LAMPdocs: Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP

There are some cases when you need to avoid displaying related videos to the youtube object shown on the page. For example, today I was called by an aesthetic clinic manager who was very unsatisfied with related videos that were shown on their site. They were related to plastic surgery, and were quite offensive. So I had to disable Youtube related videos in the embedded player. The solution was very simple: you just need to add a short parameter to your Youtube URL. All you need to add is &rel=0 to the Youtube URL. It will stop displaying related videos, the thing that often takes a lot of time.

So the initial state was:

<object width=”425″ height=”344″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/4HwMzUAbfWg&hl=ru&fs=1″></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/4HwMzUAbfWg&hl=ru&fs=1″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”425″ height=”344″></embed></object>

And after my modification it became:

<object width=”425″ height=”344″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/4HwMzUAbfWg&hl=ru&fs=1&rel=0“></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/4HwMzUAbfWg&hl=ru&fs=1&rel=0” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”425″ height=”344″></embed></object>

This simple parameter will save you from unwanted videos displayed at your pages.

Today I have discovered a service that allows you to search just message boards for the keywords you need. If you are involved in forum marketing, you might find it useful. So, let me present: Big Boards. What does this service actually do?

Big Boards has the database of active forums.  If you would like to search for forums related to your website, than that’s just for you. Certainly, there are queries to Google, that do the same, but you don’t need to know Google query syntax to locate the forums you really need. There are various options that allow you to see the forum popularity, you may sort forums by engine, etc. If you’re planning to do forum marketing for your site, that’s probably the best idea to use Big Boards.

This post will be useful for beginners, but I think that experienced users will also find out something new. If you’ve never heard about crontab and your hosting service provider doesn’t let you to use cron jobs, then this article is for you.

Let me tell some words about the service I’ve discovered. It’s name is Webcron and it has already 30K+ members. It allows you to launch any script installed on your webserver or shared hosting account at any time. It is a web-based implementation of the Crontab under Unix/Linux and the Task Scheduler under Windows.

If you own a dedicated or run a site on a paid hosting, you should already have cron jobs installed. This service will help you if your site is located on a free hosting and you’re not allowed to execute cron jobs.

Today when I turned on my computer and searched something in Google, I’ve noticed some strange signs near my search results. My first thought was that my PC has been hacked , but when I clicked the link, I got the idea that it’s another Google innovation. Let’s see what’s written at the Official Google Blog:

Today we’re launching SearchWiki, a way for you to customize search by re-ranking, deleting, adding, and commenting on search results. With just a single click you can move the results you like to the top or add a new site. You can also write notes attached to a particular site and remove results that you don’t feel belong. These modifications will be shown to you every time you do the same search in the future. SearchWiki is available to signed-in Google users. We store your changes in your Google Account. If you are wondering if you are signed in, you can always check by noting if your username appears in the upper right-hand side of the page.

The changes you make only affect your own searches. But SearchWiki also is a great way to share your insights with other searchers. You can see how the community has collectively edited the search results by clicking on the “See all notes for this SearchWiki” link.

What does this really mean? I don’t think I input the same queries every day, if I don’t intent to promote my site for this key phrase. Usually my search terms are different and I can’t see the reason to delete or manage the search results: if I’m searching for some information, I get what I need (Thanks, Google) and don’t come back to the same page anymore.

I’ve checked what’s shown for linux terms. Almost nothing at the moment as people don’t yet know what do these little arrow and “X” signs do. But when I checked Searchwiki contents for a competitve keyword, I’ve found that 53 notes were recorded for “car insurance”.

My personal opinion at this time is that this instrument will be widely used by SEO webmasters. Though Google tells that Searchwiki doesn’t affect general search results, I think that this function will be implemented some time later. But… if it’s done, there will be SEO wars, when webmasters will try to pull don concurents’ sites from SERP…

Let’s see how it comes. At the moment, I’ve moved all my sites to the top and I’m happy