How to Integrate Google Drive with Elgg 1.8

Last Updated on Sunday, 10 February 2013 08:48 Written by Rodolfo Hernandez Monday, 11 February 2013 12:00

Google Drive lets you store any document or file you want. It is a free service with almost unlimited storage. Not only that, Google Drive lets you share any file or document with your friends or everybody in the internet. In this article I will give you a step by step guide on how integrate Google Drive with elgg 1.8 so that you can share your Google Drive files in your elgg network.

1. First download the elgg community plugin Google Drive here

2. Now, upload the plugin to the mod folder. If you don’t know how to do that, read this article.

3. Log into elgg as an Admin. Open the Administration Dashboard and go to menu “Configure -> Plugins“:

How to Install Google Analytics Into TomatoCart

Last Updated on Thursday, 31 January 2013 07:12 Written by Jack Yin Saturday, 2 February 2013 12:00

Google Analytics is a free tool to analyze your website traffic. This article guides on how to install Google Analytics tool into your TomatoCart store.

1. Create a Google Analytics account
   Sign up at http://www.google.com/analytics and set up your web property.
2. Get the tracking code
   After setting up an account and your web property, you will be redirected to the admin panel of Google Analytics.

How to Add Different Fonts on a Web Site

Last Updated on Monday, 21 January 2013 02:51 Written by David Bauernschmidt Tuesday, 29 January 2013 12:00

In today’s web environment you have a great number of options when it comes to technologies to use, images to show, animation to run, navigation to launch, as well as many different frameworks to implement but one area that has always been fairly limited is in different fonts.  For the most part you have just a few (relatively speaking) to pick from.  You can look at sites like ampsite, MIT, webDesigndev and many others and you will find that you have about 16 fonts or so.  This has always bothered me.  You want to provide the user with a unique experience which should include fonts that are tailored to your site design.  You can create a wide range of graphics text but these are neither scalable nor search engine optimized.

How to Add a Google Direction Map to a Web Site

Last Updated on Saturday, 26 January 2013 08:17 Written by David Bauernschmidt Saturday, 26 January 2013 12:00

Just about everyone in today’s internet has either a Google, Bing or MapQuest map on their web page, and although this is a fine idea there have been several times when I want to know how to get there from where I live, work, or eat.  You are left with a couple of choices, you could try and copy and paste to Google map and then add a destination or you could zoom out and try and figure it out yourself. Why not add the ability for a user to enter in their address and then let them see driving directions from your site. Furthermore; if you wanted to capture the address that they are using you might find a pattern which might help target your advertising dollar. This article will walk you through the steps to add this to your site. Trust me it is not very difficult.

Holy Crap, Google Just Blocked My Site!

Last Updated on Thursday, 24 January 2013 11:53 Written by Brent Riggs Thursday, 24 January 2013 11:53

So I’m kicked back one day enjoying a relaxing and peaceful afternoon when all of a sudden I get an email that one of the primary pages has been blocked by Google. And it’s on the website that funds my entire business .

Panic would be an understatement.

The site has thousands of users and the emails start flooding in from irate users. I have no clue why my page had been blocked or “suspected of malware”. I dove into the page code only to be more puzzled because it was a simple page:

• A blog reader clicks on a link
• That link goes to an intermediate page
• A “click counter” is ticked off in the database
• The reader is redirected to the destination URL

About 10 lines of code and I’m getting an ulcer trying to figure out how this could be hacked or malicious. The code uses an “id” from the querystring. No problem… the code checks to make sure the “id” has not been tampered with. It also checks for any additional variables that have been added.  If the “id” doesn’t exist in the database, nothing happens.  Fool proof… which makes the whole thing maddening.

I just cannot figure out why Google is blocking me. Yep, that’s my site in the graphic below (www.linkytools.com)… talk about the kiss of death. Bloggers will spread that kind of information like wildfire:

After couple of valium, some logic set in: it must be the target site being redirected to because I know the “malware” is not on mine. So why is “www.linkytools.com” getting the bad wrap by Google?

Using the “id” in the offending link from my click-counting page, I got in my database and found the destination URL.  Imagine my relief when I visited that URL and found out I was right. THEY were problem, not Linky Tools:

I could rest easy that is was not my site but I was still left with how to fix things where 1) the click is tracked, 2) the redirect occurs and 3) if a bad site is encountered, Linky Tools is not listed as the culprit.  I had several options for redirecting in my .NET environment:

• Response.redirect – would not fix the “blame Linky Tools” issue and it’s not a permanent redirect so the end users don’t get any link love
• Response.PermanentRedirect – users get credit for the link in search engines and ranking but does not solve the “blame Linky Tools for the malware” problem
• HTML Meta-refresh – solves the bad site message but gives no link love (not a permanent redirect)

The solution was using the response headers.  The following code is not .NET or VB peculiar. All the webdev platforms can use some version of this; it is the process of sending page headers to the final HTML output:

• Response.Status = “301 Moved Permanently”
• Response.AddHeader(“Location”, “http://” & whateveryoururlis)
• Response.End()

Send these headers to your page when it loads. The “Status” takes care of making the redirection permanent so your end users get the linking credit they crave from search engines. “AddHeader” allows you to add the redirection (“Location”) and the URL to send the page to.  ”End” stops any additional processing.

Works perfect.  Using this method, I don’ t have to worry about anything on the hundreds of thousands of destination URLs in my database causing me another Google-banned-me-coronary-arrest.  I can’t risk having any more episodes of Judge Judy interrupted like that.