Wednesday 15 August 2012

How to layout poetry in Wordpress the way you want

This is the div trick I used to left indent poetry and group verses (better than tables for accessibility).  An annoying thing with both Blogger and Wordpress is that they like to correct things for you, thinking they know best what you wanted.  If you know HTML then better to go into the HTML or TEXT option and edit there.  But beware, don't flick between the two or all of your changes will be undone with auto correcting.

The code in the image box below, gives the formatted text that follows it. If you want to see the code more clearly, click on the image to enlarge it. I know this is not accessible for people with screen readers but only way I could get the code to show and not be acted upon and really this is a note for myself but sharing in case useful to anyone else.

Image showing HTML Code
After I’d biked around the loch ten times
and run up and down a couple of mountains
I sat down here to catch my breath.
I whipped out my camera
to capture this wondrous moment.
This is how the world looked tonight
in this glorious natural light.
I can’t tell you how disappointed I was, though,
that the view didn’t transform itself
into a more serious and highly processed black and white.
And the full thing with image can be seen here:
http://bernardgrownup.wordpress.com/2012/07/26/a-photograph/

Tuesday 14 August 2012

SEO Resources

Just doing a bit of research on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), so thought I would list some useful links here.

My favourite bits from 55 Quick SEO Tips


12. Check the link to your home page throughout your site. Is index.html appended to your domain name? If so, you’re splitting your links. Outside links go to http://www.domain.com and internal links go to http://www.domain.com/index.html.

Ditch the index.html or default.php or whatever the page is and always link back to your domain.

16. If your site content doesn’t change often, your site needs a blog because search spiders like fresh text. Blog at least three time a week with good, fresh content to feed those little crawlers.

23. The bottom line in SEO is Text, Links, Popularity and Reputation.

41. There are two ways to NOT see Google’s Personalized Search results:
(1) Log out of Google
(2) Append &pws=0 to the end of your search URL in the search bar

My favourite bits from 21 Essential SEO Tips and Techniques


2. Be patient. SEO isn’t about instant gratification. Results often take months to see, and this is especially true the smaller you are, and the newer you are to doing business online.

9. Do keyword research at the start of the project. If you’re on a tight budget, use the free versions of Keyword Discovery or WordTracker, both of which also have more powerful paid versions. Ignore the numbers these tools show; what’s important is the relative volume of one keyword to another. Another good free tool is Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool, which doesn’t show exact numbers.