Notice! As of 2008, I am no longer updating my site guide (these pages). It was a good idea, but never really took off (I’m too lazy, and now everyone just uses Wordpress anyway)… I may come back to it some day, or I may not (now that it’s 2012, I’d say it’s safe to say I won’t come back to it)… Currently, I’m putting anything new like this on my hardanswers site.

Welcome to my Site Guide.

I’ve been playing around with web sites, HTML, XML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript and all the other technologies that come with a web site, for a while now – it’s something of a hobby. As my sites have grown slowly more complex, I’ve had to work out more advanced ways to do the things I need. Sometimes, it has been quite difficult to find information explaining what I want to do, so I thought I’d explain the techniques I’ve used, for the benefit of anyone else who might be trying to do the same things I’ve done.

So, if you’ve been trying to do any of the below, here is how I’ve done it.

• Hotlink Prevention
  Ever had someone include an image from your site, into his or her site, and use up all your (expensive) bandwidth? Here’s a technique that prevents anyone from viewing files linked directly to your site, unless they’ve already visited your site.
• Caching
  There’s a lot of information out there explaining how to prevent browsers and caches from caching your dynamic content – but precious little explaining how to allow them to. Caching has the ability to save you money (by lowering your data transfers) and make your site appear faster and more responsive. Here’s how.
• Static and Persistent URI’s (Coming Soon)
  Links should be something that’s static, something that won’t change. Links like http://nedmartin.org/default?this=that&that=9dd4e461268c8034f5c8564e155c67a6 not only look bad and are impossible to remember, but they’re often not followed by search engines. How much better is http://nedmartin.org/default.html or, even better, http://nedmartin.org/default? Here’s how you can make your links look (and work) like this.
• Templates
  As anyone who has tried to maintain a site of any size will know, clever use of templates greatly reduces the time and complexity involved in updating something that appears on every single page – or even the look and feel of the whole site. Nearly all my sites use the same template system, which allows the basic content to be generated easily, by anyone, as plain XHTML, using anything from a text editor through to Dreamweaver – but displays it consistently when viewed online. Here’s how I did it.

I hope it’s of help to someone.

Please feel free to contact me should you have any suggestions. Note, though, that I am busy, and I can’t build your site for free.

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