The robots.txt file, also called the robots exclusion file, is used to provide useful information to search engine spiders. The file can serve a number of purposes, but it is primarily used to tell a spider which files and directories should NOT be indexed, and that is why it is also called the robots exclusion file.
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One of the first questions that comes up when someone starts using PHP and the very powerful MySQL database is: How do I page through the results of a query like I see with search results on many web sites? This is pretty easy to accomplish if you know how to use the MySQL LIMIT clause.
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I normally would not cover an issue this basic, but I receive requests almost every week for answers from aspiring (OK, call them newbie) web developers who cannot see the images on their web pages after using FileZilla or another FTP utility to transfer HTML and image files to their web site. Almost all say that all they see is the infamous red X where their images should display.
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There are times when you want the printed output from a web page to look different that the way the page is displayed on a computer screen. This is particularly useful with blogs and web sites that provide information that users may want to print and file away for later use or for late night reading. I am amazed at the number of major web sites whose pages cannot be printed properly because the content either doesn’t fit on the page, or is cluttered with ads and menus that have no useful purpose on a printed page. CSS can come to the rescue with an external style sheet designed to format printed output.
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CSS shortcuts combine cascading style sheets rules into one efficient line of code. If your web site uses large stylesheets, cutting down on the amount of CSS code can help your code to load and render faster.
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Many people mistakenly believe that Internet was developed in the 1990s. The history of the Internet actually goes much deeper than that. The Internet we use today has evolved over the past 40+ years from a simple communications network to one that spans the globe and includes participants in every country in the world. Many people are also surprised that the Internet started out as a Cold War military project.
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New web site owners frequently do not understand which image types to use with a web site. Once you understand the characteristics of each type of image, the choice becomes much clearer. (more…)

Many web site owners and new designers do not understand the importance of optimizing images for a web site. The process is pretty simple once you understand the concepts. (more…)

Netiquette, or Net etiquette, is a set of guidelines for content and web site design that seek to create a seamless communications channel with users and to avoid areas that sometimes cloud or confuse the communications. Many rules that have become bona fide standards for print media do not work well with the Internet. It is a mistake to assume that all standards used for books, brochures and print media advertising work equally well with the web. Here are some examples of bad netiquette. (more…)

We have been using PHP and MySQL for web development almost exclusively for several years. During this time, our team has come up with a list of simple, yet powerful one line SQL statements that make MySQL easier to use. We thought we might share them with you. (more…)