The web, the internet and all that

The web is a fascinating place and what an age to live in. This collection is a mess of things I have loosely tagged as web and cover a lot of different web based topics such as websites, email and even operating systems, which technically are not the web as such, it has afforded me a living for many years, has kept me passionate about communicating with the outside world, has found me friends - and hey it's my site, this is what the web is all about.

Posts about The web, the internet and all that

• Publishing an OKF bundle with 11ty

  on Wed, Jun 17, 2026 ~ Post | Web | Featured
  How to publish a Google OKF knowledge bundle using 11ty and Nunjucks templates, with full content, discovery signposting and bot tracking via Cloudflare and Google Sheets.

• Measuring the effectiveness of your redirects

  on Fri, Feb 13, 2026 ~ Post | Web | SEO | Featured
  Do people actually follow old URLs to your site? Set up UTM tracking on your 301 redirects to find out. Here's how I did it with Fathom and GA4.

• Sort ordering for your Fathom Analytics accounts

  on Tue, Feb 10, 2026 ~ Shorticles | Web
  How to sort out the order of shortcut keystrokes in Fathom Analytics to suit haow you want them to work

• Creating Cloudflare redirects

  on Wed, Oct 8, 2025 ~ Shorticles | Web | Eleventy
  How to manage redirects on a Cloudflare Pages site using a _redirects file — notes from migrating directory structure in an 11ty build.

• Apple OSX Messages full stops emoticon bug

  on Sun, Jun 15, 2025 ~ Shorticles | Web | Tech
  When macOS Messages throws a wobbly—what broke, how to spot it, and the quick fixes that calm the chaos, with a wink for sufferers of Apple’s little quirks.

• Recovery from a Bing de-indexing

  on Mon, Apr 7, 2025 ~ Post | Web | SEO
  My personal site vanished from Bings index and it took quite a while to get it back in - here is what I found and did.

• Creating a blogroll page from Mastodon bookmarks

  on Fri, Apr 4, 2025 ~ Post | Web | Eleventy
  How I used the Mastodon API to turn my bookmarked toots into a living blogroll page on my website — despite JavaScript being a bit of a dark art.

• Marketing URLs - when and how to use them

  on Fri, Feb 7, 2025 ~ Post | SEO | Web
  Discover why URL shorteners like Bitly may not be ideal for SEO and how to implement your own memorable, branded redirects for better marketing results.

• The 2025 blog question challenge answers

  on Mon, Jan 20, 2025 ~ Post | Web
  I reflect on my blogging journey, platforms like 11ty, my writing process, favorite posts, and Ava’s Bear Blog Challenge.

• Newspaper style layout for my content

  on Sat, Sep 14, 2024 ~ Shorticles | Web | Eleventy | CSS
  Simon Cox experiments with a newspaper-style layout using CSS columns, grayscale filters, and a custom design to replicate the feel of vintage newsprint.

• The cobbles of Mousehole

  on Sat, Jul 13, 2024 ~ Shorticles | Web | News
  Simon Cox shares a scenic view of the charming mythical cobbles of Mousehole, capturing the essence of this picturesque Cornish village in a brief snapshot.

• Tracking 404 broken links with Fathom Analytics

  on Sun, Feb 11, 2024 ~ Shorticles | Web | Eleventy
  How I set up Fathom Analytics to track 404 broken URLs so that I could redirect those links to the correct page.

• Build your own 11ty starter

  on Sat, Aug 5, 2023 ~ Post | Web
  If you want to build a website quickly then 11ty is a great tool. Here is how I set up my starter pack to get me up and running in a few minutes.

• How I set up lastmod date in my 11ty xml sitemap

  on Thu, Jul 6, 2023 ~ Post | Web
  Google now want an accurate lastmod date in the xml sitemap. Here is how I set it up in my 11ty site.

• Netlify prerender cache

  on Sun, Jun 4, 2023 ~ Shorticles | Web | SEO
  Crawling a newly changed website on Netlify can bring you incorrect cached results!

• Cloudflare Pages error with 11ty build

  on Mon, May 15, 2023 ~ Shorticles | Web | Eleventy
  Troubleshoot Cloudflare Pages errors with 11ty. Set Node version in Environment Variables to resolve build failures and deploy successfully now today.

• Interaction to Next Paint, the new Core Web Vital

  on Wed, May 10, 2023 ~ Shorticles | Web | SEO
  INP, Interaction to Next Paint is no longer experimental and is due to be included as part of the Core Web Vitals by March 2024.

• Alternative to Google Analytics

  on Wed, May 10, 2023 ~ Shorticles | Web
  Why I switched from Google Analytics to Fathom Analytics — GA4's 16-month data limit was the tipping point, and this indie Canadian tool fills the gap.

• The HTML Neck Tag — Where Should Broken Head Scripts Go?

  on Tue, May 9, 2023 ~ Shorticles | Web | Humour
  Poking fun at the mythical HTML tag—where semantics meet silliness, standards collide with satire, and web nerds nod knowingly at a cheeky non-element.

• AI making some astonishing leaps

  on Thu, Mar 23, 2023 ~ Shorticles | Web | Tech
  A look at AI's rapid progress in early 2023 — ChatGPT-4, Google Bard's live URL access, and Midjourney v5's photorealistic image generation.

• Webmentions

  on Sun, Feb 5, 2023 ~ Shorticles | Web | Eleventy
  I have added webmentions to this 11ty build.

• Netlify CMS

  on Sat, Feb 4, 2023 ~ Shorticles | Web | Eleventy
  Somehow I have managed to add the Netlify CMS to the site.

• 11ty inline minified css

  on Fri, Feb 3, 2023 ~ Shorticles | Web | Eleventy
  Minifying css for 11ty sites.

• Website re-platform and a light redesign for 2023

  on Fri, Feb 3, 2023 ~ Post | Web
  Website rebuild using Eleventy for a faster, flat-file setup. Improved SEO, performance, and design while optimizing hosting with Netlify and Cloudflare Pages.

• How to get your Wix website verified on Mastodon

  on Tue, Nov 8, 2022 ~ Post | Web
  Simon Cox explains how to verify a Wix website on Mastodon by embedding a proper link rel=me tag in the site's header for successful identity confirmation.

• How to find insecure pages in your site before Google start penalising

  on Sat, Feb 10, 2018 ~ Post | Web
  From July 2018, Google flagged non-secure sites. Learn how to use Screaming Frog’s Insecure Content Report to fix your site.

• How I add canonicals into Perch CMS sites

  on Wed, Nov 29, 2017 ~ Post | Web
  Canonical links tell search engines where the original page is. Google favors the oldest version and flags others as duplicates.

• Fix Apple Mail ’Unable to Verify Account Name or Password’ Error

  on Thu, Oct 5, 2017 ~ Post | Web | Featured
  Struggling with Apple Mail login issues? I found a fix for keychain-related errors affecting LinkedIn, Google, Flickr, and more.

• Using a CDN to help migrate your sites hosting

  on Sun, Sep 18, 2016 ~ Post | Web
  Moving a site to new hosting can be fraught with issues. Here is one technique that I find useful when moving to a website to a new hosting server.

• EU cookie consent law largely ignored

  on Mon, May 28, 2012 ~ Post | Web
  The UK had until May 28, 2012, to comply with the EU cookie law. How many organizations met the ICO's deadline?

• Uploading images outside of Perch CMS default resource directory

  on Fri, May 11, 2012 ~ Shorticles | Web
  Moving images outside of Perch default folder - how I did it…

• ExpressionEngine custom log-in page

  on Wed, Oct 12, 2011 ~ Shorticles | Web
  How I customised the ExpressionEngine log-in page for a more on-brand experience.

• EEUK11 report from the 2011 ExpressionEngine conference in Manchester

  on Sat, Aug 27, 2011 ~ Post | Web | Trips
  The UK's first ExpressionEngine conference took place in Manchester in 2011—I share a report on the event and surrounding activities.

• Assets for ExpressionEngine

  on Sun, Jul 3, 2011 ~ Post | Web
  Assets for ExpressionEngine improves file management. I installed it and built a simple image gallery to test its capabilities.

• Responsive web design

  on Tue, May 31, 2011 ~ Post | Web
  Inspired by Simon Collison, I implemented Responsive Web Design on my site as the approach gained momentum over two years.

• Preventing deep linking

  on Tue, Nov 9, 2010 ~ Shorticles | Web
  Why preventing deep linking is both technically misguided and bad for the web — exploring the W3C's position and the real reasons IT teams panic about it.

• Web Fonts, CSS Typography and Making My Own Typeface

  on Wed, Jul 28, 2010 ~ Post | Web
  With HTML5 evolving, I explore modern web fonts, current techniques, and the latest in digital typography.

• Nibbler by Silktide — Testing Your Website Score and Standards

  on Tue, Feb 9, 2010 ~ Post | Web
  Online testing suites are a very useful way of checking your website to see if it's up to scratch. I take you through Nibbler from Silktide.

• New Look for simoncox.com in 2010 Moving to ExpressionEngine

  on Tue, Jan 26, 2010 ~ Post | Web
  A fresh design for simoncox.com in 2010 following a move from Movable Type to ExpressionEngine 2 — new look, same test-bed spirit, content incoming.

• Content stealing

  on Wed, Jun 14, 2006 ~ Shorticles | Web
  TIs someone stealing your content? You probably don't know. I just read a piece over on Learning Movable Type that sparked this post off.

• Dashes vs Underscores

  on Thu, Jun 1, 2006 ~ Shorticles | Web | SEO
  An ongoing debate about whether it is better to use a dash, or hyphen, in a file name or to use an underscore instead. I used the underscore for many years.

• Javascript SymWinOpen function pain

  on Fri, Dec 23, 2005 ~ Shorticles | Web
  This one really bugged me. I was trying to validate some code I had uploaded to a staging area on a site and it would not validate back on my PC running CSE HTML Validate.

• rel nofollow suits commerce users of Google

  on Fri, Jan 21, 2005 ~ Shorticles | SEO | Blogging | Web
  Commercial users of Google have finally been given a way to reduce the amount of Blogs clogging up their search results.

• rel nofollow suits commerce users of Google

  on Fri, Jan 21, 2005 ~ Shorticles | Web
  Commercial users of Google have finally been given a way to reduce the amount of Blogs clogging up their search results via the rel=nofollow attribute.

• Another e-mail scam

  on Thu, Jan 6, 2005 ~ Shorticles | Web
  Just popped into my inbox - this time the scammer is using a real life event, an aircrash in Alaska, to tart the story up.

• New comment spam technique

  on Tue, Nov 9, 2004 ~ Shorticles | Blogging | Web
  I had recently been getting some odd comments to this site and it's not just me - Ben and Dave have as well. I checked out the domains and there are no websites and no clues from the registrations.

• UI9 + 2

  on Sun, Nov 7, 2004 ~ Shorticles | Blogging | Web
  Getting nice and silly now!

• Texas Holdem Poker casino betting spam

  on Sat, Nov 6, 2004 ~ Shorticles | Blogging | Web
  I got comment spammed a lot today by someone trying to promote their Texas Holdem Poker casino site. I spent 10 minutes dealing with the spam that was trying to boost their search rankings.

• Silktide Sitescore website test

  on Fri, Oct 29, 2004 ~ Shorticles | Web | Standards
  I reported the link to Sitescore at Silktide yesterday and wanted to do a fuller report today having been through the service a little more.

• Google world word domination plans

  on Wed, Oct 27, 2004 ~ Shorticles | Web
  Just had an email from Google telling me that they are adding a new service into the search engine - you will now be able to search inside printed books.

• Feedburner

  on Sun, Oct 24, 2004 ~ Shorticles | Blogging | Web
  I have just added my RSS feed to Feedburner because of the amazing variety of options it allows for feeds.

• Train times blog

  on Tue, Oct 12, 2004 ~ Shorticles | Blogging | Web
  I have decided to add a second side blog to the site. This one is about my daily train journeys to Canary Wharf and back.

• Brandchannel interbred

  on Thu, Sep 9, 2004 ~ Shorticles | Opinion | Web | Standards
  Recently brandchannel.com reviewed a commercial web site that I have spent the past five years dramatically improving. The site now conforms to WAI AA standards and is fully CSS driven.

• Commenting fixed on this site

  on Wed, Aug 18, 2004 ~ Shorticles | Tech | Blogging | Web
  Earlier on today I realised that I had not got around to finishing off the commenting on this site properly. I had fallen asleep at the keyboard one night and forgotten to finish what I was doing.

• Secret Ying Yang club

  on Tue, Aug 17, 2004 ~ Shorticles | Tech | Web | Standards
  I noticed something interesting when I was using Bloglines this morning - both Eric Meyer's site and Mark Pilgrim's use the same favicon. Is it like a secret mark of the web standards in-crowd?

• Web Developer Firefox extension

  on Mon, Aug 16, 2004 ~ Shorticles | CSS | Web
  If you design and build websites, one of the best reasons for changing your browser to Firefox is the Web Developer extension developed and provided free by Chris Pederick.

• Lost in translation

  on Mon, Aug 16, 2004 ~ Shorticles | Tech | Blogging | Web
  In the last build of my Blog I had a side panel that allowed users to translate the entire site into a number of languages. The idea was that I could reach out to more people.

• burningcar.net spamming my site

  on Fri, Aug 13, 2004 ~ Shorticles | Opinion | Blogging | Web
  Someone has tried to post a comment on my site that was a full html advert for some kids micro scooters - essentially a site map of burningcar(dot)net sitting inside my comments.

• Meme too! or Count meme in!

  on Wed, Aug 4, 2004 ~ Shorticles | Tech | Blogging | Web
  There's an interesting experiment going on to test how ideas (memes) zip around the internet. The idea is to post a blog entry and get others to post the same entry.

• Meme 2 - get your blog up those charts

  on Wed, Aug 4, 2004 ~ Shorticles | Tech | Blogging | Web
  Nova Spivack has produced a second version of his Meme project already. If you are reading this and have a blog please do join in.

• Site templates

  on Tue, Jun 29, 2004 ~ Shorticles | Tech | Web
  I have actually spent a little time tonight looking at the site templates and have removed the home page templates temporary table layout having fixed on a CSS layout scheme.

• Dynamic CSS (DCSS)

  on Fri, May 7, 2004 ~ Shorticles | CSS | Web
  Dynamically altered CSS is something I have had going around in my head for about three years. Ever since I built the original Simon and Paula Garden website I always wanted to change the CSS depending on the context.

• Tim Berners-Lee gets a knighthood

  on Wed, Dec 31, 2003 ~ Shorticles | Tech | Web
  Tim Berners-Lee, the English chap who literally invented the web while working at CERN, has been honoured for his work in the Queen's new year Honours list with a knighthood.

• Nice Titles!

  on Fri, Nov 14, 2003 ~ Shorticles | Tech | Web
  The more observant and regular visitors will have noticed over the past few days that interesting floating boxes pop up if you hold your mouse over a link - using an advanced DOM technique.

• Multibabel

  on Sat, Sep 6, 2003 ~ Shorticles | Humour | Web
  Just come across a great site - Lost in Translation. It takes a word or phrase and uses Babelfish to translate from English into Japanese then back to English then Chinese then English and so on.

• Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman

  on Sat, Aug 30, 2003 ~ Shorticles | Reading | Web | Standards
  If, like me, you design web sites this is possibly one of the most important books I have ever read about the subject - Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman.

• Spam Scams

  on Thu, Aug 14, 2003 ~ Shorticles | Opinion | Web
  I have read a lot about the 419 Nigerian email scams and have received three in the past two years but this morning I received two new scam emails in my inbox.

• Don't make me think

  on Wed, Aug 6, 2003 ~ Shorticles | Tech | Web
  Steve Krug is bringing his usability workshop Don't Make Me Think to London on the 5th September! If you have not heard of Steve he's the thinking man's usability expert.

• Flashmob.co.uk

  on Mon, Jul 28, 2003 ~ Shorticles | Flashmobs | Web
  I have put together a new Flashmob site dedicated to events in the UK - Flashmob.co.uk.

• FavIcon installed

  on Thu, Jul 24, 2003 ~ Shorticles | Tech | Web
  I finally got round to adding the favicon back into the site. I used to have one a long time ago but it was pants.

• Pittock.net

  on Tue, Jul 8, 2003 ~ Shorticles | Web | Family
  Pittock.net is now live and the forum is in place. I encourage Pittock family members who visit this site occasionally to go and register on the forum.

• Microsoft drops Explorer for Mac

  on Wed, Jun 18, 2003 ~ Shorticles | Web
  Microsoft have announced that they will no longer develop new versions of their web browser Internet Explorer for the Apple Mac - what are the implications?

• Radiohead TV goes live

  on Mon, Jun 9, 2003 ~ Shorticles | Music | Web
  Radiohead TV has gone live at last with what may prove to be a very interesting web experiment.

• Moveable Type 2.64

  on Sun, Jun 8, 2003 ~ Shorticles | Web
  Just upgraded the content management system to Movable Type 2.64. This entry is more of a check to ensure all is ok than a real blog entry.

• Text Pipe

  on Sat, May 31, 2003 ~ Shorticles | Tech | Web
  It is not often that I get very excited about a piece of software but this week I unearthed an amazing bit of code - Text Pipe Web solved a huge problem for me and saved me hours of work.

• Grub it out!

  on Sat, May 24, 2003 ~ Shorticles | Tech | Web
  Fed up with Google? Grub.org was launched earlier this year and it is a network distributed web crawler - an alternative search engine.

• Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense - Web Realities

  on Thu, May 8, 2003 ~ Shorticles | Web
  This is a description of my new short.

• Microsoft plans toilets with Web access

  on Wed, May 7, 2003 ~ Shorticles | Web | Humour
  This is a description of my new short.

• wma189

  on Tue, May 6, 2003 ~ Shorticles | SEO | Web
  I was getting a lot of traffic due to some spammers

• Topic Icons

  on Mon, Apr 28, 2003 ~ Shorticles | News | Web | Blogging
  I have just added John Addis's excellent MT addon that allows me to add little images to each item's category.

• Boogle

  on Wed, Apr 23, 2003 ~ Shorticles | Web | Rant
  Very disappointed today to open Google UK to find no St George's Day banner.

• Weblogs.com

  on Mon, Apr 21, 2003 ~ Shorticles | News | Web | Blogging
  Weblogs.Com - Recently Changed Weblogs.

• Web site undergoing more changes

  on Sun, Apr 20, 2003 ~ Shorticles | Web | Blogging
  I am moving the cms over to Moveable Type.

• Movable Type moves to Simoncox.com!

  on Wed, Apr 16, 2003 ~ Shorticles | Web | Blogging
  I have installed MoveableType personal Publishing System onto the site

• New look new server

  on Tue, Jul 9, 2002 ~ Shorticles | Web
  I have got my act together at last and started shifting content to a dedicated web space.

• Upgrade to The Gallery

  on Fri, May 17, 2002 ~ Shorticles | Web
  I upgraded my photo gallery with new slideshow features to match the site's design, but sadly had to remove it in 2010. My images are now available on Flickr

• Accessibility links with css

  on Tue, May 14, 2002 ~ Shorticles | Web | CSS
  Lots of sites use short catchy 'action' terms to entice people into further sections of thier sites. Here is an alternative method. Accessibility links with css

• Mac Classic OS windows with css!

  on Mon, May 13, 2002 ~ Shorticles | Web | CSS
  A couple of Mac sites have complicated tables forming Mac like windows for showing stories. I tried this in css alone and reduce the number of graphics as well.

• It's a start with CSS

  on Sat, May 11, 2002 ~ Shorticles | Web | CSS
  Over the past few years I have become more and more engrossed with Cascading Style Sheets and the benefits they offer to the web.

• CSS rollovers - no javascript!

  on Sat, May 11, 2002 ~ Shorticles | Web | CSS
  I wanted stylish CSS rollover buttons—not just color blocks—so I explored techniques beyond basic JavaScript effects.

• New look site!

  on Fri, May 3, 2002 ~ Shorticles | Web | CSS
  The up side of being unwell is that I have spent this week delving into CSS.

• Microsoft - Hotmail pain...

  on Fri, May 3, 2002 ~ Shorticles | Web | Rant
  Just checked my hotmail account - which I only have so that I can use MSN Messenger because certain friends use it rather than ICQ.

• The latest webcam images

  on Sun, Jul 9, 2000 ~ Shorticles | Web
  OK Big changes to this page in July 2007! We now have a timelapse webcam picture for you.