I am not talking about this thing that shows related pages/links, I'm talking about the box that shows up on Pages:
I can't find any information about it on Facebook - all that comes up is the "Recommendations Box" linked above. In fact the box recently disappeared and we had to follow some convoluted method to make it appear again (add an address and make sure the map is displayed).
We would like to display the recommendations on the testimonials page on our site. Is there any method to do this?
No, there is no social plugin which displays this information, nor is there an API which returns those recommendations
i have to create widgets for whether reports and etc. to my website. what are all the needs to create widgets? is Css5 and Html enough to make a attracting widgets?? can you provide me the correct way to do that ...
Update Question :
i have got some more ideas to make widgets for websites and how we can add into our web pages. and now i have to do widgets for desktops like windows 7 desktop widgets. is it possible? and what're all the needs to make it??
Thanks in advance.
The widgets are generally not developed by the people who run the websites they appear on. Instead the weather widget might come from a weather site that provides data to. The widget is provided as code for web developers to paste into their site. These widgets refer to the maintained weather website (images, data, etc...). Some of them allow for a small level of customization, so you can use your own colour palette to make it blend with your site, or toggle rounded corners etc...
As a start a quick google search brought me to google's gadgets page which will get you started. I don't doubt that they are customizable through some minimal CSS. Changing borders and such.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=mark+zuckerberg+crunchbase
Guys, check out that search, in particular the first result's url. Crunchbase.com > People, and thus the people links to the /people section of the site.
How are they achieving it? I know Google algorithm is intelligent and looks for links and then makes the assumptions itself in cases, but is there any particular markup they are using to help Google to make these connections?
Google is light with details, but here's what they said in their announcement.
The information in these new hierarchies come from analyzing destination web pages. For example, if you visit the ProductWiki Spidersapien page, you'll see a series of similar links at the top, "Home> Toys & Games> Robots." These are standard navigational tools used throughout the web called "breadcrumbs," which webmasters frequently show on their sites to help users navigate. By analyzing site breadcrumbs, we've been able to improve the search snippet for a small percentage of search results, and we hope to expand in the future.
When you go to Google and perform a search, it will return either one of two type of results:
just the title of your webpage, or
the title of your web-page plus, lists subpages it found on that web site
Here is an example of option #2: http://37assets.s3.amazonaws.com/svn/grub-ellis-googlelisting.png
My website on a google.com search only lists my web page title (option #1), how do I get google to list my subpages on the search results (option #2)?
Is is an HTML issue? How do I get Google to know what my subpages are so that it can also list those on a google search.
Those are called "sitelinks" and are automated but you can partially configure them in Google's webmaster's tools. In webmaster's tools, click "sitelinks" in the navigation menu on the left. From the sitelinks page:
Sitelinks are links to a site's interior pages. Not all sites have sitelinks. Google generates these links automatically, but you can remove sitelinks you don't want.
Here is another Google page explaining sitelinks.
You should add a site-map using the Google webmaster tools site, or by maintaining your own. For explanation check out Sitelinks page.
Google has not generated any sitelinks
for your site. Sitelinks are
completely automated, and we show them
only if we think they'll be useful to
the user. If your site's structure
doesn't allow our algorithms to find
good sitelinks, or we don't think that
the sitelinks are relevant to the
user's query, we won't show them.
However, we are always working to
improve how we find and display
sitelinks.
You can also directly enable sitelinks (you don’t have to get lucky) in Google’s Pay-Per-Click platform (AdWords), and it will have a similar very positive impact on your clickthrough rate.
You need to create XML sitemap. Here is all you need to know. Check if your open-source CMS has plugin/add-on/module to do this automatically, there must be generators somewhere too.
http://www.google.lv/search?q=XML+sitemap
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitemaps
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=156184
You are describing "Search Engine Optimization" with your question. If you have a small site, the best thing you can hope for is to ensure every page has a unique title, links back to your home page, you have a good "site map" so search engines can easily discover ALL of your pages, and most important, your pages are THE definitive place for information about whatever you're selling.
Content is king and once you become the authority, your page will pop up in the 1st 1-2 links.
Contact some local SEO folks in your area and ask for a site evaluation. Many will do it for free with their automated tools. You can use the webmaster tools from bing or google if you're on a tight budget.
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Designing a web application, how do you design the main page? By this I mean the page that is displayed to a user after entering the base url, like http://www.foo.com.
It would probably depend on a website, but...
stackoverflow welcomes us with list of questions, no silly what is stackoverflow landing page,
last.fm prestens a kind of dashboard, being very popular lately, kind of personalized landing page for registered users
google welcomes us with a search box, but iGoogle i completly diffrent story - looks diffrent for everyone (well, and that's the point actually).
The other thing is, if the user is logged in (provided the website supports logging in), should we present him a diffrent content there then some new, random incomer? And I don't mean some personalized content, but something completly diffrent, like his user profile instead of main page?
From one perspective it could be good - registered users usually know our site, and get a kind of special greeting as soon as they come back. On the other hand, this could cause problems - when I show a website to a friend, then he goes there from his computer and sees something totally diffrent.
And other thing is, when I show a http://www.foo.com to a friend, and it takes me directly to my user profile / dashboard - this isn't sometimes what I'd like to show everyone, as this might show some of my personal data, etc.
What do you do when you design your web applications? What's, in your opinion, best from user's point of view, do my concerns about the website looking diffrent for registered and unregistered users do or don't make any sense? (Again, I don't mean small diffrences, like hiding huge register now link - but showing completly diffrent view then).
It really depends on the focus of your application, but if you were to generalise I would say determine the one or two most critical paths in your application and focus on those.
Registration is probably what you
want to drive more than anything
else, so make it clear how users can
sign up and get involved.
Make it is easy for existing users to sign in.
Consider the amount of text you have
on your front page and reduce and
pair it down as much as possible. Keep the messages and information you
convey here as succinct as possible.
Provide some content immediately
showing what your application or site
provides. Don't make users follow a
link to access the core functionality
of your site immediately e.g. if
you're building an auction site,
ensure there are listings on the
front page.
Consider your audience. If your site is non-technical, the fewer UI elements you present the better. Portal like sites, with lots of compartmentalised functionality and information can be confusing and overwhelming for many non-technical users.
Make it clear how users can get Help if they require it
Without knowing the business area of your site then it's going to be tricky to answer this, but...
You should get the user into the main flow of your website as soon as possible, and the home page is the best place to do this.
If you're an online store, start showing your products.
If you're a search engine, give the user the ability to search.
If you're a blog/news site, show the user the latest news.
Yes - make the experience for a logged on/registered user better (show them THEIR news, show them their recommended products etc), but the purpose of your site should be obvious and accessible from that home page. Get your existing users into their flow as soon as possible, and attact new users in to your site by showing them the meat of your site.
There are plenty of places out there that discuss good web design, making your site "sticky" etc. Check out SmashingMagazine.com (it's one such site) but there are plenty of others.
Oh, and remember that there's one very important user of your home page that you need to accomodate - search engines. Make their life easy, make the content discoverable and indexable, and drive people to your site via Search.
What I've found works best for me is to "role-play" the end-user's experience.
When they initially hit your site, what do they most want to see, or in other words, what are they most likely to be looking for and wanting to do?
I work on many intranet websites for a very large company, and what I've learned is that a home page that has detailed information of the site and what it does is useless and, consequently, my end-users just skip over it in order to get to the pages that they really need. So, my strategy usually consists in a home page that allows them to get straight down to business and whatever they're there to do.
BUT, that's just for the sites that I create. I think it totally depends on your target market and what they're wanting to do.
For the most part, a visitor landing on your page will already know the gist of what your application is about, so there shouldn't be a need to explain in detail what is is you do. Instead, show them that you have the information they are looking for. Screenshots and screencasts are becoming popular these days as a means of getting this across to the short-attention-spanned user.
For registered users, I'd recommend taking them directly to the primary application page instead of the homepage (unless the homepage is the primary application page). For many apps this is a Dashboard (Flickr, Basecamp, Campaign Monitor). If your app's main focus is the homepage, you may want to show them a personalized version of that page (think Google vs. iGoogle).
With all this said, it really does depend on what you are building. Every application is different and there's no right way to do it - only conventions that work for most.
I would start by looking at the type of tasks that can be performed inside your web app, what's important? what's important when they are a new user? what's important when they are a repeat user? what's important when they haven't even registered yet.
Although all of these things happen on the the same page, it's likely that you'll need to define different states. e.g. If a user is on the homepage and not logged in, should we prompt them to login and register.
Perhaps also look at Personas so you can figure out exactly who will be using the app and what is relevant to them.
It should be whatever makes sense for the application, and this should be verified by testing the application with a group of expected users.
The main page should provide a first-time user with enough visual and/or written information to understand what the application is about. They should have some idea as to what actions they can take to interact with the app and what the outcomes of these actions could be.
I know people hate this answer on stackoverflow but there's only one way to find out what the most appropriate thing for your users is - you need to brainstorm ideas with potential users or at the very least you ask them.
I'm not suggesting that you do a focus group, or put a flawed poll up (neither of those things work). Rather, I'm suggesting that you go out and talk to people who will potentially be in your target users and do planning games with them (like card sorting) or go out and do some user testing with paper prototyping.
Anything else is guessing.