…from duplicate content and black hat tricks.  UKGimp offers 6 Simple Ways to Protect Your Website, an article on some techie tricks that help ensure your site won’t be doing anything to anger the search engine gods.  Some of these tips and tricks are more technical than others.  Most of us know you need to [...]

…from duplicate content and black hat tricks.  UKGimp offers 6 Simple Ways to Protect Your Website, an article on some techie tricks that help ensure your site won’t be doing anything to anger the search engine gods.  Some of these tips and tricks are more technical than others.  Most of us know you need to use htaccess to make sure only the “www” or non-”www” version of your site is getting indexed.  Personally, I didn’t realize that some hosts configure their servers to return 200 errors instead of 404 errors, which can cause problems.

Check out the article for more good stuff.

Thinking about moving your sites to a new host?  If both hosts have Cpanel, there are a few ways to do this.
First, the “full backup” method, explained here.  This one is simplest, but doesn’t always work.  The new host may not give you the access level you need to install the backup on that end.
The [...]

Thinking about moving your sites to a new host?  If both hosts have Cpanel, there are a few ways to do this.

First, the “full backup” method, explained here.  This one is simplest, but doesn’t always work.  The new host may not give you the access level you need to install the backup on that end.

The second method is almost as easy.   From your cpanel backup:

• Download a home backup. It’ll save itself with a really long name involving backup, the domain name, the date, etc.  You want to change that file’s name to username.tar.gz.  By username, I mean what you use to log into your cpanel.
• Download any databases you have.
• Upload all this to the new host.
• If you had no databases, you’re done.  Just point your nameservers over.
• If you had databases, there are a few more steps.  The first is: go into MySQL Databases, and create the users and passwords for each database.  Remember, if your username changed from one host to the next, you’ll have to change this in your config files (along with anything else you changed).
• Assign the databases to the users so they can actually connect (I’ve left this one out before!).
• For some reason, when I upload a database file just the way it comes out of the old Cpanel - database.gz - it creates a second, bogus database called databasegzkey.  You can just delete that.  (It may be that unzipping the databases on your hard drive first makes this not happen, but I don’t know.  I stick with what I know works.  And even if you don’t delete the bogus database, it won’t matter.  It’s just taking up one of your available database slots.)

Mark at 45n5 has decided to keep 19pages free for good.  He says he may charge for custom templates and a few other items, but those are all optional things.  The core software is going to remain free.
Installation is ridiculously easy.  You can install it into a subfolder, but it will create the website on [...]

Mark at 45n5 has decided to keep 19pages free for good.  He says he may charge for custom templates and a few other items, but those are all optional things.  The core software is going to remain free.

Installation is ridiculously easy.  You can install it into a subfolder, but it will create the website on your main page.  It’s definitely worth checking out, especially at these prices. 

Writing original content is time-consuming.  The brain drain can really get to you after a while, making you feel like you’d rather shut your head in your laptop than try to type one more word.  If you’ve ever considered hiring someone to write a few articles for you, there is one person whose work I’m [...]

Writing original content is time-consuming.  The brain drain can really get to you after a while, making you feel like you’d rather shut your head in your laptop than try to type one more word.  If you’ve ever considered hiring someone to write a few articles for you, there is one person whose work I’m familiar with that I feel comfortable recommending.  Her site is Wit And Wile, and the basic order form and pricing guide (isn’t it nice when they tell you prices up front?) can be found on her order info page.

She’s a good writer; concise and straightforward, with a very readable style.  You can peruse her site and see for yourself.  If you want something a bit different from what you see there, or perhaps a customized package, I suggest getting in touch with her and asking if she can meet your needs.

Do you know when your websites are unavailable? It happens more often than you might think, even with the best of hosts. It’s a good idea for every webmaster to sign up with a website monitoring service that emails you quickly when a site goes down, so you can fix it before you [...]

Do you know when your websites are unavailable? It happens more often than you might think, even with the best of hosts. It’s a good idea for every webmaster to sign up with a website monitoring service that emails you quickly when a site goes down, so you can fix it before you lose sales or traffic. There are a number of free services out there, but not all of them are that reliable - as your host will be quick to point out when you cite those services as evidence your site was down. If you’re willing to invest a little, there are also some paid services that use different (better) methods to monitor your websites. Most of them offer a variety of service packages so you can pay for as much or as little monitoring as you want.

Here’s an oldie but goodie. If your website could use a favicon - one of those squares you see url tab in your browser, this is an easy way to make one. You’ll need your own picture to use; take it to this free favicon generator. Follow their instructions and it’s pretty [...]

Here’s an oldie but goodie. If your website could use a favicon - one of those squares you see url tab in your browser, this is an easy way to make one. You’ll need your own picture to use; take it to this free favicon generator. Follow their instructions and it’s pretty simple.

Now that tabbed browsing is here to stay, this can help your sites stand out more and remind people to come back to tabs they’ve left open.