Category: Internet Authors, Experts, Investors

Migrated content from internetauthors.lc.lndo.site

Robots.txt Tips
Each web site you write should have a robots.txt file in the main folder, to suggest to search engines which folders you want them to not scan or index.

You can make this file in any text editor (but not a word processor, must be plain text).

Comments start with #, so the first line is for your information, specifying which web site this is for. Comments can be after any directive.

The Sitemap line (can be anywhere in the file, but I put it at top) is a way to tell search engines the full URL where your site map is.

The “User-agent: *” line says “for all User Agents, this is for you” (The User-agent normally would be browser type, e.g. Firefox or Chrome or IE, but search engines also tell web servers some User Agent.)
```
# robots.txt for yoursite.com
Sitemap: http://www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml

User-agent: *    # all search engines should ignore the folders Disallowed below

# Maybe have one folder for site images that shouldn't be indexed
# another for photographs you want indexed by search engines
Disallow: /images/
Allow: /photos/

# Here are more examples, use the folders that apply to your site:
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /freecontactform/
Disallow: /junk/
Disallow: /newsfeeds/
Disallow: /oldboring/
```
You can exclude individual files this way (but probably simpler for you to put files into a separate directory):
```
Disallow: /test/junk.html
```
If you have WordPress on your site, include these lines:
```
# WordPress
Disallow: /wp-admin
Disallow: /wp-includes
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins
Disallow: /wp-content/cache
Disallow: /wp-content/themes
Disallow: /category/*/*
Disallow: /comments
Disallow: */comments
Disallow: /feed
Disallow: */feed
Disallow: /manager
Disallow: /trackback
Disallow: */trackback
Allow: /wp-content/uploads
```
You can say a specific search engine has different permissions, if you want. (I don’t, all are commented out in the example below)
Don’t use Allow: /*
(I actually saw this on some dumb robots.txt teaching site!) Google correctly reads the Allow: /* as overriding the folders for ‘any search’ (see that line above, User-Agent: *), “Ah, everybody but Me shouldn’t read /youtubevideosite/ etc.” and then reports hundreds of errors from your YouTube, Amazon etc. site widgets having bad links that it can’t find on your site. (Of course not, those links are on YouTube or Amazon or the comment writer’s own site.)
```
User-agent: Googlebot
# Disallow:
# Allow: /images/

# Google Images
User-agent: Googlebot-Image
# Disallow:
# Allow: /images/

# Google AdSense
User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*
# Disallow:
# Allow: /ads/

# digg mirror
User-agent: duggmirror
Disallow: /
```
See Google’s test page, to make sure Google is reading your robots.txt the way you expect: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ and under Crawl click on Blocked URLs:

Robots.txt does not provide Any security. Use .htaccess for that. Robots.txt is a suggestion for good search bots, e.g. Google or Bing, to not bother indexing files. Do NOT mention private areas in robots.txt, you just told bad search bots to go looking there! Don’t bother filling your robots.txt with lines like this, since bad bots don’t even read your robots.txt
```
User-agent: Flaming AttackBot   # waste of time, bad bots ignore it
Disallow: /
```
There is no way to specify, in robots.txt, to not index “everything except” a single file, there is no use of ‘wild cards’ in file names. Best is put the files you prefer search engines ignore in separate directories.

There is a way to specify inside an HTML page that search engines shouldn’t bother indexing it. However, this is only seen once the search engine has loaded the page (robots.txt is generally read by search engines before loading any pages in that folder). Simply put a “noindex” meta tag in the <head> section of the page: <meta name="robots" content="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW, NOARCHIVE" />. I use this on the “thank you” page after a form was submitted, and on my site error pages.

Also see http://perishablepress.com/robots-notes-plus/.

Here is my robots.txt in one piece:
```
# robots.txt for lernerconsult.com
Sitemap: http://www.lernerconsult.com/sitemap.xml

User-agent: *
Disallow: /htm/
Disallow: /lists/
Disallow: /sitespecific/
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /cgi-bin/apf4/
Disallow: /ddtabmenufiles/
Disallow: /feedforall/
Disallow: /newsfeeds/
Disallow: /utils/
Disallow: /shared/
Disallow: /shared/youtubevideosite/
Disallow: /socialbookmarkscript/
Disallow: /styles/
Disallow: /youtubevideosite/

# WordPress
Disallow: /wp-admin
Disallow: /wp-includes
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins
Disallow: /wp-content/cache
Disallow: /wp-content/themes
Disallow: /category/*/*
Disallow: /comments
Disallow: */comments
Disallow: /feed
Disallow: */feed
Disallow: /manager
Disallow: /trackback
Disallow: */trackback
Allow: /wp-content/uploads

# See test page https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ then under Crawl click on Blocked URLs

User-agent: Googlebot
# Disallow:
# Allow: /googlefolder/

# Google Image
User-agent: Googlebot-Image
# Disallow:
# Allow: /googlefolder/

# Google AdSense
User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*
# Disallow:
# Allow: /googlefolder/

# digg mirror
User-agent: duggmirror
Disallow: /
```
August 25, 2013
Screenshots on Windows, OS/X, iPhone, iPad, Android

Windows:

On Windows, you can take a screenshot of the currently active window by pressing Alt-PrntScrn (aka Alt-PrintScreen, hold down the Alt key, press PrntScrn, release both) and the screenshot is put in the Clipboard, open up any image program (I like IrfanView best, get it on http://download.cnet.com) or even Word or WordPad, press Ctrl-V to paste. To get the entire desktop (everything showing on screen) press PrntScrn instead of Alt-PrntScrn.

To capture menus, including right-click menus, it is usually easier to grab the entire screen (press PrtnScrn) and then crop the captured image.

OS/X:

On OS/X there are several keystrokes, to get different portions of the screen. The keystrokes put the screenshot into a PNG file on your desktop (PDF in Mac OS 10.3 and earlier). If you want it put in your clipboard instead, add holding down the Ctrl key also, e.g. Command-Control-Shift-3. (Note: http://www.osxkeyboardshortcuts.com/keyboard-symbols.html has a chart of keyboard symbols and the easy-to-type names used in documentation.)

Entire Desktop: Command-Shift-3
A portion of the Desktop: Command-Shift-4, position the mouse at one corner of what you want to capture, click-drag to the opposite corner, when you release the mouse button the area will be captured.
A specific application window: Command-Shift-4, space, move the mouse pointer over the application window you want captured, click the mouse.
To include the mouse pointer or a menu in your screen shot: use the Grab utility by selecting Dock > Utilities > Grab. Set the Grab Preferences to use the cursor icon you wish to have in your screenshot.

iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch

Press and hold the menu button (the main button below the screen), press the power/lock button (the switch on the top edge of the device). The screen will flash white and make a camera shutter noise, to indicate the shot has been taken. Release both buttons (holding too long will give the power-down confirmation). The screenshot is saved in the default Photos app in the “Saved Photos” or (depending on your device) “Camera Roll” album. Email the photo by clicking the Menu icon (rectangle with arrow coming out of it, bottom left corner of screen). Or, click the Menu button from an index page to select multiple pictures to email.

Android

Different devices use different buttons, most use one of these button combinations: Power + Home, or Power + Volume Down. Open the Gallery application, the file is in the Screenshots album. In Android 4.2 and later, your screenshot will appear in your notication bar, to open it in Gallery or to Share it.
There are apps for screenshots, make sure an app specifically supports your device. Generally they give you more control over your screen shot than the built-in screenshot function.
You can connect your Android device to your computer, take the screenshot with your computer, see http://www.wikihow.com/Take-a-Screenshot-of-an-Android-Device-%28from-a-Computer%29

July 5, 2013
Should You Use WordPress as Single- or Multi-Site?

I recommend Everyone with a business install WordPress in Multi-Site mode.

You might think you only need one blog. You definitely should focus on a single business at a time, and I bet you will find good ways to use multiple WordPress sites.

If you are a good writer, each book you write would have a blog specific to the book, and the questions people have about the book, and how they’ve used what they learned.

Or you could market to different groups of your customers. Let’s say you have a course or coaching for single parents. Maybe marketing separately to single moms and single dads would be more effective, or maybe some things you offer would be best marketed to both. The only way to know is to Test, find out what actually works better. The best marketers know that what they think will work is rarely what actually works; they write ads and sales letters that use their knowledge of what makes a good ad, write many of them that each could work well, and let the people tell them which ads are best by responding to the ads.

Place the same marketing letter on all relevant blogs and place ads that alternate sending people to each of the blogs (e.g. sending an ad for women to the “single parent” site and the “single mom” site). (That is called “split testing”, one ad sends people to page A, ad with “something different”, perhaps a different headline or slightly different offer, sends people to page B; track which page gets more viewers, more sales, more money per sale, or more repeat customers.)

Another reason for having multiple blogs is multiple groups of people might be interested in the same workshop or coaching or products, if you speak specifically to them. Maybe slightly different age groups, or education levels, or income levels, respond to slightly different offers. Maybe people who are brand new to what you teach want a different style of marketing than people who have learned some about it already.

If you have specialty items, but your customers sometimes come to you to solve their more “commodity” problems, (and if it would be minimal work for you to have basically another business) you could offer that. Lets say you supply specialty cakes to restaurants, but the restaurants sometimes get requests for banquet food, larger orders than you could handle, and less expensive cakes than you provide. You know of another company that you could recommend. Instead of just passing the customer to the other company, you could have a separate blog to promote the products or services you don’t take care of directly, you are an affiliate or receive a referral bonus from a business that takes care of those requests. Having the separate blog lets you keep each blog focused only on the one customer, always better than trying to take care of everyone. Put a small ad on each blog, mentioning the other; customers who find one can pick which “company” is a better match for what they need.

The installation for WordPress Multi-Site is detailed, but you would only do it once. The first benefit of WordPress Multi-Site is you would only ever install WordPress that single time; no installing the WordPress program, plugins, themes multiple times; no configuring each of those multiple times. That saves a lot of administrative work. I can install WordPress for you from scratch, or convert a single WordPress installation to WordPress Multi-Site. (Migrating multiple single WordPress installations into one WordPress Multi-Site installation, each blog looking exactly like it did, is also possible, more complex, yet I can do it for you too, very few people know how.)

June 22, 2013
WordPress missing Post Editor (and other Ajax features)

My WordPress installation was not showing the Post Editor. Basically instead of an editor, I had a box that I couldn’t type in.

I also noticed widgets that had drag and drop configurations, where I couldn’t do any dragging. On the “Add New Post” page, the “Add New Category” popup wouldn’t work. The Permalink “Edit” button doesn’t work.

Okay, something with my WordPress installation wasn’t running jQuery or Ajax properly.

There is a WordPress plugin that lets visitors to your site load Google’s cached version of jQuery, instead of loading it from your site. Faster for them (since it is probably in their browser cache already). Just install the Use Google Libraries plugin.

There is a page on why you should let Google host jQuery for you, http://encosia.com/3-reasons-why-you-should-let-google-host-jquery-for-you/

I have WordPress Multi-Site installed, so I went to the My Sites, Network Admin, Sites page, and from there to Plugins, Add New. I turned on the plugin for all sites (“Network Enable” ), and my editor and Ajax features (used a lot throughout WordPress) work now.

I also copied jQuery and TinyMCE from a fresh download of WordPress to my site. They are in your wordpresswp-includesjs folder, and go to the corresponding folder on your site. I used FileZilla’s Upload “if different size or source newer” option. (If that doesn’t fix the problem, try copying the entire folder, overwriting all files.)

The Post Editor is working, both Visual and Text modes. The “Add New Category” link doesn’t work yet. The Permalink “Edit” button is not working yet.

January 13, 2013
Migrate All Your WordPress Blogs into Multi-Site and You’ll Save Lots of Time!

Unlike most “solutions”, I bring over all your settings, configurations, customizations. Your blogs will look Exactly like before, and you’ll have much less administrative work.

If you are considering using WordPress Multi-Site, you probably have some blogs already. In fact, you probably have some blogs with a Lot of posts.

(If you’re just starting, WordPress Multi-Site is still good, it makes having more than one blog much easier.)

Each blog most likely has a few widgets, and probably some settings on each post and page. Maybe you specified what image should be featured on the post. If you are marketing at all, you should have a custom search engine description and keywords for each post. Maybe you selected some Amazon books that go well with this page. Your sign-up form. Your latest Facebook or Twitter posts.

When you want to bring blogs from WordPress (single site) into Multi-Site, you find there are tools to help with that. “Great, this will be easy”, you think. Then you find that only the text of your posts and pages and comments are migrated. (Unlike if you have me migrate your blog!) (more…)

November 16, 2012