Even though CodeIgniter is a very flexible framework, it’s very lightweight and some feature for Web application have not been taken into account, that in mind, the people behind EllisLab, Inc made sure that these small twigs were easily bypassed by allowing complete customization of their libraries.

Here is my original issue:

I have a item listing page with pagination activated and I wanted the first page to be the the root URL of the item page.
e.g. http://www.mysite.com/items

But what CodeIgniter Pagination Library generated for the first page was: http://www.mysite.com/result/1

That is pretty inconvenient for SEO, because the crawler will find two pages with the same content while crawling the pages.

Thus i modified the CI_Pagination library an created MY_Pagination.

First of all i have added a new variable called first_page_url as class variable in MY_Pagination class

class MY_Pagination extends CI_Pagination {

var $first_page_url        = ''; // The first page will have this URL

I have changed the original Pagination Library First page rendering from

// Render the "First" link
if  ($this->cur_page > ($this->num_links + 1))
{
$output .= $this->first_tag_open.'<a href="'.$this->base_url.'">'.$this->first_link.'</a>'.$this->first_tag_close;
}

to

// Render the "First" link
if  ($this->cur_page > ($this->num_links + 1))
{
$output .= $this->first_tag_open.'<a href="'.$this->first_page_url == '' ? $this->base_url : $this->first_page_url.'">'.$this->first_link.'</a>'.$this->first_tag_close;
}

This way if during the initialization of the Pagination class the configuration setting first_page_url was passed it will be used instead of the base_url.

Some modification were also made to the pagination digit generation from

// Write the digit links
for ($loop = $start -1; $loop <= $end; $loop++)
{
$i = ($loop * $this->per_page) - $this->per_page;

if ($i >= 0)
{
if ($this->cur_page == $loop)
{
$output .= $this->cur_tag_open.$loop.$this->cur_tag_close; // Current page
}
else
{
$n = ($i == 0) ? '' : $i;
$output .= $this->num_tag_open.'<a href="'.$this->base_url.$n.'">'.$loop.'</a>'.$this->num_tag_close;
}
}
}

to

// Write the digit links
for ($loop = $start -1; $loop <= $end; $loop++)
{
$i = ($loop * $this->per_page) - $this->per_page;

if ($i >= 0)
{
if ($this->cur_page == $loop)
{
$output .= $this->cur_tag_open.$loop.$this->cur_tag_close; // Current page
}
else if($loop == 1 && $this->first_page_url != '')
{
$output .= $this->num_tag_open.'<a href="'.$this->first_page_url.'">'.$loop.'</a>'.$this->num_tag_close;
}
else
{
$n = ($i == 0) ? '' : $i;
$output .= $this->num_tag_open.'<a href="'.$this->base_url.$n.'">'.$loop.'</a>'.$this->num_tag_close;
}
}
}

which will make sure that the page numbered 1 takes has the first_page_url has href when  first_page_url is available.

The complete file can be found here: MY_Pagination

Why is my bounce rate so high ?

Definition: A bounce occurs when a person leaves your website after reaching your entry page. The above cases can be considered equally as bounces from your website.

1) Visitor enters your site and press back immediately (before or even after the page has loaded)

2) Visitor waits for the page to load stays on this page for some time and then press back or navigate on another site. ( In this case the visitor might have found the information and then chose to navigate elsewhere to either find some supplementary information. Or it could be that he/she might not have found it but just read some pieces to see what is there, a third case could be the persons did not like the: website, content or colors on the site and went away.)

Therefore there seems to be considerable number of aspects to take into consideration to get a more precise question about “Why is my bounce rate so high ?”. There isn’t any straight forward answer to this question, but there are many questions that can lead to possible solutions:

When you ask your questions about bounce rate here are the different questions that might come to your mind.

Why is my bounce rate so high ?

User Interface
Is my layout/presentation/design attractive to visitors ?
Does my pages load slowly ?
Do my page have appropriate ads ? Are these ads non-aggressive towards the user ?
Is your page browser friendly ? (Can be views at any resolution with any browser the same way)

Content

Does

The first thing I installed is the S3 Object plug-in, to be able to upload images directly to my Amazon S3 account and use them on this post.

This image comes from my S3 bucket.

There are many feature such as the Insert Map: Let’s try it out and point out Mauritius for example

Where i live.

Nice. I have also created a Marker (Push Pin). Which does not seem to appear, When you create a map on Windows Live Messenger, it’s not the actual map that appears but an image with a link to the actual map…

Some other comment: There is to a problem, when there are connection cuts. The application just hangs during an operation. It was the case for my first post. Hope that is will be happen.

Conclusion a very nice and elaborated tool for blogging. I’ll will be trying it for a fews days and will send some feedback on this post. Or create a new one if need be.

My previous article to Windows Live Writer can be found here

I came across 2 free tools that i use for my backup and file sharing:

MozyHome Remote Backup

MozyHome is a small application that runs on background and backups any folder that you configure it to. It will encrypt and then upload your files to your 2 GB free space. You have several tools to enable you to them restore any lost files. Nice for uploading document, project files. You have also the paid version with unlimited space.

Dropbox

Dropbox is a new tool, that just got public last week. It’s similar to Mozybackup with 2 GB free space and the posibility of backup your files. With some extra features such as file sharing and automatic sync. Personally I use it to share files only. Since your files need to be in the DropDox folder (Similar concept and LiveMSN sharing folder) to be able to share.

It also allows sharing of files and give you a nice public URL that you can easily send to the person you want to share your files with. The only lacking features i might see here, is that you can’t share an entire folder with files inside. i.e When you want to share several photos you can’t directly get a link to the folder. You must share it with someone that already has Dropbox. A feature that would enable a link to a zip version of an entire folder could be nice.

Consider the case where we already have a website in IIS called: greataspnetwebsite.com

• Go to IIS Manager
• Create a new website that point to the same directory as your existing one
• Select the newly created website, open the properties box
• In the option button “When connecting to this resource the content should come from” should be change to “A redirection to a URL“
• Specify the URL http://www.greataspnetwebsite.com
• Select the check box that says “A permanent redirection for this resource.”

It’s a Google like home page i may say, not many actions, but the essentials that are needed is visible. Let’s say is more web 2.0

The bright orange is a bit too flashy and takes up too much of the screen i may think. It could have been a bit smaller.

For those who don’t what sourceforge.net is about here is a part of the description from wikipedia:

SourceForge.net is a source code repository and acts as a centralized location for software developers to control and manage open source software development. SourceForge.net is operated by Sourceforge, Inc. (formerly VA Software) and runs a version of the SourceForge software, forked from the last open-source version available. A large number of open source projects are hosted on the site (it had reached 178,832 projects and 1,861,990 registered users^[2] as of 2008, although it does contain many dormant or single-user projects).

SourceForge.net has offered free access to hosting and tools for developers of free software / open source software for several years, and has become well-known within such development communities for these services.

SourceForge.net competes with other providers such as RubyForge, Tigris.org, BountySource, BerliOS, JavaForge and GNU Savannah.

Read more about sourceforge here.

Here is an extract from Yahoo! Search BOSS YDN

BOSS (Build your Own Search Service) is Yahoo!’s open search web services platform. The goal of BOSS is simple: to foster innovation in the search industry. Developers, start-ups, and large Internet companies can use BOSS to build and launch web-scale search products that utilize the entire Yahoo! Search index. BOSS gives you access to Yahoo!’s investments in crawling and indexing, ranking and relevancy algorithms, and powerful infrastructure. By combining your unique assets and ideas with our search technology assets, BOSS is a platform for the next generation of search innovation, serving hundreds of millions of users across the Web.

I’ll try to experiment a bit on it, to see if i can get to integrate the search on this blog for a small…

They have been working together with Google and Yahoo for a way to give access to all the information that can be found in Flash application that have been hanging around the web for the some times now.

So what does that mean, in the Web world: Flash developers that have strived to create faboulous flash websites and application, that could only be reached via direct linking, will now be seen in Google and Yahoo search result, WOW this means millions of Flash application links will make their appearance in the day to day searching on GOOG.

From my point of view this is something really good. But what will happen to AJAX application with fancy effects ? will they not be replaced by Flash which is now INDEXABLE natively by the web crawler. From what i know from the internal working of flash, their are series of events that are triggered to be able to navigate in an application, so when the crawler will index it, will it be by pages or by scene… What will be the effect of this changes on the Web 2.0 era ?

i’ll make some research to see how it will be working and maybe post back something here. If anyone has extra information or reaction to this post, do not hesitate to post a comment.

Here is an article from ZDNET:

It’s a big day for rich Internet applications. Why? You can now find these newfangled Web applications a lot easier. Google, Yahoo and Adobe have teamed to make Flash file format content easier to find….

Read more

I have been searching for some quick implemented solutions for performing this IIS Log archiving task and found some quiet nice discussions and article about it. Here are the links to the different post and forums that talk about a solution to solve this issue:

http://blogs.thesitedoctor.co.uk/tim/2007/02/10/Automatically+Delete+Old+IIS+Log+Files.aspx

http://www.iislogs.com/ (Tool to automate maintenance of IIS Log)

http://forums.webhostautomation.com/showthread.php?t=5053

http://forums.iis.net/p/1022450/1388469.aspx

On my side i need something with a bit more functionality so, i modified some of the scripts that i could find on the different article related above and came up with a solution that can.

• Compress each log file found in your websites folder
• FTP the compressed files on a foreign server ( Keeping historic of your IIS log ) Uses Chillkat Free FTP ActiveX
• Delete them from your disk afterward

You can launch this process everyday and there will be no log that is older than a specified number of days on your server.

Requirement for this solution to work:

• Chillkatsoft FTP.1 ActiveX
• gzip archiver

You can download the script here.

See the entire script in the full post.

[sourcecode language='vb']Option Explicit

Const ftpSite = “yourftpsite”
Const ftpUsername = “ftpusername”
Const ftpPassword = “ftppassword”
Const bDEBUG = True
Const zipProgram = “C:\gzip\gzip.exe” ‘ Path to your gzip utility
Const zipExtension = “.gz”

Dim objFSO, objFolder, objF, objWS
Dim strYear, strDay, strMonth, strDate
Dim strBaseFTPPath
Dim bFTPUpload

bFTPUpload = False

‘If no arguments passed quit the script
If WScript.Arguments.Count = 0 Then
WScript.Echo “weblogs.vbs startdirectory [ftppath]”
WScript.Quit (1)
End If

‘Check if there is the FTP path Argument sent
If WScript.Arguments.Count > 1 Then
bFTPUpload = True
strBaseFTPPath = wscript.arguments (1)
End If

strDate