February 2009

SquareSpace.com E-a-s-y Blog Development

I’m on the trial for SquareSpace.com and I’m digging it so far. Squarespace is a blog / website builder platform that lets you literally SLAP together a nice looking – I’d say professional looking blog in minutes. Need a quick 500 bucks? Sell a 5 page website to a client and build it on SquareSpace in like 60 minutes.

It’s got some advanced CSS modification capability meaning you can apparently modify their master stylesheet, BUT, it’s a little hard to work with at my subdued mental capacity without a safety net. I’ve questioned their tech support about the SEO. They have a “I’m much holier and better than thou” explanation why we professional SEO jerkos should NOT NEED meta keywords… and we don’t for the most part – except that SE’s STILL read them even if they supposedly “ignore” the. So I’m looking to manually edit my meta title and meta description field because I am only guessing that my rendition is better than their “lets play I’m a SEO algorithm”. I looked at 5 pages of one of their Mark Ecko example sites and it was MISSING description tags on the 5 pages I checked and 3 of the pages I checked had identical title tags.

<title>The Marc Ecko Blog - The Official Blog of Marc Ecko </title>

If that’s their automatic SEO I can do without it. What was a little freaky about the site in terms of SEO was the homepage was a PR5 and notwithstanding the disaster under the hood with meta tags, it ranked # 5 for “Mark Ecko” on Google… www.beingmarcecko.com
But everything else seemes most beautious SO FAR.  More on this HUGE POTENTIAL for website makers like us.  Cheers !!!!

WDWP Recommended Reading: Search Engine Marketing, Inc.

Written by Mike Moran and Bill Hunt, this was the first book I tore into on my learning curve for SEO. I have recommended it to every single person who has ever asked me for a first book to teach them search engine marketing.

Specifically, Mike Moran and Bill Hunt teach the SEO wannabe about all the overall theory involving PageRank and inbound link weight and Search Engines and SERPS and tools. It’s complete and leaves the reader with a coherent overall idea of what search is about. I just found out there is a 2nd edition of this book so I must buy it on my next payday and dig deep.

Adding a Project Seven Menu to a Web Page – Overview

Project Seven has been making “Dreamweaver Extensions” for many years. This is an add-on piece of software that bolts in seamlessly to Dreamweaver and allows you to insert a vertical or horizontal menu easily.

I usually make the buttons in advance with Fireworks. I’ll make a “down” buttons” and and “over” buttons so the images will change when the mouse is hoovering. The code is automatically generated by the extension…

<td><a href=”http://tiffanydiner.com” target=”_top” onclick=”MM_nbGroup(‘down’,'group1′,’H',’images/h-white.jpg’,1)” onmouseover=”MM_nbGroup(‘over’,'H’,'images/h-yellow.jpg’,'images/h-white.jpg’,1)” onmouseout=”MM_nbGroup(‘out’)”><img src=”images/h-white.jpg” alt=”" name=”H” border=”0″ id=”H” onload=”" /></a></td>
<td><a href=”http://tiffanydiner.com/nj-diner-architecture-gallery-001.html” target=”_top” onclick=”MM_nbGroup(‘down’,'group1′,’A',’images/a-white.jpg’,1)” onmouseover=”MM_nbGroup(‘over’,'A’,'images/a-yellow.jpg’,'images/a-white.jpg’,1)” onmouseout=”MM_nbGroup(‘out’)”><img src=”images/a-white.jpg” alt=”" name=”A” border=”0″ id=”A” onload=”" /></a></td>
<td><a href=”http://tiffanydiner.com/nj-diner-food-gallery-001.html” target=”_top” onclick=”MM_nbGroup(‘down’,'group1′,’F',’images/f-yellow.jpg’,1)” onmouseover=”MM_nbGroup(‘over’,'F’,'images/f-yellow.jpg’,'images/f-white.jpg’,1)” onmouseout=”MM_nbGroup(‘out’)”><img src=”images/f-yellow.jpg” alt=”" name=”F” border=”0″ id=”F” onload=”MM_nbGroup(‘init’,'group1′,’F',’images/f-white.jpg’,1)” /></a></td>
<td><a href=”http://tiffanydiner.com/nj-diner-lights-gallery-001.html” target=”_top” onclick=”MM_nbGroup(‘down’,'group1′,’L',’images/l-white.jpg’,1)” onmouseover=”MM_nbGroup(‘over’,'L’,'images/l-yellow.jpg’,'images/l-white.jpg’,1)” onmouseout=”MM_nbGroup(‘out’)”><img src=”images/l-white.jpg” alt=”" name=”L” border=”0″ id=”L” onload=”" /></a></td>
<td><a href=”http://tiffanydiner.com/index2.html” target=”_top” onclick=”MM_nbGroup(‘down’,'group1′,’S',’images/s-white.jpg’,1)” onmouseover=”MM_nbGroup(‘over’,'S’,'images/s-yellow.jpg’,'images/s-white.jpg#’,1)” onmouseout=”MM_nbGroup(‘out’)”><img src=”images/s-white.jpg” alt=”" name=”S” border=”0″ id=”S” onload=”" /></a></td>

Project Seven’s New Menu Offering

I’ve been using Project Seven Menu systems for years for HTML sites. They have menu systems that conveniently bolt right into DreamWeaver as an “Extension”. My only beef with the product line has been that sometimes, the horizontal menu’s have been difficult or impossible for me to get centered across IE and FireFox browsers. The new version of Pop Menu Magic promises to fix that problem… automatically. I’m going to give it a test drive and let you all know. I have to say in advance that I bought the Al Sparber book “Dreamweaver 4 Magic” in late 2001 and since then I’ve used many of his “ProjectSeven.com” offerings.

Securing your WP-Config.php

One of the key components of a Wordpress blog is a file called wp-config.php and it’s used to control administrator access. Wordpress blogs will not run unless the 3 critical administrator supplied fields are in the wp-config file. These are

1.) the name of the MuSql database the blog is going to run on

2.) the name of the administrator of the MySql database or “username”

3.) the password for the database administrator user

the wp-config.php looks like this:

********************************************************************

<?php
/**
* The base configurations of the WordPress.
*
* This file has the following configurations: MySQL settings, Table Prefix,
* Secret Keys, WordPress Language, and ABSPATH. You can find more information by
* visiting {@link http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-config.php Editing
* wp-config.php} Codex page. You can get the MySQL settings from your web host.
*
* This file is used by the wp-config.php creation script during the
* installation. You don’t have to use the web site, you can just copy this file
* to “wp-config.php” and fill in the values.
*
* @package WordPress
*/

// ** MySQL settings – You can get this info from your web host ** //
/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘putyourdbnamehere’);

/** MySQL database username */
define(‘DB_USER’, ‘usernamehere’);

/** MySQL database password */
define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘yourpasswordhere’);

********************************************************************

Your implementation of the wordpress config fil might look more like this:

define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘cookiejar’);

/** MySQL database username */
define(‘DB_USER’, ‘baker’);

/** MySQL database password */
define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘bakerspassword’);
********************************************************************

WP-CONFIG.PHP begins life as a file called wp-config-sample.php and it is found at the root level of your installation. You have to modify the sample file adding the 3 critical fields, rename the file to wp-config.php, and upload it to your host site before your WordPress Blog will start properly.

The problem is that unless you do a few more steps, any decent hacker can see your ID and Password and Database name, and consequently HACK YOUR SITE.

THIS IS A UNIX HOSTING SOLUTION – this will run on all APACHE LINUX Servers

To prevent bad surfers from seeing and manipulating your config file, take these protective measures.

1.) Create and upload a file called .htaccess and put it in your root directory on the host.There are thousands of variations you can put in the file but this will do for starters

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# protect the htaccess file
<files .htaccess>
order allow,deny
deny from all
</files>

# limit file uploads to 10mb
LimitRequestBody 10240000

# protect wpconfig.php
<files wp-config.php>
order allow,deny
deny from all
</files>

# disable directory browsing
Options All -Indexes

I put this text into a file I call htaccess.txt on my local drive, I upload it to the root of the host, and then I rename it on the host to .htaccess and then it immediately disappears because it acts like a system file.

For more information and details on this subject:

Josiah Cole Dot Com – Published 7-11-07

DevLounge – Published 11-14-07 by Ronald Huereca