Have a blog? Here’s a tip to help gain readers!
April 17, 2008
So you have a new and ‘truly’ innovative blog, you would like to share your insight with the rest of the world but you have no idea how to obtain more readers.
Here’s a tip that many bloggers have no idea about — Update Services
Update Services are offered by Wordpress (this site is built on WP) by default. Unfortunately, it pings only one service, Ping-O-Matic.
The Update Service works by “pinging” the service each time you edit or create a new post. This ‘Ping’ is then processed and your post can now be found by really really bored people.
The Tip:
Update your Wordpress services by going to >>Options>>Writing and update with the list provided after the break.
999 Reasons Why Facebook Is The Worst
December 20, 2007
Facebook is the worst but no matter how much I don’t like it, I can’t help but check it every day. I did a little survey at my break this morning and these were the most commonly cited reasons why Facebook is the worst:
9. It is the world’s most deadly Time Burglar
It is a scientifically proven fact that you can’t spend less than 3 hours at a time checking your wall, your superwall, your gifts, your free gifts, your superpokes, your Schrute Bucks, your graffiti area, and all this information for all your friends and even people you have never met. If I do a quick calculation here, that means that at every possible moment in time someone is creeping on your profile, 24/7. Um, ew.
9. Everyne knows all your business, all the time.
Even those little applications you add steal your personal info. It seems like you give up the right to that information when you make an account. To make it worst, those people you left in elementary school keep trying to reconnect. The ones you wanted to stay in touch with you still talk to, and the ones you were never friends with in the first place want to rekindle the friendship that never existed. It gets real creepy when someone asks you about something posted on your profile before you have even had a chance to see it yourself!
9. The fact that you hate it does nothing to help you delete your profile.
I must admit I have tried deleting my profile before, but I keep encountering this hardware problem whereby I can not press the mouse button on that particular screen. Is it the fact that I don’t want to lose contact with people, don’t want to be able to creep my friends, or just don’t want to have to call them that is preventing me from pressing DELETE?
I don’t know, but the one thing I do know is that Facebook is the worst. I know, I will post this on my profile and everyone will know how I feel!!
Stumbleupon - Crack for Nerds
December 13, 2007
Stumbleupon is quite the interesting tool. It’s great for exploring the internet and it’s proved to be an addiction to some (me included). The problem IMO lies in the ability to quickly “stumble” on many interesting and informative articles. Once you see something you like, it makes you believe that the next one stumbled will be even better. There you have it — an addiction is born.
Original Image can be found here:
http://i23.tinypic.com/a3kumr.jpg
Hiring a Web Designer? Some tips to make them crazy!
December 11, 2007
I’ve been running a web design department for quite some time, and it’s quite easy to send me over the edge these days. It’s not because I hate the job, it’s not because the company or people are awful to work with. Nope, they’re actually super cool. The real problem is the fact that the customers have unrealistic expectations for what they pay for.
These tips will send your designer over the edge and possibly to the centre for addiction and mental health:
- Tell your designer that you want a website that has the functions and design of MySpace, Facebook and YouTube — in one.
- Ask for a discount (usually on their already rock-bottom prices). If you are an existing hosting customer, ask for free web hosting for a year! That’ll grind their noodle.
- The designer or manager will ask you for your sites content before the project can begin. Make sure to tell them that you have everything prepared and ready-to-go even if you don’t. Once ready to send the content, send multiple emails each with a small piece of your content. There’s nothing more annoying then waiting for content in order to finish a website.
- After you have agreed upon the initial contract/proposal ask for a quote minus a few of the options that you originally wanted.
- Do not under any circumstances listen to the suggestions of your designer. They may know what’s best but what’s the fun in that.
- If the designer or manager asks what you would like to be able to manage (edit/add) on the site yourself. Say that your site is going to have millions of visitors and that you’ll need to update all facets of the site.
- A logo is one of the most important aspects of a website. When the designer asks for yours, send them a low-resolution image in *jpg format or send them a old business card.
At this point, if you were to try any other stunts the designer and manager would probably have to quit or end up like the guy in the above picture. Enjoy!
If you have any of your own, comment and we’ll place them as additional points.
So, you want a website? (Part 1)
June 7, 2007
Having your own website means freedom of speech, your own personal place to rant and rave, or somewhere just to setup shop. No matter what the intention, you can do just about anything you need to do online.
Before you start planning and spending the money to get the ball rolling, take a few moments to think about what its real purpose is. You may be surprised to know that many services and products related to websites are free and ultimately can save you lots of time and headaches. Before we talk about those, let’s first describe the website checklist;
Requirements:
– a product or service
– domain name
– hosting and email
– marketing and promotion
– ongoing maintenance, webpage updates
– more marketing and promotion!
– More updates…
I’ll not get into the details of a business plan and research. We’ll assume you are 100% convinced and are ready to take the plunge. The first step is coming up with a domain name. You need to come up with many, and alternative spellings, etc. A good place to search for names is domains bot. .com domain names cost about $8 US each. Each domain name type has a different price, and there are no set prices. Shop around!
If you need to generate names, try dnwiz. Once you have a name, then you need to give it an address. Every webpage on the internet has an address. Think of it as a postal address. People need to be able to find it. It’s address is called an IP address. An IP address will be automatically assigned by the hosting domain registrar – which is where you “pays your money, and gets your name”
Once you have purchased the domain name, you have an address, but no house to put your website. The next step is to find a host. We hosting is typically a company with a room full of network servers split into many shared websites. One server could house thousands of separate websites, all completely independent of each other. This is called shared hosting, and typically runs about $3 – 20 per month for the average hosting package. Watch out for the setup fees; where the hosting is charged monthly, as well as an annual setup fee. Most setup fees can be waived if you purchase hosting by the year.
Hosting packages are defined by many factors, including:
- storage space you will need for your website (how many gigabytes)
- bandwidth requirements (how many visitors will you have each month, and what are they doing at your site? Reading, or getting data, music, or other files from you? (again, measured in gigabytes)
- Uploading – can people give you files and put them on your website?
- Number of email accounts you need
- Storefront (e-commerce, shopping cart, can you accept credit cards)
- Database – will users register to login, will they store any personal information, or interact with your website in any way
- Support for creating and publishing the website with Microsoft FrontPage, or Adobe Dreamweaver (you need special software on the server to allow you to publish the website from your own computer, directly to the internet)
To locate a hosting package you will need to shop around, and may look at hostsearch.
To be continued tomorrow…
aizen Design
