Must say I'm so sick and tired of Microsoft products now. Everytime one needs a program or need to update or whatever, there are costs, problems in finding the item of your choice, and not to mention all these licenses and certifications and crap. Let alone the instability of the OS and all (almost) software installed onto this. Everything in mind to create a steady flow of the mighty dollar. Well, I have grown real tired of this, and turned my eye's towards Linux, which has been proposed to me several times over the years. I haven't had the expertise, though, as Linux mostly have been a tool for even more geeky persons than me (pardon my french). But now, or rather for sometime but it came to my knowledge just now, there is this easy Linux based OS called Ubuntu which seems really nifty.

Ubuntu is a community developed, linux-based operating system that is perfect for laptops, desktops and servers. It contains all the applications you need: a web browser, presentation, document and spreadsheet software, instant messaging and much more. - How nice doesn't this sound ?

I did go download a copy of the desktop CD (there is a server version aswell) and tried it out. You know, it's so cool, you can download the ISO file, burn it onto a CD, and try it out from the CD without installing anything (runs really slow, but...), further if one chooses to install, Ubuntu does it all for you (so they say, hehe).

I have but one webdesign job to do, and after that's done. I'm, oh so, going Linux.

...even at p-ahlqvist.com. God, that has taken it's sweet time. I have been running 1.5.42 since it got out and where cleared as stable, and thought that the changeover from that to 1.6, when it got released, was to much work, really.

So, now when having deleted my old index.php and CSS by mistake (what a mistake to make) and for the first time ever not having a backup, I thought to myself, why the hell not. If I'm about to do a new index page, why not do the engine change aswell ? Said, thought and done. A couple of days now, p-ahlqvist.com have been running off of sNews version 1.6 , not a day to soon, eh...

If you're anything like me, you don't like all too generally looking items on a website. I've been looking for a way to change my contactform so that it looks a tad differently than most do.

I found this excellent article by Sören Madsen at picment.com , which illustrates how to achieve a form that isn't like others. I have yet to test it though.

And furthermore, think... Is this change of form not ok with some readers, how can I achieve that those see the default form. Some consideration is called for...

A few days ago I did the most newbie mistake of them all... I deleted my index.php by mistake. This is not something one laughs at upon discovery, I can assure you that.

Never the less, something had to be done, of course. Can't have a non existing index.php, ergo - No site. So I scrambled this up, I'm not done with it yet, but as there are some whom actually pay for space here, I need to get something up as fast as possible.

So if you miss anything, or simply wants to comment upon my progress, please do so, and my sincere appologies for any inconvinience this might have caused you.

Patric Ahlqvist.

I was contacted by one of my customers about something I've never been involved in before. They had a video they wanted to be shown at their site. I thought of the most simple solution which is to upload the video and just link to it, but that wasn't the way they had planned it.

As most people they have also been made aware of he phenomonon, Youtube.com . And of course they wanted online, in browser, video. Now this was growing to be a problem for me as I had never done such a thing before, but luckily there is such things as open source, and people that gladly share what they've accomplished on the net.

A friend of mine shared this link with me: http://www.jeroenwijering.com/ , and I was eager to investigate. I went there and I downloaded the media player, in order to try it out.

And by just uploading this to my server, and having a browse at the readme file , and t he setup wizard I was online showing video in no time, in a matter of minutes actually.

Now this isn't a thing intended for the use with sNews , I'm sure you get that, but it's not non-integratable as many other tools are. You just add the javascript call in the head tag of the index.php and then add the javascript that makes the player show inside an article or a page.

For a demo, if not finding anything on Jeroen Wijering's site, you could have a look at Fagereke.se where I installed it. No comments on managment issues on this one to me, you hear ;)

du måste ha rätt version a Flash spelaren som tillhanda hålls via denna sida .

This article outlines some basic tips for building a high traffic website, It also outlines some things that you should not do that could cause some serious setbacks.

1. Key words - Consider what people would search for which may cause them to find your site. Also find out what keywords are the most popular possibly by subscribing to a site that provides keyword popularity information. Gear some pages to these keywords so long as they are relevent to your material. Write some pages that would contain these keywords (In headers and other text) but don’t overdue it and keep the material useful.

2. Page ranking and getting links - Google is a very important part of the internet today. They use a computerized page rank system based on links and link structure to compute the “value” of pages. This value combined with the relevance or a search (or how closely your page matches the search phrase in terms of exact matches and number of matches) determines where your page link will appear when a search is done. Getting other webmasters to link to your site is a very important part of getting a good page rank. Suggestions include:

a) Create one or more links pages where other webmasters may post links to their site on your site. Creating a friendly site that makes exchanging links easy encourages other webmasters to post your link.
b) Partner with other sites and work with them to exchange links. Building an affiliates section with links to partner sites may help.
c) Submit to web directories as mentioned at http://www.comptechdoc.org/independent/web/sitecreate/sitepromotion.html Once web directories have your site submission most internet search engines will find your site. It is still good to submit your sites to search engines such as Google, but be sure you do not do it more than once every three months.
d) Building good content will be very helpful in getting links to your site.

3. Content rich – Having a lot of content on your site will not only help improve your page rank, but will provide a better chance of getting page hits when internet users search for information. Also good quality content will keep them coming back It may be worth your while to give some useful content away for no charge to help build traffic to your site.

4. Getting awards – It is very useful to get awards for a quality or useful site from those sites that give awards. It adds to the prestige of your site and may draw additional customers.

5. Giving awards – Giving awards is a very useful way of getting links to your site from other quality sites since webmasters usually post the award with a link back to your site which can be required.

6. Active content such as discussion boards – On today’s internet active content is a very useful part of bringing people back to your site since many enjoy the free information exchange that is provided by discussion boards and similar tools.

7. Create a site map - This will make sure all your pages can be crawled. Some webcrawlers only crawl a site a limited number of links deep such as 3 or 4 links deep. If you create a site map which is available from a link on your home page it will allow webcrewlers to see all your pages within a depth of two links. Having a sitemap is especially important if you use framed HTML pages on your site. See the Important Note about Frame use at http://www.comptechdoc.org/independent/web/html/guide/htmlframes.html and it will give some guidelines on what to do to overcome the disadvantages of using frames.

8. Be sure all your pages are linked together using HTML links even if users have the ability to navigate to your pages using Javascript or other active programs. This is because webcrawlers may not be able to count links provided by active programs such as Javascript and this can keep the page rank (for search engines that rank pages) of many of your pages at a lower level than normal.

9. Avoid possibly catastrophic errors – There are some mistakes that could be made which can get you banned from some search engines so don’t do any of the following:

a) Duplicate content on multiple sites can get your page rank penalized.
b) Submitting your site to search engines too often (more than once per three months) could get you banned with little hope of a reprieve.
c) Creating pages with hidden content that readers can’t see but search engines can see can get you penalized or banned.
d) Linking from one site to another excessively especially if the two sites have the same IP address can get you penalized.

Ryan Fait is the author of this "A CSS sticky footer" that I suggest you check out if you're in need of a footer that stick, and will continue to stick.

I'm a frequent guest at Stu's site as he never ceases to amaze me with his skills in CSS. So when I did go there for my weekly looksie the other day I noticed that he had been fiddudeling with a set of professional CSS menues . I thought they where so great I just had to post a little something here for my readers to see. Please go visit Stu's site, and have a look around it's so worth your while.

And I hereby also publicly pronounce Stu Nicholls as my hero, hehe. I have gotten almost all of my knowledge by studying his work, and trying them out. I even use things he have done, an example of that is the horizontal menu above which is a tweaked version of the ULTIMATE CSS only drop-down menu . Tweaked in such a way that it now is an integrated working and validated version of my sNewscopy which is running this site.

It was time for sNews to get it's own site so the sNews team gathered up to create a site and to write documentation. The main goal was to separate Solucija from sNews and to help users understand and extend sNews more easily. sNewsCMS.com is open from monday august 20th and the existing forum will be locked down on sunday and transfered from Solucija to the new site. Forum software PunBB that's currently being used, have been replaced with SMF.

Solucija.com will still offer CSS Templates and eventually get a new design with lots of new content.