Archive for the ‘Website Design’ Category
IE6 Will No Longer Be Supported
Thursday, February 11th, 2010
Last week Google announced that they will no longer be supporting Internet Explorer 6.
In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.
Since Google’s sites (Gmail, Docs, Apps, Calender, etc.) will no longer support IE6, it should come as no surprise that MCGWD will officially no longer support that browser either (Actually, I stopped supporting IE6 the first of 2010, and this very site is unsupported). This basically means websites will still render with IE6, but it may not always look pretty, or display the same way as newer browsers will.
By no longer maintaining support for this old and insecure browser, I will be able to decrease development time, thus reducing the costs passed onto my customers. It’s a win-win. However, if your project does require IE6 support, please let me know up-front. I can still add IE6 support to new projects, but beware I will need to charge extra to do so. Also, I have no intention of dropping support for IE7+ anytime soon.
Please Upgrade Now
For both performance and security reasons, I always recommend using the latest version of your chosen browser. Please consider upgrading now, by selecting one of the browsers below.
Posted in Company Information, Website Design. ⋅ Tags: IE, Internet-Explorer, Website Design
Redirect Only Specific Files from HTTP to HTTPS
Sunday, January 27th, 2008
I had a hard time finding a solution to redirect only certain files from HTTP to the secure HTTPS. I found all kinds of ways to redirect the entire site to HTTPS but none for specific pages only. After a few hours tinkering I found a solution using the following code in a .htaccess file:
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^example.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [r=301,nc]
rewritecond %{SERVER_PORT} !^443$
rewriterule ^filename\.php(.*)$ https://www.example.com/filename.php$1 [r=301]
The first part of the code redirects example.com to www.example.com as noted in an earlier post, “301″ Redirects for SEO. The second part then redirects a specific file (filename.php) from http to https. Thus the individual file “filename.php” can only be accesses using a SSL connection.
Posted in Website Design. ⋅ Tags: .htaccess, http, https, redirects, SSL
“301″ Redirects for SEO
Friday, January 4th, 2008
Search engines will often regard www.example.com and example.com as two different websites. Because of this, websites usually experience the effects of link fragmentation (inbound links point to both www.example.com and others to example.com). For example, if www.example.com has 5,000 inbound links and example.com has 2,500 inbound links you could potentially combine them so you have all 7,500 links pointing to www.example.com.
To do this you can setup a permanent “301″ redirect by creating a .htaccess file with the below code. This will ensure that all requests coming in to example.com will get redirected to www.example.com.
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^example.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [r=301,nc]
Notes:
- The .htaccess file needs to be placed in the root directory of your old website (i.e the same directory where your index file is placed)
- REPLACE example.com and www.example.com with your actual domain name in the code above
- This .htaccess redirection method only works on servers using the Apache Mod-Rewrite module
This “301″ redirect method is also a great way to save money on SSL certificates. When the site always points to www.example.com you only need to buy a single SSL certificate.
Posted in Website Design. ⋅ Tags: .htaccess, redirects, SEO, SSL