George’s Wonder Blog

My mostly tech-stuff blog

Archive for May, 2008

Dreamweaver: Find Replace in Open Documents

May 28th, 2008 by George

Here’s a cool trick I picked up in Dreamweaver (DW8 but probably works in many versions). Often I need to copy-n-paste the same code into many pages, but not all of the pages in a site (e.g. only the pages about a certain place or subject). Instead of opening all of those pages and pasting the needed code try using Dreamweaver’s Find/Replace function and have it perform the replacement only on the documents you have open.

  1. Get the code you need
  2. Close all pages in Dreamweaver you do not need to edit, and open only the pages you need to paste your code into
  3. Press CTRL+F (Command+F1 on Mac OS) and in the Find and Replace dialogue box, in the Find in dropdown box (screenshot below) select Open Documents
  4. Now enter the code you need in the Find and Replace boxes then click the Replace All button (see notes below). Optionally you can click Replace instead to watch the replacement happen page-by-page until you feel safe enough to click the Replace All button.


Find Replace - Select Open documents


NOTES - Things to keep in mind:

- Its a good idea to save the changes you make only to one page first, then upload it to make sure it looks the way you want. If it doesn’t then you still have all of the pages open and you can undo or make the changes anew. If it looks okay then you can do a Save All.

- If you are not editing too many documents and you use the Replace All button, you can use the undo feature to undo your changes if a) you don’t mind doing it for each page you’ve just changed and b) your settings allow that many levels of undo

- Dreamweaver is very good at doing what you ask, so as with any program make sure you ask it to do exactly what you want. Make sure the Find box contains code that is unique enough to only make changes where you want them.

Category: Web Design | No Comments »

Why Gmail?

May 28th, 2008 by George

As I’ve previously stated I am in the process of planning my move to Gmail from the various email programs. Why? Well for one the ability to get most of my email in one place is invaluable, and its great that I can access them anywhere I can get to a browser. New computer? Computer or hard drive died? No problem, all of my email will be online in my trusty Gmail account!

So why do you use Gmail, or why should you use Gmail? How could you be using Gmail? Gmail has collected interesting emails and videos in their Your Gmail stories post.

Category: Email | No Comments »

Making Gmail Faster-er: Gmail and IMAP

May 27th, 2008 by George

UPDATE: New post Gmail Slow for you? Try these tips

Gmail runs pretty fast for me. Embarrassingly I still have over 300 unread items in my inbox, and almost 700 spam in my spam folder. Gmail loads at a raging quick 3 seconds for me on my 2.4 Ghz PC with 1MB of RAM with LOTS of programs running.

However from feedback I’ve gotten in comments to my Gmail Improved? How? post not everyone is seeing Gmail speeding up, or fast at all. If you are one of those people and you a) otherwise love Gmail, b) are willing to learn a new trick, c) and you also your POP email on your computer using an email program (yes, some people DO that!) then it might be time to learn about Gmail and IMAP. Heck, even if you are not finding Gmail too slow like many of us, and b and c above describe you then , then it might be time to learn about Gmail and IMAP. In that case just this afternoon they made a new post you might want to read: Getting Gmail anywhere: IMAP versus POP.

How can using IMAP make Gmail load faster?

Still not fast enough or IMAP isn’t for you?

1. Log into Gmail, click Settings and on the General tab you will see a dropdown where you can set the number of email conversations per page, set it to its lowest setting of 25 conversations per page. Don’t forget to save changes:

Gmail conversations setting

2. Now click on the Web Clips tab and uncheck the “Show my web clips above the Inbox” checkbox. Don’t forget to save changes:
Google Web Clips setting


Wait, How can using IMAP make Gmail load faster?
Using IMAP will speed up your Gmail if you check email on your computer’s email program first. Any time you check email on your computer’s email program first (Outlook, Thunderbird, or whatever) when using IMAP every email you handle that results in Gmail deleting or archiving reduces the number of email Gmail will load when you login. You will probably notice more difference with changing Gmail settings as above, but every little bit helps. Plus if you are already checking your Gmail on your home PC it saves you the need to check emails 2X.

Category: Email | No Comments »

Now burned by Feedburner

May 27th, 2008 by George

George’s WonderBlog is now Powered by FeedBurner.

For step-by-steps on how to get your Wordpress blog up and running with FeedBurner I recommend these links:

Burn baby, burn!

Category: Computers | No Comments »

SEO Basics - foundations of good SEO

May 27th, 2008 by George

SEO BASICS

Let’s start at the very beginning, and very simple. First disclaimers….

  • Basics means basics, but advanced SEO will be useless without it
  • I’m successful at reaching my own SEO goals, but I’m also reasonable. If there are 3,000,000 results for my targeted keyphrase(s) I don’t expect to get onto the first page of results in a couple of months. So… what I call successful you may feel is not successful.
  • Unrealistic goals can lead you to failure
  • Try anything here at your own risk, I offer no guarantees except that I believe in everything I post

Here are what I consider the base elements, from which all successful SEO begins. First, determine good keyphrase(s) you want your website to target. Check the search engine or search engines you want to target to see how many results you get for your chosen keyphrase(s). The more results you see, the more competition you have. At this point determine if you want less competition by choosing an alternative that has fewer results or maybe you want to go ahead and brave it. Say you want to sell balloons on your website. Google shows about 1,270,000 results for the search term balloons. Lots of competition, so maybe try balloons online and Google shows only about 243,000 results - still a lot, but far less. Okay, so now you have a primary keyphrase, also check another related term like buy balloons and Google shows about 251,000 results. That’s good for a secondary keyphrase, so let’s move onto coding.

CODING FOR GOOD SEO

Next, be sure you use valid code - HTML, XHTML, whatever. Now onto the elements on your pages you need to tie together, make sure your keyphrases appear throughout these places. From top to bottom the important basic elements of SEO are:

  1. the HTML Title tag: <title>Your Webpage Title</title>
  2. META description: <meta name=”description” content=”a description of the page where the description tag appears, a different one for each webpage.”>
  3. Header tag: <h1>Your Webpage Title</h1>
  4. Other headers: <h2> thru <h6>, be sure to use these using proper HTML/outline format to get the most
  5. Paragraph text, your content. Bold counts more than not bold, italicized **might** count more than no italicized, but less than bold text. Generally speaking the larger the text the more it counts.

Okay now we’ve got a list of the basic elements, now let’s talk about them a little bit. The more important keywords and keyphrases should appear as close to the beginning of these elements as is possible. However, don’t load your page up with a bunch of keywords and keyphrases to the point that visitors that reach your page are confused.

Tie your elements together by using your keyphrases throughout these different tags on your site. Considering balloons online is your primary and buy balloons is secondary you might end up with something like this (note: this is not meant to be a complete HTML document, and creativity is lacking in the examples below):

<title>Balloons Online - Click through and buy balloons</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”If you are looking for balloons online then you have found one of the Internet’s best places to buy balloons.”>

<h1>Ballons Online</h1>
<p>You have found the <strong>Ballons online</strong> website where you can <strong>buy balloons</strong> at a reasonable price and have them delivered. No need to pick them up and you can choose from our 1 million balloon, a must at any party! If you want to buy balloons online then you have found one of the best places on the Internet to do it.</p>
<p>Check out our balloon packages on the left and buy balloons until your heart’s content. Or check the Balloons on Sale button and see how much you can get for your money by taking advantage of our specials.</p>

Now, to contrast here is a bad example using the same elements and keyphrases:

<title>Balloons Online, buy balloons on our balloons online store, built especially to help you buy balloons</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”Balloons online, buy balloons, buy balloons online, your online balloon home, your home for balloons online”>
<h1>Balloons Online</h1>

<p><big><big><font size=”1″>Balloons online</big></big>, <strong>buy balloons, buy balloons online,</srong> your <em>online balloon home</font></em>, <strong>your home for balloons online.</strong> </p>

<p><font color=”#ff0000″>Buy balloons online this is your buy balloons online store,</strong> where you can buy balloons online for great balloon prices using a great balloon online store! </p></font>

In the example above the HTML is invalid (invalid tag nesting of the <font> tags), use of the out-of-date font tag, and the tags are littered with the keyphrases rendering the page hard to use for humans. Some search engines *might* be tricked by this keyword rich page, but as time goes by search engine algorithms get smarter and smarter and even if it works today it might not work tomorrow. What’s worse is when and if humans do get to your page you’ve made it difficult for them to do what they want, buy balloons!

Balance your need for SEO and what your visitors see. Never lose site of the fact that your goal is visitors visting your pages, and so they need to be easily read by live people, not just search engines.

Category: SEO-SEM | No Comments »