Web Skills

Somethings never change.

What was  obvious to Sergey Brin and Larry Page when they started tinkering about in their Garage, was as true then as it is today. The need to communicate; information, experience and knowledge.

The ability to ask questions and get answers. The search for answers.

Targeted quality traffic. The ultimate key needed to open doors to the opportunities that are waiting on the net.

What was not so blindingly obvious though, was how what they were doing would change the way everything gets done. How it would evolve and vest such enormous power and responsibility in the hands of so few.

But  at the same time changes which have also given all of us, almost free access, to every tool we might ever need. Tools to challenge and compete. The means and the ability to influence  everything we do, what we buy and what we think.

So if things are not quite what we would like them to be, we being who we are, are the ones responsible or who are supposed to be responsible, only have ourselves to blame. We can, we should be doing more. Building virtual word of mouth information hubs to share our experience. Where we facilitate the exchange of skills and know how and to do that, the first step is to start sharpening those tools.

To demonstrate that we can change whatever can be changed.

Traditional boerewors – Index pages appear to getting indexed rather than regional lists

Scotland (not indexed) – Removed menu links in the footer (no change 7/5). No Index 7/5

Northern Ireland (indexed) – Removed menu links in the footer and no indexed ‘Recommendations’ (no change 7/5)

South East England (indexed) – Removed menu links in the footer and no indexed ‘Recommendations’ (no change 7/5) Hampshire indexed and has a footer link to SE but so does West Sussex which is not indexed. No index South East England 7/5

East England (indexed 7/5) – Links in place  x1 post indexed x2 adjacent posts de-indexed (Previous and Next links? No pagination for canonical pages swoitched off?) Otherwise no clue

 

Indexing is a cat and mouse game.

Google is continually changing it’s algorithim to try and stay away one step ahead of the multitude of keyboard fanatics that are doing whatever they can to get into the top rankings. Originally Google came up with the idea of Page Rank. This to try and keep them happy. To give them something to obsess about which had nothing to do with anything.

However as the noise reached fever pitch Google had no option other than to quietly drop it. The grift became an embarassment and the metric became an ethical hadache for a corporation that started with the lofty ideal of ‘do no evil.

Nothing has changed however. Such is the mass appeal for disinformation and the need to mask the simplicity of what is a tool that should be accessable to all.

The latest hurdle that has been introduced is a duplicate content filter and god only knows how the brilliant minds at Google have figured this one out. Post gets indexed one month and de-indexed the next. Frustrating……,..

Way out of my depth here.

Am getting mobile usability alerts for one obscure page on On the Coals. Understand it should have something to do with the template and the settings. So I have installed Neve which is supposed to be mobile friendly and have fiddled with the settings under Header layout – Title alignment. Although I am not sure what that does or does not do.   Makes no difference to what I see on the laptop.

At the same time I have installed Neve on Kids at Play and Great British Banger.  As these two sites are on the same server and search console dashboard and have or I think had the same problem. But have not edited any of the settings.

I think had because after interogating the Search Console I see no mention of mobile usability problems. What I did find on Great British Banger were references to the Photographers pages I removed. This prompted me to submit a blanket removal request for /commercial-photographers-in-the-uk/

I also found two urls that ‘have been crawled’ but not indexed.

How, once again, I have absolutely no idea. The one greatbritishbanger.co.uk/premium-cumberland-sausages-in-the-uk/artisan-gourmet-sausages-in-the-south-of-england/ is a double up of two existing urls. Both of which are indexed. However the extension artisan gourmet reads gourmet artisan in the live post.

Similarly  with greatbritishbanger.co.uk/the-english-sausage/legges-of-bromyard-artisan-sausages/ I have no idea where the add on legges-of-bromyard-artisan-sausages/ comes from.

 

 

We have to get our two boys into school in the UK. But itgets a little complicated. Particularly with our eldest son who is seventeen and who has not sat the GCSE’s which he needs to get into College.

Another long term project digging out the information that should be easier to find than it is and archiving it on a couple of workshop sites.

Home schooling options as well the steps one needs to take to get the boys placed in a school and how they are going to catch up what is now two years of formal schooling.

As most of us do,  I spend a lot of time looking for the stuff.  Searching and scouring the net for this and that.

Turning page after page. Taking wrong turns, missing what should be obvious until I trip over the one link I need. Generating traffic, clicks and hits.  The very stuff that drives the web and adds value to all we do.

Experience.

Information and know-how that we could share. We have all the tools we need to make it happen.  To offer a service. To make ourselves useful. To add value, improve and grow a resource we all use.

Local knowledge, local experts, local advice and assistance – Web Guides

Bruce Bartie

073 544 5660 or 044 382 0266

I experienced a problem with one of my Add On domains.  Every time I tried updating I would get locked out. This we sort of resolved by deactivating the Mod_Secuity setting.

But there was still a problem. I couldn’t upload an image until I figured out that I needed to upgrade to the latest version of php installed on the server.

A little thing that takes up way too much time to sort out.

There is a section on the Dashboard called Site Health which lists any exceptions that have been noted. Something I have never bothered with.  But I looked at it and discovered I was running on a version of php which was out dated. This took me to Cpanel/Software where I clicked on Select PHP Version.

The last one was  native 7.2 which I shied away from and selected 7.4 instead. I am not sure why nor what the implications are. Nor do I know why I then pressed Reset Defaults. But it appeared to work. Site Health changed to Good.

But I still couldn’t upload pictures.

They were apparently too big. From what I understood there was 2 meg limit in the WordPress settings and I had already resized the images I was working with. What I didn’t know was that there is server setting in Cpanel under the PHP Version which I needed to edit after clicking Options and scrolling down to the last field.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Where does this all it take one?How many is too many?

There are too few, who understand that the internet is nothing more than a handy tool that has been left lying around, waiting for someone to use. There are too few, who understand that the key to using the net, is understanding, the importance of a sense of community.

Tick off those two boxes and you will be opening doors in no time