My Joomla News » Search Engine Optimisation

Icons for your website through the iPhone

Nicholas — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:23:14 +0000

I just spent a while looking for a way to change the default screen-grap icon for bookmarked web pages using the iPhone. I finally discovered it through google, but thought it would be worth posting here, as Apple seems to have deleted the official instructions page.

I finally found something close at the CartoonBarry blog:

Step 1: Create custom icons that are 57×57 and save them as PNG files. They can be larger, but Apple will scale them for you.

Step 2: Rename the file to apple-touch-icon.png

Step 3: Upload them to your root directory on your server.

STOP – what if you don’t have access to your root directory? Well, you can add a element similar to within the element of the page.

Well, this is pretty good but a bit misleading. You can’t follow the instructions and then cut and paste. If you need to create the icon and make it usable, then the code will need to reflect the link and the image source file. For example, this is the code that I inserted into my header:

Notice that the link section and the image source have the same name. If you copy this code and insert it into your header on your template’s index.php file, it should work. This does mean however that you can change the code to remove any mention of Apple (sort of). For example you could use this code:

And it will work!

This is the icon that I use on Crawl.net.au

Crawl.net.au iPhone icon

If you are trying this out on an iPhone, you will notice that the version of Mac OS X on the iPhone will automatically apply the shiny filter and the rounded corners to the image. You only need to provide a square original image.

One last thing to mention is that the iPhone takes the title of the website as the name of the bookmark. So if your Joomla! website uses a longish slogan on it’s homepage, it will truncate it. I haven’t worked out a way to get around this yet. It would be brilliant if you could force the iPhone to substitute a different title, that would be brilliant!

If anyone knows the secret, spread the word! Although, I doubt it, as even the Apple and Google websites do not seem to do this.

Important info about updating your Joomla 1.5 site

Nicholas — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 13:53:03 +0000

Recently there was a post on the official Joomla! blogs about updating your Joomla! 1.5 site. It relates to the way that SEF is managed. Check it out here:

http://www.joomla.org/component/option,com_jd-wp/Itemid,105/p,462/

The change will also be included in the upcoming RC4!

Steve Burge Reviews SEF Components

Nicholas — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 06:32:53 +0000

A few months ago, Steve Burge from Alledia.com completed some rather good reviews of Search Engine Optimisation components for Joomla! Recently he added a review of the SerrBizSEF SEF URL Extension.

Here are the links to all of the reviews on his blog:

Those are all full reviews, but recently Steve posted a sneak peak into the next version of the SEF extension sh404SEF, which Steve says is rapidly becoming the “the 800 pound gorilla of SEF tools.” And it’s easy to see why, it’s a very cool extension, but perhaps it’s greatest strength is the support from the developers.

While some SEF components have suffered from inactive development (such as NuSEF which began as a resurrected OpenSEF.) sh404SEF is in very active development, and the forums for the component are a great resource, and participated in by the developers.

But all of the components that Steve has reviewed have something good to offer. Be sure to check out his blog when choosing your next SEF solution.