If you’ve just downloaded IIRF – Ionic Shades friendly URL rewriter, but you can’t quite get get it running here’s a really easy to follow walkthrough to get your site up and running. There’s also a solution for WordPress to.

(Yes, I trawled the Internet to and none of the code I could find worked – This code will, first time Guaranteed!)

This is a complete walk-through/tutorial to get Ionic Shades IIRF clean and friendly URL rewriter up and running in just a few minutes (in fact the URL’s are so friendly I think they’re starting to interbreed – but that’s another story).

This post is specifically written for Windows 2003 Server and it has a complete and  working example of the code you need to use for your IsapiRewrite4.ini file. If you just need the IsapiRewrite4.ini code you can skip to the end and just copy n’ paste, but this post might make a useful check list.

I know I’m not talking to idiots, but after the number of websites I’ve visited that provide dis-information / wrong information / code that simply doesn’t work. I thought I’d cover absolutely every angle – leaving no stone unturned, so that this post can become a sensible benchmark for people wanting to get IIRF easily up and running. Once you’ve done this a few times you’ll be able to get a new IIS website up and running with IIRF in about 20 seconds – literally!

This tutorial will allow you to host multiple websites on IIS6, whether they be Drupal (any version) or WordPress (any version) or both. I’m hosting over 40 sites on my Windows 2003 server and IIRF is rock solid, completely free and had I been suckered into useing ISAPI_Rewrite3 it would of cost $3,960! (£2374)

Create a directory on your system and arbitrarily name it ‘ISAPI‘. Don’t place it within your websites folder, but either one directory lower, or on another partition.

Right click on the newly created ISAPI folder and select Properties > Security tab > Add.

Now click on the Advanced button. Like so…

You’ll now see the Advanced dialogue box. Select Object Types

And just tick the box that says Computers

And then click OK.

Next click on the Find Now button, scroll down the list until you find IIS_WPG and IUSR_YourComputerName

(Use CTRL to make multiple selections – I did say earlier that I know you’re not stupid, but this tutorial is not just for Drupal developers, it’s also for WordPress users – LOL! Remember this website is WordPress and it’s helping you out right now so R.E.S.P.E.C.T)

Now click OK. and then OK again to add those names you have just selected

You’re now back at the Security tab, select the computer user IIS_WPG and give it the following permissions – no more, no less, it’s a security thing… Read & Execute, List Folder Contents, Read.

And now select the user Internet Guest Account – IUSR_YourComputerName and give it the following permissions:

Modify, Read & Execute, List Folder Contents, Read, Write.

Oy, this tut is taking me forever. I do hope you leave me a comment when your site is up and running.
(or maybe click on a Google Ad banner – Eeek! I didn’t just say that…)

Now click OK.

Right, that’s your folder permissions all done. If you want to use IIRF with multiple websites, just create a folder inside your ISAPI folder and call it yourdomainname and place the files IsapiRewrite4.dll and IsapiRewrite4.ini in there.

Drupal (all versions) IsapiRewrite4.ini code. Yes this code really does work. It’s running right now on Windows 2003 server for my Astrophysics website http://www.manonmars.co.uk in fact if you click on the link you’ll see the URL get re-written to http://manonmars.co.uk

Drupal

(all versions)

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.manonmars\.co\.uk).*$ [I]
RedirectRule ^/(.*)$ http://manonmars.co.uk/$1 [I,R=301]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^/(?!favicon.ico$)([^?]*)(?:\?(.*))?$ /index.php?q=$1&$2 [L]

If you have a dot com, then it’s a simple modification to this:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.yourdomainname\.com).*$ [I]
RedirectRule ^/(.*)$ http://yourdomainname.com/$1 [I,R=301]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^/(?!favicon.ico$)([^?]*)(?:\?(.*))?$ /index.php?q=$1&$2 [L]

WordPress

(all versions)

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(caspianit\.co\.uk).*$ [I]
RedirectRule ^/(.*)$ http://www.caspianit.co.uk/$1 [I,R=301]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]

Again, if you have a dot com, it’s a simple modification to this:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(yourdomainname\.com).*$ [I]
RedirectRule ^/(.*)$ http://www.yourdomainname.com/$1 [I,R=301]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]

Just make sure you have your IsapiRewrite4.dll and IsapiRewrite4.ini in the same folder. You won’t have any trouble at all, this code will work first time. If there’s any chance you have a problem,  re-boot your server. There is probably another way of doing this without re-booting, but I don’t know what it is.

And now last, but by no means least:

IIS

Just run your Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager. Open your websites folder and select the website that you’d like clean / friendly URL working on.

Right click on your website and select Properties.

Now go to the ISAPI Filters tab and click the Add button.

Under Filter name: put some text in (this text is arbitrary, but it’s useful to put something appropriate in such as Ionic Shade’s IIRF). Then click on the Browse button and locate the file IsapiRewrite4.dll which is in your ISAPI folder.

And then click OK.

You know what? You’re done. That’s it, all finished. Will it work? YES IT WILL. Will you have any problems? NO YOU WON’T. If for any reason you don’t have immediate success, the only thing you will need to do is to re-boot your server.

I would like to thank the man who is so cool, even his own Mother knows him only as Ionic Shade… for writing IIRF, it’s absolutely great, it’s powerfull and it’s completely free. Though I’m sure he would appreciate a small donation – as might I (hint, hint). But if you’re poor and can’t afford it, no problem whatsoever. I’m glad to of helped!

Happy Web Designing!

Simon.

The easiest way to explain SEO is to simply say “Think like Google” but how? Well, when you take away all the glitz and glamour of beautiful graphics, layout, JQuery animation and cunning use of Flash – what exactly are you left with?

That’s the thing.

I think most people on the Internet, or certainly most web designers, are familiar with WordPress – though a lot of designers might mistakenly believe they are above it and WordPress is only really for complete beginners, and yes, I do understand their point of view. I was like that myself just over a year ago, the days before my epiphany, the days before I started using WordPress. To them I would just say this – “Don’t re-invent the wheel, and there’s no point swimming against the tide. There are thousands of WordPress developers and plugin authors all over the World working round the clock to make WordPress an even better platform than it already is (and it’s free) – just work with it. Integrate your work into it and you won’t look back.”

This post is about one particular enhancement to WordPress’ arsenal. It’s the plugin that most WordPress users know and love and it’s called the ‘All in One SEO plugin’.

In and of itself WordPress does a great job of optimising for search engines, but combine it with a plugin like the All in One SEO plugin, you really do have an advantage, which is why whenever you search for anything on the Net you’ll generally find a WordPress site or two in amongst the top 10.

Firstly; if you don’t already use Firefox, I suggest you download a copy. I’m not going into a browser war rant. IE is easily the fastest browser for displaying Flash content – hands down! However as a web designer/developer the plugins available for Firefox make it a CSS designers dream, there’s a free plugin called Firebug and if you don’t already have a copy I strongly suggest you download it and give it a go, and while you’re at it, it would be a good idea to also download the ‘Web Developer Toolbar’ – but that’s enough of that!

This post is about SEO and the All in One SEO plugin for WordPress, and here’s the crucks of the matter right here -

The H1 tag.

Or maybe I should put it like this:

The H1 tag

Yes, we all know it looks nasty, but that’s what CSS is for, and that’s not necessarily to make it look nicer. CSS can also be used to move it completely off screen, not hidden per se, but just well off screen.

All search engines see once you remove the glitz and glamour of graphics and styling is just text, which is why I mentioned Firebug and the Web Developer Toolbar earlier. With the Web Developer Toolbar you can easily disable all CSS styling and just see the raw text that a search engine will also see.

With that in mind, try disabling CSS on your website and see how it looks.

See what I mean? Maybe your site is stunning, but when you look at it the way a search engines like Google or Bing etc… see it, then it’s a lot easier to see where the search engine rankings are going. Having said all this; being at the top of the search engines will always be a game of cat and mouse, because 10 billion websites can’t all be in first place in the search engines and thus the ranking formula and criteria to rank above another website vieing for the top position has been and always will be a dynamic process – out of pure necessity.

Anyway, I will philosophise in another post. To sum it all up in one punchy paragraph do this to your website to improve is search engine ranking position:

With the All in One SEO plugin, go to it’s settings. Near the bottom of the page you will see a box that looks like this:

Under where you can see ‘Additional Home Headers’ you can see I’ve place my text inside an h1 tag, which is wrapped in a ul tag. It’s unlikely that this combination of HTML tags are used elsewhere in the site (I know on my site they’re not). It’s just called ‘specifisicity’ which allows me to create a custom tag in my stylesheet for this specific combination of HTML tags.

This style is added to the stylesheet for my site:

ul h1{height:0;margin:-31px 0 0 -9000px}

What this does is to allow me to use the power of the h1 tag – all search engines that I know of will see the h1 tag as important. By combining this style with CSS, it means when CSS stylesheets are active in a browser the important text I have (that looks dreadful) will not be hidden, just displayed a long way off screen.

So when the stylesheet is disabled or ignored (as it is with Google and other search engines) the text contained within the h1 tag will be visible. Not only that the text within the tags will be given more weight thus improving your performance/ranking within a search for those ‘key words’.

Simon

If you’re like me and you’re using that fab plugin for WordPress – All in One SEO, you have probably noticed by now that all your pages render as %post_title%, not only that but all new posts (my home page has the three most recent posts) also have exactly the same problem! So as long as someone Googles “%post_title%” I’ll be in the top 10 – lol

I’m using WordPress 2.8.5 – the latest as of this post, and I think we all know that the All in One SEO plugin updates every other week or so. I’ve not really found out what the updates are all about, it just means I have to download, re-enable and re-activate the plugin.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the All in One SEO plugin is excellent and I can’t remember exactly when the AiOSEO started going a bit wobbly, but I’ve found that – whatever – text I place in the box, that’s the text that gets displayed, it doesn’t get rendered to a value, which isn’t that bad, but the titles would be the same for every page on my blog.

When the All in One SEO plugin is working it’s fab, but when it’s not, it’s almost as though it’s an ANTI SEO. Listing all my posts and page titles as %post_title% doesn’t describe a thing.

I’m thinking (and maybe I’m sounding a little paranoid here) but with all those seemingly pointless updates I have to do, and constantly re-activating the plugin every time – you know, the button just under the DONATE button, and the one that says I have made…. no, that’s just crazy talk…

I think I might try to track down the problem myself, but then changing the code of the plugin means I would have to constantly re-patch my modification every time the plugin itself gets updated, which would be a pain.

Still, I think I’ll give it a go.

Please post a comment if you’re having the same problem as me – is it just me?

I’m using WordPress 2.8.5 and am trying to add a related posts plugin, but as soon as I activate it I get this error: