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.
Six Things Businesses Need to Know About Facebook's Timeline By Laura Tate
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.
Set Your Website on Fire with Red Themes, Photos, and Palettes
Set Your Website on Fire with Red Themes, Photos, and Palettes
There are some things that you wouldn’t have thought of when using red, such as symbols or effects on our mood. After all, it’s just a colour, right? Red has quite a few qualities and associations; fiery, passionate and overall dynamic are just a few descriptive words that barely scratch the surface.Prepare to go deeper into the subject and see just how it works!
Basics
Like its predecessor from the previous article, red is part of the primary triad, but it is also on the opposite side in a few senses. Unlike blue, its name is much less tolerant and only a few colours have the luxury of being included in the category. The exclusiveness is present at a biological level, as well: only one of the three types of receptor cells is truly sensitive to the wavelengths characterising red. If you really think about it, just slightly tinting something red will most probably warrant a different name.
Characteristics
Being a warm colour, it tends to be more invasive and will make a room appear to be smaller than it actually is, but when used well and in darker forms, it can lend itself to a cozier environment.
As mentioned, red is somewhat more difficult to perceive and this is because it has the highest of wavelengths. As its wavelength increases, it also nears the edge of what is called infrared, which cannot be perceived by the naked eye.
Colour therapy suggests that exposure to red raises the blood pressure, thus having an invigorating effect. Without going too much into the subject, Eastern philosophy associates red with the adrenal glands and, by extension, with the emotions produced by increased adrenaline.
Symbolism
Naturally, the things associated with it vary with every culture, but there are some general symbols with which we can all agree. In no particular order, these include heat, fire, passion, courage, danger, love and energy.
photo by Martin LougasDelving deeper into the human aspect, warmth and energy can be derived. Strangely, the general idea of flames being red has long been rooted, even though orange would be more appropriate. Perhaps it’s because it triggers much stronger feelings which are better represented by fire and we also tend to remember and associate extremes. Warmth and heat also suggest life, but from an inner perspective.
Red is a very powerful symbol for danger because of its immediate perception and adrenaline-related qualities. Stop signs and stop lights are examples of its daily uses. In part because of this, large quantities of bright red can be overbearing so it should be used sparingly.
Combinations
Given its overall effect, for a balanced result it’s best to either tone down a predominantly red design or use it in smaller quantities to bring more life. This mostly concerns bright shades; while darker tones can still be imposing, they are still more tolerable. It should be noted that it tends to conflict with strong cool colours and will warm up more passive colours like browns.
Its complementary is green and theoretically it should be used in a 50-50 proportion for a harmonious effect. In order to avoid a Christmas impression, their interaction should be kept at a minimum and a third colour should be introduced to keep them in check by dominating quantity-wise. Another solution is to use less bright variants.
As an attention-grabber, it works well on darker backgrounds such as dark grey, ash brown and even black. The contrast is effective even with darker or vintage tones of red. On the opposite side, it can be successfully used on white backgrounds in more minimal designs, but once again with a bit of caution.
Palettes
01. TOOL Remix by whoneycutt
02. Sea Serpent in Horrible Peril by sethbenson
03. Shark Attack by kristi
04. Fire Dragon and Charthouse by mark
05. Herzin by maya-kido
06. Oil Flame by rickomoreira
07. Vintage Poster by robertkubas
08. Court of the Crimson King by carle
09. Water Cherries by spongebobgirl949
10. War on Water by cgriffith
Web – WordPress themes
01. Slick Red (free)
02. Provocateur (premium)
03. Redminton (premium)
04. ShapeShifter (premium)
05. Titanium Folio (premium)
06. Daily Journal (premium)
07. Bold (premium)
08. CherryTruffle (premium)
09. Snapshot (free)
10. Myriad (premium)
Artwork – macro photos
01. Red Delight by Bozack
02. Abstract Red by StacyD
03. Shades of Red by eyedesign
04. Blood Clot by PoisonedHamster
05. An Apple II by OnMostSurfaces
06. Ladybug by wulfila
07. Leaves on fire 3 by Dieffi
08. Cherry Blossoms by heathersfeathers
09. Red by i-shadow
10. Flaming Feathers by starlightspell
25 Finance APIs
By Kevin Farnham
Among the 25 finance-related APIs now listed on ProgrammableWeb, there are services from old and new companies, and large and small companies. For example, the venerable Dun and Bradstreet offers the Dun and Bradstreet Credit Check API, personal finance startup Wesabe offers an API and there’s an API from Prosper, a peer-to-peer lending service. Overall, most current business and finance APIs fall into one of two categories: APIs from SaaS-based business administration and management services, and APIs that provide financial markets data. SaaS Business Administration APIs
A variety of new on-demand service providers offer APIs as a means to reach and integrate with their services. For example,
the Blinksale API accesses their online invoicing service. The REST API provides access to your Blinksale data, letting you create invoices using a Blinksale invoice template or one of your own creation. The FreshBooks API provides online invoicing and time tracking using your Freshbooks account. The KashFlow and NetAccounts APIs offer broader accounting capabilities, geared toward businesses in the UK and Australia, respectively.
Financial Data APIs
Looking for real-time financial market quotes or historical data? Fifteen APIs are ready to get you the data you need, when you need it. Xignite provides financial data APIs ranging from XigniteRealtime and XigniteFunds (real-time U.S. stock market quotes, and U.S. mutual fund data) to XigniteCurrencies and XigniteRates (currency and international interest rate data) to XigniteEdgar and XigniteCalendar (U.S. SEC Edgar filings and global economic calendars). The Xignite APIs feature SOAP and REST protocols, with all data returned in XML format. Once you’ve used one Xignite API, it’s relatively easy to get started with others, since all the APIs incorporate a common design structure.
StrikeIron offers a number of APIs that serve users with U.S. financial data including StrikeIron Stock Quotes Basic, StrikeIron Mutual Funds, and StrikeIron Historical Stock Quotes. The StrikeIron APIs utilize SOAP protocol and return results in XML format.Timepost Mashup
Business and Financial APIs provide excellent opportunities for developing mashups. One example is the Timepost mashup, which applies the Blinksale and FreshBooks business APIs, along with the popular Basecamp API (from 37signals) and the Harvest time-tracking API. Integration of these APIs results in a rich time tracking and project collaboration solution for small businesses.
Using Weather Data to Change Your Website’s Appearance through PHP and CSS
Using Weather Data to Change Your Website’s Appearance through PHP and CSS
This article is co-authored by David WalshInspiration for this idea came from a comment by Andreas.
Using a little magic and trickery (read: PHP and CSS), we can change the appearance of a website automatically based on the weather outside, in real time! In the example site we have created, the header graphic will change to one of four different styles based on Sunny, Rain, Snow, and Cloudy.
Step 1: Designing your weather graphics
Our example site changes header graphics as as well as an icon in the sidebar to describe the weather. For the sake of example, we only created four different weather scenarios, defaulting to sunny.
Step 2: Retrieving the weather information
Yahoo! has an API for weather information. We can tap into this very easily using an URL formatted like so:http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=97211&u=f
The 5-digit number is your Zip Code and the “f” stands for “Fahrenheit” (change to “c” for “Celsius”). The information comes in XML format and it’s up to you how you want to parse the data. Since the only bit of information we care about is the “yweather:condition” element’s “text” attribute, We’re going to avoid creating an XML parsing object and use a short regular expression.
Once the regular expression returns the yweather element’s text, we’ll use str_replace() and strtolower to format the string into a representative CSS class.
Step 3: Turning the weather information into an CSS class
Here is the PHP code:<?php
/* get xml, find match */
/* get the weather from Yahoo */
$data = get_data("http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=97211&u=f");
$weather_class = format_result(get_match('/<yweather:condition text="(.*)"/isU',$data));
/* debug to see what we got back */
//echo '<pre style="background:#fff;font-size:12px;">['; print_r($weather); echo ']</pre>';
/* format the result */
function format_result($input)
{
return strtolower(str_replace(array(' ', '(', ')'), array('-', '-', ''), $input));
}
/* helper: does regex */
function get_match($regex,$content)
{
preg_match($regex,$content,$matches);
return $matches[1];
}
/* gets the xml data from Alexa */
function get_data($url)
{
$ch = curl_init();
$timeout = 5;
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL,$url);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT,$timeout);
$xml = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
return $xml;
}
?><div class="header header-<?php echo $weather_class; ?>">
</div>Step 4: Code your CSS for each of the classes
.header {
width: 782px; height: 150px;
/* DEFAULTS TO SUNNY */
background: url(images/header-sunny.png) no-repeat center center black;
}
.header-rain {
background: url(images/header-rain.png) no-repeat center center black;
}
header-snow {
background: url(images/header-snow.png) no-repeat center center black;
}
.header-sunny, .header-fair {
background: url(images/header-sunny.png) no-repeat center center black;
}
.header-partly-cloudy, .header-cloudy, .header-mostly-cloudy {
background: url(images/header-partlycloudy.png) no-repeat center center black;
}Step 5: Extending the idea
Notice that we use the “partlycloudy” graphic for the weather conditions of “partly-cloudy”, “cloudy”, and “mostly-cloudy”. It’s up to you how specific you want to get. Here is a full list of the possible weather conditions from Yahoo!:0 tornado
1 tropical storm
2 hurricane
3 severe thunderstorms
4 thunderstorms
5 mixed rain and snow
6 mixed rain and sleet
7 mixed snow and sleet
8 freezing drizzle
9 drizzle
10 freezing rain
11 showers
12 showers
13 snow flurries
14 light snow showers
15 blowing snow
16 snow
17 hail
18 sleet
19 dust
20 foggy
21 haze
22 smoky
23 blustery
24 windy
25 cold
26 cloudy
27 mostly cloudy (night)
28 mostly cloudy (day)
29 partly cloudy (night)
30 partly cloudy (day)
31 clear (night)
32 sunny
33 fair (night)
34 fair (day)
35 mixed rain and hail
36 hot
37 isolated thunderstorms
38 scattered thunderstorms
39 scattered thunderstorms
40 scattered showers
41 heavy snow
42 scattered snow showers
43 heavy snow
44 partly cloudy
45 thundershowers
46 snow showers
47 isolated thundershowersHave fun! - and let me know if anyone actually uses this, I’d love to see what you did with it.
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