Denver SEO Blog

Improve Gravity Forms – Gravity Forms Addons Plugin

Zack Katz — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:41:01 +0000

Download Gravity Forms Addons Plugin on WordPress.org

Gravity Forms is Great. Let’s Make it Better.

To view one pane, the other panes close. What a pane in the ass!

I really enjoy the Gravity Forms plugin. It’s a great form generator seemingly based on making a Wufoo-style experience for a WordPress form plugin. It’s super-simple to use and set up, and I’ve set up my website request form using Gravity Forms.

Some little things make a big difference

One thing that has frustrated me about the plugin is that when selecting the type of field to add to the form, I had to click a box to show it, like the image to the right. I knew that it would be a simple thing to fix…so I did. Enter the Gravity Forms Addon plugin.

More improvements to come!

I am going to be using this plugin a lot, and customizing it a lot…so I will be making lots of additions to this plugin in the future.

Planned improvements:

Add Fields Panes with the Gravity Forms Addons plugin activated

Add a configuration page for the Addons in the Forms admin menu that the GF plugin creates
Add Ajax form submission
Add an Advanced Field module for my favorite email marketing plugins
Add a simple widget option
Add an option to move the field description above the input, instead of below (look at my website questionnaire as an example of what I’m talking about)

Leave your wish list below

I am open to suggestions on what to add to the Gravity Forms Addons plugin. Leave a wish below!

Katz Web Services, Inc. on Facebook

Zack Katz — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:43:23 +0000

KWS has a new home on Facebook

The transition from Katz Web Design to Katz Web Services, Inc. is complete with the launch of the Katz Web Services Facebook page. Become a fan, ask questions on the discussion board, and be recognized by others for being so avant-garde!

I love KWS fans – share your love and become a fan today!

Katz Web Services Featured in iContact’s Email Marketing Monthly

Zack Katz — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:03:41 +0000

iContact sent out their Email Marketing Monthly October email and featured the Katz Web Services iContact plugin for WordPress. We’re glad they like it, and hope you do too!

Get the iContact Widget for WordPress, and check out iContact for your email marketing.

Un-Ban Yourself from WHMCS Administration

Zack Katz — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:50:19 +0000

Is your IP banned from your own WHMCS?

Who can remember all their passwords all the time? I have a password manager, and I still don’t get it right. I use the WHMCS software to manage client hosting and such, and so sometimes I get locked out of my own system because I’ve tried too many times to log in!

Here’s how to un-ban yourself:

Log into your cPanel or website database administration panel
Enter phpMyAdmin
Look for a database ending in _whmcs
Browse that database
Browse the table named tblbannedips
Refer to your WHMCS ban notification where it says your banned IP address (such as “Your IP 12.345.12.345″)
Find the entry in the tblbannedips where the ip column matches your IP address
Click the X in that row to delete the ban
Re-access your WHMCS ban-free!

Maybe some day, my password management applications and my browsers will play nicely together. Unlikely, though

Recover your password from Interspire Shopping Cart

Add Canonical Tags to Shopp Plugin for SEO

Zack Katz — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:36:31 +0000

I am building a store using the Shopp plugin, and I noticed that there are possibilities for duplicate content issues:

A product can be accessed both by /shop/{productID} and /shop/{product-slug}
A tag can be accessed using /shop/?shopp_tag={tag-uri} and /shop/tag/{tag-slug}
A tag can be accessed using /shop/?shopp_category={category-id} and /shop/{category-uri}

Should Google somehow find it’s way into indexing these pages, the value of the identical indexed pages may drop. Canonical tags aim to remedy this situation, and are implemented by the hugely popular and awesome All in One SEO Pack plugin (see my other SEO tips regarding AIOSEO Pack plugin).

The Shopp plugin does not feature canonical tag support, so here’s a modification you can make that will add support for it without changing any core files in All in One SEO Pack, or in Shopp.

Add the following code to your theme’s functions.php file

function shopp_canonical_tag() {
	global $Shopp, $aioseop_options; // The All in One SEO Pack Options Variable

	// Get all the pages Shopp is using and make an array
	$ShoppPages = $Shopp->Settings->get('pages');
	$pages = array();
	foreach($ShoppPages as $ShoppPage) { $pages[] = $ShoppPage['id']; }

	// If in a Shopp page...
	if(is_page($pages)) {
		// Path to Shopp installation
		$path = $Shopp->shopuri;
		$link = '';
		if($Shopp->Product->id) { // If in a product
			$link = $Shopp->Product->slug;
		}
		elseif($Shopp->Category->id) { // If in a category
			$link = $Shopp->Category->uri;
		}
		elseif($Shopp->Category->tag) { // If in a tag
			$link = $Shopp->Category->slug.'/'.$Shopp->Category->uri;
		}
		elseif(isset($Shopp->Cart->data->Search)) { // If in a search result
			$link = 'search/'.$Shopp->Cart->data->Search;
		}
		if($link) {
			// Turn off All in One SEO pack canonical URLs for this page
			$aioseop_options['aiosp_can'] = false;

			// Add the proper trailing slashes to the link using this WP function
			$link = trailingslashit($path.$link);
			echo "\n\t".''."\n\t";
		}
	}
}
// Add the function to your site's  and run it before AIOSEO Pack
add_action('wp_head', 'shopp_canonical_tag', 1);

When Shopp tells this function that it is on a product, tag, search, or category page, it will show a canonical tag to that page. If Shopp doesn’t have an available page, it will leave it up to the SEO Pack plugin to show its canonical tag as usual (which works on the checkout, account, and other pages).

This code will set you up nicely for a SEO’d-out shopping cart. Leave feedback below!

Strip Extra ImageScaler Attribute from Plugin-Generated Code

Zack Katz — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 01:45:55 +0000

I am using the ImageScaler plugin for WordPress on a project, and I like what it does, but it adds a non-standards-compliant attribute to images, such as:

imagescaler="http://www.example.com/imagescaler/original-image.jpg" />

To strip imagescaler’s imagescaler attribute, add the following into your functions.php file:

add_filter('the_content', 'strip_imagescaler');
function strip_imagescaler($content) {
	$content = preg_replace('/imagescaler="(.*?)".?/s','', $content);
	return $content;
}

Add a Store Catalog XML Sitemap to the Shopp Plugin

Zack Katz — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 21:19:28 +0000

The Shopp default RSS/XML/Google Base solution was not enough.

I needed to have a Google Base feed that featured all the store products. For some reason, the recommended process wasn’t working for me. It was either showing only recent products, or it wasn’t working at all. Here’s how I fixed it:

This code will show you the way to full indexing. Trust it. Feel it.

Add the following code before case "newproducts-rss": (near line 1295) in Shopp.php:

// This adds sitemap functionality for all products
case "catalog-rss":
	$CatalogProducts = new CatalogProducts(array('show' => 50000));
	header("Content-type: application/rss+xml; charset=utf-8");
	echo shopp_rss($CatalogProducts->rss());
	exit();
	break;

Once you add that, you will be able to see a RSS feed of your entire catalog by visiting yoursite.com/your-shop-location/index.php?shopp_lookup=catalog-rss

If the RSS feed is empty, try commenting out (add // before it) the following code near line 484 in /core/model/Category.php: $item = apply_filters('shopp_rss_item',$entry,$product);

Hope this helps!

Google Place Pages – Google Finally Shows its Answer to Yelp.com

Zack Katz — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 17:09:49 +0000

Google finally goes “local directory” in Place Pages

Google had been lagging behind sites like Yelp.com in providing a place to find information about businesses. If you did a local search, you would have a “More info…” link that would expand your search result inside the map and have tabs that were badly organized. Not anymore. Enter Place Pages. Google explains it well: “Now, instead of just getting a slightly bigger bubble, you’ll get an entire page of rich details, like photos, videos, a Street View preview, nearby transit, reviews and related websites.”

But don’t let them fool you. This is not just a minor improvement. This is a major entry in the directory website world. Think MerchantCircle, Yelp, CitySearch, etc.

Google Place Pages is a crazy directory…

http://maps.google.com/places/us/denver/s-queen-way/904/-katz-web-services-seo-&-web-design

Google now has pages for each of the “directories” in the URL. The street you live on now has its own Place Page.

United States – /places/us/
Denver – /places/us/denver/
S. Queen Way – /places/us/denver/s-queen-way/
904 – /places/us/denver/s-queen-way/904/
Katz Web Services, Inc. – /places/us/denver/s-queen-way/904/-katz-web-services-seo-&-web-design

…but Place Pages are still “search results”

Place Pages also seem to guess what you’re looking for. If Google thinks that the URL you have entered is related to a page, it will display the related information.

Interesting examples:

Place Pages are related search results or best guesses? The results are not always right, or even close.
- /places/us/co/lakewood/-starbucks takes us to a related coffee shop
- /places/us/-starbucks and gets Starbucks wrong again here
- /places/us/denver/-starbucks but is correct in Denver and New York

S. Queen Way - each of these shows the same page content
- /places/s-queen-way/
- /places/us/s-queen-way/
- /places/us/denver/s-queen-way/
- /places/us/lakewood/s-queen-way/
- But the South Queen Way in nearby Littleton that gets no love except when going to /places/us/littleton/s-queen-way/
London – Google chooses the most relevant
- /places/london/ goes to the UK London (also at http://maps.google.com/places/uk/london/)
- /places/us/london/ goes to the apparently famous London, Kentucky…which doesn’t have anything going for it, or any content
- …and all the other Londons in the US get ignored. Like London, Alabama (which has steet view!?) or London, Ohio, which even has a YouTube video on its page…but gets no love.

Keep your eyes on Google Place Pages

We want there to be a Place Page for every place in the world, but we might be missing a few places here and there….And if you don’t have a business, but you discover a place that doesn’t have a Place Page, you can add it through community edits or Google Map Maker, depending on the country you’re in.

I’ve been waiting for Google to release something that could effectively serve as a way to review every single business, place, restaurant, etc. on Earth. Place Pages is their true entry into the world of Yelp and Urbanspoon, because finally each business has its own page that is easy to find and remember. It’s simple to find hours, leave reviews, and more all from this one page.

I imagine Google will create Android and iPhone apps to enable more simple reviewing using Place Pages. This is a bomb that Google has dropped…but they’re dropping it all soft-like so as not to worry the competition.

For further reading:

Google Chrome Frame Plugin for WordPress

Zack Katz — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:02:06 +0000

Google Chrome Frame — the Beginning of the End of IE Tyranny?

Google just introduced a new tactic in the browser wars, and this one’s juicy. It’s called Google Chrome Frame.

What it does is it makes Internet Explorer render websites using Google Chrome in a frame. That means that IE can have HTML 5 compatibility and all the other WebKit goodness. The catch? Google Chrome Frame will only activate if webmasters ask it to by adding a meta tag. So I created a plugin that does just that.

Download the Google Chrome Frame Plugin from WordPress.org

Hopefully, GCF will start to shift users from rendering sites in IE 6/7/8 to Google Chrome.

Version 2.0 includes option to add the Google Chrome Frame javascript installation prompt code.

SEO Google Profiles – Google Adds NoFollow to Links

Zack Katz — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 23:06:49 +0000

Just a quick post to show that Google has started to nofollow all links on new Google Profiles. This is too bad for a quick SEO shot in the arm, but also makes sense, since most of the people who knew about Google Profiles were SEO’s anyway

Here’s my do-follow Google profile: Zachary Katz – Google Profile.
Here’s a no-followed profile: John Sileo – Google Profile.

Oh well, on to greener pastures!

As an user on BlogCatalog notes,

The links on your Google profile will be nofollow, but the links on your Google Reader shared items page (as of the time I write this) are NOT nofollow.

Linking to your profile on your site or blog is a great idea, but linking to your shared items page is an even better one.