Transcript

00:05 hello everyone this is Weaver cast
00:07 Weaver cast is a weekly podcast that we
00:10 go over tips and tricks for rapidweaver
00:12 and web design I am Joe workman your
00:15 host I am an independent mac and web
00:18 developer based in the San Francisco Bay
00:19 Area today it is show number 21 it is
00:24 Tuesday februari 25th 2014 and Weaver
00:28 cast is never longer than 15 minutes so
00:31 let's get started so I actually recorded
00:35 show 20 yesterday and as I was editing
00:39 it I realized that this was it was a
00:41 huge just big old fire hose right and I
00:44 was just like pumping data out so I
00:48 decided because I talked so much and
00:50 that the data was just so in your face
00:53 so much that I would split it up into
00:56 two shows so instead of plus I talked
01:00 for like 20-30 minutes and I tried to
01:03 edit it down couldn't so to keep true to
01:06 our 15 minutes I split it up into two
01:09 and now we have two 10-minute shows um I
01:11 think that's really great because I
01:14 assume like after 10 minutes of all the
01:16 stuff I was going over and firing at you
01:18 your eyes which is class over right so
01:20 it's good that we split up so I'm not
01:23 really going to go over what htaccess
01:26 file is please watch show 21st um none
01:30 of the contents here really relies on
01:31 show 20 unless you don't know what
01:33 htaccess file is so you probably want to
01:36 watch show 21st and then move on to show
01:39 21 after you've had a cup of coffee
01:41 after you wash code 20 so without
01:45 further ado let's jump into the
01:47 tutorials ok now here's another tip that
01:50 deals with performance and this has to
01:52 do with caching and expires now inside
01:56 wrap Weaver and you know if you're just
01:58 hand coding things you do know that you
02:01 can provide expire headers on each web
02:04 page individually now a lot of times we
02:07 forget to do that I myself never do it I
02:10 always forget so doing it in the
02:12 htaccess level is
02:13 a great way because you can actually do
02:15 it across all the files on your site
02:17 centrally by default basically what we
02:21 do is we we make sure that expires
02:23 active is on so we actually enable this
02:27 feature now this next one is kind of
02:30 controversial some people have it some
02:31 people don't what this does is it sets a
02:34 default expired date for every file on
02:37 your web server then basically that
02:39 requires if you want to change from the
02:41 default that you explicitly say so in
02:43 this configuration file now a lot of
02:46 people say that you know maybe not
02:48 providing the default at all is the best
02:50 way because then it just takes the
02:52 default mentality of always get the
02:54 latest but it's there if if you deem
02:59 that a default would be good if we look
03:01 at the syntax here for the rest we have
03:03 expires by type and then we have the
03:07 what's called the mem type of a file or
03:09 the type of file that that is going to
03:12 be accessed on that for this rule so we
03:15 have a text CSS there's application json
03:18 text xml these are called mem types so
03:22 if you want to look for a particular mem
03:24 type you know make sure that i should
03:27 have inside this example all the
03:28 possible mem types that you would want
03:30 so definitely look at that then so we do
03:34 expire by type and then you can actually
03:36 then define the type of file and then
03:39 here is access plus 1 year we see in the
03:42 CSS example and what that says is access
03:47 time which is the date that the user
03:49 hits your hits that web page so it's
03:53 telling the browser you can cash this
03:55 CSS file for one year now this may be a
04:00 little uh you know conservative you know
04:03 I think one year is probably a lot a
04:05 little much because we're updating our
04:07 websites a little more frequently than
04:09 once a year ok so this is telling the
04:13 web browser that they're able to cash
04:15 the CSS file for up to a year then at
04:19 that point it can it will force it to be
04:22 redownloaded as you see there are all
04:25 kinds of other things we could
04:27 you know you can do images you can do
04:29 you know font files now a lot of these
04:32 you know a lot of time font files are
04:34 not going to change so you can
04:36 definitely cash those we saw in the
04:39 previous example something called a mime
04:41 type what this is is it defines the type
04:45 of file and ties that to an extension so
04:50 for example let's say video mpeg-4 so
04:53 here we have ad type video / mp4 and if
04:57 we ever have a file called mp4 or with a
05:01 dot m4v it's going to tell the browser
05:04 that this file is a type of video mp4 if
05:08 the web server does not serve up a file
05:11 with a proper mem type it could it won't
05:14 be interpreted properly by the browser
05:16 so for video that means maybe the video
05:19 won't get played because maybe it thinks
05:21 it's a dot movie file or if it's an
05:24 audio maybe you think since is mp3 file
05:26 instead of a video file so there are a
05:30 lot of times where hosts do not properly
05:31 have every possible page extension
05:34 defined so if you do have some issues
05:37 where maybe a font that you've tried to
05:39 load isn't working or a video that
05:42 you've loaded or a mp3 file that you've
05:45 loaded doesn't quite work properly it
05:48 could definitely be a mime type issue
05:51 and you might need to add some of these
05:53 lines into your HT Access file so this
05:57 is a quick rule that allows you to stop
05:59 users from you know being able to embed
06:02 your images that are hosted on your
06:04 website on other domains now this next
06:07 rule isn't really going to apply to a
06:09 lot of people this is if you're using
06:10 HTTPS on your web browser or on your web
06:13 server and you want users if they get
06:16 actually go to HTTP colon slash slash
06:19 your domain you want them to
06:21 automatically redirect to https this is
06:25 how you would do that now kind of a
06:27 similar rule that we just saw let's say
06:30 if you go to www workmen net right now
06:34 you'll get redirected basically the www
06:37 gets stripped off this is essentially a
06:40 way
06:40 of accomplishing that in your htaccess
06:43 file where you can put in your domain ww
06:45 your domain com and then redirect that
06:48 to be you know HTTP colon your domain so
06:52 basically you're stripping off the dub
06:54 dub dub so really simple thing you have
06:57 to change the domain but easy good to
07:00 know now in the last couple examples we
07:03 looked at at some things that redirected
07:05 and restructured the URL those those use
07:08 something called a URL rewrite and here
07:11 are some more complex situations on this
07:14 where instead of you know just you know
07:18 removing HTTPS we're actually
07:19 restructuring how URLs are defined now I
07:23 use this and this is documented for my
07:25 tumblr stack and we see examples of that
07:27 here where if a user had gone to slash
07:31 blog / index.php / post dash and then
07:35 some digits I rewrite that rule to be /
07:39 blog / index.php ? ID equals and then
07:45 dollar one is what is used in is what is
07:48 placed from these parentheses so it's a
07:51 way of making some URLs prettier it's
07:54 another way of doing more generic broad
07:57 URL rewrites for example on the set
08:02 second example here it might really old
08:05 a few years ago my URLs were drastically
08:08 different than they are now I had Joe
08:12 work net / product / product name and
08:15 when I redid my website and had my new
08:19 my new URL structure which is Joe net /
08:22 rapidweaver / stacks / product name I
08:27 wanted just a really quick and simple
08:29 way where you know people weren't
08:31 getting 404 is if they went to an old
08:33 product page so what I did was if you go
08:36 to Joe workman net / products / anything
08:40 which is a dot star this uses regular
08:43 expressions it'll basically redirect
08:47 them with a 301 redirect to /
08:51 rapidweaver on my site
08:54 now if you do notice a lot of these
08:55 rules use you know regular expressions
08:59 I'm not going to go over all the
09:00 intricacies of what a regular expression
09:02 is here definitely do some research
09:05 maybe search from stack overflow or
09:07 Google various examples of what you
09:09 potentially would want but some generics
09:14 here carrot is the beginning of a line
09:17 dollar is the end of a URL anything that
09:21 is in parentheses will be assigned to a
09:23 variable so here we have parentheses and
09:26 everything inside of that gets assigned
09:29 a dollar one dot star is a way of saying
09:33 anything okay so any character it could
09:38 be slashes spaces anything dots are
09:41 matches anything and then so that's that
09:46 that is the last HT access rule let's
09:49 jump into some robot txt files so robot
09:53 txt files um it is like I said earlier
09:56 it is simply a text file that you add to
10:00 the root of your web server the name is
10:03 explicitly going to be robots dot txt
10:06 and search engines look for this file
10:10 and they will abide by the rules that
10:13 you define within this file so the first
10:18 line of a robots.txt file is going to be
10:21 user agent star now you could if you
10:26 like actually target specific search
10:28 engines and give rules for specific
10:30 search engines and by doing that you can
10:32 do user agent colon Google or Bing or
10:36 something else right I don't really
10:39 recommend that I don't know of any great
10:41 use cases for doing that because pretty
10:43 much I think most of our problem is
10:45 actually getting found by search engines
10:47 not restricting specific search engines
10:50 from finding us so most of the time
10:53 you're going to do user agent star and
10:55 that will affect these so the rules that
10:57 we're defining here will affect every
10:59 single search engine that finds your
11:01 site then essentially is some disallow
11:06 commands where you can say
11:07 search engine do not find or source
11:11 anything inside / temp or / junk in this
11:15 example here that we see in this file
11:16 and there are no regular expressions
11:19 allowed here it is simply statically
11:22 defining the exact folders that you do
11:24 not want your search engines to search
11:27 and that's basically it the robots.txt
11:30 file i zc here is really simple you say
11:33 all search engines and then define
11:35 folders that you do not want the search
11:37 engines to source and they won't go in
11:39 and look at anything inside there and
11:42 that's it for more information check out
11:44 robots.txt org and they have a few more
11:47 examples and whatnot for you but this is
11:49 going to serve you ninety-nine point
11:51 nine percent of the time so good luck
11:54 everybody thanks well that's a wrap
11:56 everyone i hope you enjoyed this two
11:58 part series on HT access files and robot
12:01 files they're really some great stuff in
12:04 here i hope you take the time to play
12:06 around with it and i hope it wasn't too
12:08 much for you um you know definitely take
12:10 reference to you know the files so look
12:14 at the snippet share that i pointed to
12:16 in show 20 on github and i'll pry just
12:19 throw it an access file that we saw all
12:22 the tips in the show notes as well so
12:24 that if you don't want to you know join
12:27 the snippet share you'll still have
12:29 access to all that stuff so make sure
12:30 you check out the show notes for links
12:32 and everything above all the sample
12:34 snippets that we've seen here today so
12:37 as always if you have any questions
12:40 comments or concerns you could reach me
12:42 on all the various internets at Joe
12:44 workman on Twitter and app.net you can
12:48 send us an email at support at joe
12:51 workman net so please you know give us
12:54 your ideas tell us what you want to
12:55 learn my list is starting to get a
12:57 little bit shorter so please go ahead
12:59 and tell me what you want to know so
13:02 that I can teach you and as always make
13:05 sure you go to Jagran uh net and check
13:07 out my awesome products they make this
13:09 great podcast free for everybody so if
13:12 you enjoy it go check out my products
13:14 and pick up a couple so thank you very
13:16 much everyone I hope you have a great
13:17 day talk to you later bye"}]