If you want to disable the WordPress plugin WP-DownloadManager‘s download-css.css file from being loaded, add the following code to your functions.php file:

remove_action('wp_print_styles', 'downloads_stylesheets');

Alternatively, if you would just like to use your own stylesheet, you can add a file named download-css.css to your theme’s directory, and the plugin will automatically load your stylesheet instead.

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.

Add Edit Link

When using Gravity Forms as a tool for managing a directory listing site, I often wanted to directly edit an entry on the Entries page. Instead, you must click View, then click Edit Entry. Not anymore!

Access Form & Form Entries with PHP Functions

If you want to be able to easily access form data for displaying on a website, use the functions below.

• get_gf_form($id, $display_title=true, $display_description=true)
  Returns a form using php instead of shortcode.
  Example: echo get_gf_form(1);
• get_gf_leads($form_id, $sort_field_number=0, $sort_direction='DESC', $search='', $offset=0, $page_size=3000, $star=null, $read=null, $is_numeric_sort = false, $start_date=null, $end_date=null)
  Returns array of leads for a specific form.
  Example: $leads = get_gf_leads(1, 1.4, 'ASC'); foreach($leads as $lead) { ... }
• get_gf_field_label($form_id, $field_id)
  Gives you the label for a form input (such as First Name). Enter in the form and the field ID to access the label.
  Example: echo get_gf_field_label(1,1.3);
• get_gf_field_value_long($leadid, $fieldid)
  To retrieve textarea inputs from a lead.  By default, long entries are truncated and stored in a separate database table.
  Example: get_gf_field_value_long(22, '14');

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!

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!

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.

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:

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

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

• 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.$link);
			echo "\n\t".'<link rel="canonical" href="'.$link.'" />'."\n\t";
		}
	}
}
// Add the function to your site's <head> 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!

[donate name=”Shopp Canonical Tag Function”]

<img class="" src="http://www.example.com/imagescaler/generated-image.jpg" alt="Example" width="258" height="234" 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;
}

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 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:

• Place Pages: Google Launches Rival to Yelp
• Google Maps UI upgrade: Places page replaces tabbed interface

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.

• 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.

Update: Google Profiles are Back to Do-Follow

Over the weekend I created a brand-new profile for my wife, and noticed that the profile for John Sileo that I had previously mentioned is now “dofollow,” as is the brand-new profile for my wife.

Use it, don’t abuse it!

It’s good that Google’s reversed their policy on this, because Google Profiles are a natural thing to optimize and promote. They are a great tool for linking to other properties, and you should create your own. Just don’t go too crazy, or Google might pull the follow plug again.

Recently I moved my company’s domain from KatzWebDesign.net to KatzWebServices.com to reflect the change of the business name (over one year ago) from Katz Web Design to Katz Web Services, Inc., to reflect the in company services offerings, and to have a .com domain.

This is a simple switch, not re-launching a new website — just moving the same site from one domain to the next. Here’s how I approached the switch, and it’s a solid method to use for any domain switch:

A week before:

• Make sure the new domain works properly
• Start pointing some new links to the domain (which will just be parked on top of the current site)

On the day of move:

• Add the website and a site-map to Google Webmaster Tools

• Update the .htaccess file to move permanently move the domain

  RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^katzwebdesign.net(.*) [NC]
  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.katzwebservices.com/$1 [R=301,NC,L]

  For great .htaccess tips, check out corz.org.

• Update the site map to reflect new domain addresses
• Fill out a change of address form in Google Webmaster Tools
• Request people you know link to the new domain

Week after move, you should slowly change existing backlinks to the new domain

• Update profile pages (LinkedIn, Facebook, MerchantCircle, Google Profiles, CitySearch, you know the drill)
• Email webmasters and request link changes be made

Matt Cutts tells people to change things slowly and steadily so Google doesn’t freak out:

Note: changing your IP address, webhost, domain name, blog template, and blog version all at the same time is the exact opposite of what you should normally do. It’s better to change only one thing at a time so that if something goes horribly wrong, you can trace what caused it.

What I experienced

Google showed both domains for a while until they completely updated their index. An example: when searching “Denver web design,” they showed katzwebdesign.net. When searching “Denver SEO,” they showed katzwebservices.com.

Here’s a quick fix: add the following to your theme’s functions.php file:

function edit_product_link($link = 'Edit Product', $before = '', $after = '') {
	global $post, $Shopp;

	if ( $post->post_type == 'page' ) {
		if ( !current_user_can( 'edit_page', $post->ID ) )
			return;
	} else {
		if ( !current_user_can( 'edit_post', $post->ID ) )
			return;
	}

	if (shopp('product','found')) {
		$page = 'shopp-products-edit';
		$id = shopp('product','id','return=true');
	}

	$url = admin_url("/admin.php?page=$page&id=$id");

	$link = '<a title="' . attribute_escape( __( 'Edit product' ) ) . '" href="'.$url.'">' . $link . '</a>';
	echo $before . $link . $after;
}

Then add edit_product_link() into your template, and you can edit products directly from your website. Woot!.

With Yoast’s Simple Taxonomies plugin, you can set up a custom categorization system for posts on your site known as a custom taxonomy. When trying to optimize these pages, I realized that the All in One SEO Pack plugin doesn’t have support for custom taxonomies, so it will not format the title properly. I’ve slapped together some code to improve the formatting of the title tag. See this code in action.

1. Modify the aioseop.class.php file in the all-in-one-seo-pack plugin folder.

2. After this code (around line line 398):

else if ($query->is_tag  && $haspost) {
  $tag = get_term_by('slug',get_query_var('tag'),'post_tag');
  if (!empty($tag->term_id)) {
    $link = get_tag_link($tag->term_id);
  }
  $link = $this->yoast_get_paged($link);
}

3. Add the following code:

else if ($query->is_term  && $haspost) {
  $term = get_term_by('slug',get_query_var('term'), get_query_var( 'taxonomy' ));
         if (!empty($term->term_id)) {
                $link = get_tag_link($term->term_id);
         }
     $link = $this->yoast_get_paged($link);
}

4. Find the following code (around line 641):

  $title = trim($title);
  $title = apply_filters('aioseop_title_single',$title);
  $header = $this->replace_title($header, $title);
}

5. And add the following code after it:

else if (function_exists('is_taxonomy') && get_query_var('term')) {
  $term     = get_query_var('term');
  $taxonomy   = get_query_var('taxonomy');
    if ($term) {
      $term = str_replace('-', ' ', $term);
      $term = $this->capitalize($term);

      $taxonomy = $this->capitalize($taxonomy);
      $taxonomy = ' - '.$taxonomy;
      $title_format = $aioseop_options['aiosp_tag_title_format'];

      $title = str_replace('%blog_title%', $this->internationalize(get_bloginfo('name')), $title_format);
      $title = str_replace('%blog_description%', $this->internationalize(get_bloginfo('description')), $title);
      if($taxonomy) {
        $title = str_replace('%taxonomy%', $taxonomy, $title);
      }
      else {
        $title = str_replace('%taxonomy%', '', $title);
      }
      $title = str_replace('%tag%', $term, $title);
      $title = $this->paged_title($title);
      $title = apply_filters('aioseop_title_single',$title);
      $header = $this->replace_title($header, $title);
    }
}

6. Find the following code (near line 736):

$title = str_replace('%tag%', $tag, $title);

7. And add the following code after:

$title = str_replace('%taxonomy%', '', $title);

8. Now your site is set up to allow for your custom taxonomy title tags. You can now configure the way that the order in which the taxonomies are displayed by editing the “Tag Title Format” setting in the All in One SEO Pack settings page.

I have it configured on the Egret Windows website as: %tag% %taxonomy% | %blog_title%

Leave comments below with any questions.

The Rich Text Tags plugin allows you to use the WYSIWYG TinyMCE text editor (the WordPress default editor) while editing Categories, Tags, and taxonomies (custom categorization created by the Yoast Simple Taxonomies plugin).

Adding Category & Tag descriptions

There’s plenty of information online on how to add category descriptions and tag descriptions to your theme. WordPress has built-in functionality for those:

• <?php echo category_description(); ?> – category_description() on WordPress.org
• <?php echo tag_description(); ?> – tag_description() on WordPress.org

How to add the taxonomy title & descriptions to your theme

Once you have the cool new rich text editor, you’ll feel pretty silly if you don’t put that great content in your theme.  So here’s what to do:  add the following snippet of code into your archive.php file.

<?php
if(isset($wp_taxonomies)) {
	// This is getting the friendly version of a taxonomy
	// - not the hyphenated get_yoast_term_title()
	$term = get_term_by( 'slug', get_query_var( 'term' ), get_query_var( 'taxonomy' ) );
	if($term) {
		echo '<h2 class="pagetitle">'.$term->name.'</h2>';
	}
	// If you have a taxonomy description, let'er rip!
	if(function_exists('get_yoast_term_description') && get_yoast_term_description()) {
		echo wptexturize(get_yoast_term_description());
	}
}
?>

Using this code, you can now have custom content on your taxonomy pages, like this one for Andersen Windows.

SEO Benefits of this plugin

Besides the obvious benefits of giving users more information on your archive pages, there are intrinsic SEO benefits to having tag, category, and taxonomy descriptions.

When you have tags and categories where posts overlap, it’s a good idea to try to create as much unique content on each page as possible, so that each page gets indexed by Google. Having custom content for each page will do that.

Help me help you!

Please leave any issues you have with the plugin in the comments below. I like to squash code bugs!

Known Plugin Incompatibilities

This plugin does not work with these plugins:

• Tylr Slidr