I'm Knight - Part 4

Is your blog meta description showing properly?

By Knight | October 6, 2008

This is one of the major problem for my blog for the past few week, i finally resolve it and i m thinking to share it with others.

So how you check meta description ? try “site:<yourblogdomain>” in google and it will return how google index your blog, as you can see on the above image, the result of how google index my blog, in stead of showing proper description of the page , it show my menu.

Since i m using wordpress , there are quite a few plugin out there which can help you add individual meta description on each blog post, example all in one seo pack or platinum seo pack , so get either one of this installed.

After i installed the plugins, my meta description remain the same, so i post on google webmater groups to check with other seo expert. So some expert advice me that the main reason my blog meta description doesn’t show properly is because i have 2 meta description.

Some of the blog template is putting your blog tagline as meta description in each page, which are the main reason of this issue, so i configure the blog tag line showing as meta desciption on main page only, when individual post, it will be hide and now my meta description is display properly in google index.

Tips : if you just did some changes, wait for google to crawl it again, using cache: is one of the good way, you can see the cache version and make sure your changes has been cache, if your changes has been cache but meta description still having problem, then more changes is required. Google cache results is the same like Google site results.

Tags: meta description, seo

What reQall need to improve

By Knight | October 5, 2008

I m going to using reQall for the next few week,i think i will write a proper review after that, but first i think there are some thing i wish them to improve.

firefox addon - it’s wired that the button to add a site into reQall on status bar, the button should be somewhere within the reQall toolbar
core - adding new section call links , i think links should be another major category other then note and todo
contact - using plaxo API might not be a good idea ?
IM - please adding MSN provider
IM - the command seem a bit complicated, maybe a more straightforward method will be better
Photo - please added flickr service support.

the iphone application looks cool, too bad i m using the ipod touch, cannot test the voice record feature,anyway this might be replace rememberthemilk as my gtd tools, let me fully using this for the next few week and compare with rememberthemilk.

Quote from reQall

reQall is designed to help you remember all the important things in your life

Tags: gtd, reQall, web2.0

Dabbleboard - a simple collaboration white board

By Knight | October 5, 2008

This might become my latest favourite service - Dabbleboard , a simple team collaboration white board that allow you to draw simple thing and collaboration with your team.

What this service provide is simple, line,free hand and text, if you using line , it will track the line you draw and generate the shape, when you select free hand then the generate shape feature will be disable. You can type some word once you click on any place of your drawing area, by combine text, line and free hand, you can draft out you idea easily.There is grid feature and allow to snap on grid, this to make sure the line that you are draw will be stay properly on the grid, it is good for you to position your shape.

Other then simple to draw, the sharing/collaboration feature is another killer point, i tested by open 2 browser and the delay is minimum, Once i change the shape on my safari, within 2 sec the same thing has change on my firefox. Without register you can just copy the address and share it with your friend to do some ad-hoc drawing.

Tags: drawing, web2.0, whiteboard

Secure your wordpress with WP Security Scan

By Knight | October 4, 2008

I m sure most of the wordpress user worry when they saw some wordpress blog been hack, other then keep your wordpress version update, i recommend this plugin to keep your wordpress secure - WP Security Scan .

Initial scan will advice certain step to secure your wordpress, example hide your wordpress version, alert you to get current version of wordpress,don’t use the defaul wp as database prefix and don’t use admin as default username. All these default setting can cause your wordpress higher risk.
File permission scanner also, which will compare your current file permission with proper permission required for that directory,if there are some alert, you need to chmod your directory with proper permission.
Password Tools, which another additional feature that provide password strength checker,it allow you to check how secure the password you using.
Database , this is the build in feature which will change your wordpress table prefix, please backup before using it.

this is not plugin that after you install, your wordpress will be secure, it is more like a scanner which tell you what other thing you can do to secure your wordpress blog.

Tags: plugin, secure, wordpress, wordpress plugin

My 3 expiring domain

By Knight | October 4, 2008

Just saw a reminder email from my domain registrar, i have 3 domain that going to expire soon.

bloglah.net (27-Oct-2005) - few year ago i using this domain to build a chinese blog aggregator for malaysia chinese blogger and the site even feature in newspaper/magazine too, but after that due to a lot of reason i didn’t continue it.

getspot.net (27-Oct-2005) - another domain that i didn’t use for few year, i start a web2.0 blog on it for some time, but realiaze it seem like duplicate of my own blog, in the end close it.

ahknight.net (29-Oct-2004) - my blog domain after i move out from some subdomain, it’s been redirect to my current domain for one year already.

there are a lot of memory on these domain, but nope i not going to renew it, not only the domain price hike, i have too many domain on hand, i would like to focus those domain which have better potential to growth something.

Tags: domain

Check your blog broken link

By Knight | October 2, 2008

If you blog since few year ago, i m sure that there will be some link broken after all these year, you might think that broken link does’t affect anything , but the fact is broken link did affect SEO of a blog

Quote from Top Ten SEO Myths

A simple thing like fixing broken links can contribute to elevating your listings. It’s one of the most overlooked search engine tweaks. Search engines will not continue to spider a site when it runs into a number of broken links.

If you are using wordpress, broken link checker will be a useful plugin that help you to find out all the broken links in your blog. It will search through post by post and test link by link which seem like causing your backend slower, but so far i find it ok don’t really affect my blogging process.

after you activate the plugin, it will start checking all the links, these are the links that found on my blog, i can choose to ignore it / unlink it or change the url, if these link are pending without action, on the blog post that contain this link, will have additional css to cross the link, this is to inform the rest that the links are not working.

Use this plugin and start cleaning up your blog for better seo performance.

Tags: broken link, seo, wordpress plugin

Is Revolution going to shake the premium theme market ?

By Knight | October 2, 2008

Just in case you don’t know what is Revolution , it is one of the first few famous magazine style premiun theme for wordpress and if you often visit those wordpress theme gallery site , most of the time you can see Revolution’s ads will be appear.

Brian Gardner officially announce on his blog that Revolution will be going open source, those current theme will be keep and a new open source version will be release on 1st Nov 2008, what he did might be causing some big effect in the premiun theme market , even Matt is claiming this wil be theme revolution.

I think open source Revolution this move will sure force a lot of premium theme maker rethink their strategy, they might start thinking what’s the idea/plan behind this and maybe new premium service will appear ?

What i can think of some of current premium theme related service

Member club service - paying a monthly/annually amount and freely using any theme that release by the club, there are starter like small potato’s theme club ( the new owner that take over seem like no news at all ) , new comer like WooThemes.
Base theme - Child theme service - the base theme as a theme framework which is free, but base on the frame work working out premium child theme, example like thematic

Can’t wait for 1st November to see the open source Revolution.

Tags: premium theme, theme, theme market, wordpress theme

Monthly Traffic Report - September

By Knight | October 1, 2008

Reviewing my blog for september performance, i believe i have more blog more often , test more thing and come out more idea, just need more energy to push these idea into real product.

Alexa - Imknight.net has a traffic rank of: 517,188 - increase a bit but have a green arrow , i wonder why
Google Analytics - 5346 visit , 8996 pageview
Technorati - Rank 969,832
Wordpress.com Stat - 6735 views

Compare to August 17 post , this month i have blog 38 post which is double of previous month, i have try my best to do 2 post each day , although some time i still miss the target, but overall i m quite happy i m starting to blog more often now.

Adsense wise, compare to previous month , this month income increase by US$2.

Learning more about SEO for this month and did some restructure of the site, i hope overall this should give my blog a better improvement traffic in long run.

Tags: blog, blog traffic, traffic

Is your username still available ?

By Knight | October 1, 2008

I think for user that using a lot of web service , thinking of a username should be something difficult , because on service A , you might be able to use your favourite username , but on service B your favourite username might be taken. It’s quite messy to use different username on different service and this is not recommended if you care about personal brand.

So what i found today is a site which allow you to check your username still available - usernamecheck.com

i did a compare between knight and imknight

as you can see , imknight is still available for most of the service, those taken should be done by me too, knight is consider too general and among most of the service, knight has been taken. Still thinking about what username to choose ? this service is recommend for you.

Tags: username, web2.0