New Look for FaceBook News Feed

 Mark Zuckerberg and his team unveiled some major changes, primarily to the design and functionality of the News Feed. These changes include Rich Stories, which display photos and visual content much more prominently and vividly; Choice of Feeds, giving users more control over the topics of stories they see; and better Mobile Consistency, making your Facebook experience much more seamless across desktop and mobile devices.

Join the waitlist to get the new homepage for the web. What do you think of Facebook’s new News Feed design?

.htaccess snippets to optimize your website

 .htaccess snippets to optimize your website

Apache .htaccess file is at the heart of your web server and control how your website will react to different actions performed by your visitors. I’ve compiled 10+ awesome .htaccess snippets to optimize your website in many ways: Redirections, performances, ease of use… Enjoy!

All of the snippets below have to be pasted into your .htaccess file, which is located on the root of your Apache server.

Warning: Always make sure you have a working backup before editing your .htaccess file!

Force trailing slash

Many clients of mine asked me for always having a trailing slash at the end of their urls. Looks like it’s great for SEO. The following snippet will alwyas add a trailing slash to your site urls.

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
 RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /+[^\.]+$
 RewriteRule ^(.+[^/])$ %{REQUEST_URI}/ [R=301,L]
</IfModule>

Source: http://perishablepress.com/code-snippets/

Prevent Hotlinking

Hotlinking (the act of using images from another site than yours) is unfortunely a common practice which can waste lots of your precious bandwidth. This useful snippets will redirect all hotlinked images to a specific image, defined on line 6.

RewriteEngine On
#Replace ?mysite\.com/ with your blog url
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.+\.)?mysite\.com/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
#Replace /images/nohotlink.jpg with your "don't hotlink" image url
RewriteRule .*\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ /images/nohotlink.jpg [L]

Source: http://www.wprecipes.com/how-to-protect-your…

Redirect mobile devices

If your site is not using responsive web design yet, it could be very useful to be able to redirect mobile device to a mobile-specific version of your website.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/m/.*$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_ACCEPT} "text/vnd.wap.wml|application/vnd.wap.xhtml+xml" [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} "acs|alav|alca|amoi|audi|aste|avan|benq|bird|blac|blaz|brew|cell|cldc|cmd-" [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} "dang|doco|eric|hipt|inno|ipaq|java|jigs|kddi|keji|leno|lg-c|lg-d|lg-g|lge-" [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT}  "maui|maxo|midp|mits|mmef|mobi|mot-|moto|mwbp|nec-|newt|noki|opwv" [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} "palm|pana|pant|pdxg|phil|play|pluc|port|prox|qtek|qwap|sage|sams|sany" [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} "sch-|sec-|send|seri|sgh-|shar|sie-|siem|smal|smar|sony|sph-|symb|t-mo" [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} "teli|tim-|tosh|tsm-|upg1|upsi|vk-v|voda|w3cs|wap-|wapa|wapi" [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} "wapp|wapr|webc|winw|winw|xda|xda-" [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} "up.browser|up.link|windowssce|iemobile|mini|mmp" [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} "symbian|midp|wap|phone|pocket|mobile|pda|psp" [NC]
#------------- The line below excludes the iPad
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^.*iPad.*$
#-------------
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !macintosh [NC] #*SEE NOTE BELOW
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /m/ [L,R=302]

Source: http://snipplr.com/view.php?codeview&id=55114

Force download of a specific filetype

For some reasons you may need to force download of specific files, such as MP3s or XLS. This code snippets will prevent your visitor’s browser to read the file and force downloading instead.

<Files *.xls>
  ForceType application/octet-stream
  Header set Content-Disposition attachment
</Files>
<Files *.eps>
  ForceType application/octet-stream
  Header set Content-Disposition attachment
</Files>

Source: http://snipplr.com/view.php?codeview&id=54752

Cross Domain Font embedding for Firefox

When embedding a font, Firefox do not allow you to embed from an external website. Using the .htaccess snippet below, you can bypass this limitation.

<FilesMatch "\.(ttf|otf|eot|woff)$">
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
    Header set Access-Control-Allow-Origin "http://yourdomain.com"
</IfModule>
</FilesMatch>

Source: http://snipplr.com/view/53703

Speed up your site with .htaccess caching

This is probably the most useful snippet of this whole list. By using some simple .htaccess file cahing, you can dramatically increase your website speed. A snippet you should always have on your toolbox!

# 1 YEAR
<FilesMatch "\.(ico|pdf|flv)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=29030400, public"
</FilesMatch>
# 1 WEEK
<FilesMatch "\.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif|swf)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=604800, public"
</FilesMatch>
# 2 DAYS
<FilesMatch "\.(xml|txt|css|js)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=172800, proxy-revalidate"
</FilesMatch>
# 1 MIN
<FilesMatch "\.(html|htm|php)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=60, private, proxy-revalidate"
</FilesMatch>

Source: http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/speed-up-sites-with-htaccess-caching.html

Stop spam on your WordPress blog

Sick of spammers on your WordPress blog? Of course, Akismet helps a lot, but your .htaccess file can also help: Today’s recipe is a snippet that prevent spam bots to directly access your wp-comments-post.php file, which is used to post comments on your blog.

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} POST
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} .wp-comments-post\.php*
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !.*yourdomainname.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^$
RewriteRule (.*) ^http://%{REMOTE_ADDR}/$ [R=301,L]
</IfModule>

Source: http://www.wprecipes.com/reduce-spam-on-your-wordpress-blog-by-using-htaccess

Redirect different feeds to a single format

Years ago, differents feed formats, such as RSS, Atom or Rdf were used. Nowadays, it seems that RSS is definitely the most used. This snippets allows you to redirect all feeds formats to a single feed. This snippet can be used “as it” on WordPress blogs.

<IfModule mod_alias.c>
 RedirectMatch 301 /feed/(atom|rdf|rss|rss2)/?$ http://example.com/feed/
 RedirectMatch 301 /comments/feed/(atom|rdf|rss|rss2)/?$ http://example.com/comments/feed/
</IfModule>

Source: http://www.wprecipes.com/redirect-feeds-to-a-single-format

Configure your website for HTML5 videos

HTML5 is bringing lots of new exiting options in the world of web development. Among other cool features, being able to play videos without using Flash is really cool. Though, you have to configure your server properly to work with the latest HTML5 video standards. This snippet will definitely help.

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !=/favicon.ico
AddType video/ogg .ogv
AddType video/ogg .ogg
AddType video/mp4 .mp4
AddType video/webm .webm
AddType application/x-shockwave-flash swf

Source: http://snipplr.com/view.php?codeview&id=53437

Log PHP errors

Instead of displaying PHP errors to your site (and to possible hackers…) this code snippet will log it into a .log file while hiding errors to visitors.

# display no errs to user
php_flag display_startup_errors off
php_flag display_errors off
php_flag html_errors off
# log to file
php_flag log_errors on
php_value error_log /location/to/php_error.log

Source: http://css-tricks.com/snippets/htaccess/php-error-logging/

Run PHP inside JavaScript files

When coding in JavaScript, it can very useful to be able to use PHP inside the .js files, for example for retrieving data from your database. Here is a snippet to allow the use of PHP inside .js files.

AddType application/x-httpd-php .js
AddHandler x-httpd-php5 .js

<FilesMatch "\.(js|php)$">
SetHandler application/x-httpd-php
</FilesMatch>

Source: http://www.kavoir.com/2010/07/how-to-execute-run-php-code-inside-javascript-files.html

The Social Media Report 2012 by Nielsen

The Social Media Report 2012 by Nielsen

Social media is coming of age. Since the emergence of the first social media networks some two decades ago, social media has continued to evolve and offer consumers around the world new and meaningful ways to engage with the people, events and brands that matter to them. Now, years later, social media is still growing rapidly, becoming an integral part of our daily lives. Social networking is now truly a global phenomenon.

This report reveals insights such as:

  • What’s driving the continued growth of social media?
  • How is consumer usage of social media evolving?
  • How is social media impacting marketing?
  • Who is using Pinterest?

Download your copy today and learn more about the social media audience.

Facebook Brand Pages of Mobile Industry

Facebook Page not only attracts fans, but is sticky so that fans keep coming back and may even share the content on the Page.

The old Facebook Brand Pages of Mobile Industry of various brands like HTC, Nokia, Blackberry, LG, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson & more…

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Advanced On-Site SEO Tactics Video

On-page optimizing is still a huge part of helping a site rank for primary head terms as well as mid and long tail keyword.

On-page optimization for keywords identified by Searchlight (Conductors SEO Software) as having on-page issues consistently resulted in rankings increases, by an average of 11.24 positions.

Here is the Video which Rand did a great Whiteboard Friday video (shown below) in which he talks about advanced onsite SEO tactics for content creation, and how they correlate with rankings.

http://seomoz-cdn.wistia.com/flash/embed_player_v1.2.swf