Practical Web tips for Drupal, Zen Cart and SEO

Installing CS cart on your local computer is very easy

2009-10-07T18:22:00.000-07:00

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

Remove Blogger Navbar From Your Blogger Account

2009-10-07T15:45:00.000-07:00

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.

Essential Drupal SEO Modules

2009-10-06T20:30:00.000-07:00

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!

Add Keywords and Description to Blogger

2009-10-04T22:44:00.000-07:00

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

Introducing Google Wave

2009-10-04T22:12:00.000-07:00

Here is Google's introductory video on Google Wave

More Tutorials and instruction's to come.

Removing Add Comment and Read More Links From Drupal

2009-10-04T16:04:00.000-07:00

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.

Google's 6 Most important On Site Ranking Factors

2009-10-02T20:28:00.000-07:00

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

Learn How to use the Page Title Module in Drupal

2009-09-30T14:28:00.001-07:00

Page Title is a very important part of SEO. In fact it is one of the first thing Google looks at when crawling your site. Drupal offers a page title module which lets you take control of your page titles, so that you can optimize them for search engines.

Installation Instructions for Drupal Page Title Module

1. Download the Page Title module for Drupal from drupal.org/node/494268
2. Install the module by placing it in your modules folder
3. Enable the module by navigating to the modules page and marking the check box next to the page title module. Make sure to save your changes.
4. Navigate to the Page Title administration page by going to "yoururl/admin/content/page_title.
5. Now you will see a list of your different types of nodes and taxonomies. You need to place "[page-title]" into the text box of each node where you want to be able to modify the page title.
6. Click on Save Configuration at the bottom of the page.

You will now be able to enter individual page titles for future and past content. For past content simply go to the content page and click edit for each one you want to add a page title. You will now see a text box called page title where you just enter the new title and hit save.

Hope this helped. Please comment if you have further questions.

How to Modify Your Zen Cart Store Width

2009-09-30T11:12:00.000-07:00

This Tutorial assumes that you are working with the default theme of Zen Cart.

Okay so you have installed Zen Cart and are surprised that the whole width of your store is only 760 pixels. If you want to modify that (which I did), here is how to do it.

1. Go to this directory zencart/includes/templates/classic/css
2. Open your stylesheet.css folder with Adobe Dreamweaver or any text editor
3. Find the "#mainWrapper" in the file
4. Modify the width attribute to whatever you like. (I used 960 px as that is the standard for most websites today.

My Zencart mainWrapper now looks like this.
#mainWrapper {
background-color: #ffffff;
text-align: left;
width: 960px;
vertical-align: top;
border: 1px solid #9a9a9a;
}

5. Save your document and reload your store.

That's it your store should now have your desired width.

How to Modify the Main Page of Zen Cart

2009-09-29T13:50:00.000-07:00

These Instructions will allow you to modify the main page of Zen Cart, so that you may get rid of the default messaging after installation.

1. Sign into your admin account
2. Under the tools drop down menu select the define pages option
3. On the next screen select "main page" from the first drop down menu and HTML from the second.
4. Highlight and delete everything in the HTML editor.
5. Now Type in or insert the images of your choice and hit Save.
6. Go to your Zen Cart Home page and view your changes.

How to Install Custom Meta Tags in Drupal Home Page

2009-09-28T19:46:00.000-07:00

I came across this issue in Drupal when I wanted to insert the custom meta tag that Google requires you put on your site before pointing them to your sitemap.xml. The Meta Tag module only allows you to put in keywords and descriptions, so you need to improvise by getting into one of the php files of Drupal.

Here are the instructions for putting custom meta tags on your Drupal home page.

1. Go into your themes folder.
2. Open the theme folder that you currently have installed on your site.
3. Now open the pagetpl.php file with your text editor.
4. in the section place the following code.
(?php if ($is_front) : ?)
( meta name="google-site-verification" content="Or Whatever Meta Tag You want" /)
(?php endif; ?)

5. Make sure to change the opening and closing () to <> for each line.

That's it, Save your document and you can view the source of the page in a browser and see your changes.

Note: Always make a backup of your php files before modifying them.

How to Install Drupal on Windows XP

2009-09-25T19:08:00.000-07:00

Drupal is by far one of the best open source content management systems on the market. We have found it easy to use and get set up and running quickly. In my opinion it is much easier to use then Joomla. But for those of you that are even frightened by the installation process, here is a step by step tutorial on how to get it installed on your local windows xp machine.

Websites With Great SEO Tools

2009-09-25T13:20:00.000-07:00

If you are a newbie to SEO and don't know where to start then the following list of websites might be able to get you off the ground. This will be an on going list, but these websites are free, are not spammy and do not require you to enter your email address or any other information.

1. Aleksika
2. Website Grader
3. w3.org This validator will display the errors in your code which may cause search engine crawlers to not be able to read your page that well.

How to Install OSCommerce on Your Local Computer

2009-09-24T21:31:00.000-07:00

Recently I came across the open source Ecommerce package OSCommerce and decided I wanted to play around with it to see what features it offers and how easy it was to administer. The first problem I ran into though was the instructions they provided for installing it locally were pretty limited. I saw that some others were having the same frustrations in some forums. So after a bit of messing around I figured it out and here are the instructions for those having similar problems.

These instructions are for windows users.

1. Download xampp if you do not already have it from apachefriends.org but I recommend installing the older version of 1.8.6 where you can find by googling xampp 1.8.6 because as I have found the 1.6.8 version of xampp is the easiest to install and work with.

2. Go to OSCommerce and download the files.

3. Unzip the files

4. Go to and open your xampp folder in the directory you installed it in. Locate the folder called htdocs and open it

5. Place your OScommerce folder in the htdocs folder

6. Next open your OScommerce folder

7. Copy the folder named "catalog" and paste it back into the htdocs folder

8. If it is not running already start xampp and make sure that the apache and mysql services are running. (if you dont know how to start xampp, then click on the desktop shortcut it made when it installed or select it from your list of programs. Once the control panel appears click start on the apache and mysql services and make sure both say "running" before proceeding.

9. Type in "localhost/phpmyadmin" into your browser address bar

10. Create a table and name it whatever you like (I used catalog to make it easy)

11. Now type in "localhost/"yourdatabasename"

12. Thats it! Now follow the onscreen instructions for completing your installation

How to Setup a 301 Redirect on GoDaddy

2009-09-24T20:09:00.000-07:00

During some of our research regarding seo tactics, we have found that having a 301 redirect setup for your website could make an impact. Since one of our websites is currently hosted on GoDaddy.com, here is how you can easily set up your 301 redirect therel.

1. Log in to your GoDaddy Account

2. Go to your hosting account manager

3. On the first page that displays, click on the content dropdown area

4. Click on the icon that says site redirects

5. Click on the new redirect button at the top right

6. When the pop up box appears, in the From section enter your domain name without the www and in the dropdown box select "Only without"

7. Click on the "TO" section and enter your domain with the "www" prefix

8. Click on the "From" section and select the radio box that says "root redirected" and click OK

9. Thats it you are all done. Test it by going to your site and entering your domain without the www prefix and you should be redirected to your site.