My FaceBook Like Button script has Stopped Working

Have you found that your FaceBook Like Button script has Stopped Working over the last few days?

I spent a little time today to research and work out a fix so that it will work properly for those of you who use HTML4 Strict or find your code is not validating correctly.

HTML code fix

If you do not want the auto PHP code, this is the facebook like button fix for you

PHP code fix

If you do use php to insert your like code, this is the facebook like button fix for you

 

Well, that should keep our pages going for a while!

Matching Font Colors with Background Colors

Best Way to Match Font Colors to Background Colors

I happened upon the best color tool for matching font colors in web pages. There are a lot of great tools around but this one is nice and easy and gives hundreds of live and useful examples.

Enter you background color in use and scroll through a bunch of colors and the hex definitions which makes finding suitable colors to use a breeze. No more distorted fonts on the page!

Great for help in deciding on color schemes too!

microdata

I'm trying to get an understanding of why webmasters are being asked to include microdata on their pages.

random thought...

If I have a video shop that is listed in google maps, and my official website of the same address has an item on a page called "dvds4sale.html" and one of the shopping cart linked items is "matrix reloaded" at a price of "75 cents", how is it that a search engine needs me to further qualify that this is a dvd title for sale from a legitimate business? Does this sound like a fantastic search engine that uses a capable logical algorithm with which to define their first 50 or 500 serps?

I am sure most of the free thinking techs that google, microsoft etc. employ have an IQ over 75 [maybe not at microsoft - lighten up, that's a joke], so I guess this is part of another game that is about to unfold to push away from the have-nots.

shopping cart code

I've been busy playing with php shopping cart code as of late to insert into small business pages. Custom built stuff so it can be easily personalized to suit your needs. Includes a backend so that you can add your products etc. 5 year US hosting deal is $995 including website seo and design etc. Let me know if your interested.

Installing PHP 5.3.5, PHP 5.3.6, PHP 5.3.7 or PHP 5.3.8 on Windows

Which PHP Version do I install on Windows? PHP 5.3.5, PHP 5.3.6, PHP 5.3.7 or PHP 5.3.8?

So you have decided to install PHP into a windows operating system with Apache because it is the best http web server around. The bigger the number the better it should be right?

Not so.

And luckily for you, we have created an easy how to install php for windows walk through guide for you. But before you jump ahead, first ask yourself if you are installing Apache downloaded from the apache website. If so, then make sure you use the PHP 5.3.5 guide when you arrive at the PHP install guide destination.

If you are using (or are willing to use) the apache version compiled at Apache Lounge, then use PHP 5.3.8 or PHP 5.3.6. The newer version is the most up to date version.

PHP 5.3.7 is buggy which is why PHP 5.3.8 was released so soon after it.

Although the install guide says it is for PHP 5.3.6, it actually points to the PHP 5.3.8 version (or the 5.3.6 version if you prefer) and will guide you through the install process and help you to troubleshoot any issues you may encounter.

Should I install PHP 5.4
Only install PHP 5.4 if you understand that it is still in Beta. That means that this version is still in testing mode and may change before an official production version becomes available for general public release.

If you are setting up a test computer for your online website. It is best to install the same version that you have on your website. How to find this out is also covered in the guide link above.

-fin

Website update

It has been said before that the websiteadministrator.com.au website was started as a test site to discover just how effective the last ten years of my part time studies of SEO bear out against the scores of "seo specialists" that are around today.

So i hand coded an old school html website with a little help from dreamweaver, ultraedit, htmltidy and a few other bits from here and there.

I use alexa as a benchmark site and statcounter for collating statistics.

I stopped pushing the seo optimization on that website a few months ago when it ranked under 250,000. The momentum still carried it to under 200,000 where it has been hanging for a few months now. It should start to back away soon until i get i get the time to be serious with it and push the site higher again in earnest.

So, what have I learned that I am willing to share with you?

What I found is that inbound links and pagerank are not high priority (though the inbound links total have now jumped in the last couple of months). Nor is the "look" of the website too important.

Content is just as important as you may have thought.

Also, there are a lot of people who claim to be expert at seo but they mostly talk about improving ad placement, how to make your ads more effective or how to buy cheaper ad placement. Well, this all can and does help drive in more hits whether you are a top 100,000 site or not. But for those of you that want higher page ranking in the first place should look at the seo course I have made available for you online.

If you don't know how to do it, hire me, I am cheaper than you might think. You can also ask me to evaluate your website too.

I will not guarantee that I can place you into the top 200,000. But for 99% of you, I will be able to get your website to freely attract many more hits.

Well, that's about all the rambling I will do for now. I hadn't posted in a little while and there is plans for some interesting stuff to soon start to appear. So stay tuned.

The fb_xd_Fragment and the FaceBook Like button

The fb_xd_Fragment
This is bit of code can appear sometimes in facebook's link back to your site from the facebook like button. However, it's not you, it's them that are creating the extra work for you.

Some sites recommend you correct this in google, bing and yahoo webmaster tools etc. Probably the smarter thing to do is to first ensure you use correctly the canonical  link rel tag. View our How to use the link rel canonical tag.

If you are using apache, you might want to include some code to get around any blank page issue. The following code and the above link are also on our web page that discusses the fb_xd_Fragment

This is the apache code we recommend at this time:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine ON
#Facebook Redirect For Added String
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} .*fb_xd_fragment.*
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.websiteadministrator.com.au/$1? [R=301,L]
</IfModule>

This either drops enough of the offending code or removes it completely from the browser link (use your own www address). So this seems to do the job but should probably be modified a little further. Feel free to add your work-arounds to this post.

Follow up on the above fb_xd_fragment note:
The above code seems to have correctly resolved the issue i was facing on my host. To follow the error, i was using statcounter's landing page url. The landing page is now correct in my reports. No reference to the fb_xd_fragment is reported in the landing page data anymore, just the correct url.

Zombie Cookies - Back from the Cookie Hall of the Slain cookies

Cookie Valhalla seems to have developed a glitch in it's Matrix. Dead cookies are coming back as undead zombie cookies. No, it is not a cookie with similar or new information you are looking at, it is the exact same cookie you deleted that is back to stalk you from the same place it left off in it's previous life.

We have penned an article on this exact manifestation in our two page introduction to the LSO Cookie article. The Lso is a flash cookie that can stalk you for years and years without you ever knowing it. You have to be online and visit adobe's website to set the preferences for how it interacts with you. And Microsoft has now developed their own version of this type of cookie and use it in their Silverlight software (The Microsoft version of Flash). Visit our link above for more data.

And today I thought i might expand the subject with some facts that were gathered by some people kicking around some study campuses around Berkley in the summer of 2009 and who threw together an interesting pilot study on the subject of cookies in general [click on of the four buttons to download the 2mb .pdf file].

Now, we all take what we want from a study. But here is some of the data:
Inspecting cookies set from a list of the top 100 websites, it was found that 54 of these laid 157 LSOs which resulted in a total of 281 flash cookies. And during that same course of study, 98 of these sites set a total of 3,602 HTTP cookies.

The study went on to find that some of the LSO cookies and HTTP cookies had the exact same identifiers stored in variables which of course means you can match the exact same visiting computer. They also found that some of these cookies re-spawned after deletion. Read the study your self for more data.

But what does this tell you? It can only mean that cookie cutting is essential to an excellent seo result. No?

Adwords and using phone numbers in adsense ads

Some Adwords ads are starting to appear that use phone numbers directly in the ad which is displayed in the adsense ad.

Now, this is a little sneaky and underhanded because it means the owner of the ad can draw in clients with out having to pay the adsense publisher one red cent for the service of building up his website and doing the work to allow the displaying of the ad.

What can the adsense publisher do about sites that display phone numbers in their ad?

Google gives the adsense publisher a tool to sort them out. It is called the Competitive Ad Filter. You'll find it in your adsense setup page. From there, you simply select the Competitive Ad Filter and add the url of the offending site into this list provided and that will ban them from covertly trying to get advertising on your site for free.

And the best way to do this is to fully block their site by entering the domain name without the www part of the address. for example, you would enter www.example.com/deals as simply example.com

Google aussie does it too for their $75 adwords starter kit freebie, but i let that one slide. But the other two that I found today, let's just say you'll not see those businesses advertise on my websites anymore.

I am sure some might say "But these are display ads!" to which i would say "Prove it". There isn't a way to tell at the moment, and as display ads can be as little as 50 cents per 1,000 views, i don't think the lost revenue will be much missed by most. That might explain why some click ads don't convert. But I am certainly not convinced this is true for many of these that are starting to surface.

That'll learn 'em!

How to remove Php 5.3.x. An un-install Php loop solution.

Have you had an endless loop problem when trying to remove Php 5.3.x from your Windows system? You run the install or un-install program and you are continuously told the software is unable to complete the process (install or un-install)?

There is a solution to this problem which lies in fixing the Windows registry keys. We have updated our Php 5.3.5 and Php 5.3.6 troubleshooting guides to assist those in need of a method to break the endless chain.