Monthly Archives: July 2009

31 Jul

A great backyard grill

The kind of grill you have says a lot about you. Do you do it up classic style and grill your meat over an outdoor wood stove? Do you simmer your meat over charcoal for that great smoky flavor? Or do you have one of those fancy  drop in grills with a full on outdoor sink?

No matter how you cook outdoors, grilling is an American past time and it has some deep roots in American culture. It is only recently that is has become a full on bonanza of basically full on kitchens, fully equipped with everything, even outdoor kitchen cabinets.… Read the rest

22 Jul

PHP UTF-8 and simplexml

Recently the page checking code was breaking when used on a site. The XML returned from the supplier was being read using file_get_contents() and passed straight into simplexml_load_string() which was then kicking out a UTF-8 Encoding Error.

The way around this is to use utf8_encode() to ensure the string is encoded into UTF-8 before passing to simplexml_load_string(). In this instance my code goes like:

{code type=php}
$FileContents = file_get_contents( $URL ) ;
if ( $FileContents !== false )
{
   $xml  = simplexml_load_string( utf8_encode( $FileContents ) ) ;
}
{/code}… Read the rest

10 Jul

Do Duplicate Content Filters Apply to Ecommerce Sites?

By Karon Thackston © 2009, All Rights Reserved

It’s a common complaint.  Ecommerce site owners will contact me for help because their product pages don’t get ranked.  Among one of my standard checks is their product copy.  Very often, what I find is copy that was provided by the product manufacturers.  Or, worse yet, copy that is the exact same for a variety of products with the exception of a few words.  Both can cost you in the rankings.

Don’t Use Canned Copy

Using copy provided by product manufacturers may seem like the best way to go.  After all, you get professionally written copy for free.… Read the rest