2011,Aug
W

Missing libnnz10.so While Compiling PHP in Solaris

in PHP, by benjamin

If you are trying to compile PHP with OCI8 in Solaris like I am and your “make” command fails because libnnz10.so is missing, here is what you need to do. Add the path of your Oracle instant client to the LD_LIBRARY PATH. This particular file can be found in that directory and PHP won’t know where to find it unless you add it to the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. You would think that specifying the instant client path in the “–with-oci8″ option would take care of it, but it doesn’t.


$ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/path/to/instantclient

I hope you still have all your hair. I might be missing some chunks.

 
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2011,May
W

The Most Common SEO Mistakes

in SEO, by benjamin

Before getting into advanced search engine optimization (SEO), it is important to make sure you cover the basics and to avoid the pitfalls that will earn your website a spot on Google’s black list or a place at the bottom of the search results. Below are a few examples of the most common mistakes made by young Internet marketers and web developers.

Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is considered to be a “black hat” SEO practice and there are several different ways this can be done. One common form of keyword stuffing involves placing unrelated popular search words in the keywords meta tag at the top of a webpage. Another method of keyword stuffing is building a hidden section in the HTML of the website containing a list of keywords or paragraphs containing the keywords. The goal of keyword stuffing is to attract traffic based on popular search words/phrases that may or may not have anything to do with the particular website. If a website is discovered to be committing keyword/content stuffing, it may be penalized by most of today’s popular search engines.

Non-Descriptive Page Titles

Another common mistake made by many web developers is the use of one common page title for every page in a website. Every page should have a unique title tag and it is especially important for all blog entry pages to have a title that matches the blog entry title. It should not be limited to the blog’s name or simply match the domain name.

Improper Link Building

It is important to get other websites to link to your site to help boost search engine rankings, however, the websites that link to your website should contain relevant themes. For instance, if you are trying to increase the traffic to your cat food website, you should try to find cat-related websites or pet care websites on which to post links. Posting a link about your cat food website on a college football blog will most likely be regarded as spam.

Wrong Choice of Keywords

It is extremely important to know what keywords people are searching for when looking for content that can be found on your website. For example, it is probably more common for someone to search for “college football” than it is for someone to search for “collegiate football”. Therefore, it is better to use the more popular phrasing on your site. Just be sure not to over-do it! Over-use of keywords can actually hurt your traffic rankings.

In conclusion, if you are feeling uncomfortable making decisions that will affect the SEO strategy of your business’s website, it may be a good idea to consult a professional or to purchase SEO software that helps manage many aspects of your SEO strategy. Many software suites help you find the right keywords to use, help you find similar websites, suggest directory sites, and automatically generate meta content such as keywords and content descriptions for each page. You can check out SEO Software Charts for more information.

 
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2011,May
W

Ruby on Rails SQLite Issue in Windows

in Ruby on Rails, by benjamin

Trying to build Ruby on Rails applications in Windows can be a pain because most Rails developers use Macs.  I am one of the few developers that doesn’t own a Mac and I use Windows.  I ran into this problem for a long time and I decided that once I found the solution, I would share it with the world.

After installing Ruby 1.9.2, installing Rails, running “bundle install”, “gem install sqlite3″ and creating a new application, I tried to run the application through Netbeans and received the following message:

C:/Ruby192/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/sqlite3-1.3.3-x86-mingw32/lib/sqlite3.rb:6:in `require’: no such file to load — sqlite3/sqlite3_native (LoadError)

Trying to start WEBrick from the command line resulted in the following error message:

The program can’t start because sqlite3.dll is missing from your computer.  Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem.

I read in several places online that to fix this issue, I had to download sqlite3.dll and place it somewhere in my Windows path.  I downloaded the latest version from the www.sqlite.org and placed it in my C:/Ruby192/bin directory.  When I tried to run the application again, I received the following error message:

The procedure entry point sqlite3_column_database_name could not be located in the dynamic link library sqlite3.dll.

This is basically telling you that you have the wrong version of sqlite3.dll.  I finally fixed both of these issues by paying attention (imagine that) to the message I received when I performed “gem install sqlite3″.  It tells you exactly where to find the correct version of sqlite3.dll on the www.sqlite.org website.  I downloaded the version (seen below) and placed it in C:/Ruby192/bin and then the application ran correctly.

sqlite3 terminal

I hope this helps other Windows users that might be experiencing the same problem.  I know it drove me crazy!

 
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2011,May
W

How to Fix Ubuntu Unity Application Search

in Linux, by benjamin

If you are anything like me, you probably freaked out about “zeitgeist” spying on your activities in Ubuntu and you may have attempted to remove it from your system only to find out that Unity depends on it very heavily in order to function properly.  The application search tool breaks down and the shortcuts for “Applications” and “Files & Folders” disappear from the sidebar.  Here is how you go about fixing the problem:

1.  Open the “Ubuntu Software Center” from the Unity sidebar.

2.  Search for “Unity” in the search bar.

3.  In the search results, select the option that says “Interface designed for efficiency of space and interaction”.

4.  Click “More Info”.

5.  Under the section titled “Add-ons”, check the boxes labeled “Application place for unity” and “File place for unity”.

6.  Apply the changes, then log out and log back in.

That should do it!  I got positive feedback about this fix on the Ubuntu forums so I hope it works for you as well.

 
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