Why is it bad? Because search engines rank content in their search results. If they believe you are the creator you are usually ranked higher than a site that has copied the content, if such a site is ranked at all.

The reality is this. Sites that scrape contents are easy to setup (using RSS feed mostly), require barely any maintenance and earn the creator money. These sites publish copied contents shortly after they have been published on the original website. As long as people can make money from this method, they will use it to do just that.

Fat Pings are one way to resolve the situation. The idea is simple. When you publish an article you ping a trusted source to confirm that you site is the original location of that article. It does not really matter if you do it 10 seconds before the scraper does the same or one hour, it is only important that you do it before the scraper does. This obviously has consequences for original content creators who do not make use of Fat Pings, as it is quite possible that scraper sites may make use of Fat Pings for an extra advantage.

How do you cope with that situation? You configure all of your sites to support Fat Pings. Here is how that is done.

If your blog is hosted on WordPress.com or Blogger, then you do not need to do anything. Fat Pings are automatically sent out. If you are running a self hosted WordPress blog, you can install the free PubSubHubbub extension to inform search engines when they blog has been updated.

The suggestion to use Fat Pings comes directly from Google. You can read up more about it on Search Engine Journal and Labnol.

The free software Websites Cop can monitor contents hosted on one web server. Configuration is not that comfortable which is the biggest let down, apart from the inability to use the freeware to monitor multiple ftp servers.

The program interface is divided into three tabs. You add local files and their remote location under the Main setting. The biggest issue here is that you can only pick one file at a time which is not very comfortable if you need to add dozens or even hundreds of web files.

Webmasters configure the ftp server under Settings. Here they need to add the ftp server’s address, port and the required username and password to access the entered server.

Additional settings are listed on the right side of the window. This includes the monitoring interval (set to 60 minutes by default), whether files should be automatically repaired if checks revealed that files on the ftp server are not identical to local files, and whether the program should be started with Windows.

The notify tab finally holds configuration options for email notifications. The program will send emails to the email address or addresses whenever files need repairing (when they are not identical anymore).

Errors can be displayed in the program interface as well. This option is listed under the File menu in the application window. Other options there include opening the log file and the list of different files.

Websites Cop is limited to one ftp server and the ftp protocol. This limitation along with the rather cumbersome way of adding files are holding the program back.

Webmasters can download Websites Cop from the developer’s website. The program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. The program needs to be running in the background continuously to monitor the files on the ftp server. (via)

They basically allow you to create variations of an existing web page in a drag and drop like manner. For that, you do not need any coding experience whatsoever. Here is what you do. You create a new experiment first by entering a web page address that you want to A-B Test.

The web page is then rendered in the interface. A click on any element on the page displays a context menu with options to move, resize, hide or remove the element, change an image, edit the HTML directly, edit the link destination, track clicks or use custom JavaScript for advanced functionality.

You can make fonts bigger, move images around, exchange contents and manipulate the page in any other imaginable way. You can create one or multiple variations of a page.

Once done you get a single line of JavaScript code that you need to add right below the head tag of the web page that you want to A-B test. And that’s it. No manual creation of pages on your web server, no code editing.

A click on Start Experiment starts the monitoring. You can from that moment on access the stats for that experiment to compare conversion rates, improvements and the performance of specific links on the page that you have chose to monitor.

Here is a video that outlines the whole process.

A-B Testing Video:

What I personally really like about Optimizely is the ease of use. You don’t have to create multiple pages on your web server to test their performance, which speeds up the process significantly. The downside is the price of the service. Users get a 30-day free trial after which they pay $79.99 for up to 20,000 visitors or $399,99 for up to 200,000 visitors, both with an unlimited number of experiments.

Optimizely has more to offer, including multi-browser testing of pages, automatic goal tracking or multiple page testings which is very helpful if you want to make changes to an element that is displayed on several pages of the website.

Optimizely is an A-B Testing service that I can recommend to web developers, Internet marketers and enthusiasts regardless of their technical background.

If you run a CSM or platform like WordPress, you can utilize plugins to create automatic and custom mobile versions of your website. You still need to test those resolutions to make sure that the sites display correctly on the devices.

Most webmasters do not own all of the devices that they need to support. The only available option to test screen resolutions and mobile compatibility is to use emulation.

Screenfly is an online service that can display a given website in predefined resolutions. Webmasters are asked to enter a web address into the form on the homepage.

This website is then displayed in one of the available resolutions. Semi-transparent buttons on the left side are provided to switch the resolution or device group. Available for selection are desktop, tablet, mobile and television devices, each with several subdevice listings.

The desktop group ranges from 10″ netbook resolutions of 1024×600 all the way up to 1920×1200, the native resolution of a 24″ monitor.

Tablet support is available for Apple’s iPad and four Android tablets including the Samsung Galaxy and the Motorola Xoom.

The mobile device category includes two Android smartphones, the Apple iPhone 3 and 4, the Asus Galaxy 7 Windows 7 phone, the Blackberry 8300 and two Motorola RAZR phones.

Television finally displays the website in a 480p, 720p and 1080p screen resolution on screen.

Switching to another device or resolution is a fluent process that happens without a reload of the page.

One interesting feature of Screenfly is the ability to detect mobile versions of a website. The service will automatically use the mobile version of a site if available and supported by the emulated device. This detection can be used to test a site’s mobile version thoroughly.

The one thing that is missing is an option to test a custom screen resolution. Webmasters who want that feature can try Simures, which supports custom screen resolutions.

Screenfly is a handy online service for webmasters to test their website’s display on different screen resolutions and mobile devices. (via)

Website validators like the W3C Markup Validation Service check a web page for validation errors. Webmasters use these services to correct validation errors on their websites.

Here is an example why validation is important. About a year ago I noticed that the RSS feed of Ghacks was throwing an XML error in Internet Explorer 8. This was caused by a single character in one of the latest articles that was not escaped (meaning instead of writing the character & directly one would have to use & instead.

That single character caused problems in the feed delivery, and I had to work longer than usual to get it fixed. Consequences of invalid code are not always that drastic, but it exemplifies the impact that it can have on a website.

Validome is another website validation service. It is a bit stricter when it comes to validating pages. It can happen that a page passes as a XHTML 1.0 Transitional document in the W3C validation, and fails in the Validome validation.

Another difference between the two validation engines is that Validome supports verifications of local and remote documents. Users can either enter an url in the form on the site, or upload a document from their local computer system.

Extended settings are offered to check the document with a specific user agent or language.

A click on Validate performs the validation of the document. Errors are displayed directly.

The service lists the line and column of the validation error, the error position and an explanation of the error. This is often enough to fix the issue in the document.

Validome is an excellent alternative to the W3C validation service. It is usually enough to use Validome since it appears to be stricter in the validation. Most webmasters on the other hand will probably use both services anyway.

Simures however offers a different approach than those third party programs. The online service can display any web page that is available online in any resolution available.

Users can either enter a web page and a desired resolution on the Simures website, or modify the url of the service to automatically display a website in a specific resolution.

Even better is the fact that the resolution can be adjusted in realtime on the page, so that the website is displayed in the new resolution immediately.

Urls use a naming convention, so that the service can be used directly without having to open its web page first. Just use the following syntax to display a website in a desired resolution:

http://www.simures.com/800×600/ghacks.net

The 800×600 part can be modified to any resolution, from 0×0 to 8000×6000 and more. The url can display any website, not just root domains. Just append the whole url without the http:// and the trailing / and it will be displayed by the service.

The best feature of Simures is the fact that it changes the resolution directly, which can save web developers some work. It would be nice if the developers of Simures would add presets to the page to load a specified web page in popular resolutions.

Update: Web developers can bookmark the web addresses to open them again whenever needed. This can be useful if they are working on a project for a long time and need to verify how it displays in a certain resolution regularly.

Codeburner, a free tool for the two web browsers Firefox and Opera, the Mac OS X operating system and Adobe Air offers another option. The web development reference offers quick lookups of HTML properties and CSS elements. Depending on the version installed, it looks slightly different.

Firefox users for instance can select to install it as a separate Firefox add-on or as a Firebug extension. The Firefox add-on places a search form in the status bar that can be utilized to search for properties and elements.

codeburner

Just enter a search term in the form and hit enter. The Codeburner window will expand from the bottom and display various information about the element or property.

The add-on displays compatibility information about the property by default, with the option to display code examples in another sidebar on the same page.

html css reference

Links are provided for more information online and to view a live demo. Both lead to the Sitepoint webmaster portal and are opened in new tabs.

Codeburner has also been integrated into the context menu. It is here possible to select an element on a page to display all of its properties. It is furthermore possible to open a full web page in the Codeburner window to see all elements used on that page.

Firefox users can change the behavior in the preferences. Here it is possible to remove options from the context menu and status bar, detach the Codeburner window from the browser, define keyboard shortcuts for the add-on, configure syntax colors and processor chunks, which determines the cpu utilization of the add-on.

Codeburner offers a solid reference for both HTML properties and CSS elements. Especially the integration in the Firebug add-on may appeal to many web developers, as they usually have Firebug installed. (via Techyard)

The Firefox web browser does not have that restriction. It is possible to install multiple versions of the web browser. They cannot be launched at the same time usually but there is a solution for that as well. And there are portable versions of the web browser so that all the versions can be put on an USB stick to be available on every PC with USB connections.

The Mozilla Firefox Collection is a software collection of multiple Firefox versions that can be launched at the same time. Included in the release are currently:

• Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.20
• Mozilla Firefox 3.0.19.0
• Mozilla Firefox 3.5.18.0
• Mozilla Firefox 3.6.16.0
• Mozilla Firefox 4.0.0.0

This collection has been mainly designed for web developers as it comes with the interesting option to launch an url in all versions of the Firefox web browser that have been installed during installation.

The following add-ons and plugin can be installed with the Firefox versions:

• Firebug add-on
• Web Developer add-on
• Flash Player plug-in

Features of the Mozilla Firefox Collection:

• It can open one or more local files and/or URLs in all installed versions of Mozilla Firefox with a single click
• It can appear in the context menu of Windows Explorer, so a file can be opened in every installed version of Mozilla Firefox directly
• It can display the version number of Mozilla Firefox in the titlebar
• It includes a number of window resizing options for the Web Developer add-on, settings for all common resolutions like 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×1024, 1440×900 and 1600×1200 are included
• It can be installed for all users, so it’s available for everyone
• It can be installed and used silently, it’s possible to create an unattended installation and use all functions using command line parameters
• It even works under the most restricted user accounts after installation, only the installation needs to be done by someone with Administrator privileges
• It supports both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows 98, 98 SE, ME, NT 4.0, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 2008 and 7

The main benefit of this approach over installing portable versions of the Firefox web browser versions that need to be tested is that it is a more comfortable approach especially with the option to launch a local or remote website in all versions of the web browser simultaneously.

The Mozilla Firefox Collection can be downloaded from the developer’s website

Software offered by Microsoft includes:

• Visual Studio Professional
• Expression Studio 2 or 3 (1 user) and Expression Web 2 or 3 (up to 2 users)
• Windows Web Server 2008 or R2 (when available)
• SQL Server 2008 Web Edition
• Windows Web Server 2008 R2

Webmasters and designers who are interested in joining the program can visit the Microsoft WebsiteSpark website to do so. The website offers a pdf document with detailed information on the program. It is probably a good idea to read thoroughly through it to get a better understanding of the requirements and responsibilities.

Microsoft WebsiteSpark can be beneficial to web design companies who are already using Microsoft software as they get the latest editions for free for the period of three years and do not have to make the switch from other software products. It could on the other hand be a good incentive for companies who would like to expand their services to include Microsoft services in their portfolio if they are not offering them already.

Sticking to standards can therefore lead to issues with certain web browsers, which lack support for the latest tags or render pages wrong.

The W3C therefore has its own web browser and editor which adheres to standards more than many browsers and supports certain new technologies others don’t, such as RDF annotation. This browser is Amaya, an open-source and cross-platform browser.

Amaya can handle a wide-range of open file formats, including HTML, CSS, XHTML, SVG and MathML.

The software integrates the browser and web editor: when you go to a web page, it can be edited inside the browser. It also instantly displays syntactic errors.

It also integrates the mark-up languages. For example, in a web page, one can write formula utilising MathML or add SVG shapes inside the software.

Amaya is a reasonable WYSIWYG editor and a good web browser for developmental purposes. It is also good to produce rich web-pages, which include other pieces of mark-up than HTML.

Update: Amaya has not been updated in the last two years. While it is still possible to use the cross-platform HTML editor it needs to be noted that it does not support recent technology advancements. This includes no support for HTML5 or CSS3 in the last release.

Windows and Linux users find in Blue Griffon a suitable alternative. Blue Griffon user however need to know HTML to work with the program, as it does not display information about elements that can be selected in the editor. Users who know their HTML elements will find it to be a suitable alternative for Amaya.

The benefit of this solution is that it allows to place more tools on the screen without forcing the user to scroll or change pages. The page will only load in web browsers supporting canvas which includes Firefox, Opera or Google Chrome for example while Internet Explorer 8 (and likely all other Internet Explorer versions as well) throw an error and do not display the page.

There are obviously some negative aspects as well. Missing descriptions or information on the screen are probably the most noticeable ones. The only source of information are the icons. A click on an icon will display a hovering box that contains a short description and a link to the homepage. The problem here is that you need to click on each item that you do not know to receive information about it. It would have been better to display the information on the page or while hovering the mouse over the entry.

It is possible to filter the tools by category. Possible categories include debug, code, design or deploy. A search in the footer is available as well which can be used to find specific tools.

The team admits that only a fraction of the tools are already listed on the website. Webmasters and developers can submit tools which are then reviewed by the team and put on the website if appropriate. They have also plans to create a generic website that is accessible by all web browsers. Web developers and interested users can visit the page here.

The programming language, Ruby, was created in the mid 1990’s in Japan, by Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto. Ruby is based on Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp and was written to create a programming language that, according to Matsumoto, “was more powerful than Perl, and more object-oriented than Python.”

One of the goals of Ruby is to allow the simple and fast creation of web applications. The language itself satisfies this goal. Because of this, there is much less tedious work with this language than many other programming languages. Ruby is also free of charge. It is also free to copy, use, modify, and distribute. Since Ruby can be modified, programmers can make necessary changes and can code without feeling restricted. Another feature of Ruby is its mark-and-sweep garbage collection which allows programmers the ability to code without having to worry about the need to maintain reference counts in extension libraries. Also, if an operating system allows for it, Ruby can dynamically load extension libraries. Ruby currently ranks as the 9th most popular programming language in the world. There are many online guides where Ruby programmers to-be can learn how to program in Ruby.

Ruby on Rails, often simply called Rails, is an open source web application framework that was designed for Ruby by David Heinemeier Hansson and was released in July 2004. Ruby on Rails makes use of an object relational mapping layer known as the ActiveRecord. Because of this, programmers do not have to specify database column names in class definitions. Rails will retrieve this information on its own from the database based on the class name. Rails also has a testing framework built in which allows programmers to write test cases which helps them create more reliable, robust code.

Once you have a written business plan, it’s time to do some research on which hosting firm is most suitable for your website. You will need to know, obviously, if you plan to sell products from your site, or if it will be strictly promotional. Do you plan to have video? Elaborate graphics? Or just text? Will your chosen host provider help you set up your web site? How many email accounts will you need?

There are a number of things you need to know about the hosting companies you choose among. Perhaps the main thing is how reliable their service is. If you have a business website, you can’t afford for it to have downtime. After all, it’s always normal business hours somewhere. Closely tied to the need for reliability is the need for technical support. Many hosting services say that they have so-called 24/7/365 tech support, but their definition of what that comprises may be different from yours. You don’t want to find out the hard way that calling tech support late at night or on a holiday only gets you to an answering machine and that you’ll have to wait for regular business to resume before getting any actual help.

Of course you should ask your candidate hosting companies directly about these things, but you should do something else too. There are forums all over the Internet where people will meet online to talk about such issues. Read these discussion threads. Ask questions. You should be able to get a more objective assessment of an Internet hosting provider than you would from the company itself.
There are, however, two things you should be aware of. The first thing is that every web hosting company that’s been around for any length of time will have some negative feedback. One or two rants about a certain hosting company shouldn’t put you off. It is possible that the user was the one with the problem, and it is also possible that the company has fixed the problem.

The other thing you should know when reading forums is that sometimes hosting companies plant people on them to say good things about them. The rule of thumb should be: discount the overly positive posts on a company, and discount the overly negative, too. Any post filled with capital letters and exclamation marks is suspect. Take your information from the saner posts you come across, and if you’re allowed to join a forum, don’t hesitate to ask questions, particularly about free web hosting companies.

The reason these companies are able to offer free hosting is that they will run ads on your site. These might be unobtrusive ad links, or they may be pop-ups, or they may be the really annoying ads that follow the reader as he or she scrolls down the page. You have to decide if you can live with the annoyance, and if you think your customers will stick around long enough to buy something.
The obvious advantage of free web hosting services is price. You won’t have to register a domain name or pay for hosting. A free web page can serve as a training site for you as you learn how you want your site to look, or test out new promotions. There are free services like sitemeter.com that will gather basic statistics on your site that can give you valuable information on your visitors. You can find out where most of your visitors come from, what time of day they visit, and how many page views they amass.

You could, if you had the time and motivation, use multiple free hosting providers to set up your site, and then monitor all of them to see if one outperforms the rest. You will likely see differences in the different hosts, and quickly learn which ones are the easiest to work with. You may find that one hosting company gets your site indexed by search engines sooner, and therefore drives more traffic to your site.

Or you may decide that free web hosting just isn’t going to be good enough. All you will have lost is time.

The biggest disadvantage to free web hosting is the ads cluttering up the site. Many visitors are turned off by pop-ups that suddenly materialize as they try to enter or leave your site. And a few will click on those ads and leave your site without looking at anything at all.

Even if you eventually choose paid web hosting for the control it gives you over your site, the free websites you set up may still work to your advantage. You never know where your web traffic will come from. Some of it might come through an old free site you set up when you were just starting out. So, while free website hosting may serve you well as you learn how to be a webmaster, if you have any kind of e-commerce function, you’ll almost certainly want to switch to paid hosting at some point.

But if you’re broke and just starting out, or just learning the basics of having your own web site, then free hosting providers may be exactly the right thing for you.

Not so with Font Friend, a bookmarklet that simplifies the font selection process greatly. A click on the bookmarklet on any website will display it in an overlay in the lower left corner of the browser window. The font selector can be used to change various characteristics of the fonts used on a website. The options are divided into font family, font variant, font weight, text transform and a html element selector.

The html element selector defines the elements on the page that will be affected by the font change. Included are headline tags, body, paragraphs and the option to select a custom element.

The font family offers a selection of 23 different font families including the popular families arial, verdana, times new roman and georgia. Font variants can further change the appearance of the fonts on the active website.

Webmasters who are currently testing various fonts for their website might want to check out the bookmarklet which can be simply added to the bookmarks and executed by left-clicking it on the right website.

One of the better scripts to display cached RSS feeds in a website is SimplePie. It might look a bit intimidating at first glance as it provides lots of options to customize the display. It is however very easy to display a feed with just a few lines of code. Start by downloading SimplePie from the website. Extract it to the computer system and upload it to the root folder of the website. You should also create a directory called cache in that root folder and make it writeable (chmod to 777).

Now add the following two lines to the top of the php file where you want to display the feed in. The first line defines the location of the simplepie.inc file on the web server (which is in the simplepie directory in root), the second the feed that you want to display on the website.

<?php
include_once $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/simplepie/simplepie.inc';
$feed = new SimplePie('http://feedproxy.google.com/Ghacksnet');
?>

Now place the following code in the location on the website where the feed should be displayed. This will fetch the five newest feed items and display them in the selected location.

<ul>
<?php foreach ($feed->get_items(0, 5) as $item): ?>
<li>
<a href="<?php print $item->get_permalink(); ?>">
<?php print $item->get_title(); ?></a>
</li>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</ul>

And that’s it. SimplePie offers a wealth of additional functions and settings to display more than one feed or mix feeds. The default caching time is 60 minutes.

The following list is a collection of webmaster tools that should help most webmasters. Many would consider them basic tools that every webmaster should know and use. Most of the tools are accessible from all operating systems and web browsers.

Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Webmaster Tools

Each of the three major search engines provides access to webmaster tools. These tools might require an account but will display all kind of information about the website that is related to the specific search engine. This includes crawling errors, statistics about indexed pages, sitemaps and troubleshooting help.

Google Webmaster Tools
Live
Yahoo Site Explorer

Markup Validation Service

The W3C Markup Validation services checks the syntax of webpages. It will report syntax errors which the webmaster should fix as soon as possible as invalid markup can lead to all sorts of problems including browser crashes, broken design or missing elements. It is a good idea to check the source check box on the page which will display the source code of the webpage which makes it way easier to locate the erroneous syntax.

W3C Markup Validation Service

Web Browsers

Testing websites in different web browsers is a must for every webmaster. What displays fine in Internet Explorer can throw up error messages in Opera or Firefox.

Firefox
Google Chrome
Internet Explorer
Opera
Safari

Web Statistics

Web Statistics are tools that record and analyze traffic that is arriving at a website. These tools provide extensive information about visitors (where do they come from, which pages did they access, how long did they stay), referring websites, errors and additional information. Webmasters have the choice to install a third party tracking code or run a web statistics script on their server directly. Running a third party tool will decrease the load on the server as no processing power is needed to crawl and analyze the access logs. Their disadvantage is that a piece of JavaScript has to be loaded on every user request which increases page loading times. It also means that data about the traffic is available at a third party site.

AWStats (Server)
Google Analytics (Third Party)
Sitemeter (Third Party)

Resources:

Robots.txt

Robots.txt files can be used to guide search engine bots on a website. They can allow or prevent access to certain files and directories.

Robots.txt

.htaccess

Htacess is a very powerful configuration option included in Apache web servers. It can be used to do various things like password protecting directories or redirecting 404 pages to another page.

.htaccess

Firebug

If there was one Firefox add-on that webmasters could use they would certainly pick Firebug. The add-on can be used to display realtime information about the active website in the web browser. Webmasters can select elements on the website to be taken directly to the code that is creating that element including its CSS properties. It can also be used to monitor network activity and to debug JavaScript. Several extensions are available for the add-on to increase the functionality further.

Firebug (requires Firefox)

Selenium

Selenium is a web application testing system for the Firefox web browser that can be configured to perform clicks, typing and other actions on the website which can be played back at a later time using variables like different web browsers or languages.

Selenium (requires Firefox)

If you can think of any other resources that are missing in this list let us know.

Widerbug is a tweaked version of Firebug that has been specifically designed for widescreen monitors. Instead of dividing the computer screen vertically it divides it horizontally by displaying the Firebug information in a sidebar on the right side of the web browser. This is good news for web developers who use widescreen monitors to work on their web development projects.

A previous installation of Firebug has to be uninstalled from the web browser before Widerbug can be installed to avoid complications. The web development application can then be installed and uses the same shortcuts as Firebug with the only difference that the screen is opening in the right pane.

The only possible problem that users could run into are update delays as the developer of Widerbug needs to update his extension whenever Firebug gets updated.

The tag we need is called “wp_list_categories()” and by default it lists all your categories in alphabetical order. All we need to do is add some arguments to it to modify the default values and we’re done! We need to limit the number of items shown to five, we also want to show the post counts in the categories and we want to order the list by the post count, in descending order.

The “number” argument actually has no default value. The reason for this is that it limits the SQL query directly, so there is no need for it by default. We can add it though to impose a limit, so our first argument will be “number=5″. We also want to show the post counts, so we use “show_count=1″ to enable this (show_count=0 is the default).

We also want to order the list by the post count, so we use “orderby=count” to achieve this. By default lists are sorted ascending, meaning that the lowest post count would show up first. To make the list descending, we can use “order=DESC”.

I also use one last argument in there, which is “title_li=”. This sets the title of the list to be nothing, by default the list is presented with a title. I like to hard code my titles for a few reasons, but feel free to change this as you like. So here is the complete code I used, one simple line to do a seemingly hard task, enjoy

<?php wp_list_categories(‘number=5&show_count=1&orderby=count&order=DESC&title_li=’) ?>

If you’d like to read some similar articles, take a look at Scriptastique, a blog all about web development and coding, with great tips on CSS, HTML, PHP, MySQL and Javascript and tutorials and screencasts coming soon! You can follow us on our RSS feed, or Twitter where we’re posting 3-4 short tips daily now!

Webmasters can however utilize tag pages better in their WordPress blogs by creating so called custom tag pages which can contain any information they want. If you open the page above you notice that it does not contain a listing of blog excerpts but a custom page for that tag.

WordPress provides the means to create those custom tag pages easily. Custom tag pages can be created in the theme directory of the WordPress directory by adding a new template file to the theme. This new template file needs to begin with tag followed by the post slug of the tag. In the case of the Windows 7 Download tag it would have to be named tag-windows-7-download.php.

Custom tag pages have a higher priority than the default ones that show only excerpts of the posts. The easiest way to fill the custom tag with content is the following:

WordPress looks for the following files in order to create those tag pages:

• tag-slug.php
• tag.php
• archive.php
• index.php

Look into your theme folder and see if there is a tag.php file. If it is copy its contents and create a new php file that is using the tag-slug.php as its name. If ther eis no tag.php look for archive.php and finally index.php.

Now simply add content to the file. It might take some experimentation at the beginning but it can be really worth it in the long run. If you have any questions or additions let me know in the comments.

The computer software supports both renaming operations on file contents but also on file names and supports the use of the two wildcards (*) and (?). The interface of the application is tab driven and the user is working from the left tab to the right to configure the renaming operations. Source files will be selected in the first tab. This can be done by typing them in, pasting them in or using a file browser that unfortunately cannot load the contents of directories into the application. Files can be excluded by dates.

The next tab defines the file replacements. It is possible to define multiple strings to be replaced in here. The options in the third tab contain several important settings like matching only whole words, enabling wildcard use, case sensitivity or limiting the replacements.

The fourth tab contains logging options. A record log will be written by default which will log all operations. This can be changed to disable logging or to log only positive or negative hits. The batch tab is the final tab which allows to execute batch files before or after the operation.

File Substring Replacement Utility is compatible with all editions of Windows including Windows XP and Windows Vista. It can be downloaded directly from the developer’s homepage.

Update: Program is Shareware. Possible free alternatives are TurboSR, String Find & Replace or Replace Text.