New project underway
Submitted by Mike Youmans, Owner of ATSites.net on 11/18/2008 at 11:43:46 am.

We at ATSites are working on a self-funded project that could prove to be quite interesting and certainly very helpful. Let me preface this by saying that we at ATSites have no partnership nor affiliation with any other software provider or development firm.

Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, let me pose a question - Have you ever needed a database but not had access to one? For instance, you are in a corporate environment that doesn't allow usage of external MySQL databases and only uses Oracle for in-house apps. Or perhaps you want to build a self-contained, portable web app that needs the flexibility of a SQL database but that can move with the app. In these cases, you may consider a flat-file database.

Flat-file databases are pretty much what they sound like: databases that are actually files written in a certain way to mimic the behavior of SQL databases. There are several different offerings out there to choose from each with its pros and cons. This blog is not an analysis of these offerings (but perhaps I should do that in the future) but rather an explanation of what we are building and why it was needed.

We ran into a situation like one of the examples above and were relegated to using a flat-file database for a web application. After an exhaustive search, we settled on Gladius DB. Gladius DB is an open source product built in php with syntax similar to MySQL. The implementation was pretty simple and usage can be API-style or function based. The documentation leaves a bit to be desired (the author admits that was due to laziness!) but it was enough to make it quickly usable.

Now to the point. While Gladius DB was easy to implement and pretty easy to use, it lacked a user interface. Anyone who has used MySQL knows that a product called phpMyAdmin can be used as the user interface to allow a developer to perform functions on the database without writing custom scripts for every little thing. We decided that a similar product would be helpful in dealing with these types of databases both during our development project and to others when using this particular system.

Laughingly, we have given this project a Beta working title of phpMyGladmin and you can check out the progress or even test drive the application by visiting our projects page at http://atsites.net/portal/projects and click on phpMyGladmin.

We hope you find it useful. Until next time, take care.

This week I spent some time researching the current state of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and figured I would share what I learned. I read a ton of information so what I will try to do is summarize the key points and let you dig deeper if you feel like it would benefit you to do so.

First, let's look at the definition of SEO.

Wikipedia defines SEO as the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results for targeted keywords.

In other words, make your website come up closer to the top of the search results on the search engines by properly placing the right keywords in the right places(s). Well, how would we do that?

In the past, all you had to do was type as many relevant keywords into your website's keyword meta tag and wait for the ranking to go up. Clever internet marketers just 'spammed' their keywords with so much data that nearly any search would bring them up. Now that search engine 'spiders' (services that search the websites and collect the data to populate their algorithms) are more intelligent, it takes a bit more planning and thought to make your site climb the listings.

Here are the steps, in order, you need to take to optimize your results in the search engines:


The TITLE tag
At the top of every webpage is the Titlebar. It tells a visitor where they are. In Internet Explorer 7 with default settings, it is the blue bar across the top of the window. The tag in the webpage that defines that is weighed heavily by search engines. Each page should have relevant information in the TITLE tag to the content on that page. It would even serve you better from an SEO standpoint to put your site name AFTER the title. Well thought out and descriptive titles can go a long way to getting you ranked higher in the search results.

Links to your website from other sites
This is another heavily weighed factor in your search engine ranking. The engines assume that if numerous sites link to your pages, then your content must be authoritative on that particular subject. This concept spawned a technique called link-farming. Link-farming is the process of getting links to your site on other sites by means other than simply an authors desire to link to you. This was specifically for search engine optimization and usually was an automated process where sites create links to other sites who then link back to that site and so on. Search engines are now smart enough to disregard or even ban such sites from the search listings.

For you to get links from other sites, the method is clear but infinitely more difficult; Have content worth linking to! Collaborate with authorities on the subject that your site features or have well-written, all-in-one-place documents that people will refer to as good resources or reference material.

Having your keywords show up in your page text
Since nobody actually knows exactly how rankings are calculated, much of SEO is thinking how a 'spider' would think. Logically, if your title is about turtles and the word "turtle" appears numerous times throughout the page, the title is then relevant to the content and should be considered relevant to turtles. If instead the word "turtle" appeared nowhere in the document, how can that page be an authority on the subject? Make sense?

Clearly, don't overdo it. Spamming the keywords throughout the page could get the page ignored or banned from the search engine results.

Concentrate on a specific market segment
In one document I read on the subject of SEO, I learned about an intriguing theory about market segments. According to Chris Anderson (the editor-in-chief of Wired magazine), businesses can find a lot of value focusing on what he refers to as the "long tail". Here is an excerpt of his writing on the concept:

The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-target goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.

What this meant to me is that if you are hoping to get high in the rankings of very general search terms like "Computers" or "Websites", the competition is too great for you to logically make any progress unless you clearly make the best ones that the world has ever seen. In that case, you would be linked to by everyone and would climb automatically. Realistically, you should focus your marketing to a smaller subset of the populous, the "long tail" and market to either a specific region, business type or other qualifier. "Websites for small businesses in Northern Illinois" may be an appropriate niche to target or "Computers built from old railroad equipment". The other clear advantage of this type of focus is that when you do get visitors from search engines, they will be more likely to turn into buyers giving you that all important "conversion". Isn't that what marketing is really all about?

If you would like to read one of the documents referring to the "Long Tail" and providing some great information on SEO, you can find it here.

You know how the mechanic always has the broken down car? Or how the glass repair shop has a cracked storefront window for years? I think thats how it is with me and blogs. I do not subscribe to anyones blogs and do not particularly like the concept of publically shared diaries since they are by nature very private.

However, I have seen some blogs wherein technically-minded individuals share their knowledge through their blogs. I decided I would follow suit and do the same here. As I find time, I will blog about some web development subject that I feel could be properly explained in a reasonable amount of time and text. I will be carefully straddling the thin line between technical and user-friendly so I apologize now for the times where I will fall too far to one side or the other.

Lets hope I hit the mark of creating a blog that even those who hate blogs could enjoy.

Take care and see you in the blogs!