Hello my lovely interwebbivilians! Today should be a pretty fun day. I'm wearing a T-shirt and Jeans at work, which usually means something funnnn is gonna happen! Todays fun will consist of Party at Mike's FIVE. That's right, people. FIVE. Number five since August 1st, 2006. Our trip should include Village Wok, Medditeranean Market, Gaming with Jesse and Sarah, picking up a darkroom kit and playing Rook. I know, it seems like a TON of stuff, but it will be done!
Also, I would like to say hello to everyone who will be reading this blog from Blog365. I'm going to try and write as many blogs possible this year, one a day, ideally. We'll see how that works, however. BTW, I already beat Blog365's system, as this year is a leap year, so it should actually be called Blog366.
http://blog365.ning.com/profile/NickDavis
Good day!
posted at 1/4/2008
At first, this project of converting my links sounded very tedious. Initially I was thinking I'd have to write some elaborate routine on publishing an HTML page after writing a blog, similar to how blogger does it. Not only would I have to make an HTML page for each blog, but I would have to update the extra content (such as "last 10 blogs") in case I wanted to archive them, keep tabs on a main page, rss feed, etc etc etc. Didn't sound appetising at all.
Dissapointed and overcome by this method, I set on a search to find a nice and easy route. Lo' and behold, Microsoft never ceases to amaze me. URLmappings totally made my life easier. They allow you to set a sort of virtual path to your page, yet, still taking in querystring information.
For example, the link to my recent blog, "Lucky Man". It's original (and working) path is:
http://www.nicholasdavis.info/blog.aspx?bID=346&Blog=Lucky+Man
The after effect of URLMappings is as follows:
http://www.nicholasdavis.info/346/2007/9/27/Lucky-Man.aspx
Sweet, huh? All I had to do was create an XML file that is referencable to my web.config file. For example, I have a file called URLMapping.xml. This contains all my URL Maps. Example:
Now, I reference URLMapping.xml from the Web.Config file of my website:
That's all there is to it! So now when I save a blog, it opens the URLMapping.xml into a Dataset, quick add the links and save it back. Couldn't be easier.
posted at 9/30/2007
Alright, lately I've been feeling the need to get into some serious SEO. Lately, over at Dream In Code, it seems as though there is a spark of interest with optimising sites for search engines. I'm trying to keep up, but man alive, these kids know how to do it. So here's what I have done... an experiment, have you. I have basically started fresh with my site structure (which goes unnoticed by the average viewer) in an attempt to climb in the Google search queries. But before I can climb with such drastic changes, I must fall at the foot of Google. Here's a few steps I have taken so far:
So far, my Google presence seems to be improving a little since last week. Searching for "Nick Davis", my blog page shows up at the very bottom. I'm hoping the next couple days, it will be my home page and a couple notches higher than the bottom of the first page. I suppose I also need to work on blogging about things that are interesting.
This blog is my personal experience and for the most part very speculative. So if you have any information or tips, please let me know! I'd love to hear from you.
posted at 9/26/2007
The night before, I read an interesting article written by the editor in the latest Communication Arts magazine we got in the mail a few days ago. From what I understood of the article, the gist of it was about user-end functionality in the ever-evolving career in web design. The editor wrote a couple paragraphs explaining how it is important to not only design the site with the client in mind, but also the end-user that will be interacting with the website. The site could have all of the latest and greatest in web design and look sleek, shiny and new. Or it could be tailored to the client, exactly how they wanted it. However, if it is not easily readable or learned by the user, the user will quickly give up and look at the next search result on Google because they couldn't easily and enjoyably find the information they were looking for on the website.
There's a lot of sweet, innovative ideas out there right now. O'Reilly coins it as "Web 2.0", I simply see it as the natural progression of the Internet. Within the last two years, AJAX, RSS syndication, streamlined video and the blog, have evolved into something amazing (despite all the baby talk). A lot of the technology and ideas behind a handful of the Web 2.0 movement is actually pretty cool and exciting to be a part of. I mean, we are one step closer to 100% interactive websites. With all of this great, revamped functionality, the average web designer has the potential to create very powerful and interactive websites. It gets me excited and very interested in what's coming up next.
With all the new and awesome technology, however, the very core basics of a website is often lost. When a user goes to a website, they are looking for a product. It could be a physical shelf product, a piece of software, an article, an idea; if they can not easily identify the product on the website, then the site just lost a consumer. It's possible that the product pertained to them, but since it was difficult (or sometimes near impossible) to grasp what the website was trying to portray, they are going to high-tail out of there.
In my eyes, this has always been an issue since the beginning of the Internet. The Internet itself, is a new technology and is still in development. There's no true standards yet. This gives the designer a ton of flexibility, which can be used and abused. It's a fine line, balancing the cutting edge of technology and pursuing an intuitive design. New technology is very important as it expands the functional boundaries of the Internet. Intuitive design is also very important, as it gives the end-user a clear direction on where you want them to go. The bottom line is, the goal of a functional website is to give the consumer the information they anticipated and expect to receive.
posted at 9/21/2007
Here's the home-brew blogging tool I've on-and-off been working on the past few months. It's got a few of the more popular web 2.0 features you find around the internet, such as RSS, tags and AJAX, as well as database options for the back-end. Here's a couple of the key features:
For Developers, it is a simple ASP.net user control that you can drag and drop into the desired page. You have the option to either save the content to a SQL Database, or if one isn't available, you may save the data using the supplied XML DataSet. No code needs to be changed, just a simple toggle of your preference in the web.config file.
posted at 9/12/2007
posted at 9/5/2007
posted at 8/26/2007
posted at 8/14/2007
posted at 8/13/2007
These need to get done and I absolutely need the time and clear mind to complete them.
5 MINUTE UPDATE:
I would like to complete these for three reasons:
O' Fall, how I love thee~
posted at 8/10/2007
posted at 8/1/2007
So there it be. The Summer of 2007 events list.
posted at 7/13/2007
posted at 7/8/2007
posted at 6/25/2007
posted at 6/15/2007
North Side from the back.
posted at 6/4/2007