Successful Blog

SOB BusinessCafe 01-20-2006

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SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

At the SOB Business Cafe, we offer the best in thinking–articles written by the
Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the screenshot to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

Javier Cabrera offers a clear discussion of the pros and cons of working at home versus getting an office for your self-owned business.

emaginacion.com.ar Home Office Article

Brian Shih comes through with a fabulous tool that cuts time making screenshots to almost nothing.

Brian Shih Cropper Article

Angie Pedersen writes the most compelling article on why blogging is good for your business and why businessess should hire bloggers.

Angie Pedersen typepad.com

Related ala carte selections are
S)B Directory
Be a Contributor!

Sit back. Enjoy your read. Nachos and drinks will be right over. Stay as long as you like.
No tips required. Comments appreciated.

Have a great weekend!

–ME “Liz” Strauss

SOB Buttons and Directory Update 2

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No Worries The SOB Directory Page

The Directory is coming along and looking fine. Go on it. Check it out! But it would be looking grand, if I got more of your bios in. So start sending them . . . . hint, hint, grin, grin. 🙂

Surely you must have 1-2 sentences description of your blog from some directory listing on your computer. Dust it off and send it along. It will get featured as others did last week. Think of it as free advertising to a substantial future readership. grin grin, hint, hint,.

By the way, if you’d have a better version of your logo feel free to send that too. Only one restriction–60 pixels high and not more than 200 pixels wide is what fits.

In case you don’t know where to send them . . .e-mail them to me at lizsun2@gmail.com.

The SOB Button Still Exists

If you are an official SOB and need a new one. Here you go.

SOB Button

By the way, please feel free to slightly adjust the size to fit your blog design. We want SOBs to have Successful and Outstanding Blog Designs too. (And Rob at Jamdo, it would look great in your sidebar below your ad space–hint, hint, grin, grin)

Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Directory. Click the link or visit from the sidebar.

More New Features Are Coming–Even Today!

So hang in there. The fun is just starting. Some really strong articles are coming too.
We’re making Success the new Style around here.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

No More NoFollow

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I asked Sumeet Jain if I could republish this post of his here, because though I had heard of the issue, I didn’t fully understand it. He was more than happy to agree. I thought it best to include all parts of his article including comments. I encourage you to check out the links along the way for more information and an additional tutorial should you decide remove nofollow yourself. –ME “Liz” Strauss

no more nofollow
by Sumeet Jain

Monday, December 19th

If you’re a blog owner, please pay attention. Early this year, Google announced the nofollow value for the rel attribute. This made it possible for blog owners to stop Google from crediting sites comments link to. This was mostly received positively and most blogging platforms picked it up. WordPress, the most popular blogging platform, includes nofollow by default. The logic behind the move is to shut out comment spammers by not rewarding them. Whether or not that’s an effective way to shut them out is not what I care to discuss. I dislike nofollow because it’s antithetical to the web.

So I’ve removed it from my installation of WordPress, and I encourage you to do the same.

Removing nofollow yourself:

Open wp-includes/comment-functions.php.

Find “function get_comment_author_link”
Replace “return = “$author”
with “return = “$author“.
Save and close.

Removing nofollow via plugin:
I haven’t tested any of these, but they’re available nonetheless.

DoFollow

Follow URL

For an detailed explanation of why nofollow is bad, check out NoNoFollow.

COMMENTS

a little birdie named Jem told me,
There’s more to getting rid of nofollow that editing wp-includes/comment-functions.php – I wrote a tutorial on it AGES ago. 🙂 You can find it here: nofollow removal tutorial

i thought about it and responded,
Hi Jem, thanks for the link to the tutorial – nofollow certainly has been around long enough that many tutorials were written. I wanted to wait a bit and see what kind of reception it got and impact it had on the community. It’s sad that the way it was used was simply to stick it in all the comments – like a blanket solution to a very intricate problem.

It might have been nicer if platforms like WordPress were strategic in their use of nofollow. For example, if a blog has moderation enabled, then all comments can at least be shown initially but have nofollow included. I can definitely see a couple uses for it, but it really is unfortunate that the only prolific use of nofollow was to kill linking.

As a side note to others reading this, Jem’s tutorial will remove nofollow for links within the comment as well. For example, the link to her tutorial in her comment above would not have the nofollow value. Some of you may like to maintain that value while others may not.

a little birdie named Jem told me,
“like a blanket solution to a very intricate problemâ€? – I couldn’t have put it better myself.

I don’t have anything against those who choose to use nofollow, although I don’t believe in it myself.. my major problem with it when I used WordPress was that it was forced upon people. Why not have it as an optional feature? Of course, it’s not a problem for me since I coded my own weblog, heh.

i thought about it and responded,
I do have something against those who choose to use nofollow. It’s likely my own ignorance, because I can’t think of why they would use it.

a little birdie named Tauquil told me,
I’m all with you on this one.

i thought about it and responded,
Glad to have your support, Tauquil. I noticed that your blog is one of the few that does follow links. Props to you.

You’ll find this post and the follow-up post here:

This article: no more nofollow

The follow-up post: nofollow advocacy

–Sumeet and Liz

Related articles:
How to Code Accessible Links–Part 1
Blogger/ Firefox–Editing Trap
Blog Construction–What’s Your Function?
Use Bloglines OPML to Find Interesting Blogs

Great Find: Developers Digest Web Design Tips

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Every Successful and Outstanding Blogger should know about this. The find is both the article from a programmer’s resource wiki.

Great Find: Developers Digest Web Design Tips
Type of Article: A Wealth of Wiki Articles on Web Design Advice
Permalink: Developers Digest Web Design Tips
Target Audience: Any blogger who wants a blog design that works for reachers (and search engines)

Content: As a publisher, not a programmer, I found this design advice to be totally on target. It’s clear, straightforward, and without a wasted word. If the screenshot below were the entire article, it would be superior to most of what I’ve found compacted in any one place–either in print or on the web. However the screenshot is just the Table of Contents. Each line is a link to a paragraph. You need more information. You’ve got it.

www.developersdigest.org/wiki design tips article

I love programmers. They’re so organized. Isn’t that beautiful?

Thank you, Developers Digest[dot]org.

This one is so good that I’m filing it with my checklists too.

. . . you know how much I like those checklists.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Successful Duncan Riley

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By now you must have heard about the secret auction held to sell the

Blog Herald Logo

to an as yet to be named new owner for what is being reported at over $70,000 USD.

Congratulations Duncan Riley on building an enterprise and a brand valued so highly. I think that officially qualifies you as an SOB–a Successful and Outstanding Blogger. I hereby award you with the badge of honor and your name on this blog forever.

SOB Button

Duncan’s Blog Herald has been on my reading list almost since the day I started blogging. It’s a one-of-a kind read that holds the niche of understanding the blogosphere and reporting on blogs around the world. I’ll miss reading Duncan’s take on things. I’ll miss having Duncan around.

On the other hand, it couldn’t happen to a better guy.

Duncan shares some of his reasons and reflections on the sale at these links, which I’ve tried to place in chronological order.

Twas The Blog Herald that’s been on the market

David Krug spends time with Duncan Riley

Duncan answers questions on The Blog Herald sale

Duncan talks to Site Sales about what he would look for in a blog

Duncan and Darren discuss the sale and using a broker

Seriously, Duncan all badges aside. I’ll miss reading you at 2:30 a.m. up here by Lake Michigan. So once you guys get b5 going strong, I’ll be looking for your new blog.

Best of Luck Always.
Liz

How to Code Accessible Links–Part 3

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How to Code an Accessible Embedded Hyperlink
by Cas of Brightmeadow

An embedded hyperlink is when the image is the hyperlink. An example of this is the feed button found in the ‘Subscribe’ section of Successful Blog’s sidebar.

These types of links can be problematic if you can’t view the images for whatever reason and you haven’t included ALT and TITLE attributes. To all intents and purposes, these links simply cease to exist. (Both screenshots that follow were trimmed at the top and side for fit).

View this screenshot of Successful Blog’s front page with images turned off,

CAS 3 without

and compare it to this one with images back on.
Cas 3 with images

The first thing you notice is that in the top image there is no banner, and then that there is no way to subscribe.

Ooops.

Basic code

An embedded hyperlink consists of a hyperlink tag and an image tag:

<a href=”http://www.foo.com/”> <img src=”image.jpg” /> <a href=”http://www.foo.com” title=”description of link destination”> <img src=”image.jpg” alt=”description text” />
Note how the TITLE is attached to the hyperlink, whilst the ALT is attached to the image.

When to use a full ALT description

Use a full ALT description when the image forms the entirety of the hyperlink, i.e., the image is the only anchor text.

When to use a null ALT description

Once again, think carefully about using the null ALT description (<alt=””>) when the hyperlink has a text component. For example:

<a href=”contactus.html” title=”contact page”> <img src=”contact.gif” alt=”contact us” /> Contact us </a></code> will render without images as <contact us contact us>
(The first from the alt attribute, the second from the anchor text).

In this case the image was purely decorative, and would have been better coded as <a href=”contactus.html” title=”contact page”> <img src=”contact.gif” alt=”” /> Contact us </a>.

A few notes

  • In this case, the ALT description should reflect the link destination as well as the image description. For example, in the case of a feed button, ALT text such as “feed for Successful Blog” might be be appropriate
  • It is also worth bearing in mind that, if you use external hosting for your images (like Flickr and Photobucket), you are at the mercy of their servers. If they go down and you haven’t thought to use ALT or TITLE, you are stuck. If you have made your links and images accessible, then you can keep going that much better till things return to normal,

And that is it. If you are already manually coding your hyperlinks, then making them accessible will just take a few seconds longer. If you aren’t yet manually coding your hypertext links, now is a good time to start. Those extra few moments pay huge dividends in terms of usability, SEO, and the general happiness of your readers. Whilst most of them won’t consciously notice a difference, the few that do will thank you for it, and we as bloggers are nothing without our readers.

If you are interested in learning more about this subject, the W3C has Web Accessibility Guidelines, and Webcredible have some very good white papers describing all aspects of accessibility and usability in more depth.

Sources for this article: The W3C, Webcredible, general common sense, and diverse other sources.

Thanks to Cas for the obvious work this took, and apologies in advance for any errors I might have introduced. We leave you now the links to the series. –ME “Liz” Strauss

The Complete Series
How to Code Accessible Links
This one: How to Code Accessible Links–Part 1
How to Code Accessible Links–Part 2
This one: How to Code Accessible Links–Part 3