40Tech

Do a Google search for “browser,” and Google Chrome no longer appears on the first page of results. In fact, as of the time of this writing, I’m seeing a hit for Chrome appear on the seventh page of results. Has Chrome suddenly become less relevant? Nope. Instead, Google has penalized Google Chrome for a violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines involving paid links. Google requires all paid links to use the nofollow attribute, so that the link doesn’t pass “Google juice” via Google’s search ranking algorithm. A sponsored post for Chrome appeared on a blog, and did not use the nofollow attribute. The demotion followed.

MarsEdit is now my Mac blogging platform of choice. Until recently, when I wanted to work on MarsEdit drafts on multiple machines, my workflow consisted of uploading a draft of my post to my blog, and then downloading it to my other machine. With a little bit of tinkering, you can do away with such a workaround, and use Dropbox to automate your workflow.

If you’re a geek, you may have heard about Markdown, a markup language that makes it easy to output HTML, without actually having to know even a lick of HTML. We joined the love fest ourselves recently, covering the basics, as well as looking at a Windows app and a Mac app that support Markdown. With the proliferation of what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) editors today, though, why should you even bother with Markdown?

This week’s app of the week post is a mea culpa of sorts, instead of a full review. Several months ago, we compared MarsEdit, ecto, and Blogo, which are all Mac blogging apps. Head on over to that review for a more detailed look at MarsEdit, and the other two apps. At the time, I favored ecto, largely because of the way that it handled images. Since then, I’ve seen the light. I’ve purchased a MarsEdit license, and haven’t looked back.

Last week, we covered two tools to help you scan your website for malware. Another method to determine if your site has been hacked is to look at changes in your server files themselves. That, though, can be time consuming if you do it manually. If you use WordPress (the self-hosted variety), and you want to use an automated tool that detects changes to files, take File Monitor Plus for a spin.

Yesterday we compared Squarespace and WordPress, and I indicated that as slick as Squarespace was, 40Tech was going to remain on a self-hosted WordPress installation. Bloggers using a self-hosted instance of WordPress, though, need to make sure that their blogs are secure. That includes making sure that your blog isn’t already compromised. How do you do that? The easiest way to do that is to use external tools to scan your site. There are two that we use here at 40Tech, and recommend.

I first started using WordPress in 2005, several years before the birth of 40Tech. For the uninitiated, when you say “WordPress,” you actually can be referring to two different products. You might be referring to the WordPress blogging platform, that you can download and install on your own web host. That’s what we do here at 40Tech. WordPress can also refer to WordPress.com, a site where you can set up a blog that runs on the WordPress platform. Recently, I wondered if there were a better choice than WordPress, so I gave Squarespace a spin.

If you’re a geek, you may have heard of Markdown. What is it? Markdown is a format that you use to write text that can then be converted to valid HTML. The hallmark of Markdown is that it is easy to read and to write.

If you run a website, you’ve probably run into issues trying to figure out what your site looks like on various devices. If you want a quick way to figure it out, check out Screenfly, a site that lets you see how your site appears on different devices, including desktop, tablet, mobile, and even television. Within each of those categories, you can choose from a variety of devices. For example, if you choose tablet, you can pick between the iPad and four other tablets, including the Motorolla Xoom. Even the desktop selection allows you to choose between several screen resolutions.

One piece of software that Microsoft got right was Windows Live Writer. If you’re a blogger, and don’t want to dig around in HTML (and arguably even if you do), Windows Live Writer is the software that we recommend for your drafting needs. One flaw with Live Writer, though, is that it doesn’t offer a setting to change where your blog posts get saved on your machine. By default, your drafts and recent posts get saved to your user folder, in the \Documents\My Weblog Posts\ directory. What if you want to save your posts elsewhere? You can do this, with a registry hack.