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Written by Matthew J. De Reno Thursday, 19 January 2012 19:03
Killing SOPA
U.S. lawmakers are kowtowing to the so-called "Internet community" and the website blackout protest that was organized regarding SOPA. Though this is widely viewed as a victory for the Internet community, I wonder if that sentiment is truly well-founded.
SOPA is the controversial legislation which would ostensibly give big companies a lot of power over smaller website owners, who might otherwise not have the resources to fight allegations of content pirating and copyright infringement. The Stop Online Piracy Act (a House bill commonly called SOPA) and the Protect IP Act in the Senate (called PIPA) permits the U.S. attorneys general and content copyright owners to lower the boom on websites that display or link to their copyrighted intellectual property or offer up fake imitations thereof.
Written by Matthew J. De Reno Thursday, 14 April 2011 09:34
How To Increase Your Website Search Engine Rankings
A well engineered site and close attention to how you create and publish web content is key to increasing your ranking with the major search engines. Much of the work you can do yourself. This article will explain what you can do now to maximize your search rankings without spending a dime.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. There are a myriad of companies providing services that will "optimize" your site for the most popular search engines, such as Google, with the expectation that your web site will appear higher in the search results relevant to your web site. Expect to pay a pretty penny for such services. I will not devalue professional SEO services, but much of what these SEO companies provide, you can do for free.
When it comes to search today, Google reigns supreme. Upwards of 80-percent of your traffic will likely originate from a Google search. Therefore, a key to increasing your website search engine rankings is understanding what Google is looking for when it crawls your website. Although Google doesn't publish its search algorithm that its crawler uses to determine your website ranking, it is widely agreed the following factors weigh heavily with Google:
Written by Matthew J. De Reno Wednesday, 16 February 2011 09:54
A Bold Challenge To "Content Is King"
Most web folks have heard the industry saw that "Content is King." Allow me to challenge this notion for a brief second and present the case for presentation. You will see, this is merely not a question of philosophy. There are concrete realms where presentation matters and not only does it matter, but perhaps it reigns supreme. I don’t want to say presentation is superior, because I am not out to flip the “Content Is King” maxim. I will argue that presentation is equal to content in many ways. At the very least, it surely is no second fiddle. This article will explain why.
Let’s start with the basics. Can you truly separate presentation from content? I say no. The only thing that is all content without any concept of presentation whatsoever is the perhaps the idea of the human soul. Other than that, things must be presented.
So how can I best present the case for presentation and challenge the notion that “Content Is King”? I begin with the simple assertion that content NOT presented is no content at all. Content without presentation is an idea about content. Information is content and presentation co-existing together. Content can't exist without some sort of presentation.
Written by Matthew J. De Reno Sunday, 05 December 2010 23:20
Will Your Family Have Its Own Website?
Nowadays most people that need a content management system are organizations ranging anywhere from your local church to a city government. However, will there come a day when each individual family will have a website? Picture this: (insert your family name).com? That sort of thing. Perhaps someone will suggest a new top-level domain such as “.fam” or something like that. If you ask me, such a scenario is really not that farfetched.
My daughter is in second grade and already has asked me about a personal email account. I told her Google does not allow kids her age to have email accounts, which they don’t (and for good reason). Nonetheless, it is fairly obvious today’s generation of kids are growing up in a brave new social, web-driven world. Telling such kids you remember living before the Internet (insofar as it became a big part of everyone’s lives in the 1990s), and even cell phones for that matter, makes you sound like a dinosaur.
Written by Matthew J. De Reno Thursday, 10 June 2010 11:17
Sucuri.net On Top of Malware Infections
It would appear that in late April, May and now June 2010, GoDaddy.com has been (and continues to be) the victim of a sophisticated hack that writes malicious script to many of their shared hosting servers.
How many websites were affected? Hmm. Hard to say. I can say that about 40-percent of the sites I am involved with were affected—I would hate to project such a number across the millions of sites that GoDaddy.com hosts. They are the biggest player in the shared web hosting game. Ouch.
As such, I have spent hours cleaning up websites and some of my more recreational hobby sites are still down (e.g., AcrossRoss.com). Compounding my frustration, several of my sites were re-infected after they were cleaned. What a nightmare.
