Monthly Archives: November 2008

PHP is Something You Should at Least Be Familiar with

Posted on by
Reply

How To Spice Up Your Site With PHP

I don’t have a vast knowledge of PHP programming, but I have come to realize the convenience of knowing something about it, not to mention the money you can save by not having to pay a programmer $25-$50 just to install a script, or up to $125/hour for a custom script!!.

Obviously this script (WordPress) was written in PHP, and so are many, many other popular programs on the Internet.

I purchased a book on PHP a while back, it’s called PHP Solutions: Dynamic Web Design Made Easy by David Powers. It’s a fantastic book, and one that I didn’t actually fall asleep reading every time. I have many books on programming, and sometimes they’re so technical that I really have trouble following them without getting so bored I never get through a third of the book. I can’t recommend this book highly enough.

Anyway, it really does come in handy knowing at least some PHP. If you’ve ever tried to install some scripts you’ll know what I mean. Of course WordPress doesn’t count, we all know that’s a couple of clicks from Fantastico to to be up and running.

If you’re doing Affiliate Marketing, or just setting up Websites for whatever reason, you can save yourself a lot of headaches, not to mention a lot of money, if you learn at least some PHP…and actually some knowledge of MySQL doesn’t hurt.

As much as I like PHP Solutions, I just ran across another great resource for learning the basics of PHP, especially if you’re a beginner. It’s called Simple PHP, and it’s fantastic. It’s in digital form (eBook), which means you can get it immediately, but even better than that…between the Simple PHP Volume 1 videos and the script installation tutorials, there’s 7 hours of training and about one gigabyte of downloadable materials!! Pretty impressive, I’d say.

I love videos because I’m just able to follow them better, not to mention I retain so much more than when I just read the material.

Also, instead of having to read for an hour just to get ‘Hello World’ to display, you actually start doing something interesting in Chapter 1, Page 1.

There’s also 22 ‘code snippets’ included in the book, and the author shows you how to install popular scripts like ‘Adtrackz’, ‘EasyClickMate’, and others.

One of the other great things about this book is, with the knowledge you’ll have after completing the book, you’ll be able to install any of the many thousands of free scripts available on the Internet. There’s a nearly endless supply of scripts out there, but if you can’t even understand the programmer’s installation instructions, they’re pretty much worthless. So by just having all those free scripts available to use, it will open up so many possibilities for you.

The author covers every line of code on every page in the book, in the videos!! I can’t imagine anything being better than that. That’s actually better than having the instructor there with you because you can rewind and play as many times as necessary.

I’ll shut up now. I can’t say enough good things about this product. Click here to go have a look for yourself. You’ll be sold from the testimonials alone.

AdSense for Search

Posted on by
Reply

If you’re using Google AdSense on your site(s), don’t overlook using an AdSense for search box also. Obviously you’ll probably make at least as much, but probably a lot more, than a comparable sized AdSense ad in the same place.

However, the money made from the AdSense search box directly probably isn’t the biggest benefit to having the search box in the first place. Of course if your getting thousands of unique visitors per day, you may be doing pretty good just on the AdSense Ad clicks. Regardless, my point here is this…don’t overlook the top queries report for AdSense for search.

The more you know about any visitor coming to your site, the better chance you have of making money from him/her. So just by having a look at the queries report, you can find out what the top 25 searches were for in the search box on your site. That is powerful stuff…especially if you don’t have anything related to those top 25 searches on YOUR site.

If most of the topics being searched for are something you do have on your site, you may be in good shape, or you may need to put even more content online that is related to those searches. Remember, if they’re searching from your site, then they might not be finding what they’re looking for on your site.

Regardless of how good your site is, how much traffic you’re getting, or how much money you’re making, you can probably make things better by utilizing the free, very targeted information that your visitors are providing by utilizing your AdSense search box, and the top queries report.

Good Free Software Tools for Web Development

Posted on by
Reply

If you’re like me, you don’t really have the means to purchase every piece of software that you’ve like to have. I spend a fair amount on software, but I could probably spend three times what I do in order to get most of what I’d like to have.

Here’s a few freebies that I ran across on the XStiePro forum. They’re especially useful if you’re setting up a Website. I’ve got more irons in the fire than I can keep going, but these products are helping immensley.

ColorPic by Iconico. This is a great little program for finding color values. It comes in real handy when you’re trying to match colors in Adsense ads to what you’ve used on a Website. They also have several other programs on their site that you may find useful, some paid, some free.

Colorzilla – This is a FireFox pluging that is very similar to ColorPic. It’s very useful if you see a color scheme that you’d like to save. You can quickly select the ‘eyedropper’, click on the colors you’re after, and you’ve got the values to use on your own site…quick and easy.

WordWeb – This is a fantastic program for free. It’s a ‘one-click’ English thesaurus and dictionary for Windows. It gives you definitions, synonyms, proper nouns, related words and has a 150,000 dictionary, with 120,000 synonym sets. It also includes pronunciations and usage examples, and has helpful spelling and sounds-like links.You can also opt to have Windows speech synth. ‘say’ the word for you. This program is truly a ‘Word Web’…for example, if you click on the word ‘Tree’, and then click ‘Types’…it will give you a long list of types of trees. If you click on ‘Part of’, the program will display things like ‘Forest’ and ‘Wood’. This one is really worth getting. There is also a paid version, WordWeb Pro, but I can’t ever imagine the free version not being enough for me.

Jing by TechSmith Corporation. You’ve probably heard of TechSmith Corporation, or at least their Camtasia Studio screen recording software, or possibly SnagIt, their other well known screen capture software. Jing is a neat little program also. As worded on TechSmith’s site, Jing ‘is the always-ready program that instantly captures and shares images and video…from your computer to anywhere.’

I haven’t played with it a great deal up to this point, but I will say that I love it, and I can see where it’s going to be used here often. You can add text, arrows, etc. to images, but not video. The video (limited to 5 minutes) can, however, have an audio narration track. There could be a few other bells and whistles, but it is FREE remember. I think you’ll like it. Also, there’s a video tour on the site that will show you exactly what it’s all about. Oh, you can also store everything on Screencast.com (2 gigs. free) if you like.

HTTrack – This program is awesome!! It can be used in lots of helpful ways, but remember, with great power, comes great responsibilty. :) Obviously being able to copy a complete Website to your hard drive can be very useful, but someone that has bad intentions could use this software in a criminal manner. Just because you’re able to do something, obviously doesn’t mean that it’s ok. Please use it responsibly.

FireFTP – This is a FireFox addon. If you’re setting up Websites, you’re likely using FTP a lot. I normally use Filezilla, which I really like, but FireFTP is already there in your browser window. I have it installed, but have yet to use it. I’ll give it try the next time I need to use FTP.

MeasureIt – This is another FireFox addon. It’s a simple little program, but it can come in very handy. As the name implies, it’s a ruler for measuring on screen distances. It displays the height and width in pixels.

If you need a ruler that can display in pixels, as well as inches, picas, and centimeters, then JRuler might be what you need. It’s not a FF pluging, but it is very useful. It has an option to immediately find the center of the distance being measured, and with a single click, can ‘flip’ from horizontal to vertical and vice versa.

TreePad Plus – This post is ‘free’ software, and this one is tecnically free, but only for a 21-day trial. I thought I’d list it however, as it looks to be extremely useful. I’ve heard good things about it also. I have it installed now, but can’t recommend it from experience yet. I do plan on playing with it later tonight. It should at least be worth the quick download to try it and see if it’s something that may help you.

I like the fact that it can be run from pretty much any external device (thumb drive, flash drive, memory stick, USB disk, etc.), without the need of an installation. TreePad is advertised as ‘Organizer, Word Processor, Photo Album, Web site Generator, Personal Information Manager, PIM, Database program, and much more!’ You store everything related to your project, hyperlinks, notes, emails, word processing documents, images, everything, in an ‘article’. The articles are then store in ‘nodes’. The nodes are part of the larger ‘tree’ structure. Having everything related to your project in one location would have to be a good thing. Especially with the many drag ‘n drop features.

I should also note that there is a ‘lite’ version of TreePad that is totally free. TreePad Lite can be found here.

Lastly, although not free, if you’re building Websites and want the ease of use that a WYSIWYG program offers, but don’t want the learning curve of Dreamweaver (or the price), have a look at XSitePro.

I had seen ads around the Web for some time before I decided to see what all the hype was about. After having a look, I was hooked. When I bought XSitePro 2, I wasn’t looking to buy ANY software at the time. I was getting by with a free program (Kompozer), but looking back, it was awful compared to XSitePro.

If you’re considering, or will be considering buying Web development software in the future, please have a look at XSP first. You will be glad you did. It’s a fantastic piece of software. Click here for an XSitePro demo video.