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“True Blood” Rolling Stone Cover A Bit Creepy
Aug 20th
People are outraged about the new cover of Rolling Stone magazine which features stars from HBO’s “True Blood.”
The stars are depicted naked and embracing, all the while covered in blood, as is typical for vampires.
The cover depicts e Alexander Skarsgard, Anna Paquin, and Stephen Moyer, much like they might appear on the television show.
True Blood Rolling Stone Cover
Frankly, the cover looks like one of those items that is intentionally designed to stir the pot, and that’s exactly what’s happening so far.
It’s creating a lot of interest in the magazine, which will help create more interest in the show, which, by the way, is excellent.
Check out the full issue for more details about True Blood from its creator and several cast members.
Building Web Content
Mar 3rd
Many people drone on about building “high quality web content.” What they fail to explain is just what content qualifies for such a lofty appraisal. Let’s face it: much web content is junky. And it’s not like it’s a big deal, either. The audience on the web has a short attention span, and is often looking just for the facts. If you can present your story in a clear and understandable manner, using excess verbiage is rarely helpful.
What makes good content? It’s debatable. But it’s safe to say some principles can’t hurt.
- Easy to read information
- Links to additional info, if needed
- Clear navigation and help if necessary
- Pictures and videos added if they expand the narrative
If people write authoritatively on a subject, readers will learn to trust the website. If the information is schlock and not up to snuff, the low quality will eventually stop people from wanting to investigate the site further.
Quality web content can be short, though. If you answer a question definitively in a concise manner, there’s no point in going long in an attempt to impress your reader.
Google Myths Explored – Duplicate Content
Jan 23rd
Some Google myths are worth exploring in greater detail. Certainly much of what is written about the world’s largest search engine is merely wishful thinking, or just plain crap. The only way to figure out what really happens in Google is to test. Most people don’t have the time or inclination to do rigorous testing, so many of them will just end up parroting what others have told them.
The idea of duplicate content scares people
Webmasters seem particularly worried about what will happen if they have duplicate content on their websites. They seem to think it will result in an instant and damaging penalty. But in reality, Google tends to be very forgiving of duplicate content.
Testing shows that duplicate content won’t necessarily rank well, but it doesn’t affect the ability of your website to rank. You won’t be penalized for it, you just not might rank. This is especially true if there are better linked domains publishing the same content as you.
In reality, a lot of the web consists of duplicate content, for nefarious reasons as well as legitimate ones. If you’re really worried that duplicate content is bringing you down, you can always use the noindex meta tag to tell the search engines to drop the pages.
PHP Warnings Off
Dec 29th
Turning off all PHP warnings. Depending on your set up, you might be getting a large number of warnings from a PHP script that are written into you Apache log files. Normally, the correct solution would be to fix the script, and all warnings would be eliminated. But on certain occasions, this isn’t an option.
NOTE: Keep a record of any changes you make to your configuration. If you turn off php warnings and don’t remember doing it, you might run into a snag later.
If you’re pressed for time and want to stifle all warnings, add this to the top of any file that is included from your main PHP script.
Now, this won’t just stop the warnings from being printed on the site, but it will also kill all errors being written to your website’s error_log.
If you want to just suppress warnings on your site, and you have access to your .htaccess file, then make a simple edit.
php_value display_errors 0
In order to add error checking back to your website:
php_value display_errors 1
php_value error_reporting 2047
It’s totally up to you how you want to handle error checking, but if you have a script that you don’t plan on changing that is creating error log files of huge sizes, then patching the code as illustrated in example one should do the trick.
Writings Tips For Internet Marketers
Dec 23rd
Use the “Hourglass Method” to Write Faster
It’s not what you think.
Using the “Hourglass” method has nothing to do with putting yourself on a timer to see how many articles you can write in an hour. It is, rather, a way for you to visualize the “shape” your article will take before you even begin to write it.
Redirecting All Traffic From A Subdirectory To The Root
Dec 22nd
If you want to permanently redirect all the traffic from a subdirectory to the root domain, and you’re running Apache, the job is quite simple. All you need to do is make sure you mod_alias installed, and then you can a simple command to your .htaccess file.
Here’s example code.
RedirectMatch 301 ^/old/(.*)/$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1/
That would take all the requests for files located in the /old/ directory and redirect them permanently their new location at the root. This might come in handy for someone who has a blog installed in a subdirectory and wants to promote it to the root.
You can also exclude directories, in case you need to. Use the following syntax:
Redirect permanent ^/(?!category/)(?!tag/)(.*)/(.*)/$
Redirect match supports regex so anything that can be done in regex can be done using redirectmatch. The documentation from Apache is typically obtuse.
“This directive is equivalent to Redirect, but makes use of standard regular expressions, instead of simple prefix matching. The supplied regular expression is matched against the URL-path, and if it matches, the server will substitute any parenthesized matches into the given string and use it as a filename.”
In any event, redirectmatch is an extremely powerful and easy to use way to do redirection.
Finding The Best Link Exchange
Dec 21st
Tips on finding the best link exchanges
To publicize a Web page, it’s always a difficult task and one of the first steps you can do is to ensure that popular search engines index your website properly. One way to do this for people who have more time than money is by exchanging links with related websites. Although the practice has been frowned on to a degree by search engines, the one reason webmasters to continue to exchange links is because link exchanges have their roots in the earliest days of the internet.
Jeremy Pivens Has High Mercury Levels
Dec 18th
Poor Jeremy Pivens. The guys been eating so much fish, apparently, he’s developed unusually high levels of mercury in his blood stream. Or at least that’s the line he used to bow out of David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow on Broadway.
Jeremy Pivens after eating fish
The line sounds like a bunch of crap when you hear it. You can sense David Mamet’s skepticism by what he said upon hearing the news.
“I talked to Jeremy on the phone, and he told me that he discovered that he had a very high level of mercury,” Mamet said. “So my understanding is that he is leaving show business to pursue a career as a thermometer.”
Ha ha. Now that’s the type of wit you might just expect from the man who wrote Glengary Glenross
Pivens rep said the actor would have liked to continue with the play, but his doctors recommended against it. 300 people demanded refunds today upon learning the news.
301 Redirection Gotchas
Oct 16th
301 Redirection is a great thing, if you do it right. 301 redirection is a great way to move content to new locations while preserving your incoming links. If you use PHP and mod_rewrite already, implementing 301 redirects is a snap.
Either way, if you plan on moving some files, you can preserve rankings for your website content with careful planning. It’s all just part of your normal website maintenance.
I’ve been doing a lot of maintenance as we hit the fall. After all, this time of the year is a busy season for website owners!