It appears that Googlebot was in here yesterday according to the cache for this page.
|
Just when you thought you were cured from the constant checking of your SERPS, Google sucks you right back in with more temptation.
Thursday, July 29, 2004
Google Cache Showing "Retrieved Date"
In a Search Engine Watch forum post, the Online SEO Training team of Sharon and Roy have just reported seeing the addition of the retrieval date of when Google had cached the page.
It appears that Googlebot was in here yesterday according to the cache for this page.
Just when you thought you were cured from the constant checking of your SERPS, Google sucks you right back in with more temptation.
It appears that Googlebot was in here yesterday according to the cache for this page.
Just when you thought you were cured from the constant checking of your SERPS, Google sucks you right back in with more temptation.
Tuesday, July 27, 2004
Nvu - Open Source WYSIWYG Editor
Nvu, an Open Source project from Lindows, is being billed as the complete Web authoring system for the desktop. Flavors are available for both Linux and Windows. The IDE sports a tabbed editing environment in which you can jump between WYSIWYG and Html modes easily.
This is truly the first free WYSIWYG editor that I have tried that can even begin to compare to the likes of DreamWeaver or FrontPage; although Nvu does have a long ways to go. Still it is a very simplistic and easy to use interface as evidenced by this screenshot. You will see the tabbed editing environment in that image which makes the screen less cluttered.
The FTP site manager in Nvu become browseable in a sidebar. You can get a tree view of a site, à la Explorer's folders pane, or a one-dir-only view, à la Explorer's directory view. It is also possible to filter files and show all files, or only HTML documents or image files. The browsing area also allows to show for each file its size and the date of last modification.
What is impressive about Nvu are some of the other features it has. Building Forms is a snap and provides for easy property assignments to build perfect forms in the blink of an eye ... well maybe not that quick, but it is fast.
Nvu is based on Gecko, the layout engine inside Mozilla. Support of XML, CSS and JavaScript is also offered. Its architecture based on XUL makes it more extensible.
This is truly the first free WYSIWYG editor that I have tried that can even begin to compare to the likes of DreamWeaver or FrontPage; although Nvu does have a long ways to go. Still it is a very simplistic and easy to use interface as evidenced by this screenshot. You will see the tabbed editing environment in that image which makes the screen less cluttered.
The FTP site manager in Nvu become browseable in a sidebar. You can get a tree view of a site, à la Explorer's folders pane, or a one-dir-only view, à la Explorer's directory view. It is also possible to filter files and show all files, or only HTML documents or image files. The browsing area also allows to show for each file its size and the date of last modification.
What is impressive about Nvu are some of the other features it has. Building Forms is a snap and provides for easy property assignments to build perfect forms in the blink of an eye ... well maybe not that quick, but it is fast.
Nvu is based on Gecko, the layout engine inside Mozilla. Support of XML, CSS and JavaScript is also offered. Its architecture based on XUL makes it more extensible.
Sunday, July 25, 2004
BoG Launches Blog
The Band of Gonzos Web Design Forums have launched a new blog on the website, affectionately referred to as The BoG Blog. Pretty catchy, eh?
Right now we have a couple of contributors signed up for the blog and will be adding more at a later date. The contributors will offer commentary on daily or weekly happenings in the web design and search engine marketing areas of the Internet. These views may not necessarily reflect the opinions of the BoG.
The design for the blog template is temporary, it is the only one we could find to quickly throw up and pretty much fit the color scheme of the BoG. If anyone has any time on their hands and would like to donate a really kewl design in trade for a link on the BoG site in recognition -- feel free to contact us at the BoG with your interest to do so.
Right now we have a couple of contributors signed up for the blog and will be adding more at a later date. The contributors will offer commentary on daily or weekly happenings in the web design and search engine marketing areas of the Internet. These views may not necessarily reflect the opinions of the BoG.
The design for the blog template is temporary, it is the only one we could find to quickly throw up and pretty much fit the color scheme of the BoG. If anyone has any time on their hands and would like to donate a really kewl design in trade for a link on the BoG site in recognition -- feel free to contact us at the BoG with your interest to do so.
CSS Filters and Hacks
CSS Filters is a categorized matrix of filters and hacks for CSS and whether or not they will validate or not, or just totally break the browser. The matrix will allow you to display any of a variety of browsers on the market today, and yesterday, via a drop down selection screen.
"Because of the generally crappy CSS standards support in modern browsers, a number of techniques have been developed to hide CSS stylesheets, rules, and declarations from browsers that won't understand or will mis-interpret them, or to set different values to the same CSS property in different browsers in order to achieve the same appearance on all (or most) browsers. On these pages, I've collected a number of these techniques (usually called filters or hacks) and documented what browsers they work on."The pages are categorized into CSS filtering using CSS only, CSS filtering using (X)HTML, CSS filtering using JavaScript, and Non-validating Hacks for quick and easy referencing.
.htAccess Generator Deluxe
The [!] htAccess Generator is the mother of all .htaccess generators. This page has it all!
I am going to add this to my favorites inside of my Html-kit, because I don't frequently write .htaccess files. But when I do have a need to write one, I am forever and a day looking up the right syntax. This sucker is just the ticket, and covers just about everything you can possibly dream of -- except the kitchen sink.
"Use this online htaccess generator to create your apache configuration files.
Dot Htaccesser simplifies the process of creating Apache .htaccess files. Users fill in the HTML form for the configuration desired, and it generates the .htaccess file syntax. It handles options (execCGI, includes, MultiView, etc.), authentication files, IP address blocking, custom MIME types, and error documents"
I am going to add this to my favorites inside of my Html-kit, because I don't frequently write .htaccess files. But when I do have a need to write one, I am forever and a day looking up the right syntax. This sucker is just the ticket, and covers just about everything you can possibly dream of -- except the kitchen sink.
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
iRider Web Browser Product Info - Wymea Bay
Here is a kewl browser called iRider. iRider is an advanced multi-page web browser without the use of tabs. It will allow you to browse much faster and work with lots of pages and sites at once, and lets you do it much more easily and naturally than with any other browser. Okay, that is the opening paragraph from the iRider site ... but you will have to take a look at it to believe it.
iRider has a unique approach to popups. Since iRider will connect and load pages while you are working on another page in the background, then popups are handled in the same way ... they are loaded in the background also. A quick glance at the sidebar will see a thumbnail of the popup -- and you can choose to ignore it or read it, just like an ad in the newpaper. Blocking some popups may prevent important features of some web sites from working, such as login windows for shops and banks. Even if blocked, some site may employ sneakier methods to show those popups. iRider lets it do its thing without an annoying window popping up in front of your face.
Other features allow you to pin pages to keep them from getting buried, SurfAhead will download pages in the background, mass link download by highlighting your links then right-click and go, surf several search engines at once, the Next Page button will automatically advance you to only pages that are ready for viewing (skipping over unfinished downloads), add several pages to your favorites at once, create favorite "books" which will allow you to open all your favorites in the book all at once with one click, and exchange sets of pages with others.
Andi at AndiLinks is giving this a whirl right now. She is pretty impressed with it so far. She mentioned another key feature that should be mentioned ... it is built with the Internet Explorer engine, but they have claimed to have plugged some major security flaws with IE -- namely the flaw that may allow an attacker to record passwords or other sensitive information, even on a secure website. See this Technical Note for more information and for steps to take to enhance security.
iRider has a unique approach to popups. Since iRider will connect and load pages while you are working on another page in the background, then popups are handled in the same way ... they are loaded in the background also. A quick glance at the sidebar will see a thumbnail of the popup -- and you can choose to ignore it or read it, just like an ad in the newpaper. Blocking some popups may prevent important features of some web sites from working, such as login windows for shops and banks. Even if blocked, some site may employ sneakier methods to show those popups. iRider lets it do its thing without an annoying window popping up in front of your face.
Other features allow you to pin pages to keep them from getting buried, SurfAhead will download pages in the background, mass link download by highlighting your links then right-click and go, surf several search engines at once, the Next Page button will automatically advance you to only pages that are ready for viewing (skipping over unfinished downloads), add several pages to your favorites at once, create favorite "books" which will allow you to open all your favorites in the book all at once with one click, and exchange sets of pages with others.
Andi at AndiLinks is giving this a whirl right now. She is pretty impressed with it so far. She mentioned another key feature that should be mentioned ... it is built with the Internet Explorer engine, but they have claimed to have plugged some major security flaws with IE -- namely the flaw that may allow an attacker to record passwords or other sensitive information, even on a secure website. See this Technical Note for more information and for steps to take to enhance security.
Flyspeck - Browser Based Web Page Editor
Have you ever wanted a simple interface for you clients so they can edit portions of a web page without having to know any Html or other technical skills? Enter Flyspeck , a - browser based web page editor that enables them to edit whole pages or selective parts of the page only.
Flyspeck is a PHP enabled script that you install on your webserver that interprets parts of the page wrapped with 'beginning' and 'ending' edit tags. Then you add a 'trigger' and the script handles the rest via an online Html editing interface. The Html editor does require IE5.5 or higher though, but that is a common enough browser and probably one that all of your clients are using anyway.
The script works by using a pattern matching function to read in just the chosen editable portion and loads that into the editor. After pressing save, the altered HTML is put back into the file . The user can't break your layout tables or edit things that you don't allow.
The script has a moderate price tag of $40, but a small enough fee considering the numerous hours of time this will save you in updating their called in changes.
The Flyspeck website has some online demos of the script in action here http://www.flyspeck.net/demos/
Flyspeck is a PHP enabled script that you install on your webserver that interprets parts of the page wrapped with 'beginning' and 'ending' edit tags. Then you add a 'trigger' and the script handles the rest via an online Html editing interface. The Html editor does require IE5.5 or higher though, but that is a common enough browser and probably one that all of your clients are using anyway.
The script works by using a pattern matching function to read in just the chosen editable portion and loads that into the editor. After pressing save, the altered HTML is put back into the file . The user can't break your layout tables or edit things that you don't allow.
The script has a moderate price tag of $40, but a small enough fee considering the numerous hours of time this will save you in updating their called in changes.
The Flyspeck website has some online demos of the script in action here http://www.flyspeck.net/demos/
Friday, July 16, 2004
mod_rewrite - Dynamic URL's & Regular Expressions
Bill Humphries has written an article on the mod_rewrite rule for Apache Server. The article is very concise and easy to follow. If you have not yet learned or about to delve into mod_rewrite and it's regular expressions to output spider friendly dynamic Url's, then take a look at the article A List Apart : URLS! URLS! URLS!.
Thursday, July 15, 2004
RustyBrick is Guest on SEO Radio
A little while ago, I reported that Aaron Wall was a guest on SEO Radio. Last Tuesday, Barry Schwartz (aka RustyBrick) was the guest on Brad Fallon's Internet-style radio show. Barry is the founder of Search Engine Roundtable, a blog format site that serves a guide to the hot topics at SEO forums around the web.
"Barry spoke about some of the latest changes in the search engine industry, including the upcoming search engine from Microsoft. Barry is concerned that the new engine could have a negative impact of the industry, especially when bundled with the next Micorsoft OS. Similar to Internet Explorer, which has become the number one browser, not becuase it is the best, but because it is convenient.Barry also talked about the various SEO forums around the web and the focus for each, and annouced a new link popularity tool which has just been launched.
The SEO Radio site mentions that audio archives for this show will available there soon. But RustyBrick has links for the interview set up already here in case you cannot wait.
Monday, July 12, 2004
Dynamic Text to Image Replacement
For those of you who have become accustomed to replacing your heading-text with images, then you know how cumbersome it is to generate the images and to maintain them. It often requires firing up the old PhotoShop, choosing an elegant font in which you use to type in your text, create the image and upload it to the server. Don't forget to update your Html as well. If the heading text changes ... well back to step one. Text styling is dull and boring web design process and can be an all too time consuming process too.
Now you can forget all that nonsense. Using JavaScript and PHP, you can generate accessible image-headings using any font you like. And you don't have to change the structure of your HTML or CSS at all.
Dynamic Text Replacement is an article at A List Apart which describes the process in detail. They also will provide you with the php/javascript files to effect this change.
View the demo to see Dynamic Text Replacement in action, then view the source code. Your browser is displaying images for the heading text, but the source contains simple (and very spider friendly) H1 & H2 elements. No span tags or CSS class elements at all. This is one nifty little trick.
Now you can forget all that nonsense. Using JavaScript and PHP, you can generate accessible image-headings using any font you like. And you don't have to change the structure of your HTML or CSS at all.
Dynamic Text Replacement is an article at A List Apart which describes the process in detail. They also will provide you with the php/javascript files to effect this change.
View the demo to see Dynamic Text Replacement in action, then view the source code. Your browser is displaying images for the heading text, but the source contains simple (and very spider friendly) H1 & H2 elements. No span tags or CSS class elements at all. This is one nifty little trick.
Sunday, July 11, 2004
phpBB2.de (Germany) Releases phpBB2 Plus 1.5
The German sister-site phpBB2.de has just announced the release of the Plus version of phpBB.
"phpBB2 Plus 1.5 is based on the latest phpBB 2.0.8a Code and contains latest versions of most popular Modifications which are available for phpBB2. To name just some of them: Categories Hierarchie Mod, Birthday Mod, Last Visit Mod, Attachment Mod....for a Full list of all Mods included please follow this Link. phpBB2 Plus 1.5 is released as Basic Package with English Language Files only included. At the Moment only German Language Files are also available for download but a lot of Translators are working on other languages and will release them soon in our Download Section. Included Theme is like in 1.3 FI Subsilver Shadow. Additional Themes will also be created in the near Future here at our Site."
Saturday, July 10, 2004
Web Spider Traps - robots.txt Traps and Robot Detection
On the pages of Web Spider Traps is one of the most comprehensive studies I have seen in Robot behavior patterns. With the use of craftily constructed robots.txt files, .htaccess files, detection scripts, and a variety of other techniques this page has detected, proven and found guilty numerous spiders that violate the code of robots.txt and the Robot Meta elements of your web pages.
For instance, Googlebot was shown to have followed it's orders in robots.txt except for files of type pdf, tar and zip. This trap has also caught red-handed in the act www.dir.com (Pompos), Gigabot, ia_archiver, and Yahoo! Slurp to name a few.
Spiders that do not follow robots.txt rules or do not limit bandwidth usage include WebCrawler, Ask Jeeves, MSNbot/0.1, msnbot/0.11, and several others.
Not all bots involved in this study are of the garden search engine variety, other traps for fighting against the "Spam harvesters", "email grabbers", "email collectors" and "spambots" can easily be understood and quite easily done, but as all spiders are not used for bad purposes why should they all be blocked, even if they consume bandwidth and sometimes block or overload some sites.
The site provides a fairly comprehensive list of links to known lists and databases of robots, user-agent/browser strings, search engine robots, IP addresses, and e-mail collectors.
There is also plenty of information on how you too can build your own effective spider trap. Wow, this could be a fun hobby.
For instance, Googlebot was shown to have followed it's orders in robots.txt except for files of type pdf, tar and zip. This trap has also caught red-handed in the act www.dir.com (Pompos), Gigabot, ia_archiver, and Yahoo! Slurp to name a few.
Spiders that do not follow robots.txt rules or do not limit bandwidth usage include WebCrawler, Ask Jeeves, MSNbot/0.1, msnbot/0.11, and several others.
Not all bots involved in this study are of the garden search engine variety, other traps for fighting against the "Spam harvesters", "email grabbers", "email collectors" and "spambots" can easily be understood and quite easily done, but as all spiders are not used for bad purposes why should they all be blocked, even if they consume bandwidth and sometimes block or overload some sites.
The site provides a fairly comprehensive list of links to known lists and databases of robots, user-agent/browser strings, search engine robots, IP addresses, and e-mail collectors.
There is also plenty of information on how you too can build your own effective spider trap. Wow, this could be a fun hobby.
Thursday, July 8, 2004
Darrin Ward - Back with new SEO forum SEOTown.com
The creator of SeoChat, Darrin Ward, has started a new forum named SEO Town. Darrin had sold SeoChat a little over a year ago to the DevShed Network. At the time it seemed like the thing to do according to Darrin.
"At the time, I was new to the USA, and I needed some money to go touring. The sale seemed right at the time, and I am glad that I have used a lot of that money to travel this great country."Now here it is one year later. He has asked some of the original moderators (RustyBrick & Phoenix) to come on board and they have graciously accepted.
"This time, I'm not selling anything, although you may find some Google Adsens boxes on here in order to help cover the cost of a dedicated server and the bandwidth."My kind of forum! Sounds a lot like the Band of Gonzos, so I know I will enjoy the non-commercialism of Darrin's new forum. Good luck!
Wednesday, July 7, 2004
Copyscape - Website Plagiarism Search
Here is a nifty tool called Copyscape - Website Plagiarism Search which is powered by GoogleAlert. All you need to do is enter the Url of one of your website pages and it will return any webpages that have copied in its entirety or just portions of your pages (and vice-versa). As long as Google has indexed a page which may contain parts of your work within in it, this tool will sniff it out.
I thought I would put it to the test. Rob at Binary Circus Media is using my feed, so it should show up on the report from this tool. I ran my news page through the tool -- http://www.webstractions.com/news/ -- and it brought back a screen full of links.
There are a number of articles on this page, ranging across a number of categories. It pretty much breaks the page down and finds snippets of the page pretty effectively. As suspected, Binary Circus was at the top of the list, plus one more site that is carrying my feed. Other items in the list are parts of the page that I quoted over at the Band of Gonzos web design forum, as well as items that I quoted from news articles or other forums. This tool works both ways I see. I found a couple of items that I was quoted for. In all cases though, my links (and theirs) are in tact -- author representation is maintained by linking back.
For a discusion on this tool, visit the Band of Gonzos Webmaster Community.
I thought I would put it to the test. Rob at Binary Circus Media is using my feed, so it should show up on the report from this tool. I ran my news page through the tool -- http://www.webstractions.com/news/ -- and it brought back a screen full of links.
There are a number of articles on this page, ranging across a number of categories. It pretty much breaks the page down and finds snippets of the page pretty effectively. As suspected, Binary Circus was at the top of the list, plus one more site that is carrying my feed. Other items in the list are parts of the page that I quoted over at the Band of Gonzos web design forum, as well as items that I quoted from news articles or other forums. This tool works both ways I see. I found a couple of items that I was quoted for. In all cases though, my links (and theirs) are in tact -- author representation is maintained by linking back.
For a discusion on this tool, visit the Band of Gonzos Webmaster Community.
Tuesday, July 6, 2004
cmsInfo - Open Source CMS News
A website, cmsInfo, is an internet community of users and developers of Content Management Systems. Dedicated to provide news and information of the Open Source weblog and CMS niche.
The site provides the latest news concerning approximately 90 Open Source CMS systems including Plone, Typo3, Xoops, Zope, pMachine, Drupal, and too many more to mention. It is a completely volunteer site of people who edit and maintain it. They are looking for people with expertise in commercial CMS systems, so feel free to volunteer to help with providing information on these products.
The site provides the latest news concerning approximately 90 Open Source CMS systems including Plone, Typo3, Xoops, Zope, pMachine, Drupal, and too many more to mention. It is a completely volunteer site of people who edit and maintain it. They are looking for people with expertise in commercial CMS systems, so feel free to volunteer to help with providing information on these products.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)