Convert Files - Free EPUB to PDF converter. Free online ebook converter.
Nice handy resource to have
Panda, Penguin, and the EMD Update – What You Need to Know
ast week was a busy one for Google. The search giant ushered in a parade of algo changes starting with the announcement of the spanking new exact match domain (EMD) update on September 28. Then, a couple of days later, Google confirmed that it rolled out a major Panda algorithm update the day before the EMD. To say the tandem updates threw webmasters for a loop would be the understatement of the century.But wait… there’s more. Head of Google webspam team Matt Cutts announced on Twitter that Google was rolling out the latest data refresh for Penguin.Is all this action coincidental or deliberate? Any guess would be speculation at this point, but many prominent webmaster news sources have already voiced their suspicions. On that note, let’s examine each update to discern what exactly went down.The EMD UpdateWhen Google announced the rollout of the new EMD Update during those last days of September, it came as little surprise to most webmasters. Google alluded to the change repeatedly as far back as 2010. Some niche site builders have ignored the threats entirely, opting instead to continue tempting fate by churning out low-quality websites en masse. These sites often hinged on exact match domains to help secure their position in the SERPs.The EMD algorithm is actually a filter through which Google sifts every website it has in its index. Now, websites with exact match domain names and low-quality content won’t cruise by Panda undetected any longer. If you are the owner of such a website, prepare yourself. The EMD algorithm will periodically refresh its data just like Panda and Penguin do now, so even if you escape the first go ’round, you may get caught in a follow-up attack down the road.There are already rumors flying around that every owner of an exact match domain website is doomed. The folks at Search Engine Land vehemently disagree. The thought is that websites with high-quality content and an eye on good user experience will remain untouched by the algo. This remains to be seen, however – we’ll find out for sure when the dust settles after all the changes over the next few weeks. According to a post on Search Engine Land about the EMD update:“Is that Google just favoring itself? I wouldn’t say so. After all, it didn’t wipe out:- Cars.com for “cars”- Usedcars.com for “used cars”- Cheaptickets.com for “cheap tickets”- Movies.com for “movies”- Skylightbooks.com for “books”Instead, EMD is more likely hitting domains like online-computer-training-schools.com, which is a made-up example but hopefully gets the point across. It’s a fairly generic name with lots of keywords in it but no real brand recognition.Domains like this are often purchased by someone hoping that just having all the words they want to be found for (“online computer training schools”) will help them rank well. It’s true that there’s a small degree of boost to sites for having search terms in their domains with Google, in general. A very small degree.”In theory, this amounts to five-page affiliate sites and websites made to host AdSense blocks getting the axe while all the rest of the higher-quality EMDs out there remain un-phased. Again, this is the theory. The real results will take a while to sort out.One fact is certain, however: Google tends to roll out updates hastily and then tweak and perfect with each refresh. If you have a high-quality site with an EMD and you were hit, don’t despair. You may have a chance to come back in the SERPs as the algorithm refines further over time.The Panda UpdateIt’s very interesting that Google rolled out the newest Panda algorithm update the day before the EMD algo, yet neglected to announce Panda until a few days after the announcement of EMD. If you follow Google’s changes, you’ll notice that Matt Cutts almost always announces updates directly before, or as they’re happening. This oversight seems like a deliberate move by G. If it is, the real question is, “Why the confusion?”Some are speculating that the overlapping updates were an attempt to confuse webmasters and SEOs whose rankings would take a nosedive. It would be hard to decipher whether the hit was because of the EMD filter or due to Panda. When it’s hard to pinpoint the cause, it’s tougher to manipulate the rankings for a second time – forcing webmasters to play by the rules instead.The Panda update is the twentieth refresh of the algorithm, and it was a big one: the change impacted roughly 2.4% of English-language search queries and it’s still baking into the index at the time of this writing. Remember, Panda deals with on-page issues such as keyword density and the overall quality of your content.The Penguin UpdatePenguin first burst on the SEO scene in late April of this year. It’s a separate algo, different from Panda in that it deals with inbound links to websites. If a website has a large number of low quality inbound links, Penguin will likely demote that site in the SERPs when the filter runs. The Penguin algorithm has only had one update so far, before the summer even began.The latest makes the third update of Penguin, and it’s a major data refresh that will affect websites spanning many different languages. Think of Penguin as a periodic filter that Google runs to catch websites with sketchy backlink profiles.The Way ForwardThere’s quite a bit to digest here. We have three events rolling out simultaneously but completely independent of one another. Obviously, checking your stats now would be an important move – you’ll want the real-time data to analyze later. However, you can’t make a definitive call about what (if anything) hit your site until a couple of weeks pass.When the dust settles, you’ll begin to see a little more clearly where your sites have relocated in the search result pages. That’s when it’s time to break out the stats and analyze site details such as your backlink profile, your content, and your domain name.Do you have an EMD with thin, mediocre content? Then the EMD update probably hit you. Don’t have an exact match domain, do have great backlinks but still felt the sting? Then it was likely Panda. Everything beautiful onsite but backlinks include some shady websites? Blame Penguin.Once you know what hit your website, you can take corrective actions to fix the errors. The downside? You’ll have to wait until the refresh of the suspected algorithm attack to see if your website will bounce back. The upside? With a little work and the right analysis, your website’s position in the SERPs can be restored.
Thnx to sitepro for this article
6 Tips for Budding Designers to Earn While Building a Portfolio
Design is one of the more unusual industries to work in because it’s one of the few that often involves working for free, especially for those who are just starting out in a design career. Working for free is starting to become more and more commonplace for those new to particular industries – as this article from The Guardian shows – but for designers, who actually create something, it doesn’t need to be this way. The dangers of spec work are well-known, and this post in particular does a brilliant job of explaining why it’s harmful. The premise is that a client offers money for designers to compete with each other. One designer gets paid, the other designers don’t. It’s not fair, and it’s not rewarding.
But when you’re just starting out in a career in design, you may be tempted to work for free in order to build your portfolio. You know that you can design but you need to get clients on board, you need a good portfolio to show people and, when your portfolio is on the small side, clients may ask you to work for free with the benefit being that you get to showcase the work that you do on your site.
It seems like a catch-22, you can’t get a great and varied portfolio without working, and you can’t get paid without a great and varied portfolio. You might be inclined to accept a few offers of working for free.
My advice to you is this: don’t. Working for someone for free helps that company significantly more than it helps you – they are not doing you a favour. If your goal is to put together an amazing portfolio, taking on free work for someone else is a recipe for disaster – 9 times out of 10 you’re giving up creative control as well as failing to get paid, and it’s much more likely to leave you feeling unhappy.
How Can You Earn While Building a Portfolio?
If your aim when first starting out as a designer is to have a portfolio that you’re proud of, and is truly unique to you and full of your personality and style, consider designing things for yourself. If you think of a great logo idea for a company that doesn’t exist, design it and use it for your portfolio. If you think of a creative site design for a fictional company, build it anyway and use it for your portfolio – clients want to see whether you can design things well, not whether the design is for an existing company or not. And if you’re in the mood to redesign an existing company’s logo, branding, site or app – then consider an unsolicited redesign so that you’re free to design it exactly how you want – such as how Andrew Kim redesigned Microsoft’s branding, and made a name for himself at the same time.Of course, designing things for fictional companies won’t pay the bills. If you want to make money at the same time as building a portfolio, keep in mind that there are some designs that have been built without a client asking for it, and have later been sold for respectable amounts of money. This leads us quite neatly to the first way to earn while building a portfolio.
1. Build and Sell a Site
You might as well do it with Twitter Bootstrap and SASSThreewords.me is a fairly simple site designed and built by coder Mark Bao that let’s people create a profile and then ask others to (anonymously) add three words to sum them up. It was a great idea – nice, clean and simple and it went massively viral. Mark later sold the site for an undisclosed figure (with rumours of that figure being six figures).
Both Lifepath and Threewords look incredible on Dustin and Mark’s portfolios – successful, beautifully designed and remarkable. They both also require the ability to code, but it’s worth keeping in mind that the coding needed is relatively basic and frameworks like Ruby on Rails are perfect for sites like these. You can find more on how to start learning Ruby here.
While this method doesn’t guarantee that you’ll make money (and if you do, it may well be for significantly less than what Dustin and Mark have earned), it does still let you build something that you’re interested in, and can be truly proud of – and even if you sell it for only a small amount, it’ll still earn you more than if you chose to work for free.
2. Create and Sell WordPress and Tumblr Themes
You can also get paid for designing and building high quality WordPress or Tumblr themes and choosing to sell them on your own site. The themes for sale on Inspect Element are a good example of this – they both look great in designer Tom Kenny’s portfolio, and they can also earn him some money too.
If you really enjoy building WordPress themes, you could even take it a step further and develop an entire series of templates that you can sell. ElegantThemes is a great example of a designer whose amazing at what he does and consistently puts out fantastic WordPress themes that his community loves. Similarly, Liam McKay has built WPBundle.com which is a collection of beautifully designed WordPress themes – the whole bundle selling for $200.
You can even create a theme that you’re proud of and sell it on a service like Themeforest, if you’re worried that you won’t be able to get enough people to see it on your own. Orman Clark of Premium Pixels recently broke the ThemeForest record by making over $47,000 in just one month from the sales of his WordPress themes. While you perhaps shouldn’t expect that sort of money any time soon, it does show that you can design the things you want to design without having to go unpaid.
3. Design and Sell Stock Icons, Fonts and Illustrations
In the same vein as creating themes and templates, there’s also a huge market out there for people that want stock icons, illustrations and beautifully designed fonts and they’re willing to pay for quality. If you think that you can do a good job, and want great designs for your portfolio as well as to sell, then you could make some extra income by creating designs to sell on sites like iStockPhoto.com and GraphicRiver (which is owned by the same people that run ThemeForest).
If you’re more interested in designing and selling fonts, there’s plenty of sites out there to help you do that too. MyFonts.com has been around for some time and is well-known for showcasing and selling really beautifully designed fonts, while the relatively new Lost Type Co-Op by Riley Cran and Tyler Galphin is an interesting Pay-What-You-Want font store that allows you, the designer, to receive 100% of the funds from each sale.
4. Start a blog and allow adverts
If you’re already out there creating designs that you’re proud of, then it makes sense to showcase them somewhere on your own blog. Blogs are great for getting your thoughts down, for letting you show off your new designs and for getting you involved in the design community, but you can also make money by running adverts too. A great way to support a blog, and make a small amount of side income, is to include a small number of relevant affiliate adverts in the sidebar, such as for your hosting company or for particular design tools that you use and would recommend to your readers.Even if you don’t make much from advertising on your blog, it’s still a great way to get your designs out there and to start making a name for yourself.
5. Write tutorials for other sites
Many design sites are in need of great tutorials, written by people that know their craft well – and a lot of these sites are also willing to pay for them. If you’ve created a design for your portfolio that you’re really proud of, you can help out other designers by writing a tutorial on how to recreate it – a step by step guide of the techniques you used in the design. It’s a great way of showing off your design, of helping out the community, of making a name for yourself and for making a side income.Related: The Shortest Web Design Guest Posting Guide You’ll Ever Need
6. Get help for bigger projects using Kickstarter
If you have an idea for something you’d like to build – whether it’s a physical product or an innovative new app that you think could turn a profit, but the cost of starting the project is holding you back, consider using Kickstarter. Kickstarter is changing the game by allowing people to get the cashflow they need to start creative, interesting projects by allowing anyone to be an early investor. If you’d like to be your own client, and work on an idea that you can really commit to, you no longer have to be put off by the lack of start-up cash. You can read more about how Kickstarter is changing the game in this post from Ryan Carson.
What are the benefits?
Other than getting money and a portfolio that you can be proud of, there are other benefits to designing things for yourself. The most obvious of this is that you’ll actually get to design the things that you want to design – if you think your portfolio is missing great examples of your hand-drawn style, you can add it. If you want to practice your typography, there’s no-one stopping you. You can choose what you work on, which allows you to be more creative, work on your own unique style and, ultimately, be happier.And if you do a really good job and make something that people love, you can earn a reputation for creating outstanding work, which you can’t put a value on. Good luck – and if you’re just starting out, remember this: if you don’t want to, you never ever have to work for free.
Easy Coders
10 SEO and Link Building Mistakes
Mistake 1 – Neglecting On-page Optimization:
I think more people are beginning to understand the importance of on-page optimization when it comes to ranking their web pages. With so much focus on keywords and link building though, often I see webmasters focusing too heavily on the “off page” stuff, without realizing what they do “on” their website is just as important. Proper internal linking, keyword density, LSI, image text, no follow tags, just to name a few, are also very important to search engines. There are free plugins available to help you with a lot of this stuff, so do your due diligence and implement whatever strategies need be.
Mistake 2 – Freaking Out When Rankings Plummet:
Go onto any internet marketing forum and you will see this every single time. People are literally freaking out when they see their rankings drop. Most often this is due to a thing we call the Google dance. All new websites go through what is called a “honeymoon” period where their websites rank very well at the beginning, but after a couple of weeks they settle in the search results… usually at a much lower ranking, again, this is natural.
I think more people are beginning to understand the importance of on-page optimization when it comes to ranking their web pages. With so much focus on keywords and link building though, often I see webmasters focusing too heavily on the “off page” stuff, without realizing what they do “on” their website is just as important. Proper internal linking, keyword density, LSI, image text, no follow tags, just to name a few, are also very important to search engines. There are free plugins available to help you with a lot of this stuff, so do your due diligence and implement whatever strategies need be.
Mistake 2 – Freaking Out When Rankings Plummet:
Go onto any internet marketing forum and you will see this every single time. People are literally freaking out when they see their rankings drop. Most often this is due to a thing we call the Google dance. All new websites go through what is called a “honeymoon” period where their websites rank very well at the beginning, but after a couple of weeks they settle in the search results… usually at a much lower ranking, again, this is natural.
Six Things Businesses Need to Know About Facebook's Timeline By Laura Tate
Since its inception, social media giant Facebook has seen numerous changes to its layouts, and many useful features have been added. The most recent of these is the "Timeline," which was introduced in December 2011. The Timeline arranges posts according to date, streamlining all materials, including status messages, pictures, videos, and other Facebook activities, showing a history of a Fan page. By now every company that utilizes Facebook for their social media networking has incorporated the Timeline. However, many might have been put off by the changes and not taken a look at all that is offered with the new features or optimized the obvious ones. Here are six things business owners should know about Timeline on Facebook. 1. The Large, Space-Occupying Cover Photo This area, located at the top of the Facebook page is the first thing people see when visiting a page. Facebook has dedicated 851 x 315 pixels just for this space alone.
How to Promote Your Website: A Common Sense Approach
By John V -in 2012
Social media. I hope you're sitting down for this one. Once you have created your website, you need to tell people about it, and the best way to do that is social media. I know, shocking, right? Okay, it's not even a little bit surprising, but in a world where we are crunched for time, it is easy to overlook the simplest things. Make sure your website is included in all of your online profiles, and then be an active member of these communities. If you write a new blog post, tweet about it, post a Facebook status with a link, and don't be afraid to click those social sharing buttons embedded next to every post. It may feel a little gauche to like, Google+, or Digg your own content, but there is nothing wrong with being proud of your work. It also encourages people to do the same.
Google's Policy Changes - What Do They Mean for You?
By Karl R Rooney 2012
In a nutshell, what do the changes mean? Basically it means that Google will now share the data it stores for you between all their services. They won't be sharing anything new with outside parties; just among Google's many services. Google has been adamant these changes are only being made to make their products better than ever and display even more relevant content and advertising to each personal user. On 1st March 2012 these changes
went into effect. Alma Whitten, Google's Director of Privacy, wrote in a blog post recently: "As you use our products one thing will be clear: it's the same Google experience that you're used to, with the same controls, And because we're making these changes, over time we'll be able to improve our products in ways that help our users get the most from the web."
8 Easy and Simple Ways to Add Likes to Your Facebook Page By Istrati Florentina 2012
As the internet and Social Media evolve one thing is clear - Facebook is king. Fast approaching 1,000,000,000 members (yes that's ONE BILLION), Facebook is the site where everyone is spending time online! "Every successful business depends on people - Facebook is where they are spending their time online. Either you will use Facebook and succeed or you will not embrace Facebook and fail."- Sean Malarkey When you start your marketing, the first thing to do is to open a business page. Make sure that all information you put on your page is genuine and not defamatory. This will make potential customers trust you. Now, let's see what are the 8 easy and simple ways to increase your Facebook likes.
All About YouTube Marketing By James Chapman- 2012
Promoting a business can be extremely taxing, especially when you're just getting started. If you're into checking out marketing blogs, you've probably come across some information about YouTube marketing. This form of advertising falls under the umbrella of video advertising, which falls under the even larger umbrella of Internet marketing. Take a look at some specifics of this business strategy to deepen your understanding about its importance and utilize it to help popularize your products or services. Why Online Video Advertising? Video marketing is one of the leading advertising platforms on the Internet. People of all ages and from different backgrounds are taking advantage of this promotional opportunity in an effort to maximize the visibility of their business.
how to find out if php is compiled with curl extension installed enabled
at some point, you will find out that some scripts require you to have cURL extension enabled in your web server.
well, how can you tell whether the CURL extension is enabled or compiled in your PHP?
these are the steps to take:
1. open a blank text document. i will be using notepad in windows.
2. copy and paste this code into notepad and save it as testcurl.php
3. if you prefer, you can download the full script at this link:
How To Check Curl Installed In Php
well, how can you tell whether the CURL extension is enabled or compiled in your PHP?
these are the steps to take:
1. open a blank text document. i will be using notepad in windows.
2. copy and paste this code into notepad and save it as testcurl.php
<?php
## Test if cURL is working ##
## SCRIPT BY WWW.WEBUNE.COM (please do not remove)##
echo '<pre>';
var_dump(curl_version());
echo '</pre>';
?>
## Test if cURL is working ##
## SCRIPT BY WWW.WEBUNE.COM (please do not remove)##
echo '<pre>';
var_dump(curl_version());
echo '</pre>';
?>
3. if you prefer, you can download the full script at this link:
How To Check Curl Installed In Php
How to active curl on xampp
Your xampp installation most likely already has curl support
built-in. You just have to turn it on. It’s not difficult at all.
That’s not necessary for Windows versions of PHP.
Find your php.ini file (probably in xampp\apache\bin\php.ini and open it in notepad or another plain text editor
search for the line that says:
;extension=php_curl.dll
remove the semicolon from the beginning of the line.
save the file
restart apache
check a phpinfo() program to see if you now have curl support listed.
In a standard xampp build, this is all you have to do. If you installed apache and PHP in another way, you might need to move some dlls to the windows\system directory.
(libeay32.dll and ssleay32.dll)
Best of luck to you.
Find your php.ini file (probably in xampp\apache\bin\php.ini and open it in notepad or another plain text editor
search for the line that says:
;extension=php_curl.dll
remove the semicolon from the beginning of the line.
save the file
restart apache
check a phpinfo() program to see if you now have curl support listed.
In a standard xampp build, this is all you have to do. If you installed apache and PHP in another way, you might need to move some dlls to the windows\system directory.
(libeay32.dll and ssleay32.dll)
Best of luck to you.
100 Great CSS Menu Tutorials - by Kevin Muldoon
Navigation is such an important part of your website. It’s how your visitors navigate to the main areas of your site and makes it easy for them to find your good content.
CSS is of course the perfect language for designing beautiful navigation menus. It can be applied to any type of website and is very flexible. Don’t be alarmed if your own CSS skills are fairly limited as there are a lot of great tutorials out there that walk you through how to add clean and professional looking CSS menus to your website. You can either copy and paste the code into your own design or modify the menu to suit your needs.
Today we would like to show you 100 of these tutorials; 75 horizontal CSS menu tutorials and 25 vertical CSS menu tutorials.
Horizontal CSS Menu Tutorials
1. Advanced CSS Menu Trick
View Tutorial | Demo
2. Elegant Drop Menu with CSS Only
View Tutorial | Demo
3. Bulletproof CSS Sliding Doors
View Tutorial & Demo
4. Tabbed Navigation Using CSS
Web Design Trends in 2012
As you read this article, keep in mind that the shift in trends from one year to the next may be subtle, and you will probably recognize some of these trends already. But it’s our estimation that the concepts we mention below will grow and become even bigger in 2012.
1. Responsive Web Design
I believe eventually, we’ll all stop talking about responsive web design – not because it will go away, but because it will become what’s expected. However, I don’t think this will happen in 2012. It’s still too new of a concept, and there are many web designers that are not familiar with it at all.
The continued introduction and adoption of more an more mobile devices is what will make 2012 the year of the responsive web site. Web designers and developers will move to the use of fluid layouts instead fixed width, and media queries will find their way into many more stylesheets – allowing more sites to easily be viewed across multiple screens sizes and devices.
How to Own Your Own Website (Even If You Can’t Build One) Part 1
You’ve probably put up plenty of pages and accounts on various services and blogs. But today, learn how to become a real website owner and put together an awesome feature-rich website of your own with little to no experience.
Having your own website is expected in many fields. You can host your resume and various files, or put up an online business card to make sure that you’re one of the top results when you do an ego search on Google. Whatever your reason is, you don’t have to pay hundreds (or thousands?) of dollars to have somebody else make a website for you, when you can use free software and cheap hosting to make your own in minutes. In this first part of a multi-part series, we’ll discuss how to put up a simple website and and how to start owning your own domain.
Purchasing a Domain and Hosting
To own your own website, you usually have to pay for a minimum of two things. To make your life easier, you can get both from the same company. The first thing you need is a domain name—that’s the URL that you type into your browser to find your website.
Learn to Code HTML / CSS / Javascript weekly
Here's a great site for all beginners and amateurs to learn HTML / CSS / Javascript coding
Subcribe to the Following link ....
www.codecademy.com/
and you get weekly lesson in your inbox to learn and practise online ....
a Great treat for Beginners and Web Designing coders ...
Subcribe to the Following link ....
www.codecademy.com/
and you get weekly lesson in your inbox to learn and practise online ....
a Great treat for Beginners and Web Designing coders ...
html redirect
One of the most requested items we get is "How do I make an html redirect page".
Strangely enough this is one of the easiest things to accomplish, but then anything is easy when you know how to do it!
Here's the code:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>Your Page Title</title>
<meta http-equiv="REFRESH" content="0;url=http://www.the-domain-you-want-to-redirect-to.com"></HEAD>
<BODY>
Optional page text here.
</BODY>
</HTML>
Strangely enough this is one of the easiest things to accomplish, but then anything is easy when you know how to do it!
Here's the code:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>Your Page Title</title>
<meta http-equiv="REFRESH" content="0;url=http://www.the-domain-you-want-to-redirect-to.com"></HEAD>
<BODY>
Optional page text here.
</BODY>
</HTML>
How to Recover that Photo, Picture or File You Deleted Accidentally
How to Recover that Photo, Picture or File You Deleted Accidentally
Have you ever accidentally deleted a photo on your camera, computer, USB drive, or anywhere else? What you might not know is that you can usually restore those pictures—even from your camera’s memory stick.
Windows tries to prevent you from making a big mistake by providing the Recycle Bin, where deleted files hang around for a while—but unfortunately it doesn’t work for external USB drives, USB flash drives, memory sticks, or mapped drives. Luckily there’s another way to recover deleted files.
Note: we originally wrote this article a year ago, but we’ve received this question so many times from readers, friends, and families that we’ve polished it up and are republishing it for everybody. So far, everybody has reported success!
Click Here to download Recuva from its original website - https://www.piriform.com/recuva
How to Search Google Like a Pro: 11 Tricks You Have to Know
Google is a powerful tool, but you’re missing out on a lot of that power if you just type words into it. Master Google and find the best results faster with these search tricks.
Whether you’re an inexperienced user or a seasoned professional, you’ll probably find at least one search operator you weren’t aware of here. Many of Google’s search operators aren’t very well-known.
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