Today we launched a new job search for web development jobs with job aggregator Indeed. The job search starts with a generic search for web development jobs. From there you can modify the search to find exactly the job you are looking for. Some searches might be for php, html, ruby, html, etc. and in locations like New York, 90210, San Francisco, Portland, etc.

You can also post a job on the board for $30 which includes distribution across the Indeed network.

So get off your couch and get your self employed so you can buy more tech crap and tweet about your new job.

Earlier this month CenterNetworks was converted from Drupal to WordPress. Part of the conversion resulted in several of the CN sites getting hit with an exploit. It appears that one of the CN sites might have actually been hit earlier and I just never noticed it and only upon CN getting hit did I realize this other site was also hit.

This other site apparently lost most of its “Google Juice” which resulted in a major reduction in organic search site traffic. Here’s a graph of the before, during and after.

At the lowest point, nearly 70% of Google-referral traffic to the site in question was lost. As you can see from the chart above, slowly the Google Juice has been restored and we are back to normal traffic today. Phew, at least now I can get the investors off my back.

What did I learn from this experience? Google indexes sites very quickly but it seems to take about two weeks for the Google search crawlers to update an entire site. From what I can tell, there’s no real way to tell Google that a site was infected and that it is now clean of bad links. There is a re-inclusion request form but I’ve never received any feedback when I have submitted that form in the past so no idea if it actually worked. More importantly, the experience made me realize just how much Google controls how this site does monetarily each and every day.

I met with a friend today and most of our discussion centered around online advertising. While waiting for the #1 subway an idea came to me (actually most of my ideas come to me on the subway). Why not give startups a break and allow them to advertise on CN for a fraction of the normal advertising cost.

With that in mind, here’s what I am offering:

• 125×125 ad on all pages of CenterNetworks in our sponsor area – not a rotation (max 5)
• 125×125 ad on all pages of HTMLCenter in our sponsor area – not a rotation (max 5)
• text link in CenterNetworks RSS feed (max 3)

Each option is available for $100/month and you are limited to only one selection. Only “real” startups will be allowed to participate (sorry Facebook) and the term will be renewable for the time being.

If you’d like one of the slots, send me an email at (allen – at- centernetworks – dot com) noting your company and a link to your ad. I will reply to confirm the ad buy or to let you know of your place on the waiting list – ads are first-come, first-served. Payments can be made via PayPal, Google Checkout or by company check.

I added a 404 tracking database to my blogs so I can track what pages are broken. The database includes the IP address of the computer attempting to access the item. Most of the listings in the database are webpages and/or images that are broken.

But what I’ve also noticed is that there are a huge number of rows for the following item (with variations):

• tag/web-3.0/feed/favicon.ico

When I lookup the IP address (174.129.123.x), it resolves to Amazon Web Services. I have an AWS account but have no idea why they would be trying to hit this file 100 times a day.

Anyone out there have an idea on why or how to correct the issue? Thanks in advance.

Curtiss wrote a great post about Thanksgiving earlier this morning and I wanted to echo his comments. I especially want to say thanks to Curtiss, Leppy and Deadeye for taking care of the forums, making sure they are spam-free and all their hard work answering everyone’s questions. Also a shoutout to Till for helping to get us working on the new Web host.

It’s amazing to think that we started the HTMLCenter journey over 10 years ago and I believe we are the longest-running independent web developer community operating today. I’ve got some ideas which will continue to move HTMLCenter forward over the year next year so stay tuned.

No matter if you are in the U.S. or anywhere else in the world, all of us here at HTMLCenter thank you for your interest in our community.

To all of our readers in the United States, I want to wish you a happy Thanksgiving. In these trying economic times, please take the time to remember those things for which you truly are thankful. In everyone’s life, no matter how dim things may seem, there are always things for which to be grateful. I hope you find those things in your own heart and mind, and take the time today to celebrate them.

If nothing else, at least most of us can be thankful that we won’t be dealing with the Black Friday crowds in a major metropolitan area (I will, regrettably, be dealing with Black Friday crowds, but not in an urban setting).

I just wanted to make a good, quick post about two good resources I find myself using quite a bit.  The first is an md5 encrypter.  It’s a very nice, simple tool that simply converts any string into an md5-encrypted string.

At work, I find myself making a lot of very simple scripts that require me to set up administration areas, but don’t really warrant taking the time to set up online registration, etc.  Instead, I simply use the md5 encrypter to encrypt the passwords I want to use, and then I enter those encrypted passwords directly into the database.

You can find that tool, along with quite a few others, at http://www.iwebtool.com/tools.  The link directly to the md5 encryption tool is http://www.iwebtool.com/md5.

The other tool I’ve found myself using quite a bit, for basically the same reasons listed above, is a random password generator.  The one I’ve been using the most is presented by PCTools.com.  It offers a lot of options, and does a very nice job of generating random, secure passwords.  You can find that tool at http://www.pctools.com/guides/password/.

I’ve recently become aware of an issue with managing comments in WordPress 2.5. I’m not sure if it’s a bug or if it’s simply a poorly implemented “feature”, but I’m going to call it a bug.

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My supervisor at work e-mailed a nice accessibility resource a few weeks ago. The “Division of Instructional Technology” at the University of Wisconsin has put together a good collection of videos and podcasts related to Web accessibility. The in-house videos are narrated and led by a blind man named Neal Ewers, who works for the Trace Research and Development Center at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

The videos are extremely interesting to watch, and very informative. If you have considered improving your Web site’s accessibility, I highly recommend visiting the site and watching each of the videos.

Around here we know that developers are no (April) fools. As we get ready to relaunch one of the longest running, independently-owned Web development resource sites,  we are excited to announce our 30 days of Web developer interviews. Each day during April, we will post an interview with a Web developer. The developer can work for a large company, a startup or be an indie. We are looking to interview a diverse set of Web developers from around the world.

If you are interested in participating, please send an email to allen =at= htmlcenter.com and include the following:

• Name
• Location
• Development Language
• Employment type (large company, startup, indie)
• Programming languages (PHP, Ruby, etc.)

We expect a large volume of responses so only those who are selected will be notified. Thanks for your interest!