You know, while I sit here, working on a new theme to put up on the site so people can download it, and waiting for my hair to dry, I just remembered one of the best things I have to offer people.

My .htaccess file.

I’ve developed my .htaccess file over the last few years, and haven’t had to touch it in about 2 years, because it’s so effective in controlling spam. I won’t confirm the types of spam it controls, because I’ve also had other methods in place - but one thing I do know is that it controls referer spam.

For those of you that don’t know, here is the Wiki on referer spam:

“Referer spam is a kind of spamdexing (spamming aimed at search engines). The technique involves making repeated web site requests using a fake referer url pointing to a spam-advertised site. Sites that publicize their access logs, including referer statistics, will then also link to the spammer’s site.

This benefits the spammer because of the free link, and also gives the spammer’s site improved search engine link placement due to link-counting algorithms that search engines use.”

In other words, the lazy jerks ride your tails, and most likely, you don’t even know they’re doing it. If you want to see, go log into your host’s cPanel (or whatever you use) and check your web stats for referers. Betcha there’s a bunch of sites that “refer” to you, with names associated with pharmaceuticals, porn, celebrities and poker, among other things.

I got so sick and tired of seeing this stuff in my logs…I could never see who was actually linking to me and get correct stats. So, I began working on an .htaccess file to elimate the problem.

I won’t promise this - but I’ve also noticed my comment spam has been reduced by a lot on my blogs. However, my personal blog actually utlizes Moveable Type (not WordPress, like this one), and I’ve found the MT Blacklist to be something I can’t live without - and I’m quite sure that the MT Blacklist had a large helping hand in working with the .htaccess file in getting my spam reduced to almost nothing.

That all being said, I’m willing to share my .htaccess file with you. So, without further ado…

read more »

So, I’ve been trying for a while to figure out the whole “Holy Grail” (as it’s been called) of layouts: the 3 column layout with header and “sticky footer” that works cross-browser. A List Apart has one, but it relies on having a huge bottom padding, and then reversing that with a huge negative margin. Me, I’m chick who likes to use negative margins as sparingly as possible - meaning only when I have to, and preferably nothing in the quadruple (or larger) digits.

There’s several other ones I’d found - but most of them relied on similar fixes - or javascript to determine the browser window’s height (for IE purposes). For me, javascript is a no-no. The point of CSS is so people can still see what you’re doing - whether javascript is turned off or not. Then there were ones that were fixed width and centered, and didn’t have sidebars. Neat idea - but I needed more.

Then I came across this site the other day, and the guy had a 3-column layout. It was nice, and exactly what I was looking for - however it had a lot of hacks and (what seemed to me) unnecessary extra code and CSS in there. So I played with it…

read more »

So I’m back from my little hiatus (I’m sure you missed me! hahaha), and had a new challenge posed to me.

Image swaps are cool for rollover effects, but what about disjointed rollovers? Can they be accomplished with no javascript?

I’m here to tell you “hell, yeah!”

And I will also show you

read more »