How to Display RSS Feeds on Your Website
February 22, 2010 by admin
Filed under Web Design
RSS, Really Simple Syndication, is an excellent way to add content to your website. More relevant content on your website means a higher search engine ranking and a benefit to your visitors. Here’s how to add RSS to your website.
Step 1. Find a reader to subscribe to. There are many available online. A quick Google Search will provide you with many to choose from. Look for ones that offer PHP scripts rather than JavaScript. JavaScript isn’t read by search engine spiders and the content will not help your search engine ranking.
Step 2. Register. Generally all you need to provide is an email address and your website URL. A confirmation will be sent to your email along with a password and logon.
Step 3. Confirm via email and logon with your assigned password and logon ID.
Step 4. Customize your content. Choose the topics you want to cover. For example Google News, Yahoo Finance, or Reuters Health. You can choose several. Make certain to choose topics that are relevant to your website subject. You wouldn’t want to choose finance if your site offers health information.
Step 5. Choose keywords. You can customize your feeds by choosing specific keywords. For example, if you have a website dedicated to fitness you can add the keyword “fitness” to your code.
Step 6. Choose appearance. You can customize the shape and size of your content block. Whether there are pictures included, the author, the title of the article and so on. This is usually a check the box type menu.
Step 7. Choose formatting. Here you can choose the font you want, size of font, and the general formatting of your feed.
Step 8. Generate the code and follow the directions to get it onto your website. Generally the code is given to you in PHP or JavaScript. PHP is recommended because JavaScript is not read by search engine spiders. If you’re using RSS to add content to your site, you’ll want to use the PHP script offered. PHP isn’t automatically added to HTML so if you have an HTML based site, you’ll need to add a bit of code to it to have it recognize the PHP. No worries, the RSS feed you use will offer you instructions on how to do that.
RSS is a technology that is fairly easy to use and it can add significant content and value to your website. All it takes is a few simple steps and you’re done. Quality content with the click of a button.
BQ7WJZWA36SY
Is Google Adsense Right for Every Website?
February 22, 2010 by admin
Filed under Web Design
Many websites that provide information on internet marketing stress the importance of adding Google Adsense to a website, while other internet marketing gurus caution against it. With so many conflicting opinions, it can be hard to figure out what to do.
Google Adsense is a program that allows website owners and bloggers to earn money by allowing Google to place ads on their websites and blogs. When a person signs up for Adsense, they create the shape and colors of the ads.
When satisfied with the display, the website owner clicks a button and the Google Adsense program generates some HTML program that the website owner places on their site. Google is then able to read the content of these sites and blogs and insert ads related to the content. When someone visiting the site clicks on these ads, the website owner receives a credit to their account.
The exact amount a person earns per click will vary depending on what ad the visitor clicked on. Once the credit balance has reached $100, the website owner can ask for the funds to be sent to them.
Some people are claiming to make a very large income with Adsense, but the majority of people do not make that much. However, it can be a small additional income stream that you do not have to work any extra hours to earn.
It is important to note that Google decides what ads are shown and the order in which they appear. While it is not their intention to put anything explicit or distasteful on your site, you still do not have much say in what appears and what doesn’t. If you don’t agree with this, your only option is to decline to participate in the program.
Whenever a website owner chooses to display ads on their site, they are giving their visitors an invitation to leave the site. For people who participate in a lot of affiliate marketing or sell many of their own products and do not want to distract their readers’ attention, putting up Adsense may not be the best idea.
As mentioned earlier, various internet marketing gurus will have different opinions on whether a person should put up Adsense. While each side has their own strong points, the ultimate decision is a very personal choice.
Free Website Templates Can Take the Pain Out of Setting Up a New Website
January 29, 2010 by admin
Filed under Templates & Plugins, Web Design
It seems like now just about everybody has a web site on the internet. If you haven’t set up your own site as yet, you may think it could be beyond your experience or expertise to create your own web presence. Years ago you needed to be technically skilled and proficient in HTML code in order to design a web site, but today there are literally dozens of online sites where you can find website templates for free. All you need to do is download the template to your local PC, make some simple modifications to the design (or even use it exactly as it is), then upload it to the server where your web site is hosted.
Good Website Design Practices to Remember
March 25, 2009 by admin
Filed under Web Design
Your website is where your business resides — it’s like the headquarters of an offline company. Therefore, it is important to practice good design principles to make sure your site reaches out to the maximum number of visitors and sells your product or service to as many people as possible.
A Few Web Design Elements You Should Avoid Having on Your Site
March 24, 2009 by admin
Filed under Web Design
As a web designer, you should design your websites to give your visitors the greatest ease of use, the best impression and most important of all a welcoming experience. It doesn’t matter if you had the greatest product in the whole world — if your website is poorly done you won’t be able to sell even one copy of it because visitors will be driven off your website by the lousy design.
When I’m talking about a “good design”, I’m not only talking about a good graphic design. A professional web designer will be able to point out that there are many components which contribute to a good website design — accessibility design, interface or layout design, user experience design and of course the most straightforward, which is graphic design.
Who Is Your Audience?
March 23, 2009 by admin
Filed under Web Design
Understanding the demographics and type of people who visit your site is extremely important because you can use that information to enhance your site to suit them. As a result, you will gain loyal returning visitors that come back again and again.
Age, gender, profession, knowledge level etc. are all criteria you should know to optimize your site. A layman might linger around a general site on gardening, but a professional botanist might turn his nose at the very same site. Similarly, a regular person will leave a site filled with astronomy abstracts but a well educated university graduate will find that site interesting.
Why Hire A Designer?
March 22, 2009 by admin
Filed under Web Design
A lot of online business owners start with no money. They have to do everything themselves — the preparation of a product, the development of a marketing strategy, the actual building of a website to cater to their product’s marketing needs. As their business expands over time, they will find that their simple “homemade” site might not be enough to cover everything, and they will have to take a day or two away to simply dedicate that to the website expansion.
Sounds familiar? Chances are, you’re someone who started everything with no money too, so you’re pretty skeptical when it comes to giving away your money in exchange for something that you could have done yourself. However, there is a lot more to hiring a designer than just finishing up a job that you don’t want to do.
Top Ten Things To Look For In A Web Host
October 9, 2008 by admin
Filed under Web Design
This is not exactly a “top 10″ líst, as all of the following things could easily be listed as the most important consideration. Individuals, small companies and big corporations all need to consider the same things when choosing a hosting package.
The overall “tip” here is that you need to get accurate information to make comparisons among hosts. Therefore, each individual tip is another, separate aspect of the hosting relationship that you need to investigate. You should take them all seriously.
Basic HTML Tags for Beginners
October 6, 2008 by admin
Filed under Web Design
HTML is the markup language that is predominantly used in web pages. It is the one which tells the computer how information contained in the page is to be displayed.
Learning how to write HTML codes is an important skill that any web designer should have. Below is a list of the most common HTML tags used to help beginners become familiar with this language.
Web Hosting – Free vs Paid Web Hosting Options
August 9, 2008 by admin
Filed under Web Design
Everyone likes to get something for free. But as the existence of spam shows, free isn’t always good. Sometimes, it’s downright harmful. Deciding whether it’s worth the cost to pay for hosting involves a number of complex considerations.
Hosting companies that offer free services obviously can’t stay in business from the money they make from you, since there isn’t any. So why do they offer free hosting and how do they make money? Why should you care, so long as you get yours? Because, in reality, there’s a price of some kind for everything, even something that’s free.
