Thursday 31 May 2012

How To Speed Up Your Photography Website Or Blog

Photography websites and blogs are the hardest sites to speed up. Because of the media files that are contained in photography sites the loading speed is slow if the site is not well optimized. 

The load time of websites is very important factors because it affects usability; most Internet users will just skip a site altogether if it fails to load within a couple of seconds and crucially, Google this days uses load time as one of the factors of website ranking. If your photography site has ultra low load speed it will rank at the bottom of Google searches.

6 Tips on How To Optimize a Photography blog / website

I have used the following techniques to try and speed up one of my sites that is photo/image heavy. 

1. Alway edit Images Before Uploading Them

Before uploading the images always use the “Save for the web” feature included on image editing software. Images represent the heavier load on a photography site so make sure you are optimizing them. Alternatively you can also turn to an online image optimizer.

2. Avoid Using Flash on Your Photography site

Although flash based website look beautiful they are very slow to load. Apart from being slow, search engines are not able to read them and they rank poorly on search engines.

3. Use JPEG Image Formats For Photography Site

It is important that you choose the right format. JPEG format is suitable for photographs or true-color images. The GIF format should be used with flat-color images like logos or buttons. PNG works very similar to GIF but it supports more colors.

4. Optimize  The CSS Of Your Photography Site

Most websites suing popular platforms such as Wordpress or Joomla are designed with CSS. Make sure to aggregate and clean your CSS. CleanCSS is an online tool that will merge similar selectors, remove useless properties and remove the whitespace from your code.

5. Use a Slash on Your Links

When a user opens a link on the form “http://www.domain.com/about” the server will need to figure what kind of file or page is contained on that address. If you include a slash (/) at the end of the link the server will already know that this is a directory page, reducing the load time of the site.

6. Use VPS Web Hosting

VPS web hosting is more expensive than shared hosting but if your site is hosted on VPS server the load speed will be faster.

Wednesday 30 May 2012

Most Popular Online Website Builders

There are many website builders around the net. The majority of these website builders offer a starter package that is free of charge. The free version include a basic sub domain site, i.e. yourname.websitebusildername.com. To get a site with your full domain name you need to upgrade to their premium services that also comes with more storage. The following is a list of some of the popular website creator tools.

Most Popular Online Website Builders

Weebly Online Website Builder
Weebly is a free online website creator. It uses a widget-style format, allowing users to create web pages with only a few clicks by dragging and dropping different page elements (images, text, or interactive content, etc.) onto a page and filling in the content.

Webs Online Website Creator
Webs, formerly Freewebs and before is a free website builder and website hosting service. The service allows users to build and manage their own "professional quality" sites. Users can use applications, normal pages, and many other features to enhance the quality of their website. A user can also choose to buy a premium service.

Basekit Website Creator
BaseKit is an Internet-based website design service, allowing W3C code compliant websites to be built using a Photoshop file as a design template, overlaid with various 'widgets' to perform various popular functions such as inserting text, RSS feeds, Twitter feeds and videos. The intention of the software is to allow a web designer to create a visually engaging and functional website without a detailed knowledge of CSS or other code languages.

Yola Free Website Builder
Yola is a website builder and website hosting company headquartered in San Francisco. People without programming skills and a limited knowledge of HTML and graphic design can make web sites using Yola. Its drag and drop system allows users to incorporate widgets without knowing HTML. Yola also integrates e-commerce and blog software and acts as a domain registrar.

Edicy Website Builder
Edicy is a tool for creating free websites online. It's built for small businesses globally and focuses on users with little or no experience with computers. The light-weight user interface offers drag and drop editing experience (WYSIWYG) and makes it one of the fastest tools to build websites with. Edicy features rich text and photo editing, picture galleries, form builder and supports multi-language site structure.

Wix Online Flash website builder
Wix.com is a free online platform that allows users to create Flash and HTML5 websites, Apple-compatible mobile sites and customized Facebook pages through the use of pre-designed templates and "Drag & Drop" tools. Wix.com targets customers that lack sufficient knowledge in HTML language to code their websites.

Doomby Free Website Maker
Released in 2009, doomby is a free online website builder, CMS (content management system) and web hosting platform. Its integrated web building tools and interfaces incorporate drag and drop and WYSIWYG editors with HTML code and CSS editing to adapt to users' existing experience with creating websites, thus enabling its use by novices or experienced website builders.

Basic accounts are free and include common website features such as blogs, forums, polls and photo albums. A number of optional paid services are also available to users
.

Saturday 26 May 2012

Wordpress Classes : How To Create A Wordpress Blog Post

In this week in our wordpress classes series we look at how to create a wordpress blog post. When you log in inside your wordpress dashboard for the first time you can feel intimidated by all the buttons and be afraid of doing damage to your blog by clicking on the wrong thing. Worry no more, this post will teach you How To Create A Wordpress Blog Post.

The most important buttons in your "new post" page.  
The new post page looks like the image below. As you can see they are many buttons but I will focus on the buttons necessary to create a blog post by a beginner.




The Title
The top part titled "Title" is where you put the title of your blog post. The characters in the title should be less than 70. Search engines such as Google show only 70 characters, any thing more than that and they will cut your title. When the title is cut it loses meaning.

The Visual vs HTML
Always choose the Visual option. HTML option is complicated and only recommended for advanced users. 

The Menu
The menu is similar to your Microsoft Office Word. You can bold, centre, number undo and bullet just like you do in WORD.

Categories
On the right hand side you will see Categories button. It is always important to put every post in a category. When readers click on category tab in your homepage they will be directed to all the post in that category. 

Save
Wordpress has an automatic auto save, so you don't need to keep clicking save every time you finish a sentence or paragraph.

Publish.
Once you are done writing your post just click publish and the page will refresh and you will see an alert at the top "your post has been published" If you click view the post, you will see your post published on the blog. 

writing a wordpress blog post can be terrifying for a beginner but don't worry. As you keep on writing it will become a piece of cake.

You can watch this video tutorial on  How To Create A Wordpress Blog Post


References ; Wordpress Official Site.

How to create a Wordpress site

This week on our wordpress classes series we focus on how to create a wordpress site. The great thing about Wordpress is that it is customizable. It starts out with a very plain look, but you can customize that look to reflect your style.

In this class you will learn a variety of useful techniques to make the most of wordpress. And, by the time the presentation ends, you will gain enough knowledge to create your own Wordpress site.

This video presentation will teach you how create or build a Wordpress site, how to create a page, how to create posts, how to choose a theme, how to install a plug-in and how to set up widgets,

It’s an informal real-time presentation in-case of any questions please leave them in the comments section and I will gladly reply

Wednesday 23 May 2012

Affordable Website & Blog Hosting Companies Missouri

Missouri is rich with web hosting providers. If you are interested in starting a personal blog you will find low cost/cheap blog hosting companies. Small business owners who are interested in setting up a small business website can find fully fledged web hosts.

Top And Best Web Hosting Companies In Missouri

SERVER4YOU - Missouri Dedicated Server Provider
SERVER4YOU is one of the worlds largest dedicated server hosting providers. SERVER4YOU provides FREE Instant Setup, 24/7 Live Support, a wide range of servers from the basic starter to the professional dual 64 bit-CPU Raid server, all housed in a state of the art server center in Saint Louis MO. 

NPS Internet Solutions - Missouri Wordpress Hosting  
NPSIS provides a range of web hosting solutions including domain name registration, hosting and design services.

The company also offers an online knowledge base, flash tutorials, a Smart Domain Search & Suggest Tool, website builders, and marketing tools.

The price of Wordpress shared hosting is $3.95 per month.  They also offer hosting for other blogging platforms such Joomla.

Integrity Host - Missouri Low Cost Web Hosting
Integrity Host is a provider of cheap shared, semi-dedicated, vps, and managed dedicated hosting services providing 24x7 live support. They host over 20,000 domains.

The price of shared web hosting is $3.95/m. 

Connectria Corporation - Missouri Business Web Hosting 
Connectria Web host is a Provider of custom managed hosting to large and mid-sized businesses in need of complex dedicated server hosting. We support AIX, AS/400, Citrix, DB2, Linux, Lotus Domino, Microsoft, Oracle, UNIX, Solaris, Weblogic, and Websphere.

VPS NOC - VPS Hosting
VPS NOC offers fully managed and unmanaged VPS server solutions designed to meet anyone's needs at affordable prices.

FPweb.net - Missouri ASP Hosting Experts.
FPweb.net is a Ecommerce Web Hosting,FrontPage Web Hosting,ASP Hosting Experts. Free 30 day trial. Microsoft Certified Partner.

They target big clients such as medium sized business and corporations that need off site data centres.

Tuesday 22 May 2012

Top Web Hosting Companies In Washington

Washington is blessed with many web hosting companies. These web host providers serve the needs of business to freelance bloggers. The company offer different services such as shared web hosting, VPS hosting and dedicated server hosting.

Top & Best Web hsoting companies in Washington

Hostward.com - Washington Low Cost Wordpress Blog Web Host
HostWard provides low cost hosting worldwide to thousands of customers. They offer unlimited space and bandwidth with 1 click scripts to set your site up easily.
Hostward.com Features:-
UNLIMITED Disk Space & Bandwidth
UNLIMITED Websites
FREE Domain Name
24/7 U.S. Technical Support
Create a Blog in 5 Minutes
Easy-to-Use » Control Panel
FREE Premium Web Builder
30-Day FULL Money Back Guarantee
RvSkins
Fantastico

All for a low cost web hosting price of $3.95 per month. This service is ideal people interested in hosting personal blogs on blogging platforms such as wordpress, joomla and drupal.

Medeek - Washington Small Business Website Hosting
If you just need a static website to give your small business an online presence then Medeek is the web hosting company for you. They will host your static web page for a low price of $1 per month. 

Tier 3 - Washington Dedicated Servers Web Host
Tier 3 offers complete end-to-end management of your IT environment. They provide and service the network and hardware, take care of backups and recovery, ensure security, and fully manage your operating systems, web, and database application infrastructures. Plus, each client has a dedicated staff of five Level-3 engineers that make it all happen. From daily operations to adding new services, your team has the experience it needs to handle large-scale web operations and application development.

Parcom - Washington Shared Cloud Hosting
Since 1997, Parcom has been offering secure web hosting services with great features! There shared cloud hosting experience is a fantastic service which offers clients a choice of several cloud locations around the world. 

Vivio - Washington Green & VPS Web host provider
Vivio Technologies Dedicated Server Hosting provides your business with the unprecidented level of control and scalability that only Dedicated Server Hosting can offer. In addition, all of their Dedicated Servers are fully upgradeable to ColdFusion Dedicated Servers. If you're looking for Dedicated ColdFusion Hosting, look no further. Dedicated ColdFusion Hosting doesn't get any better then a Vivio Technologies Dedicated Server.
 

Affordable Web Hosting Companies In Illinois

Looking for a web host? Check out the state of Illinois. There are many website and blog hosting companies located in and around the state of Illinois. These web host providers serve big business, small business and freelance bloggers. 

Top & Best Web Hosting Companies In Illinois
Steadfast Networks - Illinois Dedicated Servers Hosting
Steadfast Networks has been providing top-rate cloud, dedicated server, and colocation services since 1998. The company prides itself in the levels of support and customer service provided. They target big and small medium sized businesses that need off site servers.They have data centres located in Chicago and New York. 

Eboundhost.com - Cheapest Web Hosting Company in Illinois
With a price of $3.95 per month for shared hosting, eboundhost.com is the cheapest web host in Illinois in terms of service. You might get a cheaper web hosting plan but what you get from this provider is unmatched. For $3.95/m you get FREE DOMAIN NAME + UNLIMITED DISK SPACE + UNLIMITED BANDWIDTH.

Hostway Corporation - Illinois Business Web Hosting
If you are looking for a web host that can serve your international website then Hostway is your company. They have Data centers on 4 continents, redundant global support centers and employees in 12 countries. They already serve 300,000 customers worldwide.

Intrahost Communications
IntraHost Communications is a web hosting company founded in 1999. They offer quality shared web hosting and reseller hosting solutions to clients worldwide. IntraHost is a Chicago, Illinois area based business, with high-performance servers in Chicago and the surrounding areas.

The price of shared web hosting is $4.95 per month.

Hosting Scene - Low Cost Wordpress Web host
They provide customers with complete web solutions. From start to finish, and everything inbetween. Domain Registration, Graphic Design, Web Design, Web Hosting, and Xen powered Virtual Private Servers.

They are ideal for people interested in starting a blog and they want someone to do the design plus the installation. There web hosting can work with the popular wordpress platform plus other blogging platforms like Joomla and Drupal. The price of a starter plan is $3.95 per month. 

My Ideal Host - Illinois Low Cost Website Hosting Provider
cheap hosting provider with 99.9% server uptime guarantee. My Ideal Host packages include unlimited Disk Space, unlimited bandwidth, free domain registration, unlimited hosted domains and mailboxes, 24/7 mail and phone support. All for a low cost price of $3.45 per month. A nice package for running a static small business website and personal blogs.

The Premier Host - Web Hosting For $1.5 Per Month
The Premier Host, is a web hosting company based in Chicago, Illinois. They enable individuals and businesses to acquire and create their unique identities and brands on the internet by offering domain registration, web hosting, SSL certificates and complimentary products and services. The starter plan cost $1.5/m

Sunday 20 May 2012

Tips On How To Attract Visitors To New Website

Setting up a new website for your online business or small business is easy, the hard part is getting visitors to your new website. There are two methods of getting visitors to your new website, promoting your new website through advertising or getting visitors to find your website when they search for your product on Google, Bing, Yahoo or another search engine.

Traffic from search engine is awesome because it doesn't cost you a penny but to get these visitors you need to add a blog to your static website. A blog will be a place where you write on topics focusing on your product or niche. Search engines love blogs and the more content a blog has the more visitors they will get. 

The blog is where you will write everything under the sun concerning your product. Before your start writing content on your website blog follow my blogging tips.

Tips On How To Attract Visitors To New Website

1. Understand Your Niche /Product / Service Be For Attracting Visitors To Your New Website
For a new website to attract traffic, the first assignment is to understand the Niche/Product / Service What kind of people are you building the website for? You’ve to truly understand what competitions lie ahead and there is no shortcut on it.

It’s not enough to know the problem this people face; you’ve to understand what got them into this problem in the first place. Prospects do not want to know the pain they’re going through; instead, what they’re after is to get rid of the symptoms. Does it make sense?
If you can understand your niche, attracting targeted traffic won’t be difficult. Think about it?

2. Use Google Keyword Tool To Do Research On Visitors You want To Attract to Your New Site
The best organic traffic comes from Google.  Make use of there free tool. When you log in into Google Keyword tool you can enter your target keywords and Google will give you a full list of keywords related to your keyword. For example, if your new website is about selling shoes online and you enter "shoes" you will see stuff like
  • Black shoes
  • black leather shoes
  • mens black leather shoes
  • etc.
This kind of information is important because it will show you how your target customers think and you can tailor your website content accordingly.

3. Write Powerful Content To Attract Visitors to Your New Website
Once you have studied your niche/product/service well you will be able to gather helpful data to help when creating content for your new website. 

Once you understand your potential customers, go ahead and weave it into your content. Use the questions they ask as your headline and start the introduction with it. Use the same question within your content and in your third paragraph, solve the problem creatively and command action. Never allow your visitors to leave without taking action – it’s a waste of time and resources.

4. Build Links For Higher Ranking To Attract More Visitors to Your New Website
Google ranks websites based on links, what that means is the more websites and blogs link to your site the higher you should expect your website to rank. If you can get your website on page one of Google you should expect to attract more visitors.

One method of getting links is writing guest posts for blogs related to your niche. Search Google for your primary keyword and research the ‘top 10’ results. Contact the blog owners and propose to write for them. You’ll definitely be turned down by most bloggers, but don’t give up. Gear up your steps and move to the next blog. Don't expect to see immediate impact when you write guest post, you will start seeing results 2-3 months down the line. 

To Your Success!

Saturday 19 May 2012

How To Successfully Move Your Website To New Domain Name

Moving an existing website to an new domain name can be a risky move if done badly. The major risk is you may lose all the site traffic. New York Times ran the story of nutsonline.com that tried to move/change to a new domain name (nuts.com).

When nutsonline.com tried to shift to nuts.com the new domain name lost 50%-70% traffic for 5 months. Readers and experts were asked to offer advice on how to fix the problem and the following were the solutions on how to shift an old website to new domain name.

How To Successfully Shift Your Website To New Domain Name

Matt Cutts - Google Head of Search Team shared three tips on how to move your old site to a New Domain Name without losing traffic.

Matt Cutts, chief of Google’s Webspam team, said, because Google’s algorithms have to adjust to a new address, sites should expect a temporary drop in traffic immediately after a move, maybe 5 percent. According to Mr. Cutts, nutsonline.com missed three opportunities to minimize his traffic loss. First, Nuts.com had been a parked or content-free site before the sale — meaning, Mr. Cutts said, that “NutsOnline basically moved into what was an abandoned building for the last 10 years.” To prepare users — and Google — for the site’s new purpose, Mr. Cutts said, nutsonline.com should have put up a banner or a simplified site on Nuts.com to announce its new identity several months before moving.

Second, NutsOnline should have moved a small part of the site — a subdirectory or subdomain — to the new address for a month or so before the move to test for problems.

Thirdly, set geographic location of the site.

Hear is a video of Matt Cutts Talking about changing your website domain name.

Thursday 17 May 2012

Zoho - Small Business Website Builder Tool

Website creator Zoho announced on Tuesday it has launched its new website builder, Zoho Sites, which enables small businesses to quickly create and build polished, professional websites without any coding.

Website builders help small and medium-businesses build professional websites easily and on budget.

“We want our users to run their entire business on Zoho,” said Raju Vegesna, Zoho evangelist. “Building a website is typically the first step for any business. That has been one of the missing pieces from our portfolio. With Zoho Sites, customers can create and host their websites on Zoho. As a next step, they can host their email in Zoho Mail, customer data in Zoho CRM, financial data in Zoho Books, etc. Websites built using Zoho Sites will be the face of a business, while all the backend data is managed using our other business applications.”

Video Of Zoho Free website Builder for Small Business Website


 Zoho Small business website builder  enables users to design a professional-looking website without writing any code by selecting a theme from the gallery, draging and droping desired elements such as text, images, and videos, and then publish the site.

Free Zoho Small business website builder
 
Zoho  Small business website builder is available in both free and paid editions. The Zoho Sites Free Edition includes two websites, with each website containing two forms, one blog and unlimited pages.

Zoho is providing free web hosting with all Zoho Sites websites, and users also have the option to register a domain on Zoho Sites and host their website on that domain.

Price and Cost of Zoho Small business website builder
The Professional Edition is priced at $39 per year and includes six websites, with each website containing 10 forms, a blog and unlimited pages. This edition also supports Google AdSense and complete rebranding.

Wednesday 16 May 2012

Connecticut Web Hosting Providers

There are several web hosting providers in the state of Connecticut. From web hosting companies that provide hosting to big business and small business to website hosting companies that serve the needs of personal bloggers.

Top website Hosting Companies In Connecticut
Hosting Connecticut
Hosting Connecticut offers a full range of website services including hosting and design for the small and medium sized business, organizations and individuals. They offer everything from domain name registration to website design to web hosting on super-fast servers to merchant accounts and ecommerce for online sales.

OLM Web Hosting 
OLM has been hosting individual websites and dedicated servers since 1996
OLM offers web hosting solutions for individuals and business of all sizes. Whether you're setting up your first site or you're looking to sell your product online, OLM offers web hosting, webmaster, ecommerce, and reseller solutions to fit everyone's needs. A starter plan for shared web hosting is $9.95 per month.

DTS-NEt - Cheap Web hosting
This Connecticut web hosting company (DTS-Net) has been around since 1997. They don't give a good first impression because the website design looks 1990s. They claim to host 40,000 domain & server accounts.

They offer cheap and low cost website hosting that starts from $2.95 per month for shared hosting. 

They host all popular blogging platforms, Wordpress, Joomla, Magento and Wikis. 

Fluid Hosting LLC
Fluid Hosting provides a wide range of website hosting services including Shared Hosting, Dual Platform Reseller Hosting, virtual private servers, and server colocation.  The basic plan starts from $9.95 per month. 

Lexiconn Web Hosting
LexiConn specializes in providing full-featured, dependable web site hosting. The one thing that sets them apart is the are way expensive compared to other Connecticut web hosting companies. The cheapest plan is $19.95 per month for a mere 100MB disk space and 4GB.

Expert Internet Services 
Expert Internet Services based In Connecticut gives a personal touch to enterprise level hosting services. Whether you are hosting your first website or you have been online for a long time, you'll benefit from EIS's experience and quality! They offer cloud hosting that give you the unique ability to run both windows and linux on the same account and has the ability to scale to suit user demand and traffic spikes quickly.

Tuesday 15 May 2012

How To Install A Wordpress Theme on Hostgator

This guide is written to help you install a wordpress theme to your Hostgator account. The beauty of wordpress is the ease of use.,you don't need technical knowledge to work with it you just need to follow simple instructions.

NB. UPDATE ; This guide is no-longer relevant because the latest version of Wordpress allows you to install Wordpress themes directly inside your Wordpress dashboard. Just go to Dashboard, click Appearance and then Themes. Inside themes click install themes. You will then see an option to choose a theme from Wordpress directory or from you PC. If you have the theme saved in your machine you can select upload and upload it from you PC. 

If you still want to know how to install wordpress theme into your hostgator account using File Zilla then read on.

How To Install A Wordpress Theme Manually On Hostgator

Step 1. Download the theme

Look for wordpress theme using Google search engine. Once you find a theme you like, you’ll need to download it to your computer before you can do anything else with it. Most of the time, all the contents of a theme are delivered as a ZIP archive.

Step 2. Upload the theme to your WordPress blog

This step will require FTP access to your Hostgator hosting account, and a piece of FTP software. You can try FileZilla —it’s good, and it’s free.
The theme’s main directory is the one you’ll be uploading to your blog. Connect to your site via FTP (the FTP tool’s help documentation will explain how to do this if you’re not sure) and navigate to the wp-content/themes directory of your site. This is where you upload your theme’s main directory.

Once you have finished uploading log in to your wordpress dashboard. 

Step 3. Activate your new theme

Log in to your WordPress Admin panel using your Admin account details.
Go to Appearance > Themes. Your new theme should be visible among all the others. The only thing left for you to do now is activate it:

There you go. Installing wordpress theme in hostgator is a piece of cake. 

Monday 14 May 2012

Low Cost Website & Blog Hosting Companies in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania has some of the leading web hosting providers in the country. You can choose from high end website hosting providers that charge a fortune to the lower end that offer low cost website and blog hosting. There is a company for everyone: web host for small business website and web host for personal blogs.

Affordable Web hosting providers around Pennsylvania

Blazeforce - business hosting packages. 
Blazeforce is a Pennsylvania web host that is dedicated to building your online presence. They offer fast reliable web hosting, mysql web hosting and business hosting packages. The start plan for a static business website is $3.99/m. All of their plans come with a free domain, 30 day money back guarantee and a personal support representative.

Bravohosting - Cheap Wordpress Blog Hosting 
Bravohosting is one of the cheapest web host in Pennsylvania. The price of a starter hosting plan is $1.95 per month. which i think is fantastic for hosting a wordpress, joomla or drupal blog. 

BravoHosting Solutions is a global leader in Website Design, Web Development, Reseller Hosting, Virtual Private Servers, Hosted Exchange, &Dedicated Managed IT Solutions.

VPS Web Server - Pennsylvania Business Server hosting
VPS web server is web hosted focused in serving the needs of business customers. Providing VPS web hosting and dedicated servers. The price of a budget windows server is $12.95 per month.

Spiderweave.com 
Spiderweave.com offers Affordable and complete Web Hosting Services from start to finish including: Domain Registration, E-Commerce, (FREE MIVA MERCHANT 5), Shopping Carts, control panels, and much more. Get Started with  $6.95 a month Starter Plan.

VGT Hosting
VGT hosting provide Unlimited web hosting, low cost reseller hosting, personal web hosting, web site hosting, domain name hosting Unlimited Web hosting, Unlimited cpanel hosting. The price of a starter plan is $6.95/m

ProVista Technologies - Pennsylvania Small Web host
ProVista Technologies is a small, privately held company based outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania that offers web based services including shared and dedicated hosting, corporate communication products, and custom solution consulting. The price of a starter plan is $4.95/m

Sunday 13 May 2012

Wordpress Video Guide For Beginners

Wordpress is the most popular blogging platform in the world. You can use wordpress to set up you blog or even build a website. The reasons why wordpress is very populare are:- 
  • Easy to use, you don't need technical knowledge
  • It is free - the software is provided for free by wordpress.org
  • You get plenty of support when you run into problem. If you ever run into a problem when using Wordpress you just need to Google the problem and you will find someone with a solution. 
  • Thousands of themes - There are thousand of designs that you can choose to match your preference or niche. 
  • Thousands of plugins - Wordpress has many plugins that you can add to your blog to enhance the performance.
Wordpress Video Guide For Beginners

Those are the main advantages of choosing wordpress. If you are getting started and have decided to use wordpress the following video will show you the basics that every beginner needs to know; Enjoy

Wordpress Video Guide For Beginners - Part 1


Wordpress Video Guide for Beginners Part 2

Saturday 12 May 2012

SEO Case Study For a Travel Blog - Traffic Tips For Travel Site

Travel niche is one of the most competitive niche in search. I once owned a travel site and getting it to rank on page on page one of Google search results was always a challenge. If you want to generate organic traffic to your travel site you need to learn SEO. The best SEO case studies I found are from SEOMOZ and this PDF case study

SEO Tips For a Travel Website / Blog

These are top teams that i picked from SEO Travel website case studies

Do Keyword research 
To know the keywords that your target customers use to search on Google make use of free Keyword Tool like Google Keyword Tool.

Write SEO friendly Articles
Make sure to include your target keywords in your title, and in your body. The general guideline is the keywords should appear in your description or at the beginning of the first 160 words. It also helps to include it in your sub titles. 

Building Back Links to Your travel Site
This is the most important part of SEO for a travel site and it is the most difficult. Google ranks website depending on how many other websites are linking to it. The more websites/blogs link to your site the higher your travel blog or website will rank. This is how you should get website link to your travel site:-
  • Submit article to article directories like Enzine article - This article directories allow you to write and publish articles. They allow you to link back to your website. 
  • Post your blog posts to social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google plus. 
  • If you own other websites you can get links from them. It doesn't hurt!
  • Write Guest post for other bloggers. Look for blogs that invite guest post, the bloggers will always allow you to have one link pointing to your site.
Write Great Content 
Don't write for search engines but write for people.  SEO is important but don't over do it because your content will lose meaning. The other advantage of focusing on great content is fellow bloggers will be inclined to link to your articles as authority reference. 

Be Active in Your Niche
Visit travel forums and blogs. Join forums and participate in discussion where you can post links to your site.  Leave comments on other travel blogs.

Good luck in building your travel sites.

NC52TYEK6S2H

Thursday 10 May 2012

Michigan Web Hosting Providers

The state of Michigan has several web hosting providers. These web hosting companies provide website and blog hosting needs to hobby bloggers, small business websites and large businesses. The advantage of having your website hosted in Michigan is you are able to visit the company offices in case of any problem. 

Top Web hosting companies in Michigan

A2Hosting - Best Hosting Company For Beginner Blogger. 
If you are get started a blogger and you want a web host to host your wordpress blog then consider A2hosting. They have the best package for a beginner. for a price of $4.95/m they will give you unlimited hosting. If you want to host unlimited domains it will cost you $7.95/m.

Duohost Web Host - Cheap Website Hosting Michigan
If you are looking for a cheap and low cost web host for your static business website or a new blog then go for Duohost. They provide Cheap Linux web hosting plans starting at $3.75 a month.

Sectorlink - Michigan Dedicated Server Hosting
This Michigan Web host has been in business Since 1996. Sectorlink has become a leader in web hosting and managed dedicated server services. Shared web hosting starts at $4.99 per month. VPS hosting starts 29.99 per month while the cost of hiring a business server starts from $69.99 per month. 

Prohostone - Small Business Web Hosting Michigan
ProHostONE provides website hosting and support at affordable prices. They offer hosting on both Linux and Windows servers. For a small business that just needs to have a website you can purchase their basic plan that cost  $4.9 per month.

Globalnet - Michigan Free Domain
If you want a free domain name purchase web hosting from Globalnet, the company claims domain hosting services include free domain name registration, free domain hosting marketing consultation, and free 850,000+ search engine submission with all domain hosting accounts.

The Linux Fix
The Linux Fix provides quality web hosting, dedicated server hosting and Virtual Private Server hosting. Linux Fix has provided expertise and world-class support to satisfied clients nationwide since 2001. The price of their cheapest plan for a shared hosting is $6.95per month.

Wednesday 9 May 2012

Affordable Web Hosting Companies In New Jersey

The state of New Jersey has a large pool of Web Hosting companies. You can host a personal Wordpress blog, small business website and large website with one of the many web host providers in New Jersey. 

Top Web Host Companies In New Jersey

Nexpoint Technologies - Small Business Web hosting
Nextpoint offers provides shared, dedicated and managed web services for small business, small medium sized business and large businesses. They have plans for windows and linux web hosting. This New Jersey web provider has shared hosting plans that start from $8.25/m. The cost of dedicated servers start from $49/m that consists of 
CPU: 1 GHz
RAM: 0.256 GB
Disk Space: 40 GB.

EMS Hosting - Low Cost Hosting In New Jersey
EMS Hosting has simple hosting plans for the bloggers and hobbyist to complicated SSL and Hosted Exchange servers for the Fortune 500. They can host your Wordpress, Drupal or Joomla blog for a low cost price of  $2.99/m.

T35 Hosting - Free Web Hosting Around New Jersey
T35 Hosting is one of the oldest and most established web hosts in the world providing web hosting to hundreds of thousands of customers. Services range from ad-based free hosting, to feature-packed cPanel paid hosting. They around a good hosting for anyone testing the waters, you can start with a free web hosting and later upgrade to paid hosting. 

3Shost Inc - New Jersey Unlimited web Hosting
3SHost provides Unmetered Bandwidth & Space. Although many host claim to do the same, 3Shost claims their plan is comes at Lowest prices. The cost of a basic plan for a shared hosting account is $3/m. The plan has enticing sweeteners such as Free Domain name and daily back ups.

eXostream - Wordpress Blog Hosting New Jersey
eXostream Communications Promotes itself as the premier provider of web hosting and Internet solutions for individuals, families and small to medium-sized businesses. The prices are are low enough for hosting a Wordpress blog. The cheapest plan starts at $4/m which comes with 25Gb disk space and 250 GB monthly transfer.

HostSEO - SEO Web Hosting
Professional SEO Hosting that allows you to host multiple domains each on separate Class C IP addresses. SEO Hosting allows webmasters to create website networks from one control panel (WHM) and assign unique ip's to each domain for extra SEO benefits. HostSEO.org is a division of T35 Hosting - which has been providing quality web hosting for over 13 years and boasts over a million free and paid hosting customers. Plans come with 20GB of space and 200GB of bandwidth.

Hostgator Web Hosting Deals & Offer : Free Hostgator Coupons

Web hosting company HostGator is offering multiple deals and offers this month, including 25 percent off all its dedicated, VPS, and shared hosting plans when you enter the promo code, “25GATORSAVINGS”. The company is also offering unlimited bandwidth and web hosting space with the purchase of one domain on a 36-month contract when they enter the promo code “SPRING”. Finally, HostGator is offering 1 month free (value of $9.95) on its Baby and Hatchling shared hosting plans when customers enter the promo code, “MONTHFREENOW”.

Hostgator Multiple Deals & Offers for the Month of April 2012 With These Free Hostgator Coupons

You will get big discounts when you enter the following hostGator coupons at the hostgator check out.

MONTHFREENOW - This coupon will allow you to host your website for $0.01 for the first month on baby and hatchling shared hosting plans. Will save you $9.95 on any other hosting plan if used.

HG25OFFCOUPON - This coupon gives you 25% OFF the total amount. You can save up to $117 on shared hosting. Or you can save up to $599.70 on reseller hosting. VPS and Dedicated will get 25% OFF.

WEBHOSTINGFREE - $0.01 for the first month

25GATORSAVINGS - 25% OFF, save up to $599.70

HG25OFFPROMO - 25% OFF, save up to $599.70

These coupons are great for anyone interested in starting a wordpress blog.


HostGator serves customers ranging from individual freelancers to Fortune 500 companies in more than 200 countries. The company is constantly working to improve and refine their service and support.

  •     Unlimited Web Hosting Space & Web Traffic
  •     Unlimited Domains on 1 Account
  •     Unlimited POP3/IMAP, MySQL, FTP
  •     Professional 24/7 Phone & E-Mail Support
  •     45-Day Money Back & 99.9% Uptime Guaranteed

HostGator has earned a great number of web hosting awards. Their customers range from large sized businesses down to personal bloggers and HostGator supports each of them with care and professionalism. If you are searching for a place to start or grow your own website, Hostgator is what you are looking for. Competitive pricing plans, countless accolades, best technology, and top-notch support are the reasons why go with HostGator

Saturday 5 May 2012

Hostgator Customer Reviews : The Good And The Bad

Before choosing a web hosting services it is only wise to read customers reviews. Existing and past customers are in a good position to give a feedback on quality of services. But be careful especially when reading negative reviews because some people are just vengeful and will go bad mouthing a company when their accounts were suspended with valid reasons. 

Hostgator Customer Reviews

I was reading customers reviews of Hostgator web hosting at webhostinggeeks.com and I noticed the people who were most satisfied were those on shared hosting while those on dedicated servers had an axe to grid. 

Hostgator Positive Reviews Sample.
Happy customers had good things to say about hostgator server reliability, Customer care access and speed at which technical support responded to queries. 

I have hosted my all sites on hostgator. I am using hostgator for 1 year. I have never faced any downtime. Their support is best. I always use the online chat option. And I got all my problems solved in few minutes. I recommended this to friends, and they don't have any issue as well.

Hostgator Negative Reviews
The most common problem was billing, it was either a case of un-refunded money or unauthorized charges. 
Negative example
I ordered VPS hosting for $49.95 on their website. The money was authorized from my credit card account but I receive email some time later requesting that I fax them a copy of my drivers license. No where was this stipulated and I resent being asked to give an internet company that kind of information. I consider these deceptive business practices and I would never use this company. So far, I have not had my money refunded although I have asked them.

Don't just rely on customer reviews. If you are concerned with any issue it is good to call or email customers support and get first hand explanation. 

Hostgator Support Forum 
Another place to gauge how Hostgator treats it's hosting customers is to check Hostgator customer support forum. This is where customer reports issue. They have a well detailed support forum where FAQ are well answered. Customers queries are quickly responded to by support team.

Hostgator.com Quick And Easy Wordpress Install Guide

Installing a Wordpress blog on Hostgator is a simple process. Once you login in inside your Cpanel you have the option to do an easy install with QuickInstall or Fantastico.

The following are video guide / tutorial on how to install Wordpress blog on your Hostgator.com account.

These videos will show you step by step guide of the icon you should look for and click inside Cpanel to do a successful Wordpress install. Don't be afraid, installing wordpress on hostgator will be a piece of cake once you watch the videos.

Installing WordPress Blog on HostGator with Quickinstall



Installing WordPress Website on HostGator with Fantastico




Although you can you can install wordpress on hostgator by downloading Wordpress from wordpress.org and uploading the files directly or by using Filezilla, I recommend you use the following scripts. Fantastico and Quickinstall makes wordpress installation on hostgator quick and easy.

Thursday 3 May 2012

Hostgator Small Business Website Hosting

HostGator is a world leading provider of web hosting services to small business websites. The over five million domains hosted by HostGator make up approximately 1% of the world's Internet traffic. As a technology and product innovator, HostGator is able to provide small business website customers with innovative products and services. HostGator serves customers ranging from individual freelancers, small business owners to Fortune 500 companies in more than 200 countries. 

Hostgator Domain Registration For Small Business website
Hostgator.com are ICANN accredited domain registrar and they offer domain registration services for small business website. The cost of domain registration for a small business website is a low $15/year.

The services offered by Hostgator for domain registration are:-
FREE Domain Name Control Panel
FREE Domain Forwarding
FREE Sub-Domains
FREE Registrar Lock

Hostgator Small Business Website Hosting Features
Unlimited Web Hosting Space & Web Traffic
Unlimited Domains on 1 Account
Unlimited POP3/IMAP, MySQL, FTP
Professional 24/7 Phone & E-Mail Support
45-Day Money Back & 99.9% Uptime Guaranteed

Hostgator Cost Of Hosting a Small Business Website
The basic plan for hostgator shared web hosting cost is $3.71/m. This basic plan is good enough for hosting a website that expects 50,000 visitors a month. When you create a web hosting account with hostgator you are allowed to host unlimited domains. If your business deals in multiple products and services make sure you set up a website for each product & service at no extra cost.

Hostgator Advances Web Hosting Services
If your small business website requires extra security or higher bandwidth or disk space you may need to consider Hostgator VPS hosting or Dedicated Hosting for small and medium sized business website.

Hostgator VPS Hosting 
They have different levels of services based on bandwidth and disk space. An example is level three that has the following features
CPU - 1.13 GHZ
RAM - 768 MB
DISK Space - 30 GB
Bandwidth 500 GB
This plan monthly cost is $39.95.

Hostgator Dedicated Servers
They have an option of linux dedicated servers and windows dedicated servers. The cheapest dedicated servers $179/m and the most expensive cost $374/m. 

HostGator has earned a great number of web hosting awards.  

Hostgator Review
This is a review of Hostgator I found from an online forum 
I've used HostGator for awhile now. I'm a Reseller, Affiliate and have a few other Web Hosting accounts there. I have NEVER had one problem with HostGator. Any question I had, I would just hop onto live chat and the person would always politely and quickly answer my question. Their prices are in line with basically every other company out there. They're not over priced or severely under priced to make you worry. I would, and currently do, recommend this hosting company to everyone.
If you want to set up a small business website you may want to consider Hostgator.