Top 5 Command Prompt Tips

Typing commands instead of mouse-clicking... sound a bit old-fashioned? It's true, once upon a time all computing was done this way. It may not be pretty, but the command line can still be pretty handy. Here's a few commands I use:

1. PING
   If you need to check your connection to something, this is the basic check. You can either ping a name or an IP address.
   ping www.sitename.com
   or
   ping 127.0.0.1
   are both valid. If you ping a name, you can also see what IP address that name resolves to.


2. TRACERT
   This will trace the route to another computer. Again, you can use a name or an IP address.
   tracert www.sitename.com


3. SHUTDOWN
   This one will shut the computer down. (Pretty obvious, hey!) Really handy to put at the end of a batch file that does a backup or something similar. Heaps of switches, so type shutdown /? to display all the options available.


4. IPCONFIG 
   Displays the IP address of your computer, plus the address of your gateway (eg your ADSL modem or the computer that's actually connected to the internet).


5. XCOPY
   Great for quick and easy batch backups. Check xcopy /? for all options available.

That's 5 that I use a fair bit - got any others?

If you're really bored, here's Microsoft's A-Z Reference.

21 Tips For Better Google Rankings

SEO Egghead has put together a bit of a summary of Matt Cutts' advice over the last year or so.

He's called it "Mattcuttsarama"... Dunno about that title(!) but the post itself makes pretty valuable reading.

301 Redirects

There are thousands of these posts out there already - I'm putting this here for my benefit more than anything else. Saves me from having to Google when I need to check how it should be done!

So - if you move a page and want it to be followed by a search engine (and keep it's pagerank etc), open up your htaccess file and enter (all on one line):

redirect 301 /olddir/oldpage.html http://www.newsite.com.au/newdir/newpage.html

Or if you're shifting a whole directory (again, all on one line):

redirect 301 /olddir/ http://www.newsite.com.au/newdir/

The 301 code says "moved permanently", so don't use it for temporary redirections. Obviously this htaccess stuff is for linux servers, if you're on Windows then there's a different way... But you'll have to find that somewhere else!

Quick Links for 21 September

A few unrelated things from around the web...

• 5 simple ways to open your blog post with a bang (might try using some of these suggestions one day!)


• MS Office 2007 technical refresh available. Worth grabbing of you're using Office 2007 Beta 2.


• Portable, accessible form styling from A List Apart. I really like this one. Forms can be a pain in the proverbial!

Email Plugin for Wordpress

Thanks to Jamie for sending me this fantastic plugin: Subscribe2.

Basically, visitors to your blog can add their email address, and this little plugin will automagically email them whenever you add a new post!

You can customise the message and a few other details. Simple to install and set up - and you can see it working by clicking the Subscribe link in the sidebar. (Or here if you're too lazy to look over there for it!)

Upgrading from Outlook 2003 to Outlook 2007 Beta

Took the plunge and upgraded my Outlook 2003 installation to Outlook 2007 last night. It had seemed to work fine for others in the office, but after my upgrade I couldn't open it at all. Kept hanging. Then wanting to open in Safe Mode. Then wanting to run Detect and Repair. But nothing seemed to fix it.

Until...

From Start -> Run, type outlook /profiles and click OK. Then create a new profile name, and make it the default profile (by clicking the Options button). Then you can go about attaching your old PST files and setting up your email accounts.

Seems that there are some instances where there is something in the old profile that new new version doesn't like.

Initial thoughts are pretty impressive. They have done some really good things with Outlook this time around. Calendar treatment is really nice. The To-Do Bar at the right of the screen is very handy.

So far, a big thumbs-up!

Visual jQuery

Not sure how long this has been online, but here's a very handy visual reference for jQuery. This is a really cool way to present online documentation - not much reading required - just gets you straight to the bits you need.