ETSY SHOP OPEN FOR BUSINESS!

ETSY SHOP OPEN FOR BUSINESS!

By Strictly-Software

My Etsy shop is OPEN again - if you run a WordPress site and want some tools to automate your system then check out: https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/StrictlySoftware

I didn't know the items in my shop EXPIRED after so long so the shop was empty to viewers for the last month and a bit but now you can buy your tools from etsy or my own site for plugins: http://www.strictly-software.com/plugins (please click on some adverts and help me raise some cash)

Also my facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/strictlysoftware has information about these tools that you should read if you have purchased any of them.

It has help articles, guides on support, possible issues and fixes and much more - feel free to comment and like the page!

The basic idea behind these plugins is:

Run a site all year, 24/7 without having to do anything apart from some regular maintenance like cleaning tags that are not used very much and OPTIMIZING your database table.

So an RSS / XML feed contains your content (e.g news about something) and this goes into WordPress at scheduled times (Cron jobs or WebCrob jobs) using WordPress plugins like RSSFeeder or WP-O-Matic then as the articles are saved Strictly AutoTags adds the most relevant tags to it by using simple pattern matching like finding the most frequently used "important" words in the article e.g words in the Title, Headers, Strong tags or just Capitalised Words such as names like John Smith.

This means if John Smith became famous over night you wouldn't have to add a manual tag in for him or wait for a 3rd party plugin to add in the word to their own database so that it can be used.

Then once your article is tagged. You can choose to have the most popular tags converted into links to tag pages (pages containing other articles with the same tag) or just bold them for SEO - or do nothing.

You can set certain tags to be "TOP TAGS" which will rank them higher than all other tags. These should be tags related to your site e.g a bit like the old META Keywords.

You can also clean up old HTML, convert text tags to real clickable ones and set up a system where if a tag such as ISIS is found the tag Middle East is used instead. This is all explained on the Strictly AutoTags page on my site.

Then if you also purchase Strictly Tweet BOT PRO as well you can use those new post tags as #hashtags in your tweets and you can set your system up to either tweet to multiple twitter accounts with different formats and tags or tweet to the same account with different wording dependant on the wording in your article.



E.G if your article was about the Middle East wars you could say only post the Tweet if the article contains this word "Middle East" OR "Syria" or you could say only post if it contains the words "ISIS" AND "War".

The TweetBOT then lets you ensure the post is cached (if you are using a WordPress Caching System) by making it live first and making an HTTP request to it so it gets cached. Then it waits a custom defined number of seconds before any Tweets are sent out.

You can then specify a number of seconds between each Tweet that is sent out to prevent Twitter Rushes e.g. Where 50 BOTS all hit your site at the same time.

You can ensure no Tweets are sent out if they contain certain words, add tracking links e.g Google before the link is minimised by Bit.ly.

A simple PIN number process lets you connect your Twitter Account to your TweetBOT Account.

A dashboard keeps you informed of recent Tweets sent out, any errors from Twitter like "duplicate tweet", or if your Bit.ly account isn't working.

Plus a test button lets you test the system without sending a Tweet by taking the last post, running your settings through it such as shortening the link and post and checking all Twitter accounts are working and connected properly.

If you then link your Twitter account up to your Facebook page like I have with my Horse Racing site http://www.ukhorseracingtipster.com/ and my Twitter account @ukhorseracetips with my Facebook page facebook.com/Ukhorseracingtipster you get social media and SEO impact for free!





Check out the new live shop on Etsy for plugins and coupons if you need me to set the plugin up for your site:https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/StrictlySoftware

You may need help due to your sites special settings or requirements so a coupon will let you help you set it up correctly for you.

My JavaScript HTML Encoder Function

Why did I write my JavaScript HTML Encoder object

One of my most popular scripts that continues to get downloaded a lot as well as spark many an email from companies and users is my HTML Encoder script that I wrote many a year back.

You can see the script in action here: www.strictly-software.com/htmlencoder

I was emailed another function that claimed to do the same work earlier and I just thought it would be interesting to other readers to know why I created the script in the first place and why many of the examples out on the net that claim to do the same job are just not up to scratch.

On many sites nowadays people are obtaining content from various sources through XML and RSS feeds and they often use JavasScript and AJAX to do part of the job. I know that when I was creating my football site www.hattrickheaven.com which was basically an exercise in using the Google AJAX API I came across the following problems:

1. Content is obtained from a multitude of sources and there is no common standard that can be relied on 100%.
2. Content is often mixed together through feed blenders like Yahoo Pipes or Blastcasta.
3. Content is often loaded in on the fly using AJAX, a Scraper Proxy to do cross domain content jacks and other formatting duties such as on the fly translations etc.
4. There is no built in function for HTML encoding in the JavaScript language.

Now I looked at many an HTML Encode solution before writing my own but the main problem I needed to overcome was that content could already be HTML encoded or partially HTML encoded and functions I came across did nothing to handle this problem.

For example if you had this bit of text you will notice that it has an encoded ampersand in the middle but the quotes are not encoded.

"Rob says hello & goodbye"

If you ran this through many of the HTML Encode functions out there including many server side ones it will double encode the & in the & so that you end up with this.

"Rob says hello & goodbye"

Now you may want this to happen but I doubt it.

Not if you want to run all your content through the same function without worrying about double encoding issues like this on your website.

This is why I wrote my HTML Encoder object as it puts into practise the technique I used whilst writing ASP classic sites that supported the UTF-8 character set.

With multi-lingual sites that display Arabic or Japanese character sets you don't want to be using the inbuilt Server.HTMLEncode function on all your textual input as it will triple the size of everything you store by converting every non ASCII character into a &#XXXX; encoded string.

When your database is set up to correctly store your text as Unicode (nvarchar etc) and you are outputting it with the correct code-base then you need something a bit more clever to do the job as you still need to encode characters that can cause you damage such as the naughty 4 " ' < > as well as the ampersand & to make your page validate (URL's, Querystrings etc).

This is obviously for security reasons as you don't want people to be able to malform your input and break your layout or insert XSS hack vectors into your system.

However running the standard HTML Encode function will encode everything as well as cause double encoding issues. Therefore the HTML Encoding needs to be done in stages and the ampersand has to be handled correctly as it makes up part of the HTML encoded &#XXXX; format.

So whilst it comes as quite a surprise to see how popular this script is (#1 on Google for "HTML Encode with Javascript") it is not really surprising when one thinks about the problem this script solves.

Whilst I don't claim to be any kind of coding genius and I am sure the code can be improved it does do what is says on the tin and if you are thinking of using another JavaScript function to HTML Encode your content then compare it first with my tool to see if it handles the double encoding issue as if it doesn't then you might find yourself having problems down the road.