Tips and Tricks

Tips and Tricks

Automatically changing a string in any file or directory:

OK...you want to change every occurance of the words red rose in file fun.html to blue ball.
Log into telnet
goto the directory where the file in question resides
use the following command:

red rose

blue ball

Like magic, all occurances will be changed! Now, let's expand this trick into a larger format. Suppose you have a very large website and you have a directory of 200 files and each file needs the same change! Well, you can take a few hours and do it manually, or do it in a few seconds by doing the following:

Log into telnet
goto the directory in question where the files reside
use the following wildcard command:

Poof...the changes are automatically made in every file in that directory. Want to thank us for saving you hours of updating. Send us a gift certificate for a pizza :).

Note well, strings are case sensative. That means upper and lower case matters, so ReD is not equivalent to red or Red, etc, etc. Keep that in mind. Also, you can use other wildcards other than *.*, like blue*.* which would affect every file in a directory that starts with the file name of blue. Also, make sure to make a backup before trying this because the little command is very powerful...so be careful!

Handling regular expressions: The above will only work for normal characters and letters. If you get into anything complex like expressions (such as changing the string (DOMAIN) to DOM, you will need to use perl5 and quote the string in a special way using the \Q device, otherwise the system will ignore the ( and ) characters:

Search Engine Submission Tips:

low cost submission services

Metatags:

Metatags are hidden HTML tags at the top of your webpage code which tell the engines what your website is about. It is absolutely a must that you include them in your website. And its very easy to do.

All webpage documents begin with this code:

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>YOUR WEBSITE'S TITLE</TITLE>

</HEAD>
<BODY>

Right before the </HEAD> tag, insert the following code:

Insert a proper description for your website using approximately two-three sentences. Phrase them like you would if a person's knowledge of your website depended on just these sentences, which sometimes it does! Next, insert at least ten keywords which properly describe your site. Be as specific as possible here. Find your niche. Seperate each of them with a comma and a space. Note that you can use short phrases as well as single words. And lastly, insert your country of origin as shown.

Website Title:

Your website title is EXTREMELY important for website submissions. Without a title your website will not be listed properly. Your title is often what many engines base your listing on. Make sure it appears like a business name would on a sign you see on the main street of your local town. For instance, if you sell pipes, don't put something like THE HOMEPAGE OF PIPES ANONYMOUS, put something specific like PIPES ANOMYMOUS - PIPING SALES AND SERVICE. The more professional and specific you make it the better. Find your niche and go with it and avoid expressions like THE HOMEPAGE or WELCOME, etc. On the main street of your town you don't see signs saying THE WELCOME SIGN OF. As seen below your title goes right after the <HEAD> tag. It begins with <TITLE> and ends with </TITLE>.

All webpage documents begin with this code:

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>YOUR WEBSITE'S TITLE</TITLE>

</HEAD>
<BODY>

Website Content:

The welcome page of your website is what the search engines primarily look at. In fact, most of them look at just the first few lines of code (ie the upper portion of your website) for keywords to list you under. To this end you should put text somewhere at the top of your website, whenever possible, that properly describes your website. If you want to be listed under certain keywords on the search engine make sure they appear on your webpage somewhere. If possible, list keywords shrewdly a few times throughout your page. The more times the engine sees a keyword the better your odds are of a good listing. But don't go overboard, for instance having a word appear on your site 2 or 3 times is good, having it 100 times will get your banned from the engines. Also, note that search engines ignore all images so don't count them.

Also, use the documentation tag to give you an added edge. This is a HTML coding tag which is used by programmers to describe there code and does not appear to the user visiting the website. But fortunately some search engines look at them. It is suggested that whatever you put in your website description in the META tag above you put in the documentation tag. It is also suggested that you place it right after the body tag and double up so the engines know that the information used is important, as shown:

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>YOUR WEBSITE'S TITLE</TITLE>

Submitting your website:

The process of submitted to search engines is extreme to say the least. You can hunt search engines down yourself and submit them, but each have their own requirements and each have their own form. The process can take you days to submit to the major engines and years if you wanted to hit to as many as you should.

Fortunately, WEBster Computing Services offers two low cost solutions. Let us do the work for you. But before you request submission services, make sure to follow the tips above to prepare your welcome webpage appropriately.