OK - it’s not technology related, but it’s an amazing video of how hard people work in this world to get by. Enjoy!

Here is a great php tip for those who want to load a different image into your header every time the page loads. For example, you may have a folder of images that you want to rotate in your header or any element of your site for that matter. Here’s how to do it.

Place all your images in a folder and name them something like this:

• pics/image1.jpg
• pics/image2.jpg
• pics/image3.jpg

Use the php rand() function to give your header an random id.

<div id="header<?php echo rand(1,3); ?>">
<!-- header content here --></div>

The rand function in the code above returns a random number between 1 and 3 which is what we want. So every time the page is loaded, we get an id of either header1, header2 or header3. In you CSS you can now markup like this.

DIV#header1 {background-image:url("pics/image1.jpg")}
DIV#header2 {background-image:url("pics/image2.jpg")}
DIV#header3 {background-image:url("pics/image3.jpg")}

Now your page loads with a random header image. Brilliant!

We all know how important it is to get good rankings on Google and Yahoo. No matter whether you want to outsource your SEO or do it yourself, it is essential to know what not to do as well as what to do. So, without further adieu, here are the most common SEO mistakes that you must avoid at all times.

Link Spamming

This is poison for your site. OK, you’ll have thousands of links, but not quality links. Google loves links if they are authoritative but will penalise you if you have loads of crap pointing to your site. Forget the business of getting thousands of links to your site. Spend your time instead enhancing your site and you will be much better off in the long run.

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Always nice to have a free resource for your webdesign projects. Here you will find some excellent icons you can use for free.

25 Free Icon Resources for Designers

All designers love experimenting with new textures and backgrounds. They are one of the first things visitors see when they go to your site so it’s always vital to have designs that won’t scare them away before they get to the content of your site. If your devoid of some backgrounds or textures, there are some great tutorials to get you going.

Liquid Blood

Folds

Silk

Vista

Rock

Bubbles

Plaid

Water

Something I found surprisingly difficult to find on the net is how to add custom 404 pages to your main and sub domains. A lot of people are scared of customising their pages due to the complicated nature of regular expression matching and .htaccess files.

So, what are 404 pages? If you try to browse to a non-existent page, this will cause a 404 error on the server and you will be directed to a 404 page. The problem arises for some when the server redirects your visitor to a 404 page they want to see rather than the one that you want. Take a look at a hostgator 404 page:

Not pretty, is it? This is a clever way for hostgator to make money on your sites and even direct traffic away from your site. Read on to see how to create your own custom 404 page and keep visitors at your site.

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If you haven’t heard, google has been updating their indexing of websites lately. This does not affect the page rank of your site, but it is having a drastic effect on some unsuspecting sites traffic. Many sites are experiencing a free fall in their rankings to a point where their business’ are been wiped out.

Google does this if believes that a site has been naughty in it’s marketing techniques. It is not just spam sites that google now targets, but any site could become victim of the google curse.

How do you know if your site is a victim of this latest round of blood-letting? Check your index stats in the google search engine “site:yoursite.com”, and do a search for your targeted keywords in google. If you find a dramatic drop in your rankings or index pages, then the almighty google has purged your site.

This seems to be happening to the most unsuspecting sites. I have heard from Eamonn, the webmaster of telcojobs.eu, that overnight all his marketing efforts since he started the site have been for nought. “I noticed my traffic was way down this morning, but when I checked my keywords, they were nowhere to be seen!” said Eamon. “I’ve been working solid with article marketing for 6 months and now it’s down the tubes”.

It is the sort of news that makes a webmasters’ blood run cold or wake you in the night in a screaming cold sweat. I suppose the moral of the story here is never entrust you websites success in the hands of the google gods. Always look for diverse traffic from many different sources like banner ads, social networking and the other search engines like MSN and yahoo.

So, what do you do if your site is slammed by google? Well, you might have to bite your tongue and follow googles own guidelines.

Determine whether your site is still in our index - site:www.yoursite.com
Verify your site ranks for your domain name - if it ranks poorly in the results, then google probably has penalised you. if this is the case, then you will be sent an explaination to the Message Center area in your webmaster tools, if you have set one up.
Request Reconsideration - This will allow to post a rant directly to google, but your probably better off banging your head off a brick wall as it can take many weeks for google to respond. And don’t expect the gods to lift their curse.

jQuery is a very impressive way to add a touch of professionalism to your site and has really taken off with the advent of the Web 2.0 bandwagon. Here, I’ll show you how to add Collapsible Divs to your site AND to your wordpress blog.

Have a look at the Collapsible jQuery Example for wordpress we are going to use here.

jQuery Wordpress Example

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Aliquam non magna fringilla justo varius scelerisque. Nam consectetuer lectus et urna. Cras a ligula elementum quam vulputate fringilla. Vestibulum lorem. Nulla neque sem, dictum a, fermentum in, suscipit at, nunc. Vestibulum vitae tortor in risus facilisis iaculis.

Nulla elit nisl, tempus vitae, pulvinar eget, consectetuer eget, enim. Nam condimentum. Nullam euismod, magna non posuere tristique, magna lorem hendrerit risus, a scelerisque quam enim quis quam. Sed id enim. Aenean eget orci.

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So, how to add this magic to your blog?

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I love this design. It’s bright and really draws you in. Even the ‘New’ logo has a hypnotic feel about it. The home page brings you tothe middle of the page, with the sky and moon above and the deep sea below.

Click on the octopus and umbrella at the bottom of the page!

If you need a quick SEO analysis of your site, then Website Grader is a superb tool. Over on Digital Point forums, some people offer this kind of service for a donation where the URL that is analyzed simply gets fed into this site.

Simply enter your URL, and wait for the results which will be very helpful in getting your site on the right track at least.

You can also enter the URL of a competing site to see how you match up. You will get a full report on On-page SEO, Off-page SEO, how you rank on the blogosphere and a load of other stuff.

Try it! Just go to http://www.websitegrader.com and see how your site ranks.