Helping You Rock Out Your Site Like A Rockstar!

Website Grader is a fun tool that extremely useful for webmasters from all types of sites. This site calculates a grade based on several pieces of information:

• Meta tags
• Keywords
• Linkage
• Rating from Google, Alexa, and more
• Some of your WhoIs information on your domain
• Your site design (if you have too many graphics)

For example, my site got an 86% (as of February 23, 2009)when I ran it through Website Grader. It allows you to see the site in a way that is close to what the search engines see it and how your visitors see your site. In a way, it literally gives you a way to think about what you have put on your site and how to improve it. The site even contains extremely helpful articles in improving your site, especially with getting inbound links to your site.

I recently submitted Blondish.net to a site that allows people to rate websites based on their design. The site is called Design Snack. I think it is a nifty idea. It is not like a normal review site where you have to leave a detailed review. You just rate and if you want, you can leave a comment. However, I still like to do reviews. My only thoughts are that people could just drop in a give a low rate to be nasty. You can view my site’s profile there a Design Snack, and please, if you do go look, please leave an honest rating. In the same regard, if you do join and submit your site, please tell me about it. I would love to return the favor.

I have had tutorials in the past, usually basic coding, but never on my graphics. I seem to give a lot of graphics, which I have been told time and time again. That is quite okay with me. I have well over 800 different graphics available on this site for download and I am damn proud of each and every one no matter if I recently created them, or created them over five years ago when I first started out. For anyone new to Blondish, or has not visited my site since its early GeoCrappy days, I have offered layouts, background patterns, blinkies (as siggies – signatures), emoticons (smilies) and much more. However, I always get “How did you do that?”

Well, I started with the Flower Vexel. Since I am designing the theme for Rouged, I will be vectoring another picture of myself. However, I have also been writing a tutorial on how to do certain parts like skin, eyes, and hair. Of course, this is all with my style of vectoring.

I hope in the next couple days when revealing each tutorial, that they will be helpful and you use your imagination when creating the vector. Art is always something that each person perceives differently. With vectors, some like smooth looking vectors, while people like myself like some difference between the layers. Of course, with the tutorials I am also going to be introducing a PNGs section of graphics that I made by vectoring.

I have been a writing fool lately. I really need to get cracking on finishing my novel, but the prospect of blogging has been much more enticing lately. I should be happy that I am at least writing. So far I have been blogging here at Blondish, at Host Solutions (there is a blog about webhosting and HS there), and now at Rouged (which is another personal site of mine with a different focus toward fashion, health, mommy and a deeper side of myself. Excuse the plain area. I am creating a tutorial on making a vector for skins and so the process for the layout there is delayed.) In fact, I have even been delving into my old coding tutorials that I have saved and will be bringing them out so look for them soon.

However, I thought since I have been eager to show these three articles, I would share.

• Design? Do Not Work For Less Money
• Creating a Portfolio
• Why You Should Use a Custom 404 Page

These can also be found in the articles section of this website.

I had a most interesting conversation with another person on Twitter. Yes, it sounds cheesy as I talk to quite a few people, but I prefer to keep the person anonymous as they have a good reputation and this is not a blog to maim anyone, more to be informative as I am not sure how the term was lost when ‘php script’ has been around for some time. Yes, WordPress is a blogging platform or a content management system. It uses php code and calls the database to cough up the information you put into your server, and even uses other scripting languages. I use WordPress like it is another religion and that is being serious despite the overtone while reading that it might be a hilarious thought.

I also produce php scripts. I have two here at the site that I coded myself, and in the past I did a simple blog php script in 2005 which I put on the backburner due to the fact I would rather promote WordPress as it is awesome. That, and I fear my own would be like another CuteNews or Greymatter story where my script would not be secure enough.

Brief Point of View Change: However, if you were looking for something like WordPress and only knew you wanted a blog built with php, would you call it general a php script?

PHP script -
PHP is a scripting language originally designed for producing dynamic web pages.

Defined by Wikipedia

Hotscripts.com (a site that has been around since 1998, only three years after PHP was originally created) lists WordPress under PHP/Scripts & Programs/Blog, which anyone can assume php script and php program are synonymous terms. Of course, anyone can call it php code as it seems to be an acceptable term these days, but when I download a program coded with php, it is also known as a php script. That is what my clients call it when they ask me.

At the end of this blog, I somehow feel I may have ranted a bit.

I noticed a huge change the other day on the Alexa rank for Blondish.net. It was at over 1.6 million for a while, but changed to 445,040 the other day. I am very happy about this. I am still wondering about my Google Page Rank as it use to be a 5 before my huge hiatus during last year. Well, it was not much of a hiatus… more like I barely blogged. I now blog daily as there are plenty of things that I believe worth sharing and discussing.

It may have been the php scripts I offer, or being active on Twitter? Or perhaps it was being able to get around to some great blogs and leave meaningful comments? However, I did find in the past year, some great sites with good PR either lost PR because they also did not keep up on their online presence, or some sites just faded away. What I need are good quality link exchanges with sites that have great page rank, but who would stretch out and link with me. I like to link exchange with sites I like, or will just link for the heck of it. However, I need sites that have better Page Rank than I do. Anyone interested in link exchanging?

For the past few years, I have been using Gravatar, which is a “globally recognized avatar.” A gravatar is something to give your blog comments a small, but nifty image. It is an attribute that WordPress and other blog content management have designed plugins to to display them within blogs both free-hosted, self-hosted, or even free-hosted comments like Haloscan.

Personally, for me, when I go through my site comments, the gravatars are the first thing I notice. That does not mean that I do not read the others, it is just that my eye is drawn to them, especially if they are well designed. This also does not just apply to my site, but when I visit and comment at other sites. Sometimes I will see an amazing avatar and will want to go see that person’s site.

Not long ago, gravatar was not accessible for new accounts. Members at that time could see their gravatar display whenever they commented, but they could not update. Since its move to Automattic, Gravatar has been accessible, so for those who might still be thinking the site does not work… well, it does now and has been for the past year.

For those who do use gravatar, how do you like it? Are you apt to visit people who have an interesting avatar (gravatar)?

I am kind of ticked. The other day I went to log into my FeedBurner account and was told that I needed to transfer my stuff over to Google’s feedburner. No offense, but for months I knew Google had bought Feedburner. Why does Google have to move a perfectly good service off a domain that has made its own brand. Google could reap more rewards by keeping the brand, not moving anything but servers and just enhancing current services already there. With the move, they are adding Adsense, but taking Site Stats because Google already has what they call a superior service, Google Analytics.

Although the transition seems to be smooth, I am highly disappointed. Truthfully, with merging popular items from a true domain that has been strongly branded, to a subdomain is a regression. Although I will still use the services, because I have no choice and want to support the memory of the original site, I just think that branching this all strictly under the Google brand is ridiculous. Great, Google has money, why the Borg attitude? Why must Google assimilate great products? It is confusing and there are definite studies through the years that have said that in moving sites, you are bound to experience visitor loss and will have to work to build. I hope Google has a big enough team to do the PR on GoogleFeedburner in case there are people who really do not want to move due to things like fail safety.

Do not get me wrong, I like using Google for things like searching and the webmaster tools. I use their services quite often, but I am thinking about how Google. Just in case, for those of you who have not merged now, eventually your account will merge over to the new place by February 28, 2009. So far, the URL has stayed the same. Here is a FAQ of the move from FeedBurner to Google accounts.