Webmaster-Talk.com Blog http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog Tue, 29 May 2007 18:21:20 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.1.2 en A Webmaster-Talk Blog Update http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/30/a-webmaster-talk-blog-update http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/30/a-webmaster-talk-blog-update#comments Tue, 29 May 2007 17:28:27 +0000 Tim Schroeder http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/30/a-webmaster-talk-blog-update Hey guys and gals. Sorry for the lack of updates to this blog. I guess the moral of the story is to not start something if you can’t finish it! Other projects took priority over the WT blog but I do hope to get things sorted out shortly.

I originally signed up a few Webmaster-Talk members to help contribute articles but didn’t finish adding their profile pages etc so they understandably have not been submitting more articles.

I’m trying to think about what approach to take with this blog. Should I basically just focus on webmaster industry news? Should I just review webmaster related tools? Or should I continue with a mix of several webmaster related topics?

I may decide to just keep one (paid) guest blogger per category and then add additional posts of my own.

Anyway, I’ll keep you updated here and let you know what I decide to do with the blog. Meanwhile, you might be interested in reading my new eMonetized blog.

]]> http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/30/a-webmaster-talk-blog-update/feed/ Making Worthwhile Investments http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/29/making_worthwhile_investments_with_premium_paid_web_directories http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/29/making_worthwhile_investments_with_premium_paid_web_directories#comments Mon, 16 Apr 2007 18:00:11 +0000 King Justice http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/29/making_worthwhile_investments_with_premium_paid_web_directories Nobody ever said that making money, especially on the Internet, is free. “It takes money to make money.” That’s why many successful online businesses and large corporations invest so much money into marketing campaigns and search engine optimization to become so successful.

Making your online business does not require a lot of money. Making a few worthwhile investments here and there can go a long with with your Internet business. One investment-type that I’d have to recommend is the submission to web directories. Let me explain…

As you’re probably well aware, a web directory is basically a library of Internet websites with titles and descriptions of websites listed in their respected categories. There are thousands upon thousands of web directories on the Internet, but very few are worthwhile investing into.

Web directories are a great way to achieve quality backlinks. Free web directories give webmasters the ability to gain backlinks without a cost, and quality premium web directories cost to have a site listed, but are well worth it.

If you’re looking to have your site spidered and indexed more frequently, and possibly achieve better rankings in search engines, as well as a higher Google PageRank, I’d highly recommend submitting your website to a few HUNDRED or so quality web directories. Better yet, I’d recommend investing some money into a few worthwhile premium web directories - most of the high traffic, high PageStrength, high PageRank web directories have gone commercial, but getting your site listed in one really boosts your website in search engines (especially Google).

Directory Lister is a new website dedicated to serving the webmaster community with the Internet’s best, strongest, and most worthwhile web directories. I’d really suggest checking out the list of premium web directories on that list as there is no list that compares to it if you’re looking to invest a few hundred bucks into your site. Commercial sites, sites that sell products (even through affiliate programs), and sites that offer paid services will always make the best ROI (Return Of Investment).

I’ve been using the list and investing in some premium web directories myself, and have been getting quite a bit of success out of it.

From one webmaster to another, my name is Justice McCay, and I wish you the best of luck with your website. :) Drop a comment should you have any questions with investing money in web directories.

]]> http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/29/making_worthwhile_investments_with_premium_paid_web_directories/feed/ Google Buys DoubleClick For $3.1 Billion http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/28/google-buys-doubleclick-for-13-billion http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/28/google-buys-doubleclick-for-13-billion#comments Sat, 14 Apr 2007 01:24:12 +0000 stOx http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/28/google-buys-doubleclick-for-13-billion Google have just completed the purchase of the advertising network doubleclick for a whopping $3.1 Billion cash. Google were in competition with Microsoft for the acquisition.

The deal means Google will take control of Doubleclicks software, But more importantly it means they now have access to Doubleclicks vast member base which has been growing rapidly since Doubleclick was founded 11 years ago.

Doubleclicks yearly income is estimated at $300 million a year.

]]> http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/28/google-buys-doubleclick-for-13-billion/feed/ PHP / MySQL Pagination http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/27/php-mysql-pagination http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/27/php-mysql-pagination#comments Mon, 09 Apr 2007 16:50:05 +0000 mgraphic http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/27/php-mysql-pagination There is a lot of talk on Webmaster-Talk about how to do pagination. There are a few steps involved with doing so, but with a few custom functions, it can be easy.

We will start with a connection to our database and we can use our MySQL connection class for that:

http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/17/php-mysql-connection-class

Let’s introduce the code. It’s a basic PHP class script in which we can include in our web application only once, and we can use over and over with simple configuration on the page scripting side.


class myPagination {

/*
* @return object
* @param string $select_string
* @param string $from_string
* @param string $where_string
* @param int $display_limit
* @desc Get the results of a database query according to the page number
*/
public function ReturnResults ($select_string, $from_string, $where_string = '', $display_limit = 20) {

$this->select_string = $select_string;
$this->from_string = $from_string;
$this->where_string = $where_string;
$this->page = floor(abs((int)$_GET['page']));
if ($this->page < 1) $this->page = 1;
$this->results_total = $this->_count_results();

$this->_get_limits($display_limit);

if ($this->results_total === 0) return false;
return $this->_get_results();
}

/*
* @return int
* @desc Count the number of results returned from the query
*/
private function _count_results () {
global $db;

$count_results = $db->Execute('SELECT COUNT(*) AS count FROM ' . $this->from_string . ( (!empty($this->where_string)) ? ' WHERE ' . $this->where_string : '' ));
return (int)$count_results->fields['count'];
}

/*
* @return object
* @desc Get the results of a database query
*/
private function _get_results () {
global $db;

return $db->Execute('SELECT ' . $this->select_string . ' FROM ' . $this->from_string . ( (!empty($this->where_string)) ? ' WHERE ' . $this->where_string : '' ) . ' LIMIT ' . $this->limit_start . ',' . $this->display_limit);
}

/*
* @return bool
* @param int $display_limit
* @desc Set the limit range for the query
*/
private function _get_limits ($display_limit) {

$this->display_limit = floor(abs((int)$display_limit));
if ($this->display_limit < 1) $this->display_limit = 1;
$this->total_pages = ceil($this->results_total / $this->display_limit);
if ($this->page > $this->total_pages) $this->page = $this->total_pages;
$this->limit_start = ($this->page <= 1) ? 0 : ($this->page - 1) * $this->display_limit;
return true;
}

/*
* @return string
* @param int $display_group
* @param string $seperator
* @param string $fstring_pages
* @param string $fstring_current
* @param string $fstring_prev_next
* @desc Return the html for the page links
* $display_group can be set to any number to group links or set to 0 for unlimited
* odd numbers work best
*/
public function GetPageLinks ($display_group = 5, $seperator = ' ', $fstring_pages = '%s', $fstring_current = '%s', $fstring_prev_next = '%s') {

if ($this->total_pages <= 1) return ' ';

if ($display_group > 0) {

$display_range = array($this->page - floor($display_group / 2) + (($display_group % 2 === 0) ? 1 : 0), ($this->page + floor($display_group / 2)));
if ($display_range[0] < 1) {

$display_range[0] = 1;
$display_range[1] = $display_group;
}

if ($display_range[1] > $this->total_pages) {

$display_range[1] = $this->total_pages;
$display_range[0] = $this->total_pages - ($display_group - 1);
}

if ($display_range[0] < 1) $display_range[0] = 1;
if ($display_range[1] > $this->total_pages) $display_range[1] = $this->total_pages;

} else {

$display_range = array(1, $this->total_pages);
}

$output_array = Array();
for($i = $display_range[0]; $i <= $display_range[1]; $i++) {

if ($i == $this->page) {

$output_array[] = sprintf($fstring_current, $i);

} else {

$output_array[] = sprintf('<'.'a href="?page=' . $i . '">' . $fstring_pages . '<'.'/a>', $i);
}
}

array_unshift($output_array, ( $this->page > 1 ? '<'.'a href="?page=' . ($this->page - 1) . '" title=" previous page ">' : '' ) . sprintf($fstring_prev_next, '‹') . ( $this->page > 1 ? '<'.'/a>' : '' ));
array_unshift($output_array, ( $this->page > 1 ? '<'.'a href="?page=1" title=" first page ">' : '' ) . sprintf($fstring_prev_next, '«') . ( $this->page > 1 ? '<'.'/a>' : '' ));
$output_array[] = ( $this->page < $this->total_pages ? '<'.'a href="?page=' . ($this->page + 1) . '" title=" next page ">' : '' ) . sprintf($fstring_prev_next, '›') . ( $this->page < $this->total_pages ? '<'.'/a>' : '' );
$output_array[] = ( $this->page < $this->total_pages ? '<'.'a href="?page=' . $this->total_pages . '" title=" last page ">' : '' ) . sprintf($fstring_prev_next, '»') . ( $this->page < $this->total_pages ? '<'.'/a>' : '' );

return implode($seperator, $output_array);
}

/*
* @return string
* @desc Return the page count string
*/
public function GetPageCount () {

return 'Page ' . $this->page . ' of ' . $this->total_pages . ' (' . $this->results_total . ' results total)';
}
}

We will want to include the above class script in our current page that we are working on. We also will need to include the script to our sql script and start a new connection. It is important that we assign the database object to the var labeled $db (because the pagination class script will reference that var name inside its functions). So on the page we are building, include the following block of code:

<?php

//# Define database connection
define('DB_SERVER', 'localhost');
define('DB_SERVER_USERNAME', 'root');
define('DB_SERVER_PASSWORD', '');
define('DB_DATABASE', 'database_name');

require('mySqlClass.inc.php');
$db = new mysqlClass();
$db->Connect(DB_SERVER, DB_SERVER_USERNAME, DB_SERVER_PASSWORD, DB_DATABASE);

require('myPaginationClass.inc.php');
$pagination = new myPagination();

?>

Now we need to make a new request to a returned set of results from the database. The example table in the database will be a members table labeled members and we want to return the username and id.

Let us create that sample query and return the results for our new pagination script to a var labeled $results


// The first parameter is the SELECT string
// The second parameter is the FROM string
$results = $pagination->ReturnResults('username, id', 'members');

If the database query does not have any data to return, it will return a Boolean of FALSE. If this happens, we can display a message to the user that there are no records to display, other wise we can build an html table of the results along with the pagination links.


<?php

if (!$results) {

echo ‘There are no results to display<br />’;

} else {

?>
<div style=”font-size:10pt;”><?php echo $pagination->GetPageCount() . ‘ <br /> ‘ . $pagination->GetPageLinks(); ?></div>
<table border=”1″ cellpadding=”8″ cellspacing=”0″>
<tr style=”background-color:black;color:white;font-weight:bold;”>
<td>Member’s ID</td>
<td>Member’s Username</td>
</tr>
<?php

while(!$results->EOF) {

?>
<tr>
<td><strong><?php echo $results->fields[’id’]; ?></strong></td>
<td><?php echo $results->fields[’username’]; ?></td>
</tr>
<?php

$results->MoveNext();
}

?>
</table><br />
<?php

}

?>
Voila! We just successfully displayed a set of results from a sql query and split the results on multiple pages rather than just one page. But what else can we do? We will now look at different ways we can customize the results and format the links…

Customization:

Lets say we want to return a set of results from our members table, but we want to show members that has had their birthday on or before 1980 and we also want to sort alphabetically by the members username. We also want to show 50 to each page instead of the default amount of 20.


// The first parameter is the SELECT string
// The second parameter is the FROM string
// The third parameter is the WHERE string
// The fourth parameter is the display limit number
$results = $pagination->ReturnResults('username, id', 'members', 'members_birthdate < 12-31-1980 ORDER BY username', 50);

Now we want to customize our page links. We want the text to be bold in Arial font in a grey color. We want the previous and next links not to be underlined, and we want the current page to be red in color while the other page links to be black in color. We also want to display all the page links and not just a range of pages separated with the | pipe.


<!--
// The first parameter is the pages to display number - set to 0 to display all pages
// The second parameter is the seperator string
// The third parameter is the pages link format string
// The fourth parameter is the current page format string
// The fith parameter is the prev/next link format string
//-->

<div style=”font-family:arial;color:#999;font-weight:bold;”><?php echo $pagination->GetPageLinks (0, ‘ | ‘, ‘<span style=”color:black;”>%s</span>’, ‘<span style=”color:red;”>%s</span>’, ‘<span style=”text-decoration:none;”>%s</span”‘); ?></div>
We can use the vars from the class script to create additional functions. By knowing the amount of total pages returned from a result, we can build a Jump-To drop-down menu to redirect the user to the selected page:


<select onchange="window.location='?page='+this.value;">
<option selected>Page:</option>
<?php

for($i = 1; $i <= $pagination->total_pages; $i++) echo ‘ <option value=’ . $i . ‘>’ . $i . ‘</option>’ . “\n”;

?>
</select>

]]> http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/27/php-mysql-pagination/feed/ A Couple Of Benefits Of Using Digg http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/26/a-couple-of-benefits-of-using-digg http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/26/a-couple-of-benefits-of-using-digg#comments Mon, 26 Mar 2007 15:03:17 +0000 Webspace http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/26/a-couple-of-benefits-of-using-digg Many of us use Digg as part of our overall social media optimization effort. Digg is a great way to share your content and get your content beyond the confines of your site. Sharing articles on Digg will help you get traffic to your website. I started seeing visitors to my website from Digg within the first day of submitting articles to the site. Furthermore every article I submitted received some readership. One of the great benefits of using Digg is the traffic. I’ll post a bit of how to information for using Digg when I have developed some SMM techniques for Digg.

The other great use for Digg is conquering writers block. If you can’t think of anything to write about just browse that latest diggs and for some ideas. When I visit Digg I find articles that I can at least make some intelligent feedback about. Note also that finding blog articles on Digg and tracking back to them is a great way to get traffic and quality backlinks to your website. By providing useful feedback you are promoting your own material at the same time. That’s why social media is so great.

]]> http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/26/a-couple-of-benefits-of-using-digg/feed/ Creating User Friendly 404 Pages http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/25/creating-user-friendly-404-pages http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/25/creating-user-friendly-404-pages#comments Thu, 22 Mar 2007 21:54:33 +0000 stOx http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/25/creating-user-friendly-404-pages It’s inevitable. At some point some of your users will see a 404 error page when the page they tried to view no longer exists.

While a 404 is annoying, Not ideal and should be avoided, There are steps you can take to make it as painless for your users as possible.

A 4 0 what?!?

Most Internet users don’t know, Or care, What a 404 error is. As far as they are concerned it’s just their stupid computer going wrong again. So don’t use the term “404 error”. Explain to them, In plain English, that the page no longer exists.

Try to find it

If you use “search engine friendly URLs” you may be able to parser the URL they requested and use it to do a search and display relevant results.

Latest blog posts

If you have a blog or forum on your site display the latest posts on your 404 error page.

Offer a search box

Display a search box on your site so that the user can look for the information they want on your site.

The idea with these tips is to keep the visitor on your site, Even if they haven’t initially found what they wanted. Maybe Google can get away with having a useless 404 error page, But most of us can’t.

]]> http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/25/creating-user-friendly-404-pages/feed/ Competitors Can Help You http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/24/competitors-can-help-you http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/24/competitors-can-help-you#comments Thu, 22 Mar 2007 15:40:45 +0000 Former Marine http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/24/competitors-can-help-you Internet marketing is as a competitive home-based business as you can find … literally thousands and thousands of people all over the world trying to make a ‘buck’ marketing their home-based businesses. You can learn alot from your competitors that just may help in making your home-based internet marketing business a success; most retail businesses hire people to do just this whether they are price checking certain items of their competitor or checking out a certain display item that may be in a competitors store.

Retail stores are doing research in hopes that they may be able to:

1) Stay competitive price/product wise.

2) Prevent their customers from doing there shopping elsewhere.

You owe it to yourself and your customers to use this same example with your home-based business.

So just how can your competitors help you with your home-based business?

Let’s take a look at a couple of items that may help you become and stay successful in internet marketing.

Website Design and Layout

Take a look at your competitors website and see how it is designed …

a) Is it easy to navigate through?
b) Can you find original content?
c) Does it capture your interest?
d) What about the colors and fonts used?

These are some of the things you should be comparing to your website. Some ‘experts’ will argue that website design has nothing to do with the success of your business … but, I beg to differ … if your website is pleasing to the eye and easy to navigate through and features your main product or service, then you have increased your chances of success. But, if your potential customers arrive at your website and they like the way it’s designed, they are more likely to stay and take a look around which increases the likelihood of making a sale.

Links, Content and Page Rank

Once again take a look at your competitors website and find their google page rank (this how google ranks websites in terms of importance) to see how your competitor measures up. A high page rank of 5 and above is very good — a page rank of 4 is average, but you shouldn’t worry about pages that rank lower than 4.

Page Rank is not a highly important factor as it was once touted to be — fresh new content is “King” and new articles / information uploaded weekly will cause search engines to spider your site on a regular basis.

Now take a look at your competitors links directory - what you’re looking for is quality link partners not so much quantity … click on some of their links and start adding these to your reciprocal links directory; search engines love websites with quality reciprocal links. The higher you rank in the search engines the better off you will be when people search using your keywords.

]]> http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/24/competitors-can-help-you/feed/ Tips For Creating A Successful Forum http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/19/tips-for-creating-a-successful-forum http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/19/tips-for-creating-a-successful-forum#comments Wed, 21 Mar 2007 16:55:49 +0000 stOx http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/19/tips-for-creating-a-successful-forum If you have ever tried adding a forum to your site you will know how difficult attracting members can be and how hard it can be to get them to post. If you do it right, A forum will be a huge generator of traffic and page views, So that also make it a great way to generate revenue with AdSense. If it is done wrong, However, It will be nothing more than a collection of empty pages that take up disk and database space.

What we will be doing in this blog post is give you some basic tips that are often overlooked that will help you create a successful forum. You still wont be guaranteed a successful forum, That depends on you, But we hope to increase your chances.

Make sure you know your topic

When your forum is new it will be down to you and your friends to answer most, if not all questions. So make sure you know what you are talking about. You don’t have to know everything, But you do have to know more than the person posting. If the thread sits unanswered for weeks that will be a member you have lost. If you have to, Google it. You may be able to find the answer online somewhere else.

Forum hacks and features

Some may disagree, But i think one of the reasons WMT has become such a successful webmaster forum is because of the hacks and features they have. Ad-share is a great way to get people posting and karma points are a great way for people to easily see which member is likely to offer good advice.

Not too many topics

Don’t flood your forum with empty topics. Something people usually do is create about 20 different topics that remain empty for some time and make the forum look inactive. With a new forum the fewer topics the better, It will condense your content and make it appear active.

Make the forum appear active

Who wants to join an empty forum? Nobody does. When you start your forum create a bunch of names and start posting, Have some conversations with yourself and generate something that appears to be an active popular forum.

Affiliates

A good way to promote a forum is to have your own affiliate program. Offer people $10 for every person they refer that eventually makes 250 posts and have a minimum payout of $100. Of course, Money isn’t the only incentive you can offer. Things like a free advert or free hosting also work well.

]]> http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/19/tips-for-creating-a-successful-forum/feed/ How To Get BackLinks http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/15/how-to-get-backlinks http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/15/how-to-get-backlinks#comments Fri, 16 Mar 2007 15:59:48 +0000 stOx http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/15/how-to-get-backlinks Backlinks are important, Not because of PR, But because they are the best way of getting traffic to your site. The more links there are pointing to your site the more likely someone is to click a link and find you.

A lot of new webmasters are unclear about how we actually get backlinks, So in this post I’m going to list a few ways to get other people to link to your site and link to deep pages.

      Link Bait - Link bait is often seen as a bad term. The word bait implies that you are somehow tricking someone into linking to your site. Actually, Link bait is a perfectly acceptable way of getting backlinks. All you are doing is giving someone a reason to link to you. Link bait could be anything from a flame, A useful tool or a list of things (like a list of ways to get backlinks, For example).
      RSS Feeds - Making an RSS feed available is not only good for your users who can subscribe to it, But it’s also good for getting listed in feed directories where your feed will be parsered by a script server side and hard coded onto their pages. Other sites may also syndicate your content.
      Link to me code - Coding a link into a page is easy, right? But it’s easier if you provide some “link to me” code so all someone has to do is copy and past it into their page. You could also provide some images and buttons for people to use. The easier it is the more likely they are to do it.
      Web Directories - While web directories tend not to send much traffic, they may send some. So what have you got to lose. Submit to some free directories.
      Submit your articles - If you write some unique articles and submit them to article directories you will be able to include some links back to your site within the articles. These articles may also be used by others in the future, Which will get you more links.
      Create something link-worthy - This is my favorite. Create something link worthy. If your site is good enough, People will link to it, I guarantee it.
      Link Exchanges - Link exchanges can be a good way of getting traffic. If your site is about cats do a couple of link exchanges with other sites about cats and you should get some traffic.
      Referrers List - By displaying a list of sites that link to you people will be more likely to link to you hoping to get listed in your referrers list. Services like E-Referrer make this easy to set up.
      Forum Sigs - If you become a regular contributor on a forum a link in your signature is a great way of getting a bit of traffic.
      Buy Text Links - If you have the budget you may want to consider buying some text links on related high traffic sites.
]]> http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/15/how-to-get-backlinks/feed/ Unique Ideas Create a Road to Success http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/22/unique_ideas_create_a_road_to_success http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/22/unique_ideas_create_a_road_to_success#comments Wed, 14 Mar 2007 19:27:49 +0000 King Justice http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/22/unique_ideas_create_a_road_to_success If there is one thing that strikes me over and over again, it has to be the amount of people getting rich so easily on the Internet. The Internet does not provide people with an easy way to make money; the people fuel the Internet with ways to make money.

I have been noticing a chain reaction sweeping the Internet ever since the great publicity of the ‘Million Dollar Homepage’ . The chain reaction is causing quite a few people to strike gold (wealth) easily. How? That’s an easy one…for some people: unique, innovative ideas.

It really amazes me sometimes how simple or just outright impossible an idea or one of these success stories may be, but I have realized something: I am not the only one amazed by unique innovative ideas; in fact, millions are, too! This amazement leads to interest, and thus interest converts visitors, and visitors bring in income, which turns a unique idea into success.

My equation:

unique innovative idea = interest
interest = amazement²
amazement² = promotion (one person telling another or even you telling other people)
promotion = interest²
interest² = visitors
visitors = income
income = a sign of success
unique innovative idea = success

It makes sense. Unique ideas are interesting, and I must admit: most things don’t interest me on the Internet since I’m a webmaster, but occasionally when something “new” comes about, I’m at full attention.

Just look at this site 1 Million Diggs. A brand new idea; so simple, yet so unique, as nobody has ever tried it. It took my interest…I even dugg it! Bah, see this! The interest I developed toward the site just ended up with me promoting it (I just noticed this live as I am writing up this post), and I never promote other people’s sites!

In final words, if you’re looking to market a website, be sure to offer something unique. Obviously, people really like that. :)

]]> http://www.webmaster-talk.com/blog/22/unique_ideas_create_a_road_to_success/feed/