For today’s tip of the day I am going to show you how to look up your site on Google to find out which pages are indexed within the search engine.

To find out which pages of your website are indexed in Google simply type the following:

That’s it. So if I wanted to see what pages are indexed for my website, moorewebexposure.com, I would type the following into Google and hit “search”.

It should be noted that Google will not give you every single page indexed.  To see every page go to the very last search result and click on the link that says: If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

This tip of the day is for Firefox users. As a web designer I have a constant need for taking screen shots on my computer and using the Print Screen key just isn’t efficient enough.  Here is a free and lightweight plugin you can download that will allow you to take awesome screen shots within your Firefox Browser.  The features are endless compared to other screen shot plugins.  You can instantly send you screenshot to Facebook or Twitter, click a button to search for similar images in Google or simply download it to your desktop.  Really, this tool is awesome and you will find yourself using it all the time.

The plugin is called LightShot (screenshot tool) and you should add it to your browser arsenal today. 

Ever wanted to keep an eye out on who is discussing your business online?  You can do this for free using Google’s Alerts service.  To setup an alert go to www.google.com/alerts and simply type in your alert.  For more details check out this Google Alert’s Post.

Short and Sweet:  To close a window from your keyboard hit “Ctrl + W” at the Same Time. This should work on Mac and PC, just substitute the Ctrl on the Mac for the Apple Button.

Ever wonder who is linking to your website?  Take guess work out of it.  Visit http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/, type your domain name into the search field and click “search”.  The sites that show up under the “inbound links” tab are the ones that have links to yours.  Easy Peasy.

Here is a quick tip for those of you on Windows machines.  This may work on a Mac but I am not sure.  If you are on a webpage and you want to open up a link but want to be sure it opens in a new tab, you don’t have to right click, then drag your cursor down to open in new tab. That is entirely too much work.  Take the easy road and simply hold down the Control button (Ctrl) on your keyboard while you click the link.  Bam!  You just opened that link in a new tab.  If you just want to open a new blank tab hit Ctrl + T.  Enjoy.

It is always fun to watch news reels from the 90′s explaining the internet.  This MTV clip is no exception. Enjoy.

For the first tip of the day I am going to share with you a computer shortcut that I use all the time.  It is super basic but not alot of people use this shortcut and it makes computer use much easier.  So what is the tip?

If you have a bunch of windows open and need to get to the desktop quickly you don’t have to click through and minimize every window.  Instead, simply hit the Windows Key + D on your keyboard and all open windows will be minimized.  Simple and effective.

+ D

I know far too many people that are using outdated, spam riddled email platforms. Google doesn’t mention the culprits in its video but to name a few they would be hotmail.com, msn.com, yahoo.com, aol.com, juno.com or aim.com.  Seriously people, lets move past the days of those emails from the prince of a small country asking for you bank account so he can share his treasure with you as he flees persecution.  It’s time to make the switch.  And if you are a business owner, try and be professional about it. If you want people to treat you like a professional then it is time to look like one.  Get rid of the “johnsautorepair@hotmail.com” and switch to a custom domain like “john@reliableauto.com” for example.  And do it now.

Have you ever wanted to keep a WordPress plugin from checking for updates?  If you have ever made any customizations to a WordPress plugin and have lost them when the plugin updated, then this little trick might help you out.

To keep a WordPress plugin from updating you simply change the plugins version to a higher version number.  When it automatically checks for updates it will think you have the latest version and skip updates on your plugin.

To do this, Login to WordPress and go to the “Plugins” page.  Find the plugin you want to prevent from updating and click on “edit” underneath it.  You will see a bunch of information like below:

/*
Plugin Name: Akismet
Plugin URI: http://akismet.com/
Description: Used by millions, Akismet is quite possibly the best way in the world to <strong>protect your blog from comment and trackback spam</strong>. It keeps your site protected from spam even while you sleep. To get started: 1) Click the “Activate” link to the left of this description, 2) <a href=”http://akismet.com/get/?return=true”>Sign up for an Akismet API key</a>, and 3) Go to your <a href=”plugins.php?page=akismet-key-config”>Akismet configuration</a> page, and save your API key.
Version: 2.5.3
Author: Automattic
Author URI: http://automattic.com/wordpress-plugins/
License: GPLv2 or later
*/

You are looking for the section in red that says the version number.  Simply change this to something higher like “Version: 100.1″ or whatever you want it to be.  Save.

That is it.  Now when WordPress checks for updates for that specific plugin it will think yours is up to date and skip it!

*Note: WordPress updates are important and many of them are done for security purposes so make sure you know what you are doing before you disable updating.