Rooturaj's Blog

This is a small post for those who have been banging their heads on various forums about “Google Kills PR” and “Pagerank addons not working” kind of stuff.

Actually I did that too. ( )

Be assured that google did not kill PR. Page Rank continues to be a big deal for determining the quality of incoming links. Hence we can understand your ordeal when you are suddenly left with no way to check the google PR for various domains.

Its just a simple change in the Google API url.

Trace this following line in your pagerank script.

http://toolbarqueries.google.com/search?client=navclient-auto&ch=%s&features=Rank&q=info:%s

Replace it with this line

http://toolbarqueries.google.com/tbr?client=navclient-auto&ch=%s&features=Rank&q=info:%s

for some of you the last line might have to look like this one.

http://toolbarqueries.google.com/tbr?client=navclient-auto&ch=”.CheckHash(HashURL($url)). “&features=Rank&q=info:”.$url.”&num=100&filter=0

Notice the change in URL. “search” part now replaced with “tbr” which would ofcourse be a short form for toolbar. Their engineers have done some upgrades there. But why change the url. No Idea.

I just ruined my last weekend trying to install Redmine on my shared hosting account featuring cPanel. This one is on Hostgator. I do not want you to face the same problem while dealing with the totally fucked up installation process of Ruby on Rails Redmine Application. Use this installation guide drink lots of fluids, put on some music and you will be done in half an hours time. Good Luck.

Gathering the Resources

Lets get our software code first. I assume you have already visited Redmine and read the requirements then you can download the code here. I am using the stable release 1.2.o in this case. That’s the latest avaialable.

Now we need to activate SSH (secure shell access) on your hosting account to execute the ruby commands. Yes some command like tasks are involved here and we don’t have another option. Some Cpanel  dashboards have an Icon where we can activate SSH but Hostgator for some mysterious reason does not want us to use that. So you can raise the issue through a chat support request or ticket.
Get winscp or putty to connect to your SSH.  I used WinScp which acts as a kool FTP client as well.

So now lets connect to SSH. Note the Ip address from your hosting account (left column) and use your hosting account credentials to login to SSH. Almost the same way use do it with FTP clients. See the screenshot below to launch the SSL.

Now go to your control panel and trace this Ruby Icon. See the pic below for reference.

click the icon in red box.

Next we have to create a place for our ruby application in the Rail_apps area. Remember this is not a public_html thing so it goes in a different place. I am saying that because you will have to do some file level  modification on this latter. So you know exactly where you ruby files are.

Leave the Redirect part for the end when the installation is complete

Post to be continued …. need a break.

Here is the Ultimate list of SEO forums for you to learn the sacred scientific art of Search Engine optimization. (lolz Sacred is it?)

Warning : For all you spammers who are looking for lists of forums to gain signature links. Get lost and get a life.

What you are supposed to be doing with my list. I will tell you how each forum stands today. How strong is their SEO community and how good are their spam fighting moderators and admins. My final words – Learn and dont spam. Search for something in the forums before you ask stupid questions that have been answered 100 times or more before.

SEO Chat Forums (http://forums.seochat.com)
It now belongs to DevShed and they have (as people often point out) gone a bit far in monetizing the forum. Nevertheless it a solid platform and the community, though small, is very strong. I am a regular there.

SEO.com Forum (http://forums.seo.com)
That was the first ever forum I ever joined. Things turned a bit pale there but nevertheless I learned loads there. Dan Sculz and KingPin where the best I remember from there.

Digital Point SEO Forum
Its heck popular and hell active but lots of rif raf questions from newbies and less of advanced discussions. I am a member there but not so active though. Don’t know anyone in particular there but I have found some good freelancers to work with. Thats the DP advantage.

Search Guild
I remember this was started by Chris Riding. Some people claim it to be their most preferred forum. I have been there once for a while but could not continue there any longer.

SEO Guy SEO Forums
The SEO guy used to be a top member of SEO chat until the mis-understanding came up. So he went on to create the new SEO forum and many good people from SEO chat followed him there. I haven’t yet been there though.  But I will definitely be there soon. Just need to find a bit more time.

Ha this is my crazy idea to get a templatep2p invitation. I need one invitation badly and I am willing to pay for it.

You can see I am seriously interested in web programming and UX. So please be satisfied that you are helping a guy in need. If you want a payment for the same – quote it.

I request your magnanimous self to help me with an invitation.

Just leave me a message in the comment field below and I will contact you back.

Others who are looking for a invite like me please don;t take it badly I will help you out as soon as I get one invitation.

Now this is a very old practice that was probably popular some 5 years ago. Blinking / flashing your page title. But the thing is that I had to use it yesterday for a chat page. Every time a new message arrives we wanted to catch the users attention. So thats where it helps.

Where can you see the Title text blinking?

• If you have the page open your Title will blink. Either switch between two messages or One Blank and One Message switching.
• if you have that page open in a tab the you will see some text blinking on the tab name.
• If the window is minimised with the page in question as the active tab then you can see the text in the taskbar tab blinking.
• If you are using windows 7 then you need to point to your browser icon on task bar to see the blinking happening.

Here is the code.

defaultmsg=document.title

// functions to blink the title of the page with a message

function blinkmsg(message, count) {

    blinkingmsg(count, message, true);

}

function blinkingmsg(count, message, blink){

    if(blink){

        document.title=message;

    } else {

        document.title=defaultmsg;

        count-- // decrement the number of times left to blink

    }

    if (count > 0) {

        blinkTimer = setTimeout("blinkingmsg("+count+", '"+message+"', "+!blink+")", 800);

    }

}

function test()

{

setInterval('blinkmsg("drink.", 3)', 2000);

}

Now the above code will do three title flashes in 2000, miliseconds or 2 seconds. So you can do the calculation as per your needs. Do not bug the user too much. Thats not a good idea. Plus setTimeOut will use quite a bit a CPU time I suppose because of constant need to check and execute.

Use the Code well and let me know if anything is not upto your expectation.

Since you have arrived on this page I will assume you are looking for a way to disable/enable  javascript on your chrome browser. If you want to do the same for Internet Explorer here my all time popular post for disabling javascript on Internet Explorer.

Chrome is a minimalist browser so neither it has all those crappy menus nor toolbars. So you need to know exactly where is what to manipulate its features.  Now you just need to follow these three steps to disable / enable JS on your Google Chrome. Use my simple screenshots as visual aids to achieve the aim.

Step 1: Locate the Settings Icon

Look at the top right corner of the browser next to the address bar. Refer to the image below. Click on that icon. Then Move down to the Options menu. See the highlight menu option.

step1 - spot the settings button

Step 2 : Go to Content Settings.

Its sometimes to hard to identify the buttons in the chrome UI. I tend to look at them as text boxes sometimes. Notice the button in Green area. Click that. You will see another window.

step2-open content settings

Step 3 : Finaly disable JS

Now we are on the final step.Move to the third option. Javascript. Enable or Disable as you may require it. Thats all no need to save the settings. They are auto saved.

step3 :disable javascript ; all set

Now you can test. If you want to test it now then – refresh it. Assuming you disabled javascript many of the Ad Banners and the dynamic elements on this page will disappear. So that means Mission Accomplished.

After cracking my heading for whole 3 hours I finally got to get the right htaccess code to direct the payment folder for a clients site to SSL secure platform – yes https connections.

Now I want to share the codes with you so that you don’t waste time and energy on that and help cutting out on green house emissions. lolz

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.yoursite.com/$1 [R,L]

If you want to redirect some particular folder to https version like

http://yoursite.com/securefolder/  to https://yoursite.com/securefolder/ then use this code on you htaccess file.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} securefolder
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://yoursite.com/$1 [R,L]

You can use the above code in the root htaccess file of your sites without any problem.

In case you want a different htaccess file in some particular folder then you should consider this alternative . Replace the last line of above code by this line.

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://yoursite.com/securefolder/$1 [R,L]

I will update more about this when I face problems regarding SSL redirections using htaccess. Till then if you have some problem implementing SSL redirections then do comment below.

A few days ago I installed Chitika Ads to this blog of mine after getting approved by Chitika.  I had to wonder aloud scratching my head why the ads were not being displayed.  Was I doing something wrong? Did I miss some part of the ad code? I am a programmer so I know when some part of the code is missing so that last doubt could be ruled away.

After a deep search I could not find a proper guiding post that could answer my query.

Finally I decided to dig deep into the mystery so I took my Pipe and put on my Hat to do a La Holmes. Lol. Here is my report and I hope it helps you doing justice to your Chitika ads.

Lets Assume you already have registered with Chitika and have the ad code ready with you. If not Click here to get Chitika .  Make sure you have the right ad format and you pasted in a proper place on your website/blog in a fashion so that space you provide on the sites is never smaller than the original Ad size.

Now to view if the Ads are active or not add #chitikatest=keyword at the end your site url in address bar and hit enter.
for Example to see if the ads are active on my site I will use one of the following URLs :
http://rooturaj.com/#chitikatest=technology
http://rooturaj.com/society-nature/einsteins-riddle-complete-solution-to-einsteins-puzzle/#chitikatest=puzzles games

Now when you check your url with the #tag you should be able to view some stuff in the ad space. This means you Chitika ads are already active and ready to roll.

Now this is what I see for after using #chitikatest on my own blog.

So why does it not show on my website without those #tags ?

That is because  displays ads for Search Engine Traffic only, that too primarily from US or Canada. If the User arrived on your blog/site from the search engines then you should see those ads. Else they stay empty or Collapse as per your preference while creating the add unit. You could also prefer to show Non Targeted Filler ads from Chitika network. More on Chitika

I see newbie programmers cracking up on htaccess issues. Normally it is a simple process where you can get beautiful stuff working in about 5 minutes time.

Most of us find the required code by googling up our requirements. Its initially tough to master the htaccess coding. But when we put then to action on our own servers. It does not work. I have seen my own programmers spending days together trying to find out why the hell is .htaccess file is not working.

First you should know how to create a .htaccess file.  I suppose you know already. If not follow the link.

Ok now open you .htaccess file in a text editor and add this simple code to the file.

redirect 301 /filename.html http://rooturaj.com

Now there should be a file exactly called filename.html or create any file like test.html and replace the same int he code above. If your htaccess is working then you should be redirected to my site  http://rooturaj.com when you click on your link to http://yourdomainname.com/filename.html or enter it directly in the browser.

If it doesnot then your htaccess is not up. Contact your hosting provider and kick his ass till he get it up and working for you. I sincerely hope this post helped you in what you are looking for. Do share this or link to this page so that other may use it too.

Have you ever wondered about those special links that let you activate your Instant Messenger when you click a link on some website and let you talk to their customer support or Sales guy? Ever wanted to include the same on your own blog or website? Here is my one stop guide to all special messenger links.

Popular Messengers - Using them on your Website.

You don’t always need to use those free chat integrations on your website that eat up your bandwidth and are not much user friendly as well. Moreover they bug your visitors with adds if you are using free versions. Almost everyone will has and knows how to use a messenger software so it could be a bit more comfortable for the users.

I am adding code snippets for the three most popular messengers on the planet – Yahoo, Gtalk, Skype
Remember these links only work if you have the respective messenger installed on your system.

Yahoo Messenger Links for your Website

<a href="ymsgr:sendIM?userid">Open an Instant Message Window</a>
<a href="ymsgr:sendIM?userid&m=add your message here">Opens yahoo IM window with a default message</a>
<a href="ymsgr:addfriend?userid">Adds the user to your buddy list</a>
<a href="ymsgr:chat?CHATROOMNAME">Starts a chat room.</a>

Gtalk Messenger (Chat and Call Links for your website / Blog)

gtalk:ACTION?jid=to-email-id&from_jid=from-email-id

Now Google Talk has one simplified global version. You can use ‘chat’ or ‘call’ (without the quotes) in place of action start a chat window or make a voice call which ever you like. The to-email-id field will carry the emailid of  the user who receives the chat or call and the from-email-id is for the sender. The latter is an optional field. You need that in case you have multiple google account to choose form.

Skype Messenger Chat and Call links

skype:USERNAME?ACTION

The Action parameter could be either ‘chat’ or ‘call’ as per your requirement. You could configure it smartly on your websites with a little bit of programming. There should be an admin page where the support guy or you can control your status and depending on the inputs the chat and call links will change sitewide.