Getting started with Jekyll
If you are a regular visitor to this blog, you may have noticed that it's changed quite a bit. For some reason, my Wordpress installation decided to go ape on me, and I wasn't able to update anything. I tried wiping the whole thing out and starting again, but to no avail. I've been looking for ways to increase my nerd status anyway, and I read a very interesting post on using Jekyll as a blog semi-CMS. Since I use NearlyFreeSpeech.net as my website host, moving to Jekyll saves me about a dollar/month in hosting costs. I think this way I may be able to host my entire site for less than $1/month.
Read more...How to add pictures to Blogger more easily
If blog regularly on Blogger/Blogspot/whatever it's called, you have probably run into the frustration that is adding pictures to a post. While it is possible, it is certainly not an easy task to get pictures where you want them, with the text around them like you like. For all you Windows users out there, there is an easier way. It's called Windows Live Writer.
Read more...Very Basic SEO
As part of a web computing class, a couple other students and I created a website called MyFlixList. As extra credit for the course, we were told to apply the things we learned about PageRank and SEO to become the top search result on Google for the term mis510proj. Here is a basic summary of the steps we took to become the number 1 result (which we are as of press time).
- Make the title of the page mis510proj. That was one of the requirements of the project, but it's a good idea.
- Have the keyword in the domain. We were not allowed to spend money on the project, so that was out. However, we could have used mis510proj.videorentalexperts.com. We decided not to since most other groups didn't even have a domain name.
- Include mis510proj in a keywords metatag. Our meta tag (inside the <head> tags at the top of the page) looks something like this: <meta name="keywords" content="mis510proj, movies, netflix" />
- Have an image titled mis510proj on the site. We used the main logo
- Link sharing. I cannot overstate the importance of this step. We contacted other groups and offered to link to them if they would link to us. The more links we had to our site using mis510proj as the anchor text, the better off we were
- Use the keyword in natural language. We have a paragraph at the bottom of the homepage that uses the keyword mis510proj a bunch of times. Be careful not to overdue this, as too many mentions of the keyword will actually hurt more than it helps. We also have the keyword inside an <h1> tag, which shows that it is an important part of the site
That's all the basic tips I have for SEO. There are a ton of other things that are important, but this is a decent primer for how to get started getting ranked for a keyword on Google.
Read more...mis510proj
Part of a project for my web mining class at UA is to create a website using 5 different APIs to accomplish some sort of useful task. A group of us have created a site to queue up movies you want to see, and be able to see those movies on Netflix, get reviews from Rotten Tomatoes, and purchase the movie from Amazon. It's called MyFlixList. Functionality is coming along nicely, so feel free to check it out here: mis510proj.
Read more...Mendeley
In my quest to find the perfect tool to manage my ever-expanding library of PDFs, I discovered a tool called Mendeley. Here's a quick rundown of what Mendeley does for me:
- Manages references - this is similar to EndNote. You can put references into folders based on topic, class, project, paper, or whatever you want.
- Manages PDFs - I have it set up to move all my PDFs to one folder and rename them to Author - Year - Title. I then use Dropbox to sync that folder to all my computers so I can always have access to my PDFs when I want them. Edit: Mendeley provides a sync service, but the free version is limited to 500 MB of individual space and 500 MB free space. Since I have the files in a Dropbox folder anyway, I just use that.
- Cite while you write - The functionality for this isn't quite as full-fledged as EndNote, but you can insert citations and a bibliography that is automatically updated based on the citations. More on this below.
- Lit review - this is one of the killer features. Most references have an entry in the "Mendeley online Catalog." If you go to the online catalog, you can see links to similar articles.
- Collaboration - you can create collaborative groups of references, and everyone can have access to the same library of references and PDFs.
I'm new to it, so I'm sure I will run into some limitations, but right now it seems like a pretty awesome tool. Also, you can import to/export from EndNote if you have to continue using that to work with other EndNote users.
Read more...