One of the most useful techniques in my HTAccess toolbox involves URL redirection using Apache’s RedirectMatch directive. With RedirectMatch, you get the powerful regex pattern matching available in the mod_alias module combined with the simplicity and effectiveness of the Redirect directive. This hybrid functionality makes RedirectMatch the ideal method for highly specific redirection. In this tutorial, we will explore the application of RedirectMatch as it applies to one of the most difficult redirect scenarios: redirecting all requests for a specific subdirectory (or any subordinate directory or file) to the root (or any parent) directory. We will explore how to accomplish this redirect using PHP in a subsequent article.

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As you may observe, the WordPress installation that powers Perishable Press is located in a subdirectory named press. This configuration was intentional, as I wanted to have the option to easily install and maintain multiple versions of WordPress in variously named subdirectories. As much as I enjoy this flexibility, many would argue the SEO-related benefits of installing WordPress in your site’s root directory, or at least making it appear that way by using WordPress’ easily customizable “Blog Address” options setting.

For example, say you have WordPress installed in a subdirectory called “gibbonz”, but you want your blog’s home page to exist at http://your-domain.tld/ and not http://your-domain.tld/gibbonz, as would be the case by default. To make this happen, you have several choices, including this method, which I summarize here, assuming the “gibbonz” scenario outlined in the preceding discussion:

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One of my favorite aspects of producing clean, well-formatted CSS code is “meta-organizing” the document using comments. In CSS, comments are included in the stylesheet like so:

/* i am the walrus */

When used constructively, CSS comments serve to break down documents into distinct regions, provide key information about specific declarations, and bring order to even the most complex stylesheets. In my experience, a well-commented stylesheet improves efficiency and optimizes comprehension.

Working with CSS, you can add comments any way you want. There are many different ways to use CSS comments, and endless ways to get there. Let’s check out some practical and interesting ways to use comments, along with some creative ways of doing so.

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Over the past several years working online, my year-end maintenance routine has evolved from simple website backups to a robust strategy involving many important and useful tasks. Some of the items on the list have indeed been performed multiple times throughout the year, but are included here to emphasize their importance. Additionally, many of these tasks are great for helping bloggers gain a clearer picture of their overall online empire, while attaining a sense of annual “closure” concerning the work of the previous year. So, let’s dig into my personal year-end strategy for cleaning things up and preparing for the new year..

Make complete backups of your work

Frequent backups should be a part of any serious online strategy. At the end of the year, I create a complete backup of everything, including all site files (XHTML, PHP, images, JavaScript, htaccess, etc.), as well as all associated database content. I generally duplicate my entire set of files (for all domains), and then include duplicate database backups in their respective directories. I also take this opportunity to purge my email inbox of any “loose ends” by relocating them to their respective domain’s backup directory. I also do this for any loose files, configuration files, article backups, and anything else that goes with a particular domain. This works great at consolidating and organizing data that may be needed at some point in the future. After I have consolidated everything worth keeping, I delete all other backups for the year and burn a permanent copy for the archives. Thus, as time goes on, I will have accumulated all the best bits of each year into a nice annual library of backup content. I can live with that :)

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Two weeks ago, I decided to completely overhaul Perishable Press. The decision came after several months of smooth sailing with excellent site performance, an optimized theme, plenty of visitors, and even a comfortable posting schedule. All things considered, everything was peachy keen — until I began reflecting on the “big picture,” meditating upon certain aspects that are frequently taken for granted or simply overlooked during periods of hectic operation and maintenance. For example, while troubleshooting htaccess and PHP errors, webmasters generally don’t take the time to meditate on the structural and functional integrity of their overall site configuration.

Fortunately, I recently found the time to contemplate Perishable Press from a broader perspective, rethinking everything from themes and plugins to organizational architecture and permalinks. As I approach the completion of the most comprehensive site renovation ever, many significant improvements are currently underway. Here is a summary of the primary changes involving site structure, presentation, functionality and performance:

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For those of you still hiding your bookmarks within the dark confines of your browser’s “favorites” menu, may I suggest stepping into the “here and now” with a fresh new approach: social bookmarking. Hopefully, most of my readers are already familiar with the many wonders of managing and sharing your bookmarks online, but for those who may still be questioning the whole idea, allow me to expound briefly on several of the immediate benefits:

Universal access to your bookmarked sites

Forget about time-wasting browser extensions that fumble to synchronize your business; manage your collection online at a great site such as del.icio.us and enjoy quick access to a definitive set of bookmarks from virtually anywhere in the world.

Better organization of your bookmarks

Drop the resource-hogging browser extensions that supposedly enhance the organizational efficiency of your collection; many social bookmarking sites employ user-defined tagging architecture to provide unlimited flexibility for organizing your bookmarks.

Don’t be tight with your bookmarks

Sharing information is the wave of the future! Help others locate the information they need by sharing your favorite sites with others. Social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us provide a simple way to keep select sites private, so get over yourself and get sharing!

One-click backups of your entire collection

Last but not least is the drop-dead simple method that most social-bookmarking sites provide for backing up or exporting your entire bookmark collection. For example, with a single click, del.icio.us exports your entire collection via a nice little html file. Fresh. Delivered.

Ahh.. so much better. If you still don’t believe me, then just stop reading here and go home. However, if you are totally feeling the whole social bookmarking movement, then read on, my friend — I have a few sweet little tips that I would like to share with you..

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Recently, I found myself drowning in an ocean of RSS feeds. Even after switching to Google Reader, which definitely speeds up the process of plowing through posts, I was wasting too much time consuming subscribed content. Thus, in an effort to find balance between saving time and staying current, I executed the following five-step feed portfolio makeover:

1. Drop lame feeds. Previously, I had subscribed to a number of feeds simply because they were recommended or mentioned in an article somewhere. Unfortunately, sound referrals and interesting commentary do not necessarily equate with strong syndicated content. I often found myself reading post after post about stuff that was not useful or even interesting. After some careful deliberation, I dropped around 25 of these lame feeds and moved on with my life.
2. Consolidate similar feeds. After following my previous collection of feeds for awhile, I began to notice ridiculous amounts of redundancy. There is just no need to subscribe to multiple blogs covering the same material unless they blog from truly unique perspectives. After choosing one or two authority bloggers for each of my focus areas, I unsubscribed to the “echo” feeds and thus reduced my feed collection by at least 20.
3. Eliminate overly aggressive feeds. I love to see fresh content from bloggers who post quality posts, especially when they only post once in awhile. It’s like getting a scooby snack or something and I just love it. Conversely, I hate to see overly ambitious bloggers bomb my reader with a jillion junk posts about the same old garbage — nothing new to say and no new ways of saying it. Needless to say, I kicked about 10 of these feed hogs straight to the curb.
4. Subscribe to summary feeds. When it comes to staying current with world news, tech news, and other frequently reported topics, it is easy to flood your reader with unnecessary content. Fortunately, many of the most prolific news-related sites provide an alternate summary feed that consolidates and highlights the day’s or week’s worth of material into a single post. By trading full feeds for summary feeds, I greatly reduced the quantity of incoming feed content without sacrificing the quality of its information.
5. Drop John Chow like a bad habit. Just kidding. Chow is great, but really, how many blogs about blogging and getting stinking rich do you really need? The point here is to craft yourself a diverse collection of enlightening, educational, and enriching feeds. Trade mindlessness and redundancy for thoughtfulness and original content. Drop the mind-numbing “list” sites and find sincere bloggers with experience and wisdom. I am continually fine-tuning my feed diet towards a diverse, eclectic, and original collection of insightful, high-quality content written by authoritative bloggers who aren’t pitching at me around every corner.

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The AT&T 8525 is the first UMTS/HSDPA smart phone to be offered in the United States. It has integrated Bluetooth 2.0, Wi-Fi, and supports AT&T’s new music, video, and location-based services. The Windows Mobile device also has push e-mail capabilities, a 2-megapixel camera, a spacious QWERTY keyboard, and good call quality. — CNET Editors’ Review of the AT&T 8525

Perishable Press via AT&T 8525 (click image for more..) Thusly inspired, I recently purchased an AT&T 8525 Pocket PC by HTC. The device now serves as my virtual satellite, keeping me connected to the internet, networked to the office, and prepared for serious business. With its many features and streamlined functionality, the AT&T 8525 enables me to operate in maximized fashion, increasing efficiency and improving productivity. This article presents a concise rundown of how each of the phone’s primary features helps me to succeed as I fight a hellish battle everyday.

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Let’s face it. Websites are as transient as the wind. Developers and designers spend countless hours producing sites that may exist online for mere months or even less before being restructured, redesigned or removed completely, forever disappearing into eternal nothingness — or, even worse, into the sterile void of a search engine database. Clearly not the best situation for designers looking to maintain a complete record of their online work.

Even for sites proactively encouraging their caching and archiving by the search engines, accurate and reliable online site preservation approaches the impossible. Unfortunately, search engines are extremely inconsistent when it comes to archiving websites. If you doubt that, try digging up one of your old sites and see how it looks as stored deep within the archives of say, Google or Yahoo. Search engine archives commonly omit associated CSS, JavaScript, and image files, rendering sites incomplete and useless as a design reference.

Local or offline site storage also is impractical, especially if your sites are database-driven and require a server to process content. Replicating the original server environment is usually a hassle, requiring database reconfiguration and URL path repairs. Further, databases frequently involve absolute URL’s, thereby rendering offline sites practically useless. Besides, many sites are often aesthetically redundant, consisting of hundreds of virtually identical, dynamically created pages. Such archived sites are waste of disk space, especially if their content is now obsolete or exists elsewhere online.

Rather than rely on the search engines or depend on impractical offline archiving methods, savvy web designers and developers should develop a concise, high-quality screenshot archive of all their work. A well-maintained screenshot archive is an invaluable design tool providing streamlined reference for future projects, source material, and portfolio development. Clearly, from a visual-design perspective, screenshot archiving is far more valuable, useful, and beneficial than traditional methods of storing antiquated or otherwise dismantled websites.

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Speed up your workflow by launching your favorite programs in one click using batch (.bat) files:

1. Create a folder and add shortcuts to your favorite programs.
2. Rename the shortcuts so that each consists of a single word.
3. Create a text file and change the name to something.bat.
4. Right-click on the .bat ("batch") file and select "Edit".
5. Emulate the following template according to your specific programs.

rem   comments should begin with rem
rem   note: this file launches all of my favorite apps!
rem   note: replace the names below with your own..

@echo off

   start %SystemRoot%\system32\cmd.exe
   start firefox http://google.com/
   start dreamweaver
   start photoshop
   start winamp
   start notes.txt

@echo on

That’s all there is to it! Of course, there are many other neat things you can do with batch files, but we leave that for you to discover elsewhere. You may want to create additional batch files for various kinds of work. For example, you could create one batch file for web-development apps, another for graphic-design apps, and so on. All shortcuts and batch files may be placed in the same folder. Then simply customize shortcuts to your various batch files and use them to consolidate your quick launch and clean up your desktop!

Introduction

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the business of every serious webmaster. The process of optimizing a website for the search engines involves much more than properly constructed document headers and anchor tags. Websites are like trees: their roots are the growing collection of content presented through the branching universe of the World Wide Web. Or something. The point is that optimizing a website requires nurturing the site itself while also ensuring proper exposure to the requisite elements of the internet.

The process of optimizing your first website may seem daunting. There are many aspects to consider and many websites with which to deal. Search engine registration, keyword development, and an evolving link campaign are all required for any home-grown, roll-your-own website optimization. Further, for each site you intend to optimize, there is a plethora of related data — site links, usernames, passwords, email addresses, etc. — that needs to be collected, organized, and updated. Therefore, it is essential to properly record and consistently maintain a carefully crafted SEO log.

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Looking ahead at the events planned for this year, I feel the need to completely restructure, reorganize, and streamline my entire digital universe. This will take a sweet amount of time, I realize, but given the complex behemoth that my digital archive has become due to the accumulation of over seven years’ worth of projects, reformats, and acquisitions, the time is now.

It all started out simply, with my first computer a mere two folders, “art” and “business,” were all that I needed to keep things in order. As time progressed, there were a few digital expansions, where loads of new software, hardware, documentation, support files, and resulting experimental files were heaped onto the already flimsy organizational structure that my “archive” had at that time become. Then there was college, various lines of employment, and a million scanned documents determined too important to simply toss. By this time, my artistic output had increased as well, with bandwidth intensive projects like Dead Letter Art, F-Disk Media, and StopSystem, my then new 250GB external hard drive was almost full. Along the way, I’m afraid, most attempts at “starting fresh” and reorganizing everything were shortsighted if not temporarily efficient.

So now, after having attained a small foothold on the internet with a newly designed, all-powerful Perishable Press website, I have taken a few steps back to contemplate the “big picture” and evaluate an optimal plan of attack. I truly cannot believe how inefficient and unorganized my system has become. Truly, it is a mess.

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