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Spring Has Sprung, 2018
Spring has arrived to the Northern Hemisphere, but you wouldn’t know it by today’s weather. We’ve got another nor’easter laying a blanket of snow on us that will be gone by the weekend.
Springy Orange Cake
Springy Orange Cake
Ingredients
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tbsp baking powder
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 small orange rind
- 2 sticks butter
- 1¼ cups sugar
- juice of the orange
- 4 eggs
- 1 cup buttermilk
Instructions
-
Sift the dry ingredients together
-
Cream the butter and sugar together
-
Beat in one egg at a time
-
Stir in the juice from the orange
-
Beat the dry ingredients into the mixture, alternating with the buttermilk to keep the batter thick and creamy.
-
Pour evenly into two 9" round pans
-
Bake for 30-35 minutes
The Spring Equinox is one of those turning points of the year that I have declared as Cake Holidays in our house. Unfortunately, I was feeling rather ill yesterday, so I didn’t get ’round to baking a cake. I certainly had no appetite for it. Hopefully, you’re starting the new season in better condition than I did.
Springy Links
Since we’re talking Spring, we might as well talk about springs. Some people use services like Goo.gl and Bit.ly as link shorteners. Those are great and give you built-in analytics on clicks and traffic. However, as with any tool in your business, it’s better to own it.
Personally, I prefer having a recommends folder under my top level domain. You can name it whatever you want, but something that suggests that you’re making a recommendation, suggestion or something along those lines is best. There’s a tool that makes a Go folder for this purpose, but frankly GO doesn’t say anything to me other than that the bank owes me $200. I prefer recommends. As such, you’d have RobKnowlan.com/recommends or SteveSmith.com/suggests or LoisLane.com/loves as your folder for referral links.
You want it right under the top level domain (whatever.com) in order to keep the links relatively short. It’s a lot easier to remember RobKnowlan.com/recommends/rootbeer than it is to ask people to go to RobKnowlan.com/ancillaryfunctions/customlinks/recommendations/rootbeer-affiliate-link.
So having defined a folder such as recommends or suggests under your top level domain, you’re going to put an index.html file in that folder that redirects people back to the top-level domain or to a page of your choosing. You don’t want to leave this folder without an index page because it’s like leaving your side door open. Going to a folder in a browser that doesn’t have an index page will display the folder tree and allow people to walk the whole tree. Not safe. Not a good idea. Lock your doors, folks. Your index page could look something like this:
<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="1; http://yourwebsite.com">
<title>Your Site Recommends</title>
<!-- Global Site Tag (gtag.js) - Google Analytics code goes here -->
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>
What’s happening there is that in the meta-tag that says http-equiv="refresh", the refresh directive tells the page to wait 1 second and then jump to http://yourwebsite.com. You can change the number of seconds. If your page had a graphic that presells the destination somehow, you could make the duration longer but people are pretty impatient and they’ll probably just close the tab rather than wait.
You can also have it redirect to any address you want. If you have a specific page you’d like them to go to that has a bunch of links on it like my recommendations page.
By having the Google Analytics code in the page, it gathers stats in your Google Analytics account rather than in some extraneous service. Looking in one place is better than having to hunt all around for your stats.
Now, having done that, you can create a folder for each recommendation. Again, try to keep it short and snappy. You can use acronyms if it makes sense to do so. I try to use short, yet meaningful names. This gives people fair warning of where they’re going if you use it for a text link in a blog post, autoresponder mailing or eBook. As such, you’d see https://robknowlan.com/recommends/aweber because I recommend using AWeber as your autoresponder service. I could make that /a or /aw to keep it short, but then it would be utterly meaningless. On the other hand, if I was recommending ❄Portable❄North❄Pole❄ (and I do, they’re so funny) it wouldn’t be meaningless to shorten that to /pnp particularly since they refer to themselves that way.
So, having decided on an appropriate name or abbreviation, create the folder and insert an index.html into it that is configured similarly to this:
<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="1; http://youraffiliatelink/etc/?id=affiliate_id">
<title>Your Site Recommends :: Whatever you're recommending</title>
<!-- Global Site Tag (gtag.js) - Google Analytics code goes here -->
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>
Again, since it has the redirect code set to 1 second, you’ll get a brief display of the page and then a satisfying refresh to the desired destination. The great thing about these kinds of links is that you can add them at will using a template file such as what’s listed above. Keep a copy of your /recommends root index.html so you can use it as a basis for future sites. Likewise, keep the code immediately above as the template for future recommendation links. Put in your Google Analytics code where it says <!-- Global Site Tag (gtag.js) - Google Analytics code goes here --> and update Your Site in the title to your site name. Once you’ve saved that as a template, all you would need to update for future recommendation links is the Whatever you're recommending in the title and the http://youraffiliatelink/etc/?id=affiliate_id in the meta http-equiv tag.
Springtime
Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush. ~Doug Larson
My kids have been looking forward to Springtime. I have a rule that the kiddos must wear their socks during late Autumn and throughout the Winter. Ideally, this is because they should wear socks to keep their feet warm during the cold season. Really, it’s just because my kids have really ugly feet and I don’t want to have to look at them for a couple of months. 😁 😈 😁 Okay, sue me. Parenthood has to have some privileges, right?
Despite the falling flakes, it is officially Springtime and we can look forward to something other than the nor’easter of the week. Buds will bloom. Bunnies will bounce. Bugs will bug. Oh well, it’s only 275½ days until the Winter Solstice and Christmas isn’t far behind that!