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.
Print Screen key
The Print Screen key is often abbreviated to prt sc. For MS Windows computers, pressing the print screen key copies the entire screen to the keyboard. The alt-print screen combination copies only the selected window to the clipboard.
Command-shift-3, Command-shift-4
There is no print screen key on a Mac, instead users can use the command-shift-3 combination to save copy of the screen to a file. The command-shift-4 combination enables a user to save a portion of the screen to a file
Jing Project
Created by TechSmith, Jing Project is freeware and works for both Mac and Windows. With this nifty piece of software you can even make a record video of onscreen action aside from snapping a picture of your computer screen.
Grab
This application is created by Apple for the Mac OSX. This application can be located in the Mac Utilities folder which is under Applications.
Skitch Beta
Made for Macs, this app can capture a chat moment on your screen, snap a website, and share the image with your network friends. Record your everyday onscreen activities for quick filing and documentation.
Little Snapper
This is a paid application which lets you snap, collect and share your onscreen images. Created and distributed by RealMac Software.
iGrabIt
Made by Hidden Valley Software, this screenshot tool was made for Macs wherein you can capture whatever is displayed on your PC screen and save it as an MOV file.
Fireshot
This is a Firefox extension created by the Mozilla Company. This can take entire screenshots of both the visible and non-visible part of the webpage.
iShowU
This is a real time capture made for Mac by ShinyWhiteBox. It can instantly record movies and has USB camera support.
SnagIt
Probably the best screen capture software for Windows computers. It is available as a 30-day trial download. It is easy and very intuitive to use.
CaptureWizPro
Another screen capture utility for Windows computers available as a 30-day trial download. It is capable of capturing the entire contents of scrolling areas, drop-down lists, tool tips, mouse pointers and screen savers.
XnView
XnView is freeware that is a fast multiple format image browser and converter. It is capable of reading more than 400 graphic formats. Aside from screen capture, it also does slide shows and supports WIA and TWAIN devices.
ScreenHunter
Another well regarded and free screen capture software for Windows computers. The application is able to capture a full screen, an active window, the client window, or a rectangular area. User can set any function key (F1 to F10) for hot-key or delayed capture.
IrfanView
IrfanView is a simple, fast and free software that is capable of doing multiple image editing tasks like cropping, batch conversions, create panoramas and of course, screen capture.
PhotoScape
This is often downloaded free software for various image editing tasks. According to its maker, PhotoScape is a capable image viewer, editor, batch editor, animated GIF creator, file print, file splitter and screen capture.
- In 1996, Americans spent an average of 30 minutes a month surfing the World Wide Web.
- The average American Spends 27 hours a month online, this according to Nielsen’s Three Screen Report for the 4th quarter of 2008.
- The Web was invented in 1989 by a British physicist named Tim Berners-Lee
- It is just one of the many services that operate on the Internet. Other services include e-mail, newsgroups and FTP.
- The Internet, in turn, was created by ARPA to connect computers of various researches geared towards regaining technological over Soviet Russia after the Russian space program successfully launched the Sputnik satellite. It was on October 29, 1969 when 2 computers from UCLA and SRI International got connected thus realizing what the internet became later, the ARPANET.
- The first proposal for a “large hypertext database with typed links” was written by Tim Berners-Lee on 1989 but generated little interest
- Berners-Lee saw the Web as a network based means of sharing information that works on any computer running on any OS
- The first Web site was built at CERN. CERN is the French acronym for European Council for Nuclear Research and is located at Geneva, Switzerland.
- A NeXT computer was the world’s first Web server
- The first Web server software was CERN httpd
- The first browser, also invented by Berners-Lee was called the WorldWideWeb. The first successful build was released on December 25, 1990
- Mike Sendall was Berners-Lee’s boss at CERN. He approved the purchase of the NeXT computer where Tim wrote the beginnings of the Web.
- The first Web browser was already capable of downloading and displaying movies, sounds and any file type supported by the operating system. The concept of stylesheets was already in place when the first browser was released.
- The first browser was also the first editor for creating web pages
- WorldWideWeb was programmed with Objective C
- The first browser could already open http:, news:, ftp: and browse local file: spaces
- The World Wide Web took advantage of things already available on the internet like TCP/IP and DNS. TCP/IP took shape way back 1973 through the work of Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn. DNS was created in 1983 by Paul Mockapetris and his friends. In fact, before the Web, email was already using TCP/IP and DNS.
- Hypertext came out as an idea way back in 1945 by Vanevar Bush. The term hypertext was actually coined by Ted Nelson
- Hypertext is implemented in the Web as links in the browser window. Links are references to text that the user wants to access. When a link is clicked, the referenced text is displayed or bought into focus. The World Wide Web is the most extensive implementation of hypertext but it is not the only one. A computer help file is actually a hypertext document.
- What Tim Berners-Lee did when he invented the World Wide Web was to figure out a way to use hypertext and connect it with DNS and TCP/IP so that links found in other computers can be displayed in the browser.
- The website of the world’s first web server is http://info.cern.ch/
- The URL of the first web page was http://nxoc01.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html. Although this page is not hosted anymore at CERN, a later version of the page is posted at http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html.
- A screenshot of the world’s first browser running inside Tim Berners-Lee computer can be seen at this page: http://info.cern.ch/NeXTBrowser.html
- In December 1991, the first institution in the US to adopt the web was the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC). True to the Berners-Lee vision, it was used to display an online catalog of SLAC’s documents.
- The first browser that made the web available to PC and Mac users was Mosaic. It was developed by National Center for Supercomputing (NCSA) led by Marc Andreessen in February, 1993. Mosaic was one of the first graphical web browsers and led to an explosion in web use.
- Near the end of 1992 there were only 26 web servers around the world. In October 1993, the number of web servers worldwide grew to 200.
- April 30, 1993 is an important date for the Web because on that day, CERN announced that anyone may use WWW technology freely.
- Marc Andreessen started Netscape and released Netscape Navigator in 1994. During the height of its popularity, Netscape Navigator accounted for almost 90% of all web use.
- The first International Conference on the World Wide Web was held in 1994 at CERN.
- It was also in the Conference Dinner in May 26, 1994 where the first Best of WWW awards were given. It was by pure coincidence that the jazz band that played during the awards was called “Wolfgang and the Were Wolves”
- The best overall site for 1994 was NCSA’s web site.
- Microsoft released Internet Explorer on 1995. This event initiated the browser wars. By bundling Internet Explorer with the Windows operating system, by 2002, Internet Explorer became the most dominant web browser with a market share over 95 percent.
- The latest entry to the browser business is Google Chrome on September 2008
- As of July 2009, Microsoft Internet Explorer accounted for 67.68 percent of all browsers used. Mozilla Firefox was used by 22.47 percent of all users.
- The browser wars refer to the battle for dominance in the late 1990s between Netscape Navigator and the eventual winner Microsoft Internet Explorer. Currently, the browser war is raging between Microsoft Explorer and emerging competitors like Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Google Chrome and Opera.
- When Netscape opened for public trading, on the first day, Jim Clark, co-owner, earned $663 million.
- The top thee dominant Web servers according to NetCraft’s July 2009 Web Server Survey of 239,611,111 sites are Apache HTTP Server (113 million sites), Microsoft IIS (56 million), and qq.com’s QZHTTP (30.3 million)
- Apache web server was the first to achieve the 100 million installation milestone. This was achieved on 2009.
- Open source technology dominates the web. The most common software used for webserving is called LAMP standing for the Linux operating system, Apache web server, MySQL database and PHP scripting language
- Google has its own web server called the Google Web Server or GWS. As of July, 2009, only 14.2 million sites worldwide use GWS and is the fourth widely used server.
- Apache HTTP web server has been the most dominant server since 1996.
- The development of standards for the World Wide Web is managed by the W3C or the World Wide Web consortium.
- The W3C was founded in October, 1994 and is headed by Tim Berners-Lee
- The need for standards arose when the web gained popularity, various vendors were making different versions of HTML thus making web pages incompatible with each other. The primary mission of the W3C is to ensure compatibility and agreement among industry members in the adoption of new standards.
- The first White House website was launched during the Clinton-Gore administration on October 21, 1994
- Even though worldwide is a valid English word, WWW is spelled World Wide Web not Worldwide Web. For a while there was a hyphen in the name: thus World-Wide Web. The hyphen caused a lot of confusion for people who were not so grammatical. Tim Berners-Lee decided to drop the hyphen.
- WWW is often abbreviated to W3. Another way of abbreviating World Wide Web is to use Web.
- However, the author of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams once said that WWW is the only abbreviation he knows that takes longer to say than what it actually stands for.
- Contemporary media uses the words World Wide Web and Internet interchangeably. However they are not one and the same. The internet is the hardware and software infrastructure used to connect computers while the World Wide Web is just one of the services running on the internet
- The “www” part of a website (www.google.com) is optional and is not required by any web policy or standard.
- Computers who are connected to the internet all have IP addresses. By using this addressing scheme (called IPv4), each computer in the internet is capable of reaching up to 4.3 billion other computers.
- Despite IPv4’s 4.3 billion unique addresses, it is forecasted that by 2011, the address space will be consumed. A newer scheme called IPv6 is slowly replacing IPv4 in some countries. IPv6 has the capability to address 2128 computers. To give perspective to this very big number, the world’s population of 6.5 billion people as of 2006 can be given 295 unique addresses.
- The blue colored links on a web page is just a browser default although way back on the days when monitors only had 16 colors, blue was the darkest color that did not affect text legibility.
- As of August 22, 2009, the most popular website according to Alexa.com and Ranking.com is Google.com. Next is Yahoo.com
- Google is named after googol, which is 1 followed by 100 zeroes. According to Google’s web site, their name reflects the company’s mission to organize the vast amount of information out there in the World Wide Web
- The supposed reason for Google.com’s sparse homepage was that its owners did not know HTML well enough that even the first versions of the homepage did not contain the submit button. The only way to make Google start searching was to hit the Return or Enter key.
- Although Google and Yahoo are today’s top search engines, they certainly were not the first. One of the earliest search engines, Gopher Search Engine, was already working since 1991.
- Gopher was another application working on the internet and was an alternative to the World Wide Web. The main reason for its present day obscurity is that web browsers are much more user friendly and, unlike Gopher, are able to integrate text and graphics
- The oldest, still working .com website belongs to symbolics.com. It was registered way back March 15, 1985.
- Vice President Al Gore’s misinterpreted statement about taking the initiative to create the Internet was one of the main causes of his defeat during the 2000 presidential elections.
- Al Gore was credited by Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf as the first political leader who recognized the importance of the internet.
- The number of hits returned by Googling “internet” is 1.6 billion.
- If you Google “sex”, the number of hits is approximately 637 million while “money” returns 913 million. It’s kind of reassuring though that “love” returns more than 1.4 billion hits while family has more than 1.1 billion hits.
- The business of web hosting in 2009 is estimated to be almost 51.2 billion dollars.
- The largest market is in Asia with a value of 15.7 billion
- By 2014, the value of web hosting is forecasted to be more than 73 billion dollars.
- Intel’s rival chipmaker AMD estimated the number of internet users in January, 2009 to be 1.4 billion.
- Vint Cerf coined the term internaut to refer to any technically capable professional user of the internet.
- All three letter word combinations from aaa.com to zzz.com are already registered as domain names.
- There is a race to register generic and sellable domain names. This practice is called domain name speculation and is the intent of the owner to sell them later for profit. Recent domain names that have been sold for a million dollars include business.com and sex.com
- 1 million domain names are registered every month
- Domain name speculation using the names of famous people is considered cybersquatting and could be a violation of intellectual property laws in some countries. Bruce Springsteen, Kevin Spacey, and Julia Roberts, all have at one time been victimized by cybersquatters.
- 100 percent of the top 10000 family names are already registered as domain names.
- In 1996, Yahoo’s front page did not include email. It was only in the 3rd quarter of 1996 when the first webmail site Hotmail was launched. The webmail service that came to be known as Yahoo Mail was launched much later on October 2007.
- According to AT&T vice president Jim Cicconi, 8 hours of video is uploaded into YouTube every minute. This was on April 2008. On May 21, 2009, YouTube receives 20 hours of video every minute.
- YouTube’s bandwidth requirements to upload and view all those videos cost as much as 1 million dollars a day and growing. The revenues generated by YouTube cannot pay for its upkeep.
- The bandwidth consumed by YouTube in 2007 is comparable to the entire bandwidth consumed by the whole internet in 2000
- There is a company named Universal Tube and Rollform Equipment, a manufacturer of metal machine tubes and pipes. Its website, utube.com often got overloaded by traffic meant for YouTube. The website was later renamed utubeonline.com
- The contents of most of today’s active websites are stored in databases which are largely invisible to search engines. Termed the Deep Web, it contains data such as book prices, airfares and other stuff that will never surface unless somebody queries for that information.
- The Deep Web and all that hidden information is what prevents search engines from giving us a definitive answer to simple questions like “How much is the cheapest airfare from New York to London next Thursday”?
- The size of the Deep Web has been estimated to be 400 to 550 times larger than the searchable web
- In a recent survey conducted by security specialist Symantec of the 100 dirtiest websites, 48 percent feature adult content
- Around 75 percent of the music that is available for download has never been purchased and it is costing money just to be on the server.
- Of the 13 million music files available on the web, 52,000 tunes accounted for 80% of download.
- Naked women make up 80 percent of all the pictures on the internet
- By 2012 it has been said that there will be 17 billion devices connected to the internet. In most of Asia, mobile phones are leading the way to internet connectivity
- The maker of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, born 1984, is said to be the youngest self-made billionaire
- He is the 321st richest person in the US
- Zuckerberg lunched FaceBook in his dormitory room while still in Harvard
- The online population of Facebook, 250 million users worldwide, and MySpace, which had 100 million accounts by 2007, are bigger than the populations of many nations worldwide
- On April 2008, Facebook overtook MySpace in terms of monthly visits
- It took the Web only 4 years to reach 50 million users. Radio took 38 years while TV made it in 13 years.
- Amazon.com was formerly known as Cadabra.com
- Bit torrents, depending on location, are estimated to consume 27 to 55 percent of all internet bandwidth as of February, 2009
- Blogger Kyle MacDonald who through a series of trades over the Web, managed to get a house from a paper clip.
- After the deed to the house was signed in MacDonald’s name, his girlfriend accepted his proposal and the engagement ring was made from the original red paperclip.
- Mahir Cagri achieved internet fame by way of his endearing use of broken English in his website. The banner of his site reads “This is my page….. Welcome to my home page!!!!!! I kiss you!!!!!”
- It was estimated that 1 of 8 married couples started by meeting online
- An image search on Google for “241543903” will show heads in freezers
- It is said that there are 5 porn pages for every single normal page
- Typing “the” in Google search results in 11,360,000,000 hits. In October 2004, the number of hits was 5,890,000,000
Increased traffic in your blog is desirable right? You crave recognition but when the moment arrives when your articles get slashdotted and dugg, your server inevitably crashes. What your readers get is an error message saying that the website is unavailable. This story has happened a hundred times already such that a name for it was invented. The “Digg effect” has even caused dedicated web accounts to crash majestically.
The pages of most websites today, especially blogs and social networking sites, are generated dynamically using PHP and MySQL. Assembling dynamic content requires more server resources compared to pages based on flat HTML. Fortunately, there are ways to optimize your server so that it uses fewer resources such as:
- Maintaining a cache of recently created content. Generation of dynamic content is a long process involving database queries and piecing query results with HTML and CSS. If a cache is enabled, what the server passes on to the browser when the same URL is accessed is content consisting of readily accessible HTML. This is good because aside from faster response times when serving HTML pages, server resources are not used to put together dynamic content.
- Optimizing the design of database tables as well as creating more efficient queries thus lessening the demand on your server’s resources when generating dynamic content. Make sure to index table fields that are used as foreign keys as well as those fields that are part of joins and used in forming query criteria.
- Making appropriately sized images and using the most acceptable JPEG compression is another effective way of lessening the demand on your server’s resources. If you use images as plain-colored backgrounds, CSS can do this task for you without the cost of reading an image file and positioning it somewhere on your web page. CSS can also tile images such that there is no need to use one huge image to serve as backdrop to your web page
- Using compression to reduce the size of data transmitted between the server and the reader
Preventing your site from crashing because of traffic surges is actually doable and is being practiced by experienced bloggers and site administrators. As you may have read, some of the tips mentioned are very simple like enabling the cache while others may require more experienced hands such as query optimization.
So the next time your site crashes the tips on this articles might help you solve this problem. If not help is readily available on the web.
Perez Hilton
No, this first picture has not been altered. Hollywood blogger sensation Perez Hilton really does have pink hair in this photo, and sadly, yes, the black eye is real too. Back in June, after the Toronto MuchMusic Video Awards, Black Eyed Peas manager Polo Molina reportedly punched Perez Hilton in the face. Perez obviously needs some makeover help, so we used these 25 Most Useful Photoshop Effects to take the attention away from his black eye. These effects are great for any photos needing an image makeover and as an added bonus we have added a link where you can find the tutorial on how to create these effects on your own.
Crack and Peel
http://photoshop-tutorials.deviantart.com/art/Crack-and-Peel-R-20607858
This effect can give you the impression that the picture is painted on rock wall somewhere and is slowly falling apart. This effect can make an image look old or fragile. It’s very striking and the tutorial can show you how it is done.
Changing Hair Color
http://www.cgshelf.com/changing_hair_color.php
This effect is so amazing that it may be hard to tell that anything has been changed. We thought Perez could use a little more color so our Photoshop hair stylist added some orange highlights.
Classical Portrait
http://www.bmcphotoart.com/portraittutorial.html
After softening the edges and dimming the light this photo could be a piece of artwork hanging on your wall. If you want to give your photo that classical feel check out the tutorial for an easy way to do it.
Collage of Polaroids
http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-effects/polaroids/
This is a very cool effect that easily breaks a photo up into different parts and assembles them as a collage of Polaroids. Check out the easy tutorial.
Color and Motion
http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-effects/bourne-blur/
With this effect you can easily add color and motion to your photo. It works best for still shots of something that is already moving but as you can see it can add a cool effect to a portrait as well. Tutorial here.
Coloring Effects
http://kailoon.com/photo-edit-coloring-effects/
There are many different coloring effects in Photoshop and the tutorial here will give you an understanding on how easy it can be. In this case, we give Perez an excuse for getting into a scrape – see how sick he looks?
Darklight
http://www.photoshopassist.com/?p=68
With the Darklight effect in Photoshop you can smooth out the color and give your photo more intimate lighting. Tutorial here.
Dave Hill Look
http://www.diyphotography.net/creating-that-dave-hill-look
If you are a fan of Dave Hill’s amazing photos you can make your own with this Dave Hill Look effect, just for the step-by-step tutorial.
Dramatic Gritty Effect
http://photoshopfrenzy.com/?p=94
The Dramatic Gritty Effect really brings out the details and makes them raw and more alive. Check out the tutorial to give your pictures a Dave Hillier than Dave Hill effect.
Eery Eye Photo
http://www.photoshopstar.com/photo-effects/eery-eye-photo-manipulation/
When you see this photo you might think differently about Perez’s story. Just looking at that fire in his eyes it can be easy to assume that he may have caused the fight himself. Very useful for making a photo look guilty. You can add your own eery eye effect with the help of the tutorial.
Face Painting on a Cracked Wall
http://www.celoxdesign.net/free-photoshop-tutorials/face-painting-on-cracked-wall/id/69
If you have always wanted your own fresco you can now be one step closer with the Face Painting on a Cracked Wall effect. This looks as if it came straight out of the Renaissance period. Or from an ancient cave. Become a caveman painter with this tutorial.
Fill a Photo with Photos
http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-effects/photo-fill/
No it is not a bad case of acne, they are actually photos. If you look closely you will see that Perez has a bunch of faces on his face and in fact the whole picture is made up of tiny pictures. This is one very cool effect. This tutorial is for that the-whole-is-bigger-than-the-sum-of-its-parts look.
Filtering Out Colors
http://www.photographyforums.org/photoshop/323-filtering-out-colours.html
By far one of the greatest effects is the ability to filter out colors. Always wondered how it can be done? Well with this tutorial now you will know.
Ghosting Effect
http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-effects/ghosting/
Want a spooky effect to your picture? Try this ghosting effect and see what you may look like in the afterlife. You might never want to look at Perez Hilkton again after this tutorial.
Good and Evil
http://www.steelfrog.com/good-and-evil/
Does Perez really need the good and evil Photoshop work, when he blackens one side “manually”? Maybe not, but you can use this effect to show your dark side to people.
Making Image Awesome
http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/tutorials/index.cfm?featureID=1709
http://www.celoxdesign.net/free-photoshop-tutorials/trippy-colors-photo-effect/id/63
Perez looks like he is enjoying himself at a crazy disco party. With this effect you can make any image look awesome!
Oil Painting
http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-effects/oil-painting/
Want to give your favorite photo that oil painting look? Then try this Photoshop effect for a fast and easy way to create a unique piece of art online. No painting lessons required.
Photo To Line Art
http://www.verlagmartinkoch.at/tutorials/combinelineart/index.html
With this Photoshop effect you can easily turn any photo into line art. Check out the tutorial for step-by-step instructions to learn how. This effect is ideal when you want an image to appear hand-drawn.
Puzzle Pattern
http://www.heathrowe.com/puzzeltexture.aspx
All the pieces are starting to come together with this effect. Turn your photo into a jigsaw puzzle. This effect helps make an image look like it’s just a picture, with a bit of 3D effect thrown in.
Rain to a Photo
http://photoshopessentials.com/photo-effects/rain/
It was a dark and stormy night… well even if it was a beautiful day this effect will allow you to add a little rain into your photos. This effect is very useful to set a mood when Mother Nature was being uncooperatively sunny.
Retro Comic Effect
Want to be a comic book hero? Well the tutorial for this effect will make that happen. Cape and tights not included. This tutorial is ideal when you want to tell a story with photos in a light-hearted way.
Stencil Art
http://www.melissaclifton.com/tutorial-stencila.html
Why pay money for the artist on the street corner to draw your picture when you can turn any photo into stencil art using this cool Photoshop effect. This tutorial also can make the image look like it was taken from a newspaper.
Too Close to TV
http://www.photoshoplab.com/too-close-to-your-tv.html
To add a little technical surrealism try out this effect that resembles being to close to a retro television screen.
Watercolor Effects
http://kailoon.com/photo-edit-watercolor-effect/
http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-effects/watercolor-painting/
With this effect you can turn your favourite picture in a watercolor painting in no time.
Water Reflection
http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-effects/water-reflection/
This is a very powerful effect to add a water reflection to any picture and although it might not work as well with a portrait just think of what you can do with a landscape shot. This effect can make an image appear more real, more three dimensional.
No matter where you go on the net, you will hear the phrase, “Content is king”. Traffic is important of course, but what is keeping them on your page? What is the reason they come back? It isn’t the pretty graphics and cool little advertisements you have going on. What it all comes down to is the connection they feel with the subject, and the writer that is producing it.
Whether you are a website owner trying to provide higher quality content to your readers, or you are a content producer trying to gain new prospects through better quality, you can gain something from here. Long sentence, I know, but I had to incorporate everyone. Just keep in mind that you are here to learn, and you have to put your own spin on things to really become original. Anyone can copy and rewrite, but creating your own brand and personality is where the readership will follow.
So what’s the hold up? Get to the good stuff.
To start, you have to always keep your audience in mind. You need to engage the reader and make your content different from any other person that writes on the same topic. If the average reader is a certain age group, education level, or has a certain level of experience, make sure to target them in your writing. Also, keep all of your writing consistent. Inconsistency will give your readers the impression that your organization skills are nonexistent and will encourage them to stop reading before the end.
You know who your readers are, so now you have to know what they are doing there. What is the point of your content? Seems like a simple question, but often times writers don’t really think about what their writing will do. Are you here to inform? Maybe you are reviewing and selling a product. Whatever the case may be, get into the readers mind set and give them what they want. If they came to you to find out the best casserole recipe, then by God at the end of it they better know which the best is. Inform when appropriate, sell when necessary, and always entertain. No matter how serious the subject material, make sure the reader feels connected to your views, and enjoyed what you had to say.
Now that you have the right mindset, it is time to get into how to write. Try to use bold words when necessary, italicize to emphasize certain parts, and underline accordingly. These action points can increase readers attention, and create a better flow overall. Don’t overdo it! Like anything in life, a little taste can be good, but too much can really put off the average reader.
It’s time to become a real life person.
Hopefully you have a personality at this point in your life. If not, I can sell you one for $24.99, plus shipping and handling. Too steep a price? Alright, I will let you in on a little taste for free. Giving your writing personality is as easy as adding your two cents where appropriate. You don’t always have to have something witty and humorous to say. Just say something that tells the reader, “OK, this is a real person writing this”.
Let’s say you have to write about an acne product. The target audience is in their late teens, early twenties. Desperate for a solution to their problem, they happen upon your website. They already know what the product is supposed to do, how it does it, and what they can expect from purchasing it. Simply stating those facts will have the reader running for true insight. Here is where you have to add a little personal touch.
If you are trying to keep it as professional as possible, avoid a story and state a simple fact that has improved your life. “Other so called acne solutions have always left skin peeling, red glaring examples of their inability to work on my face. With so and so product, no redness or irritation occurred, and I could vibe out to the latest club banger without fear of being seen“. This will create an instant connection to you and the material.
As long as you are capable of coming across with some kind of personal insight, people will instinctively listen to what you have to say. Add some flare, make a joke, and give some personal enlightenment that you recently achieved. Continue to sharpen your writing skills and you will soon have no problem keeping the audience happy.
There is no shortage of tools and resources to help web designers work better and more efficiently. Unfortunately the best of these tools can be difficult to find. Here are some my top picks, divided into the essential categories of web design and development.
Colors and Fonts
Depending on the site, the choice of colors and fonts can portray as much about it as its text. While you may, or may not, already be an expert in color theory or typography, the following tools can still help you make good design choices:
Adobe Kuler – Find, create, and modify color schemes
Font Squirrel – Large free font collection, allows commercial uses
WhatTheFont – Automatically identify fonts
Typetester – Compare fonts, side by side
sIFR – Use non-standard fonts on sites, without breaking compatibility
Graphics and Icons
Graphics, from logos to interface icons, are both an effective way to provide the user with information, and add to a design. The following resources can help with the graphic design process, or are ready-to-use openly licensed graphics:
stock.xchng – Free Stock Photography
Silk Icons – Popular free 16×16 icons
IconBuffet – Swap icons with other users
Vecteezy – Free collection of vectors
Liquidcity – Vector icon collection, designed for websites
Coding and Testing
Now that your design is shaping up, it’s time to begin coding and testing. The following tools can help you code, find bugs, and cross-browser test efficiently:
Spiffy Corners – Purely CSS Rounded Corners
Browsershots – See your page as it appears in dozens of browsers
W3C Quality Assurance Tools – Find coding errors, broken links, etc
Web Developer – A Firefox addon with many essential design tools
Firebug – Another Firefox addon, which aides in debugging
HTML Tidy Online – Automatically clean up your HTML source
