Improving the SEO of a Shopify store

By Josh Highland in internet, Tech

Shopify SEO

I love Shopify. It’s an amazing e-commerce SaaS (Software as a service) application. Shopify is basically an online solution for people who want to run an e-commerce store, but don’t want to deal with the headache of maintaining secure servers and source code. I’ve used them for years, and have built several stores based on their platform.

One of the things I really like about Shopify is their pro-developer attitude. They have a robust API and they want people to build thing on their platform. They even have an app store where developers can create and sell plugins to extends their platform. http://apps.shopify.com/

Recently, I launched a Shopify app to help store owners improve their stores SEO. “SEO Meta Manager” allows users to easily modify their products titles, meta descriptions and meta keywords. This allows Shopify store owners to control how search engines see and list their products in search result pages. For $5 a month, it’s a must have add on for anyone who is serious about their store.

SEO Meta Manager is an powerful tool for any Shopify store owner.
Better search results = More visits to your store = More sales = More $$$ for you!

http://SEOMetaManager.com
http://apps.shopify.com/seo-meta-manager

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTtdbvvkd3Q[/youtube]

Remove Unwanted Firefox Auto-Suggest Entries

By Josh Highland in internet, linux, mac, tutorials, windows

Firefox 3 is awesome we all know that, but there are some things that that would just be nice to have. One of those things would be the ability to control what appears for the auto suggest when you type in the URL bar.

Most of the time FireFox does a very good job of figuring out what you want to do, but when it goes bad, it goes really bad and gets annoying fast.

The other day I accidentally typed in “google.com/a”, and from that moment time on, everytime I wanted to go to “google.com”, it would auto complete to “google.com/a”, and i would end up going there. Very annoying.

I searched the Firefox menus but couldn’t find anything to help. I didn’t want to wipe out all of the auto complete entries, I find most of them helpful. I did some research and realized that you can remove these entries manually, but you have to do it in an unconventional way.

How remove those unwanted auto suggest entries

1. The list appears as you type something.
2. Select an entry by pointing you mouse at the item in the list, it will highlight.
3. Press Shift + Delete from your keyboard to delete the entry.

That’s all! You can remove entries from the address bar.  This trick works on any Firefox auto complete list, including text fields and other dropdown suggestions.

This also works on windows, mac and linux machines

Internet Explorer 6 must die!

By Josh Highland in internet, software, web 2.0, windows

noIE

As a professional web developer I have the authority to say this, Internet Explorer is a pain in the ass to support. IE 6 is the browser that shipped with Windows XP, so it was pretty wide spread. Every year on the web is like 10 years in any other industry. This makes IE 6 about 80 years old in practical terms, a literal antique. Microsoft is now on version 8 of Internet Explorer. IE6 is not considered a “modern browser”. Modern browsers honor web site development standards and promote a consistent visual experience are users. The most notable of these modern browsers are FireFox, Chrome, Safari, and even Opera.

In a nut shell, a web browsers is an interpreter of code. Programmers write the code to power a website, but the displaying and presentation of the site is up to the web browser. Modern browsers will all react the programmers code in a similar manner, this gives users a consistent experience and lets programmers worry more about making cool stuff instead of worrying about how to make their pages look consistent on all browsers. IE 6 doesn’t play by the modern rules, it does its own thing, which is often unpredictable. This means that programmers have to write special code just for people who use IE 6 to look at their site.

Despite IE 6 being a horrible browser that is full of security holes, people continue to use it which is mind blowing to me. Upgrading to IE 7 or IE 8 is free, and mandatory if you have Windows XP service pack 2 or 3 installed. Better yet, IE 6 doesn’t come with  Windows Vista or Windows 7. Get with the time people and upgrade your computers!

Because IE 6 is still widely used but doesn’t play by today’s rules so to speak, and it is old, the decision has been made, IE 6 MUST DIE!

Major website announced this week that they would be displaying special messages to IE 6 users telling them to upgrade to a modern browser or lose the use of the site. Some of the big boys behind this effort include Twitter, Facebook, Digg and YouTube. In time these sites are going to stop worrying about IE 6 users all together.

I think this is an amazing step towards the future and would like to see some of the larger websites join together to solve some of the webs other problems.

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