by WebKeyDesign | Jan 10, 2006 | Software
On Windows98, Microsoft had a built-in utility for shrinking the registry, but on Win2k, there is no such utility that I could find. It’s not so much that the registry takes up a whopping 58 megs last time I checked it, it’s that it loads into memory, and so the smaller the better.
Warning: run at your own risk!
I found two freeware utilities that do wonders for shrinking and defragging the registry:
NTREGOPT will optimize your registry for Windows NT/2000/2003/XP. It will not remove any registry keys, it just rewrites the registry, and dumps any deleted data. When I tried it, it meant going from 58MBs to 42MBs.
PageDefrag goes ahead and defrags the actual registry and paging files, on your actual hard disk. You only need this utility if you are running WindowsNT or Win2k. XP already does this automatically.
To check the registry size on Windows2000, go to My Computer, Right-click – Properties – Advanced – Performance Options – Change – Registry size – Current registry size.
by WebKeyDesign | Jan 9, 2006 | WebKeyDesign
Just recently I had written about Om Malik in Bloggers v/s Splogs and Scrappers and how he was upset at having his blog’s rss feeds used as content for another website, (without his permission of course). Although WebKeyDesign is not anywhere near as popular as Om Malik’s blog, I figure that sooner rather later I would also be splogged. I usually check for sites that link to WebKeyDesign once a week, just to see how my linking campaign for WKD is progressing and sure enough I spotted a real splog site with WKD’s content. Usually my own web stat programs pick up what I call a blog links site, this is what I call a site that just links a bunch of blogs based on a keyword, something similar to Technorati, but not as sophisticated or well intentioned either. But b-1st.com is not just displaying links to WKD, they are displaying the entire RSS feed. However, since my feeds do not contain my full content, but only a summary, not all of my content is being stolen, just summaries of it.
I am sure that there are some bloggers out there who believe in syndicating their full postings and having sites like this one really make those bloggers take pause. In my case I really would not mind the actual splogging much, but then I start thinking of the hosting costs involved with running WKD and at the same time the loss of third party revenue, and it does begin to bother me somewhat.
Over the weekend PlagiarismToday.com sent me a nice email informing me of this splog. If you are a blogger and are at all concerned about this issue, you can take a look at their site. I am not in any way affliated with PlagiarismToday.com.
In the case of b-1st.com, they have already angered another group of webmasters and eventually they may be taken down in the near future.
I am still somewhat undecided about splogs, and just what they mean for the average blogger. I suppose I would like to have Google, Yahoo, and MSNSearch, remove them from their indexes but I have a feeling that the big search engines themselves are still coming to grips with the issue as we speak.
by WebKeyDesign | Jan 8, 2006 | WordPress
For WordPress 1.5, I had done some changes to Jeff Minard’s Shortstat plugin and since I recently installed WordPress 2.0 on my personal site, and since Shortstat 1.3 still works for WordPress 2.0, I figured I would go ahead and redo the color scheme and make it fit in more with WordPress 2.0’s new backend colors.
For more detail on the original changes see my original posting of a Custom Shortstat Plugin.
If you like the blue scheme you can download the plugin with the complete changes here:
wpshortstat.blue2.txt
Or if you like the color scheme and want to disable the IP lookup feature as well, download the complete changes here:
wpshortstat.blue.nolookup.txt
You can copy and paste the code into the Plugin Editor or rename the file to wp-shortstat.php and upload it to your server.
Since WP-Shortstat stopped working on WordPress 2.0.1, these custom versions are now based on HappyArt Blog’s modified wp-shortstat. My CSS changes were added by HappyArt Blog to his version, so wpshortstat.blue2 is the same as his plugin. For the lastest version go HappyArt Blog.
by WebKeyDesign | Jan 4, 2006 | WordPress
Here is something which I wanted to do with WordPress for a while now. In the sidebar, I wanted to remove the ecommerce seals for the SSL certificate and PayPal from the main blog entries and only have them display for the WordPress Pages. This is where The WordPress Codex comes in handy and explains how WordPress Conditional Tags can be used to display content based on what page the reader is currently viewing. There is even a code sample for the sidebar.
In my case, though it was really simple, I just added the html code for the gifs into a php section, similar to this:
<?php if (is_page()) {
echo "<img src="http://www.site.com/logos/paypal.gif" />";
}
?>
However note, that this code will not work! If you notice, that the echo statement uses double-quotation marks and that the html code does as well, you will realize that in order for this code to work, you have to escape the quotation marks in the html by using the backslash.
Therefore the correct code would look like this.
<?php if (is_page()) {
echo "<img src=\"http://www.site.com/logos/paypal.gif\" />";
}
?>
The is_page tag is used in this case to mean that if I am on a WordPress Page, then include the html in the echo command. To add more html code, I would just add another echo command, making sure I enclosed it in quotes, and that I escaped any quotes in the html with a backslash, and finally in PHP, you have to end each command with a semicolon.
For further information on conditional tags see the WordPress Codex.
by WebKeyDesign | Jan 3, 2006 | SEO
Search Engine Optimization (or SEO for short), is something which many new web designers do not learn, but which is nonetheless important to the success of most web sites. SEO is really all about marketing your site. While you can market your site the old fashion way by using word-of-mouth campaigns and traditional advertising methods, the online marketing methods are all about search engines and the traffic that they can bring to your site. SEO can encompass many techniques and depending on your subject matter, the process can vary significantly. The first thing to understand is that SEO results can vary, because the search engines constantly tweak and change their algorithms and databases. It is pretty safe to say then that no one technique will work indefinitely. This is why SEO experts customize their methods so often.
It is best to think about the SEO process before you start your web site project, but this is not always possible. The following tips should help though, even if your site is already completed and active.
HTML Content
The most important SEO tip is also the most obvious, namely great content. People have to want to read your content to begin with, and so anything you can do to make your content more interesting, more accurate, more enjoyable do it!
Next you will want to extract the key words from your content. Your content is usually about something, try to narrow down (summarize) your content into one phrase, or pick out certain repeated words that best describe the paragraph or section of your content. You should then use this phrase (or keywords) as a heading for the section, or in the title tag for your html document. In HTML, there is a title tag that goes in the HEADING section, and then there are the heading tags H1, H2, H3,… . You want to make sure that you use these to accurately describe your content.
Once your content is nicely keyworded, you need to make sure that your site follows web standards as much as possible. Using valid XHTML matters because, the search engines will be able to read your site that much better. Having clean and valid code is easier to read for the search engine bot, and so if you can cut down the size of a web page by using CSS, then you should use CSS.
If your web site content is generated instead of static html pages, you will need to modify your script or program to generate the content with a search engine friendly url. In WordPress these urls are referred to as permalinks. Search engines like to have uncomplicated urls for indexing, so you have to accommodate them by using a shorter friendlier url scheme for your site.
Link Campaign
If your site is Flash based, search engines cannot read the text in Flash animations, and so you must either have plain html text to describe your flash sections, or you must have an extensive linking campaign. Search engines can figure out what a site is about by reading the content, and secondly by seeing what websites point to your site. In the case of Flash sites, the links become more important since the content is not readable.
Regardless of whether you use Flash or not though, a link campaign should be part of your overall SEO strategy. The more sites you have linking to you the more prominent your site’s ranking becomes in the search engines database. You should though avoid link farms, (sites that automatically copy your link to hundreds, perhaps thousands of other sites). Google, Yahoo, and MSNSearch have all optimized their searches to no longer include these sites or worse, can penalize your site for using them. It is best to do a natural linking campaign where you manually submit your site or email a fellow webmaster requesting a link. Many directories allow free linking or reciprocal linking (where you must also link to their site in exchange). As you naturally build up links monthly, the search engines will calculate these new links pointing to your site. In the case of Google, your Pagerank will improve within a few months. A reasonable goal is to add 10 to 12 new links a month to your site.
Monitoring Search Engine Optimization Results
SEO Shortcuts
You will want to avoid using unethical seo techniques, but there are a few SEO shortcuts that you can use. One is Google’s Sitemap, which allows webmasters to submit an XML based sitemap to Google directly. This way the search engine knows all the relevant links to your site. You will need software to create the sitemap formatted file most likely, but you can build the file manually if you have the time. The other shortcut is to actually use an advertisement campaign to drive traffic to your site. This means paying for the traffic, but if your site is ecommerce based, then you might have to do an Adwords campaign anyway. However, you should still include a link campaign and other SEO strategies to help increase traffic.
Further SEO Information
You can find information on linking strategies and other SEO topics on WebMasterWorld.com and DigitalPoint’s Forum.
To learn more about web standards check out any of the books in our WebKeyDesign Store.
For possible linking partners check out our Links Page.
