Showing posts with label website tips. Show all posts
Showing posts with label website tips. Show all posts

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Submit your site to Alexa

On previous blog post, I wrote about submit website to popular search engines ( Google, Yahoo, MSN ...)..
But how about Alexa?
Alexa said : "There are a few reasons that Alexa may not have visited your site. Perhaps your site is new or we haven't discovered any links on the web that lead to your site. Or perhaps we haven't had any Alexa users visit your site. It is also possible that your web site administrator has disallowed crawlers from visiting your site - please read the information about robots.txt that we have provided above."



The easy way to submit your site to alexa is you or someone browse your site with a browser had Alexa toolbar intergrated.
If by any reason, your site not available at Alexa, don't worry. Just visit this link, go to the bottom, fill your website's address and click "Crawl my site". That's all.

http://www.alexa.com/site/help/webmasters

Happy harvest exp ;).

Friday, December 24, 2010

Promoting your web page and blog

Intro
Unless your page is among the top of search engine results, no one will know your page exists. The Internet consists of BILLIONS of individual web pagesand millions more appear every day. This page will help improve your search engine rankings and page quality using the secrets and tips we learned over the past twenty-years. Computer Hope currently averages over 340,000 unique page views a day and over nine million unique a month (around 50 million hits).
Secrets and tips
Below is a listing of quick links to get to a specific category on this page. If you have not yet read through this document we suggest simply reading this whole page so nothing is missed.
Content
Create new and original content
By far the most significant first step any site can do is create new and original content. Search engines use web robots (spider/crawler) designed to search a website and grab keywords and text from the website to be listed on their search engine. If your site does not have a lot of content, your chances of being found are significantly decreased. For example, if your web page has ten pages and your competitor has 100 pages, it is a lot more likely that your competitor's website will be found first.
Update content frequently
Update and add new content frequently. If your site contains frequently updated content, visitors have yet another reason to return and bookmarkyour site, search engines will also visit your site more often. We recommend creating at least 2-3 pages of new content weekly or even better a new page every day. Sites that have not been updated in over a month are generally considered abandoned pages by most visitors.
Scripts and other tools can also post new content as it happens, hourly, or daily. For example, the Computer Hope home page has a computer related history event posted daily, monthly computer tips, daily computer word, and new forum posts and pages posted as they occur. This gives a visitor several different reasons to visit again.
Add content even if your site only sells products
Most users do not visit a website only to purchase a product. If your site is trying to sell something it should have complete information about the products such as how to setup the product, how it can be used, reviews, and comments from other users about your products. Not only will this bring more visitors to your web page, it is also likely they will convert into visitors that buy what is being sold.
Format the content
Format your pages content in an easy to read and scan format. This can be done by creating easy to read, short, and catchy headings as shown on this page. Doing this will make your web page more enjoyable to read and help reduce your pages bounce rate. For the heading of each page, we also suggest surrounding it with the HTML <h1></h1> tags. The heading tags help match keywords and can improve your search engine rankings.
Make sure each page has enough content
Individual web pages that only contain only a few dozen words do not help your page or your visitors. Make sure that at least every page has 200 words. Adding one or more pictures with those words can also help grab the visitors eyes.
Free
Most people on the Internet expect information to be free. If your site contains free information, be sure to mention it, for example, "free computer help" is much more catchy than "computer help". Do not abuse the word free though, visitors who follow a link with the impression it is free and find the page is not free, requires registration, or has some other scheme will immediately leave the page.
Domain, titles and URL
Domain
If you plan on doing anything with your web page, a domain name is a must. When registering a domain name make sure the name is a short, simple, and easy to spell and remember. For example, computerhope is a much easier name to remember and type than computerhopesfreetechnicalhelp. Many of the common domain names have already been taken, so try to think of as many names as possible. Doing a whois lookup is an easy way to determine what domains are available, the GoDaddy whois is an example of such a lookup.
Page title
Most search engines use the title of your web page when displaying your site in their search results. Therefore, it is always a smart idea to put keywords into the title of each of your pages. However, keep the title short (at most 5 or 6 words), use words that a potential visitor may be searching for, and make the title understandable. For example, this pages title is "Secrets of promoting your web page", this title is not only descriptive but also has often used keywords such as secretsweb page and promoting.
URL Keywords

23 Coolest Firefox Tricks Ever!

23 Coolest Firefox Tricks Ever!

1. More screen space. 


Make your icons small. Go to View - Toolbars - Customize and check the “Use small icons” box.


2. Smart keywords.

If there’s a search you use a lot (let’s say IMDB.com’s people search), this is an awesome tool that not many people use. Right-click on the search box, select “Add a Keyword for this search”, give the keyword a name and an easy-to-type and easy-to-remember shortcut name (let’s say “actor”) and save it. Now, when you want to do an actor search, go to Firefox’s address bar, type “actor” and the name of the actor and press return. Instant search! You can do this with any search box.


3. Keyboard shortcuts. 

This is where you become a real Jedi. It just takes a little while to learn these, but once you do, your browsing will be super fast. Here are some of the most common (and my personal favs):

* Spacebar (page down)
* Shift-Spacebar (page up)
* Ctrl+F (find)
* Alt-N (find next)
* Ctrl+D (bookmark page)
* Ctrl+T (new tab)
* Ctrl+K (go to search box)
* Ctrl+L (go to address bar)
* Ctrl+= (increase text size)
* Ctrl+- (decrease text size)
* Ctrl-W (close tab)
* F5 (reload)
* Alt-Home (go to home page)


4. Auto-complete.

This is another keyboard shortcut, but it’s not commonly known and very useful. Go to the address bar (Control-L) and type the name of the site without the “www” or the “.com”. Let’s say “google”. Then press Control-Enter, and it will automatically fill in the “www” and the “.com” and take you there - like magic! For .net addresses, press Shift-Enter, and for .org addresses, press Control-Shift-Enter.


5. Tab navigation. 

Instead of using the mouse to select different tabs that you have open, use the keyboard. Here are the shortcuts:

* Ctrl+Tab (rotate forward among tabs)
* Ctrl+Shft+Tab (rotate to the previous tab)
* Ctrl+1-9 (choose a number to jump to a specific tab)


6. Mouse shortcuts.


Sometimes you’re already using your mouse and it’s easier to use a mouse shortcut than to go back to the keyboard. Master these cool ones:

* Middle click on link (opens in new tab)
* Shift-scroll down (previous page)
* Shift-scroll up (next page)
* Ctrl-scroll up (decrease text size)
* Ctrl-scroll down (increase text size)
* Middle click on a tab (closes tab)


7. Delete items from address bar history.

Firefox’s ability to automatically show previous URLs you’ve visited, as you type, in the address bar’s drop-down history menu is very cool. But sometimes you just don’t want those URLs to show up (I won’t ask why). Go to the address bar (Ctrl-L), start typing an address, and the drop-down menu will appear with the URLs of pages you’ve visited with those letters in them. Use the down-arrow to go down to an address you want to delete, and press the Delete key to make it disappear.


8. User chrome. 

If you really want to trick out your Firefox, you’ll want to create a UserChrome.css file and customize your browser. It’s a bit complicated to get into here, but check out this tutorial.


9. Create a user.js file.

Another way to customize Firefox, creating a user.js file can really speed up your browsing. You’ll need to create a text file named user.js in your profile folder (see this to find out where the profile folder is) and see this example user.js file that you can modify. Created by techlifeweb.com, this example explains some of the things you can do in its comments.


10. about:config. 

The true power user’s tool, about.config isn’t something to mess with if you don’t know what a setting does. You can get to the main configuration screen by putting about:config in the browser’s address bar. See Mozillazine’s about:config tips and screenshots.


11. Add a keyword for a bookmark

. Go to your bookmarks much faster by giving them keywords. Right-click the bookmark and then select Properties. Put a short keyword in the keyword field, save it, and now you can type that keyword in the address bar and it will go to that bookmark.


12. Speed up Firefox. 

If you have a broadband connection (and most of us do), you can use pipelining to speed up your page loads. This allows Firefox to load multiple things on a page at once, instead of one at a time (by default, it’s optimized for dialup connections). Here’s how:

* Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return. Type “network.http” in the filter field, and change the following settings (double-click on them to change them):
* Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
* Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”
* Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to a number like 30. This will allow it to make 30 requests at once.
* Also, right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0?. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.


13. Limit RAM usage. 

If Firefox takes up too much memory on your computer, you can limit the amount of RAM it is allowed to us. Again, go to about:config, filter “browser.cache” and select “browser.cache.disk.capacity”. It’s set to 50000, but you can lower it, depending on how much memory you have. Try 15000 if you have between 512MB and 1GB ram.


14. Reduce RAM usage further for when Firefox is minimized.


This setting will move Firefox to your hard drive when you minimize it, taking up much less memory. And there is no noticeable difference in speed when you restore Firefox, so it’s definitely worth a go. Again, go to about:config, right-click anywhere and select New-> Boolean. Name it “config.trim_on_minimize” and set it to TRUE. You have to restart Firefox for these settings to take effect.


15. Move or remove the close tab button.


Do you accidentally click on the close button of Firefox’s tabs? You can move them or remove them, again through about:config. Edit the preference for “browser.tabs.closeButtons”. Here are the meanings of each value:

* 0: Display a close button on the active tab only
* 1: (Default) Display close buttons on all tabs
* 2: Don’t display any close buttons
* 3: Display a single close button at the end of the tab bar (Firefox 1.x behavior)




16. Build your own Firefox search engine

Want to power up Firefox's search box? It's easy to create your own search engine, so that you can rifle through any site from right within Firefox. Adding a search engine that has already been written, of course, is easy. Click the down arrow to the left of the search box, select "Manage Search Engines," then click the "Get more search engines" link at the bottom of the screen. From the Web site that appears, click the search engine you want to install, and you're done.

There are plenty of sites that don't have prebuilt search engines, though. No problem: It's easy to build your own search engine. First install the OpenSearchFox add-on. Then, when you're on a search site, right-click the search box and choose the Add OpenSearch plug-in. From the screen that appears (shown below), type in the name that you want to be associated with the search engine, add a description of the search engine and click Next. Then click Finish, and the site will be added as a search engine that you can choose like any other -- by clicking the arrow to the left of the search box and selecting the engine.



Building your own Firefox search engine. (Click image to see larger view)

Note that as of this writing, OpenSearchFox doesn't work properly with Firefox v. 2.0.0.10 or 2.0.0.11, although it may be fixed as you read this. When you use the add-on in v. 2.0.0.1 or 2.0.0.11, you'll get an error message after you click Finish, although in some instances, even if you get the error message, the search engine will still be added.


17. Use keywords to speed up your searching

Don't want to go to the trouble of adding your search engine -- or you can't get OpenSearchFox to work properly? Here's another way to do an instant search. When you're at a site, right-click on its search box and select "Add a Keyword for this Search." Type in a name for it and an easy-to-remember shortcut (for example, hp for the Huffington Post blog site). Then click OK. Now, to search the site, go to the Address Bar, and type in your shortcut, followed by a search term, such as hp Clinton. You'll search the site, just as if you were there. Note that on occasion, the search won't work properly, but it will on most sites.


18. Use keywords to speed up bookmarks

Visiting your favorite sites using Firefox's bookmarks is far too much of a chore -- do you really want to do all that mousing around? Instead, you can use keywords to instantly jump to any site you've bookmarked. To do it, after you bookmark a site, right-click on the bookmark, select Properties, type in a short keyword (or even just a letter or two) in the keyword field and click OK. Now, to visit the site, type in the keyword in Firefox's address bar, and you'll jump straight to the site.


Adding a keyword to a bookmark. (Click image to see larger view)


19. Put your own graphic on the Firefox tool bar
If you don't like the plain background of Firefox's tool bar, don't worry -- you can put your own graphic there. Type the following into the userChrome.css file and put the graphic that you want to use, background.gif, in the same directory as userChrome.css. The graphic can be any name and any type of image file supported by Firefox.

Here's the code to use:
/* Change the toolbar graphic */
menubar, toolbox, toolbar, .tabbrowser-tabs {
background-image: url("background.gif") !important;
background-color: none !important;
}

The graphic you use will automatically be scaled to fit the tool bar. For example, if it's small, it will be tiled.



20. Hack the stop, back and forward buttons
Are you a minimalist? Does it annoy you that there's a big fat Stop button on the Firefox tool bar, even when there's nothing to stop? And how about the Forward and Back buttons -- if there's no place to go forward or back, would you like them simply to disappear?
You're in luck, because it's simple to do. Add these lines below to userChrome.css. Note that even after this trick, the buttons will appear when there's a use for them. For example, when a page is loading, the Stop button will appear, so that you can stop loading the page; it just won't appear when a page isn't loading. And the Forward and Back buttons will appear when there's something to go forward or back to:

/* Remove the Stop button when content isn't loading*/
#stop-button[disabled="true"] { display: none; }

/* Remove the Back button when there's nothing to go back to */
#back-button[disabled="true"] { display: none; }

/* Remove the Forward button when there's nothing to go forward to */
#forward-button[disabled="true"] { display: none; }








21. Move the sidebar to the right
Firefox has a sidebar for viewing your history or bookmarks. It normally displays on the left-hand side when you choose View-->Sidebar. If you prefer, though, you can have the sidebar instead appear on the right, by typing this code into the userChrome.css file:

/* Place the sidebar on the right edge of the window */
hbox#browser { direction: rtl; }
hbox#browser > vbox { direction: ltr; }

This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 756x583.


After hacking userChrome.css, you can make the Sidebar appear on the right, instead of on the left.


22. Change the search bar width
Don't like the width of the search bar on the upper-right hand corner of Firefox? No problem -- it's easy to change. All you need to do is specify the width you want, in pixels. Use this code in userChrome.css to tell the search bar to be 600 pixels wide, but you can, of course, use whatever size you want:


/* Make the Search box wider
(in this case 600 pixels wide) */
#search-container, #searchbar {
max-width: 600px !important;
width: 600px !important; }


Here's the normal-size search box ...



... and here it is, after the hack, 600 pixels wide.



23. Remove menu items
Are there menu items -- for example, Help -- that you never use? If so, you can easily make them disappear. To remove the Help menu, add this to userChrome.css:

/* Remove the Help menu */
menu[label="Help"] {
display: none !important; }

You can remove any of the other menus as well. Use the same syntax as above and substitute its name (File, Edit, View, History, Bookmarks or Tools). So, for example, to remove both the Help and Tools menu, you'd add these lines to userChrome.css:

/* Remove the Help and Tools menus */
menu[label="Tools"], menu[label="Help"] {
display: none !important; }




Here's Firefox with the normal complement of menus ...



... and here it is, minus the Help and Tools menus.

10 Yahoo Messenger Tricks You Shouldn't Miss!

10 Yahoo Messenger Tricks You Shouldn't Miss!


1. Finding an invisible user on your yahoo messenger list:

Want to find out someone who’s hiding from you? You can easily do so by going to Yahoo Invisible Checker. All you need to do is type in the Yahoo! ID and the particular users status will be revealed.

2. Run Multiple Instances of Yahoo Messenger on same system:

Some of you might be having more than one yahoo ID would like to log in simultaneously. Here is an easy way to do it without installing any sort of software. You just have to edit the registry and voila there you go. Follow the instructions from here.

3. Invisible Nickname In chat rooms

Just go to edit profile and in the nick name type a (space character) on it just press Alt 0160 ( or ALT+255 ) and save it.

Now go to any yahoo chat room and you’ll notice that your nick name is empty. [Alt+0160 is a keyboard shortcut for space]

4. Removing Ads from your Yahoo Messenger

If you are using Yahoo Messenger 8.0, then you can disable ads by following the below steps:
1. First close the Yahoo Messenger.
2. Save this .bat file and execute it.
NOTE: You won’t be able to enter the chat rooms if you use this patch.
This above fix doesn’t work for Yahoo Messenger 9 Beta. Here’s a way to disable the ads in Yahoo Messenger 9:

1. Make sure the Yahoo Messenger isn’t running, if it is then just close it.
2. Now backup the following file C:\Program Files\Yahoo!\Messenger\YahooMessenger.exe (create a new copy)
3. Download HxD hex editor.
4. Open C:\Program Files\Yahoo!\Messenger\YahooMessenger.exe in the hex editor
5. Now go to the offset 295928 (in HxD: Search/GoTo)
6. Look at the right column and replace y from “y.m.s.g.r.a.d.s” with p
7. Save the file and close HxD.

NOTE: This approach breaks Yahoo Messenger’s terms of service.

>> If nothing works try launching this file.

5. Yahoo! Smiley Codes!

You can make use of all smileys including hidden ones in your messenger by using YEmotePLUS plugin.

6. Change the Yahoo Messenger Title Bar
You can change the text that appears at the very top of the yahoo messenger window by editing the ymsgr.ini file.

1. Go to Program Files\Yahoo\ and open ymsgr.ini.
2. Then at the end, type this:
[APP TITLE]
caption=YOUR TEXT
3. Change YOUR TEXT to whatever you want it to say. Then save the file and close messenger. When you restart messenger you will see your new message.

7. Creating Custom Profiles for Chat
You can create custom profiles with different name, sex and other details from Yahoo Create/Edit Profiles. You can use these for chat services only.

8. Online Status Changer and Manager
HyperIM is currently the best status changer & manager for Yahoo messenger available at present. You can download it from here.

9. Retrieve Yahoo! Messenger Display pictures
Y! Display Pic will retrieve yahoo users even if they are offline or invisible. You can download it from here.

10. Access Yahoo Messenger Chat archives while offline
You can access your Yahoo chat logs using Yahoo Message Archive Decoder. It reads Yahoo! Messenger archive files (.dat files) and presents them in a format that you can read. It decodes the message archive without logging in (offline mode and no passwords required). You can download it fromhere.





MSN Messenger Tricks

These tricks require that MSN Plus! Live is installed on your PC:

1. Sending Continuous Nudge

You might have experienced this before: one of your friend on MSN messenger keeps sending you non-stop nudges continuously, until you can hardly do anything on your MSN messenger. When you try to do the same back to him, you get the message "You may not send a nudge that often". If you have this experience before, I bet you will be desperately trying to find out how did your friend do those annoying stuff while you are not able to the same. And the answer is you need to install the NudgesToolsScript in order to do this. Just download the script and execute it (double click the .plsc file.. you will get a warning message.. just check the the check box that says "I accept the responsibility of installing this script" and click 'Import'). After installing the script, you will now be able to send continuous nudges to your friend with no delay. If you really want to annoy any of your friend :P, type "/sendnudge 1000 100" (without the double quotes) and hit enter. Your friend will then get 1000 nudges every 100 milliseconds! By the default setting, your own chat window will also be vibrating when you send nudges.. To prevent vibration on your own chat window, do this: go to Tools > Option > Messages, and uncheck the "Allow me to send and receive nudges" checkbox so that your chat window will not vibrate when sending nudges to your friend. To stop the nudges, type "/stopnudge" and it will stop immediately.


2. Find out if somebody has blocked you on MSN


This is probably one of the most frequently asked question: how can I know if someone has block me on MSN messenger. There are lots of online services out there which claims to be able to check if someone has blocked you. As far as I know, many of them contains some sort of spyware, and will intrudes your MSN and sends annoying automated messages to all of your contacts. So instead of using those so called MSN block checker, here's a manual way to check if someone has blocked you:

1. Register a new MSN account. Use a different nick name so that no one can recognize that it's you.
2. Sign in to MSN on both your actual account and your new fake account. Having MP!L installed, you can sign in to 2 separate session of MSN simultaneously using different account.
3. Add the contact that you want to check using your new account. If at anytime, someone appears online, or accept you into his/her contact on the new account, but appears offline in your actual account, he/she has blocked you.

This seems to be a more troublesome way, but it saves you from being intruded by spyware, and most importantly, it works. 


3. Cool effects on MSN display name
This is a cool trick that enable you to easily edit your display name and make it looks cooler. Install the script NameEditor. Then go to the script button (somewhere on the top of the messenger), and choose NameEditor > Edit Name. The Name Editor window will appears, which which enable you to fill in some cool effects for your display name. This will easily make your name stand out among all the names in your friends' contact list.


4. Check Gmail with MSN Messenger

The original MSN Messenger will only alert you when you receive an email in your Hotmail account. With the Gmail Checker script, we will also be receiving incoming email alert for Gmail account. A pretty useful feature to be added to MSN Messenger!


5. Let your keyboard's LED alert you when you have incoming message


This is a cool script that will flashes your keyboard's LED, and plays a beep sound from your laptop when you receive incoming MSN message. Just install the script KeyFlasher, and start playing around with the script configuration. You can specify which LED to flash (Num Lock / Caps Lock / Scroll Lock), the speed of the flashes, amount of the flashes, etc.. Simple and fun!


6. Easily translate the text in chat window

Another very useful and cool script to be installed on your MSN messenger is the GoogleTranslator. You can easily translate the text in your chat window into another language by just hitting F5 on your keyboard. As the script name suggest, this script is using Google's translator to do the translation.. which means it supports multiple languages translation! A really useful script.