Tech Blog

Much headache to get this to work. The following format will allow dynamic url with multiple variables in the query string in a itemtemplate.

<asp:HyperLink ID=”HyperLink1″ runat=”server”
Text=”Link Text”
Target=”_blank”
NavigateUrl=’<%# “~/mypage.aspx?var1=”+ Eval(”Var1″) + “&var2=” + Eval(”var2″)%>’>
</asp:HyperLink>

NOTE: Make sure any literal between <%# and %> uses double quotes NOT single quotes.

Other methods for handling dynamic NavigateUrl

Everybody likes fresh items. We look for fresh food, fresh air, fresh baked good, etc. So why would be go to a website that does not have fresh content? The answer is that we don’t. More importantly Google, Yahoo, and MSN do not like stale content either. They will crawl the website less often. They will rank the website lower or not at all.

Therefore, it is very important to have new content all the time. Some websites are built very beautifully with sharp designs and animation. These sites are great to look at, but generally are not very dynamic in content. These sites are static and stale. In order to have new content for a website, the website owner needs to be able to add new content regularly. A content management system (CMS) is what is needed to facilitate this requirement. CMS software have administrative portal for content providers to add content. Some can even be updated via email such as Wordpress, a blogging software. This type of software allows a writer to type in content as if they were using Microsoft Word and will not need to change any HTML code just to update content.

So, please take a look at your business website and ask yourself if it is fresh or stale and start adding content if you have not recently.

Clients are always trying to determine if they should host their own site in house or using an ISP. While in the past I would definitely suggest using an ISP, it is not so cut and dry as the cost of servers and bandwidth have decreased dramatically. These days, I can build a server that is super fast for around $1,000. Getting a DSL line with static IP addresses cost around $75 per month. It allows for ease of system upgrade and for more advanced integration into business systems through programming. While there is the down side of power backup issues and hardware failures to contend with, it is still a viable option if the website is not a mission critical application.

It has been said many times by many people, but I have to reiterate again how important it is to have a website that loads quickly.  Researches have shown that visitors to a page has the patience to wait only four seconds before hitting the Back or Esc button and off they go.  However, I have encountered so many content rich sights that take well over that before the page is loaded with content I am interested in.  Some sites just do not have anything showing before the page is up, others will have random images appearing and pushed into place as more are loaded, but the content is no where to be seen.

So what can you speed up the load time for your site.  For one thing, if you are using more advanced technology than static HTML files, which most site are in this category these days, you need to make sure the server hosting the site is fast enough.  A lot of sites are running on the cheapest shared web hosting services and as we all know, the cheapest is not always the best.  These services do give you a lot on paper, but with their bogged down servers you will never be able to utilize half the resources they allow for your account.

Now, if your hosting service or your own server is plenty fast with enough bandwidth, then it is time to look closer at the details.  Like I mentioned before, if you are running a static HTML site, these tips will not help you.  But you do have many other problems of how on earth will you update your content or design across the entire website.  That is another post.  But for the majority of us using databases to generate dynamic content, the database is a big culprit in site latency.  Databases need to be optimized for the hardware and the application it is running.  Optimizing a database starts from the design of the schema to the implementation of regular maintenance processes.  Again, there can be books written on how to optimize a database and maybe I will write one someday.

Anyhow, if you are running a site that is slow, don’t just ignore it.  Spend some time to figure out why it is slow and solve the issue.  It would be a shame to lose all those potential visitors to slow load time.

Google has made life easier again for website owners by improving their Google Analytics. The new beta was just released recently and it has a lot of very important information for understanding how people get to the site and navigate through the content. The new features added allow you to target a page on your site to see what keywords, internet ads, or referral site landed the visitor there. Then you can see where the visitors go from there by drilling down through different possible pages and ending on a third page. With this valuable information and another Google tool for optimizing your site page by testing different versions of the same page, you can start to systematically improve your site content to what your visitors are actually looking for while surfing through your pages.

For more information on how to improve your site traffic, contact us.

Just encountered a problem that was painful to deal with while configuring SSL on apache for linux.  The httpd.conf had a tag, , before all the SSL configuration lines.  In order for any commands within and to be loaded on service start, you must use the -D attribute like this.

$ service httpd -D SSL -k start

Also, I found that restart does not always take new changes to my conf files.

$ service httpd -D SSL -k restart

Instead, use the stop then the start command to be sure.

$service httpd -D SSL -k stop
$service httpd -D SSL -k start

That was a source of much pain while working on this particular server.

Configuration:

Linux
Apache 1.3
Mysql 5
PHP 5
Zencart 1.3.5
Chemo Ultimate URL for Zencart 1.3.5

Problem:

After installation, the error message
1054 Unknown column ‘c.parent_id’ in ‘on clause’
shows up on any page in the catalog.

Fix:

Make the following change to /include/classes/seo.url.php
Original:

SELECT c.categories_id as id, c.parent_id, cd.categories_name as cName, cd2.categories_name as pName
FROM “.TABLE_CATEGORIES.” c,
“.TABLE_CATEGORIES_DESCRIPTION.” cd
LEFT JOIN “.TABLE_CATEGORIES_DESCRIPTION.” cd2
ON c.parent_id=cd2.categories_id AND cd2.language_id=’”.(int)$this->languages_id.”‘
WHERE c.categories_id=cd.categories_id
AND cd.language_id=’”.(int)$this->languages_id.”‘”;

Change:

“SELECT c.categories_id as id, c.parent_id, cd.categories_name as cName, cd2.categories_name as pName
FROM
“.TABLE_CATEGORIES_DESCRIPTION.” cd,
“.TABLE_CATEGORIES.” c
LEFT JOIN “.TABLE_CATEGORIES_DESCRIPTION.” cd2
ON c.parent_id=cd2.categories_id AND cd2.language_id=’”.(int)$this->languages_id.”‘
WHERE c.categories_id=cd.categories_id
AND cd.language_id=’”.(int)$this->languages_id.”‘”;

Here is a website that can help if you are wondering how your email was released to the public for spam. This spam tracking site finds out if you sign up for anything online that requires an email address, what is your likely hood of leaking this information out to marketers.

It would be wise to take check out any website on www.spamleak.com before giving away your valuable email information.

This post is to help those who are using Zen Cart and are using new product types with Ultimate SEO URL package installed. There are a couple of things to change in order to make everything work together as it took me a couple of hours to figure out. I hope this will help others save these couple of hours of hair pulling.

Prerequisite:

Zen Cart installed
New product type added
Ultimate SEO URL package installed
Goal:

Have the URLs for the products using the new product type show URLs in this format.

http://www.domain.com/[product name]-p-[product id].html

Changes Required:

NOTE: [handler_name] is the new product type name added.

1. File - seo.url.php
   Original:
   $seo_pages = array(
   FILENAME_DEFAULT,
   FILENAME_PRODUCT_INFO,
   FILENAME_POPUP_IMAGE,
   FILENAME_PRODUCT_REVIEWS,
   FILENAME_PRODUCT_REVIEWS_INFO,
   );Result:
   $seo_pages = array(
   FILENAME_DEFAULT,
   FILENAME_PRODUCT_INFO,
   FILENAME_POPUP_IMAGE,
   FILENAME_PRODUCT_REVIEWS,
   FILENAME_PRODUCT_REVIEWS_INFO,
   FILENAME_[handler name]_INFO
   );
2. File - seo.url.php
   Original:
   $this->reg_anchors = array(
   ‘products_id’ => ‘-p-’,
   ‘cPath’ => ‘-c-’,
   ‘manufacturers_id’ => ‘-m-’,
   ‘pID’ => ‘-pi-’,
   ‘products_id_review’ => ‘-pr-’,
   ‘products_id_review_info’ => ‘-pri-’,Result:
   $this->reg_anchors = array(
   ‘products_id’ => ‘-p-’,
   ‘cPath’ => ‘-c-’,
   ‘manufacturers_id’ => ‘-m-’,
   ‘pID’ => ‘-pi-’,
   ‘products_id_review’ => ‘-pr-’,
   ‘products_id_review_info’ => ‘-pri-’,
   ‘[handler name]_id’ => ‘-pji-’,
   
3. File - seo.url.php -> function parse_parameters
   Find “case ‘products_id’:”
   Within this case statement, add the following.case ($page == FILENAME_[handler name]_INFO):
   $url = $this->make_url($page, $this->get_product_name($p2[1]), ‘[handler_name]_id’, $p2[1], ‘.html’, $separator);
   break;
4. File - [webroot]/includes/filenames.php
   Add the following definition.define(’FILENAME_[handler name]_INFO’, ‘[handler name]_info’);
5. File - [webroot]/.htaccess
   Add the following rewrite rule.RewriteRule ^(.*)-pji-(.*).html$ index\.php?main_page=[ handler_name]_info&products_id=$2&%{QUERY_STRING} [L]

Strangely, invoking the PHP SMTP mail() function after outputting any HTML within a PHP page will cause Firefox to intepret the PHP command twice, thereby sending out 2 duplicate emails. This was happening using PHP5, FF1.5, and Windows IIS6. The issue is fixed by simply placing the mail() command as the first part of any script, before any headers or output are called. I cannot ascertain yet why this is occurring. Any ideas, anyone?