Cross Selling – Offer Your Surfers An Alternative

Date: 2011.02.23 | Category: Promotion | Response: 0

As webmasters our primary goal is to make money from our surfers in order to be successful at business, however, in order to make money from our surfers we need to constantly change the way in which we sell products and services to them.

One such method of selling products to surfers is by using cross selling or, up selling as it is sometimes referred to in the industry. So what exactly is cross selling and, more importantly, what benefit does it give your business model? This is what we shall take a look at in this article.

Cross Selling – The Basics.

Cross selling is a method used by marketers to make the maximum amount of money out of a single sales lead at any given time regardless of whether you are working online or, in a bricks and mortar store cross selling is something that almost every sales person does from offering an extended warranty on a new television purchase to offering an affiliate product from inside your sites secure area.

Cross Selling – How To.

One of the easiest ways to initiate the cross selling process is simple to provide your site visitors with a selection of links going to a multitude of individual products, this may be a dating site, a software package or, something else, either way, by placing a selection of links on your main selling pages you have already initiated the cross selling process and, by doing so, have already increased your chance at making a sale.

Cross Selling – New Customers.

One method of cross selling that is becoming more and more prevalent on the internet is that of cross selling or, up-selling new customers immediately after they have made a purchase, this in itself is not a bad thing after all, you know they have money to spend so, why not use this fact to garner additional sales.

One good way of offering cross sales to new customers is to give the an option on the actual shopping cart page immediately when they hit it, this may be for a site that complements the product they are making a purchase to already or, something completely different either way, by having this already on the order page waiting for your customer you might just make additional money from them.

Cross Selling – Old Customers.

So what happens when a customer leaves your site after making a purchase? Well there are two routes you can take with thee customers, one, is to leave them alone and hope that they return to buy from your site again whilst, the other, my personal preference, is to send these customers a regular follow up letter offering them a product they may be interested in based on their initial purchase after all, if they purchased a copy of Adobe Photoshop, the chances are they may also be interested in something such as Paint Shop Pro, why not give the surfer this as an option by placing a link in the follow up letter taking them to that specific area on your site.

Cross Selling – Overview.

When all is said and done, cross selling whether you agree with it or not is a very powerful sales tool, not only can it increase the revenue potentials from new clients but, can also enable any business a method of gaining further incomes from older customers, the one thing that you should all be doing on a regular basis is ensuring that you have a good cross selling strategy in place, regardless of whether you actually are selling memberships to sites, warranties on televisions or, mouse pads for new pc owners.

Article written by Lee

Converting Japanese Traffic – The Niche Paysites That Work

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Traffic | Response: 0

Up to this point we have only looked at the European traffic sources and what niches convert for them however, we will now take a look at the Japanese specific adult surfers and, see just what makes them tick when they come to look online for porn.

Japanese Adult Traffic – Dispelling The Myths.

Contrary to popular beliefs Japanese porn surfers are not all looking for Bukakke or Hentai orientated adult sites in fact, the results we saw far from backed this up. Also, many webmasters believe Japanese traffic is worthless again, from our results this is simply not the case.

Japanese Adult Traffic – The Niches.

We were extremely pleased with the results we found from the Japanese traffic we got to our hub sites in fact, we altered the type of sponsors we used on our Japanese hubs so that we could see just how well this type of international adult traffic converted and, i think you will see the results are worthy of you sending your Japanese adult traffic to sites that do not encompass dialers as the only means of revenue for those surfers after reading this article.

Asian.

We set up a small niche specific ‘Asian’ hub trap that we could use to primarily filter our Japanese traffic through and, as we expected, very little of the traffic actually purchased memberships to these sites that were supposedly made specifically for Japanese surfers instead, all but 2 sales came from sites outside of this ‘Asian’ specific hub.

Ebony.

By far our best converting niche on Japanese traffic, the sales figures we saw from a join perspective were enough to warrant that we altered the rest of our hub site to ensure maximum exposure of the Ebony niche sites we were using to get them in front of the Japanese surfer as quickly as possible.

Anime / Hentai / Toon.

Again another surprise, the sales we saw on these niche paysites were lower overall when compared to sites in completely different niches what was also surprising about this is that the vast majority of adult webmasters will actively push their Japanese traffic to sites in this niche.

Bukakke.

Finding a Japanese Bukakke sponsors was impossible for us, instead, we opted to send the traffic to a US only paysite and, as expected, we had no sales for this niche on the Japanese traffic we saw flowing through our sites. As mentioned above with the Anime niche, this is often the first type of site adult webmasters will send their Japanese speaking traffic too and, as we thought, this is wrong.

Teen.

The teen niche converted really well for us, not as well as the ebony niche did but non the less, we received a steady amount of signups each month, this steady signup rate was also added to by recurring incomes from the previous months signups towards the end of our three month test period.

Gay.

As with the Bukakke niche paysite we received absolutely no sales to the Japanese gay paysite we used in our hub site this was surprising as even with the other international traffic we had gotten at least one sale a month but, alas, it seems the vast majority of Japanese surfers do not want to see naked men online.

Amateur.

Specifically amateur web cam sites converted for us on our Japanese traffic and again, this was good because of the rebills at the end of the month in fact, we still have some rebills continuing now some 5 months after our test period ended.

Japanese Adult Surfers – An Overview.

As expected at the start of the test period, Japanese adult surfers are not primarily interested in Bukakke and Anime sites in fact, it would appear they were primarily interested in the Ebony paysites we had to offer them. This is interesting in itself because, when offered ‘Asian’ niche paysites we only achieved 2 sales a month compared to the vast amount of sales to the Ebony niche, I think it might be worthwhile re-visiting Japanese traffic at a later date so we can evaluate exactly what preferences they have over time.

One other thing we discovered when testing the Japanese traffic was that, as we have been saying for a long time, Japanese surfers do hold credit / debit cards and, will use them online if their needs can be matched. This is good as if, like us, you use recurring sponsors on this type of traffic you will see some good long term residual income.

Article written by Lee

Hard Hitting – In Your Face – This Is Reality

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: General | Response: 0

It started on terrestrial television some 5 years ago with the first episode of Big Brother, then it went from a house of captive stars to talent scouts looking to create a new pop sensation. From there we saw a variety of television series with ‘reality’ as the main focus.

It only follows suit that this popular marketing machine should hit the adult internet; and, it hit in a major way. And now, almost every major adult sponsor has one common type of site in their portfolio – a reality site.

However, one thing that many in the adult industry are not aware of is that the ‘reality’ type adult sites have been around for longer than what most realize. Before the live sex up-sells and chat rooms, Brandon Marley, a gay website owner, has had a site catering towards the gay reality niche – the premise of his site, as a gay male on the prowl, he goes to the street looking for straight guys to use as content; once he has them in the studio, he lets them work their magic and, inevitably, gets down to business, sometimes persuading the guys to have sex, sometimes, grossing them out whilst they up and flee the studio, all of this is caught on tape and published online.

Next is the web cam phenomenon. Reality at it’s utmost, watching live guys talk, strip, jerk off and discuss the most intimate desires in a chat room. The gay market flocks to reality like a moth to a flame. And surprisingly, much of the focus of ‘reality’ has been pointed to the straight adult audience, with a limited amount of gay orientated reality sites being launched.

That is until now, more and more programs and providers are coming up with reality to the gay market. The key to the on going success and growth of these sites is the, always allusive, original idea.

From M.I.L.F To D.I.L.F.

One of the popular types of reality site we saw explode was MILF (Moms I Like To Fuck). Spurred not only by the popular teenage movie American Pie, this type of reality hits a spot of desire within some surfers to days gone by where they had a secret crush on someone’s mom. Well if it’s possible that a straight man could have a crush on a mom, what about the young gay man having a crush on a dad?

“Well, if the straight markets can have MILF, why can’t the gay arena have DILF?’ asks Gary-Alan, owner of the new gay reality site DILF.com from http://www.studmoney.com.

The gay markets have been yelling they are looking for something different to sell. So rather than taking DILF to the straight adult reality markets DILF takes it’s unique flavor and gears it toward to gay market.

‘Reality sells! It is one of the freshest and highest converting niches yet. We see this from great sites like Chi Chi La Rue and Brandon Marley – two of my most favorite sites. I have been listening to webmaster for years. They are looking for something different not just in a reality sense but something that features older guys, not your typical young buff stud. I think when the idea to finally launch StudMoney came up, the first thing that was mentioned was DILF. So we’ve brought the two aspects together and given the gay market webmasters the opportunity to promote a reality site that will convert and, convert well on their traffic.” Alan tells us.

So What Are Reality Sites?

Reality sites cater to a specific target audience, those people who don’t want to see the usual porn stars that are found on almost every other site on the web. Instead, these sites offer exclusive real-life models that could next door neighbor’s sister, mother or, in the case of DILF, their father. Reality opens your site offerings, giving you the opportunity to retain surfers with frequent updates and story lines that will peak their interests. You get to set the standard of your entire site to promote not only the content but a familiarity with your core performers.

Starting Reality Site.

So how do you go about setting up a reality niche pay site? In all honesty, there is more involved than putting up a cookie-cutter site online.

First you need a concept. With as many niches available today you need something fresh. Mind you there are ideas to mimic but new sells. Once the ideas are down then you need to find content. This isn’t as easy as buying a standard CD, it has to be fresh and new so finding a good photographer to shoot exclusive custom content. Even if you decide you will shoot your own content, you will need to be sure to schedule fresh new shoots frequently. This is important with any type of site, but none more than reality.

Once you have the content aspect figured out, you need to work on designing your site. You may think that’s easy, but the regular cookie-cutter designs, that are so often seen across multiple sites, simply do not cut it. You should seriously give your site design as much consideration as you do you concept for the site itself. A unique approach to the overall layout and design the site and it the member’s area has an equal impact on your members retention rates as having unique content.

Reality Niche – Overview.

What it all comes down to is reality is here, and here to stay. From market to market, niche to niche the one thing we have seen on and offline is that audiences around the world are looking to satisfy the voyeur, the deviant or the simple curiosity that lurks just beneath the skin. So the next time your driving past the mini-mart or peak inside the dressing room at the department store, remember you’re not only in public places – you are probably walking through the next set for an upcoming reality site.

Article written by Lee

JavaScript – Redirecting Foreign Surfers

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

At some point or another we are no doubt going to have the need to redirect some or all of our surfers based on the language they speak, this snippet of JavaScript when placed on your page will enable you to do just that without the need for .php or other more complex scripting.

Here is the coding that you need to place between your <head> and </head> tags:

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE=”JavaScript1.2″>
<!– Begin
if (navigator.appName == ‘Netscape’)
var language = navigator.language;
else
var language = navigator.browserLanguage;

if (language.indexOf(‘en’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘english.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘nl’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘dutch.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘fr’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘french.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘de’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘german.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘ja’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘japanese.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘it’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘italian.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘pt’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘portuguese.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘es’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘Spanish.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘sv’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘swedish.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘zh’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘chinese.shtml';
else
document.location.href = ‘english.shtml';
// End –>
</script>

To add additional language redirects to this JavaScript all you need to do is duplicate the:

else if (language.indexOf(‘zh’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘chinese.shtml';

Section of the coding changing the (‘zh’) language code to that of the language you wish to redirect.

Article written by Lee

Writing A Business Plan – The First Step To Success

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Forms & Contracts, Writing | Response: 0

Regardless of what type of business you want to run be it a bakery, a funeral home or an online marketing empire the one thing that you will require is a business plan however, having never taken any business basics 101 classes what do you need to have and, what is required in your business plan?

That is what we will touch on in this brief article from the basics to the not-so-basics by using a few simple steps you can be sure your business plan will contain all the information you need to make it up the ladder of success.

Information Summary.

As the name suggest this is a simple summary of what you are hoping to achieve from the name of your business, the goals, the concept and your plans. This should actually be no longer than two pages so that you can fill the needed information out clearly and concisely.

Business Details.

This will be the founding information of your business again you need to mention your business name, what type of business you will be running (Sole Trader, Partnership, Corporation, etc) in addition you will also need to include details of who the company owners are, whether it be yourself alone or a list of your business partners, this information will be invaluable to you at a later date you also need to include a brief history of the business whether you have been running it already for a number of days, weeks, month or, years.

Products And Services.

Basically, you need to write what exactly it is you will be selling. Are you going to be selling baked goods, marketing services or custom solutions. Keep this section simple, if you need to go into depth then do so at the end of your business plan by way of an appendices. Once you have listed several of the products or services you will be selling you should also list the features and benefits (Marketing points) of the products and services in addition, why do you think your business idea will succeed, what do you offer your clients that no-one else currently does? In addition you also need to have a basic pricing structure planned out, this will assist you in the future as, from your initial plans you can see what, if anything needs to be changed.

Marketing.

A business is more than just an idea. You need to have good pricing, affordable suppliers and a great marketing plan. This is what is also needed in your overall business plan. You should include details of your competitors products and how they compare to your own or, if applicable why your product will be a benefit to the market place should it not already be readily available. In addition the marketing section of your business plan should include a list of advantages as well as some of the pitfalls you are likely to see. You also need to include a section detailing your specific marketing strategies regarding your overall and individual products and services.

Industry Economics.

This area should detail some of the more specific areas of the industry you are going to be working in for example, what type of industry are you entering, how does the future for this industry look and, more importantly, how many existing companies work this industry as well as how do you successfully launch yourself into the industry. Parts of this area you may have covered in the marketing and previous section non the less, go over them again here in more detail.

Target Market.

We have detailed the business ideas and products and services but, what about your potential clients? What does your product offer then that they need which no other company does? What is your target client base? How will you reach your customers? All of this and more needs to be addressed in this area of your business plan.

Competing Companies.

What do your competitors do and, more importantly, who are they? Make a list of your potential competitors and address their weaknesses and strengths ensure that you leave no stone unturned when getting this information together often, you will realize that there are things your competition is doing that you can do much better then they.

Don’t forget to address their marketing, what are they doing right and, more importantly to you, what are they doing wrong? How can you capitalize on this and make their errors benefit your long term business plans.

Location, Location, Location.

Location is everything and, this is particularly true in business for example, will you be working from an office, from your home or even your garage, do you require any special permits to operate your business? Can your customers reach you easily? All of these items and more need to be considered when writing this area of your business plan. By addressing any and all of these items you will find yourself with a much clearer picture of what is needed of you and your business.

Stock + Supplies.

Often overlooked in business plans the one thing you NEED to have is a list of potential suppliers and sub-contractors who can provide you with your products and services. What materials (if any) do you need? How much will these cost you? Where will you find your stock and supplies? By getting this information available now you will have a better idea once your business plan is laid out as to what you are able to offer easily and also it will enable you to lay your pricing structure out more concisely.

Labor.

So you have this great business idea all laid out but, who will be running this for you? Do you need additional staff or are you going it alone? Do you need to setup accountants, lawyers, insurance companies, consultants, bank accounts etc etc? All of these aspects of your business need to be laid out here.

Capital.

Money, as they say, makes the world go round. Your business is no different, how much financial outlay do you require to get your business off the ground? Do you need to ask for a loan from your banking facility to help you out? How much income are you planning on making within the next 6 to 12 months? How much of this income needs to be invested back into the business? All of these ‘financial’ question need to be answered in this area of your business plan only then will you begin to see the bigger picture of your business idea.

Hopefully this article has given you some solid advice and information regarding planning for your new business and, once you have all of the above laid out you should be able to see whether you will succeed or fail in your new idea.

Also, by planning now for the future of your business you should hopefully be able to avoid any hidden costs which can often push a company to the edge.

Article written by Lee

Building Your Brand – Business Basics

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Branding | Response: 0

Many online businesses have a good solid brand name attached to them already for example, ARS (http://www.adultrevenueservice.com), Webair (http://www.webair.com) and, WEG (http://www.wegcash.com). These companies have worked long and hard to build up their own brand name on the internet and, specifically, in the adult industry where, it almost seems that everyone is out to make a name for themselves so, how do you as a small business owner get a piece of this branding pie?

Branding Basics.

The word ‘Brand’ or ‘Branding’ can refer to several items when used as a noun to describe a company name, product, service or, trademark. Branding started centuries ago when cattle ranch owners used to place their unique insignia on their cattle so that surrounding ranch owners knew who the cattle belonged to and, so that the owners of the brand knew if their cattle were being stolen by others.

Starting The Branding Process.

From the very first site you build you should start working on your own inimitable brand name or logo, perhaps it will consist of a small logo on top of every page you build or even a simple text link for your sites domains, either way, the one thing that is important in recognizing a brand is being able to place it to a product instantly.

Building Your Brand Name.

Now that you have started the branding process how can you continue to grow your businesses brand name or product even further? This is what we will take a look at next.

Domain Name Registration.

Buy the domain name that is representative of your ‘brand name’ if your brand is going to be 123pornosex then go and register 123pornosex.com be cautious though, just because you think of a brand name, you should ensure the domain is available to register BEFORE you start using that brand in detail.

Getting The Word Out.

This may seem like the hardest of tasks at first but, once you make a start in branding your site or, yourself this is relatively easy to keep up on an ongoing basis.

Visit the boards, use your tagline as often as possible and, either mention your brand name in the tagline or, link to your brand names website. This is especially easy to do if you run a TGP or some other site that needs to attract webmaster traffic in order for it to succeed.

Start your own newsletter, this may seem an odd way to build your brand up but, if you name your newsletter the same as your brand name for example you might have a text link saying:

Join the BRANDNAME Newsletter.

This keeps the branding process alive and well. The next step you should take it to ensure that the sender address of the email is something like brandname@brandname.com again, even though you have collected the email addresses by sending out mailings from an address like the one above you have more of a chance of your brand name actually staying in the mind of the newsletter recipient.

In addition to a newsletter, you might also like to consider having a designer make you a logo or button you can use on your site/s this will come in handy for several uses for example, if you own a traffic site you can use this logo as a reciprocal link, you can use it in your signature on message forums and, you can even include it on sites you build.

You might also like to consider writing articles for other sites to use, usually the sites that publish your articles will place a link or a small bio to you or your site, this is another way to increase the ‘exposure’ of your brand.

Branding Overview.

All in all, building a brand name for yourself or your business need not be a hard and tedious task in fact, if you start off almost immediately building up name recognition for you and your sites. Regardless of what type of product, service or site you operate getting your brand name recognized by both webmasters and surfers can lead to a lot of money long term, start now and reap the benefits later in your career.

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

Traffic Filtering – Country Specific Redirects

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Traffic | Response: 0

To some, actually marketing to foreign surfers is a waste of time rather than a business practice. Unfortunately, they are missing out on additional revenue. We are already beginning to see some of the major sponsors in the adult industry embracing these foreign markets and, not just by utilizing dialers.

However, filtering your traffic base is often the hardest part of this money making equation. That is where the following piece of PHP coding can come in handy.

PHP FILTERING CODE

<?
$user_lan = $HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE;

if($user_lan==’de’) {
## German
$redir_url = “http://www.germanlanguagepageurl.com”;

} elseif($user_lan==’fr’) {
## French
$redir_url = “http://www.frenchlanguagepageurl.com”;

} elseif($user_lan==’it’) {
## Italian
$redir_url = “http://www.italianlanguagepageurl.com”;

} elseif($user_lan==’es’) {
## Spain
$redir_url = “http://www.spanishlanguagepageurl.com”;

## US traffic or Rest of world not defined above
} else {
$redir_url = “http://www.yourmainpageurl.com”;

}

header(“Location: $redir_url”);
exit;

?>

So, we know that the above piece of coding can redirect surfers based on their country of origin however, in order for you to maximize this to its full potential you will need to know the country specific codes (Also called ISO 639 codes) for each of the main browser languages. Some of these are as follows.

da | Danish
de | German
en | English
es | Spanish
fi | Finnish
fr | French
it | Italian
jp | Japanese

The problem you now have is finding where to send your filtered country specific surfers to. Of course, there is always the dialer option however, this is not going to be as lucrative to your wallet as what most people will have you believe.

In fact, I very rarely use a dialer on my foreign traffic instead, I tend to send them to a language specific tour page from one of the big sponsors and, if they do not sign up to that sponsors site, this is the point where I throw a dialer at them and, if the dialer still doesn’t make any money off the surfer I then recycle the surfer for a fresh one through a toplist or banner exchange heavy page.

In doing this I find it is often more productive than ‘regular’ English speaking traffic as, if you give the surfer something they are looking for, they will be more inclined to buy.

Hopefully this article has given you some insight into filtering and using your foreign traffic as oppose to just sending them off to a dialer program.

Article written by Lee

Mirroring Adult Sites – Stage One.

Date: 2011.02.23 | Category: Promotion, Tutorials | Response: 0

In this next series of tutorials I will be exploring the benefits of utilizing your existing content to build more sites in the least amount of time possible, in fact, after you have completed the steps in this tutorial series you should be able to build over 20 types of site within 5 minutes using a single set of 50 pictures.

So, onto the start of our tutorial.

Stage one in this tutorial is something we have ALL done before, so what you need to do is this…

Build a 50 pic free site, this is using a lot more content than a ‘standard’ free site however, what we are actually going to be making is a set of AVS sites and several TGP galleries, along with some SE pages and also some links list mirrored pages using this set of 50 images by building just ONE site! Sounds impossible? It isn’t… read on….

Your site should have the following on it:

1) Warning Page (index.html)
2) Menu Page (menu.html)
3) Gallery Pages (5 galleries of ten pictures called gallery1.html, gallery2.html etc)
4) HTML Large image pages x 50 (picpage1.html, picpage2.html, etc.)
5) Multi Site FPA (fpa.html)

Now lets break these individual pages down into sets of instructions for each:

Warning Page.

This should have your standard warning text placed on it, along with an enter AND an exit link. The ‘enter’ link should link to your Multi Site FPA and the ‘exit’ link should go to a program such as the ARS Discreet Browser tour page.

Menu Page.

This should be a page containing an odd sized banner, links to your 5 gallery pages, plus text links at the bottom of the page ideally, these text links should be in the same style as the niche tables we created for the surfer trap except they should only contain 4 cells instead of 8. These links should go to a different ‘niche’ as the one you are building your current site for and, link to the existing FPA’s of your surfer trap.

Gallery Pages.

On your gallery pages, ALL of the thumbnails should be linked to the relevant HTML page with a text link at the top and at the bottom of the HTML page (No Banners are to be used on the gallery pages!) Also, the file names of the images should be pic1.jpg, pic2.jpg, etc for the full sized images and, thumb1.jpg, thumb2.jpg etc for the thumb nailed images. your images MUST be named this way!!

Multi Site FPA.

This should link to the individual FPA’s that you should already have on your server if you followed the surfer trap tutorial series (If you did not create this surfer trap the tutorials can be found at this link) as well as linking to the Single Site FPA’s this should also have a ‘no thank you’ link which goes to your Menu Page.

Images.

You need to have 50 images, you also need to have 50 thumbnails for the content you will be using on this site. I usually select my content by the niche I am building for, rename the images using The Rename then, once renamed I use Thumbnailer from Smaller Animal to create the thumbnails for each of the renamed images. This will give you 50 full sized pictures with 50 thumbnails named respectively for the larger image.

They are the basics, now onto the good stuff…

Once you have created these pages you need to create some folders on your Hard Drive which will be the SAME structure you will have on your server. This folder structure should look somewhat like this once you have saved each of the pages we have just created into their respective sub folders:

FreeSite/index.html
FreeSite/AVS/
FreeSite/FPA/fpa.html
FreeSite/Galleries/gallery1.html, gallery2.html, gallery3.html, etc, etc.
FreeSite/Images/pic1.jpg, etc.
FreeSite/Images/Thumbs/thumb1.jpg, etc.
FreeSite/LinkList/
FreeSite/Menu/menu.html
FreeSite/PicPage/picpage1.html, picpage2.html, etc.
FreeSite/Recips/
FreeSite/Engine/
FreeSite/TGP/

This will give you 5 folders with HTML pages in them, one folder with the full sized images, one with thumbnails in it and five empty folders.

At this point we will end the first stage in this tutorial as this should take you a couple of hours to complete.

Article written by Le

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.