Web Development Articles

How To Display RSS Feeds On Your Website
 by: Allan Burns

This article is intended as a guide for webmasters who want to display automatically updated content on their website in the form of RSS feeds. In this article I will cover the easiest method to implement using javascript for displaying RSS on websites to create additional dynamic content. This will allow you to display headlines from syndicated content around the web on your website.

RSS to Javascript.

By far the easiest method is to use client side javascript to parse and display the headlines on your site. To achieve this all you need to do is cut and paste some HTML or javascript code into the web page where you want the RSS feed headlines to display.

To achieve this there are several sites that offer a free service that will allow you to select a few options to choose your feed source and display formatting parameters. You will then be presented with some javascript code that you can cut and paste into your website.

Here are some things you should know before finding a “cheap” or or low cost web hosting services.

You should pay very careful attention to the terms of use and the acceptable use policy of that low cost web host. You can find a good deal because cheap web hosting industry is very competitive but if a host is way too cheap for the features it offers compared to others, don’t go with them.

Going with a low cost web host requires extra research: read the reviews of that host on this site, look for any information about them in the search engines, see how long they have been in business. Visit the support pages and see if you are comfortable with the level of support offered by this host. You can’t expect to get the greatest and fastest support for every little problem you have by paying less than /month.

To build a website, there are four methods to choose from:

First method:
Get a professional designer to build the site for you:

It is expensive in creation process, site maintenance and development.

Second method:
Designing the site with free website hosting:

In this case, just sign in the website that offers this service, and start building your own website.

Free Hosting Sites:
http://www.geocities.yahoo.com/
http://www.angelfire.com
http://www.tripod.com
http://www.freeservers.com

Disadvantages of this method (Free Web Hosting):
? Small size-Limited web page space
? Can’t create interactive features (message boards, online ordering, etc.)
? Advertisements-May have banners and/or pop ads on your homepage
? Long and hard to remember web address (instead of yourdomain.com)
? No branded email addresses (you@yourdomain.com)
? Weak technical support-Poor help and support options
? May not be free forever
? No seriousness to the site

So it is better to choose a cheap Hosting sites with reasonable prices, you will get a better quality and a higher credibility.

Third method:
Professional Web Hosting:

Design the site by a web page designer program (computer software) and use one of the hosting sites.

How to create an RSS feed
 by: Allan Burns

An RSS news feed can be used to communicate with your target audience. It is an ideal means of notifying people of new content on your website without the need for them to keep on visiting your site. You can send newsletters to your readership without having to use email and risk being accused of spamming. You will be comfortable in the knowledge that people who request your feed are actually interested in it because they have actively subscribed to it. This article will explain just how to create your own RSS news feed.

There are a couple of ways to create an RSS file, you can use an editor designed for the purpose or you can create a file using a simple text editor. The latter will require you to learn some XML whilst the former will do the hard part for you. First off I will describe an RSS file, there are several versions and I will be showing you version 2.0, the latest RSS version.

3 Tips to improve your RSS marketing
 by: Allan Burns

You have created an RSS feed, or maybe you have several feeds and you post at least once a week to keep your RSS subscribers interested. So now you can sit back and watch your hit counter tally up all those extra visitors. Well you may think you have finished but there are a few things you can do to improve things still further.

1. Let browsers and search engines know you have an RSS available.

To do this you need to add a line of HTML to every page that has a link to your RSS feed. The link will be:

link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”title” href=”http://www.site.com/rss.xml”

This line will need to be enclosed by angled brackets and placed between your HEAD tags of your page. Once you have done this some search engine bots and web browsers such as Firefox will know you have an RSS feed available.

2. Submit your RSS feed to the RSS and Blog directories.

You have created your custom error page so now all of that traffic that use to go into the World Wide Web black hole now stays on your web page. But if you don’t do the following 15 Minute exercise once or twice a month you are not Maximizing those Lost visitors

Custom error pages are a crucial part of your web page but they are just not enough. They are a failsafe. If you knew every bad address your surfers would type you could display a page that was more closely related to what the surfers was expecting then a catch all error page.

Most Web Hosts will provide you with a Cpanel, where you can create E-mail Accounts, Upload Web Pages and check your stats. Most of the Cpanel’s are very similar if not identical to the one my Hosts uses.

When it is time to check my web page traffic statistics I click on Log and then Web/FTP Stats and finally AWStats. I am now presented with a List of Stats to look at. This Article will discuss the stat related to Http Error Codes.

With consumers purchasing billions of dollars of merchandise online each and every year, the Internet has become the key to financial security. The e-commerce business has consistently thrived well above all other online enterprises, and continues to flourish. Because of this encouraging surge in activity, many individuals are now interested in becoming e-commerce merchants. To profit from your online business, you must first produce a unique website that will intrigue visitors and interest them in your items.

In reality, the e-commerce business is not much different than your average offline retail venture. Both vendors have products that he aims to sell, and each retailer must discover the appropriate avenue to market these items. Online shoppers crave the same things that traditional shoppers demand: a pleasant shopping experience, in-stock merchandise, and a courteous vendor. If you seek to please the customer, your e-commerce business shall prosper.

Almost every e-commerce website that is currently profiting has a clean, crisp layout, and effortless navigation. It is essential for you to have several categories featuring your products that are easy to browse. Clear, detailed images should also be readily available. Customers should have the opportunity to examine your products and compare them with others.

8 Ways to Build a Really Bad Web Site for Search Engines
 by: Gareth Davies

Some web sites receive hundreds or thousands of unique visitors a day, whilst others only get a handful or none. The reason is often because the web designers or Webmaster has built the site in one ‘really bad way’ or other. This can end up hindering the potential success of the web site. If you want to make sure your site is not a ‘traffic flop’ then here are some simple rules to follow.

Bad Move 1: Build the site using a frameset.

Framesets may save designers time but are bad news for search engines. They can struggle to follow links into the web site or read text on the page unless you use a no frames tag effectively. In addition to this, if an engine does keep a cache of a site with frames it will often pick up the individual frames/ pages and not the complete frameset. The downside of this is that you may lose your navigation for many of your pages, which is likely to turn visitors off. Whilst one or two partial fixes to framesets are out there, it’s still no wonder that many web site promoters still cry “Please No Frames”. For more information on why framesets can cause problems visit http://www.html-faq.com/htmlframes/

Get Real-time Adsense Channel Stats And Find Out Which Ads Are Being Clicked
 by: Subhendu Sen

If you have multiple sites or multiple directories in your site for different subjects and you have placed Adsense codes in your site, I am sure you would like to know: (a) from which site or directory you are earning the most / least, (b) which Adsense ads are being clicked and (c) from which page?

CREATE CHANNELS FOR EACH SITE

To get separate stats for each site / section / directory / page with Adsense, you need to create channels for each one. Create a channel with a relevant name and generate a code for that channel. Paste that particular Adsense code to the concerned pages / sites.

GET CHANNEL STATS IN REAL TIME

Google now provides Channel Data in real time. Earlier, it used to provide data for ‘2 days before’. Follow the procedure mentioned below :

1. From ‘Date Range’ drop down menu, select ‘today’.
2. Check the radio button : Group data by ‘Channel’.
3. On the right hand panel, check the radio button ‘Channel data’.
4. Click on ‘Select ALL’ at the bottom of channel list.
5. Click on ‘Display Report’.

Now you get the seggregated report for clicks generated for each channel.

Are you going to design or redesign new website or thinking for it, then first read below given points, which google likes in a website, Google Information for Webmasters.

There are more than 80 factors of your website that are taken into consideration when determining the ranking of your website, Following these guidelines will help Google find, index, and rank your site.

Basic principles:

1) Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as “cloaking.”

2) Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”

3) Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.