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Making Websites - SEO Practices – Comments on Blogs

Making Websites - SEO Practices – Comments on Blogs

I have been creating web pages for some time and have spent considerable time researching SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) techniques, and as the owner of several blogs have always wondered about one of the techniques.
Quoted from the results of a recent Google search on “SEO Blog Comments”:

“By taking the time to comment on blogs, even one or two comments per day can lead to extremely positive results such as reputation building, expert positioning, and the building of inbound links, even if said blogs use the no follow attribute in their comment fields (and if they do not, all the better).”

The above has some valid points, and as long as the comments are on topic and are well thought responses then I guess you may have a positive moderation and your comment allowed.
Before you make a comment, place yourself in the webmasters shoes and ask. How will a comment of “Nice site” or “That is a valid point” followed by a link to a site selling “Viagra” enhance their their Blog? The answer is, quite simply, it will not.
As a webmaster, one of my blogs is for my accounting practice, and any comments like the preceding one will always be treated as spam and deleted. Most webmasters, myself included, have spent considerable amount of time on their blog, writing posts and promoting their site. We appreciate comments on topic and in fact encourage it, and if a URL is added to the comment then that to must be on topic and very relevant to the comment.
I guess the last thing I would be doing is to denigrate my site with a “Nice site” comment and a link to sell Viagra. To give you an idea of the success rate, of the 3500 comments posted only 11 comments have been approve and are displayed on my blog, the remainder are all “Nice site” comments.
The time and effort you put in making a comment on another blog will be matched by the time and effort of the Blogs owner.

Highland Accounting Services - Delays to tax returns lodge in January 2010

Highland Accounting Services - Delays to tax returns lodge in January 2010

The Australian Taxation Office replaced its software in January, and because of this any tax returns lodged were not going to be processed till February 1st.

I contacted the ATO on Monday and was informed that the software update didn’t go as planned and that instead of the 1st being the start of processing the lodged tax returns, it would now be February 15th.

So those who lodged the tax returns throughout January and the start of February, your 14 day processing time as suggested by the ATO started on the 15th.

Your tax returns should be appearing about March 1st.

Making Websites 404 Error Pages Make them work for you.

Making Websites - 404 Error Pages Make them work for you.

404 error pages, we all know what they are, right. I will refresh your memory, a 404 error occurs when your server is reached by a user, but the page the user is looking for, can not be found. This may happen for a variety of reasons;

• A typo by the user, by simply missing the “l” in “html” will result in the 404 error,
• An external link to a moved/deleted page,
• An internal link to a moved/deleted page.

I read an article recently that stated that most users of the internet when encountering a 404 error page assumed that the whole website is no longer available, not just the one page. Bearing that in mind, after attracting a user to your page and for them to find a 404 error page, all your hard work is undone as they are browsing away from your website to your competitors site.
Stop making your 404 error page the exit page to your website. Create a 404 webpage that replaces the default error page. How I created my 404 page on my websites is to make the error page in the same format as any other page on my site, and then place the error information where the content would go.
If you do not want to create your page as above, make sure that you have;

• A link to your website as big and as clear as possible so the user will prows to your site,
• Make sure your page is less than 512 kilobytes, as windows explorer may display a default 404 page.
• If applicable have a search box so the user can type what they are looking for and be directed to the correct page.
• If applicable a drop down menu so the user can browse to the page of interest.
• If your site is small, maybe a sitemap showing all your pages.
• An apology for not have the page there, eg “We apologise for the inconvenience, please browse to the home page www.yourwebsite.com”.

Most website hosting services will have the ability to change your 404 error page, cPanel is a commom interface used by web hosting business, please contact your hosting company and they should be able to direct you on how to make the changes.
To get your new 404 error page up and running, first create in your favourite html editor and then upload.In cPanel you first need to logged in, click on the error page icon at the bottom of the configuration page, click on the “404 (not found)” link and then copy and paste your html into the text box. Save the information and it is completed.
To view the updated page live, browse to a page that you don’t have on your site and the new error page should be displayed.
If you have any ideas that have worked for you, please add to the comment box below.
http://www.makingwebsitesblog.com/?p=171

Web Hosting - Facts and Figures

I have been comparing web hosting packages lately, mainly as research for a websites I am working on so my visitors will know which hosting package will suit them.
One of the web hosting packages I examined has 10 GB of webspace and 300 GB of transfer per month for a reasonable fee of $US 4.99 per month, so what do all these figures mean?
I will attempt to put into perspective for you. The page that you are reading now has an approximate file size of 140,000 bytes. As you can see this page consists mainly of text with a few small graphics, a typical blog page. A page with graphics, photos and flash media will of course be larger in size than a page consisting mainly of text.
So how does this web page of 140,000 bytes fit in to the 10 Giga-Bytes of web space and 300 Giga-Bytes of transfer per month?
The web space and transfers also includes any databases that you may have, as well as the sending, receiving and storing of emails. The calculations and estimates will only include the storage and transfers of web pages. As you will see in the following calculations, these extras, are merely incidental
First off I will look at the webspace. The 10 GB of webspace means that 76,000 pages can be hosted at the file size of 140,000 bytes, that is a huge amount of information, I would seriously doubt that any one person would be able to create that much data.
Now for the transfer of data from your web site, 300 GB how many page views does that equate to. This blog page as mentioned before is 140,000 bytes of data which equals 1 page view so the 300 GB will give this page over 23 million page views per month.
For $US 4.99 per month you can host 76,000 pages and have over 23 million page views per month, as a comparison www.debian.org has over 20 million pages views per month.
Assuming the above is still not enough, then for $US 14.99 per month at the same web hosting service you can recieve unlimited web space and transfers.

Centering your web page via a div

I center my websites in the browser and normally have the site width set to 950 pixels.

To center I create a div with the following class='wrapper', the style will be 

.wrapper {

width: 950px;

margin: 0 auto;

}

As IE as issues with the above we enter into the body tags, style="width: 100%; text-align: center;"

PHP Sessions

A Session stores temporary data on the server for later use while on a website, the session data is destroyed after the website has been closed.

Sessions work by creating a unique identification(UID) number for each visitor and storing variables based on this ID. This helps to prevent two users' data from getting confused with one another when visiting the same webpage.

I use sessions after I have verified the log on details of an user. The user is able to access allowed pages. Any one not logged in will get a message say that they are not authorised.

All page that require the use of a session, even the original log on page must have this code.

session_start();
header("Cache-control: private"); // Allows the backspace of a page will in a session

Once I have verified the user logging in I would place this code.

if($user = 'user' && $pass = 'password') // This section of code is a simple example to show

{

$_SESSION['name'] = true; // Names the session for later use.

echo "Your are logged in";

}

else

{

echo "Incorrect username or Password";

}

All pages that the user has permision will nee the following code:

session_start();
header("Cache-control: private");

if($_SESSION['name'])

{

echo "You have access to this page"; // Plus all the information that the only the user can is autorised to see.

}

else

{

echo "You are not authorised to see the contents of this page";

}

Number of Rows in Database Function

Have created a function that will query a database and return the number of rows as a result of the query.

I use this function as part of log in access of myweb site. The first section of code is on the log in page.

$username = $_POST['usernamel'];

$password = $_POST['password'];

include "functionfile.php";

$rowqry = "SELECT * FROM tablename WHERE username = '$username' AND password = '$password' ";

if(numofrows($rowqry) == 1)  // calling the fuction and checking that the results equal 1

{

// if result is correct add the info that you want to display here

}

else

{

echo "Your password or username may be incorrect, please try again";

}

This is the function that is called, I have a single fill (functionfile.php) with all my functions that I include in the code.

function numofrows($rowqry)

{

$host = "localhost"; // database host

$un = "username"; // database username

$pw = "password"; // database password

$dbname = "database"; // database name

$dbase = mysql_connect($host, $un, $pw);

if (!$dbase)

die ( "No Connection"); // connecting to database

mysql_select_db($dbname, $dbase)

or die ("Could not open $dbname: ".mysql_error()); // Opening database

$result = mysql_query($rowqry, $dbase); // applying query to database

$rows = mysql_num_rows($result); // counting rows in the applied query

return $rows; // returns result to fuction

}

PHP Form, Code Injection

A HTML form, can be used to inject a piece of code to produce results that the hacker wants. An unprotected  form can be used to run a simple php code like ' echo "hello world";'  or a more destructive code.... 

To stop the form from being hacked I use the following steps:

Step 1. Check the data via JavaScript;

Call the JavaScript function by putting onsubmit='return checkform()' in the form tags

The folowing code checks that the password is alpha numerical, and if so returns and processes the form. The main reaon for the JavaSrcipt is to validate the form for the standard user, making sure that the correct data format is entered.

function checkform()

{

re = "no";

repass = /^[0-9A-Za-z]+$/;

if(repass.test(document.form.password.value))

{

re='yes';

}

else

{

alert('Please make sure the password is alpha numeric');

document.form.password.select();

document.form.password.focus();

return false;

}

if(re=="yes")

{

return true

}

}

Step 2.  Check the data via PHP

This code recieves the data from the forms textbox, makes sure that the data is alpha numeric. If the data is not apha numeric the error message is displayed, and the code stops running. 

The main purpose for this extra code, is that the hacker would not be using the form provided, thus rendering the JavaScript useless, so if a hacker or spammer enters any thing but numbers or letters then the code will cease.

$pw = $_POST['password'];

$passpattern = '/^[0-9A-Za-z]+$/';

$errormessage = " field, has invalid information and needs to be changed.";

if (!preg_match("$passpattern", "$pw")) 

{

echo "Your Password $errormessage"; 

exit();

}

Step 3. Preparing the data for MYSQL

The mysql_escape_string() function replaces characters that have a special meaning in MySQL with an escape sequence. eg " is replaced with \" and ' is replaced with \'. This will stop any code being written to the database and executed as it will be displayed as plain text.

If you use  mysql_real_escape_string() as the preffered alternative then you will need to be connected to the database before you run the code.

$pw = mysql_escape_string($pw);

Step 4. Use my examples as a basis to do your own research, and if find and alternative please post.