Today is the ninth day of Diduary. You can see links to all of the published articles in the series here.

Ever wonder what you can do with your website to make it more friendly to search engines? Microsoft recently released a free tool to help you with this. It's called the Search Engine Optimization Toolkit, and you can use it on any website, regardless of where or what it's hosted on. Once you've got it installed, you'll see this screen (click to enlarge):



Click on "Create a new analysis" under the Site Analysis section, and you'll get a prompt to add your website. In the image below, I have also opened the "Advanced Settings," but I didn't change any of the default values.



Once you click OK, it will start running your site analysis. For my jeffblankenburg.info site, the analysis takes about 45 seconds. I am eventually presented with a summary of this SEO analysis (click to enlarge).



Here's the surprising part: It found 209 SEO violations. Clearly, I've got some work to do. Opening the Violations tab, I can see that the bulk of my issues are based on missing ALT attributes, something I can ultimately choose to live with. It's not accessible whatsoever, but if I just have decoration graphics, perhaps you don't want them to have attributes. The only that really surprised me was the 4th one down. "The description is too long." (click to enlarge)



Something I had never realized is that the <meta> description value could only have 150 characters? That's something I'm going to have to optimize.

It also noticed that I had a broken hyperlink. I was linking to

http://friendfeed.com/jeffblankenburg

when my FriendFeed username is actually jblankenburg. Little things like this can make your site seem broken to a user, but are absolutely confusing to a search engine. Fixing these seemingly simple issues can make you rank much higher in Google, Bing, etc.

So go download the Search Engine Optimization Toolkit, and try it on your site today. I think you'll be surprised.

Labels: diduary, iis 7, seo toolkit

Today is the eighth day of Diduary. You can see links to all of the published articles in the series here.

Sure, you've used the Windows key to open the Start menu. Maybe you even used it with the L key to lock your machine. You're already WAY ahead of most people, who don't know the value this little key provides us out of the box in Windows 7. Some of these have been around a while, but very few people know they're there.

Here's a nice list of all of the things your Windows key can do for you. Almost all of these will toggle back to whatever the previous state was by repeating the keystroke. For example, if you use Windows Key + D, it shows the desktop. If you do it again, it will return all of your windows the way they were.

Labels: diduary, windows 7, windows key

Today is the seventh day of Diduary. You can see links to all of the published articles in the series here.

Let me start this post by stating that if you're running Internet Explorer 6, you really need to stop. There are entire movements to get everyone to stop using IE 6. Google is dropping support for it. Microsoft has released a security advisory for Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6.

OK, now that you've heard why you should upgrade to a new browser, I'll concede that some of you have to support applications that only work in IE 6. For those of you that have that issue, you probably feel restricted to living in a Windows XP world. The point of this article is to show you that you can have all of the security and features of Windows 7, while still having the ability to run certain applications in Internet Explorer 6 and Windows XP. Here's how it works:

1. Get your machine running Windows 7

You can get that plenty of places. This should be the easy step. If you really need a place, Amazon.com has a reasonable price.

2. Get Windows XP Mode

A simple download, you basically get a virtual machine with a fresh XP installation. Click here to get Windows XP Mode for Windows 7. If you haven't done this already, you're going to need to make a change to your BIOS settings. You need to make sure that Hardware Virtualization is not only possible, but enabled as well. Once you're back from your reboot, we can do the rest.

3. Installing XP Mode

The next step is to get XP Mode up and running. You'll find it (by default) in the "Windows Virtual PC" folder in your Start Menu. After agreeing to the EULA:



The installer will ask you for credentials, and an installation location. (It rhymes, but "Installation Destination" seemed a little over-the-top.) I kept the default location, and gave it a password. By default, you can't change the username, but once you're in, you could create other user accounts.



Next, you'll be asked to protect your computer. ALWAYS turn on Automatic Updates. Unless you're prepared to manage all of the updates for your machine manually, it's the right thing to do. This is a fresh install of Windows XP, with none of the updates you need to protect it.



Finally, it lets you know that it will be sharing your drives available to Windows 7 with XP. This will make it MUCH easier to move files in and out of the Virtual PC.

I thought this post was about Internet Explorer 6...

Yes, yes, it is. I just wanted to make sure you got set up first. So, after you've completed your install of Windows XP Mode, open up Windows Explorer (in the XP window), and navigate to:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs

Create a shortcut to Internet Explorer 6 in this folder. I just dragged the icon from the default desktop setup, but you can do it any way you'd like. (Click to enlarge.)



After a few seconds, return to your Windows 7 Start Menu, and navigate to:

Start > Windows Virtual PC > Windows XP Mode Applications

You will see that there is now an Internet Explorer 6 icon in that new folder. Go ahead and close your entire Windows XP Mode Virtual PC window now. It will hibernate the machine for you.

Go back to your start menu, and click that Internet Explorer icon that was created. You will actually ONLY get the IE6 window, without all of the XP operating system. Here's a screenshot of Internet Explorer 6 running next to Internet Explorer 8, in Windows 7 (click to enlarge).

Labels: diduary, internet explorer, windows 7, xp mode