stargirl-designs.com Blog

On a directive from my bosses to investigate the possibility of creating an RSS feed for our website, I forced myself to start using them this week. And I’m finding that RSS is pretty cool. It’s usually said to stand for Really Simple Syndication and it’s an xml file that allows users to read the headlines from a site (usually a blog or news website) with an aggregator. It makes it easy to see which of your favorite sites have updates on them, without actually going and checking each site manually.

Now, a lot of management software (like that used on blogs) will generate the rss feed code automatically. But since we have nothing like that at my work, I had to figure out another way of generating the rss file. I found the Listgarden program after a short search and had the rss feed set up almost instantly. Not bad for someone who barely knew what RSS was last week! Of course, we aren’t using it on our site yet. We are going to wait for the php switchover. But it is ready and waiting…

My aggregator of choice is the Sage extension for Firefox. Simple and straightforward to use.

I’ve gone to two DCWW workshops so far.

The first one, on PHP, was a great but TOO  SHORT overview of the scripting language at WestLake Internet Training.  I would definitely like to get more experience with it.  PHP is used to make webpages more dynamic and my own pages are pretty boring and static right now.   You can also use PHP in combination with mySQL to hook into a database and use its contents on a website.  Now, that is something I really want to learn more about.  But I think I’ll have to take a full mySQL class to get it.

The second workshop/seminar was on digital photography, another great but short overview.  This one was held at a Penn Camera downtown.  The woman who gave it, Melanie, has worked in photography for a long time and really seemed to know her stuff.  Most of the time was spent with her answering all of our questions about digital cameras.  I realized right off the bat that mine is woefully out of date. Looks like that might be my next big purchase.  And, unfortunately, we all have the same camera in my family so we are all in the same boat.  One thing I was excited to find out about was Washington Photo Safari.  Melanie is one of the people who leads these tours.  I may go on one this weekend.

I also attended a DCWW dinner bunch in Bethesda last Monday.  My sister gets together with fellow pet sitters to talk shop and this was the same kind of thing, but with web women! I’m just so excited to meet all these women who are as interested in web tech stuff as I am.

I went to a steering committee meeting on Wednesday of DC Web Women, an organization of women who work in the web field.  The main part of the organization is a mailing list, where we talk about web stuff, technology, jobs, etc.  But it was great at the meeting to hear about all the other stuff they do, and just meet all of the women who run it in person.  I am now signed up for two workshops and plan to offer my services to help with outreach.

The first workshop is on PHP.  I took a class in it years ago, through HWG, but I could definitely use a refresher.  We are in the process of converting our website at work to PHP, so it will come in handy. The other workshop is just for fun: tips and tricks for digital photography.  I love taking pictures but I’m a complete amateur without much of a clue about what I’m doing.  I get some great pictures every once in a while but I’m sure it’s just luck!

My new business cards finally came this week, and I picked them up this morning. I’m very happy with how they turned out.  Vistaprint does good work.

I have to admit search engine optimization is a subject that is a bit murky to me. I know of the importance of key words (words used in a search that you hope would lead a user to your site) and using them appropriately on your site and the importance of having other sites link to you. Beyond that…I would be lost.

There are a lot of firms out there who offer it and their fees can run into the tens of thousands of dollars. Most are legitimate but some are shady. And according to Google (the most popular search engine around), NONE of them can claim a “special relationship” with Google and/or guarantee a #1 ranking. Google does have advice and guidelines for webmasters that might HELP their ranking, but they keep the full details of their ranking system a secret. And engaging in certain practices (this is where those shady SEO people come in) can even get a website banned completely from Google! I read recently an article about a company that’s suing Google because they were removed from the rankings. After their removal, their business dropped off almost completely. I guess that’s quite a testament to the search engine’s power.

Anyway, I’m thinking of taking a class on SEO so I can get my mind around all of this.

Another amazing thing about Google is how much people can find out about you by searching on your name. Of course, my name is common enough that a lot of irrelevant stuff comes up when you search on me. I don’t run marathons! But a woman with the same name does. Anything related to astronomy with my name attached is most likely me, though. I read article about people have been rejected from consideration because of what job interviewers found out about them on the web. You’ve got to be careful what you put out there on yourself on the web. People start blogs and post things on MySpace (a site I myself have always avoided) and sometimes don’t seem to realize that anyone with a computer can see it. And if you rant about your boss…you can quickly find yourself on the street. I do have have a personal blog too, although I don’t post in it much anymore, but the worst that has come out of that is someone I formerly dated yelling at me about what I said about him on it. I guess I should count my blessings! And no, you can’t have the link.