Category Archives: Tips and Tricks

Tips and Tricks

Privacy Matters

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watcher of the watchers - Julian AssangeGoogle adverts and many others set cookies in your browser that allow them to track you across the web. Google (as an example), uses this information to display adverts that it thinks you are more likely to click on, based on the kind of sites you’ve visited in the past. Here’s how the world’s 3rd biggest search engine Yahoo! describe it:

“To make our ads more relevant and useful for you, we make educated guesses about your interests based on your activity on Yahoo!’s sites and services.”

Quite apart from the privacy concerns this raises, it can make SEO (search engine optimisation) of your website harder to do. If you are checking keywords in search engines, how do you know if you are seeing the same results as an ordinary user who’s never heard of you before?

Fortunately you can opt out of these networks (well most of them).

Because the default behaviour is opt-IN, these methods set a cookie that tells the advertiser to stop tracking. If you clear all your cookies, this preference it lost and you will have to revisit these pages again to opt-out again.

Location information is also commonly being captured by search engines so it’s important to clear this as well when you are doing research on your website’s search engine ranking. Google call it location-based customization.

2020Media can help

SEO Panel screenshot
SEO Panel

Use the links above to check your browser’s current settings – if you use more than one browser you will need to use each in turn.

2020Media are beta-testing a new free service to all customers – SEO Panel. This is a complete open source seo control panel for managing search engine optimization of your websites and works independently of your browser settings. If you’d like to be in the trial, let us know.

Communication preference settings on the 2020media portalCustomers can update their communication preferences with 2020Media by logging in to the customer portal, clicking My Profile and editing the Bulletins tab.

 

2020Media takes privacy matters extremely seriously. We have a privacy statement on our website. This describes the policy that is in place to protect your personal information.

When changes are requested to your services, website or email, expect us to be robust in challenging the person making the request to prove they are authorised to do so, especially when the change requested could affect the availability of that service. 2020Media prides itself on being “small enough to care, large enough to cope”; so our staff attempt to speak to each and every contact during the service. This helps improve security as well as emphasises that we are not just a faceless supplier – we’re trusted partners in your internet presence.

 

 

 

Opinion, Tips and Tricks

London Joomla User Group report

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joomla UG LondonThe September London Joomla User Group meeting took place with less than a week to go until the only UK Joomla conference of 2011 – Joomla!Day UK 2011. Several of the speakers were at the meeting and we were given a preview of one of the talks coming up on Sunday.

Coupon code for 100% discount on your extra tickets is MAXIMUM.

Use the code for today (Wednesday 21st September) only.

Other topics discussed were getting Joomla running on a local Windows setup for development (Microsoft’s Web Matrix was recommended); the imminent release of the long awaited VirtueMart 2 – this will actually be released during Joomla Day London; a discussion about everyone’s favourite extensions; and finally we talked about making Joomla fast.

Jet Set Joomla

rockettheme- AfterburnerWe asked what the fastest Joomla theme was – Afterburner from Rockettheme was suggested; honourable mentions went to Joomlapolis and Morph.

To further increase your site’s speed, use of a content delivery network was suggested – although not free, these can definitely help. If you sign up via the guy who makes the Joomla plugin there’s a discount for one popular commerical CDN.

Use Firebug for Firefox to check the download speed of all the components of your site – find out if anything is dragging your load times down.

 

 

Tips and Tricks

Decoding Cron

Cron is a useful feauture on Linux operating systems that allows easy scheduling of repeated tasks. Typically this includes rotating log files so that they don’t get to big, and checking for updates to software.

Cron commands can look intimidating to the non-technical user, so this article explains how to read them.

A typical crontab line looks something like this:

a typical crontab line

The asterisks at the beginning of the line are the all important timing information.

 

Decoding Cron

The values accepted for each field are:  The minute field value must be 0-59, the hour field 0-23, the day of month field 1-31, the month field 1-12 and the day of week field 0-6 (Sunday is 0 but this can also be given as 7).

The values can be given in a variety of formats:

  • An asterisk (*) character will match all possible values for the field: e.g. the Cron expression “* * * * *” will run the command every minute since this is the smallest representable time period.

 

  • A literal value: e.g. “30 * * * *” will run the command whenever the minute is 30, i.e. once an hour at half-past the hour.
    “* * 5 * *” will run every minute when it is the 5th day of the month.

 

  • A list is given by separating each possible value using a comma: e.g. “0,15,30,45 * * * *” will run the command whenever the minute is either 0, 15, 30 or 45. Another example, “0 1,2,3 * * *” will run the command between 1am and 3am (inclusive) but only when the minute is 0, i.e. on the hour. Lists can also contain ranges (see below).

 

  • A range is given by separating the lower and upper values of the range with a hyphen (-): e.g. “0 1 1-5 * *” will run the command at 1am on the first, second, third, fourth and fifth days of the month.

 

  • An increment is given by using a forward slash: e.g. “*/15 * * * *” will run the command every 15 minutes starting on the hour. i.e. this example is the same as the list example given above to run whenever the minute is 0, 15, 30 or 45.
  • A final example “35 7 * * *” means run the command at 35 minutes past 7am, everyday.

By default each run of the command will write to your log file. A couple of options are to change this:

  • Add “>> /dev/null 2>&1” to the end of the command line (a space then the text inside the “)
  • Add “| mail -s “Subject” me@domain.com” to send a confirmation by email.

Ready to have a go?

This utility helps you build Cron expressions easily by choosing job scheduling scenarios. The crontab entries produced work with Vixie Cron, popular in many Linux distributions.

In the examples above, you should normally remove the inverted commas (“) around the commands.

If you need any advice about cron, we’ll be happy to help. Please contact us.

 

 

Opinion, Tips and Tricks

Themes that do more

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The WordPress.org website includes an online directory of thousands of completely free themes. WordPress insists on GPL licensing which also means these themes are free to modify to your own custom design if you wish.

There are also many many sites offering paid for themes. The quality is generally high and if you are after something that gives your site instant wow appeal, it can be worth spending a few pounds on a theme. Expect to pay USD $35- USD $95 (GBP £20 – GBP £60) for a theme.

This post is about WordPress themes that do more than just change the appearance of your site. We’re looking at themes that include specific functionality. This often means the theme comes with extra plugins to perform these roles.

Business Directory

The DirectoryPress WordPress theme is a complete theme and plugin. Cost  is USD $79. The theme includes maps, payment gateways for paid directory listings and around 20 different template designs.

Business Directory for WordPress is a plugin only. It allows simple text based listing, submitted by the unregistered users. There’s no editing facility. Cost is free although a suggested donation of USD $5 is requested by the author to help fund further development.

WP Business Directory Manager is a plugin only. It supports user registration, paid placements (at extra cost to the plugin creator). It allows images in the listings. The plugin is free and you can see a live example at www.hairdressing.co.uk

Jobs

9-to-5 theme. This theme from a paid theme provider costs USD $35 and includes both a  job board theme and the listing plugins. Features include ajax filtering, google maps, and the ability to take payments via paypal for paid listings.

Jobroller is another paid theme. It includes separate portals & tools for both job seekers and employers, has built-in payment gateway support and a has a CV section. Cost is USD $99.

Job Manager is a plugin only. It’s designed for a single company’s job listing and includes functions to take online applications and manage the interview process. It’s free and has been downloaded over 30,000 times from WordPress.

Classifieds

Sofa OpnPress is a paid theme that styles itself “WP Yellow Pages”. It offers front-end editing for users, paid or free listings mode, a voting system, and supports localisation. Cost is USD $35.

Another WordPress Classifieds Plugin is a well established free plugin (2 years old) and boasts upwards of 70,000 downloads from WordPress. It allows for paid or free ads, moderation, notifications and social integration. A number of premium (paid-for) modules are available which add things like featured listings, fee per category and google checkout integration.

wp-classified is a simpler option that adds a simple information & advertising blackboard or classified page in to your wordpress site. The plugin is free. A few comments in the forum indicate that some users find the documentation lacking.

Charity

Agency Theme is a paid theme that includes a nice “donation bar” on the home page. Ideal for fund raising towards a target, the donation bar shows progress towards the specified amount features a prominent donation link. Cost of this theme is USD $95. A number of plugins that offer a similar feature can be found on WordPress.

10 themes for non-profits. Not a theme or plugin itself, this post reviews 10 beautiful themes designed with charity websites in mind.

Donate Plus is  a free WordPress plugin with PayPal integration. The plugin contains lots of options for creating a donation form on your site, and includes a recognition function for displaying donations and comments. In function it’s similar to Just Giving, though does not include any Gift Aid functionality.

Conclusion

We’ve chosen just 4 categories here but there are dozens if not hundreds of customised themes and plugins for just about any specific function you might care to imagine (let us know in the comments). Costings shown above were correct at the time of writing but are likely to change in the medium-long term. Sometimes you may need to pay for the feature you want, but compared to the cost of bespoke development it’s likely to a be fraction of the cost. Many of the developers actively encourage customisation work so even if the plugin or theme doesn’t do quite what you want, it’s very well worth contacting the provider to ask if they will make a change for you.

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