Last week we worked on adding our business to Google Map to drive more local traffic. This week we will drive more traffic to our sites by modifying our signature. Everyday I get over a 1000 emails from various people and of those only 30% of them have an effective signature. Every signature is unique and you can add as much information in your signature as you want.

What I recommend to everyone is that you should add a small teaser or fact at the very bottom of your signature with a link to your site. Something like this…

• Find out why 10,000+ Canadians do business with us at http://www.yourdomain.ca.
• 800+ pages of tutorials, articles and knowledge online at http://www.yourdomain.ca.
• Did you make our top 10 sales questions? – Find out at http://www.yourdomain.ca.

These teasers in your email will drive potential customers, current customers and anyone you email to your site. If you have a large company if everyone uses a teaser then the traffic impact can be significant.

This weekend sit down and think of a good teaser to add to your current signature. If you need help as always post your issue in a comment.

Modern browsers will cache downloaded content for a period of time, so as to not be downloading the same content repeatedly. These browsers will keep this cache for a few days by default, or until the user clears it manually. However, if the visitor visits your site frequently, it would be more beneficial for the browser to cache this content for a longer amount of time.

That’s where this article come into play. It is possible to send HTTP response headers that tell the browser to cache the content for (up to) a longer amount of time. For the visitors who visit your site frequently, this will benefit both you and them. Since they won’t be repeatedly downloading the same content, their page will load slower, and your server will consume less bandwidth. For the visitors who don’t return to your site, telling the browser to cache the content for longer really has little negative effect.

The response headers we’ll be setting are Expires and Cache-Control. Assuming you have already installed mod_headers, this will be a snap. Start by logging into your server via SSH, and opening your Apache configuration file (/usr/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf).

If you followed our GZIP article last week, then you’ll already have part of this code in your file. Find that code, and add this above it:


ExpiresDefault "access plus 2 weeks"
ExpiresActive On
Header append Cache-Control "public"


Assuming you did follow last week article, then immediately after this line:

Add these lines:

ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 months"
ExpiresActive On
Header append Cache-Control "public"

After you have add those two snippets, save and close the file and then restart Apache. This will tell browsers to cache .css files for two weeks and images for one month. While you could certainly cache CSS files for one month, I, personally, tweak my CSS files more frequently than I change images. Feel free to change that to suit your own needs though.

Thank goodness it’s Friday. As is tradition around these parts, that means it’s time to take a brief stroll through this place we call the blogosphere to see what the bloggers have had to say. This week, we focus on the gastronomical exploits of some Vancouver area locals (and one bloke from overseas). You like to eat, right?

Ed Lau spoiled himself when he went to visit Japan last year, enjoying some of the best sushi and other fine Japanese cuisine that this world has to offer. Back home in Richmond, his Japanese dining experience hasn’t been quite the same, but he’s managed to find at least one place that does it right. Ed went to Torarenbo for Tenzaru Soba. He got cold zaru soba noodles, fresh tempura, and a chopped scallop roll.

Hummingbird604, who some of you may know better simply as Raul, was invited to The Lazy Gourmet for a delectable barbecue. Located in the Kitsilano area, The Lazy Gourmet isn’t your typical restaurant. Instead, it is a local business that focuses heavily on “providing sustainable food catering options.” Raul managed to triple-book himself for the night, so he didn’t get to eat all that much. He hopes to go back some day soon.

Instant Gratification Girl (aka Lisa) has been trying her hand at a few different dining options lately. Most recently, she attempted the Cavewoman Diet. These days, we eat far too much processed foods, so the idea behind the Cavewoman Diet (or Caveman Diet, if you prefer) is to eat more natural foods from our hunter and gatherer days. In five days, she lost about six pounds. Nice work!

Buzz Bishop may best be known as a local radio personality, but he’s also heavily involved with charitable events around the world. As part of Team Diabetes, he recently made a long trek down to South America for a marathon. While there, he was able to experience several Easter Island restaurants, reviewing several of them along the way. There’s more to the island than giant stone heads.

A Welsh View features a challenge that the breakfast lovers in the audience may want to try. He found a massive breakfast for 10 British pounds. That works out to about $18 Canadian. Included in the meal are 10 eggs, 10 bacon strips, 10 sausage links, 10 slices of toast, 5 black puddings, tomatoes, beans, and mushrooms. If you can polish off the plate in 20 minutes, it’s free.

A cartoon created by artist Jerry King.

Just a reminder that summer is here and that means it is the Dog Days of Hackers again. If you get hacked you did not read or follow the advice we provided.

If you have an idea for a future comic or would like to submit your own BlueFur cartoon let us know in a comment.

Creating themes is another portion of WordPress development. While it certainly involves less programming than creating a plugin, there is still a fair amount of code “required”.

Themes are generally spread into multiple files, which are then (mostly) automatically included into each other on a as-needed basis. If we take a look the default theme, we can see the general structure of the files. The default theme has the following files (beside them I’ve included a short description of what they’re for):

404.php (displayed for 404 errors)
footer.php (the footer of the design)
index.php (the blog home page)
search.php (search result page)
archive.php (date, category and tag archive listings)
functions.php (can hold theme-dependent plugins, etc)
links.php (template for list of links)
sidebar.php (the sidebar of the design)
archives.php (template for list of archives)
header.php (the header of the design)
page.php (a page)
single.php (a single post)
comments-popup.php (popup form for comments)
image.php (attachment template)
style.css (CSS file)
comments.php (comments display loop)

As you can see the various sections of a WordPress site are separated into different files (archives, posts, pages). Additionally, the header, footer and sidebar also get their own file. This creates the design structure, which one of the various page types then fits into. Over the next few articles, we’ll be further discussing these files and how to create a theme from scratch.

This morning I woke up to find my twitter account had been suspended. A bit confused I immediately tried to submitted a ticket to support but I could not find it on the twitter help page. I googled and found it of course and submitted a ticket. As my account was suspended I started searching for others who had been suspended to see how long it could take. One post suggested it could take up too 30 days. As I continued to search I found there was very little help for when you need it at twitter.

While I was suspended I learned a great deal about twitter though. For example did you know that twitter is owned by obvious.com. Also I found a phone number where you can call twitter and leave a message. This is the info on their whois…

415-896-2008

Another interesting fact that I learned was that the twitter.com domain was previously owned by someone in South Korea. I wonder how much they sold it for? Bet  they are kicking themselves now for selling so low.

I also found that they list the twitter employees on their site. Here is a list of those employees that I can find…

I do not suggest you harass these people as it may get you permanently banned.

At this point I tried calling the obvious.com phone number which is a different number on that whois. That number was disconnected so I do suggest that they update it.

Around this time I noticed that my ticket had been updated that delbius was the person reviewing my ticket. I fired him a quick @ with my ticket number letting him know if he had any questions to let me know.

Less then a hour later delbius had resolved the issue and my account was  back online.

The problem with my account was there was a spammer sending out RT’s using my username in them and someone at twitter inadvertently suspended me too.

So what should I have done? What would you have done in this situation?