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25 Sites We Can’t Live Without 2007-06-27 13:19:25 Today TIME released a very interesting list of websites called “25 Sites
We Can’t Live Without.” In that list you’ll see online stores such as Amazon.com and iTunes Music Store, search engines like Google and Yahoo, social bookmarking sites and many more. I bet you’ll find some new to you sites too.
What I would add to that list
Let me check in some sites that I as a webmaster and blogger can’t live without.
Webmaster Radio. The only radio that I listen to when I am working on the computer. It’s a shame that I can’t listen to it in my car
Yotophoto. The search engine for free stock photos. From Stock XCHNG to Wikipedia, you’ll search all of those free sites for the image you’re looking for.
CSS Mania. The site that I visit when I need some design inspiration. You can check out CSS Remix too.
Bookmarks.net For Sale 2007-06-27 02:32:02 Here’s something interesting - bookmarks.net, a great single word domain name is for sale. How much? At least 10,000 EUR. Quite a nice, wallet-friendly price, isn’t it? At least for the person who’s selling it.
Maybe we are looking at the domain for the future analogue of Digg.com.
Check out the auction at Sedo Read more:Bookmarks
Three Reasons to Put Text Ads 2007-06-26 02:53:07 You have a site. One with many visitors and good content. So, what kind of monetizing should you choose? Text ads or banner ads? In this guide I’ll give you three pretty good reasons to use text ads instead of banners.
Visitors don’t like banners. Let’s face it - they’re a web cliche. Nobody (including me) likes bright images with flashing text and some stupid stock photos looking at us as monkeys. I overdid it a little bit but I’m saying the truth.
Text ads have a higher click through rate. It’s not surprising if you read the first reason for using text ads. You have a much better chance of more clicks on text ads because users get a better, simpler and not such an intrusive explanation of the site that is being advertised.
Customizing text ads. Unlike banners, you can customize the look of your text ads. Color, background, border. That’s quite important. The more integrated your ads are, the bigger the change that your visitors will check th Read more:Three
, Reasons
New SMF Version 2007-06-26 02:38:04 SimpleMachines just updated their board software - SMF (Simple Machines Forum) to version 1.1.3. They’ve fixed some small but important for security and the appearance of your board. Just don’t forget to backup your forum before the update. Just in case.
Why I prefer SMF
Simple Machines Forum is perhaps one of the best free forum software out there. Unlike phpBB, it’s more secure. It’s not hard to get used to the administration panel which looks a bit strange the first time you load it. I’ve used SMF for almost an year and I had no bots and no hackers. Well, I had a lot of luck too
What Would You Do if You Had $100 2007-06-25 07:39:04 SEOish made a great interview with several internet marketing experts, asking them what would they do if they had the budget of $100 for a site.
According to most of them money comes from a site with good (even unique) content, a fair amount of quality backlinks and some affiliate links on the site itself. Read the interview to check out their tips.
How Drupal Will Save The World 2007-06-25 02:24:58 Yesterday, I stumbled upon an article with a interesting title - “How Drupal
Will Save The World
“, so I printed it and checked it out. Its author is a Drupal developer talking about a recently held conference in San Jose - NetSquared. He shares a great story of a village who gave their land to an oil company with the promise that they’ll get fresh water and schools. Of course, the company does not realize that promise. So the villagers find Drupal, create a site and scan the contracts… what happens next? Read the article. It’s more fun that way.
Also you’ll find some Drupal improvement ideas and team facts that you’ll find very interesting.
What I Think
Drupal is a good and flexible content management system (CMS) but it’s really not that easy to use. However, if one has enough time to read some guides around the Web, he’ll become a Drupal “expert”. Still, the system must be improved with some features such as drag &
Blogging Spree 2007-06-25 02:11:21 Or how to never run out of blogging material
Sometimes you’re full of ideas - you can even write some posts for the next days in your blog. But every blogger runs out of blogging steam from time to time - it’s inevitable. So, how to stay fresh of ideas?
Have a schedule - write on a particular topic for each day. On the weekend, post something more fun or “light” like material because we all like to read something interesting when we relax in home.
Join forums from your niche - it’s not hard at all. When searching on google, write “<your niche> + forums” and check out the results. Join two or three of the leading forums on Google’s first page of results and start searching for some material.
Check out Digg.com - social bookmarking sites not only provide quality articles for you to read, but also some great new sites. So find something interesting and cover it - you might create a piece of history.
Read more:Blogging
, Spree
How to solve Firefox problems 2007-06-30 13:10:40 A fix your fox when it’s sick how-to
Firefox
is a great browser. The best think about it is that you can modify it, install add-ons and themes. But there’s always the moment when you got something wrong and your friendly neighborhood fox stops… working.
Some people will instantly advice you to reinstall it. But there is no need to, since Firefox has a great feature called Safe Mode. Just like Windows itself, you can load Firefox in safe mode and reset your settings. It saves you a lot reinstalling time.
Enter the Start Menu and select Programs (Or “All Programs” in the XP-styled start menu). Find the Mozilla Firefox folder and run “Mozilla Firefox (Safe Mode)”. Instantly, you’ll get this prompt:
But don’t just go around selecting all boxes and restarting your fox. My advice is to disable all add-ons first, because they are ofter the cause of Firefox problems
. If that doesn’t work, select all settings without “Reset Bo
Asia gets its own domain name 2007-06-30 04:32:56 The .asia domain
names will be available this year
ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) approved .asia domains last October so now, DotAsia
Organization Limited has announced that the first domain names ending in .asia will be assigned towards the end of 2007. The organization will provide names to governments and registered trademark holders in October, and afterwards to companies in mid-November. Potential registrants must live in Asia, including Australia and New Zealand.
The DotAsia Organization Limited admitted itself that they will not get much traffic the first day. I disagree. Curiosity killed the cat. At least so goes the saying. In my opinion, not only Asians, but Europeans and (perhaps) Americans will be curious to visit the first site with a .asia domain. Links to that site will start appearing in news portals, blogs and in social networking sites. So our friends will have a great amount of traffic to those sites. At least the first three days.
S
What’s the keyword today? 2007-06-30 03:29:24 Imagine a keyword forecast for webmasters…
Microsoft adCenter Labs recently released some tools for webmasters that I find very useful and interesting. The one that I decided to share with you is their Keyword Forecast. It may sound unusual, but that’s exactly what the tool does.
Just type some keywords and check out the results - you get keyword monthly history trend plus a prediction, the keyword(s) age and gender distribution. For example, more than 20% of the people who searched “webmaster” are between 18 and 24. And around 38% of all those people are women.
So don’t be wondering what the keywords are going to be tomorrow (or a bit further) Check out Microsoft’s keyword forecast.
The Big Reunion 2007-06-29 05:47:36 Bill Gates and Steve Jobs Together Once More
Just as 1983, Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Apple’s Steve Jobs were together again on the same stage at the same time. They responded to questions from the hosts Walter Mossberg and Kara Swisher without any fireworks as some people expected. It turned out that they have quite more in commen then many people expected. After all, they’re not only competitors - Gates and Jobs have been collaborating together for quite a long time. Gates shared that he likes Steve Job’s taste of both people and products, while Jobs said that he admired Gates’ ability to create and maintain partnerships.
In the years, Microsoft and Apple have taken two very different directions. Especially for their personal computers. While Apple make their software and operating systems for their computers, Microsoft makes the operating system and licenses to PC hardware vendors.
So, why some people prefer Apple, and other - Microsoft? Just a matter
Gran Paradiso Returns 2007-07-05 04:59:09 Mozilla Released Firefox 3 Alpha 6
Once again, Mozilla released another alpha version of Firefox 3 under the codename Gran Paradiso
, the name of the highest mountain group in the Graian Alps (Wikipedia).
As expected in such an alpha version of the software, it came out with some minor but nice updates. If you have set your fox to start with the previous tabs that you had opened, you won’t see that nasty confirmation prompt “are you sure you want to close all tabs?”. Also, we now have a permanent Restart button in the add-ons (or extensions as some of you may recall it) menu.
A great new idea is that the download manager now shows download speed in MB/s or GB/s instead of KB per second. Quite nice, since the internet speed for normal users has evolved so much since Firefox started.
If you’re a beta (or in this case an alpha) tester, you can download the new alpha release for Windows here, for Linux here and for MacOS - here.
Remember that this is the final alpha Read more:Returns
, Gran Paradiso
Choose Vanilla 2007-07-04 02:31:29 How board software should look like - Vanilla
Have you ever heard about Vanilla? Basically, it’s the most simple and most flexible board software out there. And when I say simple, I mean simpler. You also get standards-compliant source code, skin and multilingual support and many, many add-ons for the software.
So what makes such a simple software cool?
Although it’s almost too simple, Vanilla has add-ons for everything - from adding categories with sub-forums to users having the chance to use avatars.
The problem with most other open source board software is that it is cluttered of functions, images and links that you don’t often tend to use. They also need more monthly bandwidth, as they have a lot of images in their skin compared to Vanilla.
So why not choose the software which you can modify to your own liking? It’s all up to you. Just choose Vanilla.
Vanilla Advantages:
A lightweight, server and human-friendly board software.
Easy to install and modify.
H
Directory Critic 2007-07-03 11:08:40 A must-visit for webmasters
I think it’s time I shared yet another favorite site of mine with you - DirectoryCritic
. I’ve watched this site as it evolved from a simple web directory list to a comprehensive resource for webmasters, containing very categorized directory lists, tools and resources and even a blog.
There’s no doubt that directory submission is a must when it comes to SEO (search engine optimization), so I hope this amazing site with a list of only seo-friendly web directories will be of big use to you.
As well as that, let me share some tips on submitting to directories:
Always have a proper, explicative title. It’s not necessary to be the same title as the <title> tag of your site, just be sure that people know what’s the main topic.
Never be short when explaining what your site’s about. Give a rich, keyword-friendly explanation so that it will appeal to everyone and so that people will be able to find your site easier.
Have pa
All About Successful Advertising 2007-07-03 09:55:03 Creating an easy message that appeals to all
Advertising
. A word that many TV watchers would try to avoid. Mainly because it’s not easy to spot a good advertisement. But the case is not like UFOs and aliens - at least we know good ads exist. So how to create one? Join me as I analyze recent commercial success stories and advertising trends…
Of course, the most important part of advertising is the product (or in the Web - the content) you’re promoting. But that’s just a bit of it. Now that you’ve got the product, you need to show people how good it is and how they’ll benefit by buying it or visiting the site.
Let’s take an early Coca Cola advertisement - “Things go better with Coca Cola.” Needless to say, the slogan says it all. You’ll never ask yourself which things go better with it. They just do. So now all you’ve got to do is buy Cola. A similar method of advertising is Heinz’s: “Everything tastes better
Apple Did It Again 2007-07-02 10:44:15 How iPhone Got So Successful that It Became Annoying
I’ve always wondered how Apple
does it. I’m talking about the popularity and huge usability of their products. Apple seen to have started yet another social revolution. The events when iPod was released are repeating themselves.
So, what stands behind Apple’s success? What makes Apple… Apple? The ability to create something new, something revolutionary that appeals to almost every single person on Earth. That’s what. iPod too started a whole new trend. One could say it become like a fashion accessory that’s customizable and most people have it. The same is happening to iPhone now.
We all should learn from Apple’s success story. Start something revolutionary new, make the society scream about it and watch as you gain more and more fame & glory.
Microsoft made that fatal mistake with Windows 95 to 2000. XP was something fairly new and that’s when their success story really began. We Read more:Again
phpBB SEO using robots.txt 2007-07-02 02:27:10
Optimizing a board software for search engines is not an easy task, especially with the more complicated ones such as Invision Power Board and vBulletin. Fortunately, phpBB
is easier to use and with some modifications it can become a safe, powerful and easy to use board.
Today I’ll be sharing with you a great SEO
trick for phpBB using robots
.txt. The biggest problem with search engine spiders in forums is that they can get easily distracted from the main content and go viewing a user profile, the users list etc. So forbidding such pages is the main idea in this kind of SEO for boards.
Basically, you have to create a new robots.txt (if you have not created one already) and put it in your root directory. Then you forbid posting.php, memberlist.php, profile.php, group.php, login.php and privmsg.php. If you are not familiar with robots.txt, I advice you to check out Thomas Brunt’s Creating and Using a robots.txt file Guide.
So, forbid those files and watch as the spi
What Most Popular Domains Mean 2007-07-09 12:37:41 Find Out What Stands behind Popular Domains
We see, type and register them every day. Domain names are part of a web geek’s life. But have you ever wondered what stands behind those short words that every domain consists of? What does .com mean? And what about .net? Do we use them with their purpose? Stay with me as I reveal the meaning of most popular domains and their usage.
Commercial Organization (.com) - the most popular and hard to find domain name on the web. So many people have registered so many .coms, that it’s amazingly hard to register a nice, no-hyphen .com name. And perhaps 75% of all those domains do not belong to commercial projects.
Networking Organization (.net) - the popular alternative to .com; More and more people register .nets as the .coms become less available. And .net sounds better for personal projects. At least according to the recent web trends.
Organization (of course, .org) - flashy and says it all. Wikipedia, Drupal (a content management sys
Five Reasons to Blog 2007-07-08 14:23:56 Why You Should Become a Blogger
So, you’re reading my blog. I bet you’re reading at least ten more blogs per day. Why? Well, the reason is quite simple - most people who like sharing and communicating have a blog. So why don’t you start one yourself! Here are five simple reasons to become a blogger:
You express yourself in a whole new way. If you ask me, one of the best hobbies is writing. And since blogging is all about writing, it can be a nice and interesting hobby.
The whole world will read you. What’s expressing yourself without being noticed? With half an hour of reading on social bookmarking sites and general blog promotion, you’ll be able to get people from all over the world to notice you.
Your passion becomes your hobby. So, we have tied together three things so far - you blog your passion with passion, you write as a hobby so writing your passion becomes your hobby. It’s that simple and nice.
You can earn money. But don’t go starti Read more:Reasons
Some Great Articles for The Weekend 2007-07-08 04:11:38
As usual, it is the weekend and it’s time for something light to read for some rest and relaxation. So let me give you some great links to something to read (or check out) for this Sunday…
15 free security programs that work. For when you need security and you need it fast and free. Computer World really created a nice article once again.
For foobar2000 fans - a beautiful Foobar configuration. I used to be a Foobar2000 fan and modder too, but now I use Winamp. A bad habit I guess.
Linux fans, don’t be bored! Little Ubuntu wrote a great article recently, called Awesome Ubuntu/Linux apps you might not know or heard about. In the list are apps to download videos from YouTube, note taking applications, great bittorrent applications and more.
Have a nice Sunday. Read more:Great
, Articles
, Weekend
Blogging: What I’ve Learned So Far 2007-07-06 09:49:13 Five Blogging
Tips That I Would Like to Share
Blogging isn’t an easy job, especially with millions of competition out on the Web. What I’ve learned about blogging is that once you start getting visitors, the real part begins. So let me share with you some of my tips about blogging and gaining more traffic on a blog.
The main purpose: write. If you start a blog just to make some extra money on AdSense etc., you won’t succeed. Blog your passion with passion. Write, promote and with good content more visitors will come.
Write drafts, then posts. Once you start checking your writing like you’re reading someone else’s text, you’ll find out how much you can improve those posts for grammar, readers and search engines.
Attach images. It makes it easier to find out the topic of a post. And makes them read further. So a good title and a nice image will get you more stable visitors, as long as your content is good.
Learn from the best. Check regularly other, Read more:Learned
When Traveling With a Laptop 2007-07-13 13:36:05 Five Things to Pay Attention On
The laptop is a great relief for travelers. You have the whole virtual world with you, everywhere. But it can be a real pain if you don’t know how to take care of it and what to pay attention on. Sometimes, even tasks as sending an e-mail can be a pain. So take a look at these tips for laptop owner below in order to avoid laptop problems.
Save Energy. If you’re with Windows, go to Start Menu > Control Panel > Power Options and select “Max Battery” scheme from Power Schemes. Now you can be sure that your laptop won’t stop working when you need it.
Use GMail. When using your internet provider’s e-mail service, sometimes you won’t be able to send e-mails from your local hotel’s free wi-fi internet. So use public services as GMail, Yahoo! Mail etc.
Avoid Theft. Always grab a good hold of your laptop and never leave it in your hotel room, where it’s exposed. Know that you’ve put it in a safe Read more:Traveling
, Laptop
Why I Use Legal Software 2007-07-13 04:11:34 Confessions on a Dashboard
I used to enjoy other people’s success some years ago. I was happy for them. But I guess the long workweeks and hours and hard everyday life changed me a bit. However, I still respect something - the hard work that people put in something in order to make it good. That’s why I use legal software.
The truth is that many more people make that conclusion every day. And that’s something very good. Not only for the Web, but for the World, too. It’s about time we respect each other. We’re not in a time of war, so there’s no reason to make one.
Using legal software has its advantages. As a great friend of mine advices his clients quite often, “either use a legal/free anti virus software, or don’t use one at all.” And he’s wright. A cracked anti virus program doesn’t work as good as a legal one. Furthermore, when you pay for that piece of software, you help it become better and better with every updat Read more:Software
Increase Your AdSense Earnings 2007-07-12 05:26:02 Tips To Get The Most out of AdSense
AdSense is perhaps one of the best ways to monetize a website’s traffic. Yet still, while some struggle to get a dollar per day revenue, others earn hundreds of dollars a day. How do they do it? What makes them so different that they earn ten, hundreds of times more that the average webmaster?
The ones who have and are earning big money from AdSense have shared some proven tips to increase one’s AdSense revenue.
Concentrate on maximum three ad formats on your site. The standard 468×60, a 336×280 (also called the large rectangle) and a link unit/Google search box. Those are proven to get the most revenue out of your site. You should choose a good colour palette that matches your site’s colour palette. The idea is to make the ads part of the site.
Place your ads carefully. You can’t just clutter your ads in one place and wait for the reward. Have a text ads unit on top of your page, a link unit in the content o Read more:Earnings
Rounded Corners in AdSense 2007-07-12 04:00:52 Seems as Google are doing it again - testing new ads format in AdSense. After the spring cleanup and new AdSense Ads’ style, they are testing rounded corners.
Now this can implement greatly into some designs, but for others it won’t be much of good news. So I appreciate Google’s decision to give users the chance to switch between square, slightly rounded and very rounded corners in the AdSense setup page. Read more:Rounded
, Corners
How to Start a Forum 2007-07-11 08:43:15 The Members and Popularity You Need
What lacks in this conference hall? The people. Unless you want your forum to be empty just like this room, you’ll have do to some work on your boards in order to make it a popular, growing community.
The most important thing about a forum itself is the software it’s based on. I suggest using MyBB as the best free forum software, containing features of its paid rivals vBulletin and IPB. Other good forum scripts for free are SMF and phpBB.
So, now that you’ve installed, configured your bulletin board, what to do in order to attract members?
Content. Write some articles, pin them as important topics so that your members will be able to spot the information easily. Give links to interesting software and articles on other sites/blogs, give your member the chance to discuss something.
Members. As a recent visitor of mine shared with me, he always invites his friends in his new forums. Let’s say that you have 50 buddies in your I Read more:Start
, Forum
Five Ways to Generate Traffic 2007-07-11 05:31:12 And How To Keep It High
It is not easy to get noticed with millions of other sites/blogs out there. And after all, traffic is the blood of your site. Without it, there is no reason to go on. So how to get more traffic and how to keep it high?
1) Unique Content + Digg.com Submission
People, search engines and social bookmarking sites such as Digg.com and Del.icio.us love unique content. So write something truly unique, interesting and useful, and you’ll get to the top. That means a lot of people to your site.
2) Free Resources
Everybody loves free resources. No matter if they’re tutorials, scripts or even programs. So put an article or downloads section in your site. When visitors see something they want to see, they’ll come back.
3) Have a Newsletter
Sometimes, people forget about your site, even if it’s a great one. But if you put some RSS feeds, they will find you, especially if you have some great new content.
4) Share with Others
Put your articles in articl Read more:Five Ways
Four Blogging Mistakes You Shouldn’t Make 2007-07-10 02:50:22 How Not to be a Bad Blogger
You can find blogging success tips almost everywhere. How to write good headlines / articles, how to optimize and promote your blog, how to use social bookmarking sites such as Digg.com and Del.icio.us but what about the things that you shouldn’t make? What should you avoid in order to not scare away your visitors?
Blogging
is quite an art. Literally. The tips that I’m about to share cover the personal blogs niche, and not company blogs (perhaps). So, here are my four blogging mistakes that you should avoid:
Don’t write boring content. Visitors come to your site to read - something interesting, fun, a piece of news, or, simply to educate themselves on a particular topic. Think like your visitors. Know what they want and why they keep coming to your blog.
Never overcrowd your blog with ads. Sure, the temptation of earning more money is big, but never put too many ads on one page. I suggest two or three AdSense units plus in-text advertisin
AdSense SEO 2007-07-16 11:12:53 Have You Even Though of That?
Search engine optimization is one of the key goals of an ambitious webmaster. But have you though of using SEO
for better AdSense revenue? After all, monetization is the reward of the webmaster. At least as a material reward. The other one is knowing that you’ve achieved something and you’ve educated/helped a lot of people on the Web.
Navigation helps you and your visitors. A website without navigation is no site. It’s a bunch of mixed content. Put some tracking codes on your pages and see which page/article gets the most AdSense revenue. Than put links to that page on your site index and in your posts. This way you are directing visitors to the highest paid pages, so you have a better chance of more AdSense earnings.
Target specific topics on each page. Don’t go around making some mixed content. Categorize. Let visitors and search engine spiders know that each page covers a specific topic. Your ads will be more relevant to your c
Ranking Good in Toplists 2007-07-15 12:00:08 How I Achieve Good Positions in Toplists
Ranking
good in any type of list is the main goal of a webmaster. No matter if it’s ranking good in Google, or just a toplist of websites - it’s important. I get some traffic from blog toplists which I am very happy about. I can’t say I have achieved the best positions - not at all, but I’m satisfied with my current achievements.
Unlike web directories (which are good for search engine optimization, but are not useful for getting more traffic to your site), website toplists can make you more noticeable and more people will learn about your site/blog. Well, you can’t get as much traffic as from a good Digg.com position, but it’s worth enough to spend some time. That’s why I’ll share my experience with you for ranking good in toplists.
Write regularly. Everybody loves new content. And not only people - everything in the Web likes new content. I’ve said this numerous times. Update your blog at
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