A Web Developer's Collection of Web Resources

Web Form Factory

rafael.minuesa@gmail.com (Rafael M Minuesa) — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 07:09:59 PDT

Web Form Factory is an open source web form generator which automatically generates the necessary backend PHP code to tie your form to a database.

All you need to do is follow these 5 simple steps:

1- Generate form from...

Webforms can be generated from HTML files. More types may be available in the future.

2- Choose your form type...

A database form or email form.

3- Choose your preferred language

Choose the PHP version running on your server.

4- Locate your file(s)...

HTML form file:
Thank you file:

5- Name your Form

Only alphanumeric characters and no spaces, thank you.

Done! The necessary backend code will then be added and the file returned to you within seconds.

Isn't it great?

Forms in e-mails

rafael.minuesa@gmail.com (Rafael M Minuesa) — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 00:01:51 PDT

Forms in e-mails are a bad idea.
If you want to set up some kind of form, that form must reside somewhere in the web, because although forms will display most of the time in email, they usually don't work due to many email clients considering email forms to be a security risk.
While some email clients will simply warn you of potential danger, others will outright disable the forms.

Complete Results from CampaignMonitor

How Forms Perform in HTML Emails
Client	Form is displayed	Form is functional
.Mac
Yahoo! Mail
Yahoo! Mail Classic
AOL Webmail
Gmail
Windows Live Hotmail
Apple Mail
Thunderbird
Penelope (Eudora 8)
Outlook 2007
Outlook 2003
Outlook Express
Windows Live Mail
Lotus Notes 8
Entourage

Since there's no way we can segment out email addresses by known email clients, I'd rather recommend linking to a form on a website in an email rather than embedding it therein. This is the safest, most reliable solution to pairing an email message with a form. More people will see it and be able to use it, and as a result participation will increase.

WordPress Theme Frameworks

rafael.minuesa@gmail.com (Rafael M Minuesa) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 02:51:39 PST

A theme framework is a theme that is designed to be a flexible foundation that can serve as a parent theme for building child themes.

The use of WordPress theme frameworks may ease theme development by reducing the volume of work which may be needed in creating a backbone for your theme (usually by using PHP and WordPress Template Tags).
Theme frameworks also make theme development more accessible, removing the need for programming knowledge.

Available Frameworks

SQLite Vs MySQL

rafael.minuesa@gmail.com (Rafael M Minuesa) — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:10:49 PDT

SQLite usually will work great as the database engine for low to medium traffic websites (which is to say, 99.9% of all websites).

One of the drawbacks of SQLite is that it is not really suitable in a situation where there are several users writing at the same time to the same database, because any write operation locks the entire database.
But SQLite will handle multi-users just fine if all they're doing is reading from the database, because reading does not require a lock. Therefore SQLite can run efficiently any website that doesn't require modifying records. Or a website where 1 person is doing the editing.

The amount of web traffic that SQLite can handle depends, of course, on how heavily the website uses its database. Generally speaking, any site that gets fewer than 100K hits/day should work fine with SQLite. The 100K hits/day figure is a conservative estimate, not a hard upper bound. SQLite has been demonstrated to work with 10 times that amount of traffic.

Speed Benchmarks:

Flat-file based PHP CMSs

rafael.minuesa@gmail.com (Rafael M Minuesa) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 00:24:38 PDT

After several unsuccessful attempts to get access to the MySQL databases behind the web pages of my main client I have decided to look into another options that do not require a separate MySQL database with a separate password and separate set of skills.

To my surprise, since last time I checked, there have been emerged/developed quite a few (and good) options around that I'm listing below:

CMSimple is simple, small and fast. It writes page data directly to a HTML file on the web server. Configuration files and language files are also saved in .txt format.
CMSimple also offers a wide variety of plug-ins, including many made by third parties.
DokuWiki is wiki software that works on plain text files and thus needs no database. Its syntax is similar to the one used by MediaWiki and its data files remain readable outside the wiki.
It has a generic plugin interface which simplified the development and maintenance of add-ons.
DokuWiki is included in the Linux distributions of Debian and Gentoo Linux.
Pluck allows for easy web page creation for users with little or no programming experience, and does not use a database to store its data.
Pluck also includes a flexible module system, which allows developers to integrate custom functionality into the system. Pluck includes 3 default modules: Albums, Blog and Contact form.
razorCMS is designed to be as small as possible ( around 300 KB including a WYSIWYG - Editor), just enough to be useful on a base install. Then extra functionality can be added as needed via the Blade Pack management system.
Skeleton CMS isn't really a CMS as much as it is a very simple framework for rapid prototyping. If nothing more, it's a good structured site model to start building a website with. There is no need for a database and no fancy admin area, but if you're building a site for a client and you don't need the power of Wordpress this might be exactly what you're after.

As pointed out, the main advantage of using flat-file (text) files as a database for a PHP driven CMS is that you no longer depend on external software to edit and maintain a part of the CMS, without which the system simply will not run.

But you must keep in mind that although flat-file files are an acceptable solution for small databases, they become sluggish as the database grows because access mode is sequential.
Another disadvantage is their inability to support transactions and probably the biggest concern is Security: A database protects the data from outside intrusion better than a flat file because it provides a security layer of its own.
Having said that, NOTHING that is hosted on a server connected to the Internet is secure and if there are hackers equipped with enough resources who are intent in breaking into your system, they eventually will.

An intermediate solution would be the use of SQLite an Open Source embedded relational database management system contained in a small C programming library that when is linked in it becomes an integral part of the program. The entire database including definitions, tables, indices, and the data itself are stored as a single text file on a host machine.
SQLite is embedded into a growing number of popular applications, such as Mozilla Firefox or Google's Android OS.

Sounds good to me.
Below some of the CMSs that are able to use SQLite to store their data:

eoCMS (everyone’s Content Management System) uses MySQL or SQLite and php to deliver content in a user-friendly interface.
It features a forum, moderation features, custom 404 pages, personal Messaging , plug-ins, RSS output, ratings, etc.
Frog CMS is an extendable open source content management system designed to use PHP5 along with a MySQL database backend, although it also has support for SQLite. It is actually a port of Radiant, the Ruby on Rails CMS, although Frog has begun to take its own development direction.
FUDforum supports all the standard features you may come to expect from a modern forum with a robust MySQL, PostgreSQL or SQLite back-end, that allows for a virtually unlimited number of messages (up to 2^32 messages).
Habari is a modular, object-oriented blogging platform that supports Multiple users, Multiple sites, Plugins, Importers for Serendipity and WordPress, etc.
Habari prides itself in being standards compliant and more secure than other blogging platforms by making use of PDO and enabling prepared statements for all interactions with the database.
Jaws is a CMS and modular framework that focuses on User and Developer "Friendliness" by providing a simple and powerful framework to hack your own modules.
Lanius CMS comes out of the box with two flatfile database choices (Gladius DB and SQLite), that will work out-of-the-box with both PHP4 and PHP5.
phpSQLiteCMS is based on PHP and SQLite and runs "out of the box". phpSQLiteCMS uses PDO as database interface, which makes it also possible to run with MySQL.
Serendipity is a PHP based blog and web-based content management system that supports PostgreSQL, MySQL, and SQLite database backends, the Smarty template engine, and a plugin architecture is kept updated by automatically checking the plugin repository online.

The only drawback to this approach in many of the systems above is that they use the PHP Data Objects (PDO) extension, a lightweight, consistent interface for accessing databases in PHP that although greatly reduces the system's vulnerability to SQL injection attacks, it does require the new OO features in the core of PHP 5, and so will not run with earlier versions of PHP.

Specificity and Star Wars

rafael.minuesa@gmail.com (Rafael M Minuesa) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 22:32:24 PDT

Specificity is a type of weighting that has a bearing on how your cascading style sheet (CSS) rules are displayed.”

“All rules in your CSS carry a specificity rating regardless of selector type, although the weighting that is given to each selector type varies and will ultimately affect the styling of your web documents.”

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/css_specificity.html

CSS Specificity: Things You Should Know

CSS Specificity Tools & Resources

CSS Specificity for Poker Players
If you’re not from the programming world and CSS seems a bit confusing, perhaps this analogy may help clear some concepts up. Think of CSS rules as poker hands. The best hand determines an element’s style.
CSS specificity calculator
Calculates the specificity of a given selector.
Understanding Specificity Tutorial
In this tutorial you will look at specificity. Specificity is a type of weighting that has a bearing on how your cascading style sheet (CSS) rules are displayed. All rules in your style sheet carry a specificity rating regardless of selector type, although the weighting that is given to each selector type varies and will ultimately affect the styling of your web documents.
Cascade Inheritance: Specificity
At this point it might be timely to have a quick discussion of specificity. Both inside a single style sheet, and in a cascade of style sheets, it should be clear that more than one rule can apply to the same element. What happens when two properties in separate rules which both apply to an element contradict one another?
CSS 2.1 Selectors Explained
An extensive overview of CSS 2.1 selectors. Learning how to use the full range of CSS selectors available in CSS 2.1 properly can actually help you keep your HTML a lot cleaner. It will let you minimise unnecessary use of the class attribute and the need for adding extraneous div and span elements to the markup.
CSS Specificity Bugs in IE
A brief overview of specificity bugs implemented in Microsoft Internet Explorer/Win.
CSS Structure and Rules
Basic Syntax, Pseudo-classes and Pseudo-elements, Cascading Order.
Specificity
It may not seem like something that important, and in most cases you won’t come across any conflicts at all, but the larger and more complex your CSS files become, or the more CSS files you start to juggle with, the greater likelihood there is of conflicts turning up.

Master Stylesheet vs Global Resets

rafael.minuesa@gmail.com (Rafael M Minuesa) — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 19:23:55 PDT

Trackback: http://www.crucialwebhost.com/blog/master-stylesheet-the-most-useful-css-technique/trackback/

The problem with Global Resets is that when set form buttons and fieldsets and a few other elements lose their original styling beyond recognition.

A better option is to individually style the elements that you want to reset. It also makes it easier to apply your own style to common elements.

Below is a basic master stylesheet that has some styling removed, such as color, removed to keep it simple and customizable.

The global classes at the bottom cover basic styling and will remove styling that was initially set. For example, the .nobullet and .noindent work great on an unordered or ordered list.
This is the place to add the classes that are commonly used.

/***** Global Settings *****/
 
html, body {
border:0;
margin:0;
padding:0;
}
 
body {
font:100%/1.25 Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}
 
/***** Headings *****/
 
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {
margin:0;
padding:0;
font-weight:normal;
}
 
h1 {
padding:30px 0 25px 0;
letter-spacing:-1px;
font-size:2em;
}
 
h2 {
padding:20px 0;
letter-spacing:-1px;
font-size:1.5em;
}
 
h3 {
font-size:1em;
font-weight:bold;
}
 
/***** Common Formatting *****/
 
p, ul, ol {
margin:0;
padding:0 0 1.25em 0;
}
 
ul, ol {
padding:0 0 1.25em 2.5em;
}
 
blockquote {
margin:1.25em;
padding:1.25em 1.25em 0 1.25em;
}
 
small {
font-size:0.85em;
}
 
img {
border:0;
}
 
sup {
position:relative;
bottom:0.3em;
vertical-align:baseline;
}
 
sub {
position:relative;
bottom:-0.2em;
vertical-align:baseline;
}
 
acronym, abbr {
cursor:help;
letter-spacing:1px;
border-bottom:1px dashed;
}
 
/***** Links *****/
 
a,
a:link,
a:visited,
a:hover {
text-decoration:underline;
}
 
/***** Forms *****/
 
form {
margin:0;
padding:0;
display:inline;
}
 
input, select, textarea {
font:1em Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}
 
textarea {
width:100%;
line-height:1.25;
}
 
label {
cursor:pointer;
}
 
/***** Tables *****/
 
table {
border:0;
margin:0 0 1.25em 0;
padding:0;
}
 
table tr td {
padding:2px;
}
 
/***** Wrapper *****/
 
#wrap {
width:960px;
margin:0 auto;
}
 
/***** Global Classes *****/
 
.clear         { clear:both; }
.float-left    { float:left; }
.float-right   { float:right; }
 
.text-left     { text-align:left; }
.text-right    { text-align:right; }
.text-center   { text-align:center; }
.text-justify  { text-align:justify; }
 
.bold          { font-weight:bold; }
.italic        { font-style:italic; }
.underline     { border-bottom:1px solid; }
.highlight     { background:#ffc; }
 
.wrap          { width:960px;margin:0 auto; }
 
.img-left      { float:left;margin:4px 10px 4px 0; }
.img-right     { float:right;margin:4px 0 4px 10px; }
 
.nopadding     { padding:0; }
.noindent      { margin-left:0;padding-left:0; }
.nobullet      { list-style:none;list-style-image:none; }

Why Feng-GUI is useless

rafael.minuesa@gmail.com (Rafael M Minuesa) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 18:42:07 PDT

According to the hype:

Feng-GUI empower designers, advertisers and photographers to effectively analyze Attention and Attraction in visuals.
This artificial intelligence service simulates human vision during the first 5 seconds of exposure to visuals.

Well, we just have to disagree ...

http://www.feng-gui.com/

Technorati blog claim - rdwfsi75az

rafael.minuesa@gmail.com (Rafael M Minuesa) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:42:06 PDT

Claiming my blog proves I am the author of this blog and enables you to update information about the blog for the Technorati community, including the blog description and tags associated with the blog.

To complete my claim, I have to copy the following code:
rdwfsi75az
and publish it in a post on the blog.

SEO Diagram

rafael.minuesa@gmail.com (Rafael M Minuesa) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 03:46:37 PDT

The 7 Secrets of SEO Success

rafael.minuesa@gmail.com (Rafael M Minuesa) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 01:06:33 PDT

Anatomy of a WebSite

rafael.minuesa@gmail.com (Rafael M Minuesa) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 02:59:35 PDT

Source:
http://www.yvoschaap.com

A collection of Global CSS Resets

rafael.minuesa@gmail.com (Rafael M Minuesa) — Sun, 24 May 2009 20:25:11 PDT

Reset Reloaded

html, body, div, span, applet, object, iframe, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p, blockquote, pre, a, abbr, acronym, address, big, cite, code, del, dfn, em, font, img, ins, kbd, q, s, samp, small, strike, strong, sub, sup, tt, var, dl, dt, dd, ol, ul, li, fieldset, form, label, legend, table, caption, tbody, tfoot, thead, tr, th, td {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
border: 0;
outline: 0;
font-weight: inherit;
font-style: inherit;
font-size: 100%;
font-family: inherit;
vertical-align: baseline;
}

/* remember to define focus styles! */ :focus {
outline: 0;
}

body {
line-height: 1;
color: black;
background: white;
}

ol, ul {
list-style: none;
}

/* tables still need 'cellspacing="0"' in the markup */
table {
border-collapse:
separate; border-spacing: 0;
}

caption, th, td {
text-align: left;
font-weight: normal;
}

blockquote:before, blockquote:after, q:before, q:after {
content: "";
}

blockquote, q {
quotes: "" "";
}

A Killer Collection of Global CSS Reset Styles

Discussion on Global CSS Resets at Webmaster World

Layout optimized for 1024

rafael.minuesa@gmail.com (Rafael M Minuesa) — Fri, 15 May 2009 00:11:16 PDT

Designing for a 800x600 resolution as a minimum was easy: Account for browser chrome and scrollbars (usually 40-50px) and then use as much of the remaining space as possible.
This usually meant a layout width of 750-760px.
However the 800x600 days are over as you can see from the table below.

The most common computer display resolutions are as follows:

Resolution	% of Internet Users
Higher than 1024×768	57%
1024×768	36%
800×600	4%
Lower than 800×600	<>
Unknown	3%

Note: These statistics were gathered from visitors to a website dedicated to web technologies, so there may be an over-representation of both higher resolution monitors and lower resolution handheld devices. Updated to January 2009 results.

1024×768 is the current minimum standard these days, and if we use the same logic as for 800x600, browser chrome being still the same, that leaves us with 974-984px as the “ideal” width.
However, many users don’t browse full screen, especially as display resolution is increased. Almost as if there’s an inverse relationship between browser width and display resolution — as the display gets wider, the browser width gets smaller (proportionately).

Additionally, in a time we all are, or should be, considering grid usage in layouts, using 960 pixels seems like a good choice, as it’s slightly smaller than full width, and it’s divisible by 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, and 16 (imagine the grid possibilities).

890 pixels is also a good measurement, since it provides a grid of 18 columns (40 pixels each) and 17 gutters (10 pixels each), which you can use in a variety of ways from 2 or 3 equal sized columns or a wide selection of mixed width columns.

Source:
http://www.cameronmoll.com/archives/001220.html

Additional Resources

Five simple steps to designing grid systems

Khoi's Vihn has devised a way of using a grid as a background image.

Ad Unit Guidelines

rafael.minuesa@gmail.com (Rafael M Minuesa) — Thu, 14 May 2009 23:36:07 PDT

The IAB Ad Unit Guidelines are intended for marketers, agencies and media companies

NOTE: All dimensions are in pixels.

Rectangles and Pop-Ups

		Recommended Maximum Initial Download Fileweight	Recommended Animation Length (Seconds)
300 x 250 IMU - (Medium Rectangle)	View IMU	40k	:15
250 x 250 IMU - (Square Pop-Up)	View IMU	40k	:15
240 x 400 IMU - (Vertical Rectangle)	View IMU	40k	:15
336 x 280 IMU - (Large Rectangle)	View IMU	40k	:15
180 x 150 IMU - (Rectangle)	View IMU	40k	:15
*NEW* 300x100 IMU - (3:1 Rectangle)	View IMU	40k	:15
*NEW* 720x300 IMU – (Pop-Under)	View IMU	40k	:15

Banners and Buttons

468 x 60 IMU - (Full Banner)	View IMU	40k	:15
234 x 60 IMU - (Half Banner)	View IMU	30k	:15
88 x 31 IMU - (Micro Bar)	View IMU	10k	:15
120 x 90 IMU - (Button 1)	View IMU	20k	:15
120 x 60 IMU - (Button 2)	View IMU	20k	:15
120 x 240 IMU - (Vertical Banner)	View IMU	30k	:15
125 x 125 IMU - (Square Button)	View IMU	30k	:15
728 x 90 IMU - (Leaderboard)	View IMU	40k	:15

Skyscrapers

160 x 600 IMU - (Wide Skyscraper)	View IMU	40k	:15
120 x 600 IMU - (Skyscraper)	View IMU	40k	:15
300 x 600 IMU - (Half Page Ad)	View IMU	40k	:15

ADDITIONAL NOTES:

Those sizes that are bold above are part of the Universal Ad Package
:15 animation includes multiple loops

Source:
http://www.iab.net/iab_products_and_industry_services/1421/1443/1452

DOCTYPE

rafael.minuesa@gmail.com (Rafael M Minuesa) — Wed, 13 May 2009 23:35:52 PDT

HTML 2.0 DTD

HTML 3.2 DTD

HTML 4.01 Strict, Transitional, Frameset

"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/frameset.dtd">

XHTML 1.0 Strict, Transitional, Frameset

"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-frameset.dtd">

XHTML 1.1 DTD

"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">

Source:
http://www.w3.org/QA/2002/04/Web-Quality

CSS CHEAT SHEET

rafael.minuesa@gmail.com (Rafael M Minuesa) — Wed, 13 May 2009 23:28:54 PDT

SYNTAX
Syntax
selector {property: value;}
External Style Sheet
link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css"
Internal Style

Inline Style

GENERAL
Class	String preceded by a period
ID	String preceded by a hash mark
div	Formats structure or block of text
span	Inline formatting
color	Foreground color
cursor	Appearance of the cursor
display	block; inline; list-item; none
overflow	How content overflowing its box is handled visible, hidden, scroll, auto
visibility	visible, hidden

FONT
font-style	Italic, normal
font-variant	normal, small-caps
font-weight	bold, normal, lighter, bolder, integer (100-900)
font-size	Size of the font
font-family	Specific font(s) to be used

TEXT
letter-spacing	Space between letters
line-height	Vertical distance between baselines
text-align	Horizontal alignment
text-decoration	blink, line-through, none, overline, underline
text-indent	First line indentation
text-transform	capitalize, lowercase, uppercase
vertical-align	Vertical alignment
word-spacing	Spacing between words

BOX MODEL
	height; width; margin-top; margin-right; margin-bottom; margin-left; padding-top; padding-right; padding-bottom; padding-left;

BORDER
border-width	Width of the border
border-style	dashed; dotted; double; groove; inset; outset; ridge; solid; none
border-color	Color of the border

POSITION
clear	Any floating elements around the element? both, left, right, none
float	Floats to a specified side left, right, none
left	The left position of an element auto, length values (pt, in, cm, px)
top	The top position of an element auto, length values (pt, in, cm, px)
position	static, relative, absolute
z-index	Element above or below overlapping elements? auto, integer (higher numbers on top)

BACKGROUND
background-color	Background color
background-image	Background image
background-repeat	repeat, no-repeat, repeat-x, repeat-y
background-attachment	Background image scroll with the element? scroll, fixed
background-position	(x y), top, center, bottom, left, right

LIST
list-style-type	Type of bullet or numbering in the list disc; circle; square; decimal; lower-roman; upper-roman; lower-alpha; upper-alpha; none
list-style-position	Position of the bullet or number in a list inside; outside
list-style-image	Image to be used as the bullet in a list

* The properties for each selector are in the order they should appear when using shorthand notation.

Shorthand*

background
border
border-bottom
border-left
border-right
border-top
font
list-style
margin
padding

Comments

/* Comment */

Pseudo Selectors

:hover
:active
:focus
:link
:visited
:first-line
:first-letter

Media Types

all
braille
embossed
handheld
print
projection
screen
speech
tty
tv

Units

Length %
em
pt
px
Keywords bolder
lighter
larger

Source
http://lesliefranke.com/files/reference/csscheatsheet.html

SEO Cheat Sheet

rafael.minuesa@gmail.com (Rafael M Minuesa) — Wed, 13 May 2009 23:00:10 PDT

S C O U T I N G
● KeyWord Research
Use WordTracker for an estimate on daily searches and Overture for an approximate report on KW usage in the last month. Use Wikipedia, dictionaries and other resources for KW inspiration to try and stretch your long tail. Remember, this is the cornerstone of your future actions and it may determine what domain name, titles, URLs, and content you chose.
● Competition Spy
Every gosu player knows that scouting early in the game is crucial. Find out who your top 3 competitors are and determine their marketing strategy, before you even buy your domain name or write a single line of code!
Check for backlinks using the “link: mycompetitor.com” query on Google. Don't stop at the directories they submit to. See if they have a Wikipedia page or reference; see if they have any links on social bookmarking websites, like del.icio.us, and what do people commonly associate them with; check for blog posts on Technorati; check for buzz on digg and other prosumer websites.
See what they did best and think of ways you can do better and differentiate.

H E A D T A G S
● Title Tag
Probably the most important of them all. Use relevant KeyWords, yet do Link Baiting; remember that this tag will show up in SERPs. Use a different title on each page to avoid duplicate content penalty. But keep them standardized by branding them with your website name. Trust a separator character. (eg: ACME | Buy Red Bicycles on Discount)
● Meta KeyWords Tag
Try to stick to a maximum of 20 KW combinations; stuffing is no good. Use different KW tags on each page to avoid duplicate content penalty.
● Meta Description Tag
Describe the page content as accurate as possible, while using relevant KW. Remember that this should be no longer than 250 chars and that the first 150 chars may show up on SERPs. Use a different tag on each page to avoid duplicate content penalty.
● Meta Foo Tags
Don't forget about the http-equiv, resource-type, classification, rating, distribution & other meta tags out there. Try teaching the spider as much data about the page as you can.

A R C H I T E C T U R E
● URLs
Describe your content and keep it short. Separate words with hyphens, as they work best. Watch out for too many subfolders, as the further away from the home page you are, the lower the Page Rank will be. Careful with subdomains, they will be treated almost as separate websites. KeyWords won't hurt, you know!
● Dynamic Pages
Use a URL rewriting engine, like mod_rewrite on Apache, and turn your string of parameters into meaningful folders. Take the time to understand this technology and you will harvest the goods. End your URLs in a .html. A good starting point would be reading Professional SEO with PHP.
● Session IDs
If you serve a crawler the same page, with different URLs, for a thousand times, it will eventually get angry and do nasty things to your ranking. Turn those ugly numbers off and implement cookies if you really have to. Or, if you feel like living dangerously, use cloaking for spiders.
● Canonicalization
www.website.com, website.com, www.website.com/index.html, website.com/index.html, will be treated as separate pages. Permanently redirect (301) all of the above combinations to a single address, preferably www.site.com.
● Frames
It ain't '97 anymore. So just forget about frames, as weird thing will happen to your indexing if you use them. Yes, the same with iframes!
● Forms
Crawlers are smart, but not smart enough to input text in search boxes and then index the resulting pages. Content available only by forms won't be indexed. If your website is designed in such a manner, engineer a workaround with HTML sitemaps.
● Navigation
If your website is structured on different levels and you need a drop-down menu, don't use JavaScript or Flash (with cheesy background music). Use a SEO friendly, list menu. If crossbrowsing issues drive you crazy and you must go with DHTML, find a script that hides the list div instead of generating it on-the-fly.

MA R K U P
● Semantic Code
Emphasis your keywords and essential info with font weight, size and color attributes. Always use heading and subheading tags (hx) and apply whatever style you like to them. Use li tags when displaying a set of items; use tables when displaying a grid; use blockquote when quoting. Remember what the semantic web is all about: data about the data, and give meaning to your markup.
● Anchor Text & Title
Use KW combinations that clearly describe the page you are linking to. Click here is not an option. Remember this is very powerful as it has been used for link bombing. Stay away from JavaScript links as chances are they will not be crawled.
● Valid Code
Don't hurt the web and do your best to stick to standards. Write valid XHTML/CSS2. There are hundreds of communities that use valid code and design superb websites, like csszengarden. Find your support group and Reboot your website.

C O N T E N T
● Copy writing
Write your own, original content. Surf for editorial tips, like CopyBlogger and pay much attention to scannable text. Study Jacob Nielsen's articles on readability. Remember to use an inverted pyramid structure, with the essential info at the top. Organize your copy into sections, short paragraphs and lists.
● Freshness
Spiders love fresh and juicy content. And so do your visitors. If you sell stuff, get a Latest Products section; if you write stuff, get a Latest Articles section; if you're a boring company, at least get a Latest News section. To make things even more attractive, generate an RSS feed and advertise it on your home page.
● Crawlable Content
Although bots have achieved great technical progress, Ajax, Flash, JavaScript generated content, text in images are all blind spots on your page. Put your important info in plain HTML. If you must really show your fancy font, use sIFR as text will still be indexed. Most bots behave as a text browser, so use a tool like Lynx to analyze your website.
● Image Name & Alt Text
Think of crawlers as visually impaired beings, learning to comprehend images. The text will come naturally to you. If you have multiple sets of images, like in a shopping cart, group your images into folders named appropriately.

S E R V E R I N T E R A C T I O N
● robots.txt
Make use of the robots.txt file on your web server. This file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled. Make sure it's current for your site so that you don't accidentally block Googlebot . Visit www.robotstxt.org to learn how to instruct robots when they visit your site.
● sitemap.xml
This file is now a standard practice. Visit www.sitemaps.org to get the protocol specifications. There are plenty of free tools for automatic generation of the XML. Submit it to all major search engines: Google, Yahoo!, MSN.
● Server Config
Make sure your web server supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. This feature allows your web server to tell the bot whether your content has changed since it last crawled your site. Check that your server outputs a 404 header even if you use custom error pages. Get a reliable hosting provider; if your server goes down during a crawl, you could flush away months of hard work.

P R O M O T I O N
● Blog
Start blogging even before you launch your service or product. There are thousands of great resources, tutorials and cheat sheets for you to learn how to do it properly. Some of the most important aspects for you to remember: be transparent, be informal, be remarkable.
● Online Reputation
The Web is such a depersonalized environment that people crave for a human presence behind the screen. Become the spokesperson for your business. Put your paranoia aside, drop your nicknames and create a professional virtual identity. Sign every article or comment with your real name. Attach a smiling photo of yourself to your accounts. People will be googling for your name. You should manage what they find.
● Networking
Comment on the blogs you read and leave your URL all over the place. Put your blog & website address on your email signatures; on your letters, business cards and everything else you print. Join a Social Networking Community, like LinkedIn, ask for connections and give recommendations.
● Buzz Generation
If you're not worthy of getting digged, write your own Press Releases and spread them with free PR websites. Try your luck by asking for a review with well known bloggers in your field.

D O N ' T S
● Black Hat
Cloaking, KeyWord stuffing and invisible text are probably the easiest way to get delisted, sandboxed or be put in Supplemental Results hell. Most amateurs start with the pick-up lines instead of the basic body language control. Study the fundamentals, don't let yourself fooled by some secret techniques your neighbour's kid told you.
● Duplicate Content
Needless to say you must not steal other people's content, for it will hurt your karma and ranking. But make sure you don't show the same content with different URLs and titles; like a product configurator, where a URL parameter only changes the shoe color; or Session IDs.
● Page Rank Mania
Focusing on increasing your PageRank is a narrow-minded approach to SEO and web marketing. It's not only inaccurate, as Google keeps is outdated for some months after it has really changed, but it is irrelevant. Bringing visitors to a poorly crafted page or dull content is suicidal. You want conversions, not traffic.
● Link Exchange
Reciprocal linkage is a thing of the past. Google already ignores reciprocal link accumulation on real estate websites. And never liked spammy/link farms anyway.

R E M E M B E R
● “You will never really know exactly how Google works (unless you work there)”
- “Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day” By J. Grappone, Gradiva Couzin
● “Most of the right choices in SEO come from asking, What’s the best thing for the user?”
- Matt Cutts
● “Good HTML titles, good body copy, great content, ensuring that your site doesn’t have
roadblocks to crawling — these have worked for nearly a decade.”
- Danny Sullivan

Source:

Mihai's SEO Cheat Sheet
Downloaded from http://mihaigheza.wordpress.com/files/2007/08/seo_cheat_sheet.pdf