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Nov

15

What Is RSS?

Filed Under (Blogging, How To, Site Promotion, Webmaster Tips) by Tricia on 15-11-2008

Do You Understand What RSS Is?

RSS can have more than one meaning behind it. Usually, RSS stands for “really simple syndication” but it can also mean “rich site summary” or “RDF site summary”.

The meaning behind, ’RDF’ is resource description framework. That should help explaining the meaning associated with RSS, now let’s look at what it can do.

Exactly what is RSS in the realm of really simple syndication? It is a tool that allows sites to give a quick summary of important links and descriptions in XML format. This essentially allows them to syndicate their content by allowing other blog owners and webmasters to use this summary as part of a list of summaries on a specific topic.

Webmasters and blogmasters will gather a number of these summaries using a feed aggregator or feed reader. Rather than asking, “what is RSS”, this tool will ask “where is RSS” and then find it.

The aggregator tool will locate RSS feeds and collect them from various sites such as, Yahoo and MSN, and will select smaller sites like a personal blog or a news sites.

The blogmasters and webmasters then take the script generated from the aggregator and insert it into their blogs. The RSS feed is then created in this way and will automatically start pulling news items and blog posts each time they come up. Whenever the blog or site page is refreshed, it will display the latest items.

Taking advantage of this tool is good for two reasons. By using your own RSS feed, you will be able to have your content distributed across the internet without having to pay each time you submit a press release, or contact other blog owners and webmasters.

If you have your own personal blog page, then by using an RSS feed you can add fresh content to it much easier and faster. This will allow you to constantly put new content links and summaries on your blog without spending the time to hunt around for related information. You just need to choose a feed aggregator to select the potential feeds you can use and these can be found on a list of news sites and authority blogs. Plus, you can create your own custom feeds by adding any of your own selections that you find.

Do you now understand the basics behind RSS? Simply put, using RSS is a very easy way to generate traffic to your blog and to display additional summaries you find on other blogs.

Related Reading:






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  1. FeedSmith Plugin might help reduce CPU resource issues


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Apr

08

DTI Data offers hard drive recovery services and software

Filed Under (Computer support, Data Recovery, Great Sites, How To, Services, Technology News) by Tricia on 08-04-2008

I’ve you’ve never been unlucky enough to have gone through a hard drive crash and major loss of data I envy you. I might be luckier than some as I’ve only experienced complete hard drive failure once and that was due to a computer virus.

All I can say is that if you’ve never experienced this you’re lucky and whether you have or haven’t had a hard drive failure you should take some basic steps to prevent hard drive failure or to make recovering your data a fairly easy task.

Some obvious ways of protecting your computer and your data are:

1. Keep your software up to date by upgrading using the latest stable release.

2. Use an anti-virus program to protect your computer.

3. Never open a file that arrives in your email if it’s from someone that you don’t know, if you weren’t expecting the attachment or if it seems suspicious in any way.

4. Backup your data to another hard drive, server, external drive, CD or DVD regularly.

There are many reasons why your hard drive might fail. Power failure is another reason, as is visiting a website that infects your computer with malicious code. However, in my opinion, failing to do some or all of the above mentioned suggestions are probably the number one reasons that lead to hard drive failure.

I don’t know how many times I’ve talked to friends, relatives, coworkers or web friends and they’ve told me that their hard drive crashed or some of the programs that they rely on most won’t work anymore. When I ask them if they have a recent backup or if they use an anti virus program more often than not they say no.

Hard drive failure is bad enough for the home computer user, but if the hard drive failure occurs on a business computer or servers hard drive it could mean downtime, loss of income and loss of valuable company data.

For those who’s hard drives have failed and they are unfortunate enough not to have a backup of their data, or perhaps had a backup failure as well as a crashed hard drive there are companies such as DTI Data that specialize in hard drive recovery. Not only is DTI DATA the only manufacturer authorized data recovery company to provide flat rate pricing for hard drive recovery, but they also have a fantastic data guarantee:

If DTI DATA fails to recover your data you don’t pay!

That claim does come with an exception. If your hard drive was opened elsewhere the guarantee doesn’t apply.

DTI Data can perform hard drive repair on many types of hard drives and servers. For example they offer services for SCSI Hard Drive repair and recovery, Exchange Server Recovery, RAID Data Recovery, laptop hard drive recovery, Western Digital hard drive recovery and even adaptive logic hard drive recovery for those who sent their hard drive to another company for repair before trying DTI Data.

Data recovery and hard drive repair takes place in a class 100 clean room.

DTI Data also offers a number of Data Recovery Resources such as do it yourself recovery software that has been developed in house.

You’ll find software that can be purchased on their website that will help you recover all of the data on your hard drive, assist in recovering lost digital pictures, CD/CDRW DVD/DVDRW drive data recovery, fast file undelete, e-Recovery for Outlook Express and Outlook as well as other forms of data recovery software.

If you’ve been unfortunate enough to have a hard drive failure visit the site and fill out their online quote form or call their toll free number to talk with one of their hard drive recovery specialists.

Related Reading:






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9 People Had Something To Say. What Do You Think?
(9) Comments
  1. It’s important to backup your data regularly
  2. Data Backup – how it’s evolved over the years
  3. Recover files that you’ve accidently deleted
  4. Network Solutions now offers VPS Hosting
  5. Computer trouble? Try 866GeekNeed.com


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Oct

23

How to use an FTP program

Filed Under (Computers, How To, Site maintenance, Web Hosting, Webmaster Tips) by Tricia on 23-10-2007

I spend time on a variety of blogging and webmaster related forums and quite often, when someone switches from a free blogging platform such as blogger to hosting their own website they are confused by … well, a lot of things since everything is new to them, but FTP seems to one major source of confusion.

If you are new to using an FTP program in order to upload files to your server I would suggest that you use the free program FileZilla. While it’s true that some hosting programs have created a simplified version of FTP that is very easy to use directly from your hosting account (I believe) most do not provide this service and you must use external FTP programs to move large files.

You might be asking yourself “why would you need an FTP program in the first place?” Well, if you are a blogger you might want to find new themes or plugins to use on your blog. Most themes and plugins have a number of files packaged together in a folder. While it’s true that you could upload the zipped file into your Wordpress -> Content -> themes or Plugin folder on your server using the c-panel File manage it is often much faster and easier to use an external FTP program.

As I said I would recommend download the easy to use FileZilla as your FTP progam.

Go to the site and click on “Download FileZilla Client – all programs” button.
Read the rest of this entry »

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12 People Had Something To Say. What Do You Think?
(12) Comments
  1. Primary domain name in addon urls? Help!
  2. Site trouble yet again!
  3. Locked out my own sites by Bad Behavior plugin
  4. Create a second WP blog in a directory or Subdomain
  5. My hosting troubles – the full story


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Sep

18

Have you monetized your blog?

Filed Under (Affiliates, Blogging, How To, Making Money, Site maintenance, Technology News, Webmaster Tips, Wordpress Plugins) by Tricia on 18-09-2007

Over the last year I’ve been experimenting with various ways to monetize my websites and blogs. Some affiliate programs have worked well and others have only netted me no more than a few cents! I’m sure you’ve had the same experiences and what works for one website owner might not work for another because it all depends upon our blog category and audience.

I’ve written about some of the programs I’ve tried on this site, WebStyle and of course my main blog Tricia’s Musings either as I’ve added them to one or many sites or after I’d been using them for a while.

I’ve been using Amazon on my main website for a number of years. I can’t remember exactly when Amazon started up it’s affiliate program but I’ve been using since the late 90’s I believe! In those early years I made quite a bit of money with Amazon and it was in fact the only way I monetized my website. These days I still make money with Amazon, but no where near as much as I used to due to changes in the program and I suppose a huge increase in the overall amount of affiliates!

I added the WP-Amazon wordpress plugin to my blogs a couple of months ago, but I’ve yet to really get going with using it. I think I’ve only created two affiliate links within my posts so far! Shame on me. Part of making money with affiliate programs is using them when appropriate. Of course I can still go over my old posts and add some Amazon links to them.

Text Link Ads has also been a very successful program for me. I joined a couple of years ago when I only had one HTML based website. I could never figure out how to get Text link ads to work on that site though! (if anyone can help me with this I’d really appreciate it! I know there’s a way to do it.) So I didn’t earn anything on my account until I got around to starting some blogs in 2006. Now I earn several hundred dollars each month with the TLA program.

Google Adsense has worked out fairly well for me too. I don’t earn anywhere near as much as I think I could be making with the program, but I earn more than enough to get paid every month by Google. Again, I only had Google Adsense on my two websites for the longest time. Then sometime last year I put it on a couple of blogs but not my busiest ones. I’ve now rectified that mistake and I use Google Adsense and the utilize the Adsense Deluxe plugin on all of my blogs.

I only added Google Adsense to my busiest blogs about a month ago and I’ve already almost doubled my income. Hopefully once the Google Media bot fully indexes those sites I’ll really start to do well with Google Adsense. I’m still of course going over old posts and using the Adsense Deluxe plugin to add ad blocks to older posts. I don’t like to use them in my newest posts. Perhaps I’d earn more if I did, but I prefer not to irritate my regular readers with too many ads. Those coming in from search engines to the older posts will get the full extent of the advertising on my sites.

This actually brings up a good point.

When you monetize your sites do you consider how it might appear to your visitors? We’ve all seen sites with far too much advertising and for me it’s a total turn off. Links everywhere, advertising to the full extent, all kinds of different affiliate program banners and so on … I try not to do that. As I’ve just said I’ve been going back to older posts and adding in a bit more advertising, but I still try to keep it as tasteful as possible.

Everyone’s got to find their own balance between developing content, advertising and continuing to build traffic. Too much advertising can make people close your site and never return.

It’s fine to experiment with different affiliate programs. Even trying different badges and products to advertise on your site with each company. Just don’t try everything at once. If you overwhelm your visitors they won’t click on your ads. They’ll just click over to another persons website.

How do you monetize your sites? Do you think you’ve accomplished that fine balance that allows you to successfully monetize your site while keeping your visitors happy?

What programs do you use to monetize your site? I’ll discuss other programs that I’ve been using successfully in future posts.

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9 People Had Something To Say. What Do You Think?
(9) Comments
  1. Create a second WP blog in a directory or Subdomain
  2. The War on Comment Spam
  3. The New Amazon Widgets
  4. Text Link Ads
  5. I’m not against website urls – I’m against comment spam


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Jul

31

How to remove nofollow tags in a Typepad blog

Filed Under (Blogging, How To, Technology News, Webmaster Tips) by Tricia on 31-07-2007

Karen from a strange life was kind enough to write out instructions on how to remove the nofollow tags from a Typepad pro template.

Note that I do not, nor never have had a Typepad blog. These are the steps that Karen took when changing her blog over to a do follow blog and they worked for her.

Karen in her own words:

Converting a TypePad Blog Pro Level to a Do Follow Blog for a Total Neophyte Like Me

  1. Set up your blog with all the modules you plan to use, and no widgets, because the widgets won’t make the transition. Now you’re ready.
  2. Go to the ‘Weblogs’ Tab on the TypePad Page.
  3. Choose the ‘Design’ tab in the ‘Weblogs’ page.
  4. Go to ‘Saved Designs’ in the ‘Design’ page.
    1. WARNING: ONCE YOU CONVERT TO ADVANCED TEMPLATE (IF YOU ARE ME) THERE IS NO GOING BACK. NOTHING WILL EVER WORK RIGHT IN YOUR BASIC TEMPLATE AGAIN.
  5. Check the box next to your Current Design and click on the button ‘Convert to Advanced’. The program will clone your design and make one of them ‘Advanced’.
  6. Go to ‘Current Design’ and you will see a list of Advanced Templates in 3 boxes: Index Templates, Archive Templates, and Template Modules.
  7. Open a new window and in TypePad Help search for Advanced Templates: Individual Archives Template.
  8. Open the Advanced Templates: Individual Archives Template and scroll down to Individual Archives Modules.
    1. There are 3 boxes of code under this title:
    2. Individual Entry (Module Name: entry-individual),
    3. Comment Listing (Module Name: comment-list), and
    4. Comment Form (Module Name: comment-form).
  9. Now in Current Design click on ‘Create new template module’. Click the top box of the form that comes up to ‘Individual Archives’ then type in the exact module name from the Advanced Templates help page. Now, copy all the code in the help module’s box and paste it into the new module’s box. Click ‘Save’. Do this same sequence of actions for all three of the modules shown in the help boxes. So now, under Template Modules you should have:
    1. comment-form
    2. comment-list
    3. entry-individual
  10. Now the guy who did the REAL fix comes to the rescue!
  11. Mike from the ConverStations blog wrote a post about removing nofollow from Typepad comment sections.
    1. go to this website and copy the code he has in the ‘new comment-list module’ code box. Take it to your box in Template Modules labeled comment-list and, after removing the old code, paste it in.
    2. now go to the entry-individual Template Module and find the phrase he tells you to change, and change it.

If you are persistent and pigheaded as I am, you will eventually make this into a do-follow blog!

There you have it. Between Karen’s written instructions and Mikes comment code you should be able to get your typepad blog to become a do follow blog and reward your visitors with back links whenever they comment on a post.

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2 People Had Something To Say. What Do You Think?
(2) Comments
  1. Adding a blogroll to Typepad
  2. Remove the no follow tag and become an I follow Blog
  3. Create a second WP blog in a directory or Subdomain
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