I am after a new development laptop since visual studio 2010 chugs on my old laptop. To be honest my laptop is 7 years old and can not run the latest applications like it used too. So like any normal sucka I decided to pop to my local PC World. I had what I wanted spec wise. I really needed windows 7 pro as my OS platform because it offers the latest IIS.

Cut a short story even shorter, the sales person could not offer me any laptop with win 7 pro, probably due to an agreement with licensing. I would have to purchase an upgrade pro or full version and pay them to install it. The sales guy could not offer me any alternative.

I know this sounds a bit of a rant but I was quite shocked about un-helpful a PC World was because it suppose to specialise in this area.

This link was given to me from a fellow friend and web developer.

It is a group of videos and presentations regarding web development from speeding up JavaScript to completely changing the architecture of big web applications to run them more efficiently. This is taken from smashing magazine with an interesting video from the co-founder of reddit.

Seven Must See Videos and Presentations for Web App Developers

Not much of an update but I come across a really funny website called clients from hell.

It is a list of all developers/ designers/ IT support have come across in their day to day lives when dealing with clients. Check this site out and see if you come across any scenarios which seem familiar to you.

http://clientsfromhell.net

The BBC have posted an interesting article about the problems on spam reviews that are a cause for concern not just for the consumer but for the manufactures. When it comes to buying products over the Internet we all tend to view the reviews from people who have brought the product.

The problem is now that many reviews now are fake reviews either paid by the competitor or caused by people spamming a certain product based in popularity / ehnical status. Apple anyone?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/8826258.stm

The web designers’ worst nightmare…

An  little funny comic strip based on the web designer and the client.

This is taken from the oatmeal and expresses the frustration all developers/ designers sometimes have with the client.

Just a quick post on anyone who is trying to learn asp.net at the moment.

the asp.net website offers video tutorials on how to implement a website using the asp.net framework. As you know at the moment I am learning asp.net to help me progress further in my career. I hope this helps anyone who is trying to learn the framework using either visualbasic.net or c#.

Although version 4.0 is out now there are new and improved way of doing things, even though some videos are quite old it will give you a better understanding on how it works.

What is email scraping?

Everyone knows that websites tend to display contact details, whether it is on a contact page or displayed at the top of the screen in a header.
These contact details normally contain an email address highlighted as a link. A custom made script, maybe a spider would crawl these sites and gather emails to sell to people at a price. Thus making money from your details.

Ways of prevention

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Don’t you just hate it it when your website has a contact form and all you receive is email after email of advertising, porn web links and Viagra? Well I do anyway. While there are ways for your email client to filter the spam, there are ways to help dramatically reduce the spam sent through your contact form.

The problem

The problem is that automated scripts / users fill out forms advertising information which is considered garbage. While to us we do not take any notice but for them a link helps improve their site in search results or make money and even some cases spread viruses. It is a major problem that is not going away anytime soon.

The solution

The standard solution
Server side validation using a regular expression or validation routine checks for valid emails and to apply strict rules in the inquiry area. For example not allowing emails, web addresses. This depends on what information you are gathering from the form. This can be programmed in such languages such as ASP and PHP. This is basic practice but in conjunction with other methods this can be improved.

The client side
Probably the poorest form of validation is client side. This is mainly for the user using the form. Based on JavaScript this can easy be turned off by the user and automated scripts can easy bypass this method. This should be used in conjunction with server side validation and never use this on its own.

Advanced spam checks

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Why SEO?

One of the issues which is greatly overlooked is SEO or Search Engine Optimisation. Think of when it comes to releasing a product, you have your research, your production and your marketing. Think of SEO as the marketing side of your service /  product.

So how do you optimise your already built product in this case your website? WordPress / 3rd parties offering tools / plug-ins which allows you to configure your website to allow optimisation on your website. This blog uses plug ins that allow pages to become SEO friendly to help boost SEO ranking performance.

It is important you also have a google webmasters account and any sort of analytics program, for this website I use google analytics to monitor my traffic. I also use it for a lot of sites I build. It is slightly more advanced than the typical stats type package but once you used it a few weeks you can get the hang of it.
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When working with a web development company there is always an issue arises when someone rings up and asks if they could change the way their website works, either applying a CMS back-end or changing the way the users interact with the website. The odd occasion we have been asked to replace one specialised content management system with another.

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