Webmaster Blog

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Popularity: 3%

How to scan all files in a directory and subdirectories for a string or variable name.

Okay so I needed to generate a list of files on my PC that contain the variable $license[xxxxx].  Whilst I knew I could write a PHP script to do this, I thought it’d be much quicker to let my PC do all the work using findstr.

First, let’s explain what FINDSTR is and how it works.

Findstr is a windows command you can use in the Windows Command Prompt (cmd / cmd.exe) to find out if a string exists in a defined file or in this case, list off all files containing a string.

So I came up with this:

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C:\Windows\system32>findstr /m /s /i "$license" C:\dev\www\*

Just to explain what each of the toggles I used mean:

/m = Only display the filename of each file found matching the search.  (without this, it will quote the entire line and line number the string was found on)

/s = Includes all subdirectories as well as the defined directory

/i = Forces the search to be case insensitive.

This worked, but it also spat off reams of results I couldn’t do anything with.. Also, there were so many results, it exceeded the command prompt capacity and trimmed off about half of the results.  So, you want to dump the results to a .txt file, which will actually leave you with usable results.

To do this, you simply add > C:/path/to/result-file.txt (this file shouldn’t exist already! It will be created!)

So I ended up with this:

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C:\Windows\system32>findstr /m /s /i "$license" C:\dev\www\* > C:\license-results.txt

Which worked perfectly!  I know I usually don’t blog about windows stuff, but I thought this would be very useful to my fellow webmasters You’re welcome!

Popularity: 6%

Check PHP files for minimum PHP version requirement

A very useful tool for many of you looking to release your scrips to the public, will be this PHP minimum version requirement checker.

If you ever plan on selling or distributing scripts, it’s vital that you let your customers know the server requirements of your scripts.  Whilst telling them that your script might use the mod_rewrite Apache Module, or that it requires MySQL database, will be fairly easy to know, figuring out the PHP version requirements of your script is not straight forward, and certainly not an easy task if your script is quite complex.

Doing so would require that you write down EVERY PHP function that you use in your script, and then cross-reference to php.net to see what versions can use each function.

Well, say goodbye to that idea thanks to PHPduck!  These amazing folks have created the script for the job!

Find out all about it here: http://phpduck.com/minimum-php-version-script/

And view an example results page here: http://phpduck.com/resources/minVersion_vBulletin401.html

Popularity: 9%

Today, I’ll be showing you how you can easily protect your downloadable media.

Why would you want to do this? Well, often we want to hide the location of the downloads, to stop people leeching your content. And most measures can be easily swerved.

Here is a method I quite like. I have annotated everything for your convenience.

Filename: download.php

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<?php
$filename = "downloaded.zip"; // this is the fake name you want the downloaded file to be called.
$source = "/downloads/thefile.zip"; // this is the real name and location of the file.
 
if(file_exists($source)) { // check that the real file exists, if so do the following..
 
   header('Content-type: application/zip'); // set the content type of the current page to the type of file being downloaded
   header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="'.$filename.'"'); // Forge the download name by setting filename=
   readfile($source); // grab the real file to prompt download.
 
} else { // if the file doesn't exist
echo "Error: File not found!"; // display error message
}
?>

So how do we use this? going to the destination: mysite.com/download.php would grab the file ‘thefile.zip’ from the /downloads/ folder, and prompt you to download it, but with a new name of ‘downloaded.zip’

This is the simplest version of this method. Obviously with use of $_GET requests you can have download.php choose varying files from the /downloads/ folder. Example below:

Filename: download.php

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<?php
$id = $_GET['file'];
$filename = "downloaded-".$id.".zip"; // will forge the name downloaded-5.zip (if download.php?file=5 is requested)
$source = "/downloads/thefile-".$id.".zip"; // will pick the real file titled thefile-5.zip (if download.php?file=5 is requested)
 
if(file_exists($source)) { // check that the real file exists, if so do the following..
 
   header('Content-type: application/zip'); // set the content type of the current page to the type of file being downloaded
   header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="'.$filename.'"'); // Forge the download name by setting filename=
   readfile($source); // grab the real file to prompt download.
 
} else { // if the file doesn't exist
echo "Error: File not found!"; // display error message
}
?>

It gets even more advanced once you start playing with more and more security. When dealing with premium ($$$) content, it’s good to use a database and give all your files a masked name, by MD5 encoding the names, storing them in a database with an assigned ID, and having download.php retreive the filename from the database to know which file to retreive. But that’d look a little messy for this tutorial!

I hope you learned something by reading this..

Thanks for reading!

Popularity: 8%

Making use of Google Adsense’s ‘Allowed Sites’ whitelist is becoming an increasingly useful tool to webmasters.

Why would anyone want to display your ads on their site? Surely they’d want to earn the cash themselves? Well, obviously there’s something more than the obvious going on.

I speak from experience in recent months whereby my account was receiving a massive amount of invalid (£0) clicks from units with no channels; and since I keep check of all my ads via channels, I knew they were ‘outside’ clicks for whatever reason.

Following that, I also discovered that Shawn Hogan of DigitalPoint had experienced the same thing, where his AdSense account was unfairly suspended due to clicks from disallowed websites. So this brought my theory to proof; people are adding your Publisher ID to their adverts on their blacklisted websites as a form of attack!

So I cannot stress how important it is to use the Allowed Sites feature Google provide. It’s there for a reason, and let’s face it; who in their right mind is going to display your ads without contacting you first, unless it’s malicious? Well it’s unlikely to say the least. And if it was legit, they could let you know to add them to the whitelist – simple!

To access the whitelist simply login to your AdSense account, and navigate to AdSense Setup > Allowed Sites.

Exclusive Tips:
Many people view your websites using Google translate and other Google apps! Adding google.com to the list will not work as the translation program uses a different domain (googleusercontent.com) to access your website. So be sure to add googleusercontent.com to the list so you allow clicks via Google Translate and any other tools under subdomains on that domain!

Any more tips will be added as I discover them!

Popularity: 9%

WordPress is the best blogging software available! My recent studies shine!

I haven’t posted here in a while, and firstly I’d like to apologise for that. And secondly, I’d like to briefly explain what this post is really about.

Eager to improve the experience of this blog, I decided to look into the brains of wordpress and all it stands for, and see if it is truly as good as people say it is.  Before now, I just took people’s word for it – and it turns out I was right to do so – but I wanted to really see what makes it so special.

I’m not going to talk about the usual, ie; Easy CMS, Plugin Systems, Widgets, Admin Panels etc – Instead I looked for what I think really matters to a webmaster.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

WordPress’s SEO URLs are undoubtedly phenomenal, we all know that!  But more so than that, the actual on-page SEO standards really are top-quality.  I guess you could put this partly down to the XHTML compliance – that always helps.  But it’s more than that, the use of perfect header tags, quality navigational links, and the absolutely perfect hierarchy of mark-up, search engines LOVE WordPress!

Without any real off-site SEO, I am high up on page #1 on Google for the search term “Webmaster Blog“, and my position is strengthening.  And the best part is, to achieve this, away from the odd link here and there on forum signatures and blog feeds, I am doing NOTHING but posting content!  Wordpress is a fully automated top-ranker!

Functionality:

There is nothing worse than a dysfunctional website.  Nobody likes to have to ‘figure out’ a website before they can use it.. And with so many competitors around, why bother? “I’m sure another blog will be easier to navigate..” – GONE.  Unless your blog is perfectly functional and navigable, you’d be losing out on a LOT of potentially loyal users.. WordPress offers perfect navigation, perfect functionality, and super-light loads.  Obviously this can be compromised by terrible themes and widgets, but the basic structure of WordPress is unbeatable!  As long as you choose a theme which complements the original structure of WordPress, you’re in business!

Speaking of which, I hope to create or buy (if my budget allows it) a nice new unique theme for this blog – I think it needs it!

My advice to you, as a happy and successful blogger, is go for WordPress!  And with the new WordPress 3 bringing even better functionality, now really is the time to soak up those perks!

Popularity: 7%

This article will explain the best ways to utilise the Title tag of your web page effectively in terms of Search Engine Optimisation.

Right, assuming you know your targeted keyword, it is vital for it to be in the title element of your website. But where?

The biggest mistake of all is to think that only the homepage needs the main keyword.  WRONG!

You want your keyword(s) to be on every single page, along with the page’s header.  For these pages, you have a choice to make in terms of what you value more.  Having the keyword present in your title is one thing, but its position does matter.

If you want the main focus to be your main keyword, across every page, you must place it before the title of the current sub-page.   So for example, I would have  ”Webmaster Blog” at the beginning of the title on every page of this blog.

However, personally, I want the main target for my articles to be the content of each article rather than the general content of the site… So I put Webmaster Blog at the end of my Title tag.

This means that the main focus is on the keywords in my headers (as “SEO Tips” or “SEO titles” is what people will  be searching for, if they are to land on this page; so that is instantly given priority over “Webmaster Blog” in my opinion).

How to separate the page title vs. the site-wide title / keyword.

Now you’ll be wondering if there’s any distinct way of separating the two – well, not really.. But what I do know is Google prefers characters like “-” and “|” to separate page title segments.. Characters like “»” can be incorrectly displayed in title bars so it’s best to avoid them and stick to simple characters.

You can however, in the event that you’re using the page keyword then the main keyword (in that order!), you can also use the structure *Page Title* on *Site Title/Keyword*.

This has proven effective for me on a number of sites, but you really do need to just go with what you prefer, and experiment a little!

Good luck with your SEO!  Stay tuned for the next SEO article!

Popularity: 11%

A lot of people are getting confused here, so I thought I’d offer a hand.

You will all have seen that due to recent scams going on on DigitalPoint Forums; you can now ‘Verify Domain Ownership’ when selling domains on the DigitalPoint Marketplace.

Whilst this sounds like a great idea, most people do not know about Total DNS control, or how to use it.  Which isn’t surprising – it can be confusing if you’ve never used it before!

So here’s a walk-through for verifying your domain on DigitalPoint.

Firstly, you need to set up your sales thread for your domain.   Be sure to enter your domain into the bidding system not just in your post otherwise you will not be able to verify your domain!

Once you have done this, view your sales thread.  You will see on the right hand side of the bidding section of your thread, a line that says “Verfied Owner: No“.  Click on it!

This will bring you to a page which says something like:

Add the following TXT record to your DNS configuration:    digitalpoint-site-verify:ab12345cd12345ef12345gh12345

How many people does this make sense to? – Not many.  Hence why nobody verifies!

So here’s what you do!

Go to your domain manager with whoever your domain registrar is.  Find your total DNS control panel.  This may be entitled MX control, or refer to C-Names, A-Names, MX management.

You should see a long list of names and values under different categories such as “A Names” “C Names” MX – Mail” etc.. Look for the one that is titled TXT.

You then want to click “Add TXT Record”

This is where most people get stuck.  They don’t know where to put in the ‘code’ they got from digitalpoint!

Well here’s what you need to put in.

Name: @
Value: digitalpoint-site-verify:ab12345cd12345ef12345gh12345  (replaced with your actual DP verification)
TTL: Default (leave as it is)

And that’s it!  Now go back to the screen where you were given the code by DP, and click Verify!  It might take a few minutes (up to an hour actually but it wont take that long xD) to work..

If you need further assistance just leave a comment!

Popularity: 25%

This SEO article will explain how to search engine optimise images, and how it can help drive traffic to your website.

Most webmasters do not realise it, but SEO can be implemented with images on your site, and it is a very good idea to do so.

Why? When users search for images and you have images of the searched description, you will more than likely receive at least one visit from that person.

How to SEO your images.

When displaying images on your website, generally you will have something that looks like:

<img src=”http://yoursite.com/path/to/image.jpg” />

Whilst this is fine for showing a picture to your already acquired audience, it’s not bringing you the full potential audience of those people who actually search for those images – even if you give the page a really good title!

So instead of having your standard picture code as shown above, give it an ALT attribute (alternate text).  The true purpose of this is for when the image cannot be displayed, it will show the alternate text instead to give the audience a rough idea of what the image was supposed to be..

BUT it’s true value to you – the webmaster – is how the search engines use it!

Using ALT text on your images allows top search engines like Google to apply a real title to the image.  Okay you might have a post title which the image is relevant to, but the image isn’t necessarily going to be named the same as your post.  So to name it accurately in the eyes of the top search engines, use the ALT attribute.

So how do I SEO my Images?

Well instead of using your standard “<img src=”http://yoursite.com/path/to/image.jpg” />” image code, use this:

<img src=”http://yoursite.com/path/to/image.jpg” alt=”The SEO Title of the Image” /> – obviously replacing “The SEO Title of the Image” with the relevant text to describe your image.  Keep it short though – a paragraph wont help you, think of it as naming a file, it just needs to be a title for the image, but a relevant one.

Now, go get recognised on Search Engine’s Image Searches now by implementing this handy SEO method!

Popularity: 7%

One of the biggest requests here is for SEO articles, so finally I’m going to start on the band wagon and give some useful tips to get your website high up in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

The first thing to realise with SEO is that you want to take full advantage of every possible place you can in terms of relevant keywords.  This includes your URLs

Search Engine Optimising URLs

The first thing to understand with URLs / links is that if you can’t read them and get a small insight as to what the page is about, how will the Search Engines?  Sure the crawlers will pick up the content on the page but they do take the URL keywords into account!

So, you want relevant keywords in your URL, not /page.php?id=1

Let’s say you have a website about vehicles.  Each vehicle  is listed under the categories for ‘type’ and ‘manufacturer’.

You have a page for a Ferrari F430 Spider under the category “Ferrari”.  A search engine optimised URL for this would be something like:

chuckunvehicles.com/sports-cars/ferrari/ferrari-f430-spider.htm – See the hyphens (-) in between the words? It’s always a good idea to use hyphens in URLs.  Why?  Well simply to define your actual keywords… If you didn’t use hyphens, a search engine crawler may read this as “sportscars” and “ferrarif430spider” – See the problem?  We want to define our keywords without mistake or misinterpretation!

Also, notice the order of the categories? It’s only sensible to make sure your categorised URLs are in a logical hierarchy!  This shows search engines that the page is under ferrari, which is under sports-cars.  You want to build understandable relevance with your URLs.

To create good SEO URLs without making each page individually you’ll need to know how to use Apache’s .htaccess file to retrieve the content.. I will write a post on .htaccess soon!

All the best with your SEO! Come back for more soon!

Popularity: 10%