I was trawling through my Awstats logs yesterday (as it’s the start of the month and there’s less to go through) and noticed a site insisting on direct-linking to my free avatars. Now, usually I don’t mind too much if someone has taken the occasional one but this particular site was using several avatars on… read full entry »

A thread came up at Mint Pages in which the age-old question “how do I increase my hits?” was asked. Although I’ve covered the subject briefly before, it did raise an interesting point about alt attributes. (That’s right, alt attributes, not alt tags.) I’m sure you’ve heard me nagging about alt attributes before in the… read full entry »

As those of you who read my Asides (see sidebar) will have noticed, I’m in the process of re-writing some of my pages. I started with my ‘About Jem‘ section, revising the information that I display about myself. While I haven’t added or taken away any information really (simply changed the formatting), it did get… read full entry »

Let’s have a quick re-cap of what we covered in Beginner’s Guide to PHP – Part One: there are different data types (string, integer, floating point number and boolean) and variables are created by simply assigning data to them. Simple enough? Well, now we’re going to take a look at mathematical operators and what we… read full entry »

I started reworking the tutorialtastic code waaay back when I first talked about rewriting the CMS over here at jemjabella.co.uk. For some reason I decided to use TT as my test site, and although I managed to get the majority of the site structure/databases/CMS done in one evening, I got hit by the procrastination bug… read full entry »

When I read up on C.R.A.P. last month — I admit — I was hoping it would turn me into an amazing designer overnight. Of course, we all know that this is an impossible feat and you can’t reverse several years of bad design habits with one book. However, it did at least make me… read full entry »

Cover your eyes if you’re easily corrupted — jemjabella is naked! Just like last naked day, I’m taking part to demonstrate that when stripped of styling Jemjabella.co.uk is still useable, browseable and most importantly: readable. Such is the benefit of separating visual style from mark-up. To get involved, visit the CSS Naked Day site over… read full entry »

I was recommending Mint recently as an excellent way of keeping an eye on click-through, a good way to find out exactly where visitors are going, how they’re getting in (whether through a link, Google search), etc.. and I was asked the question “is it legal?” Now I believe everyone who uses the Internet probably… read full entry »

No, I’m not being rude and I’m not swearing at you… I’ve just finished reading a book (The Non-Designers Design Book — Robin Williams) and have learnt that “CRAP” is the best way of remembering the four basic design principles: Contrast, Repetition, Alignment and Proximity. I make no secret of the fact that I don’t… read full entry »

A couple of my spring pictures have been ‘featured’ on the website of a local newspaper (“Jem of Jackfield”; that has a nice ring to it) after I spotted them accepting Spring picture submissions. This coincides nicely with me re-adding some of my pictures to the ‘net; I am hoping to re-add some of my… read full entry »