Web Dev Notes

ArticleDashBoard.com is a website which allows authors to write and share their articles online! Submitting articles online is a great way to get discovered and to boost traffic to your website. Lynn Little at SeoDance.com suggests some good websites to submit articles too and explains why you want to do so!

For the Web Developers reading this, perhaps writing/sharing content is not your main interest if you are not writing a blog. For you guys however, you may be interested in knowing that you can download the Article Dashboard software and use it to start running your own article directory website!

Thanks to the continued support from 451 Press, I will likely test this software on the web-hosting they kindly provide me with and then write up a review for you all! If anybody has any experience running an Article Dashboard website, please let us know what you think about the software!

Update: I now have a website called Writer Database up and running that is using the Article Dashboard software. The site has been online for a few months and so far I am very satisfied with the results! There have been no problems, the software is very easy to use, and people are definitely eager to submit when doing so is free and beneficial to them!

Feel free to visit the website and submit a few articles!

The only issue that I have with Article Dashboard right now is that approving articles can be quite a time consuming task! While it has not been a problem, thus far, if the site were to suddenly take off and receive hundreds of articles a day, it would become a full-time job approving new submissions! It would be great if instead there was an option to auto-accept new submissions and then give users the ability to report or flag poor content so that at this point an editor can take action. Meanwhile, editors can still maintain the site and moderate the content, but in the meantime those submitting articles will not end up in a huge-backlog delay because their content would appear right away.

Another thing that I found quite confusing at first was the method for subscribing to RSS feeds. When you click a feed, it seems like nothing happens. Many users would likely take this to mean the page is broken or the feeds are currently unavailable. However, what actually occurs is that the address to the feed is posted in a text-box at the top of the screen. At this point users can copy/paste this info to access the feed. It would definitely be way better if clicking the feed link simply opened the feed, since most browsers will take action on this and ask the user how they would then like to subscribe to it.

Overall though I am very pleased with the results! I definitely recommend the software to anyone who wishes to setup their own directory!

The easiest way to boost your websites rank and increase profitability is to download the Alexa toolbar.

What is Alexa? It is a site that ranks all websites on the internet. Many people will use this as a reference when estimating the value of a website or when deciding whether or not to advertise on a website.

How does it work? Let’s ask Alexa:

Alexa’s traffic rankings are based on the usage patterns of Alexa Toolbar users over a rolling 3 month period. A site’s ranking is based on a combined measure of reach and pageviews. Reach is determined by the number of unique Alexa users who visit a site on a given day. Pageviews are the total number of Alexa user URL requests for a site. However, multiple requests for the same URL on the same day by the same user are counted as a single pageview. The site with the highest combination of users and pageviews is ranked #1.

So in a nutshell, if you have the Alexa toolbar, then every time you visit a website, you will basically cast a vote for that site. All your votes and the votes of everyone using the Alexa toolbar then get added up in order to rank all the websites in the world.

Guess what? Nobody visits your website more than you! Download the Alexa toolbar now so that every time you visit or update your website, you cast yourself some votes and boost your own rank!

The Alexa toolbar itself is actually pretty useful too. It will give you a search box for browsing the web and list the current rank of the page you are browsing. You will also have the ability to easily find and access more information about websites you visit and even compare your website against others.

Alexa is owned by Amazon which is a well known trusted company. Your Alexa toolbar will also give you a handy little link to Amazon.com and all of the great products they offer at excellent prices.

What are you waiting for? Download the Alexa toolbar now!

Joomla is a free content management system which many people use to easily run their own website with little to no programming knowledge.

One great thing about Joomla is that it is very easy to change the look of your website simply by downloading a new template. The following video will show you how to install a new template so you can quickly move on to the next step of filling your website with awesome content!

Did you know that by moving around your ad placement from time to time or changing the background or border colors of your ads, you will help yourself get more clicks?! If a lot of your traffic is from return visitors, after a while they will subconsciously block the ads out from their mind. By moving them around or changing their appearance, people will suddenly notice them again for a while, increasing the chances of potential clicks!

Give your site a breath mint from time to time by freshening things up with some changes! You’ll see people won’t hide from your ads quite as much!

Looking for Web Development Software or Books? Visit my Web Development Software and Books Store!

Want to Increase your Websites Page Rank and Incoming Traffic? Submit your Articles to WriterDatabase.com. It’s Free!

If you haven’t been paying attention, the internet is an incredibly huge place these days. Millions of people browse the net every day and more and more people are becoming comfortable with shopping online. With the vast amount of customers at your finger tips world-wide, running an internet shop is a good way to make some extra money!

The first thing you need to consider before you jump right into setting up a shopping cart is first deciding if you will be renting a shopping cart system hosted by another company or if you will be purchasing software to set-up your shop yourself.

What are the advantages to renting a shopping cart system with a hosting company? The first obvious advantage is that it is much simpler for those who are not as tech-savvy but who still have a product they think they can sell successfully online. Also, by going with a hosted solution, you will often already have a payment gateway available to you so that you can immediately accept credit card payments on your site.

So why host your shopping cart yourself if the rented solution seems to offer a very easy to use solution? Because hosting the shopping cart yourself is less expensive! Since many shopping cart software systems are available absolutely free, the only cost you will need to worry about is the cost of having your own website! Below are three shopping cart systems recommended by the Web Development Blog as well as two hosted solutions that I like that are actually free!

Three Free Shopping Cart Systems Recommended by Web Development Blog

Zen-Cart
Zen Cart is a well-known provider of a free shopping cart system. While the administration back-end can be confusing because of the amount of options available, once you get the hang of things, Zen Cart can be an asset to your company because of its feature rich interface.

OsCommerce
Much like Zen Cart, Os Commerce is a feature rich shopping cart that also happens to be free. Released as Open Source software, Os Commerce has a solid community of supporters that help with the creation of plugins and modules, making this a feature rich shopping cart solution as well.

Cube Cart
Cube Cart is another free, yet versatile shopping cart system. Requiring only PHP and access to one MySQL database, the minimal requirements for this shopping cart solution are easily met by most paid web hosting accounts online today.

Two Free Hosted Shopping Cart Systems

Amazon Store
Amazon is a great way to setup an online shop at absolutely no cost. Of course, this option has one important restriction that you need to be aware of. By setting up an Amazon store you will be able to sell any of the products on Amazon.com and earn a commission on sales. If you want to sell your own products, this option is not for you. Even if your products are listed in Amazon, you could make more selling them directly than by doing so through Amazon. However, for those who’d just like to sell products related to the topic of their website, an Amazon store is an excellent option.

Paypal
Paypal is another great way to set up a free shopping cart. With Paypal you will be able to sell the products you like securely at no initial up front cost. You will be charged a fee for each transaction, but you do not have to invest any money up front. With Paypal’s shopping cart, you can define items and their prices then simply add an “Add to cart” button on your website. You can see an example at the BattleCity Classic website.

Once you’ve setup your shopping cart, you’ll need to market it! The best way to get free advertising is to take advantage of article directories like Writer Database where you can submit an article about your cart and the products available. This will help send visitors to your site at not cost whom will hopefully be interested in purchasing your product!

Are you interested in creating a PHP powered website? Why wouldn’t you be, PHP is available for you to use absolutely free. On top of that you can make some very powerful application with PHP. Check out the following examples for instance:

Joomla - Open source content management system created with PHP
PHP-Nuke - Content Management System with phpBB built in
phpBB - Open source bulletin board system created with PHP

To learn a little more about PHP, read this Introduction to PHP page.

The following are articles I’ve written about PHP. These articles include code snippets and examples to help get you started with creating your first website with PHP. The articles cover fundamental basics which are excellent for beginners, not advanced developers. The idea is to give you all the information you will need explained when you first begin working with PHP. Once you understand the following, you’ll be able to start applying it to create all sorts of different things!

Understanding PHP and the Web Server/Browser Relationship

Your First PHP Page

How to Comment Your PHP Code

Echo vs Print - Which Should be Used?

How to Use Variables in PHP

Using Concatenation with PHP Variables

PHP Variable Naming Rules

Taking Advantage of Arrays

IF / ELSE Programming Logic

Nested IF / ELSE Conditional Statements

Introducing the Different PHP Loops

The Magic of While Loops

The Incredible FOR Loop Multitasker

The FOREACH Loop Love Affair with Mr.Array

Check back often for new tutorials!

When it comes to developing a website or writing a successful blog you need to remember that it won’t always be all fun and games. Sometimes you’ll need to sit down and focus on writing a very serious post like “Are Chihuahua’s Holding Back Your Website?“. Sure chihuahuas may be tiny little beasts, but that doesn’t mean that their very existence can’t be a deterrent to your success. You can’t miraculously expect to create one of the richest companies in the world while fooling around and having a good time; you need to keep that serious “I AIN’T BLUFFIN” business face at all times like Google did with these top secret projects.

moar funny pictures

It’s obviously no secret then that all the most successful bloggers look to Super Squirrel when in need of inspiration. Super Squirrel is always available to help you stay focussed so you can Plot You Plan for success… in an evil way of course! In fact, it’s important not to let the big guns intimidate you and it is therefore recommended you post slanderous posts about them whenever possible such as when I wrote about how I hacked Google and stole their robot lolol! If you can’t improve your website, at least such rumor spreading posts can help make your competitors look bad so the end result is still a better view of your own site! On that note, also remind visitors often that your competitors are actually drug dealing zombies who plan to have Googlebot Index Your Brain for their own head feasting pleasures.

If all else fails and it appears you’ve somehow condemned your website to failure despite following all of the above advice, there is still one last hope for you! When in doubt, resort to starting conspiracy theories! Remember when in all seriousness I wrote, “HELP! My TrackBacks Have Been Kidnapped!“. This was an excellent conspiracy that had all my readers searching the internet for my lost trackbacks. If that doesn’t work, you can also try boosting your own ego by discussing the failures of others such as when I wrote, “Are You Sad Because Nobody Visits Your Website?”

At the end of the day, if your website is still a black hole void of even the smallest glimpse of light or hope then the real problem is that you were a clone. If you clone you’ll end up alone!

If you want to make a living from blogging you can! Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. The good news is that getting started with a blog does not require any monetary investment. You can turn a 0$ initial investment into a million dollar business! The thing to keep in mind though is that this transition will not happen over night! Some assembly is required!

more funny pictures

The main ingredient you will need to invest in you blog is time. By constantly investing time into your blog, you can turn a tiny little website into a huge empire! Doing so requires just a few simple steps. Blog often, do it on a consistent schedule and comment comment comment!

Of course, there is always a catch. The above will get you started but it won’t help you make any money! To make money even more assembly is required! First you’ll need to sign up for one or more of the following advertising services.

Get Reviewed At ReviewMe!

Earn $$ with WidgetBucks

AuctionAds: Increase the bid on your site’s income!

Once you are signed up to one of these services they will give you some code that you can copy/paste into the theme of your blog or website in order to display advertisements. If your website has many daily visitors, you’ll start converting that traffic into income! Now you’re not only blogging which is hopefully something you enjoy, but you’re also making money from it!

Another great way to make money online from your website is to use Amazon! Read this article to find out how to create an online store and make money with Amazon.

Of course, once you slap on some ads or start using Amazon, you still need to continue posting quality content! Quality content is the best way to ensure your visitors return to your site again in the future!

Once your site has a lot of traffic, a good Alexa ranking and a good Google Page Rank, you should also consider direct advertising. Direct advertising is when you sell advertising space on your website yourself. You always make more profit this way because you no longer have a middle-person taking a cut! You only want to offer direct advertising once your website will offer something of value to your advertisers because you definitely want them to be repeat customers. The more repeat customers you have, the less you need to worry about finding new partners each month and the more stable your income becomes!

If you enjoyed this post, why not check out some other websites I’ve been working on!

• BattleCity Classic
• Looble Network
• Software Engineer Training
• WriterDatabase
• Tamra Maew

If you want your website to be successful then you need to be ready to spend a lot of time working at it! There is no get rich quick scheme out there when it comes to making a living off the internet. It is possible to make tons of cash from a blog, but you need to make sure the chihuahua’s are not holding you back! Don’t let those little buggers grab you by the tail and slow down the success of your website! Toss that evil something a bone!

Does it always feel like success it out of reach? It’s not. While I’d love to be cliché and say you are the only one holding yourself back, I’ll be honest and say there are tons of factors involved with how much money you can make online. That being said, only you are holding yourself back from creating a successful blog or website in terms of generating traffic! How much money you can then make from that traffic depends on the topic of the blog and available advertising opportunities.

If you follow all of the advice of the successful bloggers out there, you will be successful as well. It is very rare that someone will say they’ve been posting quality content daily for one year while commenting on other blogs and have not managed to get any traffic yet! Those who have failed are those who did not stick to a regular posting schedule or who did not take the time to comment on other blogs of similar content in order to build valuable relationships and generate some incoming links. For many, it’s not their fault either. Dropping everything to blog full-time is not an option, especially since it will take several months of dedicated blogging before you start to see results. People need to work a job or go to school. It’s not easy to manage!

The good news is, if you do manage to do it all and stick to doing it all consistently, then you will be successful. You will start getting tons of incoming traffic and if you place ads that add value to your website, you will also start making some money!

Are chihuahua’s holding you back? Don’t let those little buggers grab you by the tail and slow down the success of your website!

If you read this website or others like Problogger, then you know there are people out there who make a great living from the internet. What’s holding you back from accomplishing the same? Who is your chihuahua? Is is lack of time? Are you too lazy? Maybe you are afraid of failure, or are unwilling to commit to something that is guaranteed to generate close to zero income for the first year!

If you want to be successful, you need to identify your chihuahua and toss it a bone. Do what you need to do to get that bugger off your tail so you can take the steps necessary to become successful. You don’t really want to be the one afraid of such a tiny little dog do you?