Semester 1 2010

Over the last term we have learnt many things in MPI104. The main aim of learning all this was to eventually put together a website. Firstly we learnt about CSS – Cascading Style Sheets. CSS was designed to enable separation of document content and document presentation to make modifying the look and layout of your website easier. Next was File Transfer Protocol (FTP). This is where we can transfer our files that we create on our computer onto the World Wide Web. We were all given an Athene account to publish our websites too. Next we learnt about adding counters to our websites. This was so we could keep track of how many people actually visited our space. At the moment the counts are only around 80, but the more different and exciting things I add to my website, the more hits I will get… hopefully... We also touched on RSS feeds. These allow you to subscribe to web pages using RSS feeds, and get updates on your webpage when they update theirs. RSS feeds have a monthly subscription cost and are very handy in keeping up-to-date with events and such. We then signed our blogs up to technorati. And because my website is visited very little and not up-dated a lot, I also have no authority in the technorati world. But I did learn that Technorati is a great tool for businesses or even just for a person to keep track of what people are ‘saying about you, your company, your products, your competitors, your politics and, other areas of interest, on the Internet in real time’(Technorati 101). It is a great source that works different to RSS feeds. It reads all WebPages, not just RSS subscribed ones. So eventually after learning all of this info, we were able to create our very own personal webpage using IWeb. Here we added counters, links and even a RSS subscription. All in all it has been a very interesting and useful semester in MPI104.
If you would like to visit my latest website, please feel free to click here !

Technorati

Technorati is a internet search engine that competes with Yahoo and Google. It follows blogs and keeps its followers up-to-date with what is happening in relation to themselves and their business. Similar to the RSS feed, Technorati will alert when changes have been made to other webpages and updates made. For Technorati to follow your web page or blog, you do not need a working RSS feed. Technorati allows you to find out what people are saying about you, your company, your products, your competitors, your politics and, other areas of interest, on the Internet in real time.

Your blog will get a ranking. Last year my blog was ranked 4,814,527 in the Technorati radar and had no authority. This number meant that four million, eight hundred and fourteen thousand, five hundred and twenty six people either joined before me, and/or have a higher number of links, favourite hits and/or followers then i did.

My 2010 blog is currently awaiting claim review. It is not yet influential on the world. One day....

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Really Simple Syndication

RSS ("Really Simple Syndication") is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works. It allows you to subscribe to feeds from RSS pages which will automatically update when new information is added to the page.
Google Reader is a simple way to subscribe to RSS feeds. All you have to do is go to the Google Reader tab in Gmail and click on the add feed icon. After subscribing you can go through the information you have subscribed to in the Subscription side bar.


Here is the site you use to add an RSS feed to your webpage - Feed2JS

Counters.

Counter are widgets that count the number of hits your web page has had.
You would use counters so you are able to see how popular your web page is. The more views the better. And if your web page is maintaining, increasing or decreasing in visits, you would be able to tell and then take appropriate actions to increase your hits!

There are a few web analysis tools out there, some are; Deep Log Analyzer, Google Analytics, AWStats, W3Perl and Power Phlogger.

File Transfer Protocol.

FTP is is a standard network protocol used to copy a file from one host to another over a TCP/IP-based network, such as the Internet.
FTP can be used to easily upload web pages and information to these web pages.
Some positives of FTP are that you can upload information onto a public server instantaneously. You could use this as a public and easily assessable CV. Files can be uploaded straight onto the Internet. You can format colours, size and fonts in word and thenupload without the hassle of coding these in.
Some negatives and risk associated with FTP are; Bounce Attacks, Spoof Attacks, Brute Force Attacks, Sniffing, Username Protection, & Port Stealing. These problems can be minimized by employing encryption tools.
Other information i learnt in class today is that anything you out on your Athene account is going to be publicly assessable too the whole world and that we get 20mg worth of space and that the links are case sensitive. I feel educated on Athene and FTP now and am ready to start creating.

Cascading Style Sheets

Advantages in CSS are designed to enable separation of document content and document presentation.

This improves accessibility, flexibility and control in presentation. It reduces complexity and repetition and allows multiple pages to share formatting.

Using templates you can change the entire webpage layout, staying within the limits of what the template can handle of course. It allows you to change the colours, font, size and background.

There certain options in templates that you cannot change. If the template your offering doesn’t offer it then you can’t change it. For example, some texts, fonts and colours are unavailable.

Accessibility is worth considering because having your webpage easily accessible ensures that more people can navigate it and hence more people will view and use it.

Link to your post as a comment to this post, about what you have customised on your Blog using Template changes and/or CSS HTML changes.