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Are you looking for technical writing experience on HTML, web design, or XML? I am looking for one to three interns for the second half of 2012. Interns for this site will write one article (650-800 words) per month, July through December, on topics related to HTML, web design, web editors, and XML.

This internship is unpaid, but you can work from anywhere in the world and all your articles will appear with your byline along with an author profile describing you and your expertise.

This internship is open to any current graduate or undergraduate students studying web design, computer science or a related discipline. Recent graduates are also invited to apply. You must know HTML and be able to write clear, accurate articles about HTML and web design.

To apply: please send a cover letter, current resume, writing sample, and the URL for at least one web page you have built to webdesign.guide@about.com. Please indicate what web editor you use for building web pages and what topics you would be most interested in writing about. Deadline for applications: June 15, 2012.

about.com | 21-May-2012 01:23

Making Your Images Show Up

I've been working with beginning web developers for many years now, and the most common question I get is how to get images to display correctly. Images are challenging for the beginning web developer because they have to understand how web servers work (a little) and how directory systems differ on their home machine and their web server.

If you still are having trouble, you should consider signing up for my Free HTML class.

about.com | 18-May-2012 10:00

Poll: Do you use centering as a design element?

Centered alignment is a popular design element as it's relatively easy. In fact, now centering with CSS is arguably harder than it used to be with the CENTER element (that element is deprecated and you shouldn't use it). However, there are drawbacks to centered design. In fact, Jacci, the Desktop Publishing Guide, recommends that you should avoid centered text for most body copy.

about.com | 17-May-2012 10:00

HTML5 Design Gallery - BeerBlogging

Be sure to mouse near the top of the “beer” to see what happens. But if you're using Internet Explorer, you'll need to check it out in a different browser. All versions of IE are sent to their Feedburner page instead. There are some interesting choices for the sectioning tags in this document. For example, the dates in the posts are listed as ASIDE and they might better be defined as DATA elements with machine readable dates in an attribute. The images are also enclosed in a SECTION element which appears to be there primarily for the CSS styles—he should use a DIV instead. But it is a fun site design.

Have you built an HTML5 site? Or do you know of one that does a great job with HTML5? Submit HTML5 site designs to be featured on this site.

about.com | 16-May-2012 10:00

Responsive Images and Web Standards at the Turning Point
Responsible responsive design demands responsive images—images whose dimensions and file size suit the viewport and bandwidth of the receiving device. As HTML provides no standard element to achieve this purpose, serving responsive images has meant using JavaScript trickery, and accepting that your solution will fail for some users. Then a few months ago, in response to an article here, a W3C Responsive Images Community Group formed—and proposed a simple-to-understand HTML picture element capable of serving responsive images. The group even delivered picture functionality to older browsers via two polyfills: namely, Scott Jehl’s Picturefill and Abban Dunne’s jQuery Picture. The WHATWG has responded by ignoring the community’s work on the picture element, and proposing a more complicated img set element. Which proposed standard is better, and for whom? Which will win? And what can you do to help avert an “us versus them” crisis that could hurt end-users and turn developers off to the standards process? ALA’s own Mat Marquis explains the ins and outs of responsive images and web standards at the turning point.
A List Apart | 15-May-2012 20:44

Don't Click the Shiny, Red, Candy-like ButtonCSS3 Buttons

Buttons are a fun feature of web pages, but up until just recently, if you wanted your buttons to have any interesting features at all, you needed to use images. In fact, if you search the web for ”web buttons” you will find hundreds if not thousands of examples of buttons you can use for your web pages. But now, with CSS3 you can create buttons that have cool effects but don't use any images at all.

Read the full article to learn how: CSS3 Buttons (Note: there are four pages to the article, and page two shows you how to create the above buttons.)

Other Fun Things to Do With CSS

about.com | 15-May-2012 15:18

Do you know when to use GET vs. POST in an HTML form?

There are two methods you can use to transfer data in HTML forms. But it's one thing to know the two methods, it's another to know which is appropriate to use. This article will help explain when to use GET or POST in your HTML forms.

Read the full article: GET versus POST Requests on HTML Forms

Other HTML Forms Articles

about.com | 14-May-2012 10:00

Did you know you can validate for accessibility?

Most web designers, when they work on websites think very little about how accessibile the site is. But this is an important part of web design. Accessible pages don't have to be ugly or boring. In fact, great design takes that into account and accounts for as many custoemrs as possible. I think making accessible sites makes sense, as why drive away customers if you don't have to? And it's easier than you think. By validating your pages, you can find out what problems your site might have.

Learn how to Validate for Accessibility

More Help with Accessibility

about.com | 11-May-2012 10:00

Poll: What's your favorite layout method? (2012)

I asked this same question a couple years ago (see results from that poll), and I'm curious if the results have changed much in the intervening time. Layout on web pages can be accomplished in many ways, and most designers have methods that they prefer. For example, I tend to lean towards elastic layouts with a max-width for large screens, but when I'm pressed for time I will often move to absolute positioning just to get things where I want them quickly. What's your favorite layout method?

Absolute positioning uses the CSS position property and properties like top and left to place elements on the screen based on a grid with 0,0 in the upper left.
A fixed width layout sets the layout as a specific size and then places the elements within that width.
Liquid layouts are set based on a percentage of the current width of the browser window.
An elastic layout is similar to a liquid layout, but sets maximum widths on either the entire page or sections of the page (such as the main content) to improve readability.
Tables for layout uses HTML tables to define how the page should look. Don't forget to use the border="0" attribute or the role="presentation" attribute so that computers know that the table is not data but layout (presentation).

about.com | 10-May-2012 10:00

Web Design Inspiration - Luxor Mag

This is a Flash website and as such is very interactive and pretty. But of course if you're on an iPad you get an obnoxious message telling you to get an Android tablet, because Flash doesn't work on the iPad (or iPhone or iPod). There are so many reasons why displaying that kind of message is a bad idea. But suggesting that someone who has already spent several hundred dollars on a tablet should go out and buy another tablet just to view your website is an extreme display of hubris. Keep in mind that the iPad has the dominant market share in the tablet market, so that message states that you don't want 50+% of tablet viewers to view your site.

Get your favorite website featured on About.com: Show Off Your Favorite Design.

More Web design resources and help: Follow me on Twitter or Become a Fan on Facebook

about.com | 09-May-2012 10:00

Application Cache is a Douchebag
We’re better connected than we’ve ever been, but we’re not always connected. ApplicationCache lets users interact with their data even when they're offline, but with great power come great gotchas. For instance, files always come from the ApplicationCache, even when the user is online. Oh, and in certain circumstances, a browser won't know that that the online content has changed — causing the user to keep getting old content. And, oh yes, depending on how you cache your resources, non-cached resources may not load even when the user is online. Lanyrd’s Jake Archibald illuminates the hazards of ApplicationCache and shares strategies, techniques, and code workarounds to maximize the pleasure and minimize the pain for user and developer alike. All this, plus a demo. Dig in.
A List Apart | 08-May-2012 14:00

Say No to Faux Bold
Browsers can do terrible things to type. If text is styled as bold or italic and the typeface family does not include a bold or italic font, browsers will compensate by trying to create bold and italic styles themselves. The results are an awkward mimicry of real type design, and can be especially atrocious with web fonts. Adobe’s Alan Stearns shares quick tips and techniques to ensure that your @font-face rules match the weight and styles of the fonts, and that you have a @font-face rule for every style your content uses. If you’re taking the time to choose a beautiful web font for your site, you owe it to yourself and your users to make certain you’re actually using the web font — and only the web font — to display your site’s content in all its glory.
A List Apart | 08-May-2012 13:59

Do You Use CSS Vendor Prefixes?

If you don’t, you should be. They let you add more cutting-edge features to your web pages and be sure that they will work even in browsers that don’t yet support the standards version of the property. Vendor prefixes are not a hack, they are a tool for browser makers and web designers to make sure that new features can be added without breaking a page in older or other browsers. Yes, you have to type a little more to use them. But stop being lazy and just do it. It’ll only hurt for a second.

Read the full article: CSS Vendor Prefixes

CSS Properties

about.com | 08-May-2012 10:00

Dont Drive Away Tablet Users in a New Browser War

I was working on my design inspiration article for this week (Wednesday), and I chose to promote a Flash website for a magazine that was very nice looking and fun to view on my iMac. But for the heck of it, I decided to see what fallback options they had chosen to use for iOS visitors. I didn't expect to see the site recreated in HTML5 (although I admit, I was hoping…). But I was surprised to see the above image as a new version of the tired and old browser wars. Only, as you can see, instead of being told to get a new browser (and there are apps that run Flash sites on iOS), you are told to get a new tablet device. Seriously? Do any of you really believe that someone will like a single website so much that they will say “What the heck! I'm going to go drop another couple hundred dollars on a new tablet, because this website is sooooooo cool!” and go out and buy another tablet? Personally, I wouldn't do it. But my brother tells me I'm an Apple zealot, so maybe I'm biased.

Read the full article: Flash Websites Need Fallback Options for iOS Users

Getting More Customers Rather Than Driving Them Away

about.com | 07-May-2012 10:00

If you do nothing else with your page

Do these things…

These simple steps will help you keep your page loading smoothly for your customers and make it easy for them to read and use your website. I recommend these tips to my web team, and I think you should know about them as well.

about.com | 04-May-2012 10:00

Poll: How do you set up checkboxes on your forms?

At first glance this may seem like a silly question, but it makes a difference in how you manage your web forms. The INPUT CHECKBOX form control (written: ≪input type="checkbox" name="myCheckbox">) is easy to add to web forms, but how you handle the identification of that control can make it hard or easy to manage when the form is submitted.

If you have only one checkbox, this is unimportant, but with a group of checkboxes—such as in a survey question “Select all that apply...” These are the two ways you can handle a group of check boxes on your forms:

Give each checkbox the name name, to keep them all in the same group. Doing this is similar to how you set up a group of INPUT RADIO buttons. Only instead of selecting only one, with checkboxes you can select as many as you need to answer the question.
Give each checkbox a unique name or id. Then you can rely on other elements like LABEL to define the group of check boxes.

Many people build their form check boxes using both methods. How do you build your check boxes? Have you thought about why you do it that way? There are a few things you should think about regarding these methods:

Using the name attribute is obsolete in HTML5 and deprecated in HTML 4.
Of course, if you want to group your checkboxes using the first method (all checkboxes get the same name), you can use the id attribute, but if you use the same id attribute for multiple check boxes you are using it incorrectly. As the id attribute is for unique identifiers for each element.
Also, grouping your check boxes with one ID or name, your form or script has to grab them as one block and process them, most likely, as an array. This can be challenging to set up.
Of course, giving each check box a separate name or ID makes it harder to remember which go together when you get the form data. I often solve this by giving grouped elements the same prefix in the ID, such as computer-apple and computer-pc. When I look at the data I can tell at a glance that both of those values go with the question about what computer they use.

about.com | 03-May-2012 10:00

Web Design Blogs - Desgr.com

This is a blog full of inspiration and information for designers. My only disappointment is that it wasn’t updated at all in April, so I’m not sure if it’s still live.

Have you built an HTML5 site? Or do you know of one that does a great job with HTML5? Share your web design blog to be featured on this site.

about.com | 02-May-2012 10:00

HTML5 Cheat Sheet

I spent all yesterday working on an HTML5 cheat sheet for myself and my other site, and I realized that you would probably like it as well. It's a PDF file of the HTML5 tags listed by whether they are new, changed, unchanged from HTML4 or completely obsolete (and what you should use instead). I created it for myself, but I thought you might like to see it.

HTML5 Cheat Sheet (PDF)

Learn HTML5

about.com | 01-May-2012 10:00

April in Review

This year, I got to look at the latest version of Dreamweaver in April. While I couldn't announce it until April 23rd (and I'll have even more to talk about after my intensive session with Adobe in early May!), I was playing with it for a large part of the month. Fun! I also played a bit with some CSS3 tutorials and a couple of editors.

In my part of the world (near Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.), spring is just starting to get underway, and it can be hard for me to stay focused on indoor work when it's so nice outdoors! I love listening to the birds chirping outside my window and the smell of the grass and the bright sunshine. I hope that your April was wonderful, and that you're looking forward to the changes of the seasons, whether it's Spring or Autumn where you are.

Here are some of the more popular articles from April:

Alexander was also hard at work delivering the first part of a series on Cross Browser Testing. This is an important part of web design work.

Previously in April

April 2011

April 2010

April 2009

April 2008

Even further back:

about.com | 30-Apr-2012 17:00

Five Excellent HTML Editors for iPad

While it may be tempting to use your iPad only for watching movies and reading books, it is quite possible to do work on them as well. In fact, I use these editors (and other apps) all the time to write and edit web pages, blog posts, images and more. Don't make the mistake of thinking that if I only have my iPad I'm not going to be working.

These five apps are an excellent way to edit HTML and other web documents. And while most of these apps are text editors, and so knowing HTML is helpful for using them, not all of them are!

Textastic

Textastic is a code editor and HTML editor for the iPad. It is a powerful tool that offers a lot of features that you might not expect in an iPad editor. Read my review or Buy from iTunes.

See the rest of the editors

about.com | 30-Apr-2012 10:00

I appreciate the kudos, I dont appreciate the spam

I don’t know about you, but the comment spammers are starting to really annoy me. This site doesn’t get a lot of comments (why not, guys? Don’t you want to talk to me?), but it does get a lot of comment spam. According to my records, I’ve received 11,230 comments on this blog since its inception and 4,098 of them were caught and marked as spam. That’s 36.5% spam. And it’s not getting lower. In fact, a lot of the spam that I’m seeing right now is comment spam that isn’t being caught by the filters.

You probably have seen this type of spam before, and you might not have even realized it was spam. It usually says something like:

I just found your site on Google and I think it’s got great information. Stuff we can all benefit from.…

It looks really nice, I mean who doesn’t want to know that their site is showing up in search engines, and that someone likes it? But seriously, this stuff is spam and bogus, and you should delete it from your blogs, preferably before it’s posted, and spammers like this should be rounded up and forced to eat only some form of processed meat product for months on end until they promise to mend their ways. I hate these spammers almost more than I hate the pr0n spammers and the advertising spammers because they are so underhanded about it. They prey on our desire to be liked and our wish for positive feedback, and that is just mean!

Sure, it’s possible that one or two of these types of spam comments really are real. In the universe of the internet it is possible that there have been people out there who just wanted to say “good job!” to a blogger and they did so with a one-sentence comment on a blog entry. But when 99.9999999999999999% of these comments come with a URL pointing to some obviously commercial site (prada bags seems to be popular right now), it’s clear to me that these spammers are not interested in giving out kudos, they are interested in getting their link onto as many websites as possible in the theory that if their link is in enough places, someone will click on it and they will earn money. And I hate them for using my blogs to try and do this. Go earn money in a reputable fashion! Or if you must be a jerk, start your own blog and write about your stupid prada bags and bikinis and so on where I don’t have to see it.

A Hint for Spammers

I moderate all comments on all my blogs. And while I appreciate the kudos you liars submit, I have enough self-esteem that I can accept them without displaying them on my blog. So all your spam does is fill up my spam folder. I never click on the links, and none of my readers will either. So go distribute your canned meat product elsewhere.

about.com | 27-Apr-2012 17:09

Poll: Do you use advanced mailto links?

When you are adding email addresses to your web pages, you can link them to open in an email program by using the mailto: command in the link. But what’s interesting to me is how few mailto links have the advanced features set to define the subject, CC, or BCC. Do you use these features in mailto links or do you leave them off?

about.com | 26-Apr-2012 10:00

HTML5 Design Gallery - CatCubed

I love the idea of this site, I love the name, and I love the tagline (“art code design—all of the above”). But I love best that it’s such nice HTML5. Be sure to scroll to see what happens in the navigation bar on the right.

Have you built an HTML5 site? Or do you know of one that does a great job with HTML5? Submit HTML5 site designs to be featured on this site.

about.com | 25-Apr-2012 10:00

How to Create a Glow Effect in CSS3

I created this glowing box with Photoshop, but CSS3 makes it possible to build this same box without any images at all.

Read the full article: Glow Effects with CSS3

The CSS Behind the Glow Effect

about.com | 24-Apr-2012 17:08

Content Modelling: A Master Skill
The content model is one of the most important content strategy tools at your disposal. It allows you to represent content in a way that translates the intention, stakeholder needs, and functional requirements from the user experience design into something that can be built by developers implementing a CMS. A good content model helps ensure that your content vision will become a reality. Lovinger explains how to craft a strong content model and use it to foster communication and align efforts between the UX design, editorial, and technical team members on your project.
A List Apart | 24-Apr-2012 15:00

Tinker, Tailor, Content Strategist
What does content strategy mastery look like? As in any field, it comes down to having master skills and knowing when to apply them. While there are different styles of content strategy (from an editorial and messaging focus to a technical and structural focus), the master content strategist must work with content from all angles: messaging architecture and messaging platforms; content missions and content management. Above all, she must advocate for multiple constituents, including end users, business users, stakeholders, and the content vision itself. Rachel Lovinger shares the skills that go into achieving CS mastery.
A List Apart | 24-Apr-2012 14:59

First look at Dreamweaver CS6

Adobe announced today the latest version of their Creative Suite—CS6. And I had the opportunity to check it out ahead of time. Dreamweaver CS6 brings a bunch of new features, some of which I found very useful, and a whole new look (think dark…) to the latest version of Dreamweaver.

You can join the live launch event (webinar starts at 10am PT). And learn more about their new subscription offering: Creative Cloud.

See my thoughts on the new Dreamweaver: First Look: Dreamweaver CS6

about.com | 23-Apr-2012 14:34

A No-Code Editor that Designers Can Use

I had the opportunity to try out the Windows web page editor Xara Web Designer MX Premium and I enjoyed using it. This is a “no-code” editor—an editor that doesn't require you to know any HTML or CSS to use. And as such it is perfect for small businesses and individuals that want to put up a website but don't want to worry about learning the languages behind it. Even some web design firms will be happy with the sites that are built by Xara Web Designer MX because they are fully standards compliant.

In the last year a lot of new editors have come out that I was judging unfairly—the no-code editors. These editors are WYSIWYG, but they don't have all the features of a full web development editor. Evaluating editors like Adobe Edge, Hype, Cubender, and Xara Web Designer against criteria like syntax highlighting, code validation, and other features they don't have because they don't edit code wasn't really fair. So I have revamped my entire evaluation system to compare these editors to other no-code editors, text editors to other text editors, and full WYSIWYG web development editors will be compared to others of that type. In the next few months I will be updating these editor profiles to reflect my new evaluation criteria.

Have you used Xara Web Designer? What do you think of this editor? Would you recommend it to your friends? Write a review of Web Designer or any other web editor.

about.com | 20-Apr-2012 10:00

Poll: How did you learn to use your web editor?

There are lots of ways to learn how to use a web editor. For instance, I have lots of free Dreamweaver tutorials and tutorials for other editors as well. But online tutorials are only one way you can learn how to use an HTML editor. I mostly teach myself by using the tools, but sometimes I read online tutorials to figure specific things out. How did you learn about your editor?

about.com | 19-Apr-2012 10:00

HTML5 Design Gallery - Clean Future

This is a nice website that includes features that most site owners want, including clear navigation, monetization (ads) and a smooth look. While I personally don't like ads positioned right in the middle of a design, it's clear enough that they are ads that it's okay. This isn't a site that screams HTML5, but when you look at the code, the designer did use some of the new elements, and of course the minimal doctype. They also use an HTML5 shiv to get it to work in IE.

Have you built an HTML5 site? Or do you know of one that does a great job with HTML5? Submit HTML5 site designs to be featured on this site.

about.com | 18-Apr-2012 02:01

Clipping and Positioning Your Background Images with CSS3 Properties

CSS3 has a lot of new background image properties, and two that are somewhat confusing are background-origin and background-clip. These two properties give you more control over your background images. And this article will explain how they work and what the values mean.

Read the full article: Positioning and Clipping Background Images with CSS3

More CSS3 Tutorials

about.com | 17-Apr-2012 09:00

Dont Forget to Test in Multiple Browsers

Cross browser testing is often the bane of most designers. It's tedious and frustrating. But it's an important part of the job. The latest article by Andrew Peev examines when to test your web pages and what browsers and versions you should test in.

What do you think? Is browser testing important to your designs? What browsers and versions do you test with?

Read the full article: Cross Browser Testing

Considerations for Testing in Different Browsers

about.com | 16-Apr-2012 15:15

SPAN and DIV Tags are Not Obsolete

One thing I've noticed when people start using the new sectioning HTML5 elements like ARTICLE and SECTION is that they often stop using the DIV element. While there is some benefit to this, after all, “Divitis” (the over use of the DIV element) is not good either, the DIV and SPAN elements still serve a purpose. If you've been writing HTML for a while, you might want to refresh yourself on what these very useful tags are for. And if you're new to HTML, learning more about these tags won't hurt your designs at all.

Read the Article: The SPAN and DIV HTML Elements

Other Articles That Can Help Learn About These Tags

about.com | 14-Apr-2012 17:20

Background Images are Becoming Critical in Web Designs

One way to really dress up a web page is to use background images. These are images that either set a mood or add some texture or tone to the page. For example, here is an example of a page with a grey background where a simple repeating image is used instead of flat color. As you can see in the flat color version the texture makes the design a bit more interesting.

But background images can be more than just texture. You can add a fixed background image to act like a watermark, or you can stretch a background image to fit the entire page.

And remember that you don't have to limit your backgrounds to the entire page. You can add backgrounds to tables, paragraphs, or any block-level element.

about.com | 13-Apr-2012 17:00

Color Theory is Important in Web Design

If you are an artist, you already understand the importance of color in design. And one way to start understanding color is to understand how the colors relate to one another. Color theory puts colors on a wheel and when you combine two of the three primary colors, you get a secondary color and then tertiary colors and so on. When you view color selectors, you are looking at colors based on color theory.

Read the article: Color Wheel and Color Theory

Get More from Color in Your Designs

about.com | 13-Apr-2012 10:00

What to Do When You Don’t Have an HTML Editor

There are situations that arise when you need to fix a web page but for some reason you don’t have an HTML editor handy. Perhaps you’re at your parent’s house for dinner or you’re on vacataion without your laptop (who does that?). But even if your parents 10-year-old PC doesn’t have an HTML editor you can still edit your HTML from the machine without needing to download a new program. Use a built-in text editor, all operating systems have one.

Windows: Notepad
Find Notepad on Your Windows Machine; Writing HTML in Notepad
Macintosh: TextEdit
Find TextEdit on Your Macintosh; Edit HTML with TextEdit
Linux: vi
Learn to Use vi

about.com | 12-Apr-2012 18:00

Poll: Do you think color symbolism matters in web design?

Color symbolism can be very important to some people but is it important in web design? Understanding what colors mean in cultures other than your own (see my Color Symbolism Chart for more help) might make a difference to your pageviews. But do you think it matters in your designs?

about.com | 12-Apr-2012 10:00

Why Google has become less relevant to meIt's a Love/Hate relationship at best

Last year Google released a change to their search ranking algorithm that devastated a lot of websites. It was called Panda after the programmer who had the most impact on the algorithm. When Panda released, many websites that had been enjoying good rankings and search referrals from Google were suddenly out in the cold. Here at About.com, we referred to this as being “Panda slapped.” Then in March of this year Google announced an over-optimization penalty that has got web content freaking out yet again. If you read my article from Tuesday (Stop Optimizing Old Content and Start Adding New Content) you know that you’re better off just continuing to write new content for your sites than you are trying to figure out whether you are over-optimized and fixing it. In fact, Danny Sullivan over at Marketing Land thnks that this may be the point at which Google has “Jumped the Shark”. And I agree with him.

Google claims that the best way to get high ranking in their search engine is by “writing high quality content,” but when asked to define what that is, their answer is generally “Google knows what high quality is.” Personally, I gave up on searching with Google about three months ago because I was tired of getting results from how to sites that seem to focus on getting just the question up and then a bunch of ads, forums where the same question I have is asked but never answered, or a site that anyone in the world can edit where the contents may be accurate or may not with no way for me to know, and PR/marketing sites for corporations to pedal their wares to me. I use Bing almost exclusively now. Bing doesn’t seem to be trying to tell me what sites are “best” according to their hidden agenda.

Don’t get me wrong. I still need to focus on and worry about Google. While this site wasn’t Panda slapped, I have seen a downturn after the over-optimization penalties were put in place. Thus when I read Matt Cutts saying:

All those people who have sort of been doing, for lack of a better word, “over optimization” or “overly” doing their SEO, compared to the people who are just making great content and trying to make a fantastic site, we want to sort of make that playing field a little bit more level.

It makes me want to hit something. I’ve been working on creating and building great content for nearly 15 years now. I am constantly striving to make this site something fantastic and amazing and useful to my readers. But apparently, I was actually “over-optimizing” it and overly doing my SEO, at least in the great G’s algorithms. I have been trying to teach people how to build and maintain websites to the best of my abilities. And yes, that includes doing SEO.

I Still Have to Focus on Google—Even if I Don’t Want To

These days I’m at a loss. I feel like I have knowledge about how to create sites that are both readable, useful to customers, and optimized for search engines. I have never advocated using spammy, black hat techniques for getting good rankings. And in fact I have several articles talking about spammy SEO and why not to use them. I have been writing about content being king since the very first year I started writing for About.com. So, to say I feel a bit picked on by Google at the moment is probably an understatement.

Hopefully, this new strategy of Google to undermine the efforts of SEO developers to create content that is relevant to their readers and provides useful signals to search engines will backfire or change to a more anti-spam, less anti-SEO stance. If they decided to start providing fewer links to obvious spammers and went back to links to actual content I might consider using them again.

e.g. Do a search for "seo" on Google right now and see if you can find companies that have just slapped some random content into a template in the first few results. I found the first one around rank #8. Really, Google? That’s a high quality site?

But until then, I’ll stick with Bing for my own research and only use Google when I want to know where sites I manage are ranking.

about.com | 11-Apr-2012 10:00

Whats In Your Editor82WHO

Get the site you’re working on featured on About.com: What’s in Your Editor?

More Web design resources and help: Follow me on Twitter or Become a Fan on Facebook

about.com | 11-Apr-2012 02:01

Don't count out making your site accessible

Accessible web design isn't exciting or glamorous. It often isn't fun and sometimes can even seem like a chore that has no point. But considering and implementing accessibility goals is both a good idea and not hard. Plus just because a site is accessible doesn't mean that it has to be ugly or boring.

Learn how to write accessible web pages. Read the full article: Accessible HTML

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