You may have noticed the block of social networking icons that appears after each of the posts on my blog. It looks like this:
I have been asked to explain how this is done. In fact, it is quite simple as all you need to do is to install, configure and activate the ‘Social Bookmarks’ plugin.
The ’Social Bookmarks’ plugin was written by Apostolos Dountsis. It is a WordPress plugin that adds a list of XHTML compliant graphic links at the end of your posts that allow your visitors to easily submit them in a number of different social networking sites.
The plugin features an AJAX front-end interface and adds a page in the WordPress admin section that lets you customize it. The plugin supports more than fifty social networking sites.
For more information, refer to Apostolos Dountsis’s website.
WordPress 2.9.2 has been released to fix a minor bug.
Previously, logged in users could view trashed posts belonging to other authors. This bug would be a problem only if you have untrusted users signed up on your blog and sensitive posts in the trash.
In any case, it is probably sensible to upgrade to WordPress 2.9.2.
Last week I explained what you need to do when you change the domain name on a website and the role of the ‘301 redirect’. This week, I am going to explain how to actually implement a 301 redirect.
The explanation set out below applies to websites that are hosted on servers running the Apache webserver software. If your site is hosted on a server running other software, check with your hosting company or software supplier for information on how to do this.
You will need to have access to your website’s .htaccess file and .htaccess directives must be enabled in the server’s configuration file.
You will then need to decide whether to use a “redirect” or a “rewrite”. If the new file is on the same webserver as the old file, you should use a rewrite. If the file is on a different server, you should use a redirect. Why? The simple answer is bandwidth. A redirect sends the new URL back to the web client and the web client must reissue the URL request, which creates more traffic. With a rewrite, the original request is just processed and a new URL is returned along with the new file – the web client does not have to reissue anything.
Redirects
To use a redirect, the Apache module mod_alias needs to be available on the webserver. This module is compiled and loaded into the server by default, and is therefore normally available unless steps have been taken to remove it.
To use it place the following directive in your .htaccess file.
RedirectMatch permanent ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com$1
(Replace ‘newdomain.com’ with your own new domain name.)
Rewrites
To use a rewrite, the Apache module mod_rewrite needs to be available on the webserver. This module is not compiled and loaded into the server by default, so action needs to be taken to install it.
To use it place the following directives in your .htaccess file.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?olddomain\.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
(Replace ‘olddomain.com’ and ‘newdomain.com’ with your own domain names.)
If you wish to understand what the various directives are actually doing, I suggest that you consult the Apache documentation, in particular the Apache URL Rewriting Guide.
The directives for both redirects and rewrites can be placed in the server configuration file instead of the .htaccess file, and, indeed, it is more efficient to do it that way, but many hosting companies do not provide access to that file.
I hope that this post provides the answer to what seems to be quite a common problem.
Next week I will get back to less “technical” issues.
Last week I was asked by one of my customers to change the domain name on one of his websites. I explained to him why this was not a good idea, but he was adamant that it had to be done. So how do you do it properly?
First, re-set up the website using the new domain name.
Second, you change all the backlinks to the old website to point to the new website. However, this is almost impossible in most cases as you do not have control over all the websites that link to your website and many of them will not respond to requests for changes.
Third, you need to tell all the users of your website that the address has changed. This includes search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing.
Realistically, stages 2 and 3 above are impossible, so the next best thing is to redirect all the traffic from the old website addresses to the new ones. This can be done (and indeed Google state that this is the best way to do it) using a “server-side 301 redirect”.
The redirect part is self-explanatory – traffic that visits an old web address is redirected to the new web address – but what does the 301 bit mean? The 301 “status code” tells the visitor that a page has moved permanently to a new location. This will not mean much to a casual human browser, but it will mean a great deal to the search engines. Search engines will begin to give priority to the new site over the old one and “understand” that the old addresses have been superseded by the new ones.
Next week, I will explain how to actually implement a 301 redirect.
Last Sunday, I was lucky enough to view the new Sennen Cove All Weather Lifeboat.
For those of you who do not know, Sennen Cove is a small village just north of Land’s End in the very west of Cornwall in the UK. The seas around the coast of west Cornwall can be treacherous – the lifeboat crews deserve the very best equipment that we can give them.
The new lifeboat, ‘City of London III’, is one of the RNLI’s new Tamar class lifeboats. City of London III was built in 2009 at a cost of £2.7 million and began service at Sennen Cove in January 2010. She is a 16 metre self-righting lifeboat powered by two 1,000hp Caterpillar diesels which give her a top speed of 25 knots. She has an endurance of more than 10 hours at full speed. All in all, she is a very ‘high-tech’ vessel.
A crew pool of 24 people is available to man the two Sennen Cove lifeboats – the new one and the inshore one. All are highly trained and dedicated volunteers. This pool ensures adequate crew availability to man both boats immediately 24 hours daily 365 days per year. And yes, they have had to launch on Christmas day.
The lifeboat house was open to all and it was a real privilege to be able to crawl all over the boat and chat to the crew.
Towards the end of the afternoon both lifeboats were launched and then recovered about half an hour later.
February 3rd, 2010 in
Cornwall | tags:
Cornwall |
No Comments
Do you use Google Adwords? If so, do you use other people’s trademarks to target your ads? If so, you are not alone.
A case in the European Court of Justice (ECJ) is currently considering the controversial use of company names and trademarks in internet advertising searches. The ECJ case has been brought by Louis Vuitton, Viaticum SA and the owners of the Eurochallenges brand. Each argues that their trademarks rights are infringed when other businesses use their names and trademarks as triggers for their Google Adwords ads.
A ruling is expected sometime in February, but the likely outcome is that Google’s service and behaviour is legal and does NOT infringe trademark rights.
Google has released a statement: “We believe that consumers are smart and are not confused when they see a variety of ads displayed in response to their search queries.”
Most internet marketers must hope that Google will win the case so that they can continue to use other people’s company names and trademarks as Adwords triggers.
If you have read any of the internet marketing forums lately, quite a few people seem to have problems keeping their Google AdSense accounts: there seem to be numerous claims of Google banning them apparently for no reason.
Google is a commercial company and as such exists to make money. It seems very unlikely to me that Google would withdraw an AdSense account for no reason. However, it seems very likely that an AdSense account would be withdrawn if the holder of the account failed to comply with Google’s AdSense terms and conditions.
It seems to me that there are three key areas of the terms and conditions that you just must understand and comply with to avoid being banned:
- Avoid prohibited website subjects
- Don’t click on your own ads
- Don’t ask people to click on your ads
Avoid banned website subjects
Many people seem to be under the misconception that once they have a Google AdSense account they can place ads on any web page they like. This is not the case. The Google AdSense terms and conditions prohibit certain categories of website from taking part in the program. These categories include the obvious such as websites promoting: use of illegal drugs; pirate software; racism; etc. However, other less obvious categories are also prohibited, such as those promoting beer and other alcoholic drinks.
Don’t click on your own ads
Clicking on ads on your own website is forbidden expressly by the Google AdSense terms and conditions. It is probably the quickest way to get banned from Google AdSense. NEVER click on your own ads. You might think that you are clever enough to fool Google’s click fraud system but you probably aren’t.
If you do click on one of the ads on your own website, in the first instance, Google will probably just give you zero credit for the click – I guess that they accept that accidents do happen. You could get banned for the second offence – Google, quite rightly, takes this form of click fraud very seriously.
Don’t ask people to click on your ads
This “rule” falls into two parts: on website; and off website.
If you design your website in such a way that people are encouraged to click on the Google ads, either directly or indirectly, your Google AdSense account will almost certainly get banned sooner or later. Some people do actually use words like “Click here” just above ads. Google does not allow this; they do not allow slightly more subtle wordings either if the wording encourages website visitors to click on ads.
Perhaps less surprising is the fact that huge numbers of people believe that they can ask friends and relatives, off line, to click on their ads. I guess that this would work in a limited way on a very small scale, but Google clearly has sophisticated systems to track click fraud. To make more than $100 per month out of AdSense you will need a couple of thousand clicks a month – those clicks must come from different computers and different people! There is no way you can generate a decent income without creating a good website with a great SEO campaign.
To make money out of Google AdSense you need to build a viable AdSense website that complies with the Google AdSense terms and conditions. If you have any doubts about what you are doing, contact Google and ask them about it. Don’t risk wasting all the time effort and money that you have put into building and promoting the website simply because you haven’t read the terms and conditions properly.
If you do get banned, there are alternatives to Google AdSense, but I have yet to find an alternative that is anywhere near as good.
Like many bloggers, I am being targeted increasingly by comment spammers. Comment spammers identify popular blogs and then post comments that (usually) have nothing to do with the blog post that they are commenting on. The primary aim of the comment spammers is to build links to their websites. They hope to gain some traffic for their websites too.
I have always moderated comments so my live blog is not polluted with the comment spammers’ trash. However, comment spammers frequently use automated ‘bots’ with the result that a huge number of spam comments can appear in a very short period of time. Having to review a hundred comments a day became too much for me so I looked for a solution.
Most of the comments that I really disliked had 20 or 30 links in them so I looked for a WordPress plugin that would limit the number of links allowed in a comment. I found ‘Link Limits’ by James McKay.
Link Limits is a WordPress plugin that rejects comments outright if they contain more than two hyperlinks, or if they contain any hyperlinks at all in BBCode format. It also displays a short note on your comment form advising your visitors that you have these restrictions in place. If you want to change the number of hyperlinks that you allow in comments, or ban them completely, you can edit the plugin file. If you want to allow unlimited hyperlinks and just check for BBCode, you can do that too.
Link Limits has made reviewing comments much much quicker and I think that it is very unlikely that it has caught any legitimate comments.
James described the plugin as “1.0 alpha 1″ and says that it has been tested on WordPress 2.1.2 and 2.2 and “is expected to work on all versions of WordPress >= 2.0.” I have not encountered any problems with it on WordPress 2.9.1. If comment spammers are causing you problems, why not give it a try.
Happy New Year.
Do you know what the top 10 New Year’s Resolutions are? If you don’t, you can probably guess but I have included them below just in case.
1. Spend more time with family and friends
2. Improve fitness
3. Lose weight
4. Stop smoking
5. Enjoy life more
6. Cut down drinking
7. Pay off debts
8. Learn a new skill
9. Volunteer to help other people
10. Get organized
You are probably too late to use them in your internet marketing this year but think about them for 2011 – they generate a huge volume of internet searches and thus are ideal for niche marketing. However, don’t just go for weight loss, for example. Find a sub-niche that does not have so much competition.
But, of course, the internet marketer’s new year’s resolution should be something like “don’t put off until tomorrow what can be done today”. If you don’t take action you can’t make money online!
According to the WordPress website there have been more than one million downloads of WordPress 2.9. Unfortunately, WordPress 2.9 contained a couple of bugs that affected scheduled posts and pingbacks - basically on some systems (including mine) scheduled posts did not get posted and pingbacks did not work too well.
WordPress 2.9.1 has now been released to fix these and a number of other more minor issues.
See the WordPress announcement for more information.
