Getting MP3 ripping to work in Windows Media Player 8 in XP

Enter the following in the registry :

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftMediaPlayerSettingsMP3Encoding]
"LowRate"=dword:0000dac0
"MediumRate"=dword:0000fa00
"MediumHighRate"=dword:0001f400
"HighRate"=dword:0002ee00

This corresponds to 56, 64, 128 and 192 Kbps.

You can change this to your liking using the following dword hex values :

320 Kbps = dword:0004e200
256 Kbps = dword:0003e800
224 Kbps = dword:00036b00
192 Kbps = dword:0002ee00
160 Kbps = dword:00027100
128 Kbps = dword:0001f400
112 Kbps = dword:0001b580
64 Kbps = dword:0000fa00
56 Kbps = dword:0000dac0

Where has Scan Disk Gone

Scandisk is not a part of Windows XP - instead you get the improved CHKDSK. You can use the Error-checking tool to check for file system errors and bad sectors on your hard disk.

1: Open My Computer, and then select the local disk you want to check.
2: On the File menu, click Properties.
3: On the Tools tab, under Error-checking, click Check Now.
4: Under Check disk options, select the Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors check box.
· All files must be closed for this process to run. If the volume is currently in use, a message box will appear prompting you to indicate whether or not you want to reschedule the disk checking for the next time you restart your system. Then, the next time you restart your system, disk checking will run. Your volume will not be available to perform other tasks while this process is running.
· If your volume is formatted as NTFS, Windows automatically logs all file transactions, replaces bad clusters, and stores copies of key information for all files on the NTFS volume.

Hide 'User Accounts' from users

Go to Start/Run, and type:

GPEDIT.MSC

Open the path

User Config > Admin Templates > Control Panel

doubleclick "Hide specified Control Panel applets"

put a dot in 'enabled', then click 'Show"

click Add button,

type "nusrmgt.cpl" into the add box

How to use Windows Update Properly

If you want to save your files to your hard drive, so after a format you dont have to download them all again, here's How:

- Logon to Windows Update

- Choose Windows Update Catalogue (left hand pane)

- Choose Find updates for Microsoft Windows operating systems (right hand pane)

- Choose your version and language then Search

- Choose one the following:

- Critical Updates and Service Packs
- Service Packs and Recommended Downloads
- Multi-Language Features (0)

- Once chosen simply click on what you want to download and then back at the top click Review Download Basket

- You are taken to the next page where at the top you can specify where the downloads are to be saved.

- Click Download now. Each patch will make a directory under the root of the folder you saved them to.
Once finished you need to go to where you saved the file (s) to and then simply install all your patches.

IP address of your connection

Go to start/run type 'cmd'

then type 'ipconfig'

Add the '/all' switch for more info.

Make your Folders Private

•Open My Computer
•Double-click the drive where Windows is installed (usually drive (C:), unless you have more than one drive on your computer).
•If the contents of the drive are hidden, under System Tasks, click Show the contents of this drive.
•Double-click the Documents and Settings folder.
•Double-click your user folder.
•Right-click any folder in your user profile, and then click Properties.
•On the Sharing tab, select the Make this folder private so that only I have access to it check box.

Note

•To open My Computer, click Start, and then click My Computer.
•This option is only available for folders included in your user profile. Folders in your user profile include My Documents and its subfolders, Desktop, Start Menu, Cookies, and Favorites. If you do not make these folders private, they are available to everyone who uses your computer.
•When you make a folder private, all of its subfolders are private as well. For example, when you make My Documents private, you also make My Music and My Pictures private. When you share a folder, you also share all of its subfolders unless you make them private.
•You cannot make your folders private if your drive is not formatted as NTFS For information about converting your drive to NTFS

Provide Remote Assistance When Using a NAT Device

You can provide Remote Assistance to a friend who uses a Network Address Translation (NAT) device by modifying the Remote Assistance invitation using XML. Network Address Translation is used to allow multiple computers to share the same outbound Internet connection. To open a Remote Assistance session with a friend who uses a NAT device:

1. Ask your friend to send you a Remote Assistance invitation by e–mail.

2. Save the invitation file to your desktop.
3. Right–click the file, and then click Open With Notepad. You'll see that the file is a simple XML file.
4.Under the RCTICKET attribute is a private IP address, such as 192.168.1.100.
5. Over–write this IP address with your friend's public IP address. Your friend must send you his or her public IP address: they can find out what it is by going to a Web site that will return the public IP address, such as http://www.dslreports.com/ip.
6. Save the file, and then double–click it to open the Remote Assistance session.

Now, you'll be able to connect and provide them with the help they need. So that your inbound IP connection is routed to the correct computer, the NAT must be configured to route that inbound traffic. To do so, make sure your friend forwards port 3389 to the computer they want help from.

Volume Icon in Taskbar

It's really handy to have access to the Volume Control panel in the event you quickly need to move the volume slider up or down. In its default state, XP ships with almost a clean slate for both the desktop and taskbar. So, if you'd like to place the volume control icon in the taskbar, you're going to need to make a little adjustment.

To place the volume control icon in the taskbar, follow these steps:

Single-click the Start menu.
Single-click Control Panel.
Single-click Sound, Speech, and Audio Devices.
Single-click Sounds and Audio Devices to launch the Sound and Audio Devices properties.
On the Volume tab, locate the text labeled "Device Volume" and place a check mark next to the text labeled "Place volume icon in the taskbar."
Single-click Apply.

You should now have the volume icon in the taskbar. Now all you need to do is double-click this icon to bring up your Volume Control panel.

Mapping Network Drives in Windows XP

If you use Windows XP on a local area network (LAN), and you save and open files in shared folders as part of a workgroup on a server, you can create a virtual drive whose drive letter appears in the My Computer window along with those of your local drives — a process referred to as mapping a network drive. To map a network drive, follow these steps:

1. Click Tools-->Map Network Drive on the My Computer menu bar to open the Map Network Drive dialog box.

2. Click the Drive drop-down list button and select the drive letter you want to assign to the virtual drive containing this network folder (note that the list starts with Z: and works backwards to B:) from the pop-up menu.

3. Type the path to the folder on the network drive in the Folder text box or click the Browse button and select the folder directly from the outline of the network drives and folders shown in the Browse For Folder dialog box. Now click OK to close the Browse For Folder dialog box and return to the Map Network Drive dialog box (where the path to the selected folder now appears).

4. If you want Windows to recreate this virtual drive designation for the selected network folder each time that you start and log on to your computer, leave the check mark in the Reconnect at Logon check box.

If you only want to use this drive designation during the current work session, click the Reconnect at Logon check box to remove the check mark.

5. If you're mapping the network drive for someone else who uses a logon different from your own, click the Different User Name hyperlink and enter the user name and password in the associated text boxes in the Connect As dialog box before you click OK.

6. Click the Finish button in the Map Network Drive dialog box to close it and return to the My Computer window.

The network folder that you mapped onto a virtual drive now appears at the bottom of the contents area under a new section called "Network Drives" and Windows automatically opens the folder in a separate window.

After mapping a network folder onto a virtual drive, you can redisplay the contents in the My Computer window by double-clicking that drive icon.

To remove a virtual drive that you've mapped onto My Computer, click Tools-->Disconnect Network Drive; next click the letter of the virtual drive in the Disconnect Network Drives dialog box and then click OK. Windows then displays an alert dialog box warning you that files and folders are currently open on the virtual drive and that you run the risk of losing data if files are open. If you're sure that you have no files open on that drive, click the Yes button to break the connection and remove the virtual drive from the My Computer window.

If you use Windows XP on a local area network (LAN), and you save and open files in shared folders as part of a workgroup on a server, you can create a virtual drive whose drive letter appears in the My Computer window along with those of your local drives — a process referred to as mapping a network drive. To map a network drive, follow these steps:

1. Click Tools-->Map Network Drive on the My Computer menu bar to open the Map Network Drive dialog box.

2. Click the Drive drop-down list button and select the drive letter you want to assign to the virtual drive containing this network folder (note that the list starts with Z: and works backwards to B:) from the pop-up menu.

3. Type the path to the folder on the network drive in the Folder text box or click the Browse button and select the folder directly from the outline of the network drives and folders shown in the Browse For Folder dialog box. Now click OK to close the Browse For Folder dialog box and return to the Map Network Drive dialog box (where the path to the selected folder now appears).

4. If you want Windows to recreate this virtual drive designation for the selected network folder each time that you start and log on to your computer, leave the check mark in the Reconnect at Logon check box.

If you only want to use this drive designation during the current work session, click the Reconnect at Logon check box to remove the check mark.

5. If you're mapping the network drive for someone else who uses a logon different from your own, click the Different User Name hyperlink and enter the user name and password in the associated text boxes in the Connect As dialog box before you click OK.

6. Click the Finish button in the Map Network Drive dialog box to close it and return to the My Computer window.

The network folder that you mapped onto a virtual drive now appears at the bottom of the contents area under a new section called "Network Drives" and Windows automatically opens the folder in a separate window.

After mapping a network folder onto a virtual drive, you can redisplay the contents in the My Computer window by double-clicking that drive icon.

To remove a virtual drive that you've mapped onto My Computer, click Tools-->Disconnect Network Drive; next click the letter of the virtual drive in the Disconnect Network Drives dialog box and then click OK. Windows then displays an alert dialog box warning you that files and folders are currently open on the virtual drive and that you run the risk of losing data if files are open. If you're sure that you have no files open on that drive, click the Yes button to break the connection and remove the virtual drive from the My Computer window.

Create a Password Reset Disk

If you’re running Windows XP Professional as a local user in a workgroup environment, you can create a password reset disk to log onto your computer when you forget your password. To create the disk:

1.Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click User Accounts.
2.Click your account name.
3.Under Related Tasks, click Prevent a forgotten password.
4.Follow the directions in the Forgotten Password Wizard to create a password reset disk.
5.Store the disk in a secure location, because anyone using it can access your local user account.

NTFS vs. FAT

To NTFS or not to NTFS—that is the question. But unlike the deeper questions of life, this one isn't really all that hard to answer. For most users running Windows XP, NTFS is the obvious choice. It's more powerful and offers security advantages not found in the other file systems. But let's go over the differences among the files systems so we're all clear about the choice. There are essentially three different file systems available in Windows XP: FAT16, short for File Allocation Table, FAT32, and NTFS, short for NT File System.

FAT16
The FAT16 file system was introduced way back with MS–DOS in 1981, and it's showing its age. It was designed originally to handle files on a floppy drive, and has had minor modifications over the years so it can handle hard disks, and even file names longer than the original limitation of 8.3 characters, but it's still the lowest common denominator. The biggest advantage of FAT16 is that it is compatible across a wide variety of operating systems, including Windows 95/98/Me, OS/2, Linux, and some versions of UNIX. The biggest problem of FAT16 is that it has a fixed maximum number of clusters per partition, so as hard disks get bigger and bigger, the size of each cluster has to get larger. In a 2–GB partition, each cluster is 32 kilobytes, meaning that even the smallest file on the partition will take up 32 KB of space. FAT16 also doesn't support compression, encryption, or advanced security using access control lists.

FAT32
The FAT32 file system, originally introduced in Windows 95 Service Pack 2, is really just an extension of the original FAT16 file system that provides for a much larger number of clusters per partition. As such, it greatly improves the overall disk utilization when compared to a FAT16 file system. However, FAT32 shares all of the other limitations of FAT16, and adds an important additional limitation—many operating systems that can recognize FAT16 will not work with FAT32—most notably Windows NT, but also Linux and UNIX as well. Now this isn't a problem if you're running FAT32 on a Windows XP computer and sharing your drive out to other computers on your network—they don't need to know (and generally don't really care) what your underlying file system is.

The Advantages of NTFS
The NTFS file system, introduced with first version of Windows NT, is a completely different file system from FAT. It provides for greatly increased security, file–by–file compression, quotas, and even encryption. It is the default file system for new installations of Windows XP, and if you're doing an upgrade from a previous version of Windows, you'll be asked if you want to convert your existing file systems to NTFS. Don't worry. If you've already upgraded to Windows XP and didn't do the conversion then, it's not a problem. You can convert FAT16 or FAT32 volumes to NTFS at any point. Just remember that you can't easily go back to FAT or FAT32 (without reformatting the drive or partition), not that I think you'll want to.

The NTFS file system is generally not compatible with other operating systems installed on the same computer, nor is it available when you've booted a computer from a floppy disk. For this reason, many system administrators, myself included, used to recommend that users format at least a small partition at the beginning of their main hard disk as FAT. This partition provided a place to store emergency recovery tools or special drivers needed for reinstallation, and was a mechanism for digging yourself out of the hole you'd just dug into. But with the enhanced recovery abilities built into Windows XP (more on that in a future column), I don't think it's necessary or desirable to create that initial FAT partition.

When to Use FAT or FAT32
If you're running more than one operating system on a single computer (see Dual booting in Guides), you will definitely need to format some of your volumes as FAT. Any programs or data that need to be accessed by more than one operating system on that computer should be stored on a FAT16 or possibly FAT32 volume. But keep in mind that you have no security for data on a FAT16 or FAT32 volume—any one with access to the computer can read, change, or even delete any file that is stored on a FAT16 or FAT32 partition. In many cases, this is even possible over a network. So do not store sensitive files on drives or partitions formatted with FAT file systems.

How Do I Install Net Meeting

Wondering how to install Netmeeting on Windows XP? Well you don't have to install it! Why? It is already pre-installed with Windows XP, but (by design they say) it isn't linked to anywhere on your programs menu. Here is how to load it:

1: Click START then RUN
2: Enter "conf" without the quotes

That's it - now you can Netmeet to your hearts content.

Useful Tips for Effective Web Design

Listed below are some useful and rather important tips for designing a professional and high quality web site:

Neat and Easy Navigation: Navigation of links on your site plays a big role in determining the stickiness of your site (how long your visitor stays and explores your site). Ask yourself this, What do visitors do as soon as they open your site? They would probably read the content of the present page and then look around to find any other page that interests them. Read our article on Web site Navigation Tips.

Clean Layout Design: A clean layout that uses a lot of white space enhances a site's looks. Try to keep the focus on your content, use dreamweaver templates for this. Use fonts that will be available on all computers to prevent your site looking messed up.

Program using pure CSS: The world is moving away from table based websites to pure CSS websites because it offers accessibility, reusability and considerably reduces file size apart from giving greater control over the look of your website. The single most important skill you can learn today to become a quality web designer is CSS programming! Even if you are not an expert at CSS you can learn to use the following simple CSS Styles Effects to enhance your website:
Cool Text Effects using CSS Styles: Text Links Rollover, Text Case Setting, Text Spacing, Line-through Effect
Bullets in HTML or Deamweaver: Using CSS Styles with bullets (shapes, decimal, roman-numerals, images, etc.)
Links without Underline: Use CSS Styles to display links without the appearance of the underline.
Optimum Load Time: Make sure your load time is low. For this you must:
Minimize Graphics, Flash and scripts: They hugely increase your file size.
Optimize your HTML & script code: Make sure that your site doesn't have any unwanted tags or unused scripts.
Use Server Side Include (SSI) files where ever possible. SSI files once called from the web server reside in its cache so on subsequent requests they load faster.
Read our article Tips for a Fast Loading Site for more.

Design for all Screen Resolutions: A site that is easy-to-use always encourages visitors to stay and read your content. For site with long pages of content this is very crucial as the amount of scrolling required is reduced. Suppose your site doesn't look good for a particular resolution it is very probable that the visitor will close the browser window feeling that the web page is not for their viewing. Designing stretch layouts that fit any screen resolution ensures that you know all your visitors see a visually appealing and professional site.
Read our article Designing for all Screen Resolutions for more.

Ensure Web site scalability: Make sure your code and design is scalable. As technology advances and configuration of computers & their monitors keep increasing and varying it is impossible to test your site in all screen sizes and platforms.

Cross Browser Compatible: Make sure you check your site for Internet Explorer 5+, Mozilla Firefox 1+, Opera 7+, Safari 3+ and Netscape Navigator 6+ as they constitute 95% of the worlds browsers.

Search Engine Tips

The search engines have provided a number of tools that can be used to retrieve information about their database. Not all search engines provide the same features; others may have a different way to access the same feature. The chart below lists the features provided by the search engine.


Note that different results are normally produced for "www.topwebsitetips.com" and "topwebsitetips.com". To view the results type the tool word i.e. "site:" followed by the URL that you wish to check into the search box of the search engine.


Tool Result Google MSN Yahoo
info: One stop place to use all of Googles webpage tools. x - -
site: Webpages that are indexed for this site. x x -
link: Pages that link to this page, this is often not a complete list. x x -
cache: Shows the the search engines cache of the this URL x - -
related: Find web pages that are similar to the this URL x - -
"URL" Find sites that contain the website url. x x x
domain: Webpages that are indexed for this site. - - x
linkdomain: Pages that link to this page, this is often not a complete list. - - x
linkfromdomain:
NEW Pages that this site links to. This will not work if you put "http://www" in front of the domain you wish to check. - x -
inurl: Useful in Google to find out which pages are in the main index. All pages listed are in the main index, if a page shows up in site: but not here it is in the supplemental index Most Useful x x

Link:
In some cases tools can be combined to "fine tune" your results. As an example
"site:http://www.siteone.com link:http://www.sitetwo.com" will show all of the pages in "siteone" that have a link to "sitetwo". This is useful when you are checking to see if one of your link partners is still linking to you.

Another way to accomplish finding if your link partners are still linking to you is with "linkdomain:http://www.sitetwo.com site:http://www.siteone.com" Once again this shows all pages on "siteone" that link to "sitetwo".

When ever using the "link:" tool it is good to remember that Google does not display all of the links it knows about. It is often better to use this tool on MSN when you are wanting to know how many people link to your site.

Allinurl:
Another useful combination uses the "allinurl:" tool. By putting this in the search bar you will get all of the articles in my article folder (as well as any other url that contains the word article). But only on topwebsitetips.com.
"allinurl:Articles site:http://www.topwebsitetips.com"

This is most useful on very large sites that you want to look at the information on only a portion of the pages. One use to is to use this to tell if a certain section of a site is in the supplimental index of Google. You can scroll through hundreds of pages searching for the one web page you want, OR use the "allinurl" to find only the web pages with particular words in the URL.

Top Offsite Webmaster Tools!

This is a list of free webmaster tools that we have found useful that come from other sites. We're testing several tools and will be updating this list soon, so stop by often....editor

CopyScape
Ever wondering if anyone is stealing copy written material from your site. Here is a link that can help you find out.

Markup Validation
This is the W3C Markup Validation Service, a free service that checks Web documents in formats like HTML and XHTML for conformance to W3C Recommendations and other standards. Validating insures that the search engines will be able to index your website. This also ensures that the web browsers will be able to show your web page properly.


Yahoo releases SiteExplorer Yahoo's Site Explorer shows all subpages within a URL indexed by Yahoo. You can also see subpages under a path and inlinks indexed by Yahoo! to a URL. You can also submit missing URLs to Yahoo.

SEO Tips for Websites

Meeting the challenge of boosting a web site high enough into the search engine rankings to be profitable can be difficult. As most web site owners have found out, having a web site built is only the first and sometimes not even the most expensive step in owning a profitable web site.

Paying to have someone else do all the web site promotion is expensive. However with the right knowledge most SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and promotional tasks can be accomplished by the web site owner, at little or no cost. Even if you do not plan to do all the work yourself its worthwhile to understand what you are paying for when you hire a SEO company.

Page Rank
Much of this site is devoted to increasing links to your site, all of the major search engines use these links to determine how important your website is, which is used to help determine where your site will show in the SERPs. Google uses links to determine your Page Rank. Something to consider though, is Page Rank is only 1 of over 100 things that Google considers when deciding which sites to show in the SERPs, and is not necessarily the most important. Don't overlook the many articles in this site that will help you understand the importance of these other things.

Remember that the search engines goal is to produce the most relevant results to a searchers request. The foremost and most important thing to do when optimizing your site is to be sure you have useful content on your site and the search engines are able to access it.

Once that is accomplished (or while you are adding additional content), then you should start applying the many tips you will find on this site, in order to promote your site and drive traffic to it.

Our goal is to provide up-to-date information and tools to help you make the most of your web site. From SEO tips and articles, to advice on obtaining hundreds of free back links, to help on choosing the best affiliate program, we provide what you need to make your web site a success!

You Know You Should Use JavaScript When…

You know you should use JavaScript when the task cannot be accomplished with any other technology.

That’s what Doug suggested when I asked him for a nicer spin on a something that was going through my head:


JavaScript: If it can be done in another language, it should be done in another language.

That just sounds so negative, which is definitely not what I’m getting at here. But I am trying to make a point. JavaScript is capable of doing taks that can also be accomplished in other languages. JavaScript is also capable of doing things that cannot be done in any other language. Some examples are probably in order.

Form Validation
You can validate a form with JavaScript. You can create a great user experience doing it this way, but of coures you’d be dumb not to validate all the inputs again with a server side language before processing them. If you are going to pick one or the other, go server side. If it can be done with another language, use the other language.

Inserting Content
I just had a circumstance where I needed to load in a block of dynamic navigation onto the homepage of a site that was created by a CMS in a subdirectory of the site. Ideally, this navigation would be created in a file that could be server-side-included on the homepage and anywhere else that needed it. Long story short, I couldn’t make it happen. Instead, I used jQuery load function to grab the block. Works great, unless you don’t/can’t use JavaScript. If it can be done with another language, use the other language.

In a similar vein, the whole concept of AJAX is generally regarded as a hack. It is a way to simulate two-way communication in a technology built for one-way delivery. When something new comes along that more naturally accommodates two way browser-server communication, AJAX is gone. If it can be done with another language, use the other language.

Styling
JavaScript is capable of applying styling to elements on the page. That’s also the job of CSS. Having a bunch of styling information in the JavaScript muddies the water. It makes the JavaScript harder to read, and styling updates more difficult to track down. If it can be done with another language, use the other language.

One of the major reasons JavaScript libraries are popular is because they open up some awesome design possibilities. You can fade things in and out, animate sizes and positions, and do it with smoothness and style. But these things are design related, not (usually) functionality related. Hence, we are seeing CSS starting to accommodate doing these same exact things. I would argue CSS is the appropriate place for this, rather than the somewhat hacky “rapidly altering the DOM” technique JavaScript libraries use. If it can be done with another language, use the other language.

When TO Use
Alright enough don’t-use cases. There are many more circumstances where using JavaScript is the only option. How about events? JavaScript is the only language available for having your website communicate with the browser and watch for events: clicks, double clicks, mouse enters, mouse exits, key presses, browser window sizing… the list goes on. If you need access to those events, you are in JavaScript territory.

Simple Tricks To Get Website Traffic

Its so important that you drive traffic to your website. The more traffic you have, the more money you will make, its a given. But, knowing how to get traffic to your website and actually putting the task to practice is where the work comes in.



Website traffic is hard to get if you expect to just set up a blog and wait for the visitors to come. It doesn't happen that way. You, the blog owner, have to get out there and promote your blog. There are lots of ways to do it, so find one way to promote your website and stick to it.



The stick-to-it-ness is where most people fall off. I mean they quit, they give up. But, you have to be persistent. Doing the same thing over and over again can get boring. However, if you want to drive traffic to your website, you might as well strap up and get ready for the long haul.



Use social media like Twitter, Facebook and social media aggregator FriendFeed to establish a presence. But, instead of doing the norm on Twitter and Facebook, try putting a promotional, stand out from the crowd spin on your updates.



Share your love of music on Twitter using Blip.fm. Blip.fm interacts with Twitter and allows the free sharing of your music on Twitter. Your followers will click on the music you share and if you're lucky, they'll read your profile to find out more about you. This is where you shine. Make sure you create a profile that will lead back to your website. Get some website traffic that way.



If you like to take pictures and want to share your images on Twitter, you can use Twitpic or Flickr to post your image links as updates. Everybody likes looking at pictures and graphics on the internet, so promote your photos. And, oh, be honest, don't steal someone else's work and masquerade it as your own.



But, the all time easiest and fastest way to get website traffic is to leave comments on do follow blogs and websites. There is no better way, more proven to drive traffic and build your page rank than by commenting on relevant blogs. You get an invaluable link back from a relevant site, and you gain new readers. A win-win situation for your website traffic driven agenda.



Keep in mind, don't leave spam comments, that will get you banned from the site or more importantly, leaving spam comments will get the comment deleted.



This isn't a long post, I don't want to ramble, but if you don't want to use Twitter, or don't 'get it' then spend a couple of hours a day commenting on relevant blogs and watch your website traffic grow.

How to Become Über Organized Using Google Calendar and Drupal

This is a trick I have been trying to pull off for years. The technology has been almost there or perhaps even all the way there for some time. I worked on perfecting my setup quite a bit, but maybe I quit right when the breakthrough was about to happen. No matter, the method works now and I am much closer to knowing where I am supposed to be at any particular minute.

The components I use for my particular level of organization, namely Drupal and Google Calendar, are not the only tools that will do the job. Any application that puts out an .ics file can play. When I first started to attempt this, there was no Google Calendar. I tried it using the calendar found at the Mozilla website; it is a standalone app. If you frequently find yourself without Internet access and needing to check your calendar then Sunbird may be just what you want. Many other applications use the standard iCal format and should work well.

The first step in the journey is to create a website for every organization you are involved with. It is important to use software that outputs the iCal format for events. Drupal does this, if you prefer another system that works as well, then by all means go for it. Maybe you are truly lucky and all your favorite groups already have a website that formats events in the iCal format. If so, skip to the next step.

Now you need to decide where you want to have the master calendar. As I mentioned before there are programs that will run on your computer and you can have a calendar that way. Personally it is much easier for me to set the Google Calendar as my home page and just use that one. I don't have to run a separate program, and besides, I dig the sexy interface. I will assume that you do, too, and I won't mention any other master calendar from here out.

So, you have your source calendar and your website, which is the source of the events. Assuming you do in fact use Drupal, you will see a little calendar-looking icon near the events part. When you click that, you will be prompted to download an .ics file. What you really want to do here is to right click and copy the link location (copy shortcut for IE).

Go back to your GCal and click Manage calendars in the lower left. You will then see a new screen. Hit Add calendar.

This screen has suggestions that you may add to your calendar. Be sure to come back later and add anything that appeals to you. Right now what you want to do is click Add by URL right next to the search box at the top. The next screen asks for the Public Calendar Address: and this is where you add the link from your website. The link will look like http://leolastreetgarden.org/event/ical when taken from Drupal.

This is when the magic happens. If the leader of the organization is properly trained and suitably motivated, he will add the events to the website in a timely fashion. All you have to do is sit back and be updated.

If you are not so lucky, it is still well worth your while to track down the upcoming events and add them yourself. It is not difficult, after all.

You may want to add the holidays for your own particular area, and you can add even more calendars at iCalShare.

This could be the coolest feature of the Internet. Everyone understands it. It works. I like it.

Web Site Promotion and Getting into Search Engines

Creating your own web site and getting on line is the easy bit because the software does everything for you. By far the most difficult aspect of any web site is promotion. How do you get people to look at your site when no one knows its there? Okay, so you will tell everyone you know the web address of your site and they can all go and enjoy it, but what about the rest of the world?

I mistakenly believed that the search engines would find it – wrong. Even the search engines don’t know its there because you’ve not told them. You will have to visit the search engines yourself and submit your web address but they offer no guarantees that they will list you. The big search engines like Yahoo currently charge several hundred dollars a year to guarantee that you will be listed; you can submit your site for free but they will take at weeks to maybe list it if they can get around to it at all.

There is submission software available that will submit your site to hundreds of search engines for you and thousands of sites that will also do it for you some for a price and others for free. Some will also bombard you with emails offering you other offers. One particular site that we tried sent about 10 emails a day full of useless information and I’ve heard of others that will send you hundreds of emails so be careful. But in the meantime visit as many search engines as you can and look for the ‘Add URL’ or ‘Submit site’ link and submit to the free section if they have one.

Web Site Meta Tags: What They Are and Why They’re Important
All your web pages will need to have what are known as ‘meta tags’ hidden in the page -- the web-design software will allow you to insert these. Meta tags are basically a means for search engines to list your site correctly and include a brief description of that particular web page and key words for it. These keywords are very important as these will be the words that people will type into the search engines when looking for a specific subject. Try to think what words you yourself would put into a search engine if you were looking for a site like yours.

Believe me it not as easy as it sounds, as you don’t simply want to be listed in the search engines results, but also within the first few pages -– there can hundreds of pages of search results and most people bother only with the first couple of pages.

The whole process of web site promotion is a science in itself and one that even I am struggling to master. At present the only time we come top of the search results is if we do a search for our site’s name ‘Echostains’. But, let’s face it, unless you know the site’s name in advance you are not likely to enter it into a search box. However things are improving slowly. At first we were not even listed and then came the great day when we showed up for the first time.

The more web sites you can get to link to or list your site, the more search results are returned. And the more your site is accessed, the greater your page ranking becomes and you will move nearer to the front of the queue. However, like I said before this is a whole subject on its own (for more on this, see About.com Web Search) and to begin with you will be happy just to let your friends know your web site address so that they can view your work wherever they are in the world.

Tips and Tricks to Drive Website Traffic Upwards

Today the challenge every web owner faces is the same - how to drive web traffic upwards every day. If you are a web owner you could do it with a few tips and tricks yourself. You can analyze these tips against what you are already doing to propagate your website and make modifications or improvements if necessary.

Though people do talk about being unique and innovative in whatever strategy you use there is no denying tried and tested methods. It is important to implement these methods carefully so that they are fully effective. There is no point in adopting a method half heartedly and leaving it mid way and then grumbling about it not having any success rate. Any method can be proven only if it is tried out full heartedly and consistently - this is the thumb rule you should ideally keep in mind.

There are professional online marketing service providers who can modify and adopt these methods to suit your business needs. Though you will be spending some money for this kind of service you can rest assured about their success. Of course if you have time and never hesitate to put in a lot of effort you can try out most of these methods single-handedly too.

Is there any point in just getting some one to click on your URL and not capturing their interest once they are into your website? Of course not! After all the ultimate aim of any website promotion is business growth and unless that is there nothing else is of any consequence. When your site is content rich and well organized it is automatically user friendly. People who come in will be tempted to surf around and learn more about you, your products and services and various offers etc. Eventually they will make a sale or hire your services and thus become your customers. And for this entire circle to happen the website appearance is crucial.

So pay attention to that. The next trick is to make sure that your website is SEO or search engine optimized when people search on your business niche, your website should prominently figure on the top page of search results so as to capture those people as visitors to your website. For this you will need to carefully identify the keywords for your niche and increase keyword density as much as possible in your web page content. There are tools available online and material to figure out such keywords. To improve search engine ranking and also to get more traffic you can go for reciprocal linking. You identify already popular sites that are allied with your business, talk to their owners and come to an agreement - to display their site link on yours and they do the same for you.

There are methods costing money like PPC or Pay Per Click and Affiliate Marketing. Articles writing and publishing on other sites, having your own blog, participating in other blogs, social networking, offline marketing are all other tips available to be used to drive traffic through various routes.

Mark West invites you to increase your website traffic with our Free Online Smart and Safe Backlink Building Guide. Your source for FREE Unlimited Backlinks. Get your FREE copy today at http://etraffichub.com

7 Advanced Google Analytics Tricks

In a previous post on the best Web analytics solutions I mentioned that in my view Omniture is the clear leader in enterprise Web analytics and that Google Analytics is the best free solution. Omniture has spoilt me and I often wish I could get a little more out of GA (which I use on Da Vinci Planet). After some digging around I found a few hacks that enable valuable reports in Google Analytics, including full referrer URLs, file downloads, and custom segmentation.

1. How to track file downloads, clicks on outbound links or Flash

Google Analytics provides an easy way to track clicks on links that lead to file downloads like PDFs or MP3s, outbound links and Flash. Simply include an onClick event in the hyperlink that calls the urchinTracker JavaScript. Link.

2. Integrate Google Website Optimizer with Google Analytics

Website Optimizer is a multivariate web page testing tool that can help you understand which web page designs really work. It uses a javascript code snippet very similar to Google Analytics. However, Website Optimizer only uses conversion rate as the metric to determine which combination of variations is best. You can use GA with Website Optimizer to use more valuable metrics like Page Value, Avg. Time and Bounce Rate. Link.

3. Identify additional search engines in the Referral reports

By default, GA tracks referrals from 20 search engines, however, you can add additional search engines by adding _uOsr and _uOkw variables to your tracking code. When you look closely at your Referring Source report you may notice some sources where the Medium is “referral” and that are search results on Web sites that should come through as “organic”. Link.

4. Tracking full referrer URLs

A common complaint about Google Analytics is that it truncates URLs at the end of the pagename and cuts off the querystring. So on sites that use query parameters as page identifiers, some reports will show aggregate numbers for those pages. There are two ways one can address this issue:
1. Use the urchinTracker to record the whole URL. Link
2. Create a User-defined report by using Custom Filters. With Custom Filters you can manipulate data before GA simplifies it and therefore one can do lots of interesting things like extracting segments into extra profiles. Link.

5. Track AdSense clicks

There is a lot of debate on the legality of using GA to track AdSense clicks, but if you are interested this is how you can do it. Link.

6. Custom Segmentation

The utmSetVar variable can be used to assign users to a certain segment. E.g. you could use the variable to track users that viewed a particular page. The variable populates the User-Defined report (Marketing Optimization > Visitor Segment Performance > User-Defined) report. Note that only the first value of this variable is recorded. Link.

7. Use link tagging to track campaigns

You can use GA to track all your campaigns including email campaigns. AdWords campaigns are tracked by default if the account is linked to your GA account, however you need to tag your links in order to use campaign tracking for other campaigns. Link tagging simply requires you to add certain parameters to your URL and Google has a nifty URL Builder for the purpose. Link.

UPDATE: The new version of Google Analytics is out and while the reports have changed the configuration and advanced tricks mentioned above have not. Phew!

8 Awesome Google Analytics Hacks, Tips and Tricks

When Google released Google Analytics, they allowed webmasters to use near-enterprise level analytics for free. However, there are a lot of things you need to tinker with in order to get some of the data you need from it. So, here's my list of 8 things you really should be doing to get the most out of GA.

1. Tracking clicks on links. Every time you put a link to anything external or a download on a page, make sure you add onClick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/link/linkname'); ". Always know where your visitors went.
2. Tracking user groups. If you're sending people to a landing page, and you want to know where they go from there, segment them by using onLoad="javascript:pageTracker._setVar('Segment/Subgroup');". This will help you know what different groups are doing, and split-test user behaviour.
3. Tracking full referred URLs. You'll often get visits from forums or blogs that append their URLs. That's not much use to you, so to make sure you know where people actually came from, set up a filter with the following settings:
   • Name: Full Referrers
   • Type: Custom filter - Advanced
   • Field A -> Extract A: Referral > (.*)
   • Field B -> Extract B: -
   • Output To -> Constructor: User-defined > $A$1
4. Exclude internal visits. Add a new filter, with the "Exclude all traffic from an IP address" setting. Then add your own IP address, and repeat for any other IPs you don't want to be included. Make sure you escape any full stops, with a backslash, like this: 63.212.171.
5. Tracking across multiple domains/subdomains. If you're running a very large site, or a site that spans multiple domains, you'll need to be able to track visits across those sites. Fortunately, we have a way of doing that. Firstly, we set up the following filter:
   • Name: Full URI
   • Type: Custom filter - Advanced
   • Field A -> Extract A: Hostname > (.*)
   • Field B -> Extract B: Request URI > (.*)
   • Output To -> Constructor: Request URI > /$A1$B1

   Now you'll see URLs in your content reports that look like this: www.example.com/index.html, help.example.com/more.html and so on. Next, we tweak the analytics code slightly, adding the following line under "var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-xxxxxx-x");"

   pageTracker._setDomainName(".example.com");

   That will make the code work across all your subdomains.

6. Tracking ecommerce transactions. Yes, Google Analytics has a full ecommerce module built in too. To learn how to enable it, go to the GA e-commerce transactions page, and follow the instructions.

   However, you can make it even better, by adding the following to the body tag of your your success page: onload="pageTracker._setVar("Customer");"

   This will tag any buyer as a custom segment, called Customer. Note that this function can be called at any time to tag people, such as those arriving at a landing page from a TV ad...

7. Tracking exact keywords for AdWords. The problem with the keyword reports for your paid search campaigns, is that they only show the keyword that was triggered, not the exact keyword the person actually typed in. If you want to get that, you're going to have to create the following two filters...
   • Name: PPC Keywords 1
   • Type: Custom filter - Advanced
   • Field A -> Extract A: Referral > (\?|&)(q|p)=([^&]*)
   • Field B -> Extract B: Campaign Medium > cpc|ppc
   • Output To -> Constructor: Custom Field 1 > $A3

   Field A Required, Field B Required and Override Output Field need to be set to Yes.

   • Name: PPC Keywords 2
   • Type: Custom filter - Advanced
   • Field A -> Extract A: Custom Field 1 > (.*)
   • Field B -> Extract B: Campaign Term > (.*)
   • Output To -> Constructor: Campaign Term > $B1,($A1)

   Again, Field A Required, Field B Required and Override Output Field need to be set to Yes.
   Now when you look in your reports, you'll see the actual keyword the searchter typed in, in brackets next to the keyword that was triggered. Cool, huh?

8. Making the site overlay tool useful. There's a basic flaw in the way the site overlay works. Unfortunately, it groups all clicks on a URL togeter, so if you've got two links to the same URL, it'll report the total data for both, rather than for each link individually. To get around this, leave the first link to the URL in question as it is, but add &location=x to the end of each additional link (where x isthe number of that link, so the first extra link would be 1, a second would be 2 and so on). Fixed!

How to build your first website - part 4

How to get visitors to your web site

There are a number of ways to get visitors to your site, like for example the search engines, more about search engines here, how to prepare your pages for the search engines here and where to submit your site to the search engines and directories here. Other out of the box ideas how to get traffic here. Some good articles on website marketing can be found here. Now once you have your website up and running don't just forget it, add regularly new pages with content to give the visitor a reason to come back. The search engines also love to find new pages so more pages more possibilities for the search engines to find your site.


How to make money with your website
See this article here about how to make money with your website. Now remember as mentioned there as well its always important you follow the rules of any sponsor to the letter! They can kick you out of the program for any reason and will do so when you are in breach of their terms. It takes time to build yourself a good reputation but easy to destroy it and loose your source of income, so again follow the rules! More sponsors are listed here and here.

How to build your first website - part 3

How to build your first website - part 3



The structure of a web site:


In this example:

From Index (this is the home page, always named index.html) have a link to each subtopic and back to index

From Each subtopic have a link to the sub pages

On every page have have a navigation menu (text link on top, bottom or in a side bar) that leads to index and subtopic 1, 2 and 3

For best results use text links and have the keyword you want to use in there.

When doing link exchanges have most pointed to your index but a few to some of the important sub pages also.

Prepare best a little chart like the one above so you can visualize better the structure of your web site and if you have many pages and files, you may also use subfolders to store your files the same way you would do on your home computer.

For more on your website layout see also this page.

Navigation.
We use links from text or graphics so the visitor can navigate our website like here on this page on the bottom. Look for a simple layout that makes it easy for the visitor so he can find what he is looking for without having to read the hole 9 yards. See this page on website navigation for some tips.

The header of your web pages.
The header of your web pages is not visible in the browser (unless you select view source code) but it includes important information like the page title for example. This information is important so the search engines can find you. I normally use this set of tags for my headers:

<html>

<head>
<title>Your site title and description goes here</title>
<meta name="robots" content="index all, follow all">
<meta name="description" content="Your site title and description goes here">
<meta name="keywords" content="Keyword1, keyword2, keyword3, etc etc">
</head>

How to build your first website - part 2

How to build your first website - part 2

Adding Content:
Adding Text.
With the mentioned WYSIWIG editors you can add and format text in the same way as you do in you favorite word processor like MS Word for example without having to worry to much about HTML (Hyper text markup language) For a good layout on web pages we use tables (some of those editors mentioned make it easy to insert tables and format them in size and color) you can use tables to order text and graphics layout visible and with borders or invisible and without borders etc. For a primer on manipulating text in HTML see this tutorial and for tables in HTML see this one. The webpages will be saved in the html file format and once prepared locally we need to upload them to the hosting companies web server.

Adding Graphics.
In the same way as we do in the word processor we add also the graphics here on the web pages and keep them either in the same folder as the html files or create a folder called images from where we access those files, remember those image files need to be stored the same way as the html files on the server (computer) that is accessible to the web, so we need to upload those the same way. The formats for graphics used on the web are mostly .gif (for line graphics) and .jpeg (for photos). Try to resize and compress the graphics as much as possible so they will download fast and not make your pages slow to download, also try not to overburden your pages with to many graphics, in good design less is often better. For more on graphics see this tutorial.



Making Links.
We can link up text or graphics to point to other web pages on the same site or other web pages on the web. Most editors let you insert the links with ease, just highlight the text or the graphic you want to link and click on the insert hyperlink button in the toolbar (probably a button that contains a little chain icon) and a new window opens where you can place the url of your external link or the file name of your own webpage in your site you want to link to. See this tutorial on more about hyper-linking.

Adding Forms.
The webpage editors will let you also add forms to your web pages so you can collect information that the visitor to your site can submit, this make the page more interactive and is important if you want to have feed back from your visitors. See this tutorial for more about forms.

Adding special effects.
There is a great number of special effects we can add to our web pages using java applets, java scripts, flash or dhtml. Just as mentioned above with the graphics dont overdo it and use those effects where it makes sense only, after all you might y not want your webpage to look like a blinking Christmas tree ;) You can find some great effects here at DynamicDrive.

How to build your first website - part 1

How to build your first website - part 1

In order to keep this little tutorial short and sweet we will not go in to many details, but we give you a link to more in-depth tutorials in each section.


What we need to start:
A computer PC o Macintosh.
Guess no need to elaborate here as you probably already have one with internet access as you read this.

A web page/site editor.
If you dont have any webpage editing software installed on your computer you can download a webpage editor from here Some reviews of popular editors are found here. Note there are some basic text style editors and some wysiwyg (What you see is what you get) editors where the later group might be easier to start with. Some popular programs are for example Dreamweaver and MS Frontpage.

Next you need hosting (where you store your files accessible to the web) and a domain name or a address (URL) that your hosting provider will give you. Some internet access providers give you a free account with your internet access account (best call them up and ask) or you can use one of the free hosting services like Yahoo / GeoCities for example, Geocities will give you both free hosting and your address. If you plan to use the website for a business then I recommend you get a paid hosting service and buy your own domain name, so you have more control over it and it looks more like a serious business.



A software program to manipulate graphics. If you want to place photos or graphics on your page you need to make them suitable in size for your webpages, photos for example can be resized and compressed for faster download so your pages load faster, for this you can use most graphic or photo editing software. If you dont have anything on your computer yet you can download a graphics editor here. Paint Shop Pro is a good and easy to use program or Photoshop for the more advanced user is a great program that comes not cheap do.

FTP Software.
An FTP (File Transfer Protocol) Software will help you to upload the files from your computer to the web server of your hosting provider that is connected always to the internet. Its really easy to use, you just set up the data like server name, user name, password etc once and connect and then you get on the left side the directories and files of your local computer and on the right side the directories and files on your hosting companies server, so you just select on the left side what files you want to upload and click they are sent to the server. You can find some FTP programs to download here.

Targeted traffic is what you need

Identify your target visitor! Prepare a detailed description of the audience you are seeking. What age group, what education level, geographic location, language, economic background etc.

It makes no sense to have tons of visitors to a site that lets say sells sports cars but the visitor looks for cookie recipes. If you want to sell cars get the visitor that looks for cars and you will sell.

It is not the same to design for a computer nerd seeking the latest software, a grandmother looking for a present for her grandchildren, a top manager seeking the latest stock market quotes or information on investments in your area or a tourist trying to find a nice hotel and travel information etc.

Secondly define what you want them to get out of your site! Do you want to sell to them directly? getting a sales lead with information on there needs? let them know a new product is on the market? promoting your new image or service? getting there e-mail for later contacts or giving them information to cut cost in distributing newsletters or instruction manuals?? etc.

Match your objectives and your target audience's needs.

Sponsor programs for website

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More sponsor programs can be found here

Making money with your web site

Is it possible to make some money with a website, you may ask. Well the fast answer is yes you can. Now, you may treat this like a hobby and make just a few dollars out of it or you may treat it as a business and the sky is the limit. But be warned there is work involved if you want to make some good profit, its not just building a few pages and your rich, nope its like any business the more serious you threat it, the more time you invest and the better your business idea and plan is the better you will do.

Well first lets analyze what type of business websites are out there:

Existing brick and mortar business that wants to expand sales, get new sales leads, improve or change their image, announce new products or services or offer customer services online to save money etc.

Purely web based business (like Google, Yahoo, EBay or Amazon for example) that offer goods or services online. Even do many niches are covered already here, remember that the Internet is still in its beginning and many more small start ups still have good chances to strike it rich.

Government and private organizations that offer mostly information or services online in order to reduce cost and get their messages out to a broader audience.

Now fine, but what about you and me who are not Mr. Bill Gates and don't have much millions to invest, how do we get started or what possibilities do we have?

First lets think of what about you want to build a website, what are your interests, hobbies or do you have special knowledge about something? What type of unique content can you produce? Are you good in writing stories, a great or maybe not so great amateur photographer, painter?

Want to make a blog about your travel experiences, what is going on in your community or what is going on in your business sector? Or do you have a clever new idea about renewable energy resources or whatever else.

So if you don't want to build a huge business but just do a small site about your hobby for example I have good news for you, even here you can make money with your website.

See this Adsense Tour from Google for example. And I quote:

"Google AdSense is the program that can give you advertising revenue from each page on your website—with a minimal investment in time and no additional resources. AdSense delivers relevant text and image ads that are precisely targeted to your site and your site content."

So you can include a little script in your webpages and adsense delivers the ads, when you get enough visitors (traffic) to your website some visitors will click on those ads and you will get paid. Make sure you follow the exact terms and rules that googles adsense requests. With this sponsors program as with any other its really important you read and understand the terms well so you don't get in trouble down the road! Googles adsense is only one of the many sponsors you can use but its easy to implement because you can use it for many topics, here you find a list of more sponsors you can use as well.

Try to build a web site about a subject that you really like, have some knowledge about and where you think you can contribute something to the world that will interest people to come and visit your site, but relax there is an audience out there for almost anything from nature lovers to the lasted high tech topic.

Now you see we have shown you one easy way to make money on the web, there are many more and we will get to those in our next article.

Website Layout - Tips & Tricks

The importance of a good site layout

Websites are judged by content and layout. How good your content maybe, if your layout is not appealing, visitors will not be eager to come back. Everyone is not born with a quality of creating layouts that are pleasing to the eye. If you have been to different Yahoo groups, you might have found various color combinations that the group owner has chosen. Some of them have red backgrounds with blue colored text creating a blinding effect. Although Yahoo provides all the possible color combinations, some choose the wrong colors.

Points to consider while designing a website layout

Website design is not a one time activity. Almost all websites alter their layouts to give it a new and better look. Also with advancement in technology, underlying code also changes accordingly, adding new possibilities of providing a better layout.
Keep it simple:
A simple website layout is user friendly. Do not create complex navigational links using complex scripts or images that maynot be viewable correctly in different browsers. Also search engines cannot index the site properly if complex navigation is involved. Minimize the use of bulky images which take long to load. Use smaller icons to attract visitor's attention instead.


Readable font size and face:
Use a standard font size of "-1" (11 or 12 pixels if using styles) so that visitors can read the content easily. Select a professional looking font face (Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif are very common). Avoid using fancy fonts like Comic Sans
(unless it is a personal website). Use appropriate spacing between lines (12 or more pixels) to avoid clumsiness.


Use web safe eye pleasing colors:
The choice of colors may reflect one's personal taste. Every webmaster or designer wants the color combination that he/she likes best. However, it is a wise decision to get feedback from users or friends about what they feel about the color combination
of the website. Use web safe colors whenever possible.


Webpage Dimensions:
One important aspect of layout is keeping track of dimensions of a web page. Most successful commercial websites limit the width and height of the webpage so that the important content of the webpage lies within the top 600x600 viewable area without scrolling. To avoid a horizontal scrollbar, set the page layout to expand and shrink with changes in browser window size. Sometimes this interferes with image and text positions relative to each other and throws the layout structure out of sync. The best choice is to limit the width by placing a table with a fixed width of 750 or 775 pixels. See the layout of this web page for an example.

The page height should not be any more than 4 scroll lengths. Limit the content of the page and if more content needs to be added, move it to a new web page. Provide a navigational link to the next page and a link back from the second page. This will also increase your web site's page views (adding more advertising space).


Limit File Size:
Webpage size is defined by the total size of text, images and supporting files (including javascript, flash etc.) that is downloaded from the server to view a webpage. Page size is very critical for high volume websites because of high bandwidth needed. However, it is also very important for any other site in order to keep loading times to a minimum. Most of the population on the internet use a slow 56K modem to access the internet. And smaller page sizes load faster. If you look at some very high volume websites like Yahoo.com and Google.com, they hardly have any images, making their site load faster.

There is a trade off between making your webpage look nicer with lots of graphics and making it faster to load. The rough target for page size should be below 35K for at least the cover page. However, for e-commerce sites, it is often not possible because they have to present multiple product images to attract attention. As a general rule of thumb, a visitor will leave your site if the loading time is more than 8 secs.

Tips & tricks
Extract Javascript code and styles from within the html page to external .js and .css files. Create a link from each html page to these external files. Browsers download these files only once and caches them on the user's computer. This will reduce the size of the individual html pages.


Use server side includes for centralizing common content. Read this article for more details.


Use a background which creates a contrast to the font colors and graphics. Look at media sites like movies.com for an example. It uses a dark background with lighter fonts in order to create a theatre like setting. However, the site is easy to read and navigate.


Check regularly for broken links. Using a link checker or checking the list of 404 errors (File not found) in your website logs (or stats) will help maintain site links. Maintenance of links to external sites can be centralized using link tracking tools

Customize Windows Media Player Title Bar

Change the title bar to read Windows Media Player provided by , so if I had entered text MAYANK , it would read: Windows Media Player provided by MAYANK.

[Start] [Run] [Regedit]

Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER>Software>Policies>Microsoft Create the Key [WindowsMediaPlayer] Create String value named [TitleBar]

Data Type: REG_SZ // Value Name: TitleBar
Double click TitleBar and Enter the text to be displayed in the title bar.

Exit Registry / Reboot

How To Delete Annoying Multiple Entries in Boot Screen

Suppose you have multiple copies of Windows XP installed in your PC in different drives or installed Windows XP on top of another operating system like Windows 98 or Windows 2000. Now, though you may have removed some or all of the older versions, still the boot screen continues to show the old operating system entries. Isn't it annoying and confusing to remember and select every time the only right option? Don't worry, here is how you can get rid of the problem forever:

1. Load windows and login if required
2. Go to Start menu, click on Run and then type cmd. This open up the command window.
3. Type this command:
bootcfg /delete /id x
where x is the number of the option you want to delete. Say, for example, you want to delete 2nd boot option then you will type bootcfg
/delete /id 2 and so on.
4. Now reboot the machine to check that you have only the correct option(s) available.

Note:
* Please be careful in step 3 and don't delete the correct operating system because that will prevent you from booting.
* Repeat step 3 to delete all unnecessary operating system menus.

ATM tips to keep it safe

How we select an ATM?
There is no such defined formula that can assurance you about the security of the ATM selection. Therefore, the ATM user needs to exercise some carefulness when selecting an ATM.

There are some steps to fellow:

1)Always go for banking in daylight hours and specially avoid to visiting ATM at weekend night.
2)Always choose ATM location which you are most familiar, most nearest point from your home or heavily traveled areas.
3)First observe the surroundings of ATM before make any transaction, if there are any person looking you then tries to avoid using ATM this time.
4)The best practice is that always go for ATM with any family member or with your best friend.
5)Avoid using if you find any other machine or code reader attached with the ATM machine.
6)Always select the ATM that is monitored by bank security or with security camera.

Using an ATM

1)Be careful when any strangers offer to help you at an ATM, even if your card is block by machine or you are experiencing difficulty with the transaction.
2)Check your surrounding any other person in the queue keep an acceptable distance from you.
3)Stand very close to the ATM and shield the keypad with your hand when keying in your PIN code otherwise any other person can guess your number.
4)Press the Cancel key on keyboard when you find the ATM is not working properly and withdraw your card. Avoid force your card into the card slot.
5)Always keep your printed transaction record so that you can compare your ATM receipts to your monthly statement.
6)If your card jammed in ATM, report this immediately to the bank.

Manner to use your ATM

1)Try to memorize your PIN code and avoid writing it down on public access book, doing so on secret book.
2)Never tell your PIN to any third person, whether to family member, office staff.
3)using easily guessable numbers for your PIN code for example your date of birth, your phone number and others.
4)Change your PIN code on weekly basis.
5)Weekly check your account balance and bank statements if you find any problem, contact to your bank immediately.

Tips to become a hacker

Certainly there are many sources of information available that can give you computer hacking basics. There is actually some misconception about who a real hacker is. Hacking computers is performed by one who knows computers very well - even the extra tricks of a computer and electronics. He can easily tweak these according to his needs and become hacker. This is the way the term was used when Bill Gates was inventing Windows.

Those who are often referred to as hackers today, should actually be called "crackers" - people who do not have unauthorized access, like a safe-cracker. If you doubt me, and want to know how to be a hacker then do a search on the term "professional hacker," and you will find many professional and legitimate computer training courses being offered. They are the ones learning the real hacker secrets.

What Are The Basics Needed To Become A Hacker

Everyone has heard of one individual or another that was caught while hacking computers that belonged to this or that organization. Because hacking into computers is highly illegal, it should be mentioned that this article will not mention any real specifics about the subject, and this author would rather gladly encourage you to become a real hacker - professionally.

This article, will however, give a brief overview of criminal hackers, some of their methods, and a few things you can do to make your own computer safer from hack attacks. Here are those things you need to learn on how to become a hacker.

■Learn Computers

It should go without saying that the first thing that is needed is to learn about computers. This means study. A lot of reading is involved along with just plain old-fashioned learning how to use a computer. Then, of course, there are the special aspects of computer study. The places where the tips are learned is often two-fold: a friend who has access to a computer, and a variety of places on the Web. But this is also an interesting thing - if a young person has the ability to learn, and wants to learn can use hacking tutorials- then why not take the time to learn the right things - things that can earn him a lot of money in the legit world? Is it possibly that it could be the friend he has that turns him away from the good?

■Learn The Websites

Special hacker Web sites, where hackers congregate, exist on the Web - as does every other known group of people - whether legal or illegal. Some of these are known to be hacker chat rooms, hacker forum, and regular hacker sites.

■Learn The Secrets

It is in these Web sites, and possibly some of the people that he may meet, maybe only online, where he will learn the hacking basics, and learn how to hack.

Tools Hackers Need To Get Into Websites

Some of the tools that a hacker may use are often varied and constantly changing. One such tool that was used last year allowed a hacker to gain control of the computers of those who simply mistyped the word Google - when trying to get the popular search engine. This automatically directed them to a special website that would give them such malware items as Trojan downloaders, backdoors and spyware.

Another tool would be the robot spider. These can be sent out and put on automatic and will look for ports of access into your computer. These spiders are running around all the time and some say that they may hit most computers that are online - up to 50 times a day.

Other tools use email attachments. It is claimed that as much as 65% of all email is spam. And as much as 1 in about 30 emails contains a virus, or some form of malware. This is why having your own virus and spam protection is a must, as well as a good spyware remover. Someone is busy. Once someone has been hacking information on a computer they will often leave a Trojan file that will give them further access - often more than one file. Then they could use your computer to send out spam attacks - without you even knowing that it is taking place. Or, they could simply be hacking your personal information off of your computer. These are just a few of their tools.

How Hackers Avoid Getting Caught

One of the first things that someone would learn about hacking tutorials when studying to be a hacker is how to cover their tracks. Of course, some are better than others. A young hacker is less likely to know all the little things that an expert hacker might know. Besides, the young hacker may be trying to impress others - and get a little careless about covering his tracks. This is why younger hackers are often caught.

An older hacker, on the other hand, will rarely leave any tracks. They know how to use their victim's computers as a tool for a launching place to get into another computer - leaving a phony IP address.

The truth is, and it is a good thing, that computer programmers are getting better software, and hardware (firewalls) that are constantly doing a better job - both in keeping hackers out, and in recording IP addresses better for tracking purposes.

There will always be hackers, and there will always be hackers in prison. The legislation is definitely turning against the hacker - with some hacking crimes becoming equal to terrorism, these days. Kevin Mitnick, a well-known hacker, had the Federal prosecutors accuse him of having caused $291 million in damages to corporate computers. A serious crime, and he remains in jail because of it - unable to touch anymore computers.

Even by learning some of the wrong type of hacking basics through hacking tutorials, a young person could start down a wrong path. Hacking computers, though often glorified on TV, is still criminal.