Tips & Tricks

Just when you thought you seen it all, another type of scam to take your hard earned money pops up. In our mailbox this week we found a statement in the mail from the INS! No, not the Immigration and Naturalization Service, but the Internet Name Security! The invoice they sent gives us the impression that a one of our domain names is not safe, and to send $99.95 for their DomainSafe monitoring system. The letter actually states that, "Increasing threat levels from domain theft and domain hijacking mean that it is imperative you monitor the status of your online identity!” Unfortunately for them, we’re not falling for this type of direct mail scam and you shouldn’t either! This type of direct mail marketing scam is aimed at consumers who do not realize that their domain names are in fact already secure with their current domain registrar, and in most cases set as “locked”  by default.

A locked domain protects you from unauthorized third parties who might try to misdirect your name servers or transfer your domain without your permission. Only the domain registrar is able to unlock a domain and modify it’s name servers.

If you received one of these letters, please ignore it! Do NOT complete the payment slip at the bottom or make any payments to this company. The address listed is: P.O. Box 1120 Niagara Falls, NY 14304. Beware!

Last week we deployed another successful Magento ecommerce website. To track the visitors we signed up for a free Google Analytics account, and then plugged their tracking code into the admin section of the Magento administrator area. When we applied the API, the site quickly confirmed that the tracking code was in place through the Google Analytics dashboard.

We then waited 48 hours, and then logged in to see how many visitors hit the site. Turns out that none of the visitors were being tracked! Using the error console within Firefox we reloaded the page, and found the problem instantly. Turns out the Magento coders totally messed up when creating their Google Analytics API. Take a look for yourself, here's the JavaScript they used:

    (function() {
        var ga = document.createElement('script');
        ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
        ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') +
        '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
        (document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0] || 
        document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0]).appendChild(ga);
    })();

    _gaq.push(["_setAccount", "UA-XXXXXXXX-1"]);
    _gaq.push(["_trackPageview", "/"]);

This is how it should read:

var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXXXXX-1']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
(function() {
var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') +
 '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
(document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0] || 
document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0]).appendChild(ga);
})();

As you can see the Magento coders have it all out of order, and forgot the most important line of code that created the “_gaq” object:

var _gaq = _gaq || [];

We can only assume that this API is broken on all Magento builds! To fix this, remove the tracking code from the Magento Google API in the admin area, then use the JavaScript given to you by Google Analytics, and place it in the footer of your website. Whala! Your site is now tracking visitors appropriately with no errors in the error console.

 After installing the new Google toolbar for Firefox we noticed that when opening a new tab the page which was once blank, now displays your web history as tiled web pages for you and everyone to see. The thumb nailed sites will list up to nine, and also shows recently closed and bookmarked pages based on your browser history. For most people this may come in handy, either for instant access to your most visited site, or to spy on whoever used your computer last. As for us here at JVF Consulting, we think the splash page is pretty annoying, the 1 second lag time is too slow for us. So for those of you who also think the toolbar is annoying, here are the correct steps on how to remove it.

1) On the Google Toolbar, right click, and then select “Google Toolbar Options”  or click on the wrench icon and select Options.

2) Under the “Search” tab remove the check next to “Enable the Google new tab page.”

3) Now click “Save” and then restart your browser.

From now on you will no longer have the annoying Google toolbar tab page appear when opening a new tab.

Search Engine Optimization is the focus of every website JVF Consulting deploys to the World Wide Web. When a new website is on our drawing board, the first question our SEO teams asks he designers is, “Where will we put the h1 tags?”. As simple as the question may seem, most often times the h1 tags have been left out, or there is no room left for them on the page. The importance of the header tags are so great, we will continue to build the website until all the pieces fit perfectly.

For those of you who are not familiar with header tags, I’ll do my very best to explain them as simple as possible. Basically heading tags help structure a webpage and highlight the topics within. Header tags are used to emphasize the importance of a certain text within a page. The h1 element is a heading, the topmost out of six you can use. In other words, there are six headings available in HTML. h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 and h6, with h1 having the most importance, and h6 having the least importance. Therefore, if you use h1 tags (the most important header tag) with a keyword, it's like you’re telling to your site visitors and the search engine spiders that the topic is very important. Google and the other major search engines will know a heading tag when they see one, and always treat it as important relevant information.

One problem some developers have with the h1 tag is that it's often too big and unappealing to use. In most browsers the h1 tag is a huge font that can look out of place on a page, unless it is properly formatted. Fortunately, you can get the best of both worlds by using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). By using CSS, you're able to tell the browser to display the h1 tag and other tags on your page to look any way you like. This is the trick that most developers are not completely aware of. If you follow these CSS instructions correctly you can get the best of both worlds, which is a boost in keyword relevance, and better control of your site's look.

Here is an example of what the header tags will look like on a webpage that does not have the CSS hack applied.

To trick your header tags you must locate and edit the style sheet of your website. Once you have located your style sheet edit the file to look like this:

When applied to the web the page the h1 tag will be rendered to look like this.

Give that a try on your web page and alter as needed! Once you have mastered this method be sure to implement it on all the websites you deploy for long lasting SEO.

If you have ever tried posting an ad on craigslist, and was rejected because it was a duplicate, then give this trick a try. This is a simple, but effective strategy I use to get around the craigslist rules.

1. Put together your post.
2. Press the “Print Screen” button.
3. Open paint or photoshop.
4. Paste screen to the canvas.
5. Crop only the copy of your post.
6. Save as .jpg
7. Upload the .jpg to a free image hosting service.
8. Paste the location of your .jpg image between the “quotes”, then copy and paste the code to craigslist.
9. Press “Continue” and publish your duplicate post with no warnings or error messages harassing you!

** This should be only used once a day to prevent spam