So the Ely Plumbers term is like the “first hurdle” in local SEO.

Lucky, then, that ISVirtual has just been asked to create a new website for a plumber in Ely

SEO is all about time vs. return, so I’ve “primed the pumps” with a single optimised holding page and this post. Nothing more. I want to see how far that gets us.

Next up, if necessary, will be an article on EzineArticles of high quality, 500+ words, and containing all the LSI-related words to plumbing that you could dream of - references to taps, boilers, spanners and soldering irons will abound, as will mention of water pressures, tank capacity and other such pipe-related terms. That will carry a single backlink direct to the plumber’s site.

Frankly I’d be mildly surprised if the article is required. I would be very surprised if, with the article, the site is not lifted into the top 10 results for Ely Plumbing without any further backlinking activity. So wel shall see. I’ll report back!

I dug around loads of legacy cr*p trying to get this working.

Then I ended up reading the WSDL, which might not be your idea of fun either.

Here’s the important bit:

$attachment = Array(
"id" => $note_id,
"filename" => "test.pdf",
"file" => $file,
);

$result = $soapclient->call("set_note_attachment", array('session' => $session_id, 'note' => $attachment));

Note please, that the params are passed through with the element name “note”, not “attachment”, “data” or some other such.
This way it, er works

You can get the rest of it here: https://www.sugarcrm.com/forums/showthread.php?t=56045

www.libdem2010.com

//replace smart quotes
function convert_smart_quotes($string)
{
$search = array(chr(145),
chr(146),
chr(147),
chr(148),
chr(151),
chr(150),
chr (133),
chr(149)

);

);
return str_replace($search, $replace, $string);
}

I pinched bits of it from these pages:

http://www.keepandshare.com/doc2/3693/turning-off-microsoft-smart-quotes-or-stipping-programmatically

http://www.liamdelahunty.com/tips/remove_special_characters.php

Cheers.

The goal was to keep a month of rolling backups, totally automatically. I decided, rather than fiddling around with date comparisions, to just name the backup after the day portion of the date, so a month’s worth of backups is always available (after the first month.)

The server is a Plesk server, so all sites sit below /var/www/vhosts/

Here’s the script, with comments:

#!/bin/sh

#create 2 filenames
SQLFILE=backup_`date '+%e'`.sql
TGZFILE=backup_`date '+%e'`.tgz

#get full db backup
cd /var/www/vhosts
#delete old one if there
rm /var/www/vhosts/$SQLFILE
mysqldump --opt --all-databases -uadmin -pMySQL_password > $SQLFILE

#backup web, including the DB backup we've just done
cd /var/www
#delete old one if its there
rm /var/www/$TGZFILE
#use --exclude to ignore big fat log files that you can cope without
tar -zcvf $TGZFILE --exclude '*statistic*' --exclude '*.log' vhosts

#ftp to backup server

Sugar was successfully creating files in the cache directory (which itself was 0755) but it was then unable to read the files it had created. Which made for a less-than ideal end-user experience.  To say the least.

The fix was here: http://kb.sugarcrm.com/tag/permissions/

Edit config.php and change the permission defaults to:

'default_permissions' =>
array (
'dir_mode' => 511, //0777
'file_mode' => 511,
'user' => '',
'group' => '',
),

Job done. Sugar can now read what it writes. Cambridge CRM working again. Have a great weekend!

RULE_0_START:
# get the document root
map path into SCRATCH:DOCROOT from /
# initialize our variables
set SCRATCH:ORIG_URL = %{URL}
set SCRATCH:REQUEST_URI = %{URL}

# see if theres any queries in our URL
match URL into $ with ^(.*)\?(.*)$
if matched then
set SCRATCH:REQUEST_URI = $1
set SCRATCH:QUERY_STRING = $2
endif
RULE_0_END:

RULE_1_START:
# prepare to search for file, rewrite if its not found
set SCRATCH:REQUEST_FILENAME = %{SCRATCH:DOCROOT}
set SCRATCH:REQUEST_FILENAME . %{SCRATCH:REQUEST_URI}

QSA_RULE_START:
# append the query string if there was one originally
# the same as [QSA,L] for apache
match SCRATCH:ORIG_URL into % with \?(.*)$
if matched then
set URL = %{URL}&%{SCRATCH:QUERY_STRING}
endif
goto END
QSA_RULE_END:

Stick this in a file called rewrite.script in the root. Job done. Set up permalinks in the usual way. Cheers Adam. Saved me a world of pain


<a href="http://www.isvirtual.co.uk"><?php echo rand(0,1) ? "Website design" : "Web Site Design"; ?></a> and <a href="http://www.isvirtual.co.uk/seo-cambridge.php"><?php echo rand(0,1) ? "SEO Cambridge" : "Cambridge SEO"; ?></a> by <a href="http://www.isvirtual.co.uk"><?php echo rand(0,1) ? "ISVirtual" : "IS Virtual"; ?> </a>


<?php mt_srand(crc32($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'])); ?>

If you’re very cautious or backlinking a big site, you might want to use “vanilla” variations like “click here” too

Hope that’s useful to you.

Secondly, this is a blatant slice of self-promotion!

If you’re looking for SEO Cambridge specialists, you should be talking to ISVirtual!

We’ve been working with a number of local companies to raise their SERPs profiles and are already seeing good success rates with a number of clients’ sites raised from obscurity to page 1 positions for fairly competitive search terms.

Local search engine optimisation demands a slightly different methodology from the usual “build pages, get links” model, in that there are usually specific local directories where getting links are especially beneficial as they have been “awarded” a Cambridge theme by the search engines already.

Also of course, there’s the importance of submitting a good quality local search listing to Google. When done right this can literally get your company name to the top of page one within a day or two, and get you a pin on the map too.

As with any Search engine optimisation, its easy enough to over-optimise for local results too. Liberally peppering the word SEO Cambridge all over the shop (with or without links,) probably won’t do - its enough to tell the SEs what you’re aiming for without ramming it down their throats.

At the same time, some backlinks are a good thing. Why did you think I was writing this post exactly?

Incidentally, I’m not sure quite yet what Google thinks about text volume. Ezinearticles likes long articles - they’ve basically said anything shorter than about 400 words will probably be treated as spam unless its blinding. I try to go for 1000 words or above there (and luckily I can ramble without totally straying off-topic, so writing for EZA is quite cathartic!)

On the other hand, blogs are meant to have short, sweet, to-the-point posts. My previous post about SEO Ely was very short, yet it hit the #1 spot in less than an hour and, touch wood, hasn’t faltered yet (yes OK its hardly competitive!) Now we’re over 300 words on this post but I think I’ll try and get up to a nice round 400 before signing off.

To be quite honest I’m still only dabbling with local search, but its a bit like shooting fish in a barrel in many markets.  The local qualifiers just lower the bar to such an extent that it would be embarrassing not to hit page one straight away…

Cambridge is a slightly different kettle-of-fish though, as our Atlantically-challenged friends had the nerve to give somewhere in Massachusetts the same name and, when used in conjunction with any IT or web-related terms, that small seat of learning MIT rears its ugly head with all the related academic pages so beloved of the SEs. Then of course you have Cambridge University over here too. Big guns in Cambridge search terms!

Often, clicking the “search UK only” radio button gets us down from the multiple millions to a couple of hundred thousand, so optimising .co.uk sites, or those physically hosted here, can be a lot easier. (This blog is on a Slicehost slice, so no dice there.)

So anyway, local SEO is fun, and SEO Cambridge optimisation especially so

Now its time to stop drivelling and go and write a backup script in Bash, gasp!

Worked for one of our CRM Cambridge clients just now anyway

There’s further explanation here: https://www.sugarcrm.com/forums/showthread.php?p=191467