The problem?.. curl was not enabled by default in Xampp.  You receive the following error:

• Fatal error: Call to undefined function curl_init() in C:\xampp\htdocs\tayst\twitter\index.php on line 4

The solution?  These simple steps!

Step 1. Stop all Xampp services: Apache, Mysql, Filezilla, and Mercury.

Step 2. Open the following files in your editor of choice. (Replace C:\xampp with the location of your xampp install)

• C:\xampp\apache\bin\php.ini
• C:\xampp\php\php.ini
• C:\xampp\php\php5.ini
• C:\xampp\php\php4\php.ini
• C:\xampp\php\php4\php4.ini

Step 3. Find the following code in each of the files, and remove the ; (semicolon) at the beginning of the line. You will most likely see it at line 546 or line 582.

• old line – ;extension=php_curl.dll
• new line – extension=php_curl.dll

Step 4. Start your apache services.

See what an easy fix to curl on xampp by simply removing a few semicolons.  Happy Coding!

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Today, I found this video by Ilana Yahav demonstrating her work – “Let’s Get Together”.   This is a dynamic “painting” using sand as a medium.  Reminds me of my creative “struggles” with the etch-a-sketch when I was a kid.  The coolest thing about this, is that unlike painting, or drawing, this is a very eco-friendly / sustainable art form.

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&pws=0

You can also sign out of google’s personal web search program in your account settings.   Even if you do not use the search wiki to vote results up or down, google does appear to be trending and custom tailoring results based upon your traffic patterns.  In doing SEO, it is important to know that the results you are looking at are not biased.

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Unfortunately, I recently discovered that the plugin does not allow you to specify custom landing page urls, or Thank You pages for the contact form.  Some of you may wonder why I care about reloading the page to say thank you vs. the sleak Ajax popup confirming that your message has been delivered.  The answer: Because I’m trying to measure performance of the contact form within my Google Adwords CPC account.

You can use javascript to fire the tracking code to create a virtual page view in analytics, but you cannot properly implement the conversion tracking from Adwords without loading a separate page.    As you can imagine, I was slightly frustrated until I discovered a very quick and simple solution.

Important.. This solution only works if you have/want a designated landing page for all forms you are using with Contact Form 7.

Step 1: Browse to wp-content/plugins/contact-form-7

Step 2: Open the contact-form-7.js file in your favorite text editor.

Step 3: Look for the function:  wpcf7ProcessJson (line 63)

Step 4: Look for the if statement: if (1 == data.mailSent)  (line 90)

Step 5: Insert this line after the jquery (line 92) – location.href=”http://www.yourdomain.com/yourthankyoupage”;

Step 6: Save the file to your server, and test out the form.
Ideally, the author of this plugin will make a change in the next release that allows a custom variable (url) to be stored for each contact form.  But until then.. here’s your fix !!!

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For those of you out there who are Search Engine marketers, you may have been having some frustrations lately with the google search engine wiki.   Typically, I keep several browsers running at once so I can be logged in to multiple google accounts (personal, business, client, adwords, analytics, etc..etc..).. so having to log out to see natural results has been quite frustrating.

What I have found really frustrating is that every once in a while, a stray mouse click has a detrimental effect on the virgin google results that I am looking at by clicking on one of the google search wiki buttons, and “BAM” a result disappears to the bottom of the page.  This gets especially frustrating when I’m looking through the SERPS and I am not sure if the results I am looking at reflect those of the general population… or our clients.  While I’m excited to see google search wiki, and I expect that at some point it will effect google search rankings, the inability to disable it seems appalling for usability.

In a desperate search for an answer it was found that adding “&hl=all” (without the quotes) to the end of the URL of your google search will disable the search wiki during your browser session.  This means that if you close your browser and open it again, the custom google search engine wiki tool returns.

A pain in the ass to do this evertime you want to turn it off.. yes
Confusing as to why google doesn’t have a link to let you do this.. yes
A possibility this may do something in addition to turning off the wiki.. yes
A way to turn it back on without closing your browser… yes …”&hl=0″

I hope you find this helpful.  If you have any idea as to what other google options this may have an affect on, please let me know.

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I ended up using a couple of different services to try to manage our grocery grocery shopping lists, especially since prices are really varied and we have to shop at Whole Foods, Weaver Street Market, and Trader Joes, depending upon which items we want to get…  FYI Trader Joes has the best prices on Raw Organic Crunchy Almond Butter ($5 vs. everyone elses $11).   I wasn’t happy with the functionality in many of the services, but found that List2Shop was a pretty good service, as they allow you to organize your shopping lists by the store that you want to shop.

You can easily create a shopping list and print without signing up, but if you create an account, you can save your lists, and if you have an iPhone, login to your account and view the list while you are in the store.  What type of shopping list services do you use, and why do you think it would be better than List2Shop?

1. We would be keeping the bears happy…  I mean seriously.. look at this fellow.  He’s enjoying a little splash in the water without a care in the world.   If we don’t make an effort to save the environment, this is going to be a grumpy bear without any place to go other than your back yard.
    
   
   
2. Prevent extinction – I’m constantly reading about how animals are going extinct.  This isn’t animal gone from the zoo, this is animal species GONE FOREVER!!   If you do a search at iucnredlist.org, you will see that in 2008, they listed 590 species as critically endangered, many with population trends continuing to decrease, and 8 species that were no longer in existance in the wild.  This article about the Monk Seal Extinction discusses the proof that humans are the cause of many of these extinctions.
    
   
3. Keep the planet from melting - The proof keeps stacking up that the planet is warming.  Regardless of whether this is part of a natural cycle or not, the truth is that it is most definitely happening, and that we do contribute in some part.  If we all take some action to reduce our carbon footprint, and it makes the smallest difference.. won’t that mean something?
    
   
4. Save the Rainforest – Deforestation is a huge problem.. Apparently, such a large percentage of the world is in need of food, that we continue to bulldoze the Rainforest to make cow pastures and corn fields… apparently noone pays attention to the fact that we grow all of this corn… TO FEED THE COWS.. maybe we should all just eat corn?   I found this pic which also explains it well..
    
   
5. Make Al Gore happy – Just look at this guy..  do you want his face to get stuck like that?   Well, then do something about it.  The only way he’s going to be happy is if he knows everyone is trying to do something to help our environment.

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We’ve been following the organic movement across the world, as consumers begin to understand the level of toxins, chemicals, pesticieds, preservatives, etc.. that are injected, grown, sprayed, or bred into the things we eat and drink.  In an effort to encourage  you to more closely scrutinize those items that you put in your body, we present “The Mouth Revolution” by Free Range Studios.. the same group that brought us, “The Story of Stuff”

Mouth Revolution hones in on the fact that we need to be more considerate of what we put into our bodies, and need to promote a culture of health within our communities.  By being more conscious of those items that are harmful.. The “Mouthifesto” or “Declaration of Indegestion” is a great starting point for understanding those items you should always avoid.  

In all of its humor, we really respect the team at Free Range Studios for their creative efforts in raising awareness about these major issues that we must all face in order to better our race.  We share a similar passion for connective todays fast paced lifestyles with an understanding of our responsibilities to the planet.  

In case you missed it last time, you can read our post on “The Story of Stuff” here.

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These cases are generally the result of bad linkbuilding. There are so many varying opinions and resources for linkbuilding that as a novice web marketer, you can easily travel down the wrong path. The problem with all of the advice you find across the web, is that most of it is outdated.

For example: A year ago, it was extremely popular for marketers to try and use deep-linking (linking to pages inside of their site instead of the homepage) as a means to boost the rankings for those particular pages. Well.. this became common knowledge, spammers took advantage, and now that tactic raises red flags. If you are a blogger reading this, you know that more often than not, when you link to a website, you reference the name of the site, and link to the homepage ( e.g. Fermentation Wine Blog ).

Here are some more linkbuilding concepts that you should avoid:

1. Reciprocal Linking – Yes.. it is great for cross promotion and comradery among bloggers and other sites, but it serves very littly, if any, purpose for SEO. If I give you an apple, and you give it back to me, we net 0.
2. Directory Submissions – Unless it is a high quality directory, you’ll most likely be establishing a relationship with spammers, and do much more harm than good.
3. E-zine articles – If you want to write content to increase your SEO, write it for your own site. The rss feeds from E-zine articles get scraped by spammers, and duplicated thousands of times across the web. Next thing you know, it looks like YOU duplicated the same article and put it out everywhere, and YOU are the spammer.
4. Excessive Submissions to Social Bookmarking Sites, Commenting on Blogs and Forums – ONLY do this if you have legitimate comments and stories. Otherwise, your site is reported as spam.
5. Links that cost less than $10 – If someone tries to sell you links for less than $10, they are most likely going to do all of the things that I just said not to do, and charge you for it. Then you have to hire someone to clean it up.
6. Rapid Linkbuilding – If you are using legitimate means to linkbuild, but do it too quickly, the search engine Gods feel cheated, and you will get banned from the search engine.. (your site doesn’t even get indexed anymore)

Obviously the overarching concept here is that if you want to do linkbuilding, you should do it legitimately by having a great site with great content. If you need some help, let us know.  If you want to try linkbuilding on your own, we recommend Blogsvertise… please be sure to use this affiliate link so we get credit for telling you about their great service!

Click here to read about our SEO Services

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