These are older articles. Please bear in mind the further back you go, the more dated the material may be — in some cases.
Mike Cherim’s Blogging Past
The Power of Natural SEO
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a critical component of a properly developed website. Or, rather, it is if you want to be found and indexed. You see, there are approximately two billion websites on the Internet, so being found by those who may be looking for you or what you have to offer, if that’s what you want, can be a huge challenge. But it is doable and is actually quite simple. There are two basic methods of getting this done: The crappy way and the good way. I will discuss the latter.
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WAT is Up with GrayBit?
It’s been a while since I brought up GrayBit. No news is often good news, but sometimes it just means no news. The online grayscale conversion tool made by Jona and I has been in active use since it was first announced, and then later updated. Since that time the tool has seen 111,471 page views, 32,541 conversions, made by 18,094 unique visitors. But that’s not why I’m writing about it today. Yesterday the WAT or Web Accessibility Toolbar was released for Opera, and guess what? Yep, GrayBit is on it.
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Web 2.0h, that’s what it is
I recently had a customer interaction that made clear to me the negative side to web-based terminology. The client asked me to make a Web 2.0-like site template. They also stated they wanted it accessible and standards-compliant. That was about it in regards to their site requirements. I asked for more details regarding the look, layout, and whatnot, but this led to client confusion. They didn’t really know but would know it when they saw it. Risky I say, but no problem, I made them an accessible, standards-complaint liquid site template and delivered the product. They didn’t like it and said I failed to give them the Web 2.0 look. But what is a Web 2.0 look? I know it has nothing to do with how a site looks, and it doesn’t mean standards-compliant nor does it mean accessible, even though the latter will help a great deal.
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The One-Click Accessibility Self-Test
Everybody and their brother has CSS and X/HTML links on their site(s) nowadays. These, in case you don’t know, are for self-testing your site’s style sheet(s) and mark-up validation (on the page tested). These links are coded to use an absolute URI or the “Referrer,” but for testing page accessibility I know of no such thing. We used to have links that led to various sites that showed the results of previous testing, but that was before Bobby became WebXact. Rarely do I see those links now. Nowadays people rely on a web developers’ or web accessibility tool bar for their browser.
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Accessible SeaBeast Theme for WordPress
I’ve just released a new WordPress theme I’m calling “SeaBeast” to which I’ve gotten good feedback on so far. I’m pretty happy with it. It represents a ton of work that’s for sure. The reason is while on the surface it may seem simple, there are a host of features and added functionality built right in. And there’s more. I created it in such a way that you don’t have to make any of the usual files writable — the ones some people have problems with, like sidebar.php for example — because they don’t need editing. Everything is done via the well-commented configuration files I created. Oh, and it’s quite accessible.
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Imagine a Dream
Working on a project recently I wanted to produce a dream-state image, but without a loss of subject clarity and with a squared up background, and I wanted it to be easy — as in I didn’t want to have to cut out the focused part. This presented a few challenges for me and I came up with the following technique that I’m now rather fond of.
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PHP/CSS Donations Thermometer
You know those donation thermometers you see sometimes? The ones where the level of the mercury marks the charity’s progress? Well, I made one for the web using PHP and CSS. It started life as a growth gauge I made for a friend’s son, then I had the notion of making it a thermometer or gauge for measuring and displaying charity’s donations progress. Next thing I know, my friend’s friend, a person who in fact runs a charity, sees it and comes to the same conclusion as I and requests the gauge. This is for them I suppose.
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Rainin’ like a Mutha’
It’s been raining here in New Hampshire like crazy for the past several days. There’s a lot of flooding, small scale local stuff mostly. My house’s sump pump is running, but that’s no big deal. The woods by my house are flooded. Nasty out. And, today, Mother’s day, right down the road a bridge washes out. Check out the images →
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Nature on Wheels
Actually found some time for life this weekend and I went on a short four-wheeling adventure with my son. This post is here simply as a way to share a couple of photos we took during the day. It was a great day and the photos will never do it justice but…
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