Search engine optimization helps you crank up your rankings in Google. Here are three easy techniques to make your posts land on the front page of Google's search returns: Put keywords in the title and first paragraph. Google places a heavy emphasis on keywords appearing in the title and first paragraph. The best placement is actually the first word in each. You can also install an SEO plugin in case you can't fit the keywords into the t...
Ann Gentle of BMC has been researching the use of wikis in documentation. Although wikis have been around for at least ten years, they are finally getting more attention. Ann writes, It's funny, in an early blog post I wrote on the internal blogs at BMC I said that I did not see how wikis would be used successfully for technical publications. I have since changed my once low opinion of wikis but I still see them supplementing other docum...
Listen here: In this podcast, I talk with Kevin Shoesmith about information architecture and the challenge of organizing complicated websites. Kevin explains about the importance of metadata, providing user-driven organization, taxonomy vs. folksonomy, the Dublin core, the usability of web menus. Music from Podshow. Check out Kevin's blog.
Lucy has a great smile. I wish I were always this happy, even when giants held me up.
Context-sensitive help is usually perceived as being tedious or difficult to implement. However, if you're writing help for a web application, this little javascript trick makes delivering context-sensitive help easy. Using this method, the developer doesn't have to manually configure any of the URLs, and you as a tech writer have only a minimal amount of work as well. Each page in the application calls the right help topic for the right ...
Popurls is a news site that aggregates the top stories from Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, Flickr, Metafilter, Tailrank, Newsvine, Youtube, Google News, Yahoo News, Netscape, ifilm, Wired, Slashdot, Boing Boing, Odeo, Fark, NowPublic, Stumble Upon, Furl, Clipmarks, dzone, Videosift, AOL Video, and then from about two dozen popular sites all on one page in one consolidated view. Talk about taking in all the news from the Web from one central ...
Shannon's latest Makes Me Smile Monday theme is fathers. When I think of my childhood and spending time with my father, I think of us playing catch in the field near our house. He always pretended I was throwing the ball so hard and fast that it hurt his hand. He would also swing a rope with a ball around the end while I batted it. My dad was more supportive with me for baseball than any other sport -- perhaps because he could participate...
Google Reader offers a Shared feature that allows you to share select posts from your list of feeds in Google Reader by simply clicking a Share link (see image below). You can then provide your readers with a link to your shared items page as well as your shared items feed. I just added my Shared Items page as a link in my header.
Have you ever run across Postsecret? It's an interesting site showing anonymously submitted confessions on postcards. This latest post has a father's day theme -- some are sad confessions, others are downright funny, like the one below:
Last week I posted a survey on my site asking who my readers were. Here are the results of that survey. You can view the report here as well. Geographic Breakdown Here's a geographic breakdown of where my readers are located. Survey Analysis Most of my of my readers are in technical communication. They're more interested in blogging than podcasting, and only a handful have met me personally. This means I'm largely writing for strangers....
This innovate podcast with Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch, provides an interesting look into entrepreneurship. Arrington says blogging can be like a treadmill rather than a train — the treadmill (blog) just requires more and more content without really going anywhere. He actually says blogging is not a good business. Each day you have to generate new, interesting content for your blog to keep readers coming back. The best kinds ...
This podcast from Tim and Tom's Design Critique is a good introduction to Information Architecture. Information architecture involves making content findable, usually in reference to websites. How intuitive is it for users to locate what they're trying to find or do? The role of the information architect is to organize information such that the user has no trouble finding exactly what he or she desires, particularly in situations where th...
My Recommended Podcasts feed gives you the best episode picks from a variety of podcasts. These podcast episodes often spur me to write about their ideas. You can subscribe to the Recommended Podcast feed here. (You can also read about 17 podcasts I recommend here.)
If you glance at the instructions for installing Mediawiki, it looks like you have to run complicated scripts with shell access to your server and other geeky stuff. In reality, it's about as easy to install as Dokuwiki -- assuming you have a typical hosted account, such as with Blue Host or Lunar Pages. Here's how to do it. To install Mediawiki: The latest version of Mediawiki requires PHP5. If you don't already have PHP5 on your serve...
Update Feb 2008: If you read Paul's post at the link below, almost everything is now crossed out, because Madcap has either fixed all the problems Paul raised or they explained workarounds. It's a really interesting read. Also, be sure to check out this podcast with Paul as well as my post on 45 Things I Love About Flare, 31 Things I Hate About It. Paul Pehrson has an excellent post detailing six persistent problems he's encountered with ...
