How to check if you have GD. Simply make a PHP info page and look for a section named gd. If you do not see one in your info page, open your php.ini file (likely in your Program Files\PHP\ folder) and look for ;extension=php_gd2.dll. Remove the semicolon and save the file. Check your EXT folder to be sure you have the dll located there. Make sure you only have one copy of the dll and in only one location. The contents of your info page should tell you where the extension should live.

After saving the php.ini reload your php info page. Still don’t see it? Navigate to your IIS Manager and refresh your default application pool. Open IIS Manager->Server->Application Pools->DefaultAppPool – Right Click->Refresh. Now reload your info page and you should see gd included in the output.

Prior to starting the install make sure the assets/cache/ Folder for the site has IUSR_MACHINE permissions or you will get errors like “failed to open stream permission denied” for siteCache.idx.php and the install will fail.

Make sure you enable mbstring (extension=php_mbstring.dll) in your PHP.ini or you will get an error from Ajax Search of call to undefined function, e.g. “Fatal error: Call to undefined function mb_strlen() in C:/directory/assets/snippets/ajaxSearch/classes/ajaxSearch.class.inc.php on line 1090″. After you make the change, restart IIS and look for mbstring in the output of your PHP info page.

Following is another Ajax Search issue that I have not resolved yet. When you go to a page in the search results, you get:

« MODx Parse Error »MODx encountered the following error while attempting to parse the requested resource:

« PHP Parse Error »

PHP error debug

Error:     preg_replace() [function.preg-replace]: Compilation failed: lookbehind assertion is not fixed length at offset 11

Error type/ Nr.:     Warning - 2

File:     C:\location\manager\includes\document.parser.class.inc.php(746) : eval()’d code

Line:     120

This is repeatable on my CentOS box and now my windows box too. The issue on CentOS is PHP was compiled against a buggy version of PCRE- but- the version used in that web server is held hostage by Parallels and their poorly supported control panel Plesk, which is not upgradable and is not planned to be upgraded for some time yet. On the windows box, updating PHP is a little easier. My info.php shows PHP is compiled with PCRE Library Version 6.6 06-Feb-2006. So the issue is not with Modx or the Ajax Search- it is with the PCRE Library. This should be resolved on windows by upgrading PHP. On the Unix box, I did a workaround and simply turn off the ajax search results highlighting.

Here’s how to add it to your Modx site:

1. Login to your manager interface Go to Elements->Manage Elements->Snippets->New Snippet.
2. Give your new snippet a name of “tweetthis” and copy and paste the text of the snippet file into the snippet code form- don’t forget to keep the PHP open and close tags, choose a category under “Properties” and tick off the “Lock snippet” box
3. Save your snippet
4. Open your desired template (e.g blog or default) and add a call to the snippet with your optional parameters.

   &name=`@Shopping_CartIt` Optionally use your Twitter ID by prefixing your ID with an @.

   &text=`Tweet This!` Optional label Text for the link. “Tweet This!” is the default text.

   &id=`5` Optional Document ID. If not specified it defaults to the current document.

5. Example Snippet Call: [!tweetthis?&name=`Shopping_CartIt`!] Save your template.
6. If desired, edit your CSS to style the link.
7. Test your page, apply to additional templates.

Here is a site with the TweetThis snippet installed- try it out. If you’re not using ModX, check it out. I’ve built a dozen sites with it over the last few years and it is a powerful platform for SEO and content management.

An easier way to do this is to create a Template Variable for the keywords and add it to the default template for the site. You can apply a default list to all pages and then manually edit each page to fine tune your keywords and descriptions.

Keywords first:

As site admin on the Modx manager interface you should first create a Template Variable (TV) called keywords, caption of Meta Keywords, default text of “type your keywords for the page here”, input type “text“, Input Option Values blank, Default Value; enter a list of your site-wide default keywords separated by commas. E.G. “Web Servers, Web Hosting, Dedicated Servers” etc. Tick off “Lock the template variable” leave Widget and Sort Order blank, Tick off your templates to use the TV, choose a Category E.G. Modx Default Templates and save it.

Now go to your template and add the following

<meta name=”keywords” content=”[*keywords*]” />

Save the template, clear the site cache and view your page. All the pages using this template should have the default keywords now. If you pull up an individual page and edit in the manager interface, you should see the keyword list which you can customize for each page. If you already added keywords to your pages- don’t forget to deselect them and save the page for each page you have applied them to. You don’t want to have keywords added twice.

Now add the Description Meta data-

Adding Meta description is even easier- just add:

<meta name=”description” content=”[*description*]“/>

to your Modx template; if you entered a description into the description field when creating your document, you should see this in the HTML source for the pages of your web site.

BASE HREF tag

Don’t forget to add a BASE HREF tag to your site so that all links are built relative to your site root, regardless of how the site is called. This can be helpful if you have another domain as an alias for your site.

<base href=”http://www.domain.com/”></base>

Replace www.domain.com/ with your site root URL.

301 Redirect

You should use a 301 redirect for sites that might be viewed using the domain name (domain.com without www) rather than the host (www, etc) name. How to do this varies depending on your web server. Here is an article I wrote on both 301 redirects and BASE HREF.

Quantcast can help you determine popularity of a site, demographics of visitors, and also tip you to what other sites visitors of your target site also visit. It can also help you as a site owner to learn your reach better. You may be disappointed to find what your reach really is- but that does not mean you don’t have an effective site. You can still have small reach while dominating for your chosen keywords. www.quantcast.com

Here is a favorite of mine. It is rather tedious to download the root zone files from each registry and run them through a database. If you really want to know what your competition is doing, a subscription to www.domaintools.com and their name server spy feature can help you find out. You can get an alert each time your competitor registers a new domain to their name server, or filter on the email address they use for domains. This is all publicly available data- no espionage going on here, just good old hard research not easily accessed unless you dig through 30 GB of data daily. There are also dozens of other tools on this site; many are free. The name suggestion tool is helpful in finding new related domains.

This one can help you improve your conversions. There have been studies showing eye patterns on web pages typically form the letter “F”- I’ve seen it on my own pages. Try using the heat map and you’ll see. It is amazing how tiny tweaks can improve your conversion rates. One tip I learned- keep your action items “above the fold” as they (used) to say in the newspaper business. www.crazyegg.com

Naturally there are more tools I use- remember: “The first rule of success in business is: never tell everything you know. The second rule is:” If you’d like to learn more about improving the performance of your web sites, head over to avatava.com and contact me. I have been working at this web site stuff since 1994. And so you know; I am not affiliated with any of the above companies other than as a user of their services.

I have a few associates who have a regular need to do whois queries. Many of them go to popular registrars’ websites to look up domains- they are amazed at how quickly I can get to the information they’re searching for. The websites take too much time in my opinion. Whois is a default command line utility in Unix-like OSes, but not on Windows. I’ll show you how to add it to your Win box without being too geeky.

1. Get Cygwin- www.cygwin.org – Cygwin is a suite of command line utilities for windows- without Cygwin I feel like a carpenter without anything but a hammer. Download and run the setup.exe
2. Accept all the defaults, choosing a mirror which seems to be near you. When you get to the “select packages” screen, maximize the box and expand the “Net” section, scroll down to “whois: GNU whois” and click the item in the “New” column- you should see the package version instead of “Skip”. Click “Next” and when the install is done, open a shell under Cygwin.
3. When in your shell, simply type: whois domain.com and press enter. You should see a response from the server in a few seconds.

Enjoy- you now have many more tools available to you- just like a power user!

OK Guys, I got the dreaded 502 error on my Gmail account today- funny thing though, my Firefox app still kept delivering screen pops- so I knew all of Gmail was not down. I logged into a server that was 150 miles from my home location and what do you know? Gmail worked from there! So, it appears my home connection kept going out to a dead server. Solution? Simply run ipconfig /flushdns from a command prompt- worked for me! BTW, if you are running Vista, don’t forget to right click on the command prompt icon and choose “Run as Administrator” or you’ll get a message about elevated privileges required. Hope this helps. Later, Bill Laakkonen

The only downside I’ve found is the Wordtracker feature requires a separate subscription, as does the web page critic feature. In reality, this is good because the targets are always changing, and people can’t be expected to work for free. You can get a free trial version of the WebPosition Pro 4 here- nothing to lose, and I’ll bet you’ll learn something new about SEO.