Q&A

Q&A March 2013

There were four questions from the SEAL club meeting earlier this month.

 

  • How can I save my web site created in RapidWeaver on my Mac to preview in a web browser?
  • How can I stop my web site on the Internet being indexed by Google?
  • How can I rename an existing OS X username and the Home Directory?
  • How would I access my 1Password details from another computer, for example from a friend’s computer or if I am abroad in a hotel or something?
     

 
Q. How can I save my web site created in RapidWeaver on my Mac to preview in a web browser?

A. Here are step by step instructions:

  1. With your site loaded in RapidWeaver, select Export Site from the File menu.
  2. In the Export sheet that appears, enter the name of the folder you want to save the site into in the Save As box.
  3. Select the location where you want the site exported (for example your Desktop). You may need to reveal the detailed location options by clicking the triangle button.
  4. If you want RapidWeaver to remember the export location for this site next time, click the “Make this the default export folder” tick box.
  5. Click Export. All the files which make up your site are saved into the folder you selected.
  6. To open the site in a browser, go to the exported folder in the Finder and open it. Double click on one of the .html files to open it in your browser (index.html is usually the home page). If you have multiple browsers installed, Right (or Option) click on the file and select the browser you want to use from the Open With menu.
    Exporting your RapidWeaver Site includes details of how you can set the Preferences to automatically open your exported site in a browser.

 

 
Q. How can I stop my web site on the Internet being indexed by Google?

A. If you have a web site on the Internet, Google and other search engines will automatically add it to their indexes so people can find the site in search results. If you’re not ready to promote your site, you might want to stop search engines from listing it.

To do this you need to create a file called robots.txt and upload it to your web site. Search engines check this file before indexing your site to see what, if any, pages they should index.

These instructions will stop all search engines (which respect the robots.txt file) from indexing all the pages on your site:

  1. Open TextEdit (or another text editor of your choice). For TextEdit, select Make Plain Text from the Format menu.
  2. Enter the following in the first line of the document:  User-agent: *
  3. Enter the following in the second line of the document: Disallow: /
  4. Save the file somewhere accessible (such as the Desktop or your Documents folder) and name it robots.txt
  5. Upload the robots.txt file to the root directory of your web site (it should be alongside the home page, usually index.html).
    Note that robots.txt only stops well behaved search engines (this includes the main ones, Google, Yahoo, Bing etc.) from indexing your site, anyone can still access it if they know the address or follow a link.

If your site is already appearing in search results before you upload the robots.txt file it will take a while before the listings start to disappear.

For full details on robots.txt and other ways you can configure it (for example to block indexing of only certain pages) are available on The Web Robots Pages. http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html

Once your robots.txt file is installed you can make sure it’s working with the Robots.txt Checker. http://www.frobee.com/robots-txt-check

Q. How can I rename an existing OS X username and the Home Directory?

A. Apple themselves provide instructions for this at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1428 - please ensure you make a backup of your computer and especially the user account on the computer before tackling this.

 

 
Q. How would I access my 1Password details from someone else’s computer, for example from a friend’s computer or if I am abroad in a hotel or something?

A. Agilebits, the makers of 1Password have provided an excellent solution for this called 1PasswordAnywhere. You just need a browser, an Internet connection and for your 1Password datafile to be stored in your Dropbox account. Alternatively you could store a copy of your 1Password datafile on USB storage. Full details are at: http://help.agilebits.com/1Password3/1passwordanywhere.html