Rapid Web News

Facebook, one of the largest and most well known PHP powered social networking websites has made significant changes to its web design. Facebook have taken a more minimalistic web design approach in many respects, removing most of the bottom application and instant messaging bar, and moving to a left hand side bar. From a technical perspective, Facebook have increased their use of many web technologies such as JavaScript and AJAX in an effort to increase the speed of website loading and make improve the overall user experience. This certainly increases speed but can cause issues on intermittent or unreliable Internet connections, or on browsers with no or poor JavaScript support. However, Facebook has full support for Internet Explorer 7, 8, Firefox 3, Google Chrome, Safari and Opera.

The left sidebar of the new web design now features links to the news feed, friends, messages, friends and Facebook applications. These applications include both built-in Facebook applications such as Photos and custom made applications such as Rapid Wish List (in the Facebook screenshot above). The sidebar also includes direct links to the top online friends in your Facebook instant messaging, providing you are signed into Facebook’s chat system, which is not the case in the screenshot shown above.

Hopefully you enjoy the new web design Facebook has adopted, but as always there are many Facebook groups which heavily dislike the new changes to the Facebook web design. This is always the case with Facebook design changes it seems. What do you think? Do you like the changes or find that they make the website more difficult to use?

If you’re interested in a new web design for your website, whether minimalist like Facebook’s new design, or much bigger and bolder, please feel free to contact us. We do web design, web development, the creation of dynamic PHP-powered web applications and search engine optimisation and much more. Take a look at some of our other work.

Why is Google naming the latest development version of their search algorithms after the main component of my morning beverage? And more importantly, will the new ‘Caffeine’ algorithms really put the ever expanding Bing in the shade more than it already is?

Earlier this week, Google let slip the development of the ‘Caffeine’ algorithms. The new algorithms are designed to ensure new and fresh content (in terms of time-sensitive news and articles) appear at the top of search engines meaning it will soon become even more important that websites keep their content up-to-date where appropriate. Although these changes will have a significant issue for search engine optimisers, many end-users of Google may not notice the difference as Google’s current web interface is not going anywhere, and thus for many, these changes will go unnoticed apart from perhaps the odd more relevant search result.

Bing – Microsoft’s search engine – is soon to become the search engine which powers Yahoo search, and will likely become Google’s only major competitor in both the UK and US search markets. This will make for some ne and interesting challenges for SEO optimising for the new Google and Bing algorithms. However, removing the Yahoo algorithms from the search engine optimisation equation entirely will certainly benefit many websites that already rank well in Google and Bing, or indeed Live Search from which Bing inherited its index and many of its initial search algorithms.

For more information on search engine optimisation in general please see our dedicated SEO services page, or to see how we are doing in ever advanced optimisations see our Live SEO Rankings page which automatically updates to show the latest results for a small selection of our clients’ targeted keywords and their positions in Google, Bing/Live and Yahoo.

Any other questions? Feel free to comment just below or contact us directly.

There are literally thousands of SEO companies out there. We’re all saying the same thing. We’ll get you to the top of the search engines. In fact that’s nigh on impossible to guarantee, although some would make the claim. What really gets results is keeping your site on the first page of search directories, and as near to the top as possible. We don’t rely on quick-hit pay-per-click campaigns that can cost a bundle for very little benefit, instead we opt for natural listings that mature and evolve over time. With constant analysis we can fine tune our optimisation campaigns to ensure that the sites are all hitting their target audiences all the time. Where we score is with our transparency. We’re not claiming to get you to number 1 spot. It’s impossible unless you have oodles of cash to throw at it . However, we will get you as high as possible, and quite often that does mean number 1. We’ll be adding a link in the next few weeks that will show you live results.