Marching Ants - CSS

I just saw a really cool way to do the marching ants.. Check this out:

http://sunpig.com/martin/archives/2010/02/10/marching-ants-in-css.html

Thought I would pass this along... too cool.

I am always looking for better ways of doing things, and I liked how he used CSS and animated gifs to get the affect...

similar one (though I like the first one better):
http://www.serafinistudios.com/blog/archives/2003/10/29/how-to-add-marching-ants-photoshop-selection-style-to-your-links/

I even integrated this into my CMS - so when people hover over a wigit - they can easily see what sections they can edit.

I had to share

Google Products - SEO

I have been working on the SEO for one of my clients - and have had a lot of success working on the SEO for his Google Products listing also... It is surprising how this can grab a little-tapped market.

I simply have a RSS feed of my products in a manner requested by Google, and submit the feed to Google Products database. The feed is dynamic - and changes whenever products change using ASP.Net

However, lately I have enhanced it a bit with better success. I still use the page meta-description for the Google product description, but I use a special field for the Google Product name, so we can tailor it for Google Product searches.

Normally I found it to be best practice to include a good product name (with relevant keywords), followed by the package/product size or weight in parenthesis. The product name should include the keywords AND be user-friendly to read. The description should include keywords AND be a good sales pitch.

.htaccess file 301 redirect - to avoid duplicate content

Ya - I'm an ASP.net programmer, but every now and then I do a bit of php or other maitenance..

The other day I had to update a website for SEO. I noticed that this guy had two domains pointed to the same website... and that you can crawl them exactly the same.

Unfortunately, this gets a duplicate content penalty so I had to update the .htaccess file to correct this and do 301 redirects. Here are the lines of code needed to do this if you ever need it:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^^(www\.)?dontneedthis\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.spiderweblogic.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Of course - change spiderweblogic to your website...

TIP: don't kill any existing .htaccess file. Just append this code towards the top. (You may not see it if you use a ftp program.)

Pinging Blogs

For best results after posting blogs...ping them. That way blog search sites know you have updated content.

Here are some free services that ping blogs on request:

http://www.feedping.com/
http://pingomatic.com/

If you roll-your-own blog, you may want to use pingomatic.com - since they are easy to integrate as a back-end service.

301 redirect windows server - for HTML pages

I was working on moving a website over... The old site was html only - the new one is ASP.net. The puzzle was how to get the 301 redirects set up on a windows box? I have done it in code-behind... if it is an ASP.Net page... and with classic "asp" pages.

HERE is what I found
IIS Redirect
In internet services manager, right click on the file or folder you wish to redirect
Select the radio titled "a redirection to a URL".
Enter the redirection page
Check "The exact url entered above" and the "A permanent redirection for this resource"
Click on 'Apply'

more on 301 redirects

Dynamically Loaded Controls Disappear ASP.Net C#

I have been working with dynamically loaded Web User Controls.

However,I just found that they disappear after a postback... The basic solution is to reload them after postback.

Oh well...

Related articles (with info/tips/code):

[Telerik has good tips on using viewstate to help]

http://www.telerik.com/help/aspnet/ajax/ajxloadusercontrols.html

http://aspnet.4guysfromrolla.com/articles/092904-1.aspx

http://weblogs.asp.net/infinitiesloop/archive/2008/04/23/truly-understanding-dynamic-controls-by-example.aspx

Javascript Cross Browser Back Method

I have been working on a quick CROSS browser "back" method in JavaScript. It is really simple...

The history.go(-1) only worked well in IE. This double method worked well in IE, Firefox and Chrome. It checks if it knows how to do the "referrer" method. If not... it uses the history.go


[a href="#" onclick="if(document.referrer) {window.open(document.referrer,'_self');} else {history.go(-1);} return false;"]continue shopping[a]

Of course, you should use a "<" instead of "[" ... Blogger had issues when I posted the full link.