Rewarding Long Time Users

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I am usually the first person to be disappointed when a Service I use offers New Users a freebie or special treatment and leaves it’s loyal users in the dark. And I did just that in a recent Blog post.

So when a loyal user of my iOS App TwitPlus tweeted: “why is it always the newbies that get the great gifts & not long timers who use it every day?” I realized that I had just done something that I can’t stand. Offering new users something and forgetting about existing ones.

Therefore @ctwilky here’s a once in a TwitPlus time offer:

We’d like you to Tweet about your offer in your own words within 140 characters. (Not using TwitPlus for this one). You must get this Tweet Retweeted by anyone on Twitter who either is or isn’t following you. Your reward for this is listed below, you may use more tweets to promote your original tweet, but the goal is to have your original tweet retweeted by as many Twitter users as possible.

10 Retweets – £15 iTunes Gift Card
50 Retweets – 2 GB iPod Shuffle
100 Retweets – Apple TV
250 Retweets - 2 GB iPod Shuffle & Apple TV
500+ Retweets – 16GB WiFi iPad 2

Terms of this offer are as follows:

  • You will receive for free the Item or Items that appears next to the relevant number of retweets.
  • If you gain 50+ retweets you will receive only the 2 GB iPod Shuffle and not the £15 iTunes Gift Card. If you gain 100+ Retweets you will receive only the Apple TV and not the £15 iTunes Gift Card or the 2 GB iPod Shuffle and so on.
  • You may not have Twitter accounts with less than 10 followers count towards your Retweets nor will multiple retweets by the same user count.
  • Try to avoid excessively spamming on Twitter, you may post on Forums or other parts of the web to help get retweets.
  • You have 30 days to achieve your retweets as of Midnight 3rd April 2012 GMT.
  • Have fun and enjoy the experience.

Retweet to help @ctwilky win his challenge!

PHP – Notice: Undefined index:

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The PHP Notice: Undefined index, is a notice that keeps coming back for more. My question to whomever is reading this is; How do you handle an Undefined index?

One method is to avoid using an unset string in the first place:

if (isset($foo)) {
    $bar = $foo;
}

Another method would be to check for a value and assign a blank string if no value:

if (!isset($foo)) {
    $foo = '';
}

The popular method lies in the php.ini file and appears something like this:

display_errors = Off

Out of sight, out of mind?

Leave a reply to show how you would handle an Undefined index and why you prefer this method to others.

Meta Keywords Tag is SEOless

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Today (19th March 2012) (the head of Google’s Webspam team) released a video blog titled “How much time should I spend on meta tags, and which ones matter?”. In this video Matt explains that the Keywords tag is not supported by Google (or many others), and that webmasters should concentrate on the Meta Description tag instead.

“If you’re a good SEO, someone who’s paying attention to conversion and not just rankings on trophy phrases” you should focus more on your Description tag.

You can find out which Meta Tags Google supports at: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=79812

Why Services Should Allow Username Changes

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I recently set up my new Blog and wanted a plugin to manage and encourage comments, so I downloaded the Disqus plugin, logged into my account and found I was already using my preferred shortname. Disqus like many services do not allow you to change important settings like your username or shortname.

So proceeding as anyone else would, I removed my old website which was using my preferred shortname and created a new one. Whilst customizing my new websites’ settings I encountered a ‘500 – Internal Server Error‘ which had worked just before on the previous websites’ settings page.

I cannot be sure if this error was caused by the deletion of an account to be immediately replaced with a new one, or if there was just a generic bug with the websites’ settings. What I do know however is services should allow users to seamlessly change ‘important settings’ without hassle of deleting and creating accounts.

Obviously as a service provider myself I wouldn’t want users constantly changing important variables on the server which may put a strain on resources, but there’s nothing wrong with allowing these changes once per X days, or weeks, or months.

Updating from Xcode 4.2 to 4.3

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If you are updating from Xcode 4.2 to 4.3 you’ll need to do it manually as the App Store will not be Auto Updating Xcode 4.2. But will continue to update 4.3+.

The update from Xcode 4.2 will not show up in the Mac App Store “Updates” tab. Updates will work as normal for Xcode 4.3 and later. – Apple

Also be warned if you develop with PhoneGap the current version does not support the Xcode 4.3 SDK which means you will not be able to use PhoneGap for development. We are expecting an update for PhoneGap soon, so keep checking their homepage. (the current incompatible version is: 1.4.1).

If you don’t use PhoneGap, or you fancy going commando you can download Xcode 4.3 from the Apple Developer website.