Webdev: November 2003 Archives
Now that I have been working with LOAF for several days, I have the feeling that the technology is not completely finished yet. I have studied many LOAF implementations, but have the feeling that most implementations are just too difficult to implement. A lot of implementations are written in obscure programming languages, and need a powerful server to run on. But this way the LOAF technology is kept away from the big audience, who know nothing about programming. In my opinion, LOAF should be more easy to use, Joe Sixpack should be able to use it on his blog. And that preferably by only changing a single setting in his weblogging software.
So, I decided to create a LOAF implementation in CSS. Notice that this stylesheet is XHTML1.1 ready, since it also styles the <html> element. You only need to copy the file to your server and your site is completely LOAF-compliant.
To use the LOAF CSS implementation on your site, follow the steps below:
- Download the LOAF CSS file;
- Replace the stylesheet for your site with the contents of the file you just downloaded (MT users: read the instructions on the Movable Type site).
That's all!
The latest trick spammers have is setting up fake blogs, usually with the design copied from another site. Though these sites look harmless, all links direct you to pr0n sites. To get visitors to their 'webblogs', they use a trick known as referer spam. They request pages from other sites, pretending to come from a link on their weblog.
Since many sites display the referers on one of their pages ---home page or statistics page---, the spammer effectively creates links to his site this way. And the more links to your site you have, the higher you get in Google's search results, which results automatically in more visitors!!! You can read more about all this at idly.org .
After reading about it at Russell Beattie's Notebook, I just had to add LOAF support to this site. You know, I always like to try out new technology. If anybody encounters strange behaviour in LOAF, please drop me a message.
[Update 2003.11.14]: Changed LOAF link to the 'official' LOAF wiki.
