SEO Site-Augmentation Tools Upgraded

[owlcroft]

There have been two significant upgrades to the free site-augmentation tools at the SEO Tools, Toys, and Packages Site:

The "Freebie" package, which can with only modest one-time install effort, add thousands of relevant, daily changing pages to any site, is now at 0.98, with the added ability to do "complex" keyword searches, yet more substantial documentation, and a fix for the weird problem that a few servers were having (it turned out that they buffer output without telling anyone).

And the "Weather" dropin tool has a new file-load routine to accomodate the server-side changes made by the supplier of the XML weather data.

With the "Freebie" logjam broken (finding that nasty server "gotcha" was quite tedious), I hope to be adding more tools soon. If anyone has any particular wants, please message me.

(Remember, these--and the others on the site--are not tools to see how you're doing with SEO: they are tools to actually accomplish SEO augmentation of sites.)

[owlcroft]

Some further upgrades have taken place. The list, and current levels, now are:

"Freebie" (add thousands of pages): v. 1.00 (finally!)

"Validate" (bulk-submit to w3c validator): v. 0.10 (newly released)

"Weather" (page dropin for anywhere in the world): v. 0.30 (just upgraded)

"Rates" (page dropin with currency-exchange rates): v. 0.20 (just upgraded)

"Via" ("hide" links from bots): v. 1.00 (unchanging)
There are also some "SEO Tips" white papers on the site--basic stuff, but you never know what can help.

[owlcroft]

Note to anyone using my "Rates" dropin package:

The International Monetary Fund, with no notice on any of their pages, just drastically changed the format of their exchange-rates data file. I have made a new v. 0.30 to handle that, but previous versions will not work--worse, they may look like they're working, but continue to give out-of-date numbers.

Please switch to the new version asap.

They also now apparently update that file every 20 minutes through the business day, and I will soon have a version 0.31 that will grab the data "live", rather than archiving it nightly.

Also: the "Weather" package has been upgraded to 0.31 with a patch to exit cleanly if the raw XML feed goes down (as it did last night for the first time in my experience).

And, finally, the "Validate" package has been fixed since original release so that the cron interface script will work right.

[owlcroft]

"Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place."

1. Amazon changed the page format of its report of "reader reviews"; anyone using the "Freebie" package needs to be using at least v. 1.01 to have those reviews display (which is important).

2. The change in the IMF's rate-data file mentioned above had an upside: their data is now, during business hours, updated frequently; the "Rates" package now uses live data (as of v. 0.41), rather than nightly archives.

In general, anyone using any of the packages at the site in the sig block ought to check fairly often for upgrades. If you are using any of the packages, you can email me (webmaster@seo-toys.com) and I will send you notices when there are changes.

[owlcroft]

Of the free tools, toys, and packages available on my site, the following recent updates are important for anyone using the subject tools:

. the "Rates" tool is now v. 0.50, and no lower version should be used. Versions below 0.30 will not work with the new file format the IMF adopted (with no notice), but may seem to be working, whereas they are only repeating cached old rates; below 0.50, the tool is subject to multi-minute hangups if the IMF file's server is down (which it currently is), while the updated version will not hang past 15 seconds. [This one creates a box you can drop into any page's HTML that will give back-and-forth currency-exchange rates for selectable currencies--very customizeable.]

. the "Freebie" package is now v. 1.05, and an upgrade is recommended for lower versions. Those below 1.01 will not capture the changed "reader reviews" file format that Amazon pulled out of its ear one fine day, and 1.05 includes some fixes since 1.01. [This one adds many thousands of apparently static, relevant, daily pages to any site, in the form of a specialist Amazon bookshop.] Note: I may soon add a version that will work with non-Apache (i.e. M$) servers, and one that will work with other national Amazons; stay tuned to the download page.

. the "Validate" tool is now v. 0.14, and all lower versions are deprecated. It is nominally still beta, but after a few quick post-first-release fixes, seems quite solid. [This one submits all your pages to the W3C validator, with selective blocking by subdirectory allowed.]

. the "Weather" tool is at v. 0.32; no version below 0.30 will work reliably with the changed XML format from Addresses.com, the data supplier; the latest version includes some "failsafes" for data-server misbehaviors. [This one creates a weather-conditions box you can drop into any page's HTML, settable for just about anyplace in the world, and very customizeable in appearance, sizem and detail.]

. the "Via" toy, being a simple thing, remains solid at its initial release v. 1.00--no upgrades needed. [It allows "hiding" any outbound link, external or internal, from SE robots.]

I am hoping that Real Soon Now the "Update" toy will be released--it's a matter of making docfiles for it. (This one will automatically freshen the date/time stamp of all your site's htm/html/shtml files, with selective blocking by subdirectory allowed.)

In general, it behooves anyone using any of these to stay tuned to the download page for announcements of upgrades, since several depend on factors (such as file formats supplied by a third party) over which I have no control.

[owlcroft]

I have just released a variant of the "Freebie" site-augmentation package that does not use any redirection or require an .htaccess file.

That makes it possible for anyone who cannot, or prefers not, to do redirection with an .htaccess file to get full use of the package. That notably includes users of FrontPage who employ the "publish to web" mode, and users hosted on servers powered by M$ IIS instead of Apache.

The "cost" is simply that the URLs of the thousands of new pages the package adds are not so 'pretty" as before--but, being only a single variable deep, should be equally attractive to spiders. Here is a representative URL example:

original: http://seo-toys.com/books-plain/0521535999.html

variant: http://seo-toys.com/seo-books/free1.php?asin=0521535999
The new variant has been tested on an Apache host. Its main use, though, would be for those hosted on IIS-powered servers, and I could really use a beta tester or two to verify that all the PHP works on an IIS server (it is known that some PHP calls--though I don't know all of which, do not work, or do not work the same, on IIS serves as on Apache servers). I hope and think it will work normally, but, again, I need some beta testers.

The variant package can be found on my site, under the name Freebie-X (http://seo-toys.com/Xfreebie/Xfreebie-package.shtml) .

[dilligaf]

I might have a beta tester for ya, but anyone else can jump ahead. I'll send you a PM

[owlcroft]

Thank you. I know too well from developing the original package that what works like a prince on a decent server can go walkies on one with strange configurations. The variant works a charm on Apache (so FrontPage users publishing to web on Apache servers are now included), but I definitely need IIS testers.

[owlcroft]

As also noted under the thread about the "internationalized" Freebie package, there has been an upgrade.

In the main "Freebie" package, and in the non-Apache alternate ("Freebie-X"), the upgrade is from 1.05 to 1.06.

While the package will certainly not crash and burn if not updated, if you have it I really, really, really urge the upgrade. The package makes upgrading quick and painless, and by upgrading you assure that you have all the latest features (and responses to Amazon's erratic ways).

[owlcroft]

[QUOTE=owlcroft]The package makes upgrading quick and painless . . . .[/QUOTE]But I decided that ten easy steps was too many, so I have further upgraded those packages by adding an automated upgrade script to each. (So they are new at versions 1.07/1.12/1.07, respectively.)

Now, you upload the new package files, run the one script (a few seconds), and essentially you're done.

(There is a trifle of housekeeping--delete the old files from your local computer and download the upgarded new ones, but that adds maybe three minutes.)

I really urge anyone using any of those packages to upgrade to the lates.

And as Bartels or James (who could say which was who?) used to say, "We thank you for your support."