SEO tips

These days.. after finishing with the flash coding for electrofolio.com I have started with SEO and PHP security. Today Im studing SEO techniques and I think I should write down all the key points related to SEO on HTML content, so there you go:

• Include keywords in your URL
• Dont use superlong URLs full of query strings and vars. the less the better.
  
• Use title, keywords and description meta-tags on the header of your html code.
• Keyword tips (google ignores them?):
  
• put the keywords in order of importance.
• less is better.
• use lowercase words.
• use only important words.
• no need to make similar sentences with same keywords, no comas are needed to separate those words. If you need special combinations use quote signs then.

• First thing appearing within the [html] tag should be a text, place the images later in the code.
  
• Use your primary keywords on the beginning of your text (or at least first paragraph) on your main page.
  
• Place alt tags with your keywords on the images.
• Write porper links, dont use meaningless links such "here" or "this link".
• In the links that come to your site for a certain key phrase - you need thoses links [alt] tag to be your keywords.
  
• Make sitemaps.
• Make footers with your contact detail in every page on your site.
  

To improve your chances of getting higher in search engines, I think the best way (talking from my ignorance on SEO) is to get links from other sites. Not bad sites, just normal sites and links from popular sites will do quite well.

Create a sitemap linking the most important pages on your website and keep you code clean and tidy(valid your code using w3c validator) to make the search engines an easier life (even a beeing digital and virtual they have a life).

When you are done remember to submit your site in the most important search engines:
google , bing and yahoo.

Here is a list with most of the popuplar search engines. And create some accounts from twitter and other social networks such facebook or linkedin to get lots of traffic toyour site.

I think that might be all. Am I missing something?

Recomended software 2009

Hi everyone,

This is all the software I can recommend to you to install on your computer (Windows) but I'm sure you can find some of this for Mac.

Some of the software is paid software but most of it is free.. If it has a dollar symbol, means that you have to pay for it. From cheap to expensive: ($) ($) ($) .

If you think I don't mention other software that you really like please let us know. The aim is to use the best software out there and let everyone know how to have a nicer IT experience.


Software that require to be installed after Installing the OS:


7Zip
It is a files compressor. With this I dont need WinRar or WinZip.



Thunderbird
Email software.

Add ons:

1. Smartsave

Firefox
Much better than IE. Not as fast as google Chrome .

I keep it because I use all of these add ons:

1. adBlock plus 1.1.1
2. FireBug
3. Flash Switcher (fix for Win7 and Vista) [for win7-64bits: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash]
   
4. Flash Tracer (or you can use Vizzy flash player as stand alone application)
5. Live HTTP Headers
6. Modify Headers
7. Stumble Upon
8. Password exporter

Foxit Reader
Read PDFs without having to install Adobe's PDF Reader.


Twhirl
Twitter client.


Fookes Mailbag Assistant ($)
Back up and archive emails. It is very nice as it packs all your emails into one big file.
It has search functions. It is very efficient.


AVG
Antivirus.


OpenOffice 3
Office suite, it works quite well and it is free.


Skype
bla bla bla. over the net.


Corel x4 ($)
I got used to it, I recommend it as it is cheap and i don't need the power of photo shop.



Net Limiter ($)
Limits your network upload/downloads.
You can force some software to connect at the max speeds you want. Is good for testing.


PhotoMatix ($)
Is good for composing HDR images


Notepad++
Until Flash Develop (next on the list) I used it all the time to work with plain text files
Now I only use it to tidy XML files.
It is not fully compatible with Windows7. It has troubles saving lang.xml and sometimes config.xml.

Software that doesn't require to be installed:
that means you wont have to install the crap files that comes with it. Just try to execute the software after installing Windows in a clean format. If you have a Mac I can't help you, you choosed to pay more, your problem :)

Winamp
Best player, I have used it since Version 2 and I love that I can control the software with key combinations when it is NOT in focus. That means that I can pause music any instant I need it without having to stop what you are doing. For example:You can stop it when someone needs you for a second with just a key stroke combination. Or you can skip a song that you don't really like or whatever you can do normally with the player in focus.:)

It has this add-on called enhancer, it improves the quality of the sound a lot.

Those two features makes Winamp the best player for me.


Trillian 4
IM client that can combine lots of different services into just one "log in" and one piece of software.


CuteFTP ($)
TIP: If you move the sm.dat into my documents, then you wont lose your FTP details ever again.


VLC
Very light but powerful video player.


Flash Develop
You need to install it once as portable or (single user mode). After that doesnt need to be installed ever again.
Software suited for programming Flash Action Script and PHP, SQL, XML and HTML?.
It has code snippets which makes it much better than Flash Builder .
It doesnt have a Flash debugger!


Flash CS3 portable
It is not sold by Adobe, in fact I think is free but If u paid for your original copy of CS3 ($) it should be fine (and moral) working with this.
It doesn't come with help panels.


Keepass
Keep your passwords super safe with this tool.


Super (eRightSoft)
Convert any video file format to any other format in a very easy way.


VirtualDub
Simple but powerful video editor.


WinDirStat
Is good to have a look where you have some files in your HD. IS perfect to find and delete junk on your Hard Drives!


Anki
Helps you to remember things. Specially done to learn languages in a not dedicated way. Is really good.


CCleaner
Is good to clean your registry files and temporary files.


RegCleaner
Old software that used to work very well.


CDex
Good CD -> MP3 back up software


DVDShrink
Good DVD->9 to DVD-4 movies back up software


iCPU Shutdown
Switch off your computer whenever a condition is true. Timer, Network traffic, etc.
Beware some anti viruses detect it as virus.... is not!


CPU-Z
Identifies what CPU are you using. Is good it tells you speeds and other important stuff related to your hardware.



The next software is for XP! I Don't recommend them for windows 7.

4T Tray Minimizer ($)
RocketDock (OSX dock in windows) + DesktopCoral
Startup Delayer
TaskAssign (good for XP and multicore PCs as lets you optimize the afinitiy of each software you are running in a permanent way)

Embedding dynamic fonts on Flash AS2.(Better explanation)

Today after a couple of years on and off (more off than on) researching about embeding fonts on flash. I found a real solution today. The solution was explained on a comment in another blog like nothing important, but I can tell you it was really good for me to see this after tlooking for a solution this long.

It was a bit confusing for me so I carried on researching for shared libraries... Hmm I can't change the library dynamically. But can load flash files that has static libraries... I got me thinking.... I started realizing what was it...

I came with a solution which probably is what Matt said in that forum but at that moment I had not idea how to use libraries... so for the unexperienced I will explain it properly.


Anyway, this is how it works:
Step 1: The preloader loads the font1.swf that has as library the font1Embed.swf. That means it has the font embedded and it can be used now.

Step 2: All the library components can be used on preloader.swf

Step 3: We load main.swf which can use "preloader.swf" 's library.

It is easy once you understand it.... The great thing is you can load any library dynamically.

I will explain how to get dynamic fonts right now, step by step:

Ingredients:

• a SWF file for the preloader,
• 2 SWFs per font
• any SWF that uses the font.

Cooking Time:

• 10 to 15 mintues.
• and then 3 minutes per font.

Preparation:

We are gonna use Arial font for this example, so wherever I say Arial , use any font you want


Character sauce:

Create an empty flash file on AS2.0.
Create a text box with the flash GUI.
Select Arial font and embed the characters you want. I normally add a text that contains at least one character bold, italic, bold+italic and normal.
Convert that text box into a movie Clip, or better said: put the text inside a movieclip.

Normally when I cook texts I assign names to the instances on the stage as "label_txt" for the text and "text_mc" for the movieclip. You can tell what kind of object is everything with just checking "_mc" or "_txt". In this example it doesnt matter as we are not going to use instances, only library objects.

When you have the convert to movieclip dialog window on screen, click on Export for runtime sharing.

Click on the URL box and write the name that is going to be this SWF file will have when exported.

We are preparing the Arial font so to make things clear name it "Arial_chars.swf".

Leave it published with that same name on the same folder as the preloader for several minutes.


Font container:

Create another empty flash file on AS2.0.

And on library click in new Symbol> Movieclip and then click on "Import for runtime sharing" it will ask you for an URL and identifier. Place the same name of the SWF file you just exported in Step1.

Then drag this new symbol into the Stage, anywhere.

Export the Flash file to the same folder of before. Use a name that will help you matching this file and the other exported file: "Arial.swf".

We should have now two files on the folder:"Arial.swf" and "Arial_chars.swf".


(optional)
Placing all fonts in a special folder:

Placing the font files in a "fonts" folder requires you to edit all URLs from the properties dialog window relative to the preloader. That means that if you place all fonts in a folder called "fonts", and that folder is a inside the folder that contains the preloader, URLS on the properties/linkage dialog box must be: "fonts/Arial_Chars.swf" in the both characters files.


Preloader:

We need to load all of these fonts before the real flash movie begins. So we are going to create a preloader, load the fonts first and load the main movie afterwards.

I generated a FLA with some code for it. It is a simple loader. I place the code as I have told you I will explain everything!


on Frame 1:

this.createEmptyMovieClip ("dummy",0);
this.dummy._visible = false;

_global._font = "Arial"; // or any font that you want to embed...

this.dummy.loadMovie (_global._font+".swf");//first preload the shared library
this.onEnterFrame = this.preload1;

function preload1 () {

if (this.dummy.getBytesLoaded () > 10) {
if (dummy.getBytesLoaded () == dummy.getBytesTotal ()) {
this.dummy.loadMovie ("main.swf");//also preload the main movie
this.onEnterFrame = null;
} else {
// add some progress display here
}
}
}

Then on the main flash file you need to create all of this code in order to test it:

my_fmt.font = _global._font ;
my_fmt.size = 40;

this.createTextField("my_txt", this.getNextHighestDepth(), 40, 40, 400, 30160);
my_txt.wordWrap = true;
my_txt.embedFonts = true;
my_txt.text = "Hello Mundo!";
my_txt.setTextFormat(my_fmt);
my_txt._rotation = 15;

Now you have to publish this test file as "mainMovie.swf" and the preloader as anyname.. "preloader.swf"?... all files need to be on the same folder.

Now if you publish all files with the correct names and folder , whenever you start the preloader it whould work.

Add glass sugar, and a smile, there you have what you have been looking for for ages!.


IMPORTANT NOTE: I have discovered that if you have at least one character embedded on your main flash movie this method wont work as it wont be using the external character set but the internal one. and this happens in ActionScript 2 and 3.


Thanks to Matt for the clever post in Odd hammer.
Preloader and more information: Mario at Quasimondo.com

Thanks to you both.