This took longer than I thought to figure out. I wanted to use a server side include so I can use files on my webserver, but that are not within my WordPress installation. I tried a bunch of stuff, but luckily was able to see the error messages when it failed by viewing the source code of the WordPress blog. For instance, I got “syntax error, unexpected T_STRING”. This is the right code (assuming, of course, that the file you want is on the same server, but just in a directory outside the WordPress installation):
<?php include(ABSPATH . ‘/filename.html’); ?>
ABSPATH means, as you can no doubt imagine, absolute path. So if the file you wanted was in a sub directory such as “myfiles” you’d change the above to:
<?php include(ABSPATH . ‘/myfiles/filename.html’); ?>
You’d typically be calling for a file with an extension such as .html, .htm or .php. I need to do this as I plan to merge a new WordPress blog into an existing site, and the site has CSS style menus driven with an unordered list of links in a separate html file which I only want to have to edit in the one place.
Got bored with using Blogger – seems to be a total headache to maintain and doesn’t give enough control, so I’ve migrated the blog over to WordPress. For now I’ve added a theme, and messed about with it a little. I intend to mess about with it a lot as (while it looks quite nice) the guy who wrote it left it littered with errors, and the layout isn’t quite “right”. Didn’t bother doing any 301′s for it, unlike the TKD site.
Made my comments now to have “Nofollow” removed by default as I don’t agree with the whole nofollow thing. I moderate comment, and I do check what the comment links to. Regardless of the quality of the comment, if it loks like it’s purpose is to promote some “bad” area of the web it just doesn’t get published. So There.
My Taekwondo site had sat for years on a subdomain at http://tkd.tomcatuk.net. I felt the site deservered it’s own domain, so I did a little keyword research using the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.
Ran the keyword “taekwondo” through it, then sorted the results by global search volume. Top of the list (of course) was “Taekwondo” with over 3 million monthly searches. Obviously taekwondo.com, taekwondo.net and taekwondo.org have all been taken up long since. It does surprise me they don’t actually have sites on them, and are just cyber squats. Presumably the owners are waiting to make a fortune selling them.
Next on the list – “Taekwondo Olympics” with 110,000 global searches. Then at number 5 “Olympic Taekwondo” with 49,500 global searches. I know I’m going to have to go for a two word domain, and this looks like the number one keyphrase. Time to visit my registrar.
Bingo – managed to get a domain I really like – http://www.olympictaekwondo.org/ . Quite surprised it was available (checked Alexa and it’s never been registered so no issues with it being used for bad purposes in the past either). Perfect! No dashes or underscores, just two totally relevant keywords with a “reputable” domain extension (I don’t like URLs with special characters or numbers and suspect Google doesn’t either). Anyone who’s tried to register a domain knows just how tricky it is to find any good ones. I was only interested in getting a .com, a .net or a .org. Didn’t want any of the “lesser” extensions such as .biz, .info or .me. As the site is really suitable for an international audience, I wasn’t keen on .co.uk, but would have accepted one of those if the name was good enough.
Next step: copy all the content from the old subdomain over to the new FQDN (still on the same server). Since the site uses Blogger for the blog I had to republish that after changing the publishing settings within Blogger. Then write a 301 redirect into the .htaccess file within the old sub domains root by entering this line into it:
redirect 301 / http://www.olympictaekwondo.org/
Publish the .htaccess file on the old sub domain and bingo, any clicks to the old sub domain now get automatically redirected to the new domain. This will include any links on other sites, links in people’s favourites and, of course, most importantly and links in SERPs.
Prior to doing this, I double checked what the Google PageRank was for my pages – Homepage a 3, Blog page a 3 and all content pages a 2. The “About” & “Contact” pages had no PageRank which I kind of think is good of Google as these aren’t pages I expect to rank in SERPs. Individual Blog entries had a mixtures of 0,1 and 2 PR.
I did a little reading up, and it seemed the consensus was that when using a 301 redirect I could reasonably expect Google to start showing the new URL in search results, in the same position as the old pages in about two weeks. It should also reassign” the PR from the old to the new in about that time frame.
The 301 was put in place on July 10th 2009. I’ll amend this post when I have a proven timeframe for the SERPs positions and PR of the new domain matching the old.
***Footnote***
Google’s webmaster guidlines recommend using the “change of address” feature in Webmaster Tools to advise Google of a moved domain. Sounds good, but unfortunately it doesn’t help in this case. They do not give an option to move a subdomain, only a FQDN.
***Update 1***
On July 15th (just five days after implementing the 301) I have PR0 on most pages, notably the homepage and blog homepage. Some of the internal pages seem to have regained their PR2 value already. Google Webmaster tools refuses to make any statements about the PR of the sites’ pages, so presumably at this stage it is still all still ironging itself out.
***Update2***
July 20th – all the PR2′s that appeared have moved down to PR0. Webmaster tools now states 100% of pages have “low” pagerank. Interestingly, this, by default, means no page that’s been crawled is “not yet assigned”. Keyword rankings appear unaffected. Rapidly closing on the supposed 2 week period at this stage.
***Update3***
July 22nd – the new domain shows up in SERPs where the old one used to. Still zero pagerank across entire site. Keyword rankings still appear unaffected, although the site is starting to rank for “Olympic Taekwondo” (about number 15 on Google.co.uk and number 17 on Google.com).
***Update4***
July 25th – no change, and we’re now over the supposed two week period.
***Not exactly an update***
I just read this article by Danny Sullivan on 301′d pages/websites and their backlinks, and now I’m wondering if Google is going to pass the weight of all the backlinks the site had where it was before. Danny’s article kind of suggests that a moved site may well lose all the link juice it previously enjoyed as Google may not count the links to the old domain as still relevant. If that’s the case it’s a tad worrying as I had a LOT of backlinks, and from good places too. A lot of them were, in fact, what I would deem “the perfect link” in that:
1. MOST IMPORTANTLY – I didn’t ask for them.
2. They were from sites on topic with mine.
3. A lot of them were deep links to my site’s content with perfect anchor text.
If I’ve really lost all that link juice, yikes.
Tags: Google
Managed to get this error this morning (13.01.00 – error in paper path for tray 2). Checked feed path – no problems. Checked guide rails in the paper tray, again all was as it should be.
This didn’t help.
Turns out that whoever had filled it last had allowed to bottom sheet of the ream they inserted to curl over the sensor at the front of the tray. The only way to see this is to remove all the paper from the tray. To fix it, just refill the tray PROPERLY.
The best way to stop this from happening is probably to stop people filling the paper trays and just do it yourself. This little mystery cost me 20 minutes whereas just refilling the printer myself (I tend to do it properly!) would have taken a few seconds.
I’ll assume you know what the title is about. If you don’t, read this. On a side note, quite how that page has a PR of 7 when it went up only two weeks ago…that’s something to talk about another time.
I just watched the SEOMOZ whiteboard Friday video on nofollow and PageRank sculpting, but didn’t leave it with any conclusions. The answer seems to be in Matt Cutt’s announcement, and this is how I read it:
Google does not like people messing with PageRank and is telling webmasters to stop trying it.
That being the case, as far as I’m concerned stop using nofollows (or any alternative methods) on internal links. You’re giving Google a negative indicator, ie that you don’t vouch for your own content. That can’t be good. To think as a webmaster you can funnel PageRank using another method without Google noticing is probably foolhardy, and certainly arrogant. So I’m not looking into it.
What saddens me about nofollow is it’s abuse – particularly WikiPedia (and other large sites – Wiki is just the top example). WikiPedias’ content is moderated and the external links have not been paid for so the use of nofollow is not in line with Google’s (or other engines) advice on what exactly the tag is for.
The allowed sites feature is great. As someone who’s been through the process of having his Adsense account disabled due to ads appearing on sites I don’t control (basically vandalism on the part of another webmaster) it’s great to be able to sleep at night in the knowledge my publisher ID isn’t being served on any pages that could get my account banned.
However, having just switched to using Analytics, I had a quick look at it this morning, then a look at Adsense. Adsense is recording more than double the number of page impressions that Analytics is. Luckily, within your Adsense account there’s a list of the sites that are attempting to display your ADs. Guess what? They are all Google pages, so this is people viewing my page in Google’s cache rather than actually visiting my site.
The answer to this is simple – add google.com to your allowed sites list. It also make sense to add your “local” Google, so I added all the English language Googles I could think of.
Bizarrely, a post I put up a while ago about press ups in Taekwondo started to appear on page one of Google.co.uk for the keyphrase “press ups”. If you’re doing TKD hopefully it was a useful, inspired and interesting read, but if you don’t, the odds are it wasn’t exactly what you were looking for based purely on that keyphrase search.
Looking at Analytics, the bounce rate for that keyphrase is 100%, and gradually Google is dropping my position for it accordingly.
It’s always seemed logical for me that Google’s algorithm should pay close attention to bounce rate to help it guage the relevance of it’s results, but this is the first time I’ve actually been able to see it actually working in a real scenario. Hopefully they’ll drop me altogether for that keyphrase as it’s dragging my total bounce rate up – most pages on the site, when they are reached through an appropriate keyphrase have bounce rates beneath 40% which is much more like it.
Finally got around to merging the stylesheets for my TKD site – now Blogger is calling the same stylesheet as the rest of the site, and all the same include files.
I thought this would be easy, but as always once you get started all manner of little quirks manifest themselves! Had to write in 4 or 5 extra hacks to get Internet Explorer 6 & 7 to work with the single stylesheet. What I thought would take an hours or so took more like 4 hours to do. Never again!
Got a little tired of the Vodafone branding on my C902, and a little digging around found out how to 1) debrand it and 2) have future firmware updates from the Sony Ericsson Update Service (SEUS). I debranded a phone once before (paying for the priviledge) and as a result couldn’t get any new firmware – I would have had to keep on paying each time I wanted to update whch wasn’t really a great solution.
Debranding a C902 from Vodafone turns out to be easy and free.
Firstly, you’ll need a piece of software call A2Uploader, and an XML file to fool Ericsson’s update service into thinking your phone is unbranded. Click here for the copy I made and used. Then you simply use SEUS to flash your firmware to the latest version, saying yes to all the warning about possible data loss.
I was a bit put off by the fact that my AVG anti-virus warned me that A2Upoader contined a Trojan. It didn’t, so to get it to run I had to turn off the residnt shield within AVG. Then you just follow the prompts like this:
1. Turn off your phone, take out the battery, re-insert the battery (don’t turn the phone back on)
2. Fire up A2Upoader, click “File System Tool” on the right, hold the “C” button on your phone and plug in the USB cable. A2Uploader should then recognise your handset.
3. Use A2Uploader to browse your phone to “tpa/preset/custom” and copy the XML file onto your phone.
4. Shut down A2Uploader, disconeect the USB cable from the phone, and switch it back on.
You can now use the Sony Ericsson Update Service and get the latest firmware. The Sony Ericsson firmware, not the Vodafone stuff.
Having done this, my phone is:
1) running much faster
2) has a decent battery indicator
3) much nicer icons in the main menu
4) hasn’t got 50 shortcuts to Vodafone Live! that I can’t change (I hate that)
You can also use A2Uploader to get rid of the awful pre-installed games, and any media files (ringtones, pictures etc) that you can’t normally remove using the phone. Great!
I thought it might be an idea to show a couple of pictures of the debranded c902. A bit tricky to get the phone to take a picture of itself, so I asked Tony if he could take a picture using his iPhone. And here it is:
Turns out the iPhone camera is, to be frank, absolute rubbish so you probably can’t read what’s on the phone. Even funnier, I asked Tony to bluetooth the image over to me once he’d taken it, and he told me he couldn’t – the iPhone can’t transmit files via Bluetooth. Pathetic eh?
Just for the sake of fairness, I took a quick shot of his iPhone with my c902, see if you can spot the differences in image quality:
Both images were taken indoors, with poor lighting and no setting camera options to anything other than default. I’m horrified the iPhone has such a crap camera, and is incapable of sending files via Bluetooth particularly as it’s so incredibly expensive.
Right now I’m reading Cool It by Bjorn Lomborg (recommended to me by my uncle) and before I’ve even finished it I have to recommend this as a book everybody who has even a slight concern over the future welfare of humanity should read.
The book is totally engaging, and totally strips away the propaganda around the whole man made global warming issue, and just what we should do about it. I don’t want to spoil what should be a great and eye opening read, but can’t stop myself mention the central theme that the Kyoto agreement (signed by multiple nations agreeing to reduce carbon emissions) is going to cost billions of Dollars, yet have minimal impact on the climate and negligible (sometimes even negative) impact on the welfare of the people of this planet. Bjorn argues that these Dollars can be far more usefully spent, and huge numbers of lives saved and improved.
The question we need to ask ourselves is do we want to reduce the amount of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere, or is our goal a better environment. The two are not the same.
