Cascading Style Sheet Basics

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) have been around for a while now, and act as a complement to plain old HTML files.

Style sheets allow a developer to separate HTML code from formatting rules and styles. It seems like many HTML beginners’ under-estimate the power and flexibility of the style sheet. In this article, I’m going to describe what cascading style sheets are, their benefits, and two ways to implement them.

Cascading What’s?

They’re what chalk is to cheese, what ice-cream is to Jell-O they complement HTML and allow us to define the style (look and feel) for our entire site in just one file!

They get their name from the fact that each different style declaration can be “cascaded” under the one above it, forming a parent-child relationship between the styles.

They were quickly standardized, and both Internet Explorer and Netscape built their latest browser releases to match the CSS standard (or, to match it as closely as they could).

So, you’re still wondering what a style sheet is? A style sheet is a free-flowing document that can either be referenced by, or included into a HTML document (Kind of like using SSI to call a file but not, if that makes sense). Style sheets use blocks of formatted code to define styles for existing HTML elements, or new styles, called ‘classes’.

Style sheets can be used to change the height of some text, to change the background color of a page, to set the default border color of a table the list goes on and on. Put simply though, style sheets are used to set the formatting, color scheme and style of an HTML page.

Style sheets should really be used instead of the standard , < b >, < i > and < u > tags because:

One style sheet can be referenced from many pages, meaning that each file is kept to a minimum size and only requires only extra line to load the external style sheet file

If you ever need to change any part of your sites look/feel, it can be done quickly and only needs to be done in one place: the style sheet and furthermore, it is done globally.

With cascading style sheets, there are many page attributes that simply cannot be set without them: individual tags can have different background colors, borders, indents, shadows, etc.

Style sheets can either be inline (included as part of a HTML document), or, referenced externally (Contained in a separate file and referenced from the HTML document). Inline style sheets are contained wholly within a HTML document and will only change the look and layout of that HTML file.

Open your favorite text editor and enter the following code. Save the file as styles.html and open it in your browser:

Cascading Style Sheet Example.

h1
{
color: #636594;
font-family: Verdana;
size: 18pt;
}

This is one big H1 tag!

When you fire up your browser, you should see the text “This is one big H1 tag!” in a large, blue Verdana font face.

Let’s step through the style code step by step. Firstly, we have a pretty standard HTML header. The page starts with the tag followed by the tag. Next, we use a standard tag to set the title of the page we are working with.

Notice, though, that before the tag is closed, we have our tag, its contents, and then the closing tag.

h1
{
color: #636594;
font-family: Verdana;
size: 18pt;
}

When you add the style sheet code inline (as part of the HTML document), it must be bound by and tags respectively. Our example is working with the tag. We are changing three attributes of the ’s style: the text color (color), the font that any tags on the page will be displayed in (font-family), and lastly, the size of the font (size).

The code between the { and } are known as the attributes. Our sample code has three. Try changing the hexadecimal value of the color attribute to #A00808 and then save and refresh the page. You should see the same text, just colored red instead of blue.

An Example Of An External Style Sheet.

External style sheets are similar to internal style sheets, however, they are stripped of the and tags, and need to be referenced from another HTML file to be used.

Create a new file called “whatever.css” and enter the following code into it:

h1
{
color: #a00808;
font-family: Verdana;
size: 18pt
}

Next, create a HTML file and name it test.html. Enter the following code into test.html:

External Style Sheet Reference Example.

This is one big H1 tag!

As mentioned above, you can see that the actual code in whatever.css is exactly the same as it was in the inline example. In our HTML file, we simply place a tag in the section of our page. The rel=”stylesheet” attribute tells the browser that the link to the external file is a style sheet. The type=”text/css” attribute tells the browser that whatever.css is a text file containing CSS (cascading style sheet) declarations. Lastly, the href=”whatever.css” attribute tells the browser that the actual file we want to load is whatever.css.

Conclusion.

Well, there you have it, a quick look at style sheets and how to implement both an inline and external version. Checkout the links below if you’ve never worked with cascading style sheets before. You will be surprised at some of the things you can do with them!

Article written by Lee.

What On Earth Is CGI?

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

Let’s unlock a little bit of the mystery about something called CGI. If it helps any, CGI means Common Gateway Interface.

This is a method which is used to swap data between the server (the hardware and software that actually allows you to get to your web site) and a web client (your browser). CGI is actually a set of standards where a program or script (a series of commands) can send data back to the web server where it can be processed.

Typically, you use standard HTML tags to get data from a person, then pass that data to a CGI routine. The CGI routine then performs some action with the data.

Some of the more common uses of CGI include:

Guest books – The CGI routine is responsible for accepting the data, ensuring it is valid, sending an email acknowledgement back to the writer, perhaps sending an email to the webmaster, and creating the guest book entry itself.

Email Forms – A simple CGI forms routine just formats the data into an email and sends it back to the webmaster. More complicated routines can maintain a database, send an acknowledgement and validate data.

Mailing List Maintenance – These routines allow visitors to subscribe and unsubscribe from a mailing list. In this case, the CGI routine maintains a database of email addresses, and the better ones send acknowledgements back to the visitor and webmaster.

A CGI routine can be anything which understands the CGI standard. A popular CGI language is called PERL, which is simple to understand and use (well, compared to other languages). PERL is a scripting language, which means each time a PERL routine is executed the web server must examine the PERL commands to determine what to do. In contrast, a compiled language such as C++ or Visual Basic can be directly executed, which is faster and more efficient.

Okay, in a nutshell (and greatly simplified), here’s how it works:

1) You (the webmaster) specify a form tag which includes the name of the CGI routine.

2) You create HTML tags which retrieves data from your visitors.

3) Each of the input tags includes a variable name. The data which is retrieved from the visitor (or directly set if the tag includes the “hidden” qualifier) is placed in the variable name.

4) When the visitor presses the “submit” button, the CGI routine which was specified in the form tag is executed. At this time, the CGI routine “takes control”, meaning the browser essentially is waiting for it to complete.

5) This CGI routine can get data from variable names. It retrieves the data and does whatever action is required.

6) When the CGI routine finishes, it returns control back to the browser.

Some important things to remember about CGI routines:

You can install CGI routines on your own site if your host allows it http://www.webair.com is an example of a web host which allows for CGI routines. Some web hosts do not allow you to install your own routines but do provide some pre-written ones to you. If these are not sufficient for your needs, you can find a remote hosting service to provide the necessary functions.

Generally, if you install your own routines they must be installed in the cgi-bin directory of your site. This is a special location which allows scripts and programs to be executed.

CGI routines work best on Apache-style servers. Windows NT and Windows 2000 does support CGI, but it tends to be slow and problematic.

If you use a remote hosting service, you must remember that although they appear to be giving you this for free, you are actually paying a price. Usually they want to display advertisements, although some of them actually take visitors away from your site.

When you write a CGI routine, you have the choice of a scripting language like PERL or a compiled language such as C++ or Visual Basic. Anything which can execute on the web server is acceptable.

I hope this short introduction to CGI has cleared up some of the mystery.

Article written by Lee

Adult Exit Traffic

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Traffic | Response: 0

How Do You Use It?

I honestly do not think there is a webmaster working in the adult industry to date who has not seen a warning page for a free or avs site with both an enter and an exit link, the enter link goes to the main body of the site in question whilst the exit link goes to some other link, normally disney.com or google.com or some other url where the webmaster in question is quite literally throwing their traffic and money away.

Instead of wasting your exit link traffic to a site that doesn’t make you a cent why not utilize this traffic to feed additional revenue streams, for example, most of the larger adult sponsors now have penis pill programs or dating sites, you could include your affiliate id in the exit link and send your traffic there, after all, the surfer you have on your site isn’t looking for porn so, offer them an alternative which, can still add to your bank balance.

So What Are The Alternatives?

The alternative types of sponsors you should be using on your exit links can vary widely however, the best type of site to send them to would be a sponsor offering products and services such as penis enlargement programs, online pharmacies, history eraser type products or, even a link to a site like amazon.com if the program you use allows for that.

Basically you should try to maximize all the traffic you get to your site whether that be by using exit consoles or links, make sure that for each and every surfer you send to the front page (warning) of your site that if they decide to back out or click on a link to leave that you send them somewhere to give them the option of spending money and ultimately earning you revenue.

Article written by Lee.

TGP Posting – Automating Submissions Responsibly

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: TGP | Response: 0

TGP Posting – Automating Submissions Responsibly.

Many an experienced webmaster has endured first hand the labor intensive process of manually building a submitting large quantities of image galleries to TGP’s in an effort to drive traffic, whether it be to their own site or a sponsors, in a bid to generate money. One quickly learns that creating a gallery template is the way to go, whereby one can more quickly and easily swap out the reciprocal links for the TGP’s, which means building customized galleries is more efficient, before going off to submit them to all the relevant TGP’s…

But this is only the beginning of the story. Manually visiting and posting to all of the TGP’s (there are literally thousands of them) takes a lot of time. Moreover, one must stop and read the rules for each TGP to ensure one is staying within the specified guidelines…

There is an easier way! Enter the Thumbnail Gallery Submission Wizard (TGSW). It takes much of the labor intensive work out of producing galleries for, and submitting them to, TGP’s. Available in both desktop (PC) and server (Perl based) versions, TGSW has gained rapid and widespread acceptance as the de-facto TGP gallery automation tool. Some of it’s features include:

Fully Customizable Gallery Templates.

You can create templates on a niche by niche basis, inserting appropriate sponsor codes and images. For the thumbnails and images they link to, you simply insert some intuitive ‘placeholder tags’, which are interpreted by TGSW at run-time and replaced with the appropriate images. You can be flexible as to how many thumbs/images you would like displayed per gallery to meet your own personal preferences.

Automated Reciprocal Link Insertion.

You can also insert placeholder tags for the automatic insertion of reciprocal links. At run-time, TGSW will insert a specified number of reciprocal links in the positions you have inserted those tags in your templates.

Customizable Filenames.

You can specify filename options so that when TGSW generates galleries, the filenames it uses are unique to your galleries.

FTP and ‘Free Host’ Support.

Do you host your galleries on a free host? Or simply on another of your servers? TGSW can be configured to FTP the completed galleries (along with images and thumbs if necessary) to a server of your choice. There is also a lot of support for ‘free hosts’ that don’t have FTP, but instead used a browser-based upload manager.

Automatic Gallery Submission.

TGSW will then automatically submit all of the galleries it generates to all of the appropriate TGP’s. It even sends an email to the TGP’s that require submissions via that method! TGSW can even be configured to place all of your submissions via a proxy server, so you can mask the IP address from where you submit.

Extensive Reporting.

There is an optional reporting feature that you can turn on or off. When turned on, TGSW logs all of the submission information at the point of submission, which you can review at your leisure at a later time.

Regular Updates.

TGP’s come and go, so TGSW offers an auto-update feature, whereby it will download the latest copy of the database from our site. We usually update at least once per week, sometimes more often, to keep your database current.

Of course, due to the personalized nature of your galleries, there will be some significant configuration work to do before one can hope to achieve any real results with TGSW. One of the key points is that we do not ship the product with any TGP’s enabled – this way, you are responsible for your own usage of TGSW, and are forced to at least visit the TGP’s in question – we do this in an attempt to remain responsible.

If you have neither the time nor the inclination to configure the TGSW TGP database yourself, then I highly recommend http://www.tgswupdates.com. They have spent extensive time configuring the current TGSW database for 55 niche categories, and offer fully-configured updates very soon after we release a new auto-update – not only will you be up-to-date, but you will also have all of the available TGP’s enabled, along with all of the reciprocal link images ready to start posting!

Article written by Robert Purdy.

Redirecting Questionable Adult Traffic

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: 2257, Scripts | Response: 0

The one thing almost all reputable adult webmasters agree on is that one way or the other, we want to rid the net of those webmasters that profit from traffic primarily gained from either the direct promotion of or, targeting of, keywords relating to child pornography however, how can you tell what traffic you are being sent and, more importantly, how can you do something about the type of traffic that you receive to your site in order to filter out this unwanted traffic? The answer is simple, use a script to redirect the traffic elsewhere before it even hits your site.

Child Porn Redirection Php Script.

The following php script when used on your server will enable you to send unwanted traffic gained by the promotion of using ‘illegal’ keywords in the search engines and sites which link to your own.

<!– Start Copy Here –>

<?

// Redirect “Lolita” traffic

$refer_full_path = “$HTTP_REFERER”.”$PATH_INFO”;

if(( preg_match(“/lolita/i”, $refer_full_path)) ||
( preg_match(“/child/i”, $refer_full_path)) ||
( preg_match(“/preteen/i”, $refer_full_path)) ||
( preg_match(“/pre-teen/i”, $refer_full_path)) ||
( preg_match(“/pedo/i”, $refer_full_path)) ||
( preg_match(“/underage/i”, $refer_full_path)) ||
( preg_match(“/beast/i”, $refer_full_path)) ||
( preg_match(“/rape/i”, $refer_full_path)) ||
( preg_match(“/kinder/i”, $refer_full_path)) ||
( preg_match(“/incest/i”, $refer_full_path)) ||
( preg_match(“/kiddie/i”, $refer_full_path))) {

header(“Location: $refer_full_path”);
exit;
}

?>

<?
$words=array(“childporn”,”underage”,”beast”,”interracial”,”lolita”,”preteen”);
for($i=0;$i<count($words);$i++){
if(eregi($words[$i],$HTTP_REFERER)){
header(“Location: http://www.fbi.gov/?CHILD_PORN_ON_DISK_LOGGED_AND_REPORTED”);
}
}
?>

<!– End Copy Here –>

In order to use this script, simply add additional keywords or partial word matches to the top part of the script and, include the bottom half of the script at the top of your HTML coding.

Any traffic being sent to your site via keywords which you have specifically told the script not to allow access to your web site will be forwarded to the url in the bottom part of the php script which again, can be changed to wherever you like.

Article written by Lee

Marketing Sites With Slogans

Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Promotion | Response: 0

With the constant changes happening in the adult industry webmaster need to look towards alternative ways of marketing not only their own sites but the sites of their sponsors. This is where something that we have all seen daily can come in handy, what is this marketing tool? Simple, Slogans.

Slogans – What Are They?

A slogan is a short, memorable advertising phrase for example, ‘Just Do it’ – Nike. By utilizing a slogan on your site you are not only giving your surfers something other by which they can remember your site by but, you are actively building up your brand which, in turn, can mean more repeat traffic and ultimately, more sales.

How To Make A Slogan.

So now you know what a slogan is how do you go about creating one? Simple, you should think of something short, usually three to four word slogans work the best again, as with the Nike example above ‘Just Do it’ its short, sweet and memorable, try to make your own slogan fit within this guideline and you are half way done. Another thing that you may like to consider is making your slogan practical or humorous, something witty can often stay in a persons mind a lot longer than something serious, play on peoples memory and ensure they remember your brand.

Where To Use Your Slogan.

Now that you have thought up a slogan which you feel will work on your traffic and sites you need to consider the places where you can use it for maximum impact, the most obvious place to use your slogan is on your site design, either at the top or the bottom of your pages, make it clear and more importantly, make it stand out. In addition, if you have any banners or buttons created, ensure you utilize the slogan on those creatives, the goal is to have your slogan seen by as many people, as quickly as possible.

Article written by Lee

Marketing Campaigns – Testing Your Variables

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Promotion | Response: 0

Irrespective of the medium, an online advertising campaign needs to be tested and optimized constantly in order to provide you with the optimum results. This is where advertising testing can play an important role in your marketing strategy. Despite the advantages to testing your online marketing campaigns, relatively few companies actually go out of their way to see what what works, what doesn’t and, more importantly, why.

Steps To Testing Your Ad Campaign.

1) Set expectations as to how you envisage your campaign to perform. This in itself will guide you’re optimization methods. An example of this is, if you expect your ad medium to get a 15% click thru rate or a, 10% conversion rate, you have justification in making adjustments to your campaign if the creative you are using does not perform to your level of expectation.

2) Don’t get tied into a campaign, If you are going to be purchasing an advertising campaign on a resource site, ensure you have an ‘out clause’. This out clause will enable you to terminate the campaign as long as it has run for a set amount of time, usually, many resources will be happy to give you an out clause especially, if after testing your marketing materials, the results you were hoping for have still not shown themselves.

3) Consider the variables in your ad campaign, usually, webmasters only think of the one variable in their advertising campaign – Price. However, there are many more variables to be looked at for example, if you are doing a mail drop, the subject line of the email, format and, copy text of the email body itself, all of these things can have a drastic effect on any given advertising campaign, at any given time and often, these can, and most probably will, fluctuate from site to site where you are purchasing ad space.

4) Stats tracking, tracking your campaign makes it easier to test and review how your advertising medium is working for you, many sites offer live stats for your ad campaigns however, some still do not, where this isn’t a problem in itself as, most companies you choose to advertise with will be more than happy to provide you with statistics as and when you need them after all, you are paying for their services and support.

5) Pull the plug on campaigns that are not performing, however, ensure you have changed your creative several times before doing so, often, you will find a simple change such as a new creative can drastically increase your marketing efforts. Also, do not just pull advertising as you feel like it, if your campaign has only been active for a week, don’t expect hundred / thousands of hits instantly, often it takes webmasters a while to realize there are new ad mediums running on the sites they visit so often.

Online Advertising – Review.

By constantly assessing and testing your advertising campaigns you can pull some interesting figures which can help you long term however, don’t rush into pulling campaigns that you have only just started. Give it a few days, change your copy text and creatives and, if that doesn’t work talk to the company, they will be able to offer you advice and help on improving your sales from your advertising medium after all, they want to keep your business.

Article written by Lee

What’s A CHMOD?

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Hosting, WebDesign | Response: 0

CHMOD is another name for setting the permissions of files on your server.

All UNIX based web servers understand the concept of permissions. these are broken down into three distinct areas.

Permissions for the person who OWNS the file.
Permissions for the group (all users are members of one or more groups).
Permissions for everyone else.

Permissions are listed one of two ways either using numbers such as 755 or, using letters such as rwx-xr-x however they both mean the same thing.

The first number or first group of three letters stands for the permissions of the owner (IE 7 or rwx).
The second number or second group of letters stands for the permissions of the group (IE 5 or xr).
The third number or third group of letters stands for the permissions of everyone else (IE 5 or x).

The way the system works is as follows:

1 = x = you are able to execute (run) this program.
2 = w = you are able to write to this file.
4 = r = you are able to read the contents of this file.

so if you add it up rwx = 7.

So, in the example given above (755 or rwx-xr-x) the owner is allowed to read and write the file AND execute it.
The group is allowed to execute and write to the file.
Everyone else can execute the file.

We hope this gives you a little more insight to how CHMOD’ing or, setting the permissions on your server can affect how files act.

Article written by Lee

Using Email Auto Responders To Build Traffic And Sales

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Opt-in Mail | Response: 0

Auto responder programs are just that, they are set up to respond automatically with a pre determined email when a blank email is sent to a specific email address.

For example, have you ever seen something along the lines of:

‘For A Free Guide To ** Whatever** send a blank email to somename@somedomain.com’

The email address in that address belongs to an auto responder script and when someone sends an email to the script, they receive a pre written email back within seconds that has information pertaining to a specific topic or selection of topics.

Basically, autoresponder programs are email on demand scripts which makes any information you want available to your surfers 24/7 and, furthermore, not only can they drastically increase your traffic but, they WILL also benefit your sales income.

Email Auto Responders are extremely important tools when you need to automate your marketing. You can easily manage in excess of 10k email requests on a daily basis without ANY effort on your part at all.

Auto responders are used primarily for three main purposes these are:

Sales Letters.

Suppose you post to a selection of forums and newsgroups on a daily basis, you could offer free information about a specific topic and, in the same email, you can also promote your site and, better still, you didn’t have to do a thing.

Customer Support.

The use of auto responders for customer support is beneficial to sites that have a lot of queries from its visitors, autoresponders allow you to set up predefined answers to the most likely questions and, this can cut your service requirements by upto 50% in some cases. For example, most hosts will have some form of autoresponder set up to answer your basic questions or tell you about a support issue you have mailed them about even if its just to let you know that your email arrived and has been placed in the queue for completion. This saves the host a lot of time enabling them to work on things that actually need to be done and not spend countless hours each day sending emails to hundreds / thousands of webmasters on a personal basis.

Email Gathering.

This is by far the best feature of an autoresponder, everyone who sends you an email to the auto respond address will have their email address stored in a database, which, in turn, will enable you to follow up with the interest they have in your site and, some auto responders can even be configured to send out emails on a weekly basis to the email addresses in this database from again, pre determined messages that you have already set up.

Autoresponders are truly amazing programs, not only will they enable you to be more productive with your time but, they will assist you in helping your site visitors and, furthermore should increase both your sites traffic and sales figures.

Article written by Lee

Community Forum Scripts

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Scripts | Response: 0

Whether you have little or much traffic one thing that will enable you to benefit greater form this traffic is giving your surfers the sense that they are part of a ‘community’ much like the message boards built around adult webmasters have the feel of a community to them your surfers will end up staying around a lot longer if you can give them a reason to come back to your site over anyone else’s.

That said, one of the main factors in starting your own little porn community is the need to have a place where all the ‘action’ take place. What better way than you own message forum.

However, we hit our first problem, having never thought about starting a forum up before you wouldn’t know where to go to look for scripts or, what the best one is. That’s the reason behind this little guide.

Below you will find a short breakdown of the more commonly used message forum scripts along with a short list of features each one has to offer you when choosing to build your own online community.

VBulletin http://www.vbulletin.com

This is actually quite a good forum script, most of the main forums on the web use either VBulletin or PhpBB when it comes to threaded forums. VBulletin uses MySQL and .php to run the actual forum and, set-up of it can become a little tricky if you want to customize it to your exact needs and color scheme. That said, once you overcome the initial complications in setting the forum script up it is easy to handle and, with a price tag of only $160.00 its an affordable option for many.

Ultimate Bulletin Board http://www.infopop.com

Unlike VBulletin UBB uses Perl programming for the forum script which, means you can install it on any cgi enabled host. However, the one main drawback with this script is that it uses flat text files to store all the data which, can sometimes bog down your server with unnecessary file calls. The cost of $199.00 however can be a bit to expensive for most webmasters.

Ikon Board http://www.ikonboard.com

Ikon board is a nice little threaded forum script and, the fact that it is free to download makes it even more so however, even though it uses MySQL for the backend or, choose to store your data in flat text files this script just seems a little to ‘basic’ looking for my personal taste. That said, there are many types of site using IkonBoard so the script must be good enough for them to be using it. Then again, maybe its the price tag of $0.00 that has made this a popular choice.

PhpBB http://www.phpbb.com

PhpBB is probably the most well known free forum script on the web today, its easy to customize (within reason) supports php and MySQL functions yet seems to offer nothing in return. The basics of a forum are there however, every webmaster and their closest friend seems to be using this script. The whole idea of building up a community is so that your site can stand out from the crowd, in my humble opinion, the script does what it is supposed to but, it doesn’t offer any redeeming qualities to your site.

Site Net BBS http://www.focalmedia.net

Sitenet BBS, formally known as Netboard, is probably one of the better Perl based forum scripts on the market, it price tag of $69.00 makes it an affordable choice for almost everyone and, the installation process itself is VERY simple to understand. The one drawback that i have found with this forum script however is that it stores the data in flat text file which actually slow the server down quite a lot making connections to the forum time-out on numerous occasions. However customization of the script is very easy using only HTML based templates you do not need any additional programming skills and, it has a nice interface with a few good features. For the price it is well worth a look. They also offer a freeware version however the links on the bottom of the forum become annoying after a while.

In summary there are a lot of popular forum scripts available for webmasters to start using some are free other require payment ALL have a range of different functions available in them.

Before looking at installing any of the scripts you should always try a demo first to see which one has the features and benefits you would like to offer your community members.

If you can get your base community built up on a forum they enjoy using then all the rest of your marketing should pay off in dividends long term.

Article written by Lee.