Do you know what happens when you type a non-existent URL address.  You get an error message that probably looks like this:

Object not found!

The requested URL was not found on this server. If you entered the URL manually please check your spelling and try again.

If you think this is a server error, please contact the webmaster.

Error 404

Not very pretty, right?  What is worse is that your readers might get confused and just go elsewhere instead of going back one page in your site.  You cannot prevent this type of error from happening.   Nobody can stop anyone from typing non-existent web pages in the address bar.  Well actually a 404 error can be created in three ways

• A mis-typed URL (or a stale bookmark),
• A search-engine link that is not there anymore, or
• An internal broken link that escaped your notice

What we want to happen is to prevent the display of such types of error messages and replace it with something friendlier and easier to understand.  In other words, what we want to do is make our own html file that will become the generic page not found handler that deals with this kind of error gracefully.  What are the bare essentials of a custom 404 page handler?

• A link back to your home page
• Most web sites have search enabled, so if you have this feature, put this into your 404 handler
• A link to your site map, if available

So how do we go about making our generic 404 error handler?  First, create an actual HTML file that contains all this elements.  Save it somewhere below your document root.  If you want to save it in a separate folder, then feel free to do so.

The next step is the tricky part and if done correctly should work in a Linux based server.  Try to look for the .htaccess file (please take note of the dot before htaccess).  If you have one, then we have to edit its contents, if not we have to create one. On a line of its own type something like this:

ErrorDocument 404 /404handler.html

This is all that is needed in order to create a custom 404 page.  The entry has 2 parts, first part tells us that if a 404 error happens, load the html file that is described in the second part of the line.  If a page not found error happens then load the file named 404handler.html. Simple eh?

Next, we will talk about a few tricks to make your 404 page really work.  If you type a link to your site map, make sure that you provide the absolute address.  While using HTML this link should look like this:

<a href=”http://www.yoursitename.com/sitemap.html”>Site Map</a>

When your visitors do something that leads them to a page not found error, they will see something they will understand, and that is one more visitor you keep in your site.

We all know that the content you see in your browser is made from HTML and can be viewed by just right clicking on a web page and choose “View page source”. If you understand what you are seeing, then good for you but if it is gobbledygook, then you might need to go to w3schools.com to know what HML is.

HTML has progressed and the current official version is HTML 4. Some of these tags have been deprecated while some are still very much in use. So let us discuss 25 of the most useful HTML tags and tag attributes.

<title> – Since all web pages must have a title, so this self-explanatory tag will put the title of the web page in the title bar of your browser. The closing pair of this tag is </title>.

Note: In the next 24 tags, I will not provide the closing pair, it is understood that one is required (or none for tags that are called empty tags).

<a> – Since the web is hypertext, the <a> tag makes all those links possible.

href – this tag is used inside the <a> tag and represents the url where the link will jump into.

<img> – Web pages are supposed to show images together with text. The <img> tag indicates that an image will be shown on the page

src – The src attribute is the file name of the image to be displayed

alt – The alt attribute is used to provide a short description to the image. This is useful for sight impaired users who use text to speech synthesizers. The alt text will tell these users what the image is all about.

<p> – Indicates that text enclosed by the <p> tag is paragraph text

<h1> … <h6> – Provides structure to your text. <h1> is the most important heading while <h6> is not.

<ol> - Another tag that provides structure and stands for ordered list.

<ul> - A tag that says that what follows is an unordered list, much like bullet points

<li> – an item that belongs to a list

<html> - serves as the container for the document and it marks the beginning and the end of markup

<head> – a section of html where header information such as title and links to stylesheets are found

<body> a section of html that contains content

<link rel> indicates that an external file is linked to the current html document and is commonly used to link an external stylesheet to format the contents of the document

<div>- A division or a section of a page. Used as an additional means to provide structure to HTML.

class – an attribute used in <div> used for formatting HTML when stylesheets are used. When class is used, it means that this type of styling can occur many times in the document

id – another attribute found in <div> and is for formatting HTML when stylesheets are used. A particular id tag can only be used once

<script> denotes that text inside this tag is script that will add dynamic and interactive capabilities to the page

type used inside the script tag to tell the browser what scripting language is used. The most common type of scripting language is text/javascript. Scripts of type text/vbscript fell out of favor.

<form> – denotes that the area enclosed by this tag is an HTML form that can accept user input

<input> used inside an HTML form and is used to accept user input or submit the input

type – used inside input and may either accept entry of data through text boxes, radio buttons or select boxes. Is also used to show a submit button if type is equal to “submit”

label – used in forms and will label HTML input elements

<!–>- comment tag. Used to add text to your document that will not be displayed in the browser and is useful to document the design of the page.

What are listed above are 25 of the most useful tags and attributes used in most modern HTML pages today. Most of the deprecated tags are those that used to provide formatting to HTML. Formatting has been moved to stylesheets so that HTML will just consist of content and the structure that describes the content.

We get asked this question all the time. In fact it is probably one of the most common marketing questions we get. It seems everyone wants to get involved with social media but they are not sure how it will help their website.

Social Media can be a great way to market your website. Some of the benefits of this type of marketing are:

-Extreme Exposure

-Branding

-Backlinks

-Increased Search Engine Rankings

-Offline Media Exposure

News Aggregators

Websites that can bring the most exposure are “news aggregator” type of sites. Specific examples are Digg, Reddit & Mixx. In these communities users vote on content they like. If that specific content gets enough votes and comments it can go make it to the homepage of these websites, which will bring thousands of visitors.

Why are these visitors important? More than likely visitors from news aggregator websites will not convert into sales or leads. What happens is it brings your website in front of thousands of people. A Digg story that hits the homepage can bring anywhere from 5,000 to 60,000 visitors within 24 hours. A percentage of the people that see your story on Digg will write about it and often will link to it. This is the true value of getting your content in front of the thousands of readers.

You will gain more exposure by getting articles on other blogs and websites. From our experience a story that hits the front page of Digg can get anywhere from 50 to 2,000 external links and mentions on other websites.

Connecting on Twitter & Facebook

Another popular way to get some exposure via social media are to participate on websites like Twitter and Facebook. Some companies do a great job reaching out to their customers or potential customers this way. If you haven’t read our article that provides some examples please take the time out to do it now.

One of the best ways to connect with people on social media websites is to just participate. Users flock to these social media websites for connections and information. Don’t make your business account one-sided. Some of the biggest most successful brands are dominating Twitter and Facebook by getting involved in the discussions.