than having a cluttered up website, or some stupid carousel menu system just because it "looks good". Give me some feng shui and zen any day.

Simple works. Simple means NO clutter. NO bells. NO whistles.

And yet. Judicious use of the occasional visual treat can be permitted. Especially if it's focused on something that genuinely helps your user (and no, I don't mean showing a clock - NO ONE needs YOUR website to tell THEM the time).

I rarely discover software that I really genuinely like. For every good bit of software, there are 9 that wind me up or do things in such a clunky way I wish I had never bothered. Ever now and then though, you find a gem. Something that's so exciting your mouth drops with excitement and you go beyond generally enthusiasm into the world of oh-my-god-this-will-change-my-life-and-all-those-around-me-quick-call-the-wife-my-mother-the-kids-the-dog-the-old-man-down-the-road-this-is-epic.

Today was one of those days.

Auto Hot Key

Testing to make sure websites work across different browsers is part of the job of making websites. A whole plethora of tiny bits and pieces work different in FireFox than they do in Internet Explorer. In a bid to test a website thoroughly, it's important to review every website you work on in all the major browsers. This includes Safari.

My laptop is neither fast nor slow. It's decidedly average. The only things that's are truly superb on it are the 17" screen and the full sized keyboard with keypad. Apart from that, it's just plain OK.