Thursday 26 February 2009

Installing Subversion on Heart Internet Shared Server

I spent a good day of my life trying to install subversion on my one of our accounts that is hosted with Heart Internet.

Just to find out that it is not possible

"It is not possible to install or run subversion on our servers as doing so would put you in breach of our terms and conditions.

15.1.2 you do not use the Hosting Service as a backup of, or repository for, your Material;"

This is unfortunate as they're are many reasons why having a version control program is paramount to solid base for web development. If you are installing on shared host though and it's not with Heart Internet then this post

http://joemaller.com/2008/01/29/how-to-install-subversion-on-a-shared-host/

explains the process much clearer than anything else that I came across.

Sunday 22 February 2009

Adding Translation to your website to increase keywords and hits

The mission: To Increase hits and bookings for Hillside Glastonbury B&B & selfcatering accommodation.

www.hillsideglastonbury.co.uk

As we are currently in the middle of the 'credit crunch' and due to the fact that the British Pound is doing so badly against the Euro at the moment that bookings from abroad may well be a opportunist market at the present time.
To tap into this market we have decided to provide a translation of the website, albeit with Yahoo's translation tool Babel Fish. The problem with this of course is that some words may be undesired and the grammar will also be incorrect in places. On the plus side though it's cheap and free - you can target a few keywords that will at least get the hits in from abroad. Hopefully once we receive a few bookings through this new channel we will then invest in a proffessional translations.


On out home page we have placed links to an introduction pages for 6 languages - German (GlastonburyAnpassung), French (GlastonburyLogement), Dutch (GlastonburyAanpassing), Spanish (GlastonburyComodidad), Italian (GlastonburySistemazione) and Portuguese (GlastonburyAcomodacao).
This page has a brief introduction and apologieses for any grammatical errors and then targets three key phrases for each language. Each link from this page to others on our website transfer the user to the BabelFish website. So all the links are this format

http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_url?doit=done&fr=bf-badge&trurl=http://www.YOURWEBSITELINKHERE.co.uk/&lp=en_pt

At the end the code -> 'en_pt'

The changes the language from English to Portuguese - Here is a list of the other language changes used.

'en_de' = English to German
'en_fr'= English to French
'en_nl'= English to Dutch
'en_es'= English to Spanish
'en_it'= English to Italian


Since these changes we have noticed a 50% increase in hits in the first month. The bottom line though will be to see if these increases in hits translate in to B&B and Self Catering bookings. We will have to see.