Ever wondered what the prominent keywords were that your visitors use to reach your site?

Google Analytics will happily show you those. With the amount of visitors per keyword of course (amongst many other metrics).

But what if you wanted to know which separate words were most used throughout all search queries? Create a tagcloud:

1. Go to the Traffic sources >> Keywords report.
2. Be sure to select a good amount of visits by stretching the date range to e.g. a year.
3. Append &limit=50000 at the end of the URL. This is some hack to get all keywords in the export and be sure to append it to the end, not before the hash (#) character or anything.
4. Click the export button at the top of the report and click CSV.
5. Open the file in an application that understands the standard CSV-format. I have to open the file in a text-editor and replace all comma’s with semicolon’s before I can open it in Excel.
6. Copy all keywords (not the numbers behind them or the general data above them).
7. Visit a tagcloud creation website and paste the data.

You can argue that the number of visitors per keyword is not taken into account but in the end that may not be what you are looking for. In case you want to know which keywords are most often used in different search phrases, this creates a pretty good image.

Below is the result of all searches that reached this website in 2009:

(click on the image to enlarge)

Thanks to Avinash Kaushik for another great post about Analytics Insights.

Like everyone has done these days and some (like me) are still doing: a random review of 2009 and a preview on 2010.

2009 (in order of magnitude)

• My first ever energy-efficient lamp broke (I must have been using it about 7 or 8 years). So these things can die!
• The basement scene with John Malkovich and the fitness owner in Burn After Reading was probably the best movie scene I ever saw.
• Together with Jan from JAMA Webcreations I built the most user friendly content management system in the world. Be sure to contact Jan for a demo and partner with us.
• I got hooked (if I wasn’t already) on a lot of Google applications: Analytics, Apps, AdWords, Mobile Gmail and Wave.

2010

• While I must admit it isn’t that hard as some people want it to be, I will stop testing projects in Internet Explorer 6. It doesn’t make that big of a difference since IE 7 often has the same quirks.
• I plan to move all hosting to Linode. Their service just can’t get better. E-mail accounts will probably be handled by Google Apps.
• I hope to (re)launch a considerable amount of the projects I work on (on a Linode of course).
• Maybe I should also try to get the Zend Framework certification but I also want to take the Google AdWords and Analytics exams.

Have fun in 2010!

One of the consequences of the huge popularity of Zend Framework is that everyone who is using PHP in one way or another has at least thought about using it (because it all sounds so good and, possibly, easy).

But different people need different approaches to start developing with Zend Framework. And the publishing companies that published the first books about Zend Framework (and apparently also the second wave of books) tend to forget about some groups of users. A little summary (in no way meant to offend):

Developers with a different background (another programming language)

Depending on the background, migration will not be that hard. I can imagine a .NET or Java developer easily gets the principles of a framework (and hopefully also understands OO programming). Ruby or Python will be even easier (but why on earth would they migrate?).

The average PHP developer (not already using Zend Framework of course)

If the Zend Framework manual is not sufficient for this group, there certainly are a lot of books available that eliminate all barriers. Of course look for the most recent books, since a lot of versions have been announced the last 2 years and, to be honest, some of the early books were published in a hurry to benefit from being among the first.

Dreamweaver users (often called “webdesigners“)

Yes, this group is also (willingly or unwillingly) pushed to, at least, have a look at Zend Framework. And to be honest, at the moment, I wouldn’t know how they can prevent themselves from creating something that isn’t maintainable in the years to come.
Zend Framework (or any other framework in this case) promises a lot of good things (which may lack in the current PHP snippets, Smarty templates, open source CMS,… now being used). Starting with the manual certainly is tricky. Getting a thorough grip of PHP/OO concepts may sound boring, but you need it.
As a suggestion: don’t set too high expectations and take your time. It may be useful to force yourself to get a PHP certification. Not because you need it, but because it forces you to learn/refresh the PHP basics.

Also: be honest to yourself. If you notice OO concepts don’t interest you, think about it and maybe try something else. Another lightweight framework like CodeIgniter (there is no such thing as “the best framework”) or no PHP development at all may better suit you. No one has ever been happy forcing themselves in a position doing something they don’t like to do!

Dummies

Belonging to this group is no disadvantage. Ok, you don’t have the experience of someone who has been using PHP since before the dot-com bubble burst, but at least you acknowledge this. Starting from scratch (and knowing it) can eliminate a lot of barriers.
Start by learning PHP and fairly early start with a decent PHP OO book and, again, take your time. In my opinion you don’t have to finish 5 courses and 3 books to start with Zend Framework. When learning Zend Framework (e.g. from the manual) you’ll also learn OO principles and best practices, but you need a basic knowledge first.
Also don’t expect that you can add new Zend Framework components on day 2, it will take time.

Did I forget about someone? I certainly hope this post can help as a starting point for new Zend Framework developers (or people thinking about becoming one).

Popular and widespread in Japan, QR codes (a variant of the well-known bar-codes) certainly provide many opportunities.

The QR code was invented by Denso Wave, Inc of Japan in 1994. They appear on many product packaging in addition to “normal” bar-codes for shipment tracking and other purposes. When scanned, these codes can return numbers and text (e.g. the URL to this blogpost in the example image). The camera on your mobile phone and dedicated scanning software do the rest of the magic.

While their ability to be a link between the “online” and “offline” world can provide many opportunities, it hasn’t really become the hype it could be outside of Japan. Practical implementations are rare. Most likely because of the lack of knowledge by the broad public. Although QR reader software is freely available and a July ‘09 research by the University of Essex stated that 68% of UK phone owners can install such an application, most have not.

The biggest difference between the numerous free QR readers (for about any phone brand/model) may be the image quality needed to recognize a code. I’m happy with the  speed of NeoReader but there are also Kaywa Reader and QuickMark barcode reader (among others).

Besides Wordpress plug-ins and support in the Google Charts API, there is a PHP library but support in the Zend Framework could stimulate its use even more (Zend_Gdata_Chart anyone)?

Some more implementations:

• Facebook Add to Friends.
• Viral advertising campaigns.
• Share contact information.
• TV to website link (Dutch).
• … any other examples? Please share them in the comments.

One useful tip is to shorten URLs through one of the many URL shortening services there are. This generates a smaller, less prominent QR code.

The upgrade to the new FireFox 3.5 causes the nice Live Pagerank plugin by Martin of raketforskning to be deactivated.

Although his URL means “rocket science”, his site seems to be down so I wouldn’t expect an updated version too soon.

Luckily a nice guy named Daniel Olivares has created a new version which runs on FireFox 3.5.

If you own one or more sites the little number that appears in the FireFox status bar is an addiction. The Google Toolbar offers the same, but of course you don’t want the whole package and that’s why this add-on is so popular.

Edit: at the time of writing this new version worked, but it seems like it no longer does. Neither does the one downloadable on the official plugins site (although some users report it does, e.g. with firefox 3.7).

A question many people and businesses probably have asked themselves at least once.

Earlier this month, Marketingsherpa put up a short post about the answer to that question. They state that you can as easily participate by commenting on other blogs as you can by setting up your own.
While they insinuate that blogging is hard and time consuming, commenting is certainly easier (be sure to set up some kind of profile page to link back too though).

For me however, it has been very satisfying already!

Gather valuable feedback on your designs, artwork, photos,… by simply waiting. Just waiting. For free.

A nice new web 2.0 application, fivesecondtest, provides a platform for images to be “reviewed” by the public (stored at Amazon S3 of course). It’s dead simple: you upload the image and wait. After some time people will have reviewed your image and marked what drew their attention in the first five seconds they saw your image.

Whether it is a screenshot of your site, a fresh mock-up, a (stock) photograph,… you name it and it gets reviewed. All without creating an account or leaving any personal information.

Be sure to review some too!

Edit: use of Calibri font makes it look nice on Windows.

Once in a while (not that much actually, but enough to write something about it) I get a question from friends or family, newly graduated or experienced, about what their next career move should be.

Not that I know that much about it, but let’s assume you want to find the appropriate job/hobby related to IT for yourself.

When I was at school we basically had to choose between development (programming) or networking. A fairly easy choice that, as we realised later, would define the rest of our life. Luckily our school provided good guidance (just kidding).

With the Internet and everything around it evolving at warp-speed, the options you have are far less obvious.

Of course you should still look at yourself and think about whether or not you like to do development. But let’s say you do. In that case and in my opinion, the language you pick is not that important. Although at school they probably still divide classes that way, it is good to realize you will have to switch between languages someday (possibly multiple times, who knows). And as Dave Thomas (The Pragmatic Programmer) says: it’s almost a requirement to keep an eye on multiple languages/technologies.

While you should not be guided by the salaries mentioned, the IT Jobs Watch provides multiple views on the current job market. One basic fact that you could derive from this list is what sector/language/tool is becoming increasingly popular (in the UK, but probably everywhere). While that may not be the optimal choice (and I’m not even saying you should base your choice on this!), it may as well play a role in your decision process.

Note: if you are interested in the salaries mentioned, there are far better opportunities for you!

When you want to use Google Reader in offline mode so you can catch up with posts when you are not connected (yes, that happens!) you may not be able to follow the instructions stated in the Help (Dutch).

Google tells you to simply click the synchronize icon at the top right, next to “Settings” but no icon appears after you’ve installed Google Gears. Switching you preferred language to English instead of, in my case, Dutch solves that.

Since it acts the same across browsers I assume it’s a small bug for all languages except English?

Edit: Google Reader’s offline mode seems to be buggy since December last year.

Apparently price settings for telecom (broadband/mobile/land line) plans in Belgium are significantly higher than its neighbouring countries and our Belgian government has decided to do something about it.

I try to avoid posts about Belgian/Dutch subjects but this one is too big of a disgrace:

To increase competition between operators, our government has launched a site to compare different telecom offers (Dutch). I can only assume someone naively decided this is the cheapest way to get prices to drop without extra legislation and while one can doubt its effectiveness in case of (forbidden) price setting agreements between operators, it must have cost (or still costs) huge amounts of time to get up-to-date data in their application.

If you now doubt this is something a government should occupy itself with, you’re not alone.

But it gets even worse. As you may have guessed looking at the site, the underlying code is terrible. This is even more sad because, while very basic and a bit outdated, there are guidelines for creating sites from the government (Dutch).

With less work and more talented people, they could have built an application that could at least be user friendly (as an example: if you submit without some required field, everything you entered is reset) and it could have been an attempt to justify the budget spent.

Maybe it is best they just fire the one responsible for this decision. No motivation needed.