The following post is about using redirection to keep your existing search engine ranking for content on an old domain. Here's my story: I purchased multiple domains and by default set them to all direct to the same content (eg. document root). When I started my search engine optimization kick I realized that different domains got better search engine rankings than others - even on the EXACT same content. And google thought that I had more links from external sites than I actually did. Some of you might think that sounds good because there were more external links than there should be, but most of them were links to things I didn't want high links to like my registration page, site search, etc.

I finally moved my sites to a new server and decided it was probably a good time to start segregating my domain content. I plan on retiring flamingcube.com sometime later in the year, so I'm trying to get the SEO results for it transitioned to the new server. I plan on using the other domains I have registered for completely new sites so I want to start getting all the content pushed over now so in a few months I can remove the redirects and start with new content.

I saw this great post on SharkSpace by Amanda about how to change your server's shell port. It said it was part of the dedicated server guide, but I thought it was good for people with VPSs (Virtual Private Servers) as well. Here's the post:

1) Login to shell via root.

2) Open the shell configuration file.

nano -w /etc/ssh/sshd_config

3) Change port.

Uncomment and change

#Port 22

to look like:

Port 6472 (choose your own 2 to 5 digit port number (49151 is the highest port number)

4) Save and exit.

Ctrl + X + Y

5) Restart shell. (Make sure if you have a firewall installed that you have the new port unblocked.)

/etc/rc.d/init.d/sshd restart

It's the Friday before Christmas and I'm excited I dont have to work until after the New Year. I've had a lot to do at work - some fun projects and some not so fun. The good thing is I'm working on a big range of different things from building a community site (like Facebook or MySpace) for the company to creating forecasting and manufacturing planning systems. I haven't posted my pictures from Europe yet, so I really need to do that. In fact, I need to sort through them and choose which ones I want to print out.

I just realized that the new Blogg-X component I'm using doesn't have a keywords area in it. If I could find a good way to automatically have these fields generated this component would really work great for me. The SEO tool I'm using has an option to mass generate keywords for articles, but it doesnt really do a good job. I could also just go in and manually mass add the keywords using the SEO tool, but I'm sure I would forget and would much rather do it while I'm posting the article.

I'm still on the search for the best blogging solution for me and hopefully I can find it. I should note that I tried making a post on Joomla 1.5 (which I forgot I installed on my server months ago) and the blogging features are MUCH better. There is no more intro text / full text. Instead you can insert a READ MORE horizontal rule if you want to split the post. Also, Joomla is not using the tabbed setup at the bottom of the page anymore. These settings are layed out one below another which makes it much easier to use.

Perhaps I'll just upgrade my current install to J1.5?