DEV Community: TechMan09

Just Launched 🥳 (What do you think)?

TechMan09 — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 01:32:38 +0000

After more time in developement then I would ever like to admit

After more money in developement then I would ever like to admit

After more bugs in developement then I would like to admit

After more misspelings than I would like to admit

It is finally launch day!

And since I cannot be trusted to spell things correctly and create grammatically correct sentences (Just look above), I decided, with much trial and error, to have an AI write a spelling and grammatical error free for my brand new public project, ➡️TinkerHost - 100% Free Hosting!⬅️

Are you tired of dealing with expensive and unreliable hosting? TinkerHost is here to help! Our free hosting platform offers 99% uptime, so you can count on your website or application being available to your users. Plus, our friendly community of users is always here to help if you have any questions or need assistance.

At TinkerHost, we understand the importance of having a dependable hosting platform for bloggers and e-commerce sellers. That's why we offer a supportive community of users to help you out. With TinkerHost, you can focus on creating great content and selling your products, without worrying about downtime or technical issues. Give us a try today and see the difference. Sign up now at TinkerHost.net and experience the benefits of hosting with us.

It would mean so much to me if you would be willing to signup and create a free account, even if it is just to offer me some feedback.

And if you do happen to be looking for a free hosting provider for a small website, or your test projects, I hope this post finds you well.

Thanks!

Finalizing A New UI (Feedback Requested)

TechMan09 — Fri, 23 Dec 2022 01:18:05 +0000

I am finally nearing the end of what has almost been a year-long project. :party: :party: :party:

From backend development, security, and so much more, I am finally in the home stretch, which means it is time to finish the part I have been putting off till now; finalizing the UI.

Now before I ask for your opinion on what I created, there are a couple of things you should note first:

I am not a designer, not by any means. Normally, I do the backend, and someone else does majority the frontend after I sketch something out. But this time, I decided to give it a go myself. It's been a journey, but I think I may have the beginnings of something great (maybe ... hopefully).
This service that I am creating is a webhosting provider, that caters towards people that are just starting out in the world of web developing and hosting. Most likely, many of my users will be brand new to the world of webhosting, and not have much prior knowledge.

With that taken care of, here is the design that I have come up with:

Light Mode:

Dark Mode:

Feedback on the design above (or even just words of encouragement) are highly appreciated. Feel free to say you hate the entire thing (I won't be offended), but don't leave me hanging (let me know how I can fix it).

For the time being, I am not going to release the URL (But if you are truly interested, let me know down below, we can work something out).

Thanks for your time, and if you offered it, your feedback.

EDIT:

@webjose @cicirello @zyabxwcd @receter @tarunc

I made some changes to the page, but still not sure what I think about the coloring of the 3 boxes.

Did I improve on some things here, or did I just make it worse?

Thanks again for your feedback!

What features do you want in a hosting provider?

TechMan09 — Mon, 01 Aug 2022 13:43:59 +0000

Hello everyone!

What features do you consider a necessity for a hosting provider?

Obviously, FTP and database access are essential, but what else do you look at before signing up?

Rate my UI and UX

TechMan09 — Thu, 07 Jul 2022 20:12:32 +0000

Well hello again everyone!

My project, The TinkerTechLab has been slowly improving over the past few months, and I would love some more feedback on the project!

Last time I did this, I got some amazing suggestions and ideas that were implemented in one way or another.

So if you have some extra time (Even if its just 5 seconds), I would love to know your first impression, and any suggestions you may have!

(Oh, and for you dark mode people, that feature is coming soon, so don't worry!)

URL: Tinkertechlab.com
YouTube: The TinkerTechLab - YouTube

Oh, and check out tinkertechlab.com/advertising as well :)

The hardest challenge, The simplest answer.

TechMan09 — Thu, 05 May 2022 16:52:26 +0000

You are reading this because you thought the title was interesting, right? Or maybe you miss-clicked?

Anyways, every developer has experienced challenging challenges. Every developer has persevered though a challenge and solved it, weather that be with the help of others, or on their own.

I'm creating this post because I'm in the mood to read about simple issues that you or your team had, but took you forever to figure out what was wrong. We are all human after all.

Did it take a team of 20 people to find the missing semi-colon when it was on the line that was last edited? Did it take five hours to figure out why the background was blue when you defined it as !important on the first line of your CSS file? (Don't use !important BTW!)

What stories do you have? What stories have you been told?

Optimizing your Website!

TechMan09 — Wed, 20 Apr 2022 19:18:35 +0000

Love this article? Share it! Sharing links available at tinkertechlab.com/webhosting/seo-and-optimization/website-optimization.

What is website optimization?

Website Optimization is a broad term. It includes everything from increasing the user experience, to the speed of the website and its SEO. Unless it is your internet connection slowing you down, the best websites load in under a second (Since website speed is often measured in milliseconds, one second is 1,000 milliseconds). Once a website takes longer than 2 seconds (2,000 milliseconds) to load on a 4g connection, many people give up, and go back to Google to click the next link, perhaps losing you money. Not only does speed affect how visitors interact with your website, but so does its design and usability, or ease of use. SEO is also a big part of optimization, as it always helps to have search engines helping to get you visitors. Enough talk, let's get started on how to make your website fast and friendly.

Website Optimization at Its Finest

A quick list of everything you can do to drop some milliseconds from your loading time, improve your users' experiences (UX), and convince search engines that you are awesome. If you want to learn more about something on this list, scroll on down. Oh, and one last thing. Unlike some lists on the web, this one is in alphabetical order since each topic will have a unique effect on every website and its visitors.

Fewer HTTP requests (Request fewer files)
Implement the best SEO practices (Search Engine Optimization)
Make use of caching
Mobile First
Shorter transfer time (Smaller files, faster speed. Compressing them will help)
UI/UX Optimization
Use of a CDN like Cloudflare (Content Delivery Network)

Website Optimization - Fewer HTTP Requests

Every time your website requests a new file, whether that be an image, HTML, or PHP, your browser has to wait for the server to complete the request. While this generally does not take much time at all, it can certainly add up fast (Just like the prices at a certain store). While condensing all your CSS into one file instead of five, or merging all of your images into one to save space, reducing HTTP requests can place some annoyance on you. It’s a choice that you have to make, easy for you, or faster for your visitors.

Website Optimization - Implement the best SEO practices

Search Engine Optimization is such a big idea, that it can cover an entire article on its own. In fact, we have a list of 20+ of the best SEO tips for your website. Since there is no need to repeat them all here, I recommend you check it out. The basics, however, are as follows. Make sure you use the meta description tag, and use the HTML title and header tags the way they are supposed to be used (As in make sure they have information that is important, and contains your keywords, tailored specifically towards the page itself). Making sure the page itself has quality content, and has good back-links is also important. If you don’t believe me, click on the links above, they lead directly to Google’s website, which states the same thing.

Website Optimization - Make use of caching

Making sure that visitors cache your website, or at least part of it, will help speed up load time after the first visit. If you change your content often, setting a lower cache time (For example, one week) is better than nothing. Not only will this speed up the load time for your visitors, but it will also help reduce the amount of stress on your web server, and if your web hosting provider has strict limits, enforcing caching is a good idea. If you use a CDN like Cloudflare, you have options to set the cache time directly in settings. Otherwise, you can use .htaccess to set how much time visitors should cache your websites files for. The best past? You can change the cache time for each file type (.htaccess only works on Apache servers).

Website Optimization - Mobile First

Did you know that more and more people are logging on to the internet from the computer in their pocket? It's true, and you need to be ready for it. If your website is ‘mobile first’, that means you developed it with mobile devices in mind from the start, so your website looks beautiful on any device. Mobile First design is increasingly important in modern times, and should be taken seriously. The folks over at css-tricks have created an amazing article on the topic, and how to successfully develop for mobile devices.

Website Optimization - Shorter Transfer Time

While reducing the amount of HTTP requests is helpful when looking to speed up your website, making files smaller helps as well. Image files can be compressed with online tools, and HTML and CSS files can be compressed for free as well with our online minifier tools for HTML and CSS. Reducing the amount of data that has to be transferred from the server to your visitor helps a lot. Did you know that all that white-space in your code is partly responsible for your slow website?

Website Optimization - UI/UX Optimization

While the speed of your website is certainly important, so is its appearance. While your site doesn't need a fresh coat of paint every week, it certainly should have one that allows your visitors to use your website with ease. There are many tips and tricks out there for improving your UI and UX (Don't get the two confused!), but the best is simply thinking like your user. What is good? What should be bigger or a different color? Sometimes, you think your site is perfect in every way, so reaching out to web designer communities is an amazing way to get quality feedback on your site.

Website Optimization - Use a CDN

Using a CDN can help with the speed and deliver-ability of your website’s files. Since CDNs have data centers around the globe, they are able to send your files from the center closest to your visor's location. On top of that, many provide extra security that certainly does not hurt to have. CDNs are powerful tools, that when used correctly, can drastically speed up load time, leading to happy visors, and more money.

Conclusion

This article touches briefly on many different things that you can do to help your website grow. Website Optimization is one of those things that is never quite done, as there is always something that you can improve on. Hopefully this article provided you with some good starting points, and convinced you that maintaining websites is awesome. Lastly, please let us know if we missed something, or made a silly error (We are humans after all).

Thanks for reading (Assuming you just did not skip to the bottom). Did you know that the TinkerTechLab is searching for advertisers, and that house ads on the TinkerTechLab are shown to people with adblackers, and JavaScript disabled? (It's awesome, that's why we spent so much time making it work). When you signup to advertise with the TinkerTechLab, mention you came from dev.to to get your first month for $1 (Up to 600% savings)!

Clearing your browsers cache - Why it is so important?

TechMan09 — Wed, 16 Mar 2022 21:01:09 +0000

So cache. You have probably heard of it, although you may not even know what it means. I have seen many beginner developers (Especially HTML/CSS ones) struggle with the concept, and how it works.

Thankfully, it’s quite a simple idea, and while some online guide dig deep into how the HTTP protocol works in order to explain it to you, this one does not (Although it is covered in part, and is important to learn more about if you want to become a professional).

Enough pretext, let’s get into it.

So what is a web browsers cache?

Every major browser has a cache. But what does that mean, and what does it do? Have you ever noticed that websites sometimes load a little faster the second (Or third, or forth, or …) time you visit them? That is because whoever you visit a website for the first time, your browser saves a copy of the code to its cache. When you visit the website for a second (or third, or forth, or …) time, your web browser realizes that it already has a copy of the code stored locally (in the cache), so it rendered that instead of downloading a new copy from the web.

Pros and Cons

Pros - Websites load faster, and less strain is placed on the server that hosts the files for the website. It also helps reduce the amount of data that is used, which is helpful for metered connections.

Cons - Whenever a website is updated, your computer won’t know, and will most likely continue to show you the version that is has saved. Normally, this is not a big deal since most changes are done dynamically, or are not important to see right away (Since the cache of a website will be cleared after a few days). However, when you are testing your own website, and do not have these things setup, you probably want to see your changes immediately to see if that text looks better in red or blue. Also, since the cache takes up space on your computer, it can begin to slow down computers with limited memory. Now just because this cons paragraph is much longer than the one for the pros, that does not means it’s bad, in fact the cache is quite good (And, you can clear it whenever you want)!

Additional Resources

So, what can you do if you are seeing an old copy of a website, want to check if a new version is available, or just want to free up a little space? Well, just clear the cache on your web browser! It’s a simple task, and does not take long to complete (Generally less then a minute).

What if you are the developer of a website? Setting cache headers on your website (Tutorial for Apache only) allow you to decide how often a visits browser checks for updates to your website, neat, right? The only thing is that they will not work until you clear your cache, isn’t that ironic?

Was this helpful? Was there anything I forgot? Let me know in the comments below!

UI/UX Redesign

TechMan09 — Thu, 03 Mar 2022 00:36:05 +0000

Hello Community!

You may have seen my post introducing my new website to the world, and now I am happy to announce that the website has been entirely coated in a new layer of paint (Oh, and a new logo to! Check out the image header of this post)!

The TinkerTechLab has partnered with @diegofranco2001 to completely redesign the UI and UX of the website, to make it easier to navigate and learn from. From SEO tips and tricks, to lot's of .htaccess code examples, the website has certainly grown!

I would love if you could check it out, and comment with any suggestions that you have.

Note that if you have visited the site in the past, you may have to hard refresh (CTRL+F5) to see the new changes due to caching settings.

Error - Bing Webmasters

TechMan09 — Wed, 09 Feb 2022 14:49:52 +0000

Hello!

While Google has slowly been indexing and add adding my pages to the index, Bing refuses to index more than just my homepage, returning the error shown below on every page except the homepage.

The inspected URL is known to Bing but has some issues which are preventing indexation. We recommend you to follow Bing Webmaster Guidelines to increase your chances of indexation.

Is there any way to know exactly what the issue is, as the article the error message links to does not really give a specific answer?

And yes, I did read the document, and nothing jumps out at me for being the reason.

Thanks!

SEO - Crawled - currently not indexed - Help

TechMan09 — Fri, 04 Feb 2022 19:57:25 +0000

Google has crawled by site about a week ago, and only marked 5 pages as "valid". The majority of my pages are marked as "Crawled - currently not indexed".

Google says that means that "the page was crawled by Google, but not indexed. It may or may not be indexed in the future; no need to resubmit this URL for crawling."

Why did Google tag most of my pages as this, and how long will it take before they are added to the index (And is there anything I can do to speed up the process)?

Thanks!

EDIT: My robots.txt file. All the files that are not showing up in the index are inside of the “webhosting” folder, not mentioned in the file below.


User-agent: *
Disallow: /admin
Disallow: /menu
Disallow: /menu.html
Disallow: /login
Disallow: /login.html

Disallow: /shop/*?page=$
Disallow: /shop/*&page=$
Disallow: /shop/*?sort=
Disallow: /shop/*&sort=
Disallow: /shop/*?order=
Disallow: /shop/*&order=
Disallow: /shop/*?limit=
Disallow: /shop/*&limit=
Disallow: /shop/*?filter_name=
Disallow: /shop/*&filter_name=
Disallow: /shop/*?filter_sub_category=
Disallow: /shop/*&filter_sub_category=
Disallow: /shop/*?filter_description=
Disallow: /shop/*&filter_description=

How do I sanitize data?

TechMan09 — Fri, 04 Feb 2022 16:31:10 +0000

I know there is htmlspecialentities() that changes "<" to (I forget, its like &31; or something), but is that the best and most secure way?

UI Redesign

TechMan09 — Fri, 04 Feb 2022 02:25:33 +0000

Hello!

I recently created a post introducing my website (The TinkerTechLab) to you.

This time, I wanted to showcase some of the amazing progress I have made in making the site look so much better.

Shout out to @diegofranco2001 for the contact form suggestion!

Spending a total of 1hour and 5minutes (Hey, I wanted it perfect), I redesigned my search bar and contact form, let me know what you think!

CONTACT FORM
————-———————
Before:

After:

SEARCH BAR
——————————
Before:

After:

Sorry for the blurry image.

The search bar is responsive, so please check out the site to see it in action!