Displaying Special Characters On Your HTML Pag

Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

In order to display certain characters within your HTML pages, you must use a special code. The codes below display the HTML code and the character when displayed on your web page. To use any of the characters displayed within the chart, copy & paste the HTML code to the left of the character you would like to use.

Whilst the above list is by no means complete, it should contain the most useful characters and codes for you to build your sites using the special characters with ease.

Article written by Lee

Robots.txt – Control The Robots That Crawl Your Sites

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Search Engine Optimization, WebDesign | Response: 0

By writing a structured text file you can indicate to robots that certain parts of your server are off-limits to some or all robots. It is best explained with an example:

# robots.txt file for general use on web servers.

User-agent: webcrawler
Disallow:

User-agent: googlebot
Disallow: /

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin
Disallow: /logs
The first line, starting with ‘#’, specifies a comment.

The first paragraph specifies that the robot called ‘webcrawler’ has nothing disallowed: it may go anywhere.

The second paragraph indicates that the robot called ‘googlebot’ has all relative URLs starting with ‘/’ disallowed. Because all relative URL’s on a server start with ‘/’, this means the entire site is closed off.

The third paragraph indicates that all other robots should not visit URLs starting with /cgi-bin or /log. Note the ‘*’ is a special token, meaning “any other User-agent”; you cannot use wildcard patterns or regular expressions in either User-agent or Disallow lines.

Two common errors:

Wildcards are not supported: instead of ‘Disallow: /tmp/*’ just say ‘Disallow: /tmp’.
You shouldn’t put more than one path on a Disallow line (this may change in a future version of the spec)
Ultimately, without the use of robots.txt files on your servers/domains, you are risking a variety of potential problems including, unauthorized access to your cgi directory, unauthorized viewing of your site stats, possible spamming of the search engines by accidental crawling of doorway pages.

One distinct advantage however of having a robots.txt file on your server is that, quite simply, you will be able to tell when and where your site has been indexed or potentially indexed as, all robots will automatically call for the robots.txt file BEFORE any other page on your server so, as long as you keep an eye open for any calls of this file, you can see who is knocking at your site for indexing purposes.

Below is a robots.txt example that you can copy and paste into a text document to use on your own server:

<!–Start Copy Below This Line–>

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin
Disallow: /logs

<!–End Copy Above This Line–>

The above will allow all spiders to crawl all of your site except the subdirectory’s ‘cgi-bin’ and ‘logs’ which, may be altered to suit any subdirectory’s you do not wish the spiders to crawl on your server.

Article written by Lee

Calling Complete JavaScript’s With One Line Of HTML Code

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

We all know that some JavaScript coding can be excessive and add considerable amounts of additional coding to our pages making them both slower and less search engine friendly however, what if I told you there was a way you could call the EXACT same JavaScript functions you are calling now by using a single line of code and, in the process you would NEVER have to find a specific piece of JavaScript again as you would instantly know where it was saved.

You would probably think the above is in fact very time consuming but, it actually takes no time at all.

The secret is to copy and paste the JavaScript into a plain text file and save that on your server somewhere. However, instead of saving it as a .txt extension save this file as a .js extension and, to make it easier still to find, when you upload this file to your server place it in a directory called /JavaScript/.

That’s pretty much it, easy huh?

Now comes the part of actually getting the JavaScript to work on your web pages, what you need to do instead of using the complete JavaScript coding that you usually would if you wanted to make a pop-up console appear is to use the following coding placed between your <head> and </head> tags:

<script language=”JavaScript” src=”../JavaScript/popup.js”></script>

That will now call the popup.js file or whatever it was you called it from your server and make the JavaScript function work for your surfers with JavaScript enabled in their browser.

As you can see, not only does using this method save you a considerable amount of time but, it will also make your pages more search engine friendly as spiders will not have to work their way through a lot of heavily JavaScript before they get to your SE content.

Getting Webmaster Traffic To Your Design Site

Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: General, Promotion | Response: 0

Just starting in the design biz? Well you’re going to need some traffic to your design work. You need to get your name out to as many people as humanly possible. If you don’t have the contacts, then you don’t have the work. Network, communicate, and setup your portfolio. These are the 3 most important steps when starting your design company, preceding these three steps are advertising and demonstrating.

When I first started designing, I had no clue what I was doing except for designing websites. I knew I needed clients, but had no idea where to start. I met up with a ouple of other webmasters one night. I told them I had just started and was looking for some work. They took me in and taught me the trade. They showed me a few tricks in how to design things much quicker, and also subconsciously taught me to make sure as many people as possible see my work, and that they know who its from.

I worked with my friends for a few months when things started to get slow, so I took it upon myself to start my own company. I still got outsourced work from them, but now was taking on my own clients, but I had forgotten one important step. Advertising, the biggest step to forget. So I started posting on message boards to get my name in the dirt. I received a few clients, but nothing large. Then one day out of the blue a man came to me and wanted 4 pay sites designed. Wow, a real client at last. He said he saw my posts on a resource forum and decided to use me for his work.

I worked for this client for about 2 months, and more and more people were coming to me. I had been doing something good, but work started to slow and finally I realized I had been working for the same few clients and had not been getting anyone else in the door. Maybe board posting wasn’t enough? Exactly, its not, I asked around to see what I could do I had gotten a few suggestions like banner trades, recip’s, work for advertising. So I did them all. And soon enough I had more clients than I could shake a stick at.

Network.

Talk to people, people that are in the biz. Webmasters and designers. Talk to anyone you possibly can that could further spread your name of even bring work to you. If you do not network, then don’t plan on anything coming your way.

Communicate.

Get on boards, ICQ, AIM, MSN, whatever. Just make sure that people see you and know you are there. Send them emails with different offers, not spam, but personal emails. Take it upon yourself to try and get your name into the field.

Portfolio.

If you do not have one of these, then you might as well try to sell a spider to an arachnophobe. Design some fakes sites if you don’t have anything to show. Do some banners, tours, anything that shows the potential of your work. Make sure you present it as efficiently as possible. People do not want to root around not knowing what they are looking at.

Advertise.

Make banners, buttons, links, ads, and anything that you can stick your name on. Get listed on any and all Webmaster resource sites, and design sites. This will help you establish a name base and let people know you are around.

Demonstrate.

Write articles for resource sites, create different tutorials also, this will let people know you know what your doing. The more people that like your ideas, the more they will like you. Therefore the more likely you will get work.

Follow these steps as I did and you will be on your way to having clients beating down your door. Also, make sure you really have something to offer before trying to sell your work. Be unique in what you design and how you present it. Clients love it when their sites are different from others, obviously.

Article written by John

Choosing The Right Sponsor For Your Site

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Sponsors | Response: 0

Affiliate programs (also frequently called referral or associate programs) have grown today to become one of the most popular ways for you to earn an income from your web site’s traffic. Most affiliate programs are designed to allow you to simply set up and begin earning commissions on visitors and sales you refer. However, the quality of the programs, and the results you will see, very greatly from program to program, making it important to choose wisely which are best for you and your site. It is the purpose of this article to help sort through many of the programs, and offer assistance in determining what to look for.

My personal experience with affiliate programs goes back over a year and a half, pretty long in Internet terms. Over this period, I researched many of the affiliate programs available on the Internet and, tried to best determine what works best. From my experiences, here are several of the top factors you should take into consideration:

1- Stability of the company and program

What I found to be the one of highest priorities for most webmasters is the stability of the affiliate program, and the company. This should be one of your top considerations when evaluating programs. Is the company stable and financially sound? Do they offer assistance with promoting the opportunity? And, do they pay in a timely fashion? Often, webmasters have been lured in by offers of high commissions, only to find out they will never see a paycheck, despite referring hundreds, or even hundreds of thousands, of visitors.

2- Synergies with your site

I am a big proponent of this. All too often, I see sites sign up for every affiliate program they can, figuring if they make a few bucks on each, that they will be profitable. For a select few, this may very well work. However, for most sites it will not, and many cases you will turn off your audience because of the ‘over-commercialization’ of your site. As you are considering the various affiliate programs available, be sure to consider what exactly your audience, your visitors, might be interested in clicking on, and eventually buying.

For example, if your site caters to a general audience, then perhaps general affiliate programs such as Adult Revenue Service, will be effective. Or perhaps Evidence Eliminator, which allows you to sell privacy / security software. If your site only caters to a specific niche, programs such as Adult Revenue Service should be excellent money-makers as they have a wide and varied selection of adult sites which you may promote. The key is to not just think of the affiliate program as a way for you to make some easy money, but rather an extension of your web site, a service you offer your visitors to help them find the products or services they are interested in, at good prices, and with a company they can trust.

3- Commission Tracking

An important aspect to consider is whether or not the affiliate program offers some way for you to track your sales, and even the number of visitors you refer. There are several ways this can be accomplished, such as real-time, online reports showing you sales and your commissions. Or perhaps sales can be tracked through a simple email each time you receive a new customer. This can be very important for allowing you to test and evaluate the effectiveness of the program, make comparisons with other programs or advertising opportunities, and give you piece of mind that you are receiving what is fairly do.

4- Opportunity for Repeat Sales

As any business person knows, a business can not generally survive on one-time purchases. Instead you have to find ways to not only attract new customers, but also keep the ones you have. This is also very true with affiliate programs. One of the largest complaints many webmasters have had with sponsors is that they refer a customer once, see their $35 commission, but in the process the customer bookmarked the Sponsors tour page. The next time the surfer is interested in buying a membership, they return to the sponsors site through the bookmark, and the webmaster never sees another penny.

Several programs have tried to alleviate this. Programs such as Adult Revenue Service avoid this problem by offering services (Daily Updated Pictures, Email Newsletter) which customers, once signed up for, use month after month. This allows them to pay residual commissions for as long as the surfer maintains their free membership to the site or, alternately, keeps returning to the page. This helps turn average programs into exceptional opportunities, because you can earn for months, perhaps even years, on referrals you made in your first, and subsequent months.

Other Factors

In summary, it is important to look at all of these main factors and several others, including the commission rates they pay (I didn’t discuss this because they are generally easily comparable), the frequency of payment checks (they generally range from weekly to quarterly), and/or the minimum dollar value you must accumulate before receiving a check (they range from nothing to $50). A couple of other important factors: be VERY wary of any program the requires a payment or ‘membership fee’ for you to join or act as an affiliate. And, be sure to check what method they use to track sales themselves. Programs that require the visitor to remember your name, or your site’s name, and enter it in when ordering, will result in many lost commissions.

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

10 Killer Advertising Sentences

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: General | Response: 0

10 Killer Advertising Sentences.

Tell your readers what they are probably thinking, feeling or doing as they read your ad copy. This strategy will usually trigger their own subconscious mind to bring out these feelings or actions.

You can add these sentences into any ad copy. You may have to change one or two words so it relates more to the product or service you’re selling.

1. As you keep reading this ad copy, you are feeling more and more compelled to experience all the benefits of our product.

2. The more you understand just how valuable our product could be to your life, the less you think about delaying this important purchase.

3. After you read this short ad you will feel like your problems are almost completely solved, all you will have to do is order.

4. As you’re skimming through this, you’re beginning to think you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by trying out our product.

5. As you’re scanning over this ad copy, you are beginning to imagine using our product and enjoying all the benefits it brings.

6. The more you keep reading our ad the more you feel it would be a waste to let this opportunity slip by.

7. The more you review our ad the more you begin to find yourself getting very excited about our product and starting to feel the urge to buy now.

8. You don’t know it yet but, at the conclusion of this ad, you will feel driven to order and experience all the benefits of our product.

9. You don’t realize it yet but, in a few short minutes you’ll realize that you can’t put off this vital purchase and then you’ll be yanking out your credit card.

10. As every word you read travels from this ad to your brain, you start to understand just how much our product could benefit your life.

I hope this article has given you some insight as to how we, as webmasters, can actually ‘manipulate’ the surfer into doing what we want them to and, ultimately, into making us money.

Article written by Lee.

Think Fresh – Work Smarter

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: General | Response: 0

We have all experienced it at some point in our webmaster career, more often than not though, we hear about it all the time. What is it? Wanting to give in when we hit that proverbial brick wall.

Hopefully this article can offer you some help and advice when it comes to getting your sales back on track or, even getting them started at all.

Ask For Help.

The one thing that amazes me about this industry is that despite the fact we are all business competitors we are all (mostly) willing to help other webmasters out for little or nothing in return. if you hit that brick wall then imply ask for some help.

As webmasters we have a barrage of free tools readily available to us for asking the advice of others whether it is in email from your sponsors support reps, icq or even on the many industry related chat boards, by actually spending sometime to help yourself by asking others you can often see things from a new perspective and, get advice as to why thing that should be working are not.

Start Over.

So you have been doing this webmaster job for the last few months submitting to the TGP’s, building free and AVS sites but you still haven’t made a dime, something is wrong somewhere but how do you pinpoint the error? By far the easiest way to find out what is wrong is to start afresh. Head over to one of the webmaster resource sites and see what others are doing ask for advice and feedback on your sites and learn from the experiences they tell you about. Just because you might have heard the same information before doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask about it, often one webmaster will be able to tell you an alternate way of doing something that another webmaster is. One of the best ways to get a grasp on this learning curve is to read articles and tutorials, there are thousands of them on the net from HTML to Programming and everything in-between emulate the information contained in these articles and adjust that same information to suit your needs.

Don’t Stagnate.

If you are not having success at the AVS side of the business try something else, you already have a good base for building free sites and even TGP’s just because you have never tried using these sources of traffic and income doesn’t mean you wont be any good at them.

If traffic is your problem as mentioned above, ask others where they get their traffic from and how they built it up, learn to start small and grow instead of running head first into millions of hits a month that are being wasted.

Research The Industry.

If you are thinking of quitting, before you do spend a day or two just doing a little background research in the industry, its no secret that webmasters who join the online industry today have to work two or three times harder than our peers who joined several years ago, this is and always has been true in any business. By researching the industry you should be able to find out how others that joined before you failed and, more importantly, WHY they failed, learn from those experiences.

Finally.

No matter how hard and meaningless you find the work stick at it, just because you are not making any sales it doesn’t mean you wont make any sales tomorrow or even next week / month / year. Keep turning those sites out and, soon enough, when you least expect it you’ll make a sale and, you know what… the euphoric feeling you will get will be more than enough to make you realize that you HAVE been doing something right all along.

Article written by Lee

Saving Time Online – Shortcut Keys

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: General | Response: 0

The one thing that i have started to do just lately is use shortcut keys. These are actually very easy to get used to and, will save you a lot of effort over a period of time.

Below you will find a list of the more common shortcut keys in both Windows and Internet Explorer.

Even if you get used to using one or two of these shortcut keys you will notice the time you start save over a week, hell, i don’t even type the whole domain into my IE address bar anymore!

Here are the shortcuts for Windows along with the description of what they do:

Alt + F – File menu options in current program.
Alt + E – Edit options in current program
F1 – Universal Help.
Ctrl + A – Select all text.
Ctrl + X – Cut selected item.
Shift + Del – Cut selected item.
Ctrl + C – Copy selected item.
Ctrl + Ins – Copy selected item
Ctrl + V – Paste
Shift + Ins – Paste
Home – Goes to beginning of current line.
Ctrl + Home – Goes to beginning of document.
End – Goes to end of current line.
Ctrl + End – Goes to end of document.
Shift + Home – Highlights from current position to beginning of line.
Shift + End – Highlights from current position to end of line.
Ctrl + Left – Moves one word to the left at a time.
Ctrl + Right – Moves one word to the right at a time.
Ctrl + Backspace – Delete word to the left of cursor.
Ctrl + Del – Delete word to the right of cursor.
Alt + Tab – Switch between open applications.
Alt + Shift + Tab – Switch backwards between open applications.
Ctrl + Esc – Bring Up start button.
Alt + Esc – Switch Between open applications on taskbar.
F2 – Renames selected Icon
F3 – Starts find from desktop
F4 – Opens the drive selection when browsing.
F5 – Refresh Contents
Alt + F4 – Closes Current open program.
Ctrl + F4 – Closes Window in Program
Alt + Enter – Opens properties window of Selected icon or program.
Shift + F10 – Simulates right click on selected item.
Shift + Del – Delete programs/files without throwing into the recycle bin.
Holding Shift – Boot safe mode or by pass system files.
Holding Shift – When putting in an audio cd will prevent CD Player from playing.

The following list are shortcut keys when using Internet Explorer:

Alt + Left – Back a page.
Alt + Right – Forward a page.
F5 – Refresh current page / frame.
Esc – Stop page or download from loading.
Ctrl + Enter – Quickly complete an address.
Ctrl + N – Open New browser window.
Ctrl + P – Print current page / frame.

Hopefully this list of shortcut keys will get you saving some time even if its just a few minutes a day. After all, we all know the one thing webmasters need more of is time.

Article written by Lee

Geo Targeting – What Exactly Is It?

Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: General, Promotion | Response: 0

As the adult industry reaches further and further across the online global community we are beginning to realize the importance of our foreign surfers, gone are the days of shifting them off to a dialer site instead, we find more and more companies actually using geo-targeting techniques to filter and monetize this profitable traffic more but, how does geotargeting work and, more importantly, is it any good? They are the questions we will look at in this article.

GEO::IP – The Basics.

The Geo::ip module is a relatively simplistic database of IP addresses and, the matching country to which the IP address belongs. This means that the GEO::IP module can be used for a variety of purposes including automatically selecting the language and countries of your visitors, for credit card fraud detection, and for software export controls.

Geo Targeting – The Basics.

As described above, the GEO::IP module is what drives any and all forms of geographical location targeting system (geo targeting). Geo targeting is the method most commonly used in the adult industry to either send a surfer to a localized version of a paysite or, send them off to a dialer in an attempt to monetize them it works by checking either the surfers browser language, country ip address or, both of these.

Putting Geo Targeting To Work.

Despite what most webmasters may think about the complexities of geo targeting and the GEO::IP Module for Perl they are easy to use and implement and, furthermore, there are cost free and highly effective ways of using geo targeting on your sites to monetize your international traffic. Lets look at two easy free solutions for webmasters to geo target their traffic.

JavaScript.

Using JavaScript you could add the following code between your HTML <head> and </head> tags to redirect international traffic to a specific url on your server:

<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>

Php.

Using .php you can add the following to your sites pages to redirect traffic based on their browser language.

<?
$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;

?>

As you can see from the above two examples, monetizing your international foreign traffic is a relatively easy step and, with the right sponsors to send this traffic to you will be able to reap the profits of countries that other webmasters are not targeting yet.

Geo Targeting – Overview.

When all is said and done geo targeting can be a cost effective way to increase your bottom line profits, whether using a free method as described above or, using one of the many filtering services available on the net you should start to monetize your global surfers. One thing you should also consider however is that far from sending your international traffic to a dialer you should search around and find a good mix of adult affiliate programs with a variety of localized paysites, this in itself will enable you to see just how much traffic you have been wasting by using dialers in the past and, it will also allow you to realize the full potential of your new found geo targeted adult traffic.

Article written by Lee