This journey into web development has plenty of moments of euphoria when I “get it”, and plenty of wanting to scream “I’m such an idiot”. Success is simply stepping forward after each one, learning and growing.
Moving Forward
Tag: web dev
Documenting Everything
Currently, I’m taking the second quarter in a two-quarter series on Systems Analysis. One of the lists my text presented is “7 Design Habits”. (side note: I appreciate the reference/nod to Steven Covey’s 7 Habits Of Highly Successful People). I like the list, so I wrote it out on a post-it and have it on the wall next to my desk.
- Understand the business
- Maximize graphical effectiveness
- Think like a user
- Use models and prototypes
- Focus on usability
- Invite feedback
- Document everything
I value each of these. While maximizing graphical effectiveness has been an area of interest for quite some time (it’s the roots of my interest in design), what really speaks to me right now is “document everything”.
I’ve lived by this mantra for years. I try to drop everything into Evernote*, for instance. Articles I’ve read, people I’ve met, things told to me. This collection of notes is but one element of documenting everything. Knowing where I got ideas is pretty important. But this notion means more. To me, it implies a certain thoughtfulness to the documentation. Sure, it’s great to have dozens of pages of random notes. But “documentation” is organized. Not just links to articles, or pages of feedback, but also analysis, explanations of the “why” within choices. Being able to reference, at some random point in the future, how we got to a certain decision can be crucial when evaluating a problem and determining a response. Also, in a more negative vein, it can show due diligence in a lawsuit.
So, yeah, my propensity for collecting information has saved me plenty of anguish over the years (“you never told me that!” “well, here’s the email I sent to you with your reply”). It’s also been helpful to friends and colleagues (“hey Carl, who was that guy from Facebook we met with last year”. Yeah, it’ll be in my notes). I appreciate the reinforcement that this is a best practice that’s valued at least by textbook writers.
*this link to Evernote is an affiliate link. If you subscribe to the service, I will get rewarded with a free year of the service.
Coding, Frustration and Euphoria
Spent today finishing up my first assignments coded with PHP. It’s interesting to me how the expectations have evolved. I’m getting to the point that, even though I’ve never done anything in PHP, that I can look at existing code and decipher its intent, then adjust the code accordingly. I did need some of my instructor’s “hints”, but not much. It was pretty cool to be able to just read my text, open up the code, and tweak it to get the desired results. Again, this is the first chapter of the book, my first set of projects, so still pretty basic. But, I’m feeling more confident as a coder every day.
This is balanced with moments of complete bewilderment. Over the course of one project, I had several moments where I just wanted to scream at my screen. One moment, trying to get some if/elseif statements to work. After the better part of an hour, I finally deleted the whole thing and re-coded it…and it worked! I haven’t any idea what I did differently. That’s one of the things with code: a wrong letter case, dropping one character, one symbol, and the whole thing will not work.
Getting it to work is an amazing feeling. Balanced by the frustrations of the damn thing not working at all.
WordPress Tip: Comment Moderation
A blogger I follow is being harassed on her site. She’s done a key thing: blocking the email addresses from setting up new accounts and providing more abusive comments. One thing that people can do in addition: set comments for manual approval. Though it doesn’t prevent someone from sending you abusive comments, it does prevent them from being seen on YOUR site. It’s a simple process to set up.
First, head to your dashboard. Scroll down the left-hand side until you see “settings”. Click on that, the look for the link to “Discussion” (the image directly below is from the WordPress.com dashboard, linked via JetPack. If you’re in your site’s dashboard, you’ll see “Discussion” open up below…that’s the third image below). The last part is simply checking “Comment must be manually approved” then clicking “Save Settings”. Now, any time someone posts a comment, you’ll get a message asking if you want to approve it. It provides some sense of security via control.
Here’s where to find it on your self-hosted WordPress Dashboard.
SEO: Link Building and Establishing Authority
Authority is a key part of evaluating the quality of a site. And inbound links, aka “backlinks” are key parts of how Search engines develop ascertain that authority. Additionally, Google has confirmed that links are one of the three main elements for determining a site’s ranking. So, earning quality backlinks is extremely valuable in pushing your site up a search engine results page. Search engines evaluate the quality of the referring site as well. One good referral is worth far more than dozens of weak ones. With that, we want to focus on links from sites that will direct high-quality traffic to our site. I think it’s best to find sites that will send users that are highly interested in whatever your site features. If you focus on providing good and interesting content, you will naturally attract good links.
Below are some key best practices, and a few things to avoid.
Let’s start with a list of tactics to avoid:
- Purchased links
- Link exchanges or reciprocal linking
- Google’s specific guidance is to avoid “excessive” link exchange.
- Low-quality directory links
To end on a positive note, here are some recommended tactics:
- Earn your links! Good, useful content that adds value
- Seek to gain links from pages with high-authority
- You want to increase your backlinks over time
- They should come from topically relevant sources
- Make sure you use natural anchor text
- Publish a blog
- Create “resource” pages
Moz Chapter 3 KEYWORD RESEARCH
Another post based on this past quarter’s research on SEO via Moz
There are many key tools for determining a good keyword strategy. The first, and most important one, is the act of questioning. Starting with core questions is critical to developing the right focus on for the other research tools. Who are our customers? What are their goals? What do they want? How do they search? Once you have answers for these, you can explore several other tools like:
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- Google Keywords Planner
- Google Trends
- Moz Keyword Explorer
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Google’s tools are perhaps the most important, as the vast majority of US based search is done via Google. Google Keywords gives you the ability to explore which keywords are relevant, which have high competition, and which have low competition. The “finding new keywords” tool looks particularly powerful. Google Trends is another tool that is worthy of adding to your toolbox. With it you can see what the world is searching for, both at the broadest levels as well as refined to the local or even hyper-local. Besides being able to search for specific keywords, you can also looking at macro trends across the internet. Moz, one of the leaders in digital marketing has their own Keyword Research tool. In many respects, it’s more powerful than Google’s. Especially for the Pro version. But even the free version has great details on their research dashboard, including keyword suggestions and SERP analysis.
With this type of work, you can determine the value of any keyword and build strategies around them.
Blogging, Twitter and Focus
If you’re engaged with me on Twitter, you might have noticed I have two Twitter profiles: CarlSetzer and SetzerDigitial. This is for focus. I read years ago that you should keep a blog focused as narrowly as possible.
@CarlSetzer is my oldest Twitter profile, which I started in 2007. I rambled over different topics over time, but for the past several years @CarlSetzer has been focused on my poetry, and mainly my daily+ haiku and regular contribution to the @Baffled Haiku Challenge, and tied to my poetry blog. It is growing solidly and has a fair amount of engagement. When I experiment with posting non-poetry, the engagement is dramatically less, and I slowly start to lose followers.
@SetzerDigital has been around since 2017, started as a part of my brief foray into geek blogging (you can see the remnants on my Tumblr page and this Facebook page), but I’m not engaged with that project at this point. (quick aside: I thought I LOVED geek things and was an expert. As I launched into this space, though, I discovered I wasn’t as deep into things as I thought.) I opted a few weeks ago to repurpose this for something tied with my new career focus. I felt that a new account made more sense than trying to shift gears with my main account. A big thing: I still love writing poetry and engaging with that community. Since I have at least another year of study before I’m trying to look for work, I have plenty of time to build out that community. And that work seems to be solidly underway. In the past 30 days, I’ve gone from 51 to 73 followers, which may not seem huge, but it is a >40% increase. I’m happy enough with that. I do, of course, reserve the right to nuke this whole thing and integrate my two accounts.
Twitter is part of my growing marketing/branding plan. I know that my network will be key to landing my next role. I don’t think that dropping resumes on websites will be terribly effective, for me, at least. Twitter’s developer community is pretty awesome. Thus my community will be crucial in my work search. Having a group of people who know me, know my work, and understand this part of my passion.
What do you think? Oh, if you’re on Twitter, I’d love it if you’d pop on over, say “hi” and give me a follow.
An Ad For An Ad Blocker? Is That Meta Or What?
Just saw this on the bottom of an article I was reading:
I found it quite amusing, for what it’s worth.