Blogspot META Description Hack

Written on July 3rd, 2006 in Blogging by halfdeck

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Add a variation of the following code underneath <$BlogMetaData$> in your header to enable meta descriptions on your Blogspot blogs.

<MainPage><meta name=”description” content=”<$BlogDescription$>” /></MainPage>
<ArchivePage><meta name=”description” content=”<$BlogPageTitle$> Archive” /></ArchivePage>
<ItemPage><meta name=”description” content=”<Blogger><$BlogItemTitle$></Blogger>” /></ItemPage>

MainPage, ArchivePage, and ItemPage “tags” function as IF statements.

  • MainPage = root url i.e. home page.
  • ArchivePage = Calendar pages, i.e. November 2005.
  • ItemPage = Individual Post pages.

WARNING: Don’t cut and paste, since Wordpress fancifies quotes.

Credits: SEO Meta Tags for Bloggers

Modifying Wordpress INSERT IMAGE Popup Window Size

Written on June 8th, 2006 in Blogging by halfdeck

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After installing Google Notebook and McAfee Site Advisor on Firefox, my insert image popup window shrunk (that’s the little window that pops up when I click the insert image button on the Wordpress 2.0 Admin / Write Post screen with Rich Editor turned on). Since the popup window isn’t resizable, I hacked Wordpress to make the window bigger. The file you want is /wp-includes/js/tinymce/themes/advanced/image.htm. You might also want to modify other files in that directory, like link.htm.

Go to <body onload= line and add this at the end: self.resizeTo(600,400); (Choose whatever dimension you prefer)

Mine looks like this:

<body onload=”tinyMCEPopup.executeOnLoad(’init();’); document.getElementById(’href’).focus(); self.resizeTo(600,400);” style=”display: none”>

Blog URL / Path Advantages of Installing Wordpress in Root?

Written on May 13th, 2006 in Blogging by halfdeck

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Most blogs I know (except Matt Cutts’ blog) are installed on root. But what’s wrong with installing a blog in a subdirectory? Here’s a list of pros and cons, in case you’re like me trying to decide where to install your next blog.

Pros:

  • Easier to run linktrades. It’s slightly easier to link to domain.com than domain.com/blog/.
  • Shorter URLs. As a rule of thumb, prefer shorter URLs to longer ones.
  • Faster indexing. Assuming your blog is on a brand new domain, SEs may crawl deep pages faster if your inside pages are as close as possible to root (domain.com/?p=3 as opposed to domain.com/blog/2005/05/01/pagetitle.html). With enough inbounds, though, directory level shouldn’t matter.
  • Branding. You might have trouble naming your blog if you install several blogs in subdirectories under one domain. For example, I initially named this blog “Adult Blogger”, but the domain name is SEO4FUN, and the guy who owns adultblogger.com would look more legit. I wouldn’t have that problem if I installed this blog, say, on adultxxblogger.com.

Cons:

  • Limits a domain’s function to hosting just one blog. I run two blogs on this domain, plus I have a few other folders where I run SEO tests to keep an eye on algo changes and indexing activity. In other words, installing blogs in subdirectories leaves me room to breathe.

I don’t care about indexing, branding, or linktrades with this blog, so I decided to keep this blog in a subfolder.