One of our clients wanted to have the Elgg Profile table in one single column with Profile Info Fields below the Profile Icon so other widgets can be flush on the top of middle and right columns with the Profile.

To make these sorts of changes you need to get familiar with Elgg’s view system. This is not easy to achieve as it is controlled by Elgg core/plugin files (even though in this particular project, code was done in such way that layout is controlled by the theme itself – photo above)

The layout of the profile widgets and dashboard widgets is handled in: /views/default/canvas/layouts/widgets.php

Right now it is using tables to display profile. With some css styling and php coding this can be achieved for unique, single column user profile view.

Everything looked good until I logged in and popup message showed up letting me know that I was now logged in but it was not disappearing from the screen. Even clicking on “click to dismiss” link did not work.

Another problem was that elgg topbar tools dropdown menu did not drop down. It took me a while to realize that I was using elgg theme for Elgg ver. 1.5 which uses older javascript files. I wanted to use the same theme but upgraded version of the theme was not available so I uploaded js files from Elgg 1.5 vendors/js folder and replaced ones on my new 1.6.1 elgg installation. It worked but that was only a temporary fix.

To get the permanent fix you have to update code in your theme folder/views/default/page_elements/ header.php file so it will call the new javascript files that are included in elgg version 1.6.1

Look for this code:

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”<?php echo $vars['url']; ?>vendors/jquery/jquery-1.2.6.pack.js”></script>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”<?php echo $vars['url']; ?>vendors/jquery/jquery-ui-personalized-1.5.3.packed.js”></script>

And replace with this:

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”<?php echo $vars['url']; ?>vendors/jquery/jquery-1.3.2.min.js”></script>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”<?php echo $vars['url']; ?>vendors/jquery/jquery-ui-1.7.2.custom.min.js”></script>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”<?php echo $vars['url']; ?>vendors/jquery/jquery.form.js”></script>

And that should do the trick. So instead of changing to a different theme with a little copy and paste you can make your older theme work with new Elgg 1.6.1

If you have any problems, comment below.

Recently I had to transfer my Pligg website installation to a new host (My first time) and I wish I had known a bit more but I learned the hard way. Even Google wasn’t much help, there were no tutorials or gudes on how to do this. I have transfered many CMS sites (WordPress, ArticleMS ,etc.) before but this was my first Pligg transfer.

You must have noticed on your default Pligg installation whatever page you open, the title tags stay the same “Pligg Beta 9 ” (or the name of your site when you change it). This is not very Search Engine Friendly because the “page title tag element is still one of the most important factors for ranking highly in the search engines” so having the same title tag on every page would do you no good.

So here is a really simple hack that anyone can do and I have been using on all my Pligg sites and in free pligg templates offered here. This little hack will display Story titles on story pages, category names as titles on category pages and for all other pages whatever you name them in your Admin Panel (under » Admin » Modify Language) in PLIGG_Visual names. It will also reverse page titles putting your site name AFTER the page name which is also better for Search Engines. Here are some examples of this below.

Original Pligg Story Title
BuzzSEOjr.com | Most Important SEO Tips

SEO Friendly Pligg Story Title
Most Important SEO Tips | BuzzSEOjr.com

Now your most important keywords are at the front of the page title. Very SEARCH ENGINE FRIENDLY title don’t you think?

Here’s how to do it:

First open templates/templateName/pligg.tpl and FIND

<title>{if isset($pretitle)}{$pretitle}{/if}{#PLIGG_Visual_Name#}{if isset($posttitle)}{$posttitle}{/if}</title>

REPLACE WITH

{if $pagename eq "story" || $pagename eq "topusers" || $pagename eq "cloud" || $pagename eq "upcoming" || $pagename eq "live" || $pagename eq "submit"}
<title>{$posttitle|substr:3} | {#PLIGG_Visual_Name#}</title>
{elseif $pagename eq "search"}
<title>{$posttitle|substr:3} search results | {#PLIGG_Visual_Name#}</title>
{else}
<title>{#PLIGG_Visual_Name#} | {$pretitle|substr:22} {$posttitle|substr:3 }</title>
{/if}

That will take care of your main title tags. Now this Hack should take care of your h2 header tag on search page and it is optional.

Open templates/templateName/search_centre.tpl and FIND

{if isset($templatelite.get.search)}
<h2>{#PLIGG_Visual_Search_SearchResults#} {$templatelite.get.search|sanitize:2|stripslashes}</h2>
{/if}
{if isset($templatelite.get.q)}
<h2>{#PLIGG_Visual_Search_SearchResults#} {$templatelite.get.q|sanitize:2|stripslashes}</h2>
{/if}

REPLACE WITH

{if isset($templatelite.get.search)}
<h2>{#PLIGG_Visual_Search_SearchResults#} {$templatelite.get.search|sanitize:2|stripslashes} search results</h2>
{/if}
{if isset($templatelite.get.q)}
<h2>{#PLIGG_Visual_Search_SearchResults#} {$templatelite.get.q|sanitize:2|stripslashes} Search Results</h2>
{/if}

There is one more thing to do, go to your Admin Panel / Modify Language and filter for “Search results for”, remove both pieces of text by editing and deleting the text then clicking save leaving blank text fields.

Thats it, you’re done. You just created SEO Optimized Page Titles on your Pligg site.

Enjoy.

The robots.txt file will tell the search engine robots what pages on your blog or website should be crawled and indexed and you really don’t want them to index your admin files because there is no relevant content there so creating a simple robots.txt file can actually improve your website’s crawlability and overall SEO.

Here’s an example of Dupe content from a pligg website :

http://buzz.seojr.com/InternetMarketing/Most-Profitable-Adsense-Keywords-List/

http://buzz.seojr.com/story/title/Most-Profitable-Adsense-Keywords-List/

Both of those URLs  point to the same page and will be indexed by search engines and there goes the flag, so here is the fix.

1. Open your NotePad.

2. Copy the text below and paste it into the file.

# All robots will spider the domain
User-agent: *
Disallow: /templates/
Disallow: /3rdparty/
Disallow: /libs/
Disallow: /modules/
Disallow: /plugins/
Disallow: /internal/
Disallow: /backup/
Disallow: /thickbox/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /evb/
Disallow: /avatars/
Disallow: /admin_index.php
Disallow: /admin
Disallow: /story.php
Disallow: /login.php
Disallow: /user.php
Disallow: /js/
Disallow: /img/
Disallow: /story/
Disallow: /story/title/

3. Save the file on your computer as robots.txt

4. Now upload the newly created robots.txt file to you pligg rott directory overwriting the existing file if there is one already.There you have it, no more duplicate content.  Read more on Robots.txt and SEO.