DOCTOR MOLE PDX AND HTaccess

The Mystery Of Setting Up doctormolepdx.com For Doctor Mole PDX.

Once you cut through the chaff of bloggers you find two types.

You don’t have to agree, but the proof is there for the taking.

If you’re a blogger, thinking about a blog, or like reading about blogs, you’ll laugh.

The echo of blogger laughter coming from your mom’s basement will fill the street.

In a world where content is king, bloggers worship the Google gods.

Words come from on high and everyone stops to listen.

Google says Panda and the freakout begins. Low quality websites go on notice. They will not be tolerated, as if anyone admits they run a low quality site.

Google gods know low quality when Google Quality Raters ask one question: “Would I trust this site with my credit card,” which gives birth to higher quality work.

No more posts full of key words that read like a Russian translation of a Taco Bell menu. You can’t repeat a word like Google for example and expect to find traction. (See what’s happening here? Cue laugh track.)

Google said penguin and the next panic began.

“Stop rigging search engine optimization, you black hatted bastards,” Google said.

Black hat SEO tactics became more covert where smart guys in the online room found new ways to push their pages, and their clients’ pages, to Google’s front page.

Did Penguin and Panda ruin boomerpdx.com?

I just googled Portland baby boomers and found four of eleven listings relate to Boomer PDX. Could be the cache on my computer, but it’s not black hat, just high quality work. But you knew that, right?

The latest update words from Google gods are mobile and friendly, as in you’d better be wired to show up correctly on smart phones.

Makes all the sense in the world when you look at any waiting room, airport terminal, or bar and too many people sit leaning over their phone.

You want your site in there too. Easy to find, fast, and scaled to screen size.

If you’re not mobile friendly with your site you’ll be sent to the back of the room. And Google gods know.

The sharp blogger, or website owner, works with Google, not against Google.

The mobile friendly update, a change not named after a black and white colored animal, shows two sorts of bloggers:

• One texts their web designer and asks them to make their site mobile friendly.
• The other does it themselves.

I’m an other.

Boomer PDX run on wordpress with a Genesis framework and a mobile responsive theme from Studiopress. Hosted on Bluehost.

Good to go, or so I thought.

My smart wife, Dr. Elaine Gillaspie, ND, started a new phase of her practice by adding aesthetic medicine.

She is Doctor Mole PDX at the Portland Wellness Center. I run her ads on my sidebar. Make an appointment and she’ll treat your mole with an Ellman Surgitron.

I’m working on her new website, doctormolepdx.com. It needs to be ready from the start so I’ve spent hours on the phone with Bluehost helpers to check my work.

While I had them on task I asked if they’d take a look at my other account, the one for boomerpdx.

They tested the mobile responsiveness by writing the URL into Google’s Mobile-Friendly tester.

The report: “Awesome! This page is mobile-friendly.”

Awesome, I thought, before hearing this: “There’s a difference between mobile-friendly and mobile-responsive.”

Huh? There is?

“You need to put code in your .htaccess file. You know where that is.”

It wasn’t a question.

“Okay.”

“It’s in the file manager on your cpanel.”

“Okay.”

“Are you there?”

“Oh, I’m there.”

“No, you’re not.”

These guys are smart.

“Okay, now I am.”

“This is where the code goes for Google to confirm your site is mobile-friendly.”

“Can you email me the code? Or where can I find it?”

“Google it.”

“Thank you.”

Googling mobile friendly code is a true adventure. Code from 2005? 2009? I’m not sticking old code in a new website.

So I called my Bluehost buddies to check it out. Did I ask them to install clean code? Of course not. Two kinds of bloggers, remember?

Then I hit the tech forums where everyone writes code but can’t spell:

“This is the code I wrote for mobile-friendly. After I put it in all fifty of the sites I manage were hacked by Russians. I took the code out and the hack continued. They went from .htaccess to my plugins. I had to take everything apart to find the vulnerable plugin, the re-install everything. And they still came back.”

That was enough for me. Why would the guy display his funky code? That’s what coders do for help. And another coder helped him. All fixed.

Would you install this code? On your wife’s new site? I’m not.

This is one blogger wondering where the clean code for mobile-friendly is hiding.

Come out, come out, wherever you are.

Ollie ollie oxenfree. All clear. Come on, internet.

Ideas? I need you. More important, Doctor Mole PDX and I both need you.