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Showing posts with label blog/website. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blog/website. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Things You Should Do After Installing WordPress




The WordPress tips and hacks mentioned below apply to a self-hosted installation of WordPress. You may skip if your WordPress blog is hosted on WordPress.com and not WordPress.org.
Tip 0: Change the Default Image Upload Folder
The default installation of WordPress will store all your images inside wp-content/uploads folder.

The 101 Most Useful Websites of 2012


Presenting the 101 most useful websites of 2012. These sites, well most of them, solve at least one problem really well and they all have simple web addresses (URLs) that you can memorize thus saving you a trip to Google.

The Most Useful Websites and Web Apps

  1. screenr.com – record movies of your desktop and send them straight to YouTube.
  2. ctrlq.org/screenshots – for capturing screenshots of web pages on mobile and desktops.
  3. goo.gl – shorten long URLs and convert URLs into QR codes.
  4. unfurlr.come – find the original URL that’s hiding behind a short URL.
  5. qClock – find the local time of a city using a Google Map.
  6. copypastecharacter.com – copy special characters that aren’t on your keyboard.
  7. postpost.com – a better search engine for twitter.
  8. lovelycharts.com – create flowcharts, network diagrams, sitemaps, etc.
  9. iconfinder.com – the best place to find icons of all sizes.
  10. office.com – download templates, clipart and images for your Office documents.
  11. followupthen.com – the easiest way to setup email reminders.
  12. jotti.org – scan any suspicious file or email attachment for viruses.
  13. wolframalpha.com – gets answers directly without searching   – see more wolfram tips.
  14. printwhatyoulike.com – print web pages without the clutter.
  15. joliprint.com – reformats news articles and blog content as a newspaper.
  16. ctrql.org/rss – a search engine for RSS feeds.
  17. e.ggtimer.com – a simple online timer for your daily needs.
  18. coralcdn.org – if a site is down due to heavy traffic, try accessing it through coral CDN.
  19. random.org – pick random numbers, flip coins, and more.
  20. pdfescape.com – lets you can quickly edit PDFs in the browser itself.
  21. viewer.zoho.com – Preview PDFs and Presentations directly in the browser.
  22. tubemogul.com – simultaneously upload videos to YouTube and other video sites.
  23. ctrlq.org/dictation – online voice recognition in the browser itself.
  24. scr.im – share you email address online without worrying about spam.
  25. spypig.com – now get read receipts for your email.
  26. sizeasy.com – visualize and compare the size of any product.
  27. myfonts.com/WhatTheFont – quickly determine the font name from an image.
  28. google.com/webfonts – a good collection of open source fonts.
  29. regex.info – find data hidden in your photographs – see more EXIF tools.
  30. livestream.com – broadcast events live over the web, including your desktop screen.
  31. iwantmyname.com – helps you search domains across all TLDs.
  32. homestyler.com – design from scratch or re-model your home in 3d.
  33. join.me – share you screen with anyone over the web.
  34. onlineocr.net – recognize text from scanned PDFs – see other OCR tools.
  35. flightstats.com – Track flight status at airports worldwide.
  36. wetransfer.com – for sharing really big files online.
  37. hundredzeros.com – the site lets you download free Kindle books.
  38. polishmywriting.com – check your writing for spelling or grammatical errors.
  39. marker.to – easily highlight the important parts of a web page for sharing.
  40. typewith.me – work on the same document with multiple people.
  41. whichdateworks.com – planning an event? find a date that works for all.
  42. everytimezone.com – a less confusing view of the world time zones.
  43. gtmetrix.com – the perfect tool for measuring your site performance online.
  44. noteflight.com – print music sheets, write your own music online (review).
  45. imo.im – chat with your buddies on Skype, Facebook, Google Talk, etc. from one place.
  46. translate.google.com – translate web pages, PDFs and Office documents.
  47. kleki.com – create paintings and sketches with a wide variety of brushes.
  48. similarsites.com – discover new sites that are similar to what you like already.
  49. wordle.net – quick summarize long pieces of text with tag clouds.
  50. bubbl.us – create mind-maps, brainstorm ideas in the browser.
  51. kuler.adobe.com – get color ideas, also extract colors from photographs.
  52. liveshare.com – share your photos in an album instantly.
  53. lmgtfy.com – when your friends are too lazy to use Google on their own.
  54. midomi.com – when you need to find the name of a song.
  55. bing.com/images – automatically find perfectly-sized wallpapers for mobiles.
  56. faxzero.com – send an online fax for free – see more fax services.
  57. feedmyinbox.com – get RSS feeds as an email newsletter.
  58. ge.tt – quickly send a file to someone, they can even preview it before downloading.
  59. pipebytes.com – transfer files of any size without uploading to a third-party server.
  60. tinychat.com – setup a private chat room in micro-seconds.
  61. privnote.com – create text notes that will self-destruct after being read.
  62. boxoh.com – track the status of any shipment on Google Maps – alternative.
  63. chipin.com – when you need to raise funds online for an event or a cause.
  64. downforeveryoneorjustme.com – find if your favorite website is offline or not?
  65. ewhois.com – find the other websites of a person with reverse Analytics lookup.
  66. whoishostingthis.com – find the web host of any website.
  67. google.com/history – found something on Google but can’t remember it now?
  68. aviary.com/myna – an online audio editor that lets record, and remix audio clips online.
  69. disposablewebpage.com – create a temporary web page that self-destruct.
  70. urbandictionary.com – find definitions of slangs and informal words.
  71. seatguru.com – consult this site before choosing a seat for your next flight.
  72. sxc.hu – download stock images absolutely free.
  73. zoom.it – view very high-resolution images in your browser without scrolling.
  74. scribblemaps.com – create custom Google Maps easily.
  75. alertful.com – quickly setup email reminders for important events.
  76. picmonkey.com – Picnik is offline but PicMonkey is an even better image editor.
  77. formspring.me – you can ask or answer personal questions here.
  78. sumopaint.com – an excellent layer-based online image editor.
  79. snopes.com – find if that email offer you received is real or just another scam.
  80. typingweb.com – master touch-typing with these practice sessions.
  81. mailvu.com – send video emails to anyone using your web cam.
  82. timerime.com – create timelines with audio, video and images.
  83. stupeflix.com – make a movie out of your images, audio and video clips.
  84. safeweb.norton.com – check the trust level of any website.
  85. teuxdeux.com – a beautiful to-do app that looks like your paper dairy.
  86. deadurl.com – you’ll need this when your bookmarked web pages are deleted.
  87. minutes.io – quickly capture effective notes during meetings.
  88. youtube.com/leanback – Watch YouTube channels in TV mode.
  89. youtube.com/disco – quickly create a video playlist of your favorite artist.
  90. talltweets.com – Send tweets longer than 140 characters.
  91. pancake.io – create a free and simple website using your Dropbox account.
  92. builtwith.com – find the technology stack of any website.
  93. woorank.com – research a website from the SEO perspective.
  94. mixlr.com – broadcast live audio over the web.
  95. radbox.me – bookmark online videos and watch them later (review).
  96. tagmydoc.com – add QR codes to your documents and presentations (review).
  97. notes.io – the easiest way to write short text notes in the browser.
  98. ctrlq.org/html-mail – send rich-text mails to anyone, anonymously.
  99. fiverr.com – hire people to do little things for $5.
  100. otixo.com – easily manage your online files on Dropbox, Google Docs, etc.
  101. ifttt.com – create a connection between all your online accounts.

How to Setup your own Proxy Server for Free


Do a simple Google search like “proxy servers” and you’ll find dozens of PHP proxy scriptson the Internet that will help you create proxy servers in minutes for free. The only limitation with PHP based proxies is that you require a web server to host the proxy scripts and second, you also need a domain name to act as an address for your proxy site.
If you don’t own a domain or server space, you can still create a personal proxy server for free and that too without requiring any technical knowledge.

Create a Free Proxy Server with Google App Engine

Here’s one such proxy site that you can build for your friends in China or even for your personal use (say for accessing blocked sites from office). This is created using Google App Engine and, contrary to what you may think, the setup is quite simple.
Step 1: Go to appengine.google.com and sign-in using your Google Account.
Step 2: Click the “Create an Application” button. Since this is your first time, Google will send a verification code via SMS to your mobile phone number. Type the code and you’re all set to create apps with Google App Engine.
Step 3: Choose a sub-domain* that will host your proxy server. Make sure the domain is available, agree to the Google Terms and click save. The sub-domain is also your App ID that will uniquely identify your proxy application.
For this example, we’ll use labnol-proxy-server as the App ID though you are free to choose any other unique name.
Step 4: OK, now that we have reserved the ID, it’s time to create and upload the proxy server application to Google App Engine. Go to python.org, download the 2.6.4 MSI Installer and install Python.
Step 5: Once Python is installed, go to code.google.com, download the Google App Engine SDK for Python and install it.
Step 6: Download this zip file and extract it to some folder on your desktop. The zip file, for the curious, contains a couple of text files (written in HTML and Python) that you can read with notepad.
Step 7: Start the Google App Engine Launcher program from the desktop and set the right values under Edit – > Preferences (see screenshot above).
Step 8. Click File – > Add Existing Application under the Google App Launcher program and browse to the directory that you created in Step 6. Click the Edit button and replace “YOUR_APP_ID” with the ID (sub-domain) that you reserved in Step 3.
Step 9: Click Deploy and your online proxy server is now ready for use.

Visual Tour – Setting up a Free Proxy with Google

You can edit the main.html file to change the appearance of your proxy server and you can even add Analytics and AdSense code to your proxy server in case it gets popular on the web.
The application is currently open to all users but you can add a layer of authentication so that only users who are logged-in into their Google Accounts can use your web proxy server.
If you have made any changes to your HTML files, you can upload the latest version to Google App Engine either by clicking the “Deploy” button again or use the following command – appcfg.py update <app-directory>

How to Browse the Web Faster on a Slow Internet Connection


If your current Internet speed is very slow and you are living in an area where broadband connections are still not available, here are some ideas to help you download web pages faster on your computer. You may use the same tips to  improve your web browsing experience on a sluggish USB modem.

Surf the Web Faster on Slow Internet

1. Turn off web images, the Adobe Flash plug-in, Java Applets and JavaScript from your browser settings as these files are often the bulkiest elements of any web page.
2. Increase the size of your browser cache. If the static parts of a site (like background graphics, CSS, etc) are stored in the local cache, your browser can safely skip downloading these files when you re-visit the site in future thus improving speed.
3. Sometimes the slow DNS server of your ISP can be a bottleneck so switch to OpenDNS as it can resolve website URLs into IP addresses more quickly. If you aren’t too happy about OpenDNS redirecting your Google queries, follow this simple hack.
4. Finch can serve a light-weight version of any website in real-time that is free of all bells and whistles. For instance, the New York Times homepage with all external resources can weigh more than a MB but Finch trims down the size by 90% so the site loads more quickly on a slow web connection.
5. Flinch (mentioned at #4) is good for reading regular websites but if you just need to check the latest articles published on your favorite blogs, use BareSite. This service will automatically detect the associated feed of a website and render content quickly inside a minimalist interface.
6. The Google Transcoder service at google.com/gwt/n can split large web pages into smaller chunks that will download more quickly on your computer (or mobile phone).
7. Monitor your Internet speed to determine hours when you get the maximum download speed from the ISP. Maybe you can then change your surfing schedule a bit and browse more during these "off peak" hours.
8. You can use a text browser like Lynx or Elinks for even faster browsing. It downloads only the HTML version of web pages thus reducing the overall bandwidth required to render websites.
9. When searching for web pages on Google, you can click the "Cache" link to view the text version of a web page stored in the Google Cache. Alternatively, install this GM script as it adds a "cached text only" link near every "Cached" link on Google Search pages.
10. Move your web activities offline as far as possible. You can send & receive emails, write blogs and even read feeds in an offline environment. Also see: Save Web Pages for offline reading.
11.  You can interact with websites like Flickr, Google Docs, Slideshare, etc. using simple email messages. Uploading a new document to Google Docs via email would require less bandwidth than doing it in the browser because you are avoiding a trip to the Google Docs website.
12. Applying the same logic, you may also consider using tools like Web In Mail or Email The Web as they help you browse websites via email. Just put the URL of a page (e.g., cnn.com) in the subject field of your email message and these services will send you the actual page in the reply.
13. Bookmarklets are like shortcuts to your favorite web services. You neither have to open the Gmail Inbox for composing a new email message nor do you have to visit Google Translate for translating a paragraph of text. Add relevant bookmarklets to your browser bar and reduce the number of steps required to accomplish a task.
14. Use the netstat command to determine processes, other than web browsers, that may besecretly connecting to Internet in the background. Some of these processes could be consuming precious bandwidth but you can block them using the Firewall.
15. Use URL Snooper to determine non-essential host names that a website is trying to connect while downloading a web page. You may block them in future via the hosts file or use Adblock Plus to filter out advertising banners on web pages.
16. If you don’t want to spoil your web surfing experience by stripping images and other graphic elements from  a web page, get Opera Turbo. It will first fetch the requested web page on to its own server and then send it to your machine in a compressed format. Opera Turbo won’t change the layout of a web site but can lower the image resolution so that they load faster on slow Internet.
17. Change the user agent of your desktop browser to that of a mobile phone like Apple’s iPhone or Windows Mobile. This will help you browse certain web sites like Google News, WSJ, etc. much faster because they’ll serve you a light-weight and less cluttered mobile version of their sites thinking you’re on a mobile phone.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

7 EASY TIPS FOR BUILDING YOUR BLOG


Attracting traffic to a blog or a web site is certainly a challenge! The market is crowded with tons of information and millions of voices attempting to get their message heard.

A successful blog is absolutely a MUST these days if you want to share your expertise, voice your opinions and get your message to your target audience. In fact, according to a 2010 HubSpot report, there is a direct correlation between blog frequency and customer acquisition http://bit.ly/aewfHr.

If you are a small business looking for bottom line results then you may already know that a blog should be part of your marketing strategy. Getting your blog noticed is the next step. Here are seven vital ingredients for building a successful blog with a loyal following.

1. Publish Regularly.
As your readers become familiar with the frequency of your posts, it will influence their visiting behavior. If your readers know that you post fresh content every day, they will probably come every day to read it. If they know you post on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, that’s when they will come.

2. Stay on Topic.
Stick to your niche. If your blog doesn’t have a niche, give it one. Readers like blog’s that are focused on a particular theme or topic. If you have no theme and just post about anything, then readers are less likely to become passionate about your blog and will probably move on to somewhere else.

3. Use Meaningful Titles in Posts.
This not only announces clearly what the post is about, but it will help people navigate your blog and also influence your ranking with search engines.

4. Interact With Your Readers.
Think of your blog like a conversation. You post. Readers comment. Be active and be positive as you interact and converse with your readers.

5. Highlight Your Best Posts.
Don’t let your best posts get lost in your archives. It’s always a good idea to link to your best posts from a ‘best posts’ category on the main page.

6. Provide Good Navigation to Popular Pages.
If you help people find the key pages within your blog, their visit will be a much more enjoyable experience.

7. Avoid Not Posting for Extended Periods.
If someone visits your blog and discovers that the last post was six months ago, they will probably be disappointed. If you don’t post, people may give you the benefit of the doubt and come back on a few days to check, but you better believe they will lose interest quickly if you fall out of your regular schedule and stop posting.

There you have it. Seven little tips that will make a big difference to your blog’s readership. It’s not rocket science. It’s all about consistency, common sense and interacting with your readers.