Web Site Optimization
UserpicGoogle Hot Trends
Posted by Moxietype

One can pinpoint the direction your dynamic site is going on the search engines by analizing the keyword activity. Below is an article on Google Hot Trends that I found interesting from the Digital Trends.

We don't want to imply that readers are the sort of folks who have to know what everyone else is searching for on the Internet, so, like, they can search for it too, but we thought we would note the launch of Google Hot Trends, a new service from the search engine giant which tracks the 100 fastest-rising search queries in the United States.

The new feature replaces the weekly Zeitgiest list Google has been producing for the last several years—although the company promised to continue compiling monthly summaries for each country, along with yearly wrap-ups. Instead of the weekly Zeitgeist, Google Hot Trends presents the hottest current search terms in what Google characterizes as "very close to real time." The listing is updating repeatedly throughout the day, and users can watch hot queries shift around as news breaks, celebrity gossip leaks, current events unfold, and the whims of cultural consciousness change.

Google says the Hot Trends are not the terms people are looking for most frequently—of course, many of those search terms are boring ("myspace", "ipod," "games", "weather", etc.) or things Google doesn't necessarily want to publish. Instead, Google analyzes search queries and presents searches that are deviating the most in relationship to the past traffic. So, if a search term paddles along with a few hundred queries a day and suddenly jumps to a million queries a day, it's deviated significantly from its past search pattern and might pop up on Google Hot Trends.

For each search term in the Hot Trends list, Google will pull up results from Google News, Blog Search, and web search; Google also displays the "hotness" of search terms by country, U.S. states, and cities. Users can also use Google Trends compare search queries against search other, and see how they fare across regions.

Of course, search terms must have enough search volume to provide data for Google Trends—which means most people won't be able to "egosurf" Google Trends using their names. Maybe Google will create that feature in the future.

That said, if one wonder's why he doesn't get enough traffic from the search engines, he should revaluate the interest in his topic within the general public.

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Security
Userpic Encryption
Posted by Moxietype

Sensitive information often is stored on database servers and other storage facilities for later retrieval. At this point, it is critical to have at your disposal a facility that allows you, as a developer, to secure that data at storage time and retrieve the information you are looking for when you need it.

PHP offers an extension that allows developers to use the Mcrypt Library (mcrypt.sf.net) to secure data by encrypting it and later decrypting it. The documentation of the Mcrypt extension for PHP is located at [url=http://www.php.net/mcrypt]www.php.net/mcrypt[/url], and it should be studied carefully before implementation.

The Mcrypt extension supports an impressive array of algorithms, including triple-DES, Blowfish, Twofish and Two-Way. Using the Mcrypt extension is not a very intuitive process if you are not familiar with encryption; it can become quite confusing because of the variety of block algorithms and encryption modes available.

Read the full article at Linux Journal with a sample of a typical use of Mcript Extension.


Security
UserpicPHP Safe Mode
Posted by Moxietype

PHP's Safe mode is something you should learn to work with whether you are a PHP developer or a system administrator. Safe mode is a set of configuration options that allow the system administrator to alter the behavior of the PHP interpreter by implementing security measures. From a system administrator's point of view, this means you must learn how to implement this feature properly, without making it impossible for developers to set up their applications on your server. From a developer's point of view, you must learn what possibly could get broken in your application if this feature is turned on.

Read the rest of this story »


E-Commerce
UserpicBlogging for Business 2
Posted by Moxietype

Great article from the Wall Street Journal about how small businesses can benefit directly from blogging to increase their customer base through search engine optimization. As the Wall Street Journal says so eloquently, "Blog It and They May Come."

Read more at WSJ...


E-Commerce
UserpicBlogging for Business 1
Posted by Moxietype

"Adding a blog that's updated regularly can offer several benefits. It may establish you as an expert in your industry, but it's also more likely to generate links to your Web site from other sites. Getting other sites to link to yours in turn will boost your site's ranking on search engines."

Read more at WSJ...


E-Commerce, Usability
UserpicTop ten mistakes of shopping cart design
Posted by Moxietype

Summary: A list of common mistakes with e-commerce shopping cart design were identified in a previous issue of Usability News. This article revisits that list and reviews how 500 of the top Internet retail sites of today implemented their shopping cart design.

I found this part particularly amusing:

"6. (2002) Requiring a user to REGISTER before adding an item to the cart. Some sites we have tested require a user to register with personal information before an item can even be placed into the cart! This is a turn-off to users who may be browsing or comparison-shopping. They may or may not purchase the items, but they definitely do not want to commit personal information just to fill the shopping cart and will leave the site because of it.

(2007) Users still encounter this and hate it! In a recent SURL usability study of a high tech corporate website, users complained bitterly of having to register on the site before they could read a company white paper. Most said they would rather search the web for another way to access the same information rather than register with their personal information. Even requesting an email address (and not personal address info) is a deterrent.

Figure 10. Unique graphical symbols used to remove an item from the shopping cart. The minus sign (cdw.com), the ?X? symbol (simondelivers.com), and the trash can (solidsignal.com).

Read the full article from Software Usability Research Laboratory.


Security
Userpicwhy do we need cookies
Posted by Moxietype

If Oreo or Girl Scouts' cookies come to your mind, it means that you have to read this little explanation why we need them.

Technically, cookies are arbitrary pieces of data chosen by the Web server and sent to the browser. The browser returns them unchanged to the server, introducing a state (memory of previous events) into otherwise stateless HTTP transactions. Without cookies, each retrieval of a Web page or component of a Web page is an isolated event, mostly unrelated to all other views of the pages of the same site.

Source: Wikipedia

It is absolutely necessary to use the cookie in order for a Web server to identify the user as a legitimate logged-in user in a recorded PHP session. Same way when you go to do your online banking or shopping at Amazon.com