Since it was released a few days ago it’s had mixed publicity largely due to an error message that some users such as pixelbits were getting with depressing regularity. I looked into the error and now can report some interesting findings.

The problem was partly with my code and partly, at least in some cases, with other Twitter applications. Here’s how I’ve summarised it to pixelbits:

Hi, I’m the developer of Tweetake and I’d like to apologize for this problem and explain what’s going on. After investigation - my co-Tweetaker Nikki was getting it as well - it would seem there’s a number of factors involved.

First up, there was a bug in Tweetake, which I fixed. But after that we were still seeing the error on Nikki’s account so I had a look at the actual numbers returned from the Twitter rate limiting interface. And the result was weird.

In case you aren’t aware, Twitter places a limit on the number of hits per hour per user account. Right now its 100 per hour. Every time you tweet, or refresh your timeline the number is reduced by 1, until you hit zero when the request is refused.

Tweetake needs to make a number of hits for its backup - exactly how many depends on the user and how many followers, friends and so on they have. If it gets the rate limit exceeded message, it gives up.

What I found when I looked at the numbers for Nikki was that she had a negative number of hits remaining (as many as minus 44 at one point), which didn’t make a lot of sense. But when she shut down Tweetdeck, things returned to normal and I was able to take a backup.

So it looks as if some clients including Tweetdeck get special treatment from Twitter. Which would be OK if they didn’t have such an unfair adverse effect on other applications, effectively locking them out completely.

So if you use Tweetdeck or any similar Twitter clients, please shut them down and wait a few minutes before using Tweetake. When our app’s a little more mature we’ll be asking Twitter if we can join the inner circle too but until then this measure is necessary.

I’d also ask Twitter to consider giving applications such as ours a more level playing field. One suggestion would be an API data item that tells us the user is running a client which is allowed to break the limit, preferably identifying it by name, so we can give back a more useful error message.

I was asked to implement a new WordPress theme and integrate a number of plugins, to give the site a great new look with more advertising space. The job also involved migrating the site to new hosting and solving a problem with character encoding in the database.

So if you were going to send an email out to a list with thousands of bloggers on it, you wouldn’t make the reply-to address point to the list, would you? Otherwise anyone who replied to the email would have their reply - with their email address and other details in it - distributed to everyone else on the list. And that would be bad, and it would make you look foolish, too.

You wouldn’t make such an elementary error, would you, Technorati? Especially not in a mail portentously titled “Technorati’s 2008 State of the Blogosphere Survey”? Maybe somebody pretending to be you might make such a boob, but not you, O ever wise Technorati! Oh, the hubris!

Online SEO Tools - the Ultimate Collection
All tools listed below fall under the following criteria:

1. they are all useful for SEOs;
2. they are all web-based (no desk-top ones or FireFox extensions so far);
3. they are all free.

Read the rest of this article.
From Search Engine Journal.

You can see it in action on our starter site package page. The three blocks in the righthand sidebar belong to this page and only appear on it. (Our custom theme uses the API functions that come with the plugin to detect the widgets are there and show them in an extra wide sidebar.)

Download the plugin.

Here’s how to use it:

1. Install and activate the plugin in the normal way.
2. On the settings page for Side Content, enter the names for your widgets, one per line. (These will also be the names of your custom fields). Save your changes.
3. On the Design->Widgets page, you’ll now see your widgets listed and you’ll be able to position them as you like in your sidebar(s).
4. Edit any page and add custom fields of the same names as your widgets. In each case, enter the HTML you want to appear as the value for the field.
5. Tip: use the HTML editor for the page to create content for a field, then (in HTML mode) cut and paste it into the custom field value area.
6. Note: it now works with both pages and blog posts.

Although the plugin does not require any theme changes to be made, it does provide a useful API function that can be used in templates to adjust page layout if required. To call it, code as follows:


if(function_exists('the_side_content')) {
if(the_side_content()->has_widgets()) {
// template adjustments for side content widgets
}
// alternatively, you can test for a particular widget by name
if(the_side_content()->has_widgets('mywidget')) {
// template adjustments for side content widget 'mywidget'
}
}


Note that this plugin requires PHP5 and has only been tested on WordPress 2.5 and 2.6.

Download the plugin.

For people to find your site in searches, it must be:

• Visible
• Relevant
• Well-connected

Let’s look at each of these factors in turn.

Be visible

If yours is a new site you need to tell the search engines about it. The simplest way is to use the search engines’ own submission services: add your site to Google; add your site to Yahoo!; add your site to Live Search.

You should not need to submit to any other search engines, nor use a submission service, especially those that charge for submission to “thousands of search engines”: they are scams.

Your next concern should be to make sure that all the pages of your site can be reached via links from the home page, a process called link checking. I use a tool called Xenu Link Sleuth to do this, but there are several alternative link checkers available.

You might find some or all your pages missing from the link checker’s list, even though you can reach them by clicking on links in your browser. If so the one possible reason is that your web designer has used a technology such as Flash or Javascript to make your the menus used on your site. Search engines can’t always follow such links so you should insist that the menus are replaced by ones that they understand as otherwise your site is effectively broken.

Be Relevant

What people are searching for might not be the same as what’s featured on your site. Or, to put it more plainly, the words they use when searching may not be prominent on your site. So you may need to alter your content with this in mind: a very simple example would be a UK company selling holidays to North Americans, whose site should use the word “vacation” rather than “holiday” as well as other language likely to be used by that audience.

To be sure you use the right words on your site, you need to carry out what is called keyword research. This is far too large a subject to cover in this brief article, but there are plenty of online resources available such as this useful summary of keyword research tools.

Without going into detail, the essence of keyword research is that you are trying to identify phrases (”search strings”) that people use to find sites such as yours, while striking a balance between popularity (how many searches using this word or phrase are performed daily), competitiveness (how many other sites are trying to rank for these searches) and value (what potential value these searches represent in terms of your business).

As an example, if you are a camera retailer, the string “camera” is very popular and very competitve but likely to be of low value as it’s not very specific to your business (many of those searching won’t be shopping for a camera: they might be looking for a magazine, or an online webcam, or a map showing traffic cameras, for example). On the other hand the string “canon digital slr” is much less popular and competitive, but potentially of higher value as it is likely to be used by someone searching with a purchase in mind.

Having identified keywords that you want your site to rank for, then you need to ensure your content is a good match for them. Again this is a large subject but there are a few basic rules to be followed:

• Make your pages distinct. As far as possible, each page of your site should be about a single topic.
• Every page should have a different title which says what it is about. Note that the true title of a web page is shown on the browser title bar, not in the page itself.
• Re-emphasise the subject of a page through headings.
• Ensure the title, headings and body content of each page matches relevant search strings that you’ve identified through keyword research. Don’t go overboard and try to match too many strings on a given page; equally, don’t have too many pages matching on the same string.
• Make sure the text on every link to another page (the anchor text) reflects the content of the page linked to. Don’t use phrases like “read more” or “click here”; do use ones like “read about our great fixed-term mortages” or “fantastic deals on UK short break holidays”.

Be Well-Connected

Up to now I’ve only talked about what is called on-site SEO: changing the content of your site in order to optimize it and attract visitors. Just as important is off-site SEO - getting links to your site from other places on the web. This process, called link-building, can be arduous but the rewards can be very great, because the search engines use the number and quality of links to your site as a measure of its significance.

Here are some basic tips and guidelines about external links:

• Strive for relevant links. They should be from sites that have something to do with yours: your customers, your suppliers, blogs and forums about related products and services, specialist directories.
• Just as with your onsite links, link anchor text is important. Try to get links with text that reflects specific products or services you offer, not always your company name.
• Links about a particular product or service should preferably be to a relevant page that will sell that specific thing to the visitor rather than to your home page.
• By all means submit your site to directories, but before doing so make sure they rank well in your sector. Try different keyword searches that your customers might use, such as “clothes shops” or “industrial pump services”, to see which directories appear high in the listings. Should you pay for a listing? I’d advise you to seek expert advice before spending money on directory listings.
• You may be approached to “swap links” with someone else. If their site is relevant to yours and worthwhile, so it would be natural for you to have a link to it on your site, then by all means go ahead, though you should be aware that such reciprocal links do not always add much value.
• Link from your own sites to other, relevant, sites you like. While this is strictly speaking part of onsite SEO, it’s also part of the process of link building. Good outgoing links help to make your site more useful to visitors, and are therefore valued by search engines.

Summary

Being “number one in Google” is a meaningless ambition: what counts is where you rank for the searches that are most valuable to you. Through keyword research, keeping your content up to date, and link building you can start to realise that goal.

To help you get started, here are some more useful resources for your SEO project. Happy optimizing!

• 299 Steps to Website Heaven. Nikki Pilkington’s collection of great tips (also available as an ebook).
• Your SEO plan. The site for another of the best books on SEO, full of useful material in its own right.
• SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool. A very handy tool for keyword research.
• Link Diagnosis. Who links to you? Who links to your competitors? What’s their anchor text? A great at-a-glance resource.
• Google Webmaster Tools. Get the lowdown on your site from Google’s point of view. Some invaluable data, including the searches where users saw your site but didn’t click.

Likemind Web Services works with SEO consultants to make sites that the search engines love. Ask for a quote today.

Change is part of the nature of the web. Sites that are frequently updated with new content tend to get visited more often than those that don’t. If you are running a business site you may want to update your site for lots of good reasons, such as:

• To promote a new marketing initiative
• To add items of company news
• To rewrite content for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes

If, every time you want to make an update, you have to get your web designers to do it for you, that can be very expensive; and, if they are busy with other work as is often the case, you might have to wait weeks for a simple change.

Web content management systems are intended to make it possible for you, as website owner, to give you control over the update process. For a small company this will typically mean you or your staff doing the changes yourselves; in large companies the process tends to require more bureaucracy and resembles traditional publishing with authors, editors and managers each needing to be involved before a change goes live. For simplicity I’ll talk only about the former case here.

Features of a CMS

What might you expect from a web content management system?

First, practically every modern web CMS gives you a control panel (also called the dashboard, the backend or the administration area) from which you can maintain the site. This control panel is a secured part of the website which may only be used by authorised users: you should ensure before choosing a CMS that it is built securely so hackers can’t easily get in and damage your site or steal data.

Typically a CMS will allow you to maintain your site as a set of different components, so that menus, sidebars, headers and footers, for example, will be maintained separately from the central content of a page.

Index pages - ones which list other pages to make your site easier to navigate - should be generated automatically for you, so when you add new content it will appear instantly in all the appropriate lists.

If those who have to maintain your content don’t understand HTML (the language in which web pages are written), the CMS may give you editing tools which simplify the creation of web content. Indeed, most nowadays provide WYSIWYG editors which make writing web content more like using a word processor.

Most CMSs allow you to add ‘tags’ to content which act as useful topic indexes, so the visitor can, for example, readily list every article about a given subject, such as content management systems.

Other common features include a site search facility, blogging tools, management of multi-media (images, audio and video files), integrated e-commerce, email list handling and member-only areas.

Choosing a Content Management System

There are a lot of web content management systems around, of which there are four main types commonly found:

1. Specialist CMSs aimed at large corporates or particular sectors. These tend to be expensive and are only worth considering if you have the demanding requirements they are aimed at.
2. General purpose commercial CMSs. Sometimes overpriced for what they offer, sometimes excellent, these tend to be favoured by middle-sized organizations which dislike open source solutions.
3. Home-brewed CMSs belonging to web design companies. I would avoid these on the whole because, given these companies’ main focus is not software development, the technical quality and level of support offered is often inferior. If your site is based on such a CMS, make sure you have an escrow arrangement in place so if the supplier ever stops trading you can get support from elsewhere.
4. Open source CMSs. There are lots of these, some of which you can find out more about at http://www.opensourcecms.com/. Quality varies a lot, but popular choices include Drupal (my own favourite), Joomla and Plone. WordPress can also be used as a simple CMS - and for basic needs it’s an excellent choice.

My recommendation would be to select one of the widely-used open source CMSs - unless you have very good reasons otherwise - because firstly the total cost of ownership is likely to be lower over time, and, secondly you’ll always have a large number of potential suppliers of support and other services to choose from.

In conclusion, then, a content management system offers the website owner considerable benefits over a traditional static site, offering not only the ability to add new content quickly and often but also many other features to help attract and engage visitors. If you are thinking about getting a new site or upgrading your current one, think seriously about having it built with a content management system. All though upfront costs may be higher, in the long term it could save you money and benefit your business,

Likemind Web Services offers a full range of services for the Drupal content management system. Learn more or ask for a quote today.

fed up with web designers sabotaging my SEO by refusing FTP access and to upload vital files and changes

I’ve come across this too, when I’ve attempted in my own modest way to help with onsite SEO efforts. Why do it? I understand the desire to retain clients but not at gunpoint. If you act like this you will ensure your client (and the SEO consultant they’ve engaged) tell everyone they meet not to use your services as you don’t care about their needs, only your revenue stream.

I tried once before to raise consciousness of this issue, but it wants saying again. Those of us who don’t treat our customers this way should shout it loud and often.

In localizing a site there are four main areas to deal with:

1. Human-readable formats for data items such as dates and numbers.
2. The (generally short) text strings used commonly throughout the user interface, for such things as labels on form buttons.
3. Major items of content such as blog articles, informational pages and static blocks.
4. Theme content. To accomodate different local conventions - and quite often to make room for longer text strings - the layout of pages and their components may need to be adjusted.

This list is not exhaustive, but I only want to talk about item 2 (and to some extent 3) here for now. Drupal provides for the internationalization of such strings with the t() function, meant to be called whenever a module outputs an English text string. This takes as arguments a string for translation and, optionally, an array of values to be substituted into it, so for example, you might call it like this:

t('My hat it has @count corners', array('@count'=>$number_of_corners));

The Engish result when $number_of_corners is 3 would be “My hat it has 3 corners” whereas the German translation might be “Mein Hut er hat 3 Ecken”.

If you are familiar with software localization such as that provided in Java, you’ll have spotted a problem right away with this function: it doesn’t make allowance for plurals. If you have a phrase that should vary depending on whether the value to be substituted is singular, plural or zero, then you must test for the different cases in your own code, rather than the t() function doing the job for you as the Java MessageFormat class does.

Another criticism of the t() function is that it gives you no means of providing context which could be used to deal with ambiguity. Here’s the problem: suppose there are two modules you use that both output the word “Store”: one module being for e-commerce, using the term to refer to an online shop; the other used to manage some form of data repository, using it as a label on a button which causes it to store a record.

The t() function is unable to distinguish between these cases, so you can’t translate them differently even though they are quite different meanings of the word (one a noun and the other a verb, for a start). The module writer has to be alert to such possibilities, which is quite a heavy burden when design and coding is hard enough as it is. In my experience programmers who are sensitive even to issues of use of English are rare enough, so expecting them to fully consider the needs of those who speak other languages is asking a lot.

So, how might the t() function be improved for better localisation? An optional more sophisticated version with similar power to Java’s MessageFormat class would be helpful, but for the problems arising from ambiguity I’d like to suggest a new function, called perhaps t1(). This would take two arguments, the first being a context. This string could then be used in localisation, when required to distinguish between two cases, so the value would need to be meaningful and guidelines would need to be developed. Perhaps module name + one of several predefined constant values would cover most common situations.

Any other thoughts on the subject?

(Footnote: the languages I have worked with include Japanese and Welsh - though I don’t speak either - every situation has its own interesting challenges, not least the thorny one of character encoding, especially a few years ago when Unicode was less commonly supported.)

There is a split testing module for Drupal, but I think its scope is far too limited to be useful, as all it does is compare two different themes. If you are trying to test variants of some specific content - for example a call to action - rather than the way it is presented, then this module won’t help. (If you do want to measure one theme against another, of course, then it’s ideal.)

I have a partially developed solution of my own to the problem of testing variants on an individual content node, though there are some issues left to solve. One is to find a good answer to the question of caching, so the site as a whole is cached while the pages under test are either not cached at all, or cached in a way that permits different variants.

If anyone is interested in sponsoring further development, or taking over what I have written so far, please let me know. I’d also be interested in discussing other possible approaches, perhaps by using other tools such as Google Website Optimizer (mine is very Drupal specific - it works by altering the content of the node at load time).