The list of tools available for web developers today is staggering. For the nice little site I having run here I visit several sites each day to take a look, see whats going on, how many people visisted today, when they left, and tons of other information that frankly doesn't really matter to me right now. It's gotten quite fun to a degree, checking the bar chart, seeing if I beat yesterdays traffic, or if today visitors are spending more time on the site than yesterday. They even provide a nice map of the world, to show me what countries, states, and cities people hit my site from. All of this is just with Google Analytics alone. Google provides a nice way to see where people are clicking on my site, little boxes with percentages and whatnot, all fine and dandy, but I like gimmicks, and I found another site that lets me see a "heat map" of my site, a cool way to see where the clicks are happening. Not as useful but it makes this whole game of traffic, and SEO kinda fun. If we move over to SEOmoz again, more tools for keyword targeting, and back link checking. These tools all provide the information to you so that you can tailor your site to the audience you're aiming for, whether it's an site with something to sell, a news site, or even just another blog on the net, you can take a small site, and get it on the first page of a Google search rather easily. The trick is all about knowing the right keywords, and trying not to break into something really competitive. This is all from more of an SEO perspective, anyone reading the blog here will realize I have a tiny, or not so tiny, obsession with SEO for some reason. I like it, it's interesting how easy and at the same time how hard it is to control your PageRank. You can get the site on the results page, but it takes everyone else to make it move up, get the name out there, and turn into something big. I like to pretend it's a small section of the world that isn't totally money driven. If people like your site, and talk about it, it gets around. Sure you can pump cash into consultants, and pay for links, which will have an effect, but the degrees vary based on who is linking, where from and so on. Whats nice is the fact that someone can throw a video online, or a blog post, and it can easily trump any major corporations traffic, just by getting the right buzz. Looks like I went off on an SEO rant there. But the tools, whether the use is for keywords or interface optimization, are all built to get a user on the site, keep them there for a while, and get them to tell others. Thats the goal, for every site, tell others, and in the end thats what these tools will help you with. I'll link the good stuff below, of course making these sites more popular, and maybe one day help my own.

On a sidenote, I mentioned I know where people are hitting my site from. I find it interesting that a user, or users, in Philadelphia views my site more than even myself at this point. If you read this, and by my analytics trends I would say you will, drop me an email, do I know you, or are you just lost on the internet?

All these sites offer free tools, except where noted. Signing up for Google's Webmaster Tools and Analytics is one of the best things you do for ANY site.

SEO Tools at SEOmoz.org SEOmoz requires a free account for most tools, and paid membership for some advanced ones.

Great FREE SEO Tools

How do visitors find, navigate & convert on your site? Learn more.

Make your site more Google-friendly with Google webmaster tools

visualize your visitors The heat map I mentioned comes from here, free accounts as well as paid for larger sites.

Yahoo! Site Explorer

Been reading a lot about SEO lately, spent some time over at SEOMoz reading up on everything they have to say about how a web developer or designer can affect rankings. Another great site I found is WebConfs, I used some of the tools they help a bit, but if you know anything about SEO, you realize that keywords and such are a small part of your ranking. The biggest thing out there is backlinks. We can all understand why they are the biggest part, I hope, as they are supposed to be good quality sites linking to you for having good quality content. There is a lot that goes into SEO, it's no easy task to get yourself up in the ranking, especially for the more competitive terms. With all the information out there though, it is possible to get up there a bit on your own, so that the quality sites can see you, and then hopefully start linking. I have been looking into the social sites as well for ranking help, but there seems to be some information going both ways about how helpful a social site really is. After all, I can put my link up there, and have several thousand of my closest friends link to me from their profiles as well. That may not necessarily be considered quality linking however, and who knows, it could hurt you more than help. If anyone else out there in the web world has anything to contribute, please do so. I am very interested in this for some reason.

Since adding rails to my resume, even with my limited experience, I have gotten a few job offers for rails projects. I got one today that looks legit, but it's beyond me, and I am not going to get in over my head like that. It came from facebook, but the site is real, and let's face it, recruiters do watch the social sites we are becoming so fond of, not just LinkedIn either. I figured I'd drop the link here, not sure if anyone even hits the site much yet, but here it is, Software Developer - Web Monitoring. Maybe any of the imaginary visitors I have will be qualified and need a job. Just remember to thank your friendly blogger, hehe. Good luck, and as always feel free to drop me a line.

Just a quick update today, joined Twitter, added my resume onto my About Me page as well. Read recently that the 3rd ed. Agile Web Development With Rails is out in a beta PDF. Thats actually kind of bizarre, a beta book, but this is the world we live in. Can't wait to see the finalized book, I might buy the beta, it's a good deal with the updates anyways. Ruby on Rails is such a fast moving framework the 2nd ed. book is useful but doesn't cooperate with Rails 2.0 very well. Hopefully I can get moving on creating my own app for the site. If you're interested in the book take a look at the Pragmatic Bookshelf site, here.

Anyone who views this site will notice the changes that happen every few days. It's a work in progress. If you have done any sort of design work before, you can appreciate the difficulty in choosing everything. I also happen to be a bit obsessive and I keep adding little tweaks to things, background images, more color to the logo. My friend Dave did a great job with it, and now I am finishing it off bit by bit. Along with the design of things, is actually getting them to work with the style sheet, always an adventure in itself. If anyone out there notices anything, let me know. If anyone even comes here, let me know, according to Google you're out there somewhere. Well actually Google tells me where to be honest. I would be interested to hear what brought you here, boredom, misplaced button clicks? My email is at the bottom of the page.

Working on the site tonight I realized I had no links to anything other than LinkedIn. I ran across some icons for Technorati, Feedburner, and a few others. Realizing I had no accounts at these sites I went ahead and created them, adding to my long list of sites. I added the new Social Sites area on the right hand nav, it's missing a few they'll be up tomorrow. Now here is a question for everyone, or anyone who reads this, do we really need all these sites? I am having trouble positioning the list, it looks cluttered no matter what I do. Do they help with any real purpose? Getting a job or a friend? I don't know. I do know that I'll continue to sign up to them, and the list will always grow, just like the rest of the sheep....

so I am trying to add a tag cloud in place of the lame list of tags. we'll see how it goes, maybe they'll actually link to the posts and content soon.

The site is live, well the nicer more useful version at least. Anyone, of about 100 people according to my handy dandy google analytics, who may have hit this site prior to last wed. will remember the other version. Still the same site, mostly a blog, and hopefully a way to get out there in the web. The site is currently using Ruby on Rails and Mephisto. Eventually as I put together my thoughts and ideas it will be solely Ruby on Rails, and hopefully I can replace Mephisto with my own wonderful app. Take a look around, it will be updated.