.htaccess

The first is in a .htaccess file. This is not the solution I would recommend. But you might find yourself in a situation where you don’t have any other choices, because you don’t have deeper access. In your htaccess file you just type in:

IndexIgnore *

This will make sure that directory listing is not allowed in that directory.

Using http.conf

The second and better solution in my opinion is via the http.conf file on your webserver.
What you do is that you open the http.conf file and find the line that look like this:

Options All Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews

From that line you delete the word Indexes so it looks like this:

Options All FollowSymLinks MultiViews

Then you just have to restart your webserver and it should be working.

Good luck. Hope it saves a bit of trouble.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?yourdomain.com [NC]
RewriteRule \.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif)$ http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ltn3afEByB1r3arh5o1_100.gif [NC,R,L]

If you want more sites to be able to implement your images, you can add more lines like this one:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?yourotherdomain.com [NC]

The image in RewriteRule \.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif)$ http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ltn3afEByB1r3arh5o1_100.gif [NC,R,L] should not be a picture on your domain, as your blocking will block that too. And all kinds of bad stuff happens! Just don’t do it.

That’s all that you need to do, simple right?

Just a little wordpress tip that you might find useful. I needed to add danish spellchecking to a wordpress blog and found that it was really really easy. All you need is you functions.php file in your theme and the ability to write in it. (If you’re scared, make a backup. If not then cry if it fails.)

What you do is you go in to the functions.php file and add the following:

function fb_mce_external_languages($initArray){
$initArray['spellchecker_languages'] = ‘English=en,+Dansk=da’;
return $initArray;
}
add_filter(‘tiny_mce_before_init’, ‘fb_mce_external_languages’);

Now if you have no use for danish spellchecking change this “+Dansk=da” to what you need. When you load your editor you should see your new languages in the spellcheck dropdown.

Download Spiced2Simple

Please: Do not hotlink to the download link.

These are free, license: none! Do whatever you like with them icons. Have fun with them. And if you want to show me you have used them, shoot a mail my way

Go nuts, and tell me what you think down below

Jquery Image lazy load

Great wordpress plugin for sites with a lot of images. The plugin holds off loading images, that’s lower on the page until the user scrolls down to them. Great for giving a better user experience and a faster loading site. Get Jquery Image lazy load here.

Easy JS and CSS

Implement css and javascript on specific posts on your blog. Great if you are using things like crazyegg or would like to use a specific jquery plugin in on only one post or page of your blog. Get Easy JS and CSS here.

Simple 301 redirects

The name says it all. Create redirects from deleted content quick and easy. Great little plugin for creating 301 redirects. Get Simple 301 redirects here.

Ozh’ Who Sees Ads

Control who sees ads on your site. It has a number of different settings, like how many days since the post have been published and whether or not the user is logged in. Get Who Sees Ads here.

Simple feed copyright

Adds a simple copyright statement to your feed with a link. It won’t prevent people from stealing your content obviously but it might give you a link everytime someone does. Find Simple feed copyright here.

Smooth Slider

Great content slider plugin that makes it easy for notech people to add content to the slider by clicking a simple checkbox. Download Smooth Slider for WordPress here.

zeList

Create a directory for you wordpress blog with this plugin. It makes it easy to create a resource list on your wordpress blog. Easy to use once installed. Get zeList here.

Really Static

Make your website static and really, really fast loading. Really great if you are suddenly getting traffic spikes. Download Really Static for WordPress here.

Did I miss a good one (of course I did)? Please post it in the comments and I will add it to the list.

Time of day segments

Hour of the day Matches regular expression 22|23|24 (click to import segment into GA)

It’s a good way of gathering intel on when to push ads for TV, radio and of course Adwords. And It can also help you in timing your social media activities and your content pushes on these. This has helped me a fair bit as I’m in a different timezone to most of my visitors and I’m not that good at figuring out when to publish new things. Combine it with a look at day of the week to see when you convert the best and you have a better understanding of when you can bid higher on your ads.

User engagement

Page Depth Greater than or equal to 3 (click to import segment into GA)

Where do your most valuable visitors come from? Are you getting enough traffic from those sources? Could you get more? This can be “low-hanging fruit” that you can easily get more of. You can also do the opposite and find the traffic sources that bounce often.

Branded searches

Keyword matches regular expression KW1|KW2|KW3

You can bundle your branded keywords together to see them in one report. This will give you an idea of how many visits you get from people who are already familiar with your products and with you.

Head search terms

Keyword matches regular expression KW1|KW2|KW3

In the same way as above you can bundle up the big keywords you are going for to see how much traffic they are providing to your site. And then you can see if they are converting in the way you want them to. If you are targeting these terms in adwords you will want to make a separate segment for cpc and organic.

Regional segments

Region matches Targeted region

View your traffic from different regions and see if some regions respond better to you, than others. These can be great segments for when you are doing a regional push and can help you determine if you should continue your push or revise your campaign. You could do this with cities too.

Tracking people coming from feed readers

Medium Matches exactly feed (click to import segment into GA)

Find out how people using feed readers use your site. See if there are any difference between them and other returning visitors. You might be able to find places where you can improve the site experience.

Tracking email visits (not from email campaigns)

Source Contains  mail (click to import segment into GA)

Make a segment that filters sources by the word mail. This will give you most of the online email clients. This is great for testing if visitors who have been recommended by a friend turn into customers or leads for you.

These examples are some of the ways I use Advanced segments to get some data points that gives me a better idea of how to optimize a website. What do you use advanced segments for?

MXToolbox has a great service where you can look up your mail server IP and see if it’s on any of the blacklists out there (don’t worry if you don’t know the IP, just type in the domain).
If you domain is blacklisted, you can then click the links next to them for more information on how to remove it. They also have tool to check your mail headers.

Other places to check if you are blacklisted
mailboxtools.com
Mailradar.com
dnsbl.info

Once you have discovered a problem, most of the lists will tell you what is wrong with your setup if that’s what’s wrong. So just a small post that I hope will save somebody some time

So let’s have a look at how you can make your website more sticky. I’m going to look at some of the things you can do, if you have a content site, like a blog, but you can use it across other types of websites as well.

Provide good content, consistently

Good content should be quite a no brainer, it is the number one way to make your website more sticky. If your content is consistently good people will pick up on it and they will browser more pages on your site. Make sure your content is the content people are coming for and make sure you have lots of it.

Provide somewhere else to go on your site

This is often done by providing related articles, a where to go next or by links in the content. This is a great way to let visitor explore more of your content. Make sure there are somewhere else to go from your article pages. When visitors are reading your articles all the way to the bottom, they often go away if you don’t provide them with something else to do.

Make theme pages

If you have a lot of content about a topic. It can be great to make a page with small excerpts and pictures from those articles and use that page to get visitors to dive in to a topic. Blogs have category pages, but if you have a regular website, this is an even better idea. Take something like the BBC’s food section, that’s a great inspiration on how to get visitors deep on your site.

Have internal content campaigns

You can make “internal campaigns” for your good content. It can be done by making a Interesting reads section in your navigation or having a block of text below your articles with a link to some new/good article about an interesting subject.

How to measure your “stickyness”

Some of the metrics you can use to measure your stickyness is bounce rate, pages per visit and average time on site. You can also have a look at your top exit pages and look for ways to get visitors to go elsewhere. Always compare these metrics with your own data. You will not get any good data by finding average bounce rate data online, because every website is different and every audience is different.

Change the search features in Firefox

Changing the default google location in the search box.
I’m from Denmark and I want to search on google.dk instead of google.com (This works with every other google local site)

• Go to your program files\mozilla firefox\searchplugins folder and edit the google.xml file.
• Find this line <Url type=”text/html” method=”GET” template=”http://www.google.com/search”>
• change it to <Url type=”text/html” method=”GET” template=”http://www.google.dk/search”> of course you should change this to whatever location you want.

Open search box results in a new tab
Opening the searchresults in a new tab is a great feature as I always forget to open a new tab and end up losing the site I was on. You can change it in you about:config file:

• In your address type in: about:config
• Search for browser.search.openintab and change it to true.

Change the I’m feeling lucky google search when you search via your address bar
I never feel lucky. And I don’t want to visit the first google result when I type something in my browser.

• In your address type in: about:config
• Find keyword:URL and change it to http://www.google.com/search?q=

Changing the Firefox user interface

Making new tabs open at the end
Firefox 3.6 made a change so new tabs open next to the current one. I don’t like this feature, I like when they just go to the end of the tabs bar. You can change it quite easily.

• Type about:config in your address bar.
• Search for browser.tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent and change it to false and close the tab. Now your new tabs will open at the end instead of grouping them together

Change the close tab button so it shows at the end of the tab bar.
I like to open and close many tabs at a time, so it annoyed me when the tabs get bigger and smaller so I have to shift around with my mouse (I’ll never get used to ctrl-w).

• Type about:config in your address bar.
• Find browser.tabs.closeButtons and set it to 3.

Now your close button will be at the end ( Like it was in some of the older version ) which is great for closing a lot of tabs at the time.

Get Firefox spell check in all fields.
Firefox spellchecks in fields that are more than one line. You can get it to spell check in all fields.

• Type about:config in your address bar.
• layout.spellcheckDefault change the value to 2

Get Firefox to remember more (or less) than 10 recently closed tabs
I said I like to open and close a lot of tabs. I tend to lose some important ones at times So this is a nice hack for me.

• Type about:config in your address bar.
• browser.sessionstore.max_tabs_undo change this to the number you want to see.

Change the number of suggestions Firefox show while you type
This can fill your screen when you are on a laptop, which is annoying. You can lower the number like this.

• Type about:config in your address bar.
• browser.urlbar.maxRichResults change to another number.

Enable autofill in address bar as you type
Here’s how to enable autofill in your addressbar.

• Type about:config in your address bar.
• browser.urlbar.autoFill set to true

Remove the menu delay
Remove the menu delay in firefox.

• Type about:config in your address bar.
• Right click and choose new – integer
• Call it ui.submenuDelay and set it to 0

Speed and memory in Firefox

Make firefox use less memory when minimized
Firefox loves memory, but I like to use it for other things when Firefox is minimized. You can change the setting here.

• Type about:config in your address bar.
• Search for config.trim_on_minimize and change this to true.

Pipelining
Pipelining will speed up your browser by allowing you to make more http connections simultaniously.

• type about:config in your address bar.
• Type network.http in the filter box.
• Find network.http.keep-alive and set it to true if it isn’t
• network.http.version and set it to 1.1 if it isn’t.
• network.http.pipelining and set it to true
• network.http.pipelining.maxrequests and set it to 8, if your internet starts to get a bit tipsy after this set this value to a lower number.

That was 12 small Firefox hacks that I use. Please share your favourite ones.

Do not change everything

Hold yourself back, just a little bit. Don’t go crazy right out of the gate. Have you ever heard the cries when facebook changes some really small detail? Now, facebook users say things, that’s kinda the point of facebook, but your users might not be telling you, when they get annoyed by changes you made. They might just leave. So be careful when making changes, be sure that it’s a change for the better and that it will not hurt the user experience.

Keep return visitors in mind

On a similar note, keep your biggest fans happy, that’s your return visitors, your repeat customers. You might even want to let them test your new design out and tell you what they think (put in a gift for participating). They will often give you a better understanding of what you do right and what they don’t use at all.

Find and promote key content better

A big part of redesigning a site is to find the important content and pages and promote them to visitors better than they were before. Find the content that people love and promote that to new visitors. Find the great pieces of content that nobody seems to be finding and promote those better too.

Do shine up elements

Some redesigns is just that, the look needs to be a little more modern and you can do that quite easily be making small changes to the site and making 4 very small changes will give the site a completely new feel without making the site hard to understand.