I’m sure we’re all familiar with URLs that look like this:

http://www.example.com/?nav=page

These type of URLs aren’t particularly “friendly”, they are known as dynamic URLs. As a rule of thumb search engines such as Google don’t like them as much as “static URLs”.

However, Google has recently released an article on this very subject entitled Dynamic URLs vs. static URLs, I recommend you give it a read so you fully understand what we’re talking about.

Google suggests that many search engine crawlers do not like dynamic URLs as much as static URLs.

A “static” or “friendly” version of the above URL could be as follows:

http://www.example.com/page.html

Here’s how it’s done…

Solution 1

Apache’s mod_rewrite can be easily used via a file called “.htaccess” to turn dynamic urls into friendly urls.

Here is an example of how it’s done:

#Turn on the Rewrite Engine
RewriteEngine on
#Set the base path
RewriteBase /
#Check that the lookup isn’t an existing file
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
#Check that the lookup isn’t an existing directory
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
#Check that the file isn’t index.php (avoid looping)
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^index\.php$
#Force all .html lookups to the index file
RewriteRule (.+)*\.html index.php?nav=$1 [QSA,L]
#Note: QSA=query string append;L=Last, no more rules

This will rewrite all paths ending in “.html” to your index file.

From there, it’s simply a case of tailoring the rewrite to your requirements.

Checkout the mod_rewrite cheat sheet for more help on rewrites.

Solution 2

If you ARE using PHP, a better way might be to just hand over ALL the path information to your “index.php” and handle it from there.

The rewrite to do that looks something like this:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^index\.php$
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ index.php/$1 [QSA,L]

As per above this will only rewrite paths that don’t exist.

It doesn’t work out any slower than the above solution, as either way you’re passing it to PHP, and rewrites are fairly slow to begin with.

In your “index.php”, you can parse $_SERVER['PATH_INFO'] (or $_SERVER['ORIG_PATH_INFO']) for the path information. It may be quicker and easier to explode the path by “/”, and find the information you need using a foreach rather than using regex in preg_match.

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However, as you can see his article was all about using the irssi IRC client on Linux/Ubuntu.

I decided that some people may wish to know how to do it on Windows.

Here’s how…

There’s tuns of IRC clients out there for windows, you can even find IRC clients in your web browser, such as Chatzilla in Mozilla and Opera has one too, not only this but you can also get ported versions of Linux clients. Not only that, bug large IRC networks such as EFnet even have their own webchat.

We’re not going to use any of these, we’re going to use the most renowned IRC client in the world: mIRC.

What makes mIRC such a great client is it’s usability. You’ll learn this once you start to use it.

Installing mIRC is easy, just download mIRC, run the exe file and follow the simple on screen instructions.

Once installed you need to setup “logging”, so go to Tools > Options, then IRC > Logging.

From there you can setup logging to your preferences. If you need help understanding any of this, just hit F1 at any time, and look for the section on Logging.

Mine looks like this:

Now to connect to a channel, say #SEO on EFnet, with the nickname NOTHM2K, you can do the following:

/nick NOTHM2K | /server irc.efnet.net | /join #SEO

Once you join the channel the client should start logging straight away.

So what can you actually do with your logs? Well you can view them, search them or generate stats from them. Just like most things you archive.

You can view your logs by doing:

//run $mircdirlogs

Note: the double slash is important, it means execute rather than plain text

As you will be on the “EFnet” network, you will likely see a folder called “EFnet”, if you have setup your logging like me, you will find your daily timestamped logs in there. You can get to the folder quickly by doing:

//run $+($mircdirlogs,\,$network,\)

To open the current log of the channel you’re currently in you can do:

//run $window($active).logfile

Note: Please make sure you have associated .log files with a program otherwise you will get an error and the file will not open.

To search through a log file for a specific string of text you can download grep for windows or use findstr which comes with windows. From mIRC do:

//run cmd

When a command prompt opens from there you can use grep or findstr. We will be using findstr…

findstr /?

Note: This returns the help information

findstr /s /C:”hello HM2K” *.log

Note: This will search through all files that end in .log in the current dir and subdirectories for the string “hello HM2K”.

Or for those that prefer mIRC scripts, here’s findstr for mIRC…

alias findstr { ; v0.1 by HM2K (Updated: 23/05/08)
if (!$3) { echo -a Usage: /findstr <path> <file-match> <string-match> | halt }
var %win = @findstr
if (!$window(%win)) { window -e %win }
var %files = $findfile($1,$2,0)
var %i = 1
while (%i < %files) {
filter -fwn $findfile($1,$2,%i) %win $+(*,$3,*)
if ($filtered) { aline %win $findfile($1,$2,%i) }
inc %i
}
}

To generate stats you need third party software such as mIRCstats or pisg (recommended), however if you do use pisg, it might make sense to use the eggdrop or windrop (for windows) IRC bot to generate the logs instead.

There’s lots and lots of other neat tricks in mIRC for logging (take a look at $findfile) and beyond. I invite you to take a look at some of my mIRC scripts, which some of you may find useful.

PS. If you like mIRC, please register.

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They then proceeded to ask me “what do we rank for on google?”, my response was “your company name, unless you request otherwise”.

They then went on to mentioned that “the man from BT” can get us listed “at the top” of the search engine for “our keywords”.

Naturally I reply to this with a sigh, but how they can they go around making such statements? It’s so unethical to make these kind of claims.

After reading their marketing bumph, I found out what they meant by “at the top”. What they are offering is the ability to list as the “sponsored links” in search engines, which appear “at the top”.

They requested my email address to send me “further details” through, below is the marketing email I was sent. I couldn’t wait to pull it apart.

This isn’t at all a review of the BT Web Clicks service, in fact i’ve not used it, it’s simply an analysis of their marketing blurb.

BT webclicks is a new service that guarantees as many or as little hits on your website based on your particular need.
Example. Anybody searching search engines such as google yahoo and msn for the specific type of business they need will be presented with a choice of various differenet company’s. What we guarantee is not just a priority sponsored listing. We absolutely guarantee that we will the will actually click on to your website searching for whatever your key words say about you. Ie car hire chaueffeur driven

WRONG: You can’t guarantee anything you have no control over. You have no control over our websites or any of the search engines. No matter whether you think you do or not, even if you are using deep packet inspection for targeted advertising, which is against your privacy policy and thus against the law.

If we don’t achieve the level of clicks you want we will give you your money back for the percentage we don’t achieve. Furthermore we are that confident of our product that we will allow customers to trial the 960 package for 3 months and can terminate the agreement if they are not happy at the end of this period.

EXPENSIVE: According to the BT Web Clicks Prices, you’re charging between £1 and £15 per month per click. So, 100 clicks in a month could cost you £1,500. Why would I do that when I get get 100 clicks a month for free using organic methods?

BT Web Clicks – Search Engine Marketing for Small Businesses Running a small business is hard work, fortunately your Internet Advertising doesn’t have to be Do you run a small business in your spare time or know someone who does? If so, BT is launching a new service which could help you save time and money.

WASTE: of time and money more like. Small businesses are vulnerable, but they’re right, running a business doesn’t get any easier, just like huge corporations are going to continue to try and trick you trick you into buying something you don’t need. If your business is important, spend the time and money doing it yourself, rather than paying BT to do it.

Internet Advertising is the fastest growing advertising media in the UK, fuelled by the tremendous growth in the use of the Internet. But small and medium sized businesses are missing out on much of this usage because advertising on search engines is complicated and time consuming.

NOT ALWAYS BEST: Just because it’s the fastest doesn’t always mean it’s the best, this is because it’s very competitive, and just about everyone has some involvement these days. This is why Google have now started using other forms of media including TV, audio and print. Whatever gets results.

BT Web Clicks is a new Internet Advertising product that helps small and medium businesses by taking away the pain of advertising on search engines, leaving them to concentrate on their business. It offers customers a fixed amount of leads to their website for a fixed monthly fee. It is backed by a guarantee1 that offers them money back for undelivered clicks.

PAINKILLER: Yes, using BT Web Clicks is much like using a pain killer, it block the pain, but they don’t actually give you a solution, and just like pain killers, they wear off after a while, unless you keep paying for them. Instead invest in a consultant who can act on your behalf.

Setting up a search marketing campaign on the major UK search engines can take up to 30 hours, however, customers placing orders for BT Web Clicks will have our expert team identify the keywords relevant to their business, create the advertising text, and place and manage the adverts on the major search engines including Google, Yahoo and at least 12 other search engines.

HOW LONG?: Last time I checked, planning and setting up a search engine marketing campaign should take about 30 minutes, not 30 hours. If choosing relevant keywords, creating advertising text and signing up to Google Adwords takes 30 hours, you must be stupid.

BT Web Clicks
Get more customers to visit your business website!

# Sponsored links on multiple search engines
# Experts choosing optimised keywords
# Fixed prices to suit your budget

FREE: None of this actually costs money, just your time. How much is your time actually worth? If it’s worth more than BT are charging for this service, I recommend you hire someone else to read through this for you.

BT Web Clicks is a search marketing service for your website or online shop. This service creates your business’ very own sponsored links on both major and local search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, in order to drive relevant leads through to your site through carefully chosen keywords.

FREE AGAIN: Creating your very own sponsored links is a FREE service offered by search engines. You only have to pay for them to appear on search engines for the keywords you choose.

Who will benefit from BT Web Clicks?
Your website is the first step in getting your business online, but how are people looking for your type of products and services going to find you if they don’t know you exist?

MARKETING: There’s lots of ways people can find out you exist. You shouldn’t rely on paid online marketing exclusively, there’s plenty of free methods and other medias to explore.

What is BT Web Clicks?

Many people start researching through search engines for both local and national suppliers – so whether you’re a local business such as a florist, takeaway restaurant, or hairdresser looking for local customers, or a specialist mail order company selling nationally BT Web Clicks can help.

WHAT?: People do what? I don’t think they do, they use yellow pages for local information. Don’t let them trick you.

What do I get?

# Keyword generation – our team of experts analyse search engines and choose the keywords that are going to generate you relevant leads to your site.
# Advertising text – we use professional online copywriters to create a text ad for your website to attract customers.
# No admin – our automated systems connect directly with the search engines to bid on keywords and upload your sponsored links.
# Fixed budget – you choose the budget so you know exactly what you will spend each month, all backed by a guarantee.
# Leads direct to your door – when a customer clicks your sponsored link they go straight through to your website and not through any other online directory.
# A monthly report with number of click through to your website – you can monitor your traffic and increase package if necessary

GUARANTEED PIECE OF CRAP: Here’s how I see it. A guy puts a guarantee on the box ’cause he wants you to fell all warm and toasty inside. But they know all they sold ya was a guaranteed piece of shit. That’s all it is. Hey, if you want me to take a dump in a box and mark it guaranteed, I will. I got spare time.

What does this mean for my business?
Getting visitors to your website is the first step in getting a paying customer so promoting your site in the right place is vitally important. Search marketing is a proven way of generating leads directly from both major and local search engines, however getting it right and running a search marketing campaign to generate quality leads can be both time consuming and costly.

With BT Web Clicks you get the opportunity to use expertly chosen keywords and professionally written advertising copy that are all relevant to your business. This helps ensure that the visitors that come to your website using a sponsored link are looking for the products or services that your business supplies, and more likely to become your customer.

THE REAL EXPERT: They aren’t the real expect, YOU ARE, yes, that’s right, the real expert is YOU! After all, it’s your business, you know your customers better than anyone else, right?

If you need anymore information don’t hesitate to call Yours sincereley, Mark Clark Sales Executive: Cheshire and North Wales BT Directories
Email: mark.d.clark@bt.com
Mobile: 07918717465

THANKS: Thanks Mark, you’ve been most helpful. I enjoyed writing about this. Now watch as I rank on the first page of google for “BT Web Clicks”.

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It’s content was mainly made up of what I was researching around that time, including a few controversial topics such as hacking, trojans and warez distribution. (Oh the joys of being under 18, or at least I was at time of original creation).

Thus, I got a reasonable response saying:

Hello [name],

Thank you very much for updating your account information. I have reviewed
www.hm2k.org and concluded that it does not comply with our AdSense
policy. Our goal is to be able to extend our service to as many web
publishers as we can. Unfortunately, after reviewing your site, we are
unable to accept it into our AdSense program at this time for the reason
listed below:

-Unacceptable site content

Please check for a separate application disapproval email for detailed
instructions on how to resolve this problem. Please feel free to reply to
this email for reconsideration when you have made the changes.

Thank you for your understanding.

Sincerely,

Trinh
The Google AdSense Team

And I did understand, it was fair enough at the time…

Since then I had completely revamped “hm2k.org” 2 or 3 times, then finally in January 2007 I decided to completely redo my site, using the wordpress blog system, a whole new domain, a new design, all new content, and a new vision. It’s a whole new site.

Let’s now fast forward to over 4 years later since the original application was submitted, to April 2008…

My blog is getting ever more popular and I wish to cash in on this, but how? My first port of call is Google AdSense.

By this point I’d already had a Google AdSense account for quite some time for my business, which is absolutly fine, this time however, it’s personal.

So, I try and login to Google AdSense using my Google Account that i’ve had for quite some time now, and I receive the following message:

An AdSense account was not found under the Google Account associated with xxxxx@hm2k.org. Please check to make sure you are signing in with your approved AdSense login and password. If you’ve forgot your login, click here. If you’re not an AdSense publisher, sign up for an account.

So I try and signup again, using my existing account as per above.

So I click on signup, and go through the steps…

I get to the step entitled: “This is the account information you entered”…

It says “Which best describes you?”

I click: I have an email address and password (Google Account) I already use with Google services like AdWords, Gmail, Orkut, or the personalized home page.

It says: “Would you like to use your existing Google Account for AdSense?”

I click: “I’d like to use my existing Google account for AdSense.”

A login box saying “Use an existing Google Account” comes up, I login…

The page reloads and it gives me an error saying:

A user with the email you specified already exists
Please select a different Google Account login to access this account.

My first issue is the fact that neither of these errors are very descriptive, the second problem is that they are conflicting errors, they don’t agree with each other. I feel like I’m going round in circles and that neither error is telling me what’s really going on…

Not only do I post on the Google AdSense group, I also proceed to contact Google saying that I’m having “login problems”, which is the only way I can describe the problem I’m seeing.

I got no response from the group, but the response I got direct from Google is as follows:

Hello [name],

Thanks for writing in. I’ll be more than happy to help you with your
password issue. Based on your description of the problem, I’ve provided
two options below. If neither of these helps you log into your account,
please feel free to reply and I’ll help you further.

Your login email address is xxxxx@hm2k.org.

If you know your current password and you’d like to change it, please
follow the directions on this page:
https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=9915

If you’ve forgotten your existing password, please visit
https://www.google.com/adsense/assistlogin . On this page, you’ll be able
to submit your email address to us. We’ll then automatically send you an
email with a link that will allow you to reset your password.

Additionally, I’m happy to let you know your application complies with our
program policies and has been approved. Please check your email for a
separate application approval message providing instructions on accessing
your account and getting started with AdSense.

Additionally, please be aware that because your application was previously
disapproved, there may be a delay of 48 hours or more before Google ads
begin appearing on your site. We appreciate your patience.

For additional questions, I’d encourage you to visit the AdSense Help
Center ( http://www.google.com/adsense_help ) or the official AdSense blog
( http://adsense.blogspot.com?utm_source=txft ). Alternatively, feel free
to post your question on the AdSense Help Forum (
http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help?utm_source=txft ).

Sincerely,

Kalpana
The Google AdSense Team

Apart from this email being very unhelpful towards my actual problem, it does clearly say that my application was approved. However, I wait 48 hours and receive nothing.

What’s going on with my account? I can’t login, is it active or not? I don’t know! How could I know?

Browsing my old emails and browsing the web I discover I can have my website appealed, and re-reviewed, but only if you’ve been banned for invalid clicks.

Stupidly (perhaps), I fill out the online appeal form anyway, with limited details, as I’ve not actually been banned for invalid clicks, so I don’t really have anything to provide.

This is the response I get back:

Hello,

Thank you for providing us with additional information. However, after
thoroughly reviewing your account data and taking your feedback into
consideration, we have re-confirmed that your account poses a significant
risk to our advertisers. For this reason, we are unable to reinstate your
account. Thank you for your understanding.

As a reminder, if you have any questions about your account or the actions
that we have taken, please do not reply to this email. You can find more
information by visiting
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

Google Ireland Ltd.
Gordon House
Barrow Street
Dublin 4
Ireland

Registered in Dublin, Ireland
Registration Number: 368047

It looks like a generic error they just send out when the appeal fails, there’s also a distinct lack of personal touches like there’s been in the past.

I conclude that my appeal application failed because firstly I wasn’t banned for invalid clicks, and secondly because I didn’t supply enough details about invalid clicks, which is mainly down to the fact that I never had an account in the first place to even generate invalid clicks.

I have come to the end of my tether with this…

Will I ever get a personal Google AdSense account?

And just when I think all is lost, I receive a reply…

Hi [name],

Thanks for writing in. I am sorry to know that you are still not able to
access your AdSense account. Please follow the steps below to resolve
this.

1. Please make sure that your AdSense account password is different from
your Google Account password.

2. You can reset it at https://www.google.com/adsense/assistlogin?hl=en_US

3. Once your passwords are different, you will need to log in to AdSense
with the AdSense email and password .

4. Once you log in to your AdSense account, please migrate using
https://www.google.com/adsense/migrate-login-1

Additionally, please know that your AdSense password is different from the
password you use to access other Google services. Our records show that
you have successfully reset he password for other Google services, but the
password for your AdSense account has not been reset. I suggest you visit
the link above and reset your password one more time.

We appreciate your continued patience and understanding.

For additional questions, I’d encourage you to visit the AdSense Help
Center ( http://www.google.com/adsense_help ) or the official AdSense blog
( http://adsense.blogspot.com?utm_source=txft ). Alternatively, feel free
to post your question on the AdSense Help Forum (
http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help?utm_source=txft ).

Sincerely,

Parvathi
The Google AdSense Team

SUCCESS!

After following the link to reset my password, receiving the email, then following THAT link, entering in a password over 7 chrs long, then returning to the login page, I can login!

I find there is a new set of terms and conditions, last updated 2008-02-25, I understand the gist, so I accept.

I then reach the migration link, as per the above email. I click “Yes – I’m the only one who logs in to this AdSense account” and press continue…

Which best describes you?
> I have an email address and password (Google Account) I already use with Google services like Gmail, Orkut, or the personalized home page.
Would you like to use your existing Google Account for AdSense?
> I’d like to use my existing Google account for AdSense.

Now I get the “Use an existing Google Account” dialogue box, where I can enter my Google Account details.

Final step is “Confirm your chosen AdSense login”, I confirm.

I AM IN! I AM ACTUALLY IN!

Just to check I’m not dreaming, I logout, and log back in, it accepts my Google Account details, no problem!

Once again, Google saves the day!

Problem solved, Well done Google!

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What you need is some kind of web based eCommerce shopping cart system, the question is which?

I decided to build a short list of web based eCommerce shopping cart software out there.

The scenario is this, you have a client who wants an eCommerce solution, they are paying you, but not nearly enough, you’re doing this as more of a favour. You started to develop a solution for them, but felt their feedback wasn’t sufficient which would ultimately lead to missing things out, and it probably wasn’t worth it anyway. What is needed is a base platform to build upon.

The rules are this, it must be open source, and it must work out of the box.

Please remember, this is based purely on my options, by all means, take them on board, and form your own options.

osCommerce – Demo

This thing has been around since about 2000, and to be honest I don’t think it’s improved much since then. I used it in the past, I found it was a ugly, useless piece of junk, despite the fact I keep getting reports from fellow web developers claiming that it’s actually a wonderful piece of software… once you apply all the community patches, fix the template system and add an array of modules to make it do all sorts of trickery.

Fail.

osCMax – Demo

No surprises that this got it’s name due to the fact that it’s based on osCommerce. Advised by a fellow web developer I proceed with caution. As it turns out, like osCommerce, it requires register_globals to be enabled. In this day and age, I cannot take any web software that tells me it will not work until I make my setup a security risk seriously. Although this is called osCommerce Maximized, if they can’t manage to work without register_globals being enabled, i’m not convinced.

Fail.

CubeCart – Demo

By looking at their website, you’d assume this product costs money. However apparently it’s only support and removal of the copyright which you must pay for, which would be fine, if it was reasonably priced, but it isn’t. And let’s just say the “checkout” process is much to be desired, for example, it doesn’t show the postage until you actually pay.

Fail.

Interchange – Demo

From the initial outlook it appears to be very much something that was created at the start of the dot-com boom, and indeed it is. Coded in perl back in 1995, it’s likely to be one of the original GPL eCommerce solutions out there. I investigated the demo, it seems very simple, yet oozes the lack of any kind of modern day standards.

Fail.

Magento – Demo

From the outset this software appears to be ideal. It’s very much geared for the modern web developer with it’s trendy feel, complete with snazzy design and gradients on the demo store. Too good to be true? Maybe.

What is interesting to know is that the company that developed this software Irubin Consulting Inc originally started out as “osCommerce developers“.

To begin with I notice that it has a huge amount of libs which amounts to over 50% of the total disk space footprint. I’m not one for unnecessary bulk, and I’m not convinced all this is required by the default setup. I proceed regardless, thinking “hey, perhaps all this is justified”.

Once all the files were uploaded, the installation could begin, a standard step of visiting the url and following the instructions. The localization took me longer than expected to define the locale settings as the lists were bizarrely long, and difficult to find what I was looking for. Now feeling dumber than before, I continue anyway.

I reach a step entitled: “Download Magento Core Modules and Updates”, to which I say “huh?”, I have three options: SVN Installation; Package Management through the Web; Manual Downloads and Upgrades. I chose the “Proceed with Automatic Download (Alpha)”. Why this had to be so complicated is beyond me…

I’ve finally reached the next step where i’m greeted by a new problem: PHP Extension “pdo_mysql” must be loaded
PHP Extension “mcrypt” must be loaded. I’m sure i’d loaded these…

Great, now I need to recompile PHP, lucky for me I’m the sysadmin, otherwise I’d have to contact someone to do this for me. I’m wondering can I still justify all this? I’m having doubts. I quit far earlier on previous solutions.

Fail? Not yet, just because my server wasn’t setup correctly doesn’t mean I can give up just yet!

I continued the installation which went flawlessly from there on inwards.

Okay, so i’m all setup and I logged in as an admin. This is complicated, how on earth will my end users figure out how to manage their online store? Reluctantly it’s a…

Fail.

Zen Cart – Demo(s)

Yet another osCommerce based system. Nobody really has a bad word to say about it. Apart from the die hard osCommerce fans that claim it’s too overly customised, yet you’ll always find their osCommerce is also, very customised, so I’m not convinced. One of the bad things about Zen is if you find you need to change something outside of your template each time you upgrade, you’ll need to reapply the modifications you made.

Fail.

osc2nuke – Demo

If you’ve ever used phpNuke, the last thing you’ll want to do is even consider entrusting it with your business transactions. Well, this is a merge between osCommerce and phpNuke, both renowned for their security issues.

Fail.

cpCommerce – Demo

The script’s site itself doesn’t have a demo, just screenshots. I’m never happy to use a solution that is so concerned about it’s own security that it won’t even include a demo on it’s own site. If you have no confidence in your product, neither do I, so no thanks.

Fail.

Freeway – Demo

The whole time I was looking at the admin part of this script I was thinking: “will my end users understand how to use this?”, and the answer is no. I just can’t see myself working with this.

Fail.

phpShop – Demo

This system could be nice if it was designed a bit nicer with the latest standards in mind. Tables are very much a thing of the past. It’s got potential, but I’m not the man to do it. I have enough to do as it is.

Fail.

CRE Loaded – Demo

Again, it’s osCommerce based, yet I don’t like the fact that they are constantly trying to sell you something, that is essentially free.

Fail.

Bakesale – Demo

What strikes me about this is how amazingly simple it seems right from the outset. There’s no beating about the bush, even the main site clearly states exactly what it is, and what it isn’t.

Although it’s good points may also be it’s down fall. It’s simplicity leaves little room for expansion, thus there’s very little interest in this project. No community means no community support, which effectively renders it a dead project. For me to use a project it must have an active community that drive the project and constantly pushing the boundaries. This simply does not have that.

Fail.

Joomla! + Virtuemart – Demo

This happy module exists as an eCommerce addon to the ever popular Joomla, but this is just far too complicated. It’s a CMS AND an eCommerce solution, yet the eCommerce solution appears to be sufficient on it’s own. I guess the point is it uses Joomla as a platform, but if you don’t already use Joomla, it’s not much use is it? Why does it have to be so complicated? Thus as far as I’m concerned…

Fail.

UberCart – Demo

Using Drupal as a working platform, UberCart is in all honesty a very nice looking solution. It sings, it dances, it does everything you’d expect from an eCommerce system. However, ultimately you know that underneath it’s Drupal, and although Drupal is a fantastic CMS, that is what it is, a content management system. Aren’t we over complicating things a little?

Fail.

Quick.Cart – Demo

I’m not sure what it is, I just couldn’t get on with this. I just didn’t like it.

Fail.

IdeaCart – Demo

The demo appears to be down, not a good start. I think I’ll pass…

Fail.

OpenCart – Demo

Very simple frontend and a very nice and straight forward admin area, a joy to see something so finely constructed for modern web development.

A very simple 2 step setup sequence was most refreshing. I was setup in no time at all and ready to go.

All I needed to do was setup the rewrites in the “.htaccess” file, login to the admin area via “/admin/” and enable it there.

Success!

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So, let’s start at the very beginning, and find out what “word separators” actually are, and why we need them in URLs.

Traditionally a word separator is a space, yes, an every day space you create with your space-bar key.

The problem with using spaces in URLs is that when the URL is utilised in a browser (for example), the URL is encoded using percent encoding which causes spaces to appear as the encoded “%20″, resulting in an ugly URL formation which is humanly difficult to read.

ie: http://www.example.com/percent%20encoding

How do we overcome the problem? Over the years a workaround has developed…

…the dash, no the hyphen, no in fact it’s the minus sign (yes, I mean this “-” symbol)…

ie: http://www.example.com/not-percent-encoding

The history

It appears that originally the usage of the hyphen comes from it’s appearance in hostnames and domain names.

In the early stages of the internet, groups of developers decided to write RFC documents to introduce ideas of how they believe the internet should work. These RFCs quickly became the standard, which includes details such as what is classed as a valid hostname or domain name is and what isn’t.

We can clearly see the use of the “minus sign” as a separator in RFC 952, although originally they weren’t there to be used in place of spaces, but simply to allow you to add suffixes to hostnames.

Later, the use of “hyphens” appear in RFC 1738 where a standard for URLs is suggested.

Beyond that “hyphens” are mentioned again in RFC 3986 entitled “Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax”, which clearly defines the URI (and consequently URL) syntax.

reserved    = gen-delims / sub-delims

gen-delims  = ":" / "/" / "?" / "#" / "[" / "]" / "@"

sub-delims  = "!" / "$" / "&" / "'" / "(" / ")"
/ "*" / "+" / "," / ";" / "="

unreserved  = ALPHA / DIGIT / "-" / "." / "_" / "~"

From this we can see that a “hyphen” is categorised as an “Unreserved Characters”, unlike “Reserved Characters” which are often used as delimiters and therefore in many programming situations would require “escaping“, however they are not that difficult to work with.

Back in 2004 GoogleGuy on WebmasterWorld clearly states that the period (.), the comma (,) and the hyphen (-) are valid word separators in URLs. He did also mentioned that most people seem to prefer the hyphen, without explanation why…

Present usage

Today the use of hyphens as a word separator in a URL is so common that people are beginning to think that it is an actually standard. It’s not.

And it’s not hard to see why. The amount of open source blogging (such as wordpress) and content management software (such as joomla) out there using them has given people enough reason to never even think twice about it.

But, why is using a hyphen a problem?

Like any workaround there are always going to be problems.

The problem arises over the confusion of a dash, hyphen, and the minus sign. Often they can be seen to be the same symbol and the same symbol used to represent each situation where they may be used as punctuation or to provide context to data.

One situation where there is potential confusion is with names and words that already contain hyphens (eg: Jean-Claude Van Damme).

So, what are the alternatives?

Underscores (_). In the past, we have seen discussion of dashes vs. underscores, and it has been concluded that the use of dashes is considered better than the use of underscores in URLs due to how search engines interpret the input, until now…

Recently it has been stated that Google now views underscores as word separators, in exactly the same way as dashes. However, a quick test of this, and you soon discover that really, this hasn’t happened, even though the heavily popular Wikipedia and Digg.com use the underscore as a word separator in their URLs.

Plus (+). In common urlencoding, we see that spaces are often encoded as this symbol instead of the percent-encoded version (%20). This gives you a good base reason to use this symbol as opposed to any other.

The biggest reason to use these instead is that unlike the hyphen, they are not found in words in the English dictionary, as well as being unheard of them appearing in names. However the one problem I have found is that visually urls encoded this way end up looking like search terms, rather than a static url.

Full stop (.). As it’s an unreserved character we can easily use this in our URLs. The problem is that it may start to get confusing, as urls may look like files, with extensions. Also, in terms of programming, the “.” often means “everything”, especially in perl style regular expressions, which means you may have to escape it when using. It’s worth noting that “.” generally doesn’t get encoded to %2E.

The future

What does this mean for my current sites using dashes?

Ultimately nothing.

Any good webmaster knows that once you have your URLs in place the last thing you want to be doing is abandoning them, unless you rewrite/remap them.

However, next time you’re developing a new site, you can rest assured that you are fully aware of why you decided to use that word separator instead of another.

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Did you know? Registering a domain name for a longer term not only saves you money, but helps to increase your search engine ranking. Consider a 5-year term!

Why it works: Search engines perceive domain names registered for 5 years or longer to be more legitimate than domain names registered for a shorter term, and therefore rank them more highly.

Source

Having previously discussed the “age of a domain” issue at length with other Search Engine Optimisers I decided to investigate whether there was any truth in this statement, or if in fact it was purely marketing.

Firstly we can assume that by “search engine” they are referring to one of the “big three” (Yahoo!, Google and Live Search). Since Google is the market leader, and their search engine technology is better documented we will focus on them.

Next, we have to ask what they mean by “search engine ranking”, Google offers two prominent ranking systems, they are SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) and PageRank. Since “SERPs” is a generic ranking system, used by all search engines, we can assume this is what they are referring to.

In order to work out whether this is true, we need to know more about the Google SERP algorithm, one place to start is at Google’s patents. One patent to look at in particular is page two of the U.S. Patent Application No. 20050071741, titled “Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data”, patent which states:

1. A method for scoring a document, comprising: identifying a document; obtaining one or more types of history data associated with the document; and generating a score for the document based on the one or more types of history data.

38. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more types of history data includes domain-related information corresponding to domains associated with documents; and wherein the generating a score includes: analyzing domain-related information corresponding to a domain associated with the document over time, and scoring the document based, at least in part, on a result of the analyzing.

39. The method of claim 38, wherein the scoring the document includes: determining whether the domain associated with the document is legitimate, and scoring the document based, at least in part, on whether the domain associated with the document is legitimate.

40. The method of claim 38, wherein the domain-related information is related to at least one of an expiration date of the domain, a domain name server record associated with the domain, and a name server associated with the domain.

This doesn’t tell us a great deal, so we continue reading…

[0099] Certain signals may be used to distinguish between illegitimate and legitimate domains. For example, domains can be renewed up to a period of 10 years. Valuable (legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate) domains rarely are used for more than a year. Therefore, the date when a domain expires in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the legitimacy of a domain and, thus, the documents associated therewith.

So far we learn that registering a domain for a longer term doesn’t increase your “search engine rankings” or SERPs, but in fact, it simply aids Google to identify illegitimate domains.

However, reading further we read:

[0102] In summary, search engine 125 may generate (or alter) a score associated with a document based, at least in part, on information relating to a legitimacy of a domain associated with the document.

Note: As far as I am aware “Search Engine 125″ is the patent name for the search engine we know as “Google”. I believe a diagram should be included to realise this.

Effectively, the patent is stating that having a domain that is detected as illegitimate can ultimately affect your score (or rank).

However, there are some oddities with so called patent “20050071741″:

• It appears as part of patent “ENTITY DISPLAY PRIORITY IN A DISTRIBUTED GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEM“, on page 2, mentioned only once on page 1. This patent in essence has nothing to do with “search engines rankings”. However it does mention a “page rank” and mentions this application as a reference.
• The patent doesn’t appear to be registered to Google, instead it states a “HARRITY & SNYDER, LLP”, however the “inventors” are recognised staff at Google.
• Searching for 20050071741 or “Information retrieval based on historical data” via Google patents returns no results.
• Searching for 20050071741 in the official US Goverment patent database returns no results.
• It mentions FIGURES/diagrams which are not included, and cannot be found.
• It does not clearly state what this “scoring system” is used for, however it’s nature seems very close to that of the Google PageRank system, not that of SERPs.
• It appears that this is only a patent application and NOT an actual patent. Considering this application has been patent pending since 2005 we don’t even know if its currently implemented.

So it seems the patent path has brought us to a dead end, however from the information discovered I have concluded that registering your domain for a longer term:

• decreases the chances of your domain being marked as illegitimate.
• only affects your SERPs or search engine rankings if your domain is marked as illegitimate.
• probably decreases your page rank if your domain is marked as illegitimate.

Is it worth registering 5 years ahead?

Please use your common sense.

Unless you’re trying to do something illegitimate, it’s safe to say registering for 5 years would have very little affect (if any) on your search engine rankings.

To give this some kind of perspective, having a link from this very page to your new domain would increase your page ranking far beyond that of registering the same domain could do even if you registered it for 1000 years.

It is however recommended that you should register for more than 1 year when purchasing a new domain, but don’t let it put you off if you only want it for 1 year.

This is because it is common knowledge that illegitimate sites have the trend of only buying a domain for a year.

Having said this, one of the major benefits of registering for a long period of time ensuring you do not lose your domain name.

Ultimately the answer is: Probably not…

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Since most people don’t have direct access to their httpd.conf, the obvious solution was to create a method using mod_rewrite within “.htaccess”. This also allowed it to be setup very easily and quickly.

I have no immediate use for this solution, however I know it will come in very handy in the future.

Someone I know was trying to figure this out earlier today, so I took it upon myself to figure out how to work out a solution for this problem.

After much discussion with #apache @ EFnet, in particular TBF, we came about the following solution.

#Grab the subdomain from the domain
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^([^.]+).hm2k.org$
#Make sure the subdomain is not www or example
RewriteCond %{1} !^(www|example)$
#Check if the directory actually exists before we go there
RewriteCond /home/hm2k/public_html/%1 -d
#This stops it from looping
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !^/home/hm2k/public_html/
#Finally, this is the actual rewrite
RewriteRule (.*) /home/hm2k/public_html/%1/$1 [Last]

Thanks to all those who helped, I hope this comes in useful to someone.

1136331104

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Often you will find yourself buying a domain for your project (eg: example.com), however these days to secure the brand you have to buy all the associated domains (eg: example.net, example.org, example.co.uk, example.info, etc).

I then find that visitors will end up entering the sites at different points from different domains, depending on how they find it, or what they have been told.

The problem with this is its confusing, and its confusing for the user. The solution is to decide on one domain name, and focus on that, then simply redirect all traffic from the other domains to your main domain name.

This will also help enforce your brand name by ensuring the user always gets redirected to the correct domain, even if they visit the others by mistake.

In addition to this, Google states “Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.“, therefore by redirecting traffic to one domain, rather than having duplicates you stand more chance of your domain not being marked as “bad” by search engines. (Also see What’s a preferred domain?)

On a very similar note, another common problem is the “www.” prefix on domains, sometimes people include when visiting a URL, other times they do not. The problem with this is that “www.example.com” is considered an entirely different domain than “example.com” by search engines. By redirecting traffic that is NONE “www.example.com” we can still continue our focus and maintain our brand name.

How?

One method is using 301 redirects to redirect from other domains, to your main one.

We can do this by using mod_rewrite for Apache or ISAPI_Rewrite for IIS.

Apache mod_rewrite (.htaccess)

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.example\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,QSA,L]

Note: The QSA flag will append the query string to the rewritten URL.

IIS mod rewrite using ISAPI filter (mod_rewrite.ini)

RewriteCond Host: !^www\.example\.com

RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ http://www\.example\.com/$1 [I,RP]

Note: Some find ^(.*)$ works, others find ^/(.*)$ works. I’ll let you decide which to use.

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The short answer is no. The long answer is as follows…

To begin with we will look as to why CSS has nothing to do with SEO by looking at the most popular Search Engine’s webmaster guide lines.

• Google’s Guidelines on SEO’s
• Google’s Guidelines on Site Design
• MSN Search
• Yahoo!

You will quickly notice that none of these pages contain anything about CSS, this is because you will find that search engines don’t even read CSS. Sure they may read your CSS file, but you’ll find they are looking for links not styles.

Once you realise this, you soon realise that the style of your page actually has no effect on your efforts to SEO, and that the search engine is more interested in your markup. It’s believed that search engine will actually strip the tables or divs when it processes the page as they serve no purpose for indexing pages (see: Poodle Predictor).

It is argued that using CSS forces you to use clean markup, and therefore CSS does help with SEO. I partially agree to this, however you have to remember that search engines are backwards compatible, and still read table layouts all the same. Still this argument is flawed as its the markup that is optimised, the style of the page still has no impact on SEO, infact you could do away with the CSS file all together, and it will still rank the same on search engines.

One of the things I notice recently about the industry is the way people seem to work these days. Often web design, web development and SEO cross, and people don’t clearly define them seperately.

A web designer is someone who designs and does not code (think of an artist), therefore a web designer must use a graphics package (such as photoshop) to design their web site layout. These applications use (very bad) html table layouts to produce the pages. They would not use CSS as this is “programming”. Yes, thats right CSS is NOT designing.

A web developer is someone who minipulates the web design to give the website its functionality. Once they have a design from the web designer, they would begin optimising the code and perhaps only then would they begin to use CSS.

Search Engine Optimisation is NOT web design, its mainly about marketing but usually requires some web development.

The main reason for using CSS over a table layout is because tables are there to provide a method to display tabular data, not to form a layout for your web page. It is also good practice that you seperate the page content from the page style as this allows for more flexablility, and because CSS is used it forces you to have clean markup as you are more organised. See “Why tables for layouts are stupid”

One of the major benifits to everyone for using CSS is with regards to bandwidth, as using a table layout is more code, than a layout created for use with CSS. One of the down sides, is that your beautiful CSS page style may not work properly on older browsers, where as a table layout would. One of the other major benifits of using a layout that is designed for use with CSS over table layouts is that it allows you to put your contents BEFORE your navigation (as long as the browser supports it). There are plenty more pros and cons of using CSS, but they all have nothing to do with SEO, as the style of the page means nothing to a search engine.

In summery, using CSS is definatly a better way to develop websites, but it doesn’t matter to the search engine whether you use CSS or not, they still view the page exactly the same, as it is the content that is important.

Still don’t believe me? Try this: Completly block search engines from reading your CSS file all together (using robots.txt), and see if you rank any differently on the search engines.

css-seo.html 1137526215.html

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