Author: vdebolt

Going to An Event Apart? 5 Tips to Help You Get Ready

The latest iteration of An Event Apart is nearly upon us, to be held in Atlanta next month with subsequent sessions upcoming in Seattle, Boston, Austin and Washington, DC later in the year. Widely recognized as the most important conference of the year for web site designers and developers, An Event Apart offers a series of educational workshops and seminars aimed at helping you, quite simply, to become even better at everything that you do online.

An Event Apart

With topics ranging from content creation to raw design and web standards, all with an innovative focus on the future, An Event Apart boasts the very best minds and voices in the industry with speakers and presenters who have been and continue to be behind some of the most popular spots on the interweb.

If you’re a web designer or developer and have the time and means to attend then your first decision has been made for you! Once your initial plans have been made, it’s time to focus on how exactly you can best prepare to get the most out of your An Event Apart experience. Check out the tips below to effectively utilize social media in helping you to create a personal itinerary:

1. Get to Know Your Fellow Attendees

An Event Apart

There is one thing you can be sure of when considering the people you’ll meet and converse with at An Event Apart: they are all utilizing social media of some sort to stay in touch with clients and colleagues. Leading up to the conference, learn more about the speakers, guests and presenters by following their social feeds; you’re sure to meet many of the colleagues you’ll soon be rubbing shoulders with via the same method!

2. Stay Active on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+

An Event Apart attendees will seek each other out not generally by face, but by online reputation. Utilize your social media presence to let the world know that you are an innovative thinker with good ideas and give your colleagues a reason to seek you out! There is no better place in the world to network and build contacts with both potential clients and potential partners than An Event Apart; make the most of it!

3. Update Your Site

When duty calls and you’ve spent the last few weeks or months thinking and dreaming code and design, it can be easy to allow your personal site and portfolio to lapse. Take the time to update your “About” page and add fresh content to your site and blog in order to give those you’re connecting with a reason to stay and chat. Also, if you plan to leave An Event Apart with wads of your business cards having been handed out, the same folks that you impressed with your ideas at the conference can also be impressed by your personal home on the web.

4. Prepare Your Review

Attending An Event Apart gives you the immediate ability to act as a qualified reviewer after the fact, letting your clients, colleagues and visitors in on the intimate details of your experience and the new knowledge and strategies that you walked away with. While the review itself will obviously have to wait until after the conference is over, you can get started now by preparing your review template, planning the outline and letting your social followers know that your blog is the place to look for a thorough and enjoyable overview of the latest iteration of An Event Apart!

5. Enjoy the Preparation and Conference

An Event Apart
Image Credit: Peter Hart.

An Event Apart is not only an intense educational experience for web professionals but also an event focused on the fun that springs naturally from bringing so many like-minded people together in one place. In preparing for the conference, be sure to enjoy every minute of online shoulder rubbing with the knowledge that you will walk away from An Event Apart having learned so much from your colleagues, all applicable to your profitability as a web designer or developer.

The more you take away from the event, the more you have to offer your clients once you’re back behind your desk!

Convinced? Here are traveling tips to get you started planning the trip:

Guest Author Jessy Troy is a social media enthusiast and tech blogger. She blogs in many places – follow her articles via her Twitter feed @jessytroy.

When someone reviews your work

There’s no manual for behavior on the Internet. Most people behave well without it, but not all. I’m observing an incident at another site involving a review.

I publish many reviews here. Most of the time the people whose work I’m reviewing are pretty quiet about it. They may stop by to say thanks for the review or tweet the URL to the review. But they aren’t spamming the review with fake positive comments. That’s what’s happening at the other site. Bad behavior, bad judgement, bad idea.

Don’t try to make yourself look good with comments you try to disguise as being from someone other than yourself. Instead, take some time to review the basics of successful social media and interaction on the Internet. Then behave accordingly.

Faked self-promotion is just sleazy.

Useful links: Zoom bug, CSS1K, iTunesU App

Zooming Bug in Webkit at AlastairC is must reading.

CSS1K. This is great stuff. It’s like CSS Zen Garden grew up and became super efficient (meaning under 1K) while still being very cool.

New iTunes U App Hits iTunes With Over 500,000 Free Lectures, Videos & Books. This is important news to web educators and anyone interested in teaching and learning. It’s only for iOS5+. Here are the basics, from Mashable.

Apple has launched a new, dedicated iOS application called “iTunes U.” This educational content portal, previously available only in iTunes, has now arrived in the App Store for all iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touch devices. It has also undergone a major revamp so as to better complement Apple’s newly-announced educational offerings, including iBooks 2 and its iBooks Author Tool, which allows anyone to easily create books and textbooks.

The Terms and Conditions are important reading, because you need to know what rights and how much money you are giving to Apple when you do this. If the Terms and Conditions don’t scare you off, you’ll find that creating a book with iBooks Author is extra easy. Much easier than creating a book for the Kindle.

And, of course, you shouldn’t overlook the possibility of using the open standard EPUB to create your books.

If you type so damn much, why aren’t you good at it?

If you met me in person you would find me very quiet, especially in social situations. People often have a first impression of me as standoffish and unfriendly. If they stick around long enough, they find out I’m not. Unfortunately, I’m one of those people who grows on you slowly. This characteristic is my downfall as a schmoozer at conferences.

Put me in front of a keyboard and something different happens. Not counting places where I blog only sporadically, here’s what I’ve typed of late, by volume.

webteacher posts on Web Teacher.

first50words posts on First 50 Words

blogher postson BlogHer

twitter postson Twitter

Add to that the 8 books I’ve written, the other writing I’ve done like curriculum, teacher’s editions, poetry, crappy fiction, etc., etc., you end up with a lot of typing. Well over the 10,000 hours needed to achieve expertise. So explain this: why am I such a lousy typist?

Protesting SOPA

I’m not going dark today, but I am well aware of the potential effects of SOPA/PIPA on web sites. Instead, I choose to share this video that explains the issue. You can take action by signing a petition at Fight for the Future.

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

You may also be interested in the lively discussion taking place on BlogHer about danah boyd’s article We need to talk about piracy (but we must stop SOPA first).

As an author, I completely agree with the rights of those who create intellectual property of any kind (words, music, movies, whatever) to be compensated for their work. It’s how we deal with the piracy issue that’s up for debate. That’s what danah boyd is talking about in the article.

 

Htaccess Magic: 4 Tips for a Better Website

 Congratulations! You have a website! Now that you have one, you also have the responsibility of taking care of one. Website optimization is not always easy, but it can be with basic knowledge of how they work. One tool you can use to optimize your website is an .htaccess file.

Web servers that use Apache HTTP Server to publish websites have an override feature that allows web hosting users, even ones with shared hosting accounts, to change some web server settings on a local level. If the host has the AllowOverride setting enabled on the web server, the user can use .htaccess files to enable any desired Apache directives. The following are four directive types that can bring a little magic to your website.

1. Custom error docs

When a user mistypes a URL to a page on your site or visits one for a page that no longer exists, one of two things will happen. Either the user will end up at a plain white page with the words “404 Error. File Not Found” or at an error page created by your web host, promoting their services. Neither is good for your services or your site.

By creating custom error documents, you can let users know they did actually make it to your site but might have made a wrong turn. You can also use it to suggest a better starting point for them to navigate through your site.

To create custom error docs, the first step is easy. Make normal HTML files for each error you want to include. You can find a list of Apache error codes on the web.

The next step is to create a file called .htaccess and place it in the root directory of your website – the directory that holds your HTML files. In the .htaccess file, place the error code redirects:

ErrorDocument 500 http://your-domain.tld/docs/500error.html
ErrorDocument 404 http://your-domain.tld/docs/404error.html
ErrorDocument 403 http://your-domain.tld/docs/403error.html
ErrorDocument 401 /local/path/401error.html

As you see, you can use a local path or full URL to each error HTML file that you have created.

2. Rewrite rules

You can use rewrite rules for a wide variety of purposes, the most common purpose is for search engine optimization. Dynamic web apps use very long URLs, and you can use Apache’s mod_rewrite engine to make them shorter. If you are running a content management system like WordPress or Joomla, it will likely add the correct rewrite rules to your .htaccess file for you. If, however, you are creating your own web app, you should also create some rewrite rules.

Rewrite rules follow a simple pattern:

RewriteRule Pattern Substitution [Flag]

For example, a simple rewrite rule is:

RewriteRule ^killer-whales.html$ orcas.html

In this example, people who access the page “killer-whales.html” will be redirected to the actual page: “orcas.html”. Apache also offers many more rewrite options you can try to make your site easier to access.

3. Restrict access

Htaccess files can also have security benefits. One example is that you can restrict access to a particular file or directory. For example, to deny access to a single IP address, you would enter:

Order Allow,Deny
Deny from 155.55.555.5.
Allow from all

Anyone attempting to access your site from that IP address will be denied. More information about mod_access is available in the Apache documentation.

4. Allow or Prevent Directory Browsing

When an index file is not present in a directory, Apache will display the contents of the directory. Many file repositories will use something like this by default to make it easy for people to browse the files. If, however, you do not want people to browse the files in a directory, you can easily disable browsing.

Options All -Indexes

On the other hand, if your web host has disabled browsing but you want it enabled, you do so with this directive:

Options All +Indexes

Taking Control

The whole point of .htaccess is to give the user some limited control over the server without affecting the other users who share it. This is only possible if your web host has enabled the “AllowOverride” setting in the web server’s configuration. The best hosting providers usually do, but even if yours does not, you may be able to convince them to make special arrangements for you. It will make your website better and make your job as web administrator easier.

Guest Author Tavis J. Hampton is the author of the upcoming book KDE for the Graphical User. You can find more of his writing at TavisOnline.com.

Useful Links: CSS3 Cursors, Learn to Code, HTML5 in WordPress, ARIA

Introducing the New CSS3 Cursor Styles is at Sitepoint.

Learn to Code is an new site that aspires to become a brilliant educational tool by teaching users to code using interactive and social tools. Congratulations to this new venture and wishes for much success in teaching learners to code.

The Rise of HTML5 in WordPress lists several WordPress themes that offer HTML5. This is a nice resource to use with my article Should Your Blog Use Responsive Web Design?

Knowing When to Break the Rules from Derek Featherstone talks about validation and accessibility and ARIA.