Elliot Reeve’s Blog
Technology, Web, Programming, Computers and Gadgets
Web Development
The development of Online Games - RPG’s, MMORPG’s
Nov 8th
With what is an ever increasing demand for games, online gaming is constantly growing with new languages allowing a wider variety of games to be made. The constantly evolving web development world has seen online games change the way we see the web. Previously the www was just seen as a place to gain information however as time has gone by we have seen the development of games come to the forefront of the web.
The games themselves are improving at a rapid pace. Gone are the days of MUD’s where the game was solely described as text. We are now seeing 2-D and 3-D graphics on a regular basis. Some of the best online games around are now matching the standard of those which were previously only available to buy in store.
Online games can be thought up and developed by anyone. There are no expensive start up costs, they can be developed in the developers own time and they do not have large maintenance costs. This provides a huge market of people who, if they put their mind to it and come up with a good idea, have potential to make a very popular game.
In my opinion the quality of online games are going to continue to improve. The only factor which can potentially slow down the development/growth of the online gaming industry is a users internet connection speed not being able to withstand the ever increasing demands of a top online game.
With internet speeds set to improve across the world online gaming has a bright future. The availability and ease of access makes online games appealing to a number of users. Being able to pick up where you left off at a friends house or whilst on holiday means that a user gets more emotionally attached to the game in question.
Happy Gaming!
Want to become a Web Developer? The basics Setting Up, HTML and CSS
May 29th
Fancy a career change? Bored of your current day job? Wish you new how to make a website? Looking for a new hobby?
Website development maybe a huge market at the moment with nearly all businesses having their own websites and those that don’t wanting one. However those that have them want to make them better to maximise their potential. To make them better requires the use of the best languages available.
If you don’t no where to start with website development you can follow my steps below to get started. The good thing about Website Development is that its quiet progressive, therefore you can start of basic and learn more difficult things as you become familiar with the more basic languages.
How to start making a Website:
Before you can start creating a website you need a few things setup, you can view these below:
- Text Editor - You can use a basic program which ever computer has such as Notepad however if you want additional help whilst coding your website a better program would be Adobe Dreamweaver (PC) or Coda (Mac).
- Hosting Package - This allows you to view your website on the internet, included will be server space and a domain. You can purchase a hosting package from various companies online such as EukHost or 123 Reg. This will cost you an estimated £20 - £30 a year.
Steps to becoming a Web Developer:
With your potential website ready to be created you are now ready to start learning and creating that master piece. To start with the basic steps will enable you to create static websites. A static website is one which does not change unless you, the web developer, changes the code. This is the most basic type of website and will help you learn the basics you need before moving onto dynamic websites.
1. Learning HTML:
HTML - Hyper Text Markup Language, is the most basic of website development languages available. HTML only allows you to create the most basic website however its very important to learn as its the “gel” of nearly all languages. All websites contain some HTML therefore you need to learn this before you can progress.
A good place to begin learning HTML is online, there are lots of guides and tutorials on learning HTML which take you through basic steps to setting up new pages, creating tables, making lists and changing background colours etc. Here are a few good guides to getting started W3Schools - HTML and HTML.net - CSS.
If you work through both of these websites and carry on the examples you should have a basic knowledge of HTML. If you have trouble understanding the basics you may need to loan or purchase a HTML book which goes into more detail.
2. Learning CSS:
CSS - Cascading Style Sheets, is the next language you should be teaching yourself. CSS defines how to display HTML elements. For example using CSS you can define, once, in the stylesheet that you want all links on your website to be black therefore saving alot of time as you only need to declare this once.
If you learn CSS early in your Website Development it will make things alot easier when you come to do more complex things further down the line. Again CSS is well documented on the Internet, some good websites are W3Schools - CSS and HTML.net - CSS.
CSS can become quiet advanced and allows you to perform a whole array of different things. I would recommend working your way through one of the above tutorials to learn the basics of CSS. Having done so you should have the knowledge in place to use CSS to a basic standard. If you then need to learn something more specific you can come back to it.
3. Getting Help
If during your learning you get stuck or don’t understand something there is lots of help on the internet. If you have a problem the chances are someone else has had the same problem as you before. If you do get stuck the best solution is to type your problem into Google. Take time to read other peoples problems and the solutions provided by others.
An example of a website which provides help to those who have problems are HTML Help. Remember that if you do get stuck patience and persistence is important, part of being a web developer involves problem solving, if you get into good habits now it will put you in good stead for more difficult tasks.
Whats next?
In my next post I will go into more detail about creating dynamic websites and the languages you need to learn to do so. These languages include PHP/ASP/MySQL. I will outline the advantages and disadvantages of PHP/ASP.
Good Luck.
Transparent PNG Fix for Internet Explorer (IE) 5.5+
Mar 20th
There are lots of “fixes” for transparent png images in Internet Explorer which remove the “white block” bug in lower versions of Internet Explorer however some dont work as well as others.
Flaws:
Some flaws I have found with some methods:
- You cant repeat the image on the background
- You cant have links within the text as they become un-clickable
Solution:
I recently came across what seems like a very good solution and a big advantage of this is that its not difficult to add into your pages therefore you have the choice of making a style-sheet for Internet Explorer or applying the PNG for IE fix to all browsers.
Method:
- Put your image in a div and apply a class to it
- In the style-sheet add the following code and change where appropriate:
- _background-image: none;
- filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader( enabled=’true’, sizingMethod=’scale’, src=’image.png’);
This will give you the solution that your looking for, this method also allows the image you are using to be repeated so you can repeat a transparent background image.
The one down side of this method is that you can now no longer click links on top of your background, however there is a solution to this problem and that is to create another div inside the the background div which just has the property of: position: relative;.
Summary:
Your code should look something like this when your finished:
Code:
<div class=”backgroundimage”>
<div class=”textlayer”>Text goes in here</div>
</div>
CSS:
.backgroundimage {
background: url(image.png) repeat-y;
_background-image: none;
filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(enabled=’true’, sizingMethod=’scale’, src=’image.png’);}
.textlayer{
position: relative;
}
I hope you find this useful, any problems add a comment and ill do my best to help you.
Improve Website Traffic - SEO
Mar 14th
Have you built a website but your not getting much traffic? Have you had a website built for you which generates traffic but you want more?
Here I will go about giving examples of ways in which you can improve the traffic to your website. This will include hints and tips on search engine optimisation (SEO) as well as building up a community based around your website.
Deciding on Keywords:
The most important thing to begin with is to decide a few specific keywords which relate to your website, about 4 - 6 keywords. Once you have got a list of a few keywords you can use this great tool provided by google to see how popular the keywords are in google. This will give you some idea of your potential audience if you aim to get into google under the specific keywords.
Once you have added the keywords you thought of you will have some idea of audience but you will also be shown a list of popular keywords similar to that which you entered which you may decide will be better than the ones you thought of. Once your happy with your keywords its important you concentrate on using these where possible within the text on your pages.
Meta Tags:
Inside the <head></head> tags on your website pages you should be using META tags. These tags are read by search engines to give them some idea as to the content on the website. There are 4 important tags which you should include on your pages:
- <title>Title of your website</title> - Try and use your keywords within the title
- <meta name=”keywords” content=”keywords go here”> - The keywords you decided upon go here, each one separated by a comma e.g elliot, reeve, elliot reeve, blog.
- <meta name=”description” content=”description goes here”> - The description gives an explanation to whats on the page itself, again try and include the keywords where possible, but at the same time make sure it makes sense to the user as well.
- alt=”" - Whenever you have an <img></img> on your website search engines obviously cannot understand what they show therefore there is a important tag called alt which allows you to describe the image shown in words for example: alt=”Picture of Elliot Reeve”
Site maps:
Once you are happy with your website you can create a sitemap which you then submit to google which basically tells google to look at your pages. Follow the steps below to create and setup a sitemap for your website:
- To create a sitemap use this free Site Map Generator.
- Upload the site map to the home directory of your website.
- Sign up to Google so you can get access to some excellent tools, or sign in if you already have an account.
- Click Webmaster Tools then type your site address to add your site to the list of sites attached to your google account.
- You will then need to follow the steps to verify you are the owner of the website - this just requires you to upload a file.
- Once you have verified the website click the Sitemaps link then enter the directory/name of your sitemap e.g. sitemap.xml
Google will then add your links to the queue of links to be searched by the search engine. It may take up-to a week before you start seeing your website in google so stay patient. Dont expect your website to go straight to the top it takes time and alot of work to get there.
External Links:
Although you have used meta tags to match the content on your website and you should now have submitted a sitemap this isnt all that google ranks your pages on. External links are another vital part of increasing the rank of your website in google. For example say your website: www.elliotreeve.com had links to it from websites such as Amazon, Ebay and Skysports then you would be preceived to have a better website than one which has no external links.
Its not just the number of external links its also the quality of external links for example Amazon is a better quality link than a lesser known website such as a friend who has decided to make his own website too.
Generating a Buzz:
Another great way to get your website more well known is to use free resources which millions of people use on a daily basis, this includes the likes of Facebook and Twitter. By creating a Fan page on Facebook and getting your friends to join increases the exposure your website gets which will hopefully improve people awareness that your website exists. Another very popular and up and coming website to use is Twitter. Creating a Twitter account again improves your exposure and will also help you rank in google.
A great way to further improve the volume of your website is to create a Blog. When I was originally told about this my reaction was “I dont have time to be writing blogs!” however its worth it. Writing a blog once every couple of days from your website helps to keep fresh content on your website which google likes. Doing this properly will also widen the audience of your website. Take a look at WordPress from which you can download the files to setup a blog on your website, its so simple give it a try!
I hope this article will help some people understand a little bit about how search engines work and how you can improve your websites chances of being found.
Getting your website at the top of google for your desired keywords is not easy and it will take time, stay patient.