As we were using this permalink structure /%category%/%postname%/ on our site, it became sometimes difficult to change the post from one category to another after publishing, because the published url got the category fixed with the url. Also in the case of posts with multiple categories the category name was always chosen in alphabetical order in the url, not as the author’s personal preference. I thought lets change our blog posts to this new structure, then it would be easy to maintain/change the categories.

So I went ahead and changed the permalink, but WordPress itself couldn’t take care of the url redirects in our live site (why I don’t know, because I tested this in localhost too and this worked, may be conflicting with some plugins here) resulting in lots of 404s for our old urls.

If you want to use any of the codes below just replace “/blog/general/” with your /parent-category-name/child-category-name/

Process 1

Simple but time consuming

Save me .htaccess! Tried to add these in the site root’s .htaccess file. But after adding a few, I got tired. Adding so many .htaccess redirects for all these posts individually (like this code below) would be a real trouble and time consuming too.

redirect permanent /blog/general/goodbye-ie6-join-countdown-to-history/ http://eyedealab.com/goodbye-ie6-join-countdown-to-history/

Process 2

With a popular plugin

What else can I do…?? Go for the PLUGIN – A quick “Muskil Asan”!

So I just installed the “Redirection” plugin.
Chose the following options:
a) “Redirect to URL” by matching “URL only”
b) Source URL: /blog/general/(.*)
c) Target URL: /$1
d) Regular expression (regex): [✔] keep it "checked" (This is the important part otherwise the regular expressions placed in source/target won’t work)

I did only one instance for each category, and all our old links redirected to our new links properly for each post, giving me some opportunity to relax for the time being.

But I don’t like installing so many plugins… And just to avoid broken links I now have to keep this plugin always on, made me annoyed.

Process 3

Back to .htaccess in a different way

Now seriously I wanted to convert this whole process to either my theme functions.php with some WordPress rewites etc or the .htaccess, and worked on it for next one or two days, ultimately coming to a satisfactory solution mentioned below.

I had to put this code in the .htaccess file

RewriteRule ^blog/general/(.*) http://domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

or you can put it like this

RewriteRule ^blog/general/(.*) index.\php/$1 [R=301,L]

right after

# BEGIN WordPress

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

Wow this worked! Now I am happy to get rid of the redirection plugin.

Although in the back of my mind I am still finding the reasons why the default WordPress canonical redirect did not work? But that will be another story…

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Now this is the mantra of the Internet-Age. But does this really work, will it help you get the business you are thinking of, and the most important thing, do you really need ‘a website’‘ ?

You may be thinking why I’m thinking this way being a web designer my self. No, we are not quiting from our web deign & development service in any near future, rather we want more & more people to go online with their business. Then why!!!?!

DATA CHECK

Because there are 676,919,707 site responses according to the survey of Netcraft in the April 2012 survey, which is giving a rise of 5.1% since last month (March 2012). That means another 3,26,43,953 website are on air with in a month, which again means almost 10,88,132 websites per day. Out of those websites the Indexed Web contents are at least 778,00,00,000 (7.78 Billion / 778 Crore) pages. Checkout our infographic below.

Where you stand

Now what all these means to your website, that means when you will launch your website it will have to compete with all these billions of websites to make it’s way to your target client/buyers screen. It is hard, but it is not at all impossible. Because just like books, not every website is created to serve every human being on earth, i.e …if you are not thinking of making another Google or Facebook. Everyone goes & surfs internet for his/her specific demands, we always knew what we are looking for on internet when we sit in-front of our computer. For instance right now you may have some specific interest on “website” or “business” or “internet” and that is why you are here reading this. There may be more than 7 Billion pages available on the web, but similarly more than 2 Billion surfers are there to read them. Which means 3.5 pages per reader, is it too much? I don’t think so.

But the thing is who is reading what and how to reach the target surfer for your website, who may be a potential future client/buyer of your product/service!

HOW TO START

Making a business website is no big deal, buy a domain, rent a hosting (or use Free hosting), put your contents and you are ready for your web based business. But the problem is, where to find the buyers, how to find them and the biggest question is, how to identify them?

To understand this, we have to know that, there are 2 types of Business websites for small-to-medium business, if it is not an eCommerce (Point-of-sell) Website…

Type-1: Portfolio/Brochure Website
Type-2: Marketing Website

If you have Type-1 (Portfolio/Brochure Website) in mind, you have to lead visitors directly & manually by yourself, it may be through your Business card, eMail footer link, Direct links, any other print material, whispering, etc., etc.

But if you want to go for the other type that is ‘Marketing Website‘ and want the potential clients/buyers find your website/service online themselves (i.e automatically) and generate leads, then you have to think differently. If you have enough budget you can go for some big promotions or ads and this will surely drive traffic to your website. But if you have a tight budget, then what? No that does not mean that you can’t go for a Marketing website.

But Yes, for this you have to make the website plan more future-proof, technically sound and content wise strong and of-course very user friendly. This way you can even make a strong, efficient and timeless website that derive legitimate traffic to your website with no/less budget for advertising in future along with less maintenance cost. We call it Organic Website.

3 most important thing you have to do for this are, (1) Planning (2) Planning and (3) Planning.

PLANNING

YES! Planning. Because, every website has its unique needs to make it edible for its unique range of visitors, just like Interior designing. An interior style for a Bookstore can’t go for a Jewelry Shop or a Flower Boutique, isn’t it.

Design

So you have to plan it from start for a basic Business Website …

1. first list the Features you want
2. then the create GOAL along with UXD (User Experience Design)
3. now create or manage contents
4. then create Wire-frame on it,
5. then comes the look & feel,
6. and now fix a color palette.

Now you are ready to design your website. Wait! the buck doesn’t stop here, you forgot to put the engine inside the car, the development.

Development

Development is the part which make the website live and running, for that again you have to have a PLAN. I know now you may be thinking that I’m just exaggerating the whole thing.

No I’m not, here (rather at the beginning) you have to think, how do you want to manage your site in future and how the bots or browser will read your website. These things directly influence your web presence and it’s business. So you must plan these issues on the first hand & with extra care.

Marketing & Publicity

After the Development when the site is ready to run, you should ‘Plan’ the marketing & publicity for the website itself. Of-course I’m not talking about paid/ high budget advertisements. If your budget is fixed/none, you can still plan some publicity with the investment of time and innovative thoughts.

There are some more technical areas one can/should look for, when they plan for their website’s optimum success, but these can be managed step-by-step later on if the plan & structure has it already inside. This can even be paused for a small/micro web business, or at-least until its ROI.

If all the Plans are done properly & worked upon them accordingly with legitimate time, one can surely get some good harvest. Check the steps below:

If you think this is too technical for you to do it yourself, hire a professional. But now atleast you know all these technicalities & you can surely make a “check-list” of what you are getting. If you think you are interested, you can HIRE US ! We will love to hear from you about your project.

So once again think, ‘Do you really need a website‘ or ‘You need a website that works‘.

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© Copyright 2004 - 2012 Eyedea Lab. All rights reserved.

Choose your wallpaper to download:

For Desktop Wallpaper : [What's my Screen size?]

1024×768 | 1280×1024 | 1152×864 | 1280×800 | 1366X768

For iPhone Wallpaper :
320×480

For iPad Wallpaper :
1024×1024

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© Copyright 2004 - 2012 Eyedea Lab. All rights reserved.

Choose your wallpaper to download:

For Desktop Wallpaper : [What's my Screen size?]

1024×768 | 1280×1024 | 1152×864 | 1280×800 | 1366X768

For iPhone Wallpaper :
320×480

For iPad Wallpaper :
1024×1024

Like our blog? Why don't you follow us on Twitter
© Copyright 2004 - 2012 Eyedea Lab. All rights reserved.

So just to make your life easier, let’s quickly go through these two ways, and use the procedure that is convenient for you!

Process 1

Long way (layman style)

1. Go to https://www.facebook.com/
2. Login to your account.
3. Visit your “Photos” under Apps
4. Click on “My Albums“
5. Now hover your mouse over “Videos” link as in picture below, you will see in the statusbar of your browser, a link text somehow similar to “https://www.facebook.com/video/?id=123456789″.
6. From this full link copy/write down the “123456789″ portion (your profile ID) which you will find right after the “https://www.facebook.com/video/?id=”.

Process 2

Short way (developer style)

We will use opengraph to find out your facebook profile ID.

1. Go to http://graph.facebook.com/USERNAME
2. Replace “USERNAME” with your Facebook user/profile name.
3. You will get your profile details as shown in the picture below.

The above example is from “Mark Zuckerberg’s” opengraph details (Don’t know Mark Zuckerberg?) with his profile name “zuck“. By visiting: http://graph.facebook.com/zuck , we get ‘4‘ as his facebook profile ID.

So now you got your facebook profile id too!

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© Copyright 2004 - 2012 Eyedea Lab. All rights reserved.