Simon Langley 2.0

This sort of thing does not happen very often, once a decade perhaps.

Very few events warrant a place on my blog but I think this one certainly does.

Michael Jackson is the biggest pop star the world has ever known and is probably one of the most famous people to have ever lived.

Once upon a time the only way to get your site spidered by search engines was to manually submit it to the Yahoo directory (come on, in 1997 what other search engines were worth using). Nowadays, search engines are a lot more advanced and don’t require any manual work. This is great, but sometimes search engines can be a little too good at finding things, sometimes things you don’t want finding.

Take the following example… I run a website www.openmeetings.co.uk which I host on a subdomain of this website. I have changed the name servers of the subdomain so http://subdomain.simonlangley.co.uk/index.php  will be shown as http://www.openmeetings.co.uk/index.php as long you access through the site through the latter URL.

Now, whilst this is a cheap way of hosting multiple websites, the one drawback is that there are two versions of every page, but with different URLs. Anyone who knows anything about SEO will tell you that this bbbbaaaadddddd news. Search engines will penalise pages that appear to be duplicated, the reason for this is probably because the content is not original, will be of less use to users and/or is more likely to be spam related.

Up until now (for the above scenario anyhow), it was almost impossible to prevent search engines spidering the subdomain. One way to prevent spidering was to ensure that under no circumstances were links to the subdomain are used. This is fine for static HTML pages, but the second you start using PHP or other server-side scripting, the chances are subdomain links creep in (even for a short time) and as such are spidered.

At the start of 2009 a new method of overcoming this problem was developed and is (apparently) supported by all the major search engines. The method uses a ‘canonical tag’ which sits in the head of you document. The canonical tag tells search engines what the actual page should be, so if (as per the scenario above) a search engine stumbles across a page that differs from the URL in the canonical tag, it will be ignored.

Of course there are lots of other reasons why duplicate content can arise (campaign/tracking codes etc), which I won’t go into here, but this method will work for these too.

To implement a canonical tag place the following code in the head of the page:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.mysite.co.uk/index.htm"/>

So there you are!

I’ve heard a rumour that search engines use the canonical tag 95% of the time (who comes up with these stats is beyond me), so it’s not quite watertight, but certainly better than ye olde days.

J.M. Hanson, J.S. Pinkney, D. Collinge, R.W. Wrathall, W.A. Baddiley, E.F. Venables, R.F. Davies, D.E.C. Coleman
W.D. McConnell, R.S. Stephens, K. Hall (captain), P.A. Kingston, H.F. Barker
G. Martyn, B.D. Mattock

A rather spooky looking photo of the Worksop College south front including the Chapel, taken summer 1936.

Click for larger version

The panelling of the Great Hall was obviously a big event, it gets three separate mentions!

• We are very grateful to Messers. Sisson and Parker, Nottingham, for the gift of a handsome volume: “The Jungle in Sunshine and Shadow” to the library.
• On March 17th whilst First Prep was in full swing, the electricity supply broke down, thereby plunging the School into gloom but lightening the hearts of the toilers, thus provided with a first-rate excuse for shortcomings on Monday. Strange shapes crept ghost-link along corridors and stairways, groping their way to dinner in a candle-lit Hall, whilst Mr Barker, resourceful as ever, converted his Sunbeam (if it is a Sunbeam) into a literal ray of light by parking it in the Cloisters and turning on the headlight. The engineers had the good taste to spin out the breakdown until all were in bed, one Prep, to the good.
• Our swimmers are hoping for warm weather next term, as they are eager to hurl themselves into the Swimming Bath, which is not nearly double its former size.
• The panelling of the Great Hall in now completed and has proved most successful, considerabley enhancing his appearance. During the holidays the walls are to be plastered in the old type of rough plaster, in a sort of parchment shade. It is hoped also to have the roof cleaned, treated with preservative and coloured to tone with the panelling.
• Whilst the panelling experts are here, we hope to have the woodwork of the Chapel also treated by them and the result should greatly improve the appearance of the Chapel.
• Now that the Great Hall has been panelled it is hoped to replace the existing furniture by something in keeping with its appearance and to install  a new High Table.
• The gymnasium has recently been provided with new apparatus and is efficiently equipped at all points.
• Congratulations to F. Martin on playing for Oxford University XV in two matches and to G. Laing on being picked for the army. Laing  was unfortunate in being off the rugger field towards the close of the season due to a damaged rib. Congratulations also to Venables and Stephens on being picked for the North vs South - Venables for the third year in succession.
• We need not have much fear for the future standard of the game when house matches produce such excellent performances as that which G. Martyn gave at scrum-half in the final house match between School House and Mountgarret. He certainly had a very large share in winning the cup for School House.