In the vast majority of today’s websites, if a program is required to pick out a particular part of a HTML page, such as the main article, the sidebar or the top navigation, it would have to be programmed to do so on a per website and web page basis. This is because every website structures its HTML differently, unless based on an underlying package with a consistent HTML foot print.

Most current websites therefore use a variety of <p>, <div> and <span> tags to surround their content. These tags define style and do not obviously determine whether the contained content is part of the website’s navigation system or whether it is the main article or focus of the web page. The new HTML 5 tags aim to change this by explicitly defining content.

Defining content with specific HTML 5 tags will make websites easier to parse by computer programs. This could benefit accessibility readers for the blind and allow content aggregating systems and ‘mash-up’ websites to easily parse, link to and cite your articles. Content aggregation and automation of web page content retrieval is quite fundamental to some of the newer Web 2.0 sites and social networks. Good examples being Facebook’s automatic retrieval of web page information when a link is entered into a status update, or Reddit’s automatic thumbnail generation based on images found within the linked web page.

Here is a listed on related HTML content tags, as available from the W3C Schools website.

• <article> – Defines a main article on a page. Can include cite (citation) and pubdate (publishing date) attributes.
• <details> – States content details for a specific section. Can include an open attribute defining whether or not the details within are visible to the end-user.
• <figcaption> – States the caption for a figure as defined by the figure tag.
• <figure> – Usually used to group a set of elements.
• <footer> – Footer layout element. This is used to contain the footer content of the page, usually contains the website name, author and copyright information.
• <header> – Header layout element. This tag is designed to contain the top header of a document, usually showing the website logo, page and/or company title and subtitle.
• <hgroup> – A tag used to group together heading tags such as <h1>, <h2>, <h3> and so on.
• <keygen> – A key generation tag which defines a generated (encryption) key that can be associated with a HTML form.
• <meter> – The <meter> tag contains content which is deemed to be a measurement of some sort.
• <nav> – The <nav> tags stands for navigation and is designed to surround navigation links, such as those present in a sidebar bar or navigational header/footer.
• <summary> – The <summary> tag defines the title of a <details> element.
• <time> – This tags contains content which is a statement or measurement of time and/or date/time.

Unfortunately, it is likely that HTML 5 content tags with not be adopted completely for quite some time and there will likely continued use of existing HTML mark up and related styling of <div> and <span> tags for quite some time.

The Reddit Alien - a great social bookmarking advantage

Some people think of search engine optimisation as being strictly building links and content, and that was very much the case before the advent of microblogging and social networking. Now being social is very important for search engine optimisation. Using social networking, social bookmarking and other such sites can really help boost your traffic, both via increased rankings and faster indexing in search engines as well as the potential for viral marketing and promotion of your content.

Let’s go over the main points. Using social methods of promotion for your website can help:

1. To get your site indexed faster – Promoting your site via services such as Reddit, Digg, Twitter, StumbleUpon and blog pinging services can ensure your site is indexed in search engines as fast as possible.
2. To increase search engine rankings – Although many social bookmarking and similar sites now use ‘nofollow’ rel tags on their links, there are still several services which do not. Reddit, a social news/bookmarking website that I have recently become addicted to, is a perfect example of a social website which does not use the ‘nofollow’ rel tag on any of its links.
3. To virally promote your content – Social bookmarking and news websites are great for promoting websites and interesting or funny website content in a viral nature. This can have a cascading effect for content this people find really interesting. To virally promote content, always ensure you post links to the relevant categories and in a way that makes the content seem interesting, either be being funny, outstanding or highly controversial.

Overall, social networking and bookmarking websites are a fantastic tool for website and content promotion and for improving your search engine results page rankings. Most importantly, you should promote good quality and interesting content without looking incredibly spammy or promote spam like web content… there is enough of that on the Web already!

When starting a new forum board based on the vBulletin forum (or in fact an forum software), one of the most common problem is making the board popular and getting users to register. The problem most people face is that users will not register on a forum board that looks completely empty! I mean, who would?

So, how can you do this? People will not register if a board is empty – that much is obvious. I’ve recently had to artificially inflate the user count and online users for a vBulletin forum, by request of the forum board owner. Luckily, I found an excellent plugin which does just this. Not only does it increase the counts for online members and guests, but it also lists real usernames.

It is implemented by grabbing the existing member names from the database and appending them to user list at the bottom of the forum home. This plugin is very ingenius and pretty believable – good if you are starting up a new vBulletin powered forum board.

If you wish, you can read more about and download the vBulletin Fake User plugin. Note that you will need a vBulletin.org account and a valid vBulletin license to download this plugin.

Retrospectively, I do not believe this is necessarily the best manner in which to entice new users to any form of community for it provides little motivation to join beyond the active community. If the ‘active community’ (which in this case, would not exist) produces no content worthy of the potential member’s time, why would they feel the need to register or sign up?

I have and still do run a few online communities, including vBulletin forum boards. During this time, I have found new and interesting content to the specific niche (if one exists) is the key for all forms of online social activity and indeed, for drawing in new users. If the content is interesting enough, people will come either in surges for time sensitive content or as a new member registration trickle effect over time.