The core ingredients of every website: HTML, JS and CSS

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If you were asked to list the most common web development languages you’d probably say JavaScript, Python, PHP, Java, C# and Ruby. If you were asked to name some web frameworks you might list Django, Laravel, Ruby on Rails, React, Angular or Flask. The number of web technologies to choose from these days is enormous. But regardless of the languages and frameworks you choose the end result is always the same: HTML, JavaScript and CSS. These are the three languages a web browser uses to generate the diverse range of awe inspiring websites we see today. What ever we use it all boils down to these three.

Having a strong foundation and understanding of HTML, JavaScript and CSS is still important for today’s web developers. Knowledge of these three is often a must when designing, debugging and optimising.

Ways to improve

HTML, JavaScript and CSS are constantly evolving so as a web developer you need to keep up with the latest advances. Below are a few tips to help you sharpen your web skills.

Take a look under the hood

Chrome Web Developer Tools

The great thing about websites is you can take a look under the hood. You can inspect the code and see how they were built. The majority of web browsers have Developer Tools built into them that let you view the HTML, CSS and JavaScript that make up a page. For example using Chrome’s Web Developer Tools you can view the HTML tags, CSS styles, JavaScript code, network traffic and more. Taking a look at the page structure or CSS rules used on a page can teach you a lot about web development. You’ll discover new HTML tags or CSS rules and build on your knowledge.

Use the W3C Markup Validation Service

W3C Markup Validation Service

The The W3C Markup Validation Service is a free tool that checks your HTML for validation errors. This can be a great way of improving your knowledge of HTML and also ensuring your HTML is error free. Valid HTML can also improve your SEO and avoid display issues and page errors.

Checkout and get involved in open source projects

GitHub Logos and Usage ยท GitHub
GitHub’s logo: Octocat

Sites like GitHub have thousands of open source projects that you can view. Popular projects on GitHub are often maintained by teams of highly experienced developers and contain great quality code. Viewing, downloading and running these projects teach you a lot. I also highly recommend getting involved in these projects by reporting bugs and contributing to the project. There is no greater feeling that having your pull request merged into a popular open source project.

Monitor your website with Uptime Robot

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No website is available 100% of the time – FACT. Websites become unreachable for a number of reasons including infrastructure issues, server errors and network issues. Whether you are a DevOps engineer, or a blogger using a cloud hosting, you’ll want to monitor your website uptime and performance.

Why monitor your website?

Website uptime and performance are very important. An outage can have a negative impact on your site’s reputation and cause a loss in revenue. Poor performance will have a negative impact on your user’s experience. If your site is unreliable or slow users will turn away. Downtime and poor performance can also negatively impact your search engine rankings. Setting up a free or paid website monitor can help you keep tabs on your websites response time and uptime. It can also confirm if you are getting that 99.99% uptime your web hosting promised!

Uptime Robot

URL: https://uptimerobot.com/
Features: ping and port monitoring, keyword monitoring, SSL certificate monitoring, Cron job monitoring and response time monitoring. You can even setup maintenance windows to pause monitoring during scheduled downtime. UptimeRobot appear to have 50+ monitoring locations as listed in their FAQs.

Free plan: 5 min intervals, 50 monitors, HTTP(S) monitoring, response time monitoring, ping and port monitoring, 2 month log retention and a single status page. No SMS or voice call alerts included in the free plan. No credit card required.

Paid plan (PRO): At the time of writing the PRO plan offered 1 min checks, 20 SMS or voice call alerts, 24 month log retention, unlimited status pages, SSL cert. expiry monitoring, cron job monitoring and maintenance window configuration.
Price: $7 per month as a Limited Offer at the time of writing (normally $15 per month).

UptimeRobot Pricing
UptimeRobot – Pricing options.

Usability: Creating an account it quick and easy. Once you have verified your email address setting up your first monitor is simple.

UptimeRobot – Creating a new monitor.

The UptimeRobot dashboard is simple and easy to view.

UptimeRobot – Account Dashboard.
UptimeRobot – Website response time monitor.

Conclusion

Setting up website monitors with Uptime Robot is quick and easy. The free plan has enough to get your started and the pro plan offers quite a bang for your buck. With a website monitor set up you can rest assured that you’ll be alerted of any outage or performance hits.

What are backlinks?

Backlinks are links from other websites to your website. They are also referred to as “incoming links” or “inbound links”. Backlinks are important as they drive more traffic to your site and improve your search ranking. These inbound links work like a recommendation or vote for your website. The more votes you have from reputable sources in your industry the better your site will perform in search results.

Backlink Quality

Not all backlinks will have the same impact on your site ranking. Links for reputable, high-ranking sites in your industry will boost your SEO far more than smaller less reputable sites. Think about how a recommendation from a trusted friend or co-worker caries far more weight that that of a stranger or someone you do not trust.

  • Ideally backlinks should come from high search ranking, trusted sites that are an authority on the topics discussed. The more creditable the source of the backlink the better.
  • Ideally the backlink should use keywords in the anchor text that are powerful keywords for your industry that you want associated with your site.

A few high quality backlinks can have a far greater positive impact on your site than many poor quality inbound links. And in some cases very poor quality backlinks may actually have a negative impact on your site’s search ranking.

How to get your first backlinks

The first step to getting backlinks is to ensure your site has valuable content. If your website has information and insights that other are looking for then it won’t take long for sites to link to your pages.

If you have great content but want to cultivate more backlinks you can try:

  • Finding forums and communities of people who would benefit from your content and make connections there. If your site can benefit them you can share links to your content.
  • Find sites with outdated or broken links to content that is similar to your site. You can contact the site manager and kindly let them know about the outdated and broken links and suggest a link to your content.
  • Promote your site on social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, Twitter, Reddit and Pinterest.
  • Depending on your site’s purpose you can promote your site on a product discovery platform like ProductHunt.com or a blog discovery platform like FlipBoard.

How to check your backlinks

The Google Search Console is a great free tool with information on the backlinks currently pointing to your website. You can view the top linked pages on your site and the top sites linking to your site. This information can be viewed in the Google Search Console or exported to a CSV document. View our article on how to setup Google Search Console.

How to setup Google Search Console tools

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The Google Search Console is a set of SEO tools that help you to:

  • Measure your site’s Search traffic
  • Get metrics on your site’s performance
  • Receive alerts on issues and information on how to fix them
  • Check how Google sees your site
  • Improve your Google Search rankings

Getting started with the Google Search Console

Before you setup Google Search Console you will need to have a domain name. If you haven’t yet purchased a domain name view our How to choose a winning domain name article.

To get stated with go to the Google Search Console. If this this is your first visit you will be prompted to start by selecting a property type:

  1. Domain: In most cases you will select this to analyse your whole domain including any URLs across sub domains. NOTE: In order to use this option you must have access to your DNS configuration. You will have this in your account with your domain registrar.
  2. URL prefix: Analyse only select addresses or protocols.

To set up Google Search Console for your entire domain enter your domain without any sub domain or “www” e.g. “htmldiy.com”. Click the Continue button and you will be shown the Google site verification code you must enter into your DNS provider:

Sign in to your domain name provider or website host and set up the new DNS entry using the text provided. Google offers detailed instructions for all the major domain name providers.

Once you have created the Google Site Verification DNS entry with your domain provider click the VERIFY button in the Google Search Console.

Google Search Console will then check your site returns the verification text. Assuming you have set the verification code up correctly on the correct domain your site ownership will be verified:

Click the Go To Property button to get started with the Google Search Console. When you first register a site with Google Search Console there will be no data as Google fetches and processes the initial data set. Check back after 24 hours.

How to choose a winning domain name

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Choosing a domain name is one of the most important decisions when building a website. Your domain name is the core of your company and product brand. It should memorable, easy to say, and chosen with SEO in mind. But with so many domains already taken, choosing a domain can be a daunting task. This article will tell you what to look out for when choosing a domain name and how to ensure your domain is SEO friendly.

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Domain name checklist

  1. Choose a memorable domain

    Choose a domain that is catchy like your brand. Your domain should be easy to remember.

  2. Keep it short

    Keep it short. Less than 15 characters is ideal.

  3. Include keywords

    Effective use of keywords, or partial keywords, can make a domain more memorable and SEO friendly.

  4. Choose a popular top-level domain

    Choosing a popular top-level domain such as .com or .net will not only make your domain easier to remember it will show authority in your industry.

  5. Easy to say, easy to type

    Avoid special characters, odd spelling, hyphens and numbers. Say your domain out loud. If you have to explain how to spell your domain it is probably not a good choice.

Which domain registrar to use?

There are many domain registrars to chose from. Some offer additional features like privacy protection, SSL certificates or email. The domain registrar you choose will come done to the features that are important to your business.

Privacy protection

Most domain registrars offer basic levels of privacy protection. The most common feature is a WHOIS personal details protection service. These services allow you to use proxy details on WHOIS instead of entering your personal details. Any notifications regarding your domain will be passed through the proxy service to you. This service can help prevent spam.

Registrars also offer more sophisticated privacy protection in premium plans. These include:

  • Malicious domain transfer protection
  • Domain hijacking protection
  • Domain security monitoring

SSL certificates

Several domain registrars offer free SSL certificates with domain registration. Ensure you pay close attention to the certificate authority, the level of encryption and the domain restrictions of the certificate as it may be of limited value.

Domain email address

Some registrars will include web based email in the domain purchase. This can be useful to get up and running quickly and allow you to use your business domain email rather than a personal email address.

Popular domain registrars in 2020

Below is a list of some of the most popular domain registrars in 2020. These registrars offer combinations of the features listed above and often have limited offers where some features are included in the domain purchase price:

Choosing a top-level domain

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The top-level domain (TLD) is the part of the domain that comes after the dot. There are over 1,000 TLDs. Choosing the right top-level domain has an impact on your SEO. You can view a list of all valid top-level domains at icann.org. Some of the most popular top level domains are:

.com

Derived from the word commercial. Currently the most popular TLD used in 48% of the worlds websites. Introduced in 1985.

.org

Intended for non-profit organisations. Used by over 10 Million web sites globally. Also introduced in 1985.

.net

Derived from the word network and originally intended for network technology organisations. This intended use was never enforced and the domain is a very popular for general purpose commercial use.

There are many other common top-level domains including .info, .biz, .gov (government), .edu (education) and .mil (military).

Country code top-level domains (ccTLD)

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There are also country specific top-level domains such as .us (United States), .uk (United Kingdom), .au (Australia) and .il (Israel). These country code TLD can be combine with other TLD to form popular combinations such as:

  • .co.uk, .gov.uk, .org.uk, .net.uk
  • .com.au, .gov.au, .org.au, .net.au

Top-level domains for SEO

In order to maximise your SEO it is usually best practice to choose one of the common top-level domains such as .com and .net. These domains are what people are most familiar with and therefore more memorable. These domains also have an inherent authority. For example .com will usually trump .pizza (yes .pizza is a existing top-level domain). That said, the top-level domain you choose is less important that other SEO factors such as content, keyword, inbound links and site performance.