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Zenphoto – doing an update the right way, manually ..

ashish — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 09:19:22 +0000

After experimenting with various photo blog kind of interfaces (including the use of Gallery2 and other plugins that work along with WordPress), I finally found something that I liked – namely, Zenphoto, that I have started to use to build a photo site called Tourist Photos (photos from different tourist locations) (primarily to find an outlet for the number of photos I have taken in different countries, with photos + some text provide feedback to people before they even visit a place, so that they have some idea of what to expect).
Now, my web host provides me an interface called SimpleScripts that provides a simple interface to do this upgrade process. SimpleScripts makes the process of update so simple:
1. You log into your Web Host account
2. If there are any updates, there is a message that SimpleScripts has an update available
3. Click that link, it gives an interface where the interface provides information about the current version and the future version(s) that are available. And you can proceed on the upgrade path
4. Once the upgrade is done, the user has an option to review the website to see whether everything is fine, or if things are not fine, there is an option to go back to a previous version of the application.
A lot of people try the above option 4 as a formality, and do not check. If you care about your site, then you need to do that check in the following way (atleast based on my experience):
1. Before running the upgrade, do a backup of the site and the database and save these files locally
2. Check whether site is launching
3. Check whether there seems to be any performance problem in the site
4. Login into the Admin area of the site and see whether the initial dashboard comes up
5. Check for existing plugins and other widgets, and see whether there seems to be any problem
When running updates for my sites, I go through the above checklist and it has proved necessary in some cases. I have been using SimpleScripts for many of my sites, and there have been many cases where the update has completed successfully, and then the site has had serious problems.
I encountered this problem more recently when I was trying to update my Zenphoto page, and my current version was version 1.3.1.2 with a recommendation to update to version 1.4.1.4. I went ahead, and after the update, things did not work (the site refused to load). So, after an initial round of panic (I already have around 2000+ photos added to the site), I went for the rollback and the rollback worked fine.
Next step, went to the Zenphoto site to check up their instructions for creating a new site / upgrade (link) and found the following text over there:

NOTE: We do not support and do not recommend installations or upgrading done with helper scripts like SimpleScripts or similar some providers make available. If you have any problems after using these please contact the maker of the script.

So, atleast for my Zenphoto site, I will go ahead and do a manual update with the steps written on the page and stop using SimpleScripts for any updates of Zenphoto.

Search Engine Optimization Tips and Tricks – Learn how to increase visibility in Search Engines – Part 23 – Understanding the robots.txt file

ashish — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 17:44:55 +0000

In the previous post (All about Crawler), there were a lot of details about what a search engine crawler is, what it looks for, and why you must welcome this crawler to your site. Well, let us move further in this regard, and understand what a robots.txt file is, and what it has to do with search engines and the crawler.

What is a robots.txt file ?

Well, a robots.txt file is actually not about those robots you read in science fiction, instead it deals with those script robots / bots that you read about in the previous post. As per the search engine crawler protocol, a robots.txt file is a file that you put on the directories of your site with instructions on how you want your site to be read by the bots (and not all the search engine crawlers obey it, but the major ones do). It is a very simple text file that you can create in Notepad (or any other text editor, so if you are a vi fanatic, then use that by all means). You can use this text file to even ask the bots to prevent certain sections of your site from being copied, which means that those sections of the site will not be visible in search engines (and why would you want this to happen ? Well, one example is when you use this set of instructions to prevent duplicate reading of your site, so for example, the you want all the archive section of your site to be read, but not other paths to the same parts of your site (to prevent the duplicate content penalty), then this is a good way to do this (and the All-In-One SEO Plugin does indeed do that)).

Some scenarios in which you want to use the robots.txt file

- It is a matter of good protocol to have a robots.txt file since search engines expect these files to be there (but this is not a necessary condition)
- If you are in the habit of building different doorway pages of a site, with customized versions of the doorway page for each search engine or platform (a different doorway page for the iPhone, for example), then you would want to customize the search engines entry into these doorways (for example, if the Google search bot found its way to all off these doorway pages, they might consider you to be trying to hoodwink users). Alert: Doorway pages are now under alerts by search engines and you should consider your policies and intent in this area carefully.
- if your page has many sections that are still under construction, then you would not want the search engines to crawl and show these not-ready sections of the site. In such cases, you can prevent the spiders from reading the site and showing the result in search engines
- There are some sections of your site that are meant for individual persons, and you are not really interested in making them available for wider reading. Other people can access these if they go through the whole structure of your site, but there is no reason to show the results in a search engine result.
- You have created a print friendly version of your articles, but really don’t want search engines to go there (to avoid the duplicate content penalty and also to prevent users from directly accessing the print friendly versions). So you can enforce this in the robots.txt file.
- Keep the robots away from such content as has no value for the bots, such as directories with flash content, with JavaScript, and so on.

How to use Facebook to promote your blog ?

ashish — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:31:08 +0000

Let me state at the outset; if you are thinking about using Facebook to promote your blog / site, then it has been quite some time since people have latched onto this strategy. However, like other tools, a first mover advantage can only take you so far. If you have the right techniques, then Facebook can help you immensely in making sure that your blog gets a good amount of promotion.
Let us enumerate the reasons as to why you should have a Facebook page (a Fan Page, and not a profile – if you did not understand, you would need to wait for the next post to learn more), as well as some tips to get more out of your Facebook page.
1. A large number of your blog readers (unless they are out of the technologically aware age) would have profiles on Facebook, and a number of them would also be searching for information about their interests, including searching on Facebook. If interested readers subscribe to your blog, they would also be doing the same to your Facebook page.
2. Facebook has a huge number of active users (upwards of hundred million) and is probably the most popular social networking tool; use it like a social networking tool, make useful information available
3. In terms of promotion, ensure that your blog information is properly added to the side of your page, and Facebook information is added to your blog. In your Facebook page, you can add information from other blogs that you think is useful to your viewers (while ensuring that you have a proper link to where you are pulling the extract from) and this ensures that you get more viewers.
4. Search for 3rd party applications to add to your Facebook page. There are a number of such applications available such as RSS aggregators and others that provide some values that your viewers will appreciate.
5. Look for relevant groups on Facebook, and add your Facebook page to these groups if they are relevant, and provide useful information in these groups. This gets more people to visit your page.
6. Attach your Facebook page as a signature on your emails, since this helps in getting more people to visit your site.
7. Link your Twitter and Facebook accounts, and Facebook provides an app to update your Twitter account. This gives your convenience, and also provides your Twitter users with a way to connect to your Facebook account.
8. Networked Blogs (an application on Facebook) gives you the ability to add your Blog details into Facebook, and if people are able to locate your blog and find it useful, they would sign up for getting updates from your blog.

Protecting your .htaccess file – a tutorial

ashish — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 18:35:53 +0000

For slightly more advanced users, securing your blog or web host is an important part of ensuring the security. However, people tend to quake when it comes to doing such operations, and there is a heightened sense of fear at making any changes that could end up corrupting your settings or otherwise tampering with the smooth operations of your server. And not everybody can afford to hire expensive consultants for helping in this regard. However, here is a tutorial that could help you understand more about what .htaccess does, and how do you tweak your settings (learn more). Some of the stuff you can learn in the article is:

This quick tutorial will provide you with an htaccess file that does the following:
1. Protects itself (security)
2. Turns the digital signature off (security)
3. Limits upload size (security)
4. Protects wp-config.php (security)
5. Gives access permission to all visitors with exceptions (security, usability)
6. Specifies custom error documents (usability)
7. Disables directory browsing (security)
8. Redirect old pages to new (optional)
9. Disables image hotlinking (bandwidth)
10. Enables PHP compression (bandwidth)
11. Sets the canonical or “standard” url for your site (seo, usability)

Once you get this done, you will have increased the security level of your site, as well as being able to handle visitors.

Learn more about hardening WordPress at Codex

ashish — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 19:14:50 +0000

As part of a security policy for your WordPress installation, you should learn about hardening of the installation. The Hardening WordPress page at the Codex (link) contains a lot of information about how to harden your installation, getting rid of security risks and making your blog more secure. The entire process is geared towards not only increasing the security of your WordPress, but also ensuring that you have a regular backup, as also to increase the number of security compartments in your installation such that even if you have a security breach, you are able to prevent the attacker from going through your entire installation.
The process starts with ensuring that the computer from which you operate your account remotely is secure, free from viruses and other security risks; that the host which runs your site can be trusted to deploy the latest patches and other such updates; using a more secure network connection to the admin section of your blog and being careful about where all you sit down to administer your network from; having a good and safe password; locking down your file permissions.
The page also explains about ensuring that your wp-admin folder is properly protected, including adding a second level of protection; it is also important to protect your wp-config file.