Tech Solutions

Apply Linked Style to Your Web Pages Using CSS

Danish — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 12:30:01 +0000

Ideally, you place styles in a separate document (a style sheet) that links to multiple pages so that the styles have global (site-wide) scope. The styles defined in this style sheet can then affect every page of your site, not just a single page or a single tag. This is the only method of the three that truly separates the presentational styles from the structural markup.

If you centralize all your CSS styles in a style sheet in this way, Web site design and editing become much easier. For example, if you need to make changes that affect the whole site (”The client wants all the paragraph text to be blue, not black.”), doing so can be as quick and painless as modifying one CSS style. This is certainly much easier than the pre-CSS task of modifying every FONT attribute of every paragraph tag in every page of the site.

You can link your style sheet to as many XHTML pages as you want with a single line of code in the head of each XHTML page:

Then the styles are applied to each page’s markup as the page loads. Note that, in the above link tag, the media attribute is defined as “screen”, meaning the style sheet is designed for the screen, which currently means Web browsers. (Certain user agents look for particular media attributes that best suit their display capabilities; possibilities here include: all, projection, handheld, print and aural.

See a full list on the W3 Schools site (www.w3schools.com/css/css_mediatypes.asp).

A browser reads a style sheet where the link tag media attribute is all or screen. But by adding a second link tag with the media attribute of “print”, you can offer a second style sheet that the browser will use when printing. A style sheet for printing might hide navigational and other elements that don’t make sense when the content goes to paper. If you create a second style sheet for printing, its link tag might look
like this

So now that you know what style sheets are, let’s look at how you write style sheet rules, and how concepts like Inheritance, Specificity, and the Cascade control how these rules affect your markup.

Apply Embedded Style to Your Web Pages Using CSS

Danish — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 12:16:00 +0000

We have previously discussed about Inline CSS Styles to apply on Web Pages and this time we are going to discuss about the second way i.e Embedded CSS Style to apply on creating WebPages. You can place a group of CSS styles in the head of your XHTML document. These are known as embedded styles (or page styles) because they are part of the page (or embedded in it). Embedded styles work like this:

Embedded Styles example

The style tag tells the browser it is about to encounter code other than XHTML; the tag’s attribute states that the code is CSS. Here’s what you need to know about embedded (or page) styles:

• The scope of embedded styles is limited to the page that contains the styles.
• If you are only publishing a single page with these particular styles, you can embed the styles in the head of the document, although you are not truly separating the styles from the content; they are still in the same document. You will become familiar with embedded styles as you follow along with the hands-on single-page examples in this chapter.
• If you are working up multiple styles for a complex layout such as a form, sometimes it’s easier to write the styles as embedded styles in the head of the document so that you don’t have to constantly switch between the markup and the style sheet. Then, once everything is working, you can move the styles into the main style sheet and replace the styles in the header with a link to the style sheet.
• Page styles override style sheet styles, but they lose out to attributes you define in inline styles.
• If you are sending an XHTML page to someone for a critique, it’s considerate to embed the CSS styles in the page, so the reviewer only has to open the page and everything works; however, for a Web site of any scale, there is really only one way to manage the CSS and that is in a style sheet that can be linked to all of the site’s pages.

Three Ways to Style Your Web Pages Using CSS

Danish — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 11:59:15 +0000

There are three ways to add CSS to your Web pages: inline styles, embedded styles, and linked styles from a separate CSS style sheet. The only one that really makes any sense in terms of developing Web sites is to link your XHTML pages to a CSS style sheet, but we will examine the other two as well, as they can be useful while creating your pages.

A style sheet can be linked to an infinite number of XHTML pages, which helps ensure a consistent look from page to page and allows edits made to a style to be instantly reflected across an entire site.

Inline Styles

Inline styles (also known as local styles) are added to a tag using the XHTML style attribute, like this

This paragraph simply takes on the browser’s default paragraph style.

By adding inline CSS styling to this paragraph, we can override the default styles.

And now we are back to a regular default paragraph without any inline styles.

Here are some things you need to know about inline styles:

• Their scope is very restricted. An inline style only affects the tag to which it is attached.
• The practice of using inline styles is simply another way of putting presentational markup directly on the tags, as we did in days of yore. Adding inline styles everywhere is as bad for the portability and edit ability of your markup as adding deprecated HTML attributes, such as FONT. Inline styles should be generally avoided.
• On those rare occasions when you need to override a style in just one specific instance and there is no better way to do it, you can create an inline style and not feel too guilty about it. That said, you could almost always avoid using inline styles by adding a unique ID or class to the tag in question and then writing a corresponding style in your style sheet.
• Using an inline style is a good way to try out a style before you move it into the style sheet (see “Linked Styles” on the next page). Just remember to clear out the style attribute entirely once you achieve the effect you want and then cut and paste just the style itself into the style sheet. If you have it in the markup, that inline style will always override whatever change you try to make to that particular tag from the style sheet, and you can spend hours trying to fix the style sheet when the problem is, in fact, hidden in the markup.
• Inline styles override the same styles you define with embedded styles (described next), which override global styles you define in style sheets.

How to Stop Twitter From Sending New Follower Messages

Danish — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 13:32:52 +0000

With all these great renovations you’ve been doing, it won’t be long before people start beating a path to your Twitter door. You’ll know right away if your custom design is a hit because Twitter sends you an e-mail message every time a kind soul decides to follow you. Personally, I love getting these messages because it’s great to know that my tweets have a growing audience, and it also gives me a chance to check out lots of other profiles.

You never know who you might come across and decide to follow yourself. On the other hand, if your profile becomes quite popular, getting tons of messages from Twitter may not appeal to you. Similarly, you might be following as many people as you can handle, so you’re not interested in also following any of your new followers. If that’s the case, then you should follow these steps to tell Twitter to stop sending you an e-mail message each time someone follows you:

1. Sign in to your Twitter account.

2. Click Settings. The Settings page appears.

3. Click the Notices tab.

4. Deselect the Email when someone starts following me check box.

5. Click Save. Twitter updates your profile with the new setting

6 Best Free Anti Spyware Programs

James Adams — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 13:11:58 +0000

Spyware is an application which is designed to gather your personal information and transmit it to a criminal. These criminals have created a multi-million dollar industry which is solely devoted to stop them. Fortunately, you don’t have to spend millions to protect yourself against spyware. In fact, you don’t have to spend a dime. Here are some of the best free anti-spyware programs available.

1. Windows Defender

Microsoft’s Windows Defender is one of the best at the detection and removal of spyware. It begins by searching through your common files, then branching out to look at the rest of your system. The program destroys the regular spyware parasites, but doesn’t provide protection against some of the common viruses.

2. Ad-Aware SE, Personal Edition

Ad Aware is one of the most popular spyware and malware detectors and killers on the market today. The scans are fast because there is no version of the antivirus software in the free version. Ad-Aware is updated all the time, and is very effective at its job. There is a pay version of this program which offers real time protection, but the free version is well worth the download.

3. SuperAntispyware

The free version of SUPERAntiSpyware is limited in its scope, but does everything necessary. It will scan hard drives, registries and memory for spyware and malware. It will also detect and remove most threats, including spyware, malware, worms and keyloggers. You can also manually download updates every eight hours, designed to keep you on the cutting edge of anti-spyware databases. The free version does not offer real-time detection and removal, but their upgraded versions do.

4. Spyware Terminator 2.0

This program offers spyware blocking, removal and protection from spyware. The real time protection monitors your system and prevents spyware from being downloaded to your machine. This anti-spyware application is effective in defending against the malware and spyware threats that are out there. It is great for those who want to load the program and forget about it.

5. MalwareBytes Anti Malware

This program is free for personal use, making it a perfect candidate for at home protection. The professionals use this program at home to defend against malware on their personal computers because it removes a majority of the malware out there. It is also effective against rogue antivirus programs, detecting and removing those quickly and easily. MalwareBytes has a professional edition which adds scheduled scans, automatic updates and real-time protection against malware.

6. Avast! Antivirus 4.8 Home Edition

The free home edition of Avast! removes viruses and spyware from your system and keeps it that way. Avast!’s protection checks out email, IMs and peer to peer systems. Avast! makes it nearly impossible for a computer to receive malicious software like spyware. Like many others, there is a $39.95 professional edition which offers some more features. Malicious programs are everywhere on the net, and these applications are designed to stop them. Using two or more of these in conjunction with each other is suggested, because there indeed is no one size fits all approach that can be taken. As with people, these free applications all have their strengths and weaknesses, but all of them defend and stop spyware from infecting your machine. James Adams is a writer and designer who works for Cartridge Save as a product reviewer where he writes reviews of franking machine cartridges.

post by: James Adams

What Is Baseband Signaling On Physical Layer In the Field of Telecommunication

Danish — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 16:29:26 +0000

Baseband, or digital, signaling is based on the use of discrete states to convey information across a communications channel. These discrete states are typically represented as pulses of some sort (such as voltage) and are thus often called square waves. Below Image shows a square wave by which two discrete states (0 and 1) can be represented each by a different voltage (plus and minus 12 volts in the picture below).

Many different baseband signaling schemes have been developed over the years; a few of the most popular are shown in the image below. At the top of the figure is a uni-polar signaling scheme, in which a digital 1 is represented by a +5 volt state and a digital 0 is represented by a no voltage (ground) state. This scheme was widely used in early transistor-transistor logic (TTL) circuitry. In the middle of the figure is a bipolar signaling scheme, in which a digital 1 is represented by a –12volt state and a digital 0 is represented by a +12volt state. This scheme is widely used today in a Physical layer protocol known as EIA-232-E. At the bottom of the figure is a bipolar return to zero (BPRZ) scheme in which digital 0s are represented by a no voltage (ground) state and digital 1s are represented by alternating 3-volt pulses.

This latter scheme, sometimes called alternate mark inversion (AMI), is used on T-1 lines by carriers and customers alike. As we have seen, each of these baseband signaling schemes has either seen widespread use in the past or is in widespread use today. A major determinant of the choice to use one baseband scheme over another has to do with the ease with which timing and synchronization is supported by the technique.

How To Configure MySQL and Apache to Start Automatically

Danish — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 14:42:06 +0000

If you’re going to be doing a lot of development (and if you bought this book, that’s a given!), then you should consider configuring the Apache and MySQL servers to start automatically when your system boots up. The following sections outline the process to accomplish this process automatically.

Automatically Start MySQL And Apache on UNIX

On UNIX, both MySQL and Apache servers come with startup/shutdown scripts, which can be used to start and stop them. These scripts are located within the installation hierarchy for each program. Here’s an example of how to use the

MySQL server control script:

[root@host]# /usr/local/mysql/support-files/mysql.server start

[root@host]# /usr/local/mysql/support-files/mysql.server stop

And here’s an example of how to use the Apache control script:

[root@host]# /usr/local/apache/bin/apachectl start

[root@host]# /usr/local/apache/bin/apachectl stop

To have MySQL and Apache start automatically at boot time on UNIX, simply invoke their respective control scripts with appropriate parameters from your system’s boot-up and shutdown scripts in the /etc/rc.d/* hierarchy.

Automatically Start MySQL And Apache On Windows

On Windows, you can use the WinMySQLadmin utility to start and shut down MySQL, and the server controls installed by Apache on the Start menu to control the Apache server. To start MySQL and Apache automatically on Windows, simply add a link to the mysqld.exe and apache.exe server binaries to your Startup group.

What Is Near-End Crosstalk (NEXT) And Far End Crosstalk (FEXT)

Danish — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 13:03:00 +0000

When the crosstalk is detected on the same end of the cable that generated the signal, then near-end crosstalk has occurred. NEXT is most common within 20 to 30 meters (60 to 90 feet) of the transmitter. The below image clearly describe the near-end crosstalk. Crosstalk on poorly designed or poorly installed cables is a major problem with technologies such as 10Base-T and 100Base-TX.

However, as long as the cable is installed correctly, NEXT is less of an issue when using 1000Base-T because the designers implemented technologies to facilitate NEXT cancellation. NEXT-cancellation techniques with 1000Base-T are necessary because all four pairs are employed for both transmitting and receiving data.

IMPORTANT :- Cables that have had their twists undone (untwisted) can be problematic because the twists help cancel crosstalk. Twists are normally untwisted at the ends near the patch panels or connectors when the cable is connected. On the receiving pair of wires in a cable, the signal received at the end of the cable will be the weakest, so the signal there can be more easily interfered with. If the wires on adjacent transmit pairs are untwisted, this will cause a greater amount of crosstalk than normal. A cable should never have the wire pairs untwisted more than 0.5 inches for Category 5 and 5e, and 0.375 inches maximum for Category 6 cables.

Far End Crosstalk (FEXT)

Far-end crosstalk (FEXT) is similar to NEXT except that it is detected at the opposite end of the cable from where the signal was sent. Due to attenuation, the signals at the far end of the transmitting wire pair are much weaker than the signals at the near end. The measure of FEXT is used to calculate equal-level far-end crosstalk (ELFEXT) (discussed in the next section). More FEXT will be seen on a shorter cable than a longer one because the signal at the receiving side will have less distance over which to attenuate.

How Do Companies Make Money with Linux

Danish — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 12:38:54 +0000

Open source enthusiasts believe that better software can result from an open source software development model than from proprietary development models. So in theory, any company creating software for its own use can save money by adding its software contributions to those of others to gain a much better end product for themselves. Companies that want to make money selling software need to be more creative than they did in the old days.

While you can sell the software you create that includes GPL software, you must pass the source code of that software forward. Of course, others can then recompile that product, basically using your product without charge. Here are a few ways that companies are dealing with that issue:

✦ Software subscriptions—Red Hat, Inc. sells its Red Hat Enterprise Linux products on a subscription basis. For a certain amount of money per year, you get binary code to run Linux (so you don’t have to compile it yourself), guaranteed support, tools for tracking the hardware and software on your computer, and access to the company’s knowledge base. While Red Hat’s Fedora project includes much of the same software and is also available in binary form, there are no guarantees associated with the software or future updates of that software. A small office or personal user might take the risk on Fedora (which is itself an excellent operating system) but a big company that’s running mission-critical applications will probably put down a few dollars for RHEL.

✦ Donations—Many open source projects accept donations from individuals or open source companies that use code from their projects. Amazingly, many open source projects support one or two developers and run exclusively on donations.

✦ Bounties—The concept of software bounties is a fascinating way for open source software companies to make money. Let’s say that you are using XYZ software package and you need a new feature right away. By paying a software bounty to the project itself, or to other software developers, you can have your needed improvements moved to the head of the queue. The software you pay for will remain covered by its open source license, but you will have the features you need, at probably a fraction of the cost of building the project from scratch.

✦ Boxed sets, mugs, and T-shirts—Many open source projects have online stores where you can buy boxed sets (some people still like physical CDs and hard copies of documentation) and a variety of mugs, T-shirts, mouse pads, and other items. If you really love a project, for goodness sake, buy a T-shirt! This is in no way an exhaustive list, because more creative ways are being invented every day to support those who create open source software.

Remember that many people have become contributors to and maintainers of open source software because they needed or wanted the software themselves. The contributions they make for free are worth the return they get from others who do the same.

What Is Volt And Description Of Volt

Danish — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 14:41:33 +0000

The volt is the standard unit of electromotive force (EMF) or potential difference. An accumulation of static electric charge, such as an excess or shortage of electrons, is always, associated with a voltage. There are other situations in which voltages exist. Voltage is generated at a power plant, and produced in an electrochemical reaction, and caused by light falling on a special semiconductor chip.

It can be produced when an object is moved in a magnetic field, or is placed in a fluctuating magnetic field. A potential difference between two points produces an electric field, represented by electric lines of flux as you can see in below image. There is always a pole that is relatively positive, with fewer electrons, and one that is relatively negative, with more electrons. The positive pole does not necessarily have a deficiency of electrons compared with neutral objects, and the negative pole might not actually have a surplus of electrons with respect to neutral things.

But there’s always a difference in charge between the two poles. The negative pole always has more electrons than the positive pole. The abbreviation for volt is V. Sometimes, smaller units are used. The millivolt (mV) is equal to a thousandth (0.001) of a volt. The microvolt (μV) is equal to a millionth (0.000001) of a volt. And it is sometimes necessary to use units much larger than one volt. One kilovolt (kV) is equal to one thousand volts (1,000). One megavolt (MV) is equal to one million volts (1,000,000) or one thousand kilovolts. In a dry cell, the EMF is usually between 1.2 and 1.7 V; in a car battery, it is most often 12 V to 14 V. In household utility wiring, it is a low-frequency alternating current of about 117 V for electric lights and most appliances, and 234 V for a washing machine, dryer, oven, or stove. In television sets, transformers convert 117 V to around 450 V for the operation of the picture tube.

In some broadcast transmitters, kilovolts are used. The largest voltages on Earth occur between clouds, or between clouds and the ground, in thundershowers; this potential difference is on the order of tens of megavolts. In every case, voltage, EMF, or potential difference represents the fact that charge carriers will flow between two points if a conductive path is provided. The number of charge carriers might be small even if the voltage is huge, or very large even if the voltage is tiny. Voltage represents the pressure or driving force that impels the charge carriers to move. In general, for a given number of charge carriers, higher voltages will produce a faster flow, and therefore a larger current. It’s something like water pressure. The amount of water that will flow through a hose is proportional to the water pressure, all other things being equal.

Significance of . NET and C# (C Sharp)

Danish — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 14:26:19 +0000

In order to understand the significance of .NET, it is useful to remind ourselves of the nature of many of the Windows technologies that have appeared in the past 10 years or so. Although they may look quite different on the surface, all of the Windows operating systems from Windows 3.1 (introduced in 1992) through Windows Server 2008 have the same familiar Windows API at their core.

As we’ve progressed through new versions of Windows, huge numbers of new functions have been added to the API, but this has been a process of evolving and extending the API rather than replacing it.The same can be said for many of the technologies and frameworks that we’ve used to develop software for Windows. For example, COM ( Component Object Model ) originated as OLE ( Object Linking and Embedding ). At the time, it was, to a large extent, simply a means by which different types of Office documents could be linked, so that, for example, you could place a small Excel spreadsheet in your Word document. From that it evolved into COM, DCOM ( Distributed COM ), and eventually COM+ — a sophisticated technology that formed the basis of the way almost all components communicated, as well as implementing transactions, messaging services, and object pooling.

Microsoft chose this evolutionary approach to software for the obvious reason that it is concerned about backward compatibility. Over the years, a huge base of third – party software has been written for Windows, and Windows wouldn’t have enjoyed the success it has had if every time Microsoft introduced a new technology it broke the existing code base! Although backward compatibility has been a crucial feature of Windows technologies and one of the strengths of the Windows platform, it does have a big disadvantage. Every time some technology evolves and adds new features, it ends up a bit more complicated than it was before.

It was clear that something had to change. Microsoft couldn’t go on forever extending the same development tools and languages, always making them more and more complex in order to satisfy the conflicting demands of keeping up with the newest hardware and maintaining backward compatibility with what was around when Windows first became popular in the early 1990s. There comes a point where you have to start with a clean slate if you want a simple yet sophisticated set of languages, environments, and developer tools, which makes it easy for developers to write state – of – the – art software.

This fresh start is what C# and .NET are all about. Roughly speaking, .NET is a framework — an API — for programming on the Windows platform. Along with the .NET Framework, C# is a language that has been designed from scratch to work with .NET, as well as to take advantage of all the progress in developer environments and in our understanding of object – oriented programming principles that have taken place over the past 20 years. We should make it clear that backward compatibility has not been lost in the process. Existing programs will continue to work, and .NET was designed with the ability to work with existing software. Presently, communication between software components on Windows almost entirely takes place using COM. Taking account of this, .NET does have the ability to provide wrappers around existing COM components so that .NET components can talk to them.

It is true that you don ’ t need to learn C# in order to write code for .NET. Microsoft has extended C++, provided another new language called J#, and made substantial changes to Visual Basic to turn it into the more powerful language Visual Basic .NET, in order to allow code written in either of these languages to target the .NET environment. These other languages, however, are hampered by the legacy of having evolved over the years rather than having been written from the start with today’s technology in mind.

Dynamically Allocated IP Addresses And Relationship Between Domain Names And IP Addresses

Danish — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 11:58:54 +0000

A network administrator is responsible for assigning which devices receive which IP addresses in a corporate network. The admin assigns an IP address to a device in one of two ways: by configuring the device with a specific address or by letting the device automatically learn its address from the network. Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is the protocol used for automatic IP address assignment.

Dynamic addressing saves considerable administrative effort and conserves IP addressing space. It can be difficult to manually administer IP addresses for every computer and device on a network. Most networks use DHCP to automatically assign an available IP address to a device when it connects to the network. Generally, devices that don’t move around receive fixed addresses, known as static addressing. For example, servers, routers, and switches usually receive static IP addresses. The rest use dynamic addressing. For home networks you do not need a network administrator to set up your address; instead, a home broadband router allocates IP addresses via DHCP.

Domain Names and Relationship to IP Addresses

Because IP addresses are difficult to remember in their dotted-decimal notation, a naming convention called domain names was established that’s more natural for people to use. Domain names such as www.cisco.com are registered and associated with a particular public IP address. The Domain Name System (DNS) maps a readable name to an IP address. For example, when you enter http://www.cisco.com into a browser, the PC uses the DNS protocol to contact a DNS name server. The name server translates the name http://www.cisco.com into the actual IP address for that host..

What Is AdSense?

Danish — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 14:45:05 +0000

Before signing up to AdSense, it’s important to understand what you’re signing up to. Many of the principles and strategies that I describe in this book make the most of the way that AdSense works. If you can understand where AdSense are getting their ads, how they assign those ads to Web pages and how they fix the prices for clicks on those ads or for ad appearances on those pages, you’ll be in a great position to manipulate AdSense in a way that gives you maximum revenues.

Unfortunately, I can’t really do that. Much of the way that Google runs the AdSense program is kept under wraps. I know a few things — and enough to do a great deal with our AdSense ads. But I don’t know it all. No one outside Google does. And for good reason. If it was clear how Google figured out the content of each website and which ads suit that site best, there’s a good chance that the Web would be filled with sites created specially to bring in the highest paying ads instead of sites built to bring in and inform users. People do try to build sites for ads not content, but they tend to make less money than high quality sites that attract loyal users who click on ads. The fact is, we can make the most of both AdSense and our own ad space without knowing the algorithms that Google uses to assign ads and pay sites.

That’s because AdSense is pretty simple. At the most basic level, AdSense is a service run by Google that places ads on websites. When you sign up to AdSense, you agree to take the ads that Google gives you and receive a fee each time a user clicks on that ad (or for each thousand ad appearances the ad receives on your site, depending on the type of ad). The ads themselves come from another Google service: AdWords. If you want to understand AdSense, you will need to understand AdWords. Advertisers submit their ads to Google using the AdWords program. They write a headline and a short piece of text — and here’s where it gets interesting — they choose how much they want to pay.

Advertisers decide on the size of their advertising budgets and the amount they’re prepared to pay for each click they receive. Google then decides where to put those ads. So a company that has a website selling handmade furniture might create an ad that looks like this:

The company’s owner might then say that he’s prepared to pay $1000 a month for his advertising budget but not more than $1 for a click. He can be certain now of getting at least a thousand leads a month. But that’s where his control over the ad ends. Google will figure out which sites suit an ad like that and put them where it sees fit, charging the advertiser up to a dollar a click until the advertiser’s budget runs out. (Of that dollar, how much the publisher receives is a Google secret. The New York Times has reported Google pays publishers 78.5 percent of the advertising price per click. The figure hasn’t been confirmed but it is around what most people in the industry expect that Google pays.)

That makes AdWords different to more traditional form of advertising. In the print world, an advertiser chooses where it wants to place its ads and decides if the price is worth paying. The newspaper too decides how much it wants advertisers to pay to appear on its pages. Any advertiser that meets that price gets the slot and the publisher always knows how much his space is worth. Neither of those things is true online. When an advertiser signs up to AdWords, he has no idea where his ads are going to turn up. When you sign up to AdSense, you’ve got no idea how much you’re going to be paid for the ad space on your page. You leave it to Google to decide whether to give you ads which could pay just a few cents per click or ads which could pay a few dollars per click.

Google says that it always assigns ads in such a way that publishers receive maximum revenues, and that advertisers get the best value for their money.

So if you have a site that talks about interior design and which mentions “homemade furnishings” a great deal, Google will assume that your readers will be interested in the sample ad above. But that won’t be the only ad that could appear on your page. There could be dozens of others. Google will give you the ads that it thinks will give you the highest revenues. That might not be the ad with the highest possible click price though. If a lower paying ad gives you more clicks and higher overall revenues, you should find yourself receiving that ad instead. In theory then, you could just leave it to Google to decide which ads to give you and at which price. In my experience though, that just cuts you out of a giant opportunity.

You can influence the choice of ads that you get on your page, both in terms of content and in terms of price. You can certainly influence the number of clicks you receive on those ads. Google leaves that entirely up to you — and it’s a crucial part of the difference between earnings that pay for candy bars and earnings that pay for cars. In short then, while signing up for AdSense can be both the beginning and the end of turning your site into income, if you’re serious about making serious money with your site, it needs to be the beginning. You’ll want to make sure you’re not getting low-paying ads, and you’ll want to make sure that you’re getting the clicks that turn those ads into cash.

How to Improve Search Engine Ranking By Avoiding Common SEO Pitfalls

Danish — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 14:03:14 +0000

Search Engine Ranking is the basic concern of a web designer/developer and everyone who owns a website wants to be on the top of Search Engines. So the question is that how a website owner can improve its site ranking on major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. Well certain website characteristics can harm or limit your potential search engine rankings. By avoiding these common SEO pitfalls, you can pave the way for higher search engine visibility.

Inadequate inbound links

One of the biggest problems with low-ranking websites is a lack of popular inbound links. Without a healthy number of high-quality links that point back to your site, you’ll be at a disadvantage against a competitor who has more. Other linking issues include links to flagged sites, overuse of parameters, improper redirects, lack of keywords, and generic link text.

Drowning in splash pages

Splash pages are usually graphically rich pages designed to impress visitors or to direct them to alternative views of content, such as high- or low-bandwidth versions of a site. A “Skip Intro” link on a web page implicitly says that the page isn’t very important. The problem with splash pages—whether they include “Skip Intro”links or not—is that they are a wasted opportunity. Splash pages usually reside at the top of a site’s hierarchy.

Pages that are higher in your site hierarchy tend to get more links and more traffic than pages that are lower in your hierarchy check the below image. If visitors must click and if search engines must crawl farther to reach the real home page (i.e., what should be your top-level index page), you’ve put up a barrier to success.

Flash fires

Flash is installed on nearly every computer (98%) that accesses the Internet.8 This popularity has caused a conflagration of Flash gizmos on the Web. The problem with Flash is that search engines do not index it properly. We recommend using Flash to enhance the user experience, not to create it entirely. So, a Flash news ticker or embedded hotel reservation system is OK, but creating your entire site in Flash is not OK.

Following is a Flash SEO trick from Flash expert Gregory Cowley(http://gregorycowley.com/).

One technique you can use to make your Flash pages more SEO friendly is the two div trick. Use one div for the Flash movie, and the other with your HTML equivalent. Use JavaScript to hide the HTML DIV if the Flash plug-in is available, and the HTML is still available for search engines. This doesn’t work in complicated multi-page sites though. The key to a multi-page site, however, is to have all your text in an XML file outside of Flash.

This code requires a FlashObject class, available at http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/

This is replaced by the Flash content if the user has the correct version of the Flash plug-in installed. Place your HTML content in here and Google will index it just as it would normal HTML content (because it is HTML content!) Use HTML, embed images, anything you would normally place on an HTML page is fine.

To avoid the appearance of cloaking, be sure to not change the textual content between the two divs.

Unprofessional design

A first impression of your website can take only milliseconds9 but will affect its long-term success. You wouldn’t go on a date poorly groomed and with dirty fingernails, right? Don’t make a similar mistake with your website. Having a professionally designed site is the most important factor for perceived web credibility. The higher the aesthetic quality of your site, the higher its perceived credibility will be. Consumers are more willing to buy from (and presumably webmasters are more willing to link to) firms with well-designed sites.

Web credibility, valuable content, and useful tools are key factors that compel webmasters to link to you, and visitors to stay and spend money.

Fix your focus.

Some sites do not focus specifically enough. A store that sells everything, or that wants to be the next Amazon.com, has a long, painful road ahead. Such a broadly focused site is unlikely to succeed in natural SEO and probably needs to advertise with pay-per-click (PPC). It’s best to narrow your focus topically or geographically so that you have a better chance of ranking well and having higher conversion rates. There is one exception to this rule, however. If you can optimize every individual product page (e.g., HP LaserJet 6MP printer replacement toner cartridge C3903), it is possible to rank highly for those very specific terms.

Obscure navigation

The navigation on your site should comprise text that is easily indexed and that wasn’t created from graphical text, JavaScript, or Flash. Search engines can only index the text within your pages. They don’t read text that is embedded in graphics or Flash movies, nor do they execute JavaScript. A reasonable compromise for image-based navigation is to include alternative text for images.

Give up graphics-based navigation.

Macromedia Fireworks (now owned by Adobe) and Adobe ImageReady popularized the automatic slicing of graphics that made creating fancy navigation menus easy. Search engines don’t read graphical text, however. By embedding your keywords in graphics, you lose a golden opportunity to bake your SEO directly into the information architecture of your site.

Junk JavaScript-only navigation.

Avoid JavaScript-only navigation such as this:

Tech Solutions

Apply Linked Style to Your Web Pages Using CSS

Related Posts:

Apply Embedded Style to Your Web Pages Using CSS

Related Posts:

Three Ways to Style Your Web Pages Using CSS

Inline Styles

Related Posts:

How to Stop Twitter From Sending New Follower Messages

Related Posts:

6 Best Free Anti Spyware Programs

1. Windows Defender

2. Ad-Aware SE, Personal Edition

3. SuperAntispyware

4. Spyware Terminator 2.0

5. MalwareBytes Anti Malware

6. Avast! Antivirus 4.8 Home Edition

Related Posts:

What Is Baseband Signaling On Physical Layer In the Field of Telecommunication

Related Posts:

How To Configure MySQL and Apache to Start Automatically

Automatically Start MySQL And Apache on UNIX

Automatically Start MySQL And Apache On Windows

Related Posts:

What Is Near-End Crosstalk (NEXT) And Far End Crosstalk (FEXT)

Far End Crosstalk (FEXT)

Related Posts:

How Do Companies Make Money with Linux

Related Posts:

What Is Volt And Description Of Volt

Related Posts:

Significance of . NET and C# (C Sharp)

Related Posts:

Dynamically Allocated IP Addresses And Relationship Between Domain Names And IP Addresses

Domain Names and Relationship to IP Addresses

Related Posts:

What Is AdSense?

Related Posts:

How to Improve Search Engine Ranking By Avoiding Common SEO Pitfalls

Inadequate inbound links

Drowning in splash pages

Flash fires

Unprofessional design

Fix your focus.

Obscure navigation

Give up graphics-based navigation.

Junk JavaScript-only navigation.