Webmaster guidelines play a major role in the SEO game because it helps you rank better in search results and also keeps your site from being banned by the search engines. Not following these roles will definitely hurt the traffic that comes from search engines. I have looked at and compared the webmaster guidelines published by Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft. Here are the five major items that are common throughout the three different guidelines.

• Content is King - Provide useful information for your viewers.
  • Google: "Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first" (Google).
  • Yahoo!: "Original and unique content of genuine value" (Yahoo!).
  • Microsoft: "The best way to attract people to your site, and keep them coming back, is to design your pages with valuable content that your target audience is interested in" (Microsoft).
• Sitemaps - Make it easy for the search engines to crawl and index your website.
  • Google: "Google uses your Sitemap to learn about the structure of your site and to increase our coverage of your webpages" (Google).
  • Yahoo!: "Yahoo! Search will retrieve your Sitemap and make the URLs available to our crawler" (Yahoo!).
  • Microsoft: "Add a site map. A site map helps MSNBot to find all of your pages. Links that are embedded in menus, list boxes, and similar elements are not accessible to web crawlers unless they appear in your site map" (Microsoft).
• Focus on Users - Design your website with the users in mind, not the search engines.
  • Google: "Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines" (Google).
  • Yahoo!: "Pages designed primarily for humans, with search engine considerations secondary" (Yahoo!).
  • Microsoft: The following is not an appropriate technique. "Attempting to increase a page's keyword density by add lots of irrelevant words" (Microsoft).
• No Link Schemes - Don't participate in excessive cross-linking to raise your rank.
  • Google: "Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank" (Google).
  • Yahoo!: "Sites cross-linked excessively with other sites to inflate a site's apparent popularity" are unwanted (Yahoo!).
  • Microsoft: The following is not an appropriate technique. "Using techniques, such as link farms, to artificially increase the number of links to your page" (Microsoft).
• No Hidden Text or Links - Don't hide text or links so that they are only viewable to search engines and not users.
  • Google: "Avoid hidden text or hidden links" (Google).
  • Yahoo!: "The use of text or links hidden from the user" is unacceptable (Yahoo!).
  • Microsoft: The following is not an appropriate technique. "Using hidden text or links. Only use text and links that are visible to users" (Microsoft).

There are a number of other specifics and guidelines that you can read about in the pages linked above. I have only listed five of the most important ones that show up in many posts and articles. Be sure to follow all of the guidelines for each search engine to ensure that your site will be included in their index. Not following the guidelines can result in your site being banned. Search engines provide a lot of free traffic and it is worth reading through the guidelines.

CubeStat estimates the value of your website as well as providing some meta and index information in a single report. The estimates are based on a "unique" algorithm that determines what a website's net worth, daily page views, and daily ad revenues are. The report also shows any meta information from the website, rank graphs from Alexa and Compete, as well as PageRank, backlinks, and other index-related information. A lot of the information that is displayed at XinuReturns is integrated into this site.

Based on the net worth estimated for my site, it looks to me like the calculations are pretty easy. After looking at the figures estimated, you can figure out the math with a few simple calculations. The one thing I am unsure of is where the daily page views estimation comes from. I don't know what source that estimate would be based on.

Overall, I like the site and I like the concept, but I'm not sure how accurate the valuations are. I wish there was more information about either how the information is gathered that backs the algorithm or at least a few listings that show how accurate the algorithm is. Currently I have no way of knowing within what percentage of error the estimate calculated stands.

phpMyAdmin 2.11.8.1 was released yesterday. The main reason for the updated release is to patch bugs and security issues. There were some XSS problems reported by Aung Khant from the YGN Ethical Hacker Group. The two main fixes are both XSS related, one having to do with frames and the other has to do with a lack of HTML escaping. You can read more about these by visiting the site which contains the news release about these bug/security fixes from phpMyAdmin. These vulnerabilities were considered very serious and have now been patched with this new release. Be sure to upgrade your copy to 2.11.8.1. You can download the new release from SourceForge.

Cuil was released yesterday and has had a great deal of coverage already. Most of the coverage has been about its index size (121 billion) in comparison to Google's (40 billion) as well as its search results in comparison to Google's. So I'm sure most of you, like myself, aren't interested in reading anymore comparisons between Cuil and Google in terms of index size and search results; TechCrunch has a great post if you want to catch up on those findings. I'm here to offer a comparison in layouts. These are a few things I found interesting when checking out Cuil:

• Google at Night - Cuil took the simplicity and elegance of the Google homepage and turned out the lights. The Cuil homepage is very similar to the Google homepage in that it has simply their logo and a search bar with a few other text snippets below. Behind these items lies a pure black canvas. This decision keeps what everyone loves about the Google homepage: it's right to the point design, but they still made it their own.
• May I Suggest? - The Google suggest feature is one that I have come to love. It saves time and helps when looking for the search string that will retrieve the results I am looking for. Cuil not only uses a similar feature in the search bar, it creates one click suggestions in a toolbar directly below the search bar. Cuil has taken a great feature and expanded it. One click recommendations is a pretty cool idea and can be very useful if the recommendations are relevant.
• Columns of Results - One of the more drastic changes to typical search results are the columns of results. When the search results are loaded, they are printed in the color scheme we have all come to expect from a search result, a blue title, a black description, and a green link. Among this commonality, Cuil displays the results in two or three columns (it appears to be three by default). This stands in contrast to the typical 10 rows of results printed by Google and countless other search engines. I believe this is a good idea. We'll have to see how it plays out, but I like the change. I am able to view almost all of the results on one screen. I barely have to scroll. I wish that the results were lined up in a more linear pattern from left to right in order for easier skimming however. I may get used to it quickly though.
• Categories of Information - Cuil has a feature on the top right of the search results page that is an "Explore by Category" box. The categories are intended to be relevant to the keyword(s) searched and then allow you to drill down into other keywords within that category. Once you click on a keyword within a category, that keyword gets added to the end of your string. For instance, searching for "webmasters" will display a category of "Search Engine Optimization." Clicking on the suggested keyword "PageRank" within that category will now make your search be "webmasters PageRank". I believe this is intended to work like a drill down function, where each additional click of a keyword narrows your results to a more fine grained result set. Some of my tests provided relevant results as I drilled down, but others didn't.
• Picture This - By default, Cuil results show a picture next to some of the results. This feature works a lot like the pictures displayed with a Google News item. Of the test keywords I searched, a very large percentage of results had a picture next to it. The relevance of the picture was not as high a percentage however. A lot of the pictures that were displayed didn't have much to do with the result. Some were totally irrelevant, and others were hanging on by a thread. This feature will get better in time and will be a nice change to the all text results. Showing image and text results on the same page could be nice in some cases. For instance if I was looking for a specific model laptop, it would be nice to see the picture next to the result.
• My Preference - The ability to customize the results is very limited. In fact, there are only three options that I can find currently; they are the number of columns to display, whether or not to use suggestions, and a safe search filtering feature. This is most likely because it is still very early in the release. I hope that there are more options in the future for advanced search features and the number of results displayed. Although I like being able to see almost all 10 of the results without scrolling, I would prefer to scroll through 10 screens to see one hundred results, rather than click the next results button ten times. I am guessing I'm not alone in that.

Overall I like Cuil. I think it has some great potential and could be very useful. I like some of the new layout changes, and I hope that the results and relevancy can improve rapidly so I can continue using it productively.

I have been working on expanding my blog and am pleased to announce a new Webmaster Resources page. The new page contains a large list of webmaster resources spanning four major categories, which I hope to expand in the future. The four categories are cheat sheets (you might recognize these from an earlier post I wrote) forums, tutorials, and monetization options. There are currently over 70 different links, so be sure to check them out. I will continue to add links and categories, but I think that over 70 is a good place to start. I'm sure that you will recognize some of the links listed, but probably not all of them; I hope you find some of these resources helpful! I have included a screen shot below, but be sure to check out the page as well.

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Opera has recently released its Web Standards Curriculum. With support already from the Yahoo! Developer Network, the Web Standards Project, and many universities, the current curriculum offers 23 articles with 30 more promised by September. There are articles that cover the topics of standards introduction, design concepts, and HTML. The 30 articles yet to be released are likely to cover topics like CSS and JavaScript.

The release of this curriculum is important to many groups of people, webmasters being one group. As webmasters, we know that standards are very important. The more standards we can and do adhere to, the better chance our website has of being displayed correctly within the many different browsers available. Even if you adhere to the standards, there will always be problems and issues that arise, but following the standards is still important. As Opera explains:

The beauty of the Web is that it creates a uniform, international development platform. Using Web Standards means your sites will be quicker to code and maintain, more compact, and accessible to web users regardless of their browsing platform and (dis)ability. (Opera)

The Web Standards Curriculum is part of Opera Education. Ultimately these education programs are meant to spread the usage of their browser; I believe they have chosen a great way to do it. Not only are the spreading the word about the browser, but they are helping the community as well. As the Opera browser usage increases, so will knowledge and understanding of web technologies and standards. I was very pleased to read about the release of the Web Standards Curriculum; I hope that there will be more to come.

Firefox offers a lot of advantages over other browsers, namely Internet Explorer. One of the greatest advantages it offers, is the ability to install add-ons. There are plenty of great plugins available for developers to use to help them make better websites and make them easier to navigate. There are extensions that cover SQL, regular expressions, debugging, security issues, FTP, and more. Here is a list of 20 great Firefox extensions for developers.

• Firebug - This extension provides debugging capabilities while viewing a web page. There is live debugging on CSS, HTML, and JavaScript. It is recommended to turn off this extension while not debugging, due to a speed lag in browsing.
• FireFTP - This extension is a full featured FTP client that integrates into Firefox. It is free and includes features like drag & drop, encryption, search, directory comparisons, and directory syncing, just to name a few.
• FireShot - This extension takes screenshots of web pages. It allows you to save the image, copy it to the clipboard, and edit the screenshot. You can also choose to capture only the visible area or the whole page. This is a very useful extension for bloggers who often review web pages.
• Screengrab - This extension is another extension that allows you to take screenshots of web pages. The features include saving the image or copying to the clipboard. It also supports capturing the visible area, the entire page, a selection, or a frame.
• Greasemonkey - This is one of the coolest extensions available. It allows you to customize how web pages behave using JavaScript. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of scripts available to download, and you can create your own. This is an easy way to improve on web pages that you didn't create, as well as the ones that you did.
• Web Developer - This extension adds a toolbar that has a large selection of webmaster tools and resources. It includes the ability to view the source and the CSS easily by loading them into a new tab within the current window. It allows for one-click validation of HTML, CSS, Feeds, and more. Other features include information and manipulation of images, forms, and cookies.
• YSlow - YSlow is an extension developed by Yahoo! to help understand why a web page is slow. There are report cards generated that detail why the web page is performing poorly based on Yahoo's rules for a high performing website.
• HTML Validator - This extension integrates HTML validation directly into Firefox. The validation is based on Tidy and gives detailed output of the errors that are found. Icons are visible in the status bar that give general counts for errors and warnings.
• JavaScript Debugger - This extension provides feedback for JavaScript errors. This is very useful when needing to determine what has gone wrong. It provides a lot of detailed information to help you troubleshoot and fix the problem.
• Dummy Lipsum - This extension provides on-the-fly creation of Lorem Ipsum dummy text to use as a placeholder. Lorem Ipsum text has become the universal default text used as a placeholder in web pages, and this extension provides a fast and easy solution. You need a minimum of 5 words, but you can create many paragraphs worth of text if needed. This is a very useful time saver.
• SQL Inject Me - This extension is a security tool for checking the vulnerability of your forms. It submits your forms with typical SQL injection values and the shows the database errors that occur.
• XSS Me - This extension is very similar to the SQL Inject Me extension. It is a security tool that tests the vulnerability or your site to XSS, or cross-site scripting, attacks.
• ColorZilla - This extension provides an eyedropper and color picker for web pages. You can easily determine what color is being displayed on the page and then create custom color palettes from it.
• Regular Expressions Tester - This extension provides testing capabilities to your regular expressions. You can plug the expressions in here and determine if they are correct and will do what you wanted them to do. It includes a save feature that allows you to keep previously tested regular expressions readily available.
• XML Developer Toolbar - This extension is very similar to the Web Developer extension. It tracks a large range of items pertaining to XML. It allows for validation, generation, and manipulation of XML schemas, DTD's, and XSL's.
• Load Time Analyzer - This extension was developed by Google and is used to track and report on how long it takes a web page to load. The output is very easy to read in graph form. You can customize what events you would like to measure.
• Server Switcher - This extension is very handy for switching between your development server and your live server. It allows you to switch between each in one click, or keyboard shortcut, and is completely customizable to your servers.
• Window Resizer - This extension allows you to switch between different resolutions and screen sizes for testing your layout. This is great for designing themes, because of the obvious need to accommodate as many resolutions as possible.
• SQLite Manager - This extension is used to manage SQLite databases on your computer. You can browse, search, edit, add, and delete using this tool. You can also run SQL queries against the database. This is a very nice tool if you use SQLite.
• MeasureIt - This is a very simple, yet very useful extension. It is basically a ruler that allows you to find out how much space something is taking up on the page. This is good for developing themes and working on the layout of your web page. It can save you a lot of time, since you won't need to guess and try different pixel dimensions.

What other extensions do you use to help you when developing websites? Let us know in the comments.

Facebook just recently celebrated their one year anniversary for the release of their developer platform. The API was released on May 28, 2007 and has exploded with user applications since then. The application directory has tens of thousands of applications, some with over 1.5 million daily users. For those of you, like me, who may not have jumped on the bandwagon right away, here are some great tutorials and information to get you started now.

• Facebook Developer Documentation - This is the main Facebook Developer website. It has all kinds of information from a wiki, to tutorials, to getting started guides.
• Facebook PHP Tutorial - This is a great tutorial for beginners. It goes through the very basics of what is needed to begin developing with the Facebook APIs and PHP. It Includes a basic application example.
• Developing with the Facebook Platform and PHP - This is another great tutorial for PHP developers, this time from Sitepoint. It covers the basics and gets a little more in-depth, covering topics like the News Feed and the User Profile Box.
• How to Develop a Hit Facebook App: 29 Essential Tools and Tutorials - This is not a tutorial, but a site that links to 29 useful websites that provide more information to help you in your journey to create the next best Facebook App.
• An Introduction to FBML - This link provides a nice overview to FBML (Facebook Markup Language). It is fairly basic, but an easy read. Definitely recommended when in need of a quick understanding.
• Facebook Developer Tutorials - A good listing of many tutorials covering many different topics. There is a lot of good information here. It is definitely worth checking out.
• How to use the Facebook API - This is a very basic overview of the API. It offers some good information, but is very short and to the point.
• Getting Started with the Facebook Platform API (Screencast) - There are 3 screencasts here that cover the basics of setting up an application through Facebook and writing the code once the application has been set up through the Facebook developer application.
• How To Set Up A Facebook Feed Reader Application For Your Blog - HowtoForge gives a nicely written tutorial on how to create an RSS feed reader application. This is a great tutorial and a great idea. This is a good way to spread the word about your blog in a fairly easily.
• Facebook Development Kit - Here is a development kit released by Microsoft, that includes control and samples for both Visual Basic and Visual C#. The site includes some nice walkthrough videos as well.

What other resources have you used to learn your way through the Facebook API's? Let us know in the comments.

The web today is all about content, and Web 2.0 has pushed tons of user-generated content to the front stage, simultaneously opening many new possibilities for web technology. Whether you want your site to be the next YouTube, or simply want to embed and stream some simple recordings or videos, there is a free media streaming software available for you. Check out some of the best options available.

Music

• XSPF Web Music Player - This is, in my opinion, the best option out there for free streaming music players. There is a slim and an extended option available. The slim version simply plays whatever song is loaded into the player. The player accepts playlists, which are xspf files. They adhere to a specific format, but are easily generated statically or dynamically. The player displays text in both versions and album covers in the extended version. The player accepts many custom parameters through the url.
  • Download: XSPF Web Music Player
  • Documentation: XSPF Web Music Player

• e-Phonic MP3 Player - The main advantage to this player is that it is skinnable. It can load single files as well as XML playlists. The player can be controlled by JavaScript, which I find to be a pretty cool feature. They also offer some visualization effects for eye candy. The downfall with this player is it shows text for 3 seconds that says "unregistered." I don't mind the link back to their website, but I don't like the 3 second text annoyance. If you can get past the "unregistered" text, this is a good choice.
  • Download: e-Phonic MP3 Player
  • Documentation: e-Phonic MP3 Player

• Flash MP3 Player - The main advantage to this player is that the player saves the song position as a user views different pages or refreshes the current page they are on. The player doesn't reload the same song with every page change. That is pretty awesome in my book. It also has all the basic controls and is easy to get up and running. It automatically creates playlists by scanning the directory and loading MP3's and their ID3 tag information. It also offers a customizable design.
  • Download: Flash MP3 Player
  • Documentation: Flash MP3 Player

Video

• Flowplayer - This video player offers a long list of customizable features that can be configured through JavaScript code. It has a very nice design, and colors can be changed to match your site. It boasts a long list of features like, "Progressive downloading, server side streaming, long play features, playlists, hardware accelerated fullscreen mode" (Flowplayer). Overall, it is nice to look at, easy to use, and easy to implement.
  • Download: Flowplayer
  • Documentation: Flowplayer

• JW FLV Media Player - This media player offers media streaming for noncommercial use. Music and video streaming are available with many of the major formats recognized. The player accepts single files and playlists, a skinnable interface, JavaScript API for player control, a large array of customizable settings. This player is a little harder to understand at first than the previous two, but the website offers many wizards, examples, and tutorials to get you streaming in no time.
  • Download: JW FLV Media Player
  • Documentation: JW FLV Media Player

• Sothink FLV Player - This video player includes features like fullscreen mode, auto-resizing to fit video player to video size, and free-form video player resizing. One of the more intersting features is its ability to understand drag-and-drop FLV files from your local drive, as well as loading a file through the URL. It is easy to use and easy to implement.
  • Download: Sothink FLV Player
  • Documentation: Sothink FLV Player

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Do you use something different to stream media from your website? Let us know in the comments if you know of something else that is worth looking into.

Conserving energy has become a widely discussed topic that has evolved into a movement commonly referred to as "going green." Major companies have started using and manufacturing more energy efficient equipment, hybrid cars have been engineered to reduce fuel consumption, and now web hosts have jumped on the bandwagon. Many hosts have gone green and have begun powering their facilities with solar and wind power. Here are a few of the hosts doing their part to reduce energy consumption.

• Affordable Internet Services Online (ASIO) - ASIO uses solar panels to power their data center and solar tubes to provide lighting. The ECO-1 hosting plans start at $9.99 per month offering 500 MB of storage space and 5 GB of bandwidth. They also offer a competitive package of features standard to each hosting plan. Don't be too quick to judge the smaller storage and bandwidth limits; this isn't always a bad thing.
• ThinkHost - ThinkHost is fully embracing the "go green" movement and is powered by 100% renewable energy sources. They also take it a step further and plant a tree for every new customer they get. Their green hosting plan starts at $7.95 per month, offering 100 GB of storage space and 1000 GB of bandwidth. Along with storage and bandwidth, ThinkHost offers a competitive package of features that comes standard with the hosting package.
• ecoSky - ecoSky is powered by solar and wind energy; it is clean and renewable. They use a grid system to store excess energy created when they aren't in need of it and are able to use it if they are in need of more power than is being produced. They offer a personal hosting plan starting at $19.99 per month with a $25.00 set-up fee. The personal plan offers 500 MB of storage space and 5000 MB of bandwidth. Each plan offers some of the typical features; however, they don't list the software versions that are installed on the servers. I would ask for that information first if you are considering purchasing a plan.
• GreenestHost - GreenestHost is 100% solar powered, relying on zero renewable energy credits and producing zero emissions. Although the front page advertises 5 hosting plans starting at $9.95 per month, I was only able to locate 3 hosting plans starting at $24.95. They offer a competitive features package with their hosting plans, but the price is quite a bit higher than the other hosts listed.
• Solar Energy Host - Their data centers are 100% solar powered, creating no greenhouse gases. This host is focused mainly on hosting with Joomla, the popular open source CMS software. Eco hosting plans start at $9.95, offering 500 MB of storage space and 3 GB of bandwidth. The features pacakage included with these hosting plans are less robust than the previously listed hosts because they are centered around Joomla.

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Disclaimer: This list does not take into account any reviews or ratings for the hosts listed. This list is just to show available options. Please take the time to research specifics before signing up.