About Katz Web Services
Katz Web Services is a web development company operated by Zack Katz.
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Category Archives: Web Development
Yourls Google Analytics Link Tagging
In my last post, I wrote about the benefits of using YOURLS, a self-hosted link-shortening service. I’m finding that YOURLS is great, but it’s not perfect. Some of the issues I have experience are part of what you get using most URL shortener services.
Some of the downsides of using link shorteners are:
- Google Analytics doesn’t always capture the original referrer (and I have no clue how they do the rest of the time!).
- When generating links using the bookmarklet (or in this case, also the Yourls installation), there’s no easy way to add campaign, source, medium, content, and term tags for Google Analytics to track.
- Yourls doesn’t allow query strings on URLs by default, making overriding existing campaign tags difficult/impossible. For example:
http://katz.si/t?utm_source=2300
I’m not the only one who wanted these things, so I’ve created a plugin that adds Google Analytics tracking to Yourls. It’s very cool.
Posted in Plugins, Web Development
Tagged Plugin, Plugin Development, Plugins, URL, URL Shortener, YOURLS, Yourls Plugin
13 Comments
YOURLS URL Shortener
I was having trouble finding the right URL shortening service. My requests for shortening were not too picky. I wanted two simple features:
- Good statistics that are visible only to administrators
- Edit the long URLs after generating shortened links
…but not one service has both features:
- http://sn.im has editable URLs, a bookmarklet, but no stats. Oh, and they kept on deleting my links.
- http://bit.ly has great stats, name recognition, but the links aren’t editable and the stats are public.
- http://goo.gl is the fastest service (so they claim), they have good stats (maybe the best, since they include OS & browser information), but they don’t have editable links or private stats.
Other smaller offerings may have had both features, but they also seem unreliable. I wanted control of my links.
Posted in Domains, Web Development
Tagged Bit.ly, Bitly, Goo.gl, Snurl, URL, URL Shortener, YOURLS
1 Comment
Enable PDF Uploads in CubeCart 4
The CubeCart file and image uploader in the product editor only allows for a small set of file types: jpg, gif, jpeg, png, swf, fla, jpg, gif, jpeg, png, avi, mpg, and mpeg. If you want to upload a PDF in CubeCart, you will have to manually FTP it into the uploads folder, and even then the file browser won’t show you PDFs. If you try to upload PDFs, you’ll get the following alert: “Invalid file type.” Well here’s how to fix that.
Posted in Tutorial, Web Development
Tagged CubeCart, CubeCart 4, CubeCart Upload, Hacks, image uploader
1 Comment
WordPress.org Changes Plugin Page Layout
WordPress.org plugin page layout change likely for usability
What the WordPress.org plugin page used to look like.
A couple of weeks ago, WordPress.org changed the layout of their plugins directory plugin pages. The update was likely to improve usability for users trying to determine whether a plugin is trustworthy and what it does. I believe the re-arranging of the page has achieved those goals.
The update removes author links
The layout redesign removes links to the official plugin page. I believe this makes it more difficult for users trying to get support on plugins.
Removing links also affects plugin authors. One of the ways that plugin authors are “rewarded” for creating plugins used to be a link from the WordPress.org website. This resulted in two things: increased traffic to the author’s website and some passed SEO value from the WordPress website to the author’s website.
I recommend all authors to go back through their readme.txt files and add a link to their support pages.
Posted in Web Development
Tagged Layout, Web Design, WordPress, WordPress Development, WordPress Plugins, WordPress.org
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How to Add www. – or Remove www. – From Your URL
This has been done many times by others, but just a quick tip on how to add or remove www. from your website’s address. This is helpful for URL canonicalization and user experience consistency. You can also achieve SEO-friendly canonicalization using rel="canonical". Oh boy, I’m getting too technical 
Here’s the juicy part:
Add the following to the .htaccess file in your website’s root folder (often named public_html or www). If there’s not a file named .htaccess, you may create it. If you are creating the .htaccess file, set the permissions to 644. For security reasons, you don’t want others to be able to write to this file.
Posted in QuickTip, Web Development
Tagged Canonical, Canonical Tag, domain, Domains, htaccess, SEO Steps, SEO Tutorial, URL, WWW
2 Comments
Save Coding Time by Creating Special-Case Categories in WordPress
When you would use excluded categories:
When using WordPress as more of a content management system (CMS) than a blogging platform, there are many things that you need control over. One of them is special-case categories.
- Frequently asked questions
- Testimonials
- Case studies
- Press releases
When you have a category of posts that you don’t want to have comments, publishing dates, post author, etc., you can define a list of excluded categories. In most cases, you should use Category Templates to achieve this functionality, but that is not always practical or the best option.
Redirect a Website in ColdFusion – Add www. or Move to New Domain
Redirecting a website in ColdFusion (.CFM)
I have been working on a ColdFusion website, and I wanted to find a way to require ‘www.’ in the URL (to consolidate all pages on www. for SEO). I normally work with PHP and Apache servers, so I’m used to .htaccess. I knew there had to be a way.
Here’s a simple method of redirecting a whole website in ColdFusion:
<!-- If the site isn't www... -->
<cfif (CGI.SERVER_NAME NEQ "www.example.com")>
<!-- Save the URL (and $_GET variables too) as the string 'strUrl' -->
<cfset strUrl = CGI.script_name & "?" & CGI.query_string />
<!-- Use 301 for SEO-friendly redirects -->
<cfheader statuscode="301" statustext="Moved permanently">
<!-- Redirect to new website (this case, added www.) with strUrl added on -->
<cfheader name="Location" value="http://www.example.com#strUrl#">
</cfif>
Posted in Tutorial, Web Development
Tagged 301 Redirect, ColdFusion, htaccess, Redirects, SEO Redirect, WWW
1 Comment
How to tell if your WordPress Plugin or Widget is Activated in WordPress
Ever wonder if your widget or plugin is activated on an external site?
Here’s how to find out.
When you register a sidebar widget, you use code like this:
register_sidebar_widget(array('Name of Widget', 'class-of-widget'), 'widget_function');
If you want to check whether the widget is activated (you may want to for a variety of reasons), you can do it like this (the “class-of-widget” value from above will be used in the code below):
Posted in Web Development, WordPress
Tagged Code, Multidimensional Array, PHP, Widget, WordPress, WordPress Development, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Widget
4 Comments
Career-Magic.com Launched
An updated website for a Denver career coach
CAREERMagic came to Katz Web Design to give their website some fresh blood.
When Career-Magic.com was last updated, I was in high school. Yes, it’s true — and I said it. The website not only needed updating visually, but there were a lot of parts of the website that needed to be better integrated with how the business ran. The new Career-Magic.com website launched last night.
Recover your password from Interspire Shopping Cart
I develop my websites locally, so sending Lost Password emails never works. When I forget what my password is, it’s quite the hassle.
I’m developing an Interspire Shopping Cart website, and lo and behold, I lost the password.
Here’s how to recover your password from Interspire Shopping Cart:
Posted in Interspire, Web Development
Tagged eCommerce, Local Dev, Lost Password, osCommerce, Shopping Cart
3 Comments
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