A coworker and I were discussing whether or not dashes are applicable in domain names - from earlier research, it seems Google has some specific issues when it comes to dashes “-” and underscores “_”.
ikeif_blog is the same as ikeifblog (note the _underscore_!)
That’s not going to do me any SEO favors. The fix is easy enough, fortunately, and luckily WordPress does this by default!
ikeif-blog is read as ikeif blog! (note the -dashes-!)
This includes your file names, image file names, page names, etc.
Why the _underscore_?
Our friend the _underscore_ is left over from earlier coding days and *nix systems. From what I’ve been able to gather, it’s not a space is because of programming functions like mysql_affected_rows in PHP, and many older C functions, pre Hungarian notation.
It just translated to the web as an extension of such. That and it kind of makes sense - keith_baker is more like keith baker visually, and keith-baker is like keithbaker. Got that? Google decided that -dashes- were more SEO friendly, and because Google is “the big one” we’re stuck following their obscure rules, and I’m forced (forced!) to research them ;). Is there a grammar lesson in there? May be!
What about periods?
Now we’re down to talking about keywords, and this could be beneficial to stores - yoga-pants.myyogastore.com is better than myyogastore.com - but the debate is open if yogastore.com/yoga-pants is a better alternative still!
The only danger in this,is you don’t want a convuluted or crowded domain name - then it starts to look spammy. Imagine if my domain was ikeif-blog-seo-mootools-jquery-nigerian-scams.com? We also start to make it a difficult site to remember! However, if you like owning domains, it might be possible to benefit from the keyword rich domain and include a 301-redirect to your actual site (if you have more detail, pass it on!)
I’m working on some new mootools functionality, and trying to be SEO friendly, so over the next several days the site may look a little wonky.
Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along-Blog!
This is something I have twitter to thank for - I stumbled on it from some random tweet, watched out of sheer morbid curiosity (it starts out like a vlog… Neil Patrick Harris as Dr. Horrible reading his email).
Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
It was once the singing kicked in that I loved it. It’s like “The Tick” from the villain’s point of view - just trying to be recognized as a villain, and have a personal life. I can’t say too much, but if this is where the future of generated online series goes - I’m loving it.
Part tragedy, part musical - it comes together in just under 40 minutes. Great performances, great music - and the idea behind the series was that:
The idea was to create something small and inexpensive, yet professionally done, in a way that would circumvent the issues that were being protested during the strike.
They succeeded, and I can’t wait for part two (or the DVD to come out so I can actually purchase it :D
Over at the Mootools Google Group daKmoR took the initiative and made a replacement for the very missed mootools forum - MooForum.net.
It’s slowly growing a following, with questions, solutions, and plugins being listed. As I wrap up some “plugins” and tutorials, I plan on adding them to MooForum so we can keep the community alive while the MooTools Devs wrap up their work!
Congrats to daKmoR for his work in pulling this together (and he just BARELY got the mooforum.net domain name before me!). Since it’s a volunteer effort (well - a volunteer for a volunteer framework!) this really showcases how much people care about it.
I’m still looking forward to Aaron’s “Mootools Essentials” Book due out soon!
So I’m a big torrent user. I love being able to say “screw you, VCR” and get my news when I want it, how I want it. My main tool of choice has been uTorrent. It’s fast, effective, and most awesomely - has a web user interface!….
…or it did until Firefox 3 came out. FF3 has been giving me its fair share of troubles, but that’s a story for another time. There is a “fix” available - but it’s had mixed responses, and I usually use the web UI from my macbook pro (so damn convenient!). I didn’t want to “down grade” firefox on the MBP since it’s been working great (except for the location bar occasionally not working…) so I figured - let’s find a new option.
I have parallels installed. Do I really want to launch it for utorrent to add new torrents? No. Overkill.
What about Safari? Oh, no, same perpetual “loading” screen - until I remember Safari’s Web Development Feature!
After I set up Safari with
defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitDeveloperExtras -bool true
I was able to get into the Safari Develop Open With selection - and behold! Netscape Navigator to the rescue!
Safari Developer Open With Window