UpdateWall 1.3

UpdateWall is now stable with no known bugs and is undergoing a major update which will bring in a lot of new features! As soon as this update is out the price will go up to it’s normal pricing (instead of the current 50% off) so get it while it’s cheap if you’ve been hesitating.

There will be a lot of new features included in the next update such as a full plugin system allowing you to easily install extra plugins to add even more functionality to the UpdateWall! Some of the other new features include Like buttons, Video embedder compatibility & custom styles! You can offer suggestions on the thread here: 1.3 feature proposal.

A SEO pack for PHPmotion v3

Yes, PHPmotion V3 search engine optimisation has improved over previous versions. But why not make it even better? I’m working on a lightweight plugin which will give you full control over page titles, meta tags and other parts of the website.

Facebook Connect

After many requests on the forum for this feature I think it’s finally time something was done about it. Now that I’ve had some experience with the Facebook API I’ve decided to get working on what will be a great addition to any social website.

I’m not going to make any promises on a release date yet but I will be working on these in my spare time and will let you know when they’re available!

I think it’s about time to unveil my latest PHPmotion addon, which will be available for v3. No price or ETA yet but it will be released within the next month at latest.

So what is it?

It is possibly one of the most useful addons you could ever buy for your website (and I’m not just saying that because I made it ).

Think Facebook activity wall with search engine benefits. And it doesn’t stop there! With the update wall you will see an increase in user interactivity, people will see groups friends create, the friends they add, videos they upload, comments they leave and a lot more (full list & screenshots soon!).

Why will search engines love this?

Not only does each user have their own update wall listing updates from their friends, there is also a public timeline which is basically a live feed to everything happening on your website in real time!

Once search engines index this they will be back all the time to find out what’s new, crawling links to new videos & audio files within seconds of them being uploaded!

Why will your users love this?

Why do they love facebook? Because they can see what people are doing as they do it. Once a user logs in they can go to their update wall and see what their friends latest actions where. Allowing them to join groups they have created, watch videos they’ve rated & commented on and much more!

Why will you love this addon?

Did you read the above two paragraphs? What more is there to add? Search engines will love it, users will too. Add this to a smart bit of marketing and some optimized seo and watch your site grow!

I will be posting screenshots & more of the features soon, I may even time permitting put up a demo. Let me know your thoughts & ideas in the comments below. Good ideas may see their way into the addon!

Update: I’ve taken a quick screenshot, if you think it looks a bit plain at the moment remember not all features have been added yet. Wait until you see it in action.

PHPmotion UpdateWall beta screen shot

Let me know if you find it useful and I’ll get started on more posts!

Do not use duplicate title & meta tags!

This is easily missed as the keyword & description tags are invisible to regular visitors, they only show up within the source code. Having the same titles on different pages is missing out on a great opportunity for getting some keywords picked up in search engines.

For example the featured, recent, most viewed & most commented videos all have the same title & meta tags! This is not good!

Here’s a simple way of fixing this and can be used in pretty much any of the .php files:

$page_title = "Your page title will go here! - $site_name";
$description = "Enter a description for the page here, descriptions are often used as the small part of text that shows in search results and shouldn't exceed 150 or so characters (the amount Google display in results).";
$keywords = "comma,separated,words,or short, search keywords";

Meta keywords aren’t used so much now as the search engines prefer to scan the actual content of your page rather then trust what you enter.

So where do you stick this code into your files? Most of the time anywhere before this will be fine except in certain files (more on that in a bit):

$TBS 			= new clsTinyButStrong;

Try it out now in category_home.php.

But wait I hear you say, I want to display the name of the category! Good thinking! So here’s how you go about it, take the code had earlier with a few minor adjustements:

$page_title = "Watch $channel videos – $site_name";
$description = "View all videos in the $channel category, watch, rate and comment on $channel videos.";
$keywords = "$channel, $channel videos, popular $channel vids";

Now that’s much better. Of course you can (and should) take this a lot further. Remember you will need to replace $channel with other variables (and don’t forget to change the descriptions & keywords around a bit). Some pages not to miss are seemore.php ($see_more_title), audio.php (also $see_more_title).

If you find this useful let me know below! Any questions just ask!

Update: How to add this for sub categories
At the bottom of the file just before adding the above code add the following:

if($sub > 0) {
	$channel = $channel_name;
}