Da Blogmother

Which search engine has the deepest cache?

If you have a computer or server catastrophe, it might be necessary to rebuild your blog or website.  If, for some reason, your backup files are also damaged or disappeared, it might be necessary to find another way to restore your previous pages and/or posts.

The major search engines all have a "cache", that is a temporarily stored copy, of all sites they have crawled. 

If no other backup is available, you can rebuild at least some posts and pages of a broken blog or web site by copying and pasting from a search engine's cache.  And if you ever need to rebuild a blog or web site that way, you will want to know which search engine has stored the most posts and pages.

In my testing, it was Yahoo!

Try this test for yourself: 

Go to Yahoo!.  In the search box type:    site:mysite.com

Note:  No space between the colon and the site name.  Also try with and without www.  To retrieve the cached page, click on the word cache.

Now try some other search engines:

Go to Bing.  In the search box type:    site:mysite.com   

Go to Gigablast.  In the search box type:  site:mysite.com

Go to Google.  In the search box type:   site:mysite.com

Please don't think this bit of information is an excuse to stop backing up your blogs or websites.  But in the event of disaster, it can help get you up and running again.

Use Google Reader as part of your Backup system

Over the last couple weeks, a few friends have suffered various computer crashes and data losses.

The following tip originated with a comment by Brad Coy on a Bloodhound Blog post:

Use Google Reader as part of a back up system for your blog!  (Any RSS reader will do, of course, but Google is handy and easy to use.)

Open up Google Reader. 

Create a new subscription to your own blog.

That's it you're done.  Set it aside and forget about it.

But if you ever have a computer crash, or lose your previous blog posts in any other way, just open up Google Reader, and there they are.

Using a backup program or the WordPress export function makes for easier automatic recovery of lost posts, of course.  But the RSS feed can prove to be a great safety net when you discover your backup barfed along with your harddrive.

Making Room Outside the Box: Add Padding with Image Transparency

Have you ever worked on a custom banner for a WordPress blog, and no matter how you tweak the padding and margin settings in the stylesheet, it just won't position properly?  Or it positions properly in Internet Explorer, but not in Firefox, or vice-versa.

Here's helpful trick:  Add the padding with a transparent image.  And Better yet:  Just make that transparency part of the banner image.

Here's how, in Photoshop:

Open your original banner image.  To view the image size, click Image -> Image Size, and make note of the Width and Height Pixel Dimensions.  After you note the dimensions, click cancel.

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Next, create a new, blank image with a transparent background:  File -> New   Making sure to check the selection box for Transparent.  Change the Width and Height dimensions to numbers slightly larger than those of your original banner image.

Click back in the original image, to make it the active window.  Click Select -> All

Click the Move Tool

Drag the original image into the new blank file.  Position it so the amount of padding you want shows around all the sides of the image.

Save for Web in .PNG format to preserve the transparency.  Upload to the blog.

Presto!  Instant padding!  Works in all browsers.  :-)

Give Them A Portal

I'd thought I'd pass along this idea, in case anyone else finds it useful over the holiday season.

Every now and then there are some big events in people's lives .... weddings, graduations, new babies, anniversaries, reunions, whatever.  And in this digital age, lots of different people take photos or videos of that same event and post the videos on YouTube, and upload the photos to Flickr galleries, Shutterfly galleries, Kodak galleries, and dozens of other places.

To "Give Them A Portal"  all you need to do is create of web page of links to all the various photo galleries and videos that various friends and family members have created.

Making the web page of links can be easily done with a basic TypePad blog, or a free Wordpress.com blog.... you don't need to know any coding to use one of the predesigned templates.  And for a few dollars you can register a domain name and map it to the portal blog.

Bob's second oldest son, Danny, got married recently.  Here's what I started for Danny -- it was built in TypePad using custom (not advanced) templates:

http://www.dannyandnormawedding.com/

(I still need to finish rounding up everyone's galleries.  That's the hardest part <s>).

If you look at the site, please keep in mind, these are photos of ordinary people, not celebs.  Nobody in the shots (me included) looks like a celeb.  Except of course, Norma, who is a radiant bride.

Nerd Queen

Thanks to Bob Carney, I can now state that I am a Nerd Queen

More About RSS-to-Javascript

Bill Gillhespy Fort Myers Beach Realtor asked about the how and why of the RSS-to-Javascript tool

RSS-to-Javascript-Converter

I'll try to create an example using our old friends at El-Mar Estates:

Let's say you have a standard, static web site.  It has some great information, but it doesn't change with current news.

Here a link to the live site http://cheryljns.typepad.com/elma/ (Yes, I'm really crazy enough to have published it).

OK.  Let's say you also have a blog.  The blog constantly features new, current information.  You'd like to be able to display the same new current information on your web site without a lot of extra work.

So... You just paste the RSS-to-Javacript code into your web site, then every time you add something to the blog, a link to that new post will appear on your web site ... Like this

Here's the live link:  http://cheryljns.typepad.com/elma/el-mar-estates-yes-really.html

The blog feed is now intregrated into the web site.  Each time you publish a new blog post, the link to that new post will appear at the top of the list, and the oldest item will scroll off of the bottom of the list.

The RSS Feed showing here is from http://www.dablogmother.com/

RSS-TO-JAVASCRIPT

The other day, Justin posted a link to this super-great little tool:  The RSS-to-Javascript-Converter

If you missed it, go right now and try it out!

If you are not quite sure what it is and what it does ,,,, let me give another example.  Several Active Rain members have made Squidoo Lens

You know how one of the Squidoo modules is an option to insert an RSS feed into your Squidoo page ... like this

And when you add that module, links to your most recent blog posts will automatically show up on your Squidoo lens ... like this .....

Well, with that little RSS-TO-JAVACRIPT tool, you can add that same kind of feed "module" to any web page or blog page.

Just grab the URL or your blog's feed, for an Active Rain blog, just click on the clicklet near the bottom of the right column

For example, the URL for my Active Rain blog feed is http://activerain.com/blogs/cheryljns/rss

Enter the URL is the top box of the converter

Check the settings -- I went with 8 items in the list, no descriptions

Click Generate Javascript, and the convertor will create a little snippet of code that you can copy and paste into a web page.

Like this ....

This is so cool!  Thank you again, Justin!

Don't Know Much About ... Duplicate Content

As most readers now know, I am backing-up, archiving, mirroring (choose your favorite word) the tutorial posts I created here on AR, by posting a duplicate copy of each post on http://www.dablogmother.com/

So the big question becomes ... "What About Duplicate Content Penalties?"

Here are the results of my research so far....

Mary McKnight wrote an excellent post on RSS pieces in June addressing the exact question of an agent posting the same content on their personal blog as they posted in AR.  Long time members will recognize Mary, AKA REBLOGGIRL, she was a frequent contributor here on AR in earlier times, and she is a recognized voice in the RE blogosphere. 

Mary's position is "No problem".  She makes the point that a personal blog platform and the AR platform are coded completely differently; that the comment string on each post will be different; and that widgets and other items on the page will be different; and that therefore, the content will appear differently to the search bot.

Here is Matt Heaton on the subject, back in February

Here is Brad Carroll in June 2007

Here is the official Google Webmaster statement

Here is an interesting discussion in a web forum

If you Google the terms "syndicate content duplicate content penalty"  this article will show up on Page One, near the top.  In fact it will show up a dozen times or more, in different syndicated versions, throughout Google Page One, Page Two and Page Three.   Take a look .... here are just a few instances of the same article:

http://www.searchengineguide.com/dunn/2007/0209_rd1.htm

http://www.isedb.com/db/articles/1601/1/-Does-Article-Syndication-Amount-to-a-Duplicate-Content-Penalty-/Page1.html

http://news.stepforth.com/2007-news/seo-answers-14.shtml

http://www.webpronewscanada.com/webpronewscanada-35-20070213DoesSyndicationAmounttoaDuplicateContentPenalty.html

That I think is my best, final answer.

P.S. Ardell!  The ocean is empty! I completed the job of copying each post!  (Ardell previously commented that she felt like she was watching me empty the ocean with a teacup.)     But I can't put away the teacup just yet.  Next step is to a add a link at the end of every AR post back to its twin on Mother.