| LED Digest 2369: Design Shortcuts with Includes |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom www.GetWebContent.com/LED : the LED's Key Sponsor The Web's Most Experienced SEO Content Providers. ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. March 16, 2007 Issue no. 2369 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ======= NEW ==================== --== Image Protection ==-- ~ Mal Bailey "...I stumbled across a relatively good way of reducing image theft..." <Moderator Comment> ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Marketing with Press Releases ==-- ~ John Smart "I saw over 100 press releases a day, and got some good insight." --== Design Change Shortcuts ==-- ~ Mike Collins "I use php includes for navbars, footers, adsense units..." ~ Bree Weasner "I use Frontpage's Shared Borders!" ~ Phil Scimone "I started out many years ago building Macromedia Dreamweaver templates..." ~ Steven Birk "...the more SSI you use on a page, the greater possibility your page can load slower..." ~ Francisco Becerra "Dynamic Web Templates .dwt is the way to go for html pages." --== Moving Sites ==-- ~ Brad Waller "A few years ago we sold the EP.com domain and moved all the content over to EPage.com." ==== BULLETIN BOARD ============= --== Help Wanted: MarketingSeeker.com ==-- ~ Adam Boettiger ========== NEW =================================== From: Malcolm Bailey Subject: Image protection (again) Hi LED'ers, During research for another project I stumbled across a relatively good way of reducing image theft, and certainly a way to stop users hotlinking to images. Now I don't actually have any use for this myself, but I recall that this topic has been raised on LED several times with some people really looking for ways to prevent this as their business is image based... At the moment I've just made a simple proof of concept (email me if you'd like access) that was manually created with a bit of work. I'd be interested to hear how many LED'ers would be interested in utilizing a system and what they'd be willing to pay. (It would require some server side development work to automate the process and make it even more secure) Downsides I'm aware of: 1. Determined people will always be able to get a copy, it's about raising the bar to stop as many people as possible 2. Your images wouldn't be viewable in google image search. Thanks in advance, Mal Bailey www.aethon.co.uk <Moderator Comment> Speaking of protecting content, we recently had a discussion that referenced Copyscape.com (see issue 2362: Dealing with Content Theft http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1763/55/ ). This week an LEDer sent me a neat alternative service: Article Checker allows you to insert text or upload files to compare while it spiders the Web for dupes. Pretty neat tool: http://www.articlechecker.com/ (tip of the 'ol LED cap to Jeremy!) Have a great weekend, Adam ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: John Smart Subject: PR Services I was the 1st copy editor at m2 PressWIRE (m2.com). I saw over 100 press releases a day, and got some good insight. 1 page is good, 2 pages can be okay, if the content is good. 3 pages is shredder fodder unless it is major (Bill Gates arrested for throwing eggs at IBM major). You can cheat a little on this - a one page 3 paragraph release is good, the Headline is essential - as is the 1st paragraph. My job was to take all the press releases, put them all into a database, and pass on the good ones to the editorial team. If the headline and 1st paragraph didn't get me, it never made the editorial desks. A good press release should be: Excellent headline. Do not try to be funny if you are not funny - it never works. If you are funny, go for it! Be relevant, brief and precise. 10 words to define your news - and the headline should tell me most of what I need to know to understand what the press release is about. 1st paragraph - who, what, where and why. Today, this person at this company did this good thing 2nd paragraph - why it is a good thing, why it is the right person / company to do it. 3rd paragraph - extra details - how this came to be, why you want to know about it. Then for the very rare occasions when the journalist wants to do some work, notes to editors. This would be (in our case) something like: -------------------- Internet Design has been in the web development industry for over nine years, and has offered world class hosting for the past 7 years. Internet Design can be reached at www.InternetDesign.com or by calling (555) 555-5555 -------------------- Do not forget to include a contact method in the press release in case they just print it verbatim. I saw thousands of press releases, and I remember two of them. One was very nerdy from IBM, it just caught my interest! The other one included a tea bag. It said across the top - this news is so good, you will want to make a drink, sit down and read this. I showed that one to everyone - use your imagination, make it memorable. Finally, get a trade magazine - most of the 'news' in those is press releases. get a feel for what works, especially for your industry. I hope this helps. John Smart InternetDesign.com ============ Sponsor Message =========== Now you got 'em, what are you gonna do with 'em? Surfers, that is. They're at your site, but is your copy ready? Is it powerful enough to convert casual visitors into free-spending customers? At www.GetWebContent.com/LED we first write "sell" copy that makes you money and your website sticky. Then we SEO it to make sure it gets read. ============ Sponsor Message =========== -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Mike Collins Subject: Design > Having an external .js file? > Frontpage extensions? > Wordpress or blog format? > Server side includes? - Richard Graham, LED Digest 2368 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1769/55/ I like server side includes. I only need to update one simple file to make changes across my entire site. SSIs are seamless to both human eyes and SE spiders, and they keep your source code clean and easy to understand. I use php includes for navbars, footers, adsense units (great for testing to see what converts best), and anything else I think I may want to update at a later time. Mike Collins http://www.webtrafficsecretsexposed.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Bree Weasner Subject: Design > What method do you all use for separating the content > and navigation of your pages? ( i.e. so you don't have to > re-edit every page if you want to change the left hand menu) - Richard Graham Richard, I use Frontpage's Shared Borders! When you save the change, all pages are automatically updated and saved. Just remember when you add a new link or edit any of your shared borders, you've got to upload all the pages of your site. You can take a peek here (I'm using top, left and bottom shared borders): http://www.preciouspets.org Bree Weasner -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Phil Scimone Subject: Design I started out many years ago building Macromedia Dreamweaver templates and putting all the main navigation elements into the template. When I needed to add a new navigation element, I simply added it to the Dreamweaver template. Dreamweaver would then regenerate all the pages that used the template. Dreamweaver knows which pages use the template because it embeds template comments into the page. Over the years, those Dreamweaver Template driven pages have been abandoned to use Server Side Includes. I find SSI easier to use and more robust. Managing navigation elements are a breeze but it is really only second to the benefits of easily generating chunks of information extracted from backend database operations. For instance, several of my sites use a Partners page for link exchange. I have a form on my sites to accept link exchange requests which are submitted into a mySQL database. I get notification of the submission and I can just login to my site manager application (custom built), locate the request, approve or deny, and then republish that page for the specific site. The republish operation simply re-generates the SSI file. When a visitor goes to the partners page, the server "includes" the file in the content area of the page where I've embedded the include statement. It's simple, clean, and easy to automate and integrate into backend processes. Regards, Phil Scimone www.orangetreeweb.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Steve Birk Subject: Design I use Server Side Includes (SSI) to put my top, left, right and bottom navigation into all my pages. For example... for my top navigation, I'll just have a file called nav_top.html that resides on my server. In that file will be just the code that I want to appear at the top of my page (no title, keywords, etc... just the actual code of what the top navigation should look like). Then inside all my pages where I want this nav_top.html code to appear, I put in the following: <!--#include virtual="nav_top.html" --> If some of your pages are in a subdirectory, i.e. http://medcenternews.com/emergencycard/index.shtml , the include virtual code would have to look like this on that page so it can find the nav_top.html file: <!--#include virtual="../nav_top.html" --> Then when someone goes to that page, the server will include this nav_top.html code into that page. If you want to change your top navigation, you change one file, the nav_top.html file, and every page will then have the updated top navigation. Your file names of your pages do need to end in .shtml for SSI to work. I would imagine that most web hosts support this, but you would have to check. Also, the more SSI you use on a page, the greater possibility your page can load slower due to the server having to put the code into your page before your visitor can see your page. Be interesting to hear what others more experienced in using SSI have to say about this. Regards, Steven Birk http://medcenternews.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Francisco Becerra Subject: Design Dynamic Web Templates .dwt is the way to go for html pages. Also, MS Expression Web (new product) is leaps ahead of FrontPage. I really can't use FP anymore. Francisco Becerra, Director Sombrero Brasil www.sombrerobrasil.com -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Brad Waller Subject: Moving sites A few years ago we sold the EP.com domain and moved all the content over to EPage.com. Between branding being better for EPage and the offer for the old domain, it made business sense to do this. We negotiated lots of things and had time to set up the sites before the transaction completed. We owned both sites simultaneously for a while and had an unsuccessful venture on the EPage.com site, which made it a lot easier to manage the changeover on our terms. We completely moved everything from EP.com to EPage.com with no changes so that all content, URLs, etc. were exactly the same as on EP.com. We even changed the IP address over from the old domain to the new one. We then used an NSAPI to create a dynamic 301 redirect that would detect the incoming URL and set up the redirect to the identical page on EPage.com We sent all our users and affiliates email notices, and made sure that there were notes about this change in all communications (newsletters, affiliate stats messages, etc.) before the changeover. I personally emailed our top 100 affiliates to make sure that they knew about the change and what to do. We updated (or attempted to update) all links to us in directories such as Yahoo!, DMOZ, and Affiliate industry related sites. We monitored the log files and dynamically inserted a large red notice to the top of status emails to all affiliates who had not updated their links. We also looked to see which sites that linked to us had not made changes so that we could contact them and ask to have them update their site. To this day, we still find active sites that have not updated their links (I found one last week), and then I contact them to make the change. Unfortunately, there are thousands of orphaned and dead pages out there that will never be updated that link to EP.com, most likely with the text "Internet classifieds." Try this without the quotes in your favorite search engine and see where EP.com shows up almost 2 1/2 years after the change. You can use the Alexa data comparing both sites (http://tinyurl.com/33u875) to see what happened. There was a few month long drop in traffic, but it is hard to say if that was from the change or part of a drop that started earlier in the year. If you look back, you will also see a regular drop in traffic/reach at the end of every year, so this could be a natural curve. I would say that the immediate drop was from Google retaining the EP.com rankings for classified related content, as you can see some jumps in the new owner's data - and I know they never promoted the site or used it for anything other than their corporate page. As far as I could determine, they never monetized the new domain online or in print literature. I would asses some of our longer term drops to market changes (Craigslist) as well as moderate drops in ranking because we lost thousands of links from those dead sites, plus some of the actual people that were not making it to us through those links. Alexa data or not, I would say that our traffic levels are about where they were before the domain change, and have never been more than 30% lower. Considering the tens of thousands of people who come to our site through Google a month, we could have seen a much larger drop if we were dropped from Google when the content was moved to the new domain. Brad Waller Manage and Sell your own site advertising http://adjungle.com ==== BULLETIN BOARD =============================== From: Adam Boettiger Subject: Help Wanted - MarketingSeeker.com After ten plus years of agency and client-side advertising and marketing experience, and many time-consuming hunts for contractors and vendors, I've decided that there has got to be a better way to identify great marketing services vendors. Craigslist is a *wonderful* tool - I use it and love it, but I've used it to find vendors for clients and often get tens or hundreds of vague responses. Asking friends is also great, if they have the time to help you and if they know who would be a good fit. Right now I am looking for help from fellow LEDers who provide marketing services in the following areas: Website Design Services, Webmaster/Website Maintenance, Online Marketing Services, Email Marketing Services, Marketing Consultants, Sales Consultants, List Brokers, Lead Generation, Click Fraud Services, Search Engine Optimization, Text Link Building Services, Pay Per Click Campaign Management, Graphic Design Services, Flash Design/Development, Press Release Services or other marketing specialties. MarketingSeeker.com connects clients directly with 3-5 prescreened vendors at no cost. I'm building my vendor referral database and would like to invite any LEDers to fill out the vendor form at http://www.marketingseeker.com/vendors/ to get on my radar for potential business referrals. If there are folks on the list who would prefer to be referred to a small handful of screened vendors rather than be bombarded by vendors and contractors from around the globe, please do feel free to peruse the site and bookmark it as a free resource for the next time you need help promoting your business. Thanks! Adam Boettiger http://www.marketingseeker.com/ ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by GetWebContent.com The Web's Most Experienced SEO Content Providers. Free no-obligation proposal: http://GetWebContent.com/LED The Archives: http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/126/120/ Subscribe: http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/52/77/ Unsubscribe, Change Email, or Hold / Resume Delivery: http://www.led-digest.com/content/category/4/17/86/ (c) Copyright 1995-2007 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. 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