Practical Web Tips

Since I love to try out new ecommerce software, I decided to give CS CART a try. The first great thing I found out was that it is very simple to install on your local machine.

These instructions are for Windows based users who already have xammp installed.

1. Go to your xammp/httdocs folder
2. Create a new folder called cscart
3. Extract the foder you downloaded from http://www.cs-cart.com/trial.html to your newly created cs cart folder.
4. Ensure you have apache and Mysql running and type in localhost/cscart/install into one of your browsers.
5. Follow the onscreen instructions

The great thing about CS Cart is that it creates your Mysql database for you. You even have options to select different themes right out of the box, which is very cool

Here is a simple and easy way to remove your the default Blogger navbar that appears by default on all of there blogs.

1. First log into your blog account
2. Go to Layout
3. Click on Edit HTML
4. Find the line of code that says "Variable Definitions"
5. Past this code above variable definitions

#navbar-iframe {height:0px;visibility:hidden;display:none;}

6. Save your changes and view your blog.

You will no be able to distinguish yourself from those others on the blogger platform.

The following are some essential Drupal Modules for Search Engine Optimization. There are some alternatives, but these seem to do a pretty good job.

1. Page Title-Provides enhanced control over your page title's which appear in the head tag of every node.
2. Meta Tags-allows you to enter description and keywords for every node you create.
3. Meta Tags by Path-allows you to choose any url/path and add keywords and meta-tags that way. I use this for nodes that don't have those options by default (such as an aggregator)
4. Path Auto-Provides a mechanism for modules to automatically generate aliases for the content they manage.
5. Google Analytics-Just what the name says, but this module allows you to enter your analytics code in one area and it will automatically be generated on every page
6. XML Sitemap-Creates an XML sitemap for your site and gives you the option to send it to all the major search engines each time your site is updated.

I will provide links to each module in the next day or so. Enjoy!

These Instructions will show you how to add keywords and descriptions to your blogger account.
1. Go to your Layout Tab.
2. Click on the Edit HTML link
3. Find the following code at the top of your HTML

4. Insert your Keyword and Description Meta Tags below that line of code. Enter them the same way you would any other HTML page.
5. Save your changes

Go back to your blogger home page and view the source code. You should see the new Description and Keyword Meta Tags

Here is Google's introductory video on Google Wave



More Tutorials and instruction's to come.

How To Remove the "Read More" and "Add Comment" links from Drupal.

In some cases you might not want these links to appear on your blog posts. Here is an easy way of removing them.

1. Navigate to your themes folder
2. Open up node.tpl.php with your favorite text editor
3. Navigate to the section that has this block of code
(?php if ($links): ?)
(div class="links")
(?php print $links; ?)
(/div)
(?php endif; ?)

4. Remove the following line of code "(?php print $links; ?)"
Remember that the parenthesis should be replaced with brackets <>
5. Save the file.

Your blog posts will now appear without the read more and add your comment links.

Note: If you remove the whole block of code, it will also be removing a div tag. This may cause the bottom of one blog posts leaking in to the top of another.

If you don't know it by now, the most important factor determining your search engine ranking is quality inbound links. In Fact, almost 75% of your site ranking is based upon your inbound links. So aside from creating quality links to your site, what should you focus on? You should be concentrating on the 6 core factors for your On Page SEO.

Here they are in order of importance.
1. Page Title
2. URL
3. Headers
4. Page Text
5. Description
6. Keywords