Blogs are a very popular ways of promoting your product or service. They are easy to install, easy to administer and easy to update. And search engines love them too. But what is a blog without traffic? Exactly. Here are five quick ways to boost traffic to your blog and start seeing those big sales.

1. Build a list of blog services to ping

There are a lot of blog services you can ping. This means that you notify this service, that you’ve updated your blog. These services then list your new posts and you get the traffic from them. I’ve made a list of 50+ blog services you can ping on my site. These list are also available if you search google or any other search engine for it. That should be enough to give an initial boost to your traffic.

2. Add buttons to popular news readers

What does this mean? Well there are sites like yahoo or google or bloglines etc, which have a members area where you can select sites with RSS feeds to fetch the latest updates from different blogs. That way you can have the latest updates from let’s say 50 blogs listed on one page. I have a list of these popular pages on my website plus the buttons which link to them. Users can then easily add my blog to their news reader members area.

3. Update your content regulary

Search engines and blog services love regular updates. It’s very likely that you will get targeted traffic from search engines if you post regulary. That means you should make a new post to your blog at least once per day. But be careful. Too many updates per day can harm your search engines position and hits. What’s too many? 10 or more.

4. Post in forums

Post in forums, but don’t spam them. Post something fresh and interesting and put a link to your blog in your signature. Don’t just post in any forum. For example if you’re selling cds, post in forums that are about music and cds. Don’t post in car forums if you’re selling furniture. By posting in forums you will get one-way links which are good for search engine position in search engines like google or msn or yahoo.

5. Submit to blog search engines

There are masses of search engines available, that list only blogs. Just google for ?blog search engines? and you should find at least 20 of them. These blog search engines will help you with targeted traffic. Be sure to write a good title and a good description to your blog, so that people will easily find it and click on your link.

Follow these 5 steps and you will start seeing lots of traffic to your blog. And the so long awaited sales will start coming in. And don’t forget to update your blog with fresh unused content that you write yourself.

About the Author: Gasper Novak is the owner of http://www.1000hits30days.com a blog about how to get 1000 unique visitors / day in just 30 days with detailed step by step instructions plus seo tips and articles. You can also contribute with your tips and tricks on traffic generation.

This article gives an overview of basics of search engine optimization:IntroductionPage RankComponents of SEOConclusion

IntroductionSearch engine optimization (SEO) is an online marketing strategy which is used to increase a Web site’s visibility to the millions of people who look for information and various services on the Internet with the help of different search engines available on the internet. Search engine optimization helps rank your company/website among the top search results for a given query/keywords. This can dramatically increase traffic to your Web site and establish a Web presence for your practice. Among other things, SEO involves optimizing the page structure and layout of your website and the text that appears on it, as well as gaining links to your website from other websites, to help make it popular with search engines. Since the number of Web sites on the Internet increasing at an exponential rate, gaining top positions in search engine rankings allows you to market your company in a very powerful and effective way. Page RankPageRank is in some ways related to link popularity, but the calculation is dependant on the quality and strength of the links your site obtained, not just the number of links. So, first question that comes into your mind is how does one go about building and increasing their Page Rank?. It is not as difficult as some may think, but surely require some research and effort.

Types of Linking: Internal linking : This also plays a factor in the Page Rank of the pages within a site. The linking structure within the site should follow the themed approach to internal linking, which stresses importance on minimizing linking between 2nd and 3rd level directories and pages. Since the internal linking of your site plays a factor, not in increasing PR, but in sharing the PR of the site, and the dilution of your keyword strength and theme, it is important to review the internal linking structure of your site. Then there are modifications that could be made to improve the site’s internal linking. External linking : is the largest factor in determining PageRank, and is the place where you have the least control. There is no way to force another web master to link to your site, especially when they already have a high PageRank. For this reason and many more, increasing your PageRank is difficult, but important nonetheless. When contacting other websites to link to your site in the attempt to build and increase your Page Rank, these web pages that you are requesting a link from should be relevant and of the same theme and market of the page that you are requesting they link to. Perform a search for your target keyword in Google, ODP, and Yahoo to start, and check the top 40 ranking sites. contact them and request that they link to your site. Be prepared for them to ask for a reciprocal link. Your website and pages within your site must meet certain criteria for this to work, with one piece being the most important: the site and pages within your site must be quality content that people will actually want to link up to. This is one of the basic points of Components: There are three major components of search engine optimization that you should keep in mind and incorporate into any design, written Web page content, coded HTML, and programming scripts for your site.

1. Keywords and Phrases ? To optimize your site, you must strategically select and place words or phrases into your Web page content and specific HTML tags - the areas from which search engines grab words and phrases to build their indices. If you want your target audience to find your site through a search engine, your Web pages must contain keywords or keyword phrases that match the search queries of your target audience. Often, there are multiple words or phrases that mean the same thing. From an SEO standpoint, it is important to include all the words or phrases your target audience may use in their searches. The closer the match between your Web site’s content’s keywords and phrases with those terms, the higher you will be ranked in a result set.

2. Web Site Structure and Page Layout ?The way you structure your site and design your Web page layout will have a large impact on your site’s search engine ranking. This includes how you serve your Web pages (e.g., as static HTML or XHTML pages or dynamically from a database or Web script), the directory structure of your site, the names of your site’s directories and individual HTML or XHTML files, and the URLs you choose when selecting your domain names. Also, each Web page on your site needs to be optimized individually to most effectively present the content it contains to the search engines. Thus, the elements of a page’s layout, including navigation, site maps, graphics and multimedia elements such as Flash and QuickTime movies, need to be placed correctly on every Web page. Using W3C Web standards such as XHTML and CSS can allow you to place unique content for a given page above its navigational elements, while at the same time reducing the file size of these Web pages. Other factors that affect a Web site’s ability to be successfully indexed are the use (and sometimes non-use) of Image Maps, Frames, JavaScript and, most importantly, your Web page title tags.

3. Web Pages Popularity ? Putting up a Web site is not enough to market your company competitively on the Internet. For your target audience to find you, your Web site needs to be found easily by search engine spiders/crawlers and then to be ranked well in search engine results sets for the keywords and phrases you have selected and placed in the content of your Web site. Conclusion The process of SEO is not easy to tackle, largely because so many pieces of a site factor into the final results. Promoting a site that writers on the web are unlikely to link to is as deadly as creating a fantastic website no one will see. SEO is also a long-term process, both in application and results - those who expect quick rankings after completing a few suggestions in this guide will be deeply disappointed. Search engines can often be frustratingly slow to respond to improvements that will eventually garner significant boosts in traffic. To make your site the best site, adhere strictly to these guidelines:

1. Unique Content

2. Search engine friendly layout and structure

3. Link-Friendly Formatting

4. Site Monetization Plan

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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I have been reading lots of article about white hat and black hat SEO technique, anyway, i guess i just post whatever i have learned

What is White hat? White hat SEO is a good guy technique. It consists of techniques used to get higher search rankings that are legal and ethical. It generally consist of

1. Writing good and unique content Content is king, infact, the best way to keep your reader is to have good content in your website and keep updating it frequently, well, this is what I do with this site, using pure white hat strategy. Google love content

2. Link exchange In order to have high page rank, link exchange is very important. But this doesnt mean to link exchange with crappy junk site but to get link exchange from related, high ranking website.

3. Submitting URL to major search engine

4. Posting good comment and opinion with your website on your signature on other good popular website

5. Optimize your site for your target audience, not for the search engines In other word, try to optimize yoursite to give your target audience what they really want, not optimize only for search engine bot

6. Program your site to be crawler-friendly Use wordpress if you dont know how

7. Submit press release If you got really good and unique news or article, you should submit your article to the public

8. Create RSS feeds for your website Pros and Cons for White hat technique?

Pros: You only need to focus on the content instead of technique that attack search engine weakness. In the long runs, it will have long term values. And you never need to have any fear that google will banning your site if you follow their rule and regulation.

cons: You will get traffic very slow, and you need to update frequently and consistenly for a very long period of time

What is Black hat? Black hat is bad guy technique. It consists of techniques used to get higher search rankings that are illegal, unethical, or annoying . It generally attack the weakness of search engine. Below is some of the technique used

1. keyword stuffing packing long list of keyword that have no meaning in the website in order to get high ranking in search engine

2. Invisible text packing long list of invisible keyword in the website that fool the search engine spider thinking that it is keyword rich.

3. doorway pages buiding a fake page purely for search engine spider where user can never see

4.link farm building website with no content and full with affiliate link

5. Article miner building website that fetch article from article directory automatically without any original content

6. spamming comment on other people blog Spamming advertisement on other people blog

7. spamming email

8. cloaking A website that showing content from different URL in a frame. The search engine spider one webpage, the visitor see another.

9. tricky redirect Redirect visitor to unwanted site. For example, you go to google and search for “basketball”, you click on one of the search result, and you been redirect to a porn site

10. force click website with sneaky pop up that force you to click on its advertisement

11. internal domain linking Create hundred of domain that linking to each other

Pros and Cons for black hat technique?

Pro: yeah, if do it correctly you can get your site in high ranking and gain many visitors within weeks, and can earn some quick cash fast. I have personally seen some crappy website with only picture and no other things to click except the ad, so i clicked the ad…..Blackhat technique such as article miner can even create website and updating it with new article automatically for you. In other word, you can save a lot of time.

cons: you need to update and upgrade your technique frequently or your site will get banned sooner or later. In other word, using blackhat technique is only short term wise.

About the Author

For more information, please visit my blog at www.phupang.com/blog

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SEO = Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization is the process of scientifically tweaking a particular website’s pages in order to get a good rank from major search engines for a competitive keyword or group of keywords.

SEM = Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing is one effective example Internet Marketing that involves search engine optimization. This involves planning and executing right methods to target and get quality traffic to a particular website and convert this traffic into sales or signups.

SEO Specialist = Search Engine Optimization Specialist

Previously called Search Engine Optimizers (SEO) but revised to SEO Specialist to give way and prohibit confusion with search engine optimization as SEO. This term is use to describe a professional practitioner performing effective search engine optimization procedures.

SEM Specialist = Search Engine Marketing Specialist

Term used to describe a professional that analyzes a certain website and recommend a particular procedure to perform in order to get the desired traffic and sales.

White Hat Procedure

Search Engine Optimization procedure that comply with search engines rules. Also know as ethical procedure.

Black Hat Procedure

Search Engine Optimization procedure that did not comply with search engine rules. Widely used by many SEO specialist to get a good rank in a shorter period of time. Effective but very dangerous procedure that may cause a certain website removed from major search engine’s database.

About the Author

Operator of SEM | SEO Philippines
Free online seo tutorial

Popular Real Estates Directory
International list of popular real estates.

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Search Engine Optimization means trying to get more visitors to see your website. Working on sites such as Poetseers and Write Spirit I have learnt a few things through trial and error. I am not a professional SEO but I have no products to sell these are my suggestions on things that have worked for me.

1. Choose titles words carefully. E.g a page “love” is unlikely to get any traffic from Google, there is too much competition. Creating a page called “Rumi love poems” has a much better chance of getting traffic because it is more specific

2. Getting External Links from other sites. This is very helpful for the website. It boosts its page rank. However Google is clever; it rates the quality of links. 100 links from sites who only have listings of link pages (a link farm) is pretty much useless. Getting a link in the middle of text from a good quality website with high PR is the most useful.

3. The link should be generally from related sites. A poetry site needs links from other sites. A link from Bob’s Bingo is not much use.

4. Links should be natural it is not good to get 100 LINKS at once. Google thinks you’ve cheated. It should be a gradual process of e.g 1 a week or 1 a month. Generally buying links is not recommended, Google hates things that look like cheating. At worst your site may begin to attract penalties.

5. Links to the home page is best, but links within the site are still good.

6. Add unique content on a regular basis. This is very important and valuable to a website. It is also useful to add fresh material to the home page. There’s no short cut to getting good rankings, at the end of the day you do need to have good material

7. Pages benefit from having relevant external links. E.g. A page about the poetry of Sri Aurobindo would benefit from having links to other sites about Sri Aurobindo. It is best to link to established sites with high PR (Page Rank). Linking to sites with PR = 0 is not good.

There are many rules and suggestion but the most important thing is that if your site has good unique content then it will do well, because people will be inspired to link to it without you asking. It is hard to get high rankings artificially and impossible to get high rankings overnight, it is a gradual process.

About the Author

Richard is an economics teacher in Oxford and works on various websites such as Sri Chinmoy Songs Richard is a member of the Oxford Sri Chinmoy Centre and is also a good UK cyclist.

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Search engine optimization seems difficult to many but with a little patience and work it’s really not that hard to pick up. In doing so you can save hundreds of dollars, and get the same results as the professionals do. You will probably get better results from highly qualified professionals, but you should definitely perform these do-it-yourself actions first. Once you’ve done some of this kind of work it will be easier to determine if a professional is worth his/her salt.

Basic SEO is very simple and easy - all it takes is the willingness to put in the work. Once you know the ropes, it’s not that difficult though it can be time consuming. The content of your website the focus of what SEO is all about. Here are the top points to think about when you’re doing it yourself.

1. You will start by registering a domain name, which should reflect what your site about. Keep it short, as long as it’s somehow related to your site. Being more specific can help. You could choose to name the page after one of your products or services, for example. Another method is to get a sub domain of a popular domain. This will generally help you get indexed more quickly though it will not appear quite as professional to your visitors. There is a trade of here, sub domains are quicker (and generally cheaper), but domain names are more memorable, and, in the long run, better for your indexing.

2. The next thing you should look at is your page’s title (i.e. the HTML title tag), which is critical in letting search engines see what the page is about, and is the first item looked at by search engines to determine your relevance. You should put your most important keywords in your title tags - you don’t need to worry about singular or plural forms as search engines account for these changes in most cases. Whatever you do, don’t call your home page ‘Home’ - make the title a mini-description of the page.

3. The two primary meta tags aren’t as important as they used to be, but the description tag is still used by some search engines to display information about your website to users and help them decide whether they’ve found what they are looking for. Not all search engines bother with this, though most will put some bearing on it (even if it is minuscule).

For very short descriptions the alt tag can be used. Alt tags let you describe an image or graphic file - they’re the pop-up descriptions that appear when you hover your mouse over a graphic, or when the graphic can’t be downloaded for whatever reason.

Text within comment tags is never displayed on the page - it is used by coders and designers to remind them of what that part of the page is for. Some coders used to put lots of keywords in the comment tags, so that they would be seen by search engines but not users, but search engines have now stopped paying attention to any text that isn’t seen by the user. Keep this in mind when trying to post invisible text (i.e. white text on a white background). This kind of behavior can get you banned from a search engine.

4. Having keyword density in all of your content is good, but keep in mind that each search engine has its own requirements when it comes to how many times that a keyword or phrase should be in the content for the page to be relevant. Somewhere between 5 and 8 percent is a roughly optimal level - but this isn’t always possible, and you shouldn’t force it. Don’t overdo it, or the search engines might mark you down.

5. Many search engines judge web page importance on the number and quality of incoming links from other sites. You should link to some related sites, but not too many. Don’t overdo incoming links either, and keep them related your site’s content. It’s also good to get sites to use your keywords as the text of these links.

Using the above advice will see you gaining some very good first page rankings, it just takes a little effort and work!

About the Author

Chris Taylor - CEO Catdynamics, author, marketing & SEO Specialist.

Search Engine Optimization Training - How To Sky Rocket Your Search Engine Rankings In “Less Than 60 Days!

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RSS is an abbreviation that has evolved into the following, depending on their versions:

?RDF Site Summary (also known as RSS 0.9; the first version of RSS)

?Rich Site Summary (also known as RSS 0.91; a prototype)

?Really Simple Syndication (also known as RSS 2.0)

Today, RSS stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’, and it has the following 7 existing formats or versions:

?0.90 ?0.91 ?0.92 ?0.93 ?0.94 ?1.0 ?2.0

RSS tools refer to a group of file formats that are designed to share headlines and other web content (this may be a summary or simply 1 to 2 lines of the article), links to the full versions of the content (the full article or post), and even file attachments such as multimedia files. All of these data is delivered in the form of an XML file (XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language), which has the following common names:

?RSS feed ?Webfeed ?RSS stream ?RSS channel

They are typically shown on web pages as an orange rectangle that usually has the letters XML or RSS in it.

RSS feeds can be used to deliver any kind of information. Some of these ‘feeds’ include:

?Blogs feed - each blog entry is summarized as a feed item. This makes blog posts easier to scan, enabling ‘visitors’ to zoom in on their items of interest.

?Article feed - this alerts readers whenever there are new articles and web contents available.

?Forum feed - this allows users to receive forum posts and latest discussion topics.

?Schedule feed - this allows users (such as schools, clubs, and other organizations) to broadcast events and announce schedule changes or meeting agendas.

?Discounts or Special feed - this is used to enable users (such as retail and online stores) to ‘deliver’ latest specials and discounted offers.

?Ego or News Monitoring - this enables users to receive ‘filtered’ headlines or news that are based on a specific phrase or keyword.

?Industry-specific feed - used by technical professionals in order to market, promote, or communicate with current (and prospective) customers and clients within their specific industries.

RSS feeds enable people to track numerous blogs and news sources at the same time. To produce an RSS feed, all you need is the content or the article that you want to publicize and a validated RSS text file. Once your text file is registered at various aggregators (or ‘news readers’), any external site can then capture and display your RSS feed, automatically updating them whenever you update your RSS file.

RSS tools are useful for sites that add or modify their contents on a regular basis. They are especially used for ‘web syndication’ or activities that involve regular updates and/or publications, such as the following:

?News websites - as used by major news organizations such as Reuters, CNN, and the BBC. ?Marketing ?Bug reports ?Personal weblogs

There are many benefits to using RSS feeds. Aside from being a great supplemental communication method that streamlines the communication needs of various sectors, RSS tools and feeds can also have tremendous benefits in your business, particularly in the field of internet marketing.

RSS tools and feeds provide Internet users with a free (or cheap) and easy advertising or online marketing opportunity for their businesses. Below are some of the RSS features that can help make your internet marketing strategies more effective.

1. Ease in content distribution services. With RSS, your business can be captured and displayed by virtually any external site, giving you an easy way to ’spread out’ and advertise them.

2. Ease in regular content updates. With RSS, web contents concerning your business can now be automatically updated on a daily (and even hourly) basis. Internet users will be able to experience ‘real time’ updates as information in your own file (such as new products and other business-related releases) is changed and modified simultaneously with that of the RSS feeds that people are subscribed to.

3. Custom-made content services. With RSS, visitors can have personalized content services, allowing them total control of the flow and type of information that they receive. Depending on their interests and needs, visitors can subscribe to only those contents that they are looking for (such as real estate or job listings).

4. Increase in (and targeted) traffic. With RSS, traffic will be directed to your site as readers of your content summary (or 1 to 2 lines of your article) who find them interesting are ‘forced’ to click on a link back to your site.

These are just several of the many things that you can do with RSS. The possibilities are endless, and they are all aimed at providing you with an effective internet marketing strategy for your business.

About the Author

Jeremiah Patton is a current user of rss. Jeremiah Patton uses rss for his legitimate work from home business opportunities website at http://www.2ndincome4u.com to keep visitors updated on current events and news.

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What is RSS? You probably have seen this three-letter acronym in the course of your internet surfing. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary; syndicating means republishing an article that comes from another source such as a website.

An RSS is a means of publicizing updates about websites. It may or may not include a summary and photos of the latest posting. But those that provide summaries (thus Rich Site Summary) allow users to skim through the article so that they could decide later on if they want to access the website source. The RSS feed usually contains the title of the update originating from the website. It is also usually the link to the website source.

What are the benefits of RSS? RSS gives benefits to both readers (users) and web publishers. 1. It gives you the latest updates. Whether it is about the weather, new music, software upgrade, local news, or a new posting from a rarely-updates site learn about the latest as soon as it comes out.

2. It saves on surfing time. Since an RSS feed provides a summary of the related article, it saves the user’s time by helping s/he decide on which items to prioritize when reading or browsing the net.

3. It gives the power of subscription to the user. Users are given a free-hand on which websites to subscribe in their RSS aggregators which they can change at any time they decide differently.

4. It lessens the clutter in your inbox. Although your email address will be required to enjoy the services of online RSS aggregators, RSS does not use your email address to send the updates.

5. It is spam free. Unlike email subscriptions, RSS does not make use of your email address to send updates thus your privacy is kept safe from spam mails.

6. Unsubscribing is hassle-free. Unlike email subscriptions where the user is asked questions on why s/he is unsubscribing and then the user would be asked to confirm unsubscribing, all you have to do is to delete the RSS feed from your aggregator.

7. It can be used as an advertising or marketing tool. Users who subscribe or syndicate product websites receive the latest news on products and services without the website sending spam mail. This is advantageous to both the web user and the website owner since advertising becomes targeted; those who are actually interested in their products are kept posted.

What are the drawbacks of RSS? The disadvantages of RSS use are brought about by its being a new technology and some user-preference concerns. 1. Some users prefer receiving email updates over an RSS feed.

2. Graphics and photos do not appear in all RSS feeds. For conciseness and ease of publication, RSS feeds do not display the photos from the original site in announcing the update except for some web-based aggregators

3. The identity of the source website can be confusing. Since RSS feeds do not display the actual URL or name of the website, it can sometimes get confusing on what feed a user is actually reading.

4. Publishers cannot determine how many users are subscribed to their feed and the frequency of their visits. Moreover, they would not know the reasons why users unsubscribe which could be important in improving their advertising.

5. RSS feeds create higher traffic and demands on the server. Most readers still prefer the whole update over a brief summary of the entry, thus they still access the site.

6. Since it is a new technology, many sites still do not support RSS.

How do I start using RSS? There are two things needed: an RSS feed and an RSS aggregator or reader. The RSS feed comes from an RSS-supported website. There are also websites that provide a list of RSS feeds of different websites. An RSS aggregator is used to read the RSS feed from the source website. It scans and collects data on latest RSS feeds from the worldwide web.

About the Author

Kurt Gordon is the owner of http://www.marketnprofit.com. Visit his website for the latest news on work at home business opportunities, Free website promotion ideas and eBooks with master resell rights.

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More websites are starting to offer RSS feeds, and more users are making use of RSS readers instead of visiting every website they want to read individually. But what is RSS, why is it getting popular, and - most importantly -what can it do for you? Read on.

What is RSS?

RSS stands for ‘really simple syndication’, and it does exactly what it says on the tin. Invented by Dave Winer, one of the first webloggers, the format aims to provide a standardised way to obtain a website’s content, instead of forcing people to try to pick it out of masses of HTML. It is a simple XML (strictly, RDF) language designed to make it easy to describe content.

Information RSS gives you about content includes its title, the dates when it was created and last updated, and its URL. There is also a space for content, which can either be used to provide a summary of the content at the URL or just to provide the content itself.

Which Version?

There is a bit of a controversy about the versions of RSS, for the simple reason that one is wildly different to the others. While RSS 0.9 and 2.0 are broadly similar, RSS 1.0 is widely considered to be a disaster - little software understands or uses it, as it’s just too complicated. For most purposes, then, you should stick to RSS 0.9 if what you’re doing is relatively simple, and offer RSS 2.0 if you want to give more detail to some of your users.

How is RSS Produced?

While you could write a script of your own to turn your content into RSS (it wouldn’t be that difficult if you store your articles in a database), almost all CMSes and blog software packages now do it for you automatically - if you’re looking for it, keep an eye out for a small orange button that says ‘XML’ or ‘RSS’ on it. All you have to do is give some prominence to the RSS feed, with instructions to your visitors on what it’s for and how to use it.

With most software, then, the RSS should be produced either when you update your content or, alternatively, every time someone asks for the RSS. It’s important to understand that RSS isn’t a ‘push’ mechanism: updating it doesn’t send changes to anyone until their software asks for them to be sent. This often means a window of five to ten minutes between something going in the RSS feed and people seeing it.

How Do RSS Readers Work?

RSS readers work by allowing a user to ’subscribe’ to a feed, either by entering the URL of an RSS feed manually or by clicking on a link that starts with feed://. The reader then works something like an email program, retrieving new entries as they are added to the RSS and alerting the user - indeed, they are similar enough that many email programs now include a built-in RSS reader.

When the user opens the new RSS entry, they will see what you put in the content area, usually with a link to open that page of your website in their web browser. You have to realise, though, that they won’t see any of your ads or graphics in the RSS feed, so it’s best to give them some kind of incentive to click through.

What Else is RSS Used For?

RSS readers might be the most common use of RSS, but the format was designed to be used for almost anything. There’s nothing to stop you, for example, from taking an RSS feed from another website and publishing it on yours - you can even be an ‘aggregator’, mixing relevant content from the RSS feeds of lots of different websites to create a new, more useful website.

That’s where the word ’syndication’ in RSS’ name comes from: it lets you virtually syndicate other people’s content on your site, and it lets people syndicate your content on theirs. It benefits everyone, since the one doing the aggregating gets more content for their website, while the one being linked to gets more links to theirs. If you want to do well on the web, you should make sure you’ve got an RSS fede

About the Author

Information supplied and written by Lee Asher of Eclipse Domain Services
Domain Names, Hosting, Traffic and Email Solutions.

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Thanks to the nature of open source, almost anyone can write a programming language and get a significant number of people to use it: and plenty of people have. Two of the newest and fastest-growing players when it comes to open source web languages are Python and Ruby. Neither of them were web languages originally - they were normal programming languages - but more and more people are starting to use them to power their websites. So what are they, and how do they work? Let’s take a look.

Python

The Python philosophy demands that code should be simple, explicit, and readable. Where Perl wants there to be “more than one way to do it”, Python wants there to be only one way of doing each thing - and it wants that way to be obvious. This makes Python code easy to work with, whether it was written by you or by someone else.

The downside to Python, though, is that it can be slow - not as slow as Java, but still much slower than most languages. It is also very picky about indentation (the number of spaces or tabs at the start of each line of code), as part of its effort to make code more readable.

So does anyone use Python? It might surprise you to learn that Google uses a lot of Python code, and the popular BitTorrent file-sharing system is written in Python.

Unfortunately, when it comes to actual web programming, Python isn’t quite up to scratch in many ways: it still shows its roots as a programming language for programs instead of one for the web. It’s for this reason that Python on the web is still quite rare - but they’re working on it.

Ruby

Ruby is a relatively new programming language from Japan, and it has a lot of evangelists who simply love it. Why? Well, it lets you do complicated things quickly, easily and readably with very little code: in some ways. It’s powerful but simple. Here’s some sample code, taken from one of the best Ruby books, Why’s Poignant Guide to Ruby (www.poignantguide.net):

[’toast’, ‘cheese’, ‘wine’].each { |food| print( food.capitalize ) }

What does that do? Well, first, it creates an array with the words ‘toast’, ‘cheese’, and ‘wine’. It then launches into a function, which prints out the name of each food - in capital letters. All that with one line of code. It might not seem like much, but just wait until it comes time to connect to a database, retrieve records, format them the way you want and put them on the screen, all in one easy-to-read line of code.

Now, Ruby is becoming more popular on the web thanks to a web framework that makes developing websites quicker than it’s ever been: Ruby on Rails. Rails is only one year old, but it’s already got lots of support, thanks to its big feature it handles the database end of things automatically. Rails is growing at a crazy speed, because programmers love it - it stops you from having to write database code over and over again, leaving you free to worry about how your web page works instead of writing SQL.

Rails works using the principle of “convention over configuration”: you do things in a standard way instead of spending time setting it up for the way you’ve decided to do things. Using Rails’ scaffolding function, you can be up and running with a simple database page within minutes - then all you have left to do is build the interface.

Watch Out for Web Host Support

One of the biggest disadvantages of using a minority programming language is that you might find trouble finding a web host that has it installed on their server. You’ll pretty much be forced to go with a smaller host: searching for ‘ruby host’ or ‘python host’ will turn up plenty of offers, but they won’t be from anyone you’ve heard of, and they’re likely to be more expensive than you’d expect. That’s the price you pay for using the latest and greatest languages.

About the Author

Information supplied and written by Lee Asher of Eclipse Domain Services
Domain Names, Hosting, Traffic and Email Solutions.

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If your anything like the majority of society, myself included, you could probably use a little more info on certain aspects of computers. Here, I decided to take a look at “PHP”. Yeah I know, that’s what I said, “Yeah right!”, but it’s not so confusing when you look at it a little closer…

PHP is an acronym (One of those things smart people use to confuse us) which stands for “PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor”. It used to stand for “Personal Home Page”, but that must have been too easy. So after a little reasearch I found out just what the acronym meant. It is an open source, reflective programming language.

Apparently, all that programming language stuff is to develop “dynamic web content and server side applications”. They have also found a new use for it in other types of software.

Once again, this stuff is pretty tricky, but take a look elseware! Maybe there is a “PHP for Dummies” out there. I would encourage any of you who have the slightest incling to find out more, to do so. It’s actually pretty interesting! The best thing to do for more information is to check out forums, blogs, or websites about PHP. There is also books and an actual formal development manual that you can purchase from a store or borrow from a library, that will be able to answer any of your questions about this particlular programming language.

About the Author

Feel free to reprint this article as long as you keep the article, this caption and author biography in tact with all hyperlinks.

Tyler Brooker is the owner and operator of Hosting Php Tutorials - http://www.hosting-php-tutorials.com, which is the best site on the internet for all Php related information.

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<span style=”font-weight:bold; font-size: 1.2em”>What are Regular Expressions?</span> A regular expression is a pattern that can match various text strings. Using regular expressions you can find (and replace) certain text patterns, for example “all the words that begin with the letter A” or “find only telephone numbers”. Regular expressions are often used in validation classes, because they are a really powerful tool to verify e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, street addresses, zip codes, and more.

In this tutorial I will show you how regular expressions work in PHP, and give you a short introduction on writing your own regular expressions. I will also give you several example regular expressions that are often used. Regular Expressions in PHP Using regex (regular expressions) is really easy in PHP, and there are several functions that exist to do regex finding and replacing. Let’s start with a simple regex find.

Have a look at the documentation of the preg_match function. As you can see from the documentation, preg_match is used to perform a regular expression. In this case no replacing is done, only a simple find. Copy the code below to give it a try. <pre><?php

// Example string $str = "Let’s find the stuff <bla>in between</bla> these two previous brackets";

// Let’s perform the regex $do = preg_match("/<bla>(.*)</bla>/", $str, $matches);

// Check if regex was successful if ($do = true) { // Matched something, show the matched string echo htmlentities($matches[’0′]);

// Also how the text in between the tags echo ‘<br />’ . $matches[’1′]; } else { // No Match echo "Couldn’t find a match"; }

?></pre>After having run the code, it’s probably a good idea if I do a quick run through the code. Basically, the whole core of the above code is the line that contains the preg_match. The first argument is your regex pattern. This is probably the most important. Later on in this tutorial, I will explain some basic regular expressions, but if you really want to learn regular expression then it’s best if you look on Google for specific regular expression examples.

The second argument is the subject string. I assume that needs no explaining. Finally, the third argument can be optional, but if you want to get the matched text, or the text in between something, it’s a good idea to use it (just like I used it in the example). The preg_match function stops after it has found the first match. If you want to find ALL matches in a string, you need to use the preg_match_all function. That works pretty much the same, so there is no need to separately explain it.

Now that we’ve had finding, let’s do a find-and-replace, with the preg_replace function. The preg_replace function works pretty similar to the preg_match function, but instead there is another argument for the replacement string. Copy the code below, and run it. <pre><?php

// Example string $str = "Let’s replace the <bla>stuff between</bla> the bla brackets";

// Do the preg replace $result = preg_replace ("/<bla>(.*)</bla>/", "<bla>new stuff</bla>", $str);

echo htmlentities($result); ?></pre>The result would then be the same string, except it would now say ‘new stuff’ between the bla tags. This is of course just a simple example, and more advanced replacements can be done.

You can also use keys in the replacement string. Say you still want the text between the brackets, and just add something? You use the $1, $2, etc keys for those. For example: <pre><?php

// Example string $str = "Let’s replace the <bla>stuff between</bla> the bla brackets";

// Do the preg replace $result = preg_replace ("/<bla>(.*)</bla>/", "<bla>new stuff (the old: $1)</bla>", $str);

echo htmlentities($result); ?></pre>This would then print “Let’s replace the <bla>new stuff (the old: stuff between)</bla> the bla brackets”. $2 is for the second “catch-all”, $3 for the third, etc.

That’s about it for regular expressions. It seems very difficult, but once you grasp it is extremely easy yet one of the most powerful tools when programming in PHP. I can’t count the number of times regex has saved me from hours of coding difficult text functions.

<span style=”font-weight:bold; font-size: 1.2em”>An Example</span> What would a good tutorial be without some real examples? Let’s first have a look at a simple e-mail validation function. An e-mail address must start with letters or numbers, then have a @, then a domain, ending with an extension. The regex for that would be something like this: ^[a-zA-Z0-9_.-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9-]+.[a-zA-Z0-9-.]+$

Let me quickly explain that regex. Basically, the first part says that it must all be letters or numbers. Then we get the @, and after that there should be letters and/or numbers again (the domain). Finally we check for a period, and then for an extension. The code to use this regex looks like this: <pre><?php

// Good e-mail $good = "john@example.com";

// Bad e-mail $bad = "blabla@blabla";

// Let’s check the good e-mail if (preg_match("/^[a-zA-Z0-9_.-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9-]+.[a-zA-Z0-9-.]+$/", $good)) { echo "Valid e-mail"; } else { echo "Invalid e-mail"; }

echo ‘<br />’;

// And check the bad e-mail if (preg_match("/^[a-zA-Z0-9_.-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9-]+.[a-zA-Z0-9-.]+$/", $bad)) { echo "Valid e-mail"; } else { echo "Invalid e-mail"; }

?></pre>The result of this would be “Valid E-mail. Invalid E-mail”, of course. We have just checked if an e-mail address is valid. If you wrap the above code in a function, you’ve got yourself a e-mail validation function. Keep in mind though that the regex isn’t perfect: after all, it doesn’t check whether the extension is too long, does it? Because I want to keep this tutorial short, I won’t give the full fledged regex, but you can find it easily via Google.

<span style=”font-weight:bold; font-size: 1.2em”>Another Example</span> Another great example would be a telephone number. Say you want to verify telephone numbers and make sure they were in the correct format. Let’s assume you want the numbers to be in the format of xxx-xxxxxxx. The code would look something like this: <pre><?php

// Good number $good = "123-4567890";

// Bad number $bad = "45-3423423";

// Let’s check the good number if (preg_match("/d{3}-d{7}/", $good)) { echo "Valid number"; } else { echo "Invalid number"; }

echo ‘<br />’;

// And check the bad number if (preg_match("/d{3}-d{7}/", $bad)) { echo "Valid number"; } else { echo "Invalid number"; }

?></pre>The regex is fairly simple, because we use d. This basically means “match any digit” with the length behind it. In this example it first looks for 3 digits, then a ‘-’ (hyphen) and finally 7 digits. Works perfectly, and does exactly what we want.

<span style=”font-weight:bold; font-size: 1.2em”>What exactly is possible with Regular Expressions?</span> Regular expressions are actually one of the most powerful tools in PHP, or any other language for that matter (you can use it in your mod_rewrite rules as well!). There is so much you can do with regex, and we’ve only scratched the surface in this tutorial with some very basic examples.

If you really want to dig into regex I suggest you search on Google for more tutorials, and try to learn the regex syntax. It isn’t easy, and there’s quite a steep learning curve (in my opinion), but the best way to learn is to go through a lot of examples, and try to translate them in plain English. It really helps you learn the syntax.

In the future I will dedicate a complete article to strictly examples, including more advanced ones, without any explanation. But for now, I can only give you links to other tutorials: The 30 Minute Regex Tutorial Regular-Expressions.info

About the Author

Dennis Pallett is a young tech writer, with much experience in ASP, PHP and other web technologies. He enjoys writing, and has written several articles and tutorials. To find more of his work, look at his websites at http://www.phpit.net, http://www.aspit.net and http://www.webdev-articles.com

PHP is the programming language of the web it?s a fact the php is used on more webservers servers than any other web language. At the time of writing php is installed on just under than 24,000,000 Domains..

MYSQL is a commercial grade database application that is made available free under the Open Source to anyone. It?s had over 6 million installs ranging from large muli-national corporations to specialized embedded applications the website also claims mysql is installed on every continent in the world? Including antartica. At least they can blame the weather when the computer freezes? hehe! Currently MYSQL runs on more than 20 platforms including Linux, Windows, OS/X, HP-UX, AIX and Netware. Which is a perfect solution for portability requirements.

PHP - MYSQL it does have uses

The benefits to creating a site that implements a php and mysql setup are really down the site and how it wants to run and taking into account how specific data is stored and displayed, php and mysql can be used in many senarios including:

# Storing and Displaying Lots of Categorised data - For example the article you are reading now, has come from our mysql database. Sites with lots of information that needs to be categorised, stored and easily displayed would benefit from a mysql backend. Lets again take this site for example, if we created the site the old fashioned way then we would have to create a single HTML page for every article. Now lets say we we wanted to change a link in the menu right of this page then we would need to go through each and every single HTML page and manually change every element to it. Not fun I?m sure you?d agree. but with php and mysql all we now need to do is change one single php page and the whole site updates our link.. Saving you time and your sanity.

# Saving customer data into php- Many websites as an example use the duo to save customer data, Including Name, telephone, address etc.. well you get the picture. MYSQL can also track customers locations on the site and save that information into the database. PHP can also store customer purchasing and previous orders into the database which allows you to build up a perfect system for tracking customer trends and customers shopping habits based on country. All you would need to do is create a php that told mysql to grab the particular information only.

Installation

Please take note that your web host will have php and mysql pre installed on the server but and easy way to check is copy the code just below into notepad then save it as ?info.php?. Upload it to your webspace via FTP and then goto your browser and type in www.yourdomain.com/info.php or where ever you dropped the file.

< ?php
phpinfo();
?>

it should show you a lot of information such as the version of php your running and additonal, but useful information about the configuration of your php. A list of installed manuals is also included.

To install PHP & MYSQL on windows you can do it manually or you can use a program called WAMPserver which will automatically install the setup for you, just to let you know the W.A.M.P stands for windows, Apache, Mysql and PHP.

WAMPserver installation on windows

WAMP5 installs the following software on your machine Apache 1.3.31 ,PHP5, MySQL database ,PHPmyadmin and SQLitemanager on your computer. Essentially your going to turn your windows machine into a webserver beacause we are installing apache. PHP does need apache webserver to run in this setup usually.

You can download WAMPserver here: http://www.wampserver.com/en/download.php

Here are the installation instructions from wampservers site: http://www.wampserver.com/

When you install WAMP5, all the files are copied in the directory you choose. Conf files are then modified to point to that directory. It also installs a ?www? directory which will be your Document Root.

At the end of the installation, WAMP5 will automatically install Apache and MySQL as services :

- service? wampapache? : apache service

- service ?wampmysql? : mysql service

WAMP5?s installation is compact. This means that all files are copied to WAMP5?s directory. Only the MySQL conf file (usually my.ini) is copied to the Windows directory but as ?mywamp.ini? to avoid conflicts with other installs. You just have to click on the icon tray to access WAMP5?s menu, The icon tray reflects the status of your server, When you?ll uninstall WAMP5, all the services and files will be automatically deleted.

In part two will be getting down to the nitty gritty by setting up the mysql database and connecting to it through php.

For part 2 of this tutorial visit: http://www.chauy.com/2005/11/php-mysql-part-2/

Thanks!

About the Author: Tutorial provided by http://www.chauy.com - webmaster tutorials, Webmaster News and tools. This notice must remain intact. copyright (c) http://chauy.com - Used with permission

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PHP is the most popular scripting language on the web, and the reason for that is how easy it makes it to create dynamic websites quickly. If you’re already a programmer, you’ll be able to learn the basics of PHP in about five minutes, and if you’re not then it probably won’t take much longer.

Getting Started in PHP

There’s a tradition in programming that the first thing you do in any language is say ‘Hello World’. Well, here’s how you do that in PHP. First of all, create a file in your server’s root directory called index.php. Put this text in it:

<?php echo “Hello World”; ?>

Let’s look at this bit by bit. The first line means ‘what follows is PHP code’. ‘echo’ is the PHP command to send text to the web browser, and each line of PHP has to end with a semicolon. Finally, the last line means ‘end of the PHP code’.

Now, the power of PHP is that those start and end tags can do anywhere in a normal HTML document, as many times as you like. For example:

<html> <head> <title>my page - <?php echo date(); ?></title> </head> <body> <?php $total = 1 + 1; echo $total; ?> </body> </html>

This is a complete HTML document with pieces of embedded PHP. The first PHP section inserts the date into the title, and the second writes the answer to 1 + 1 (that’s 2, you know) as the content of the document - the word with a dollar before it is a variable, storing the result of the sum. Where this all becomes extremely useful is that your PHP code can open a connection to a database, read data from it, and then the text into a template, along with other things from the database like the headline, the author’s name and the date it was written.

Useful PHP Functions

Here’s a quick reference of the most useful PHP functions to help you get started.

date. This function returns the date in a format you specify using letters. For example, date(”D j M Y”) outputs dates in this format: Mon 1 Jan 2010.

echo. Writes text to the document. You can use < ?= as a useful shortcut for explode. Divides up some text into an array by looking for ’seperator’ letters or characters. Can be good if you’re using odd characters like | to separate data somewhere in your program.

fopen. Opens a file on your web server, but can also be used to open a URL and so connect to another server.

fread. Reads the contents of the file, either all at once or line by line.

header. Allows you to set your own HTTP headers - most often used to control which MIME types things are sent with (the content-type header), or to tell the browser whether to cache or not (the cache-control header).

md5. Takes some text and produces a ‘hash’ using the MD5 algorithm. This is often used to allow checking of users’ passwords without needing to save their passwords in a database in plain text. The sha1 function does the same thing, and is more secure but slower.

mysql_connect. Connects to a MySQL server. You have to tell it where the server is (usually localhost), as well as your username and password.

mysql_select_db. Chooses which MySQL database to open on the MySQL server you’re connected to.

mysql_query. Sends any SQL commands you want to your MySQL server.

mysql_fetch_assoc. Turns the results of a query sent to a MySQL server into an array, to make it easier to use in your program.

str_replace. Replaces one word with another in some text. This is useful when it comes to inserting the HTML tags between paragraphs, for example.

strtotime. Turns an English-language description of a date and time into a number representing that date and time (technically known as a Unix timestamp). This makes them easier to use with a database, as you can sort from the ‘highest’ (most recent) to the ‘lowest’ (longest ago) more easily. You can convert back from timestamps again by using the date function.

If you have trouble remembering the names of the PHP functions (they’re quite inconsistent), take a look at http://www.ilovejackdaniels.com/php/php-cheat-sheet/ - this page has a ‘cheat sheet’ with names of common functions that you can print out and keep.

About the Author

Information supplied and written by Lee Asher of Eclipse Domain Services
Domain Names, Hosting, Traffic and Email Solutions.

Chances are that if youve been around the Internet long enough, youve heard of server-side scripting languages such as PERL, ASP and ColdFusion. These are all popular languages that are used to add interactivity to Web sites, but one stands out from the crowd in terms of usability, power, and, yes, price: the PHP scripting language. Initially developed in 1995 by North Carolina programmer Rasmus Lerdorf, PHP has since blossomed into one of the leading open-source, cross-platform scripting languages available. This is due, in large part, to the worldwide community of coders that contributes to its development. Unlike proprietary scripting languages like ASP and ColdFusion, PHPs source code is freely available for peer review and contributions. This is, of course, the essence of open-source software development, but why is it that PHP in particular has gained such popularity among Web developers when there are other open-source alternatives, such as good old-fashioned PERL CGI scripts?

One very strong reason is that PHP, unlike PERL CGI scripts, is scalable and fast. Instead of requiring the server to start a new process in the operating systems kernel for each new request, which uses both CPU time and memory, PHP can run as a part of the Web server itself, which saves a considerable amount of processing time when dealing with multiple requests. This decreased processing time means that PHP can be used for high-traffic sites that cannot afford to have their performance hampered by relatively slow CGI scripts.

In addition to its scalability and speed, another usability factor that sets PHP apart is its ease of use. The PHP language is considered to be a mix between C and PERL, and it draws from the best features of each parent language, while adding unique features of its own. For example, PHP code can be embedded within standard HTML documents without using additional print statements or calling separate scripts to perform the processing tasks. In practice, this allows for very flexible programming practices. Although a working knowledge of HTML is a prerequisite for PHP development, PHPs basic functions can be learned quickly and applied to a wide range of common Webmaster-related projects, such as order forms, e-mail responses, and interactive Web pages.

Contributing to the power of the PHP language, is its native support for leading relational database platforms, including MySQL, Oracle and PostgreSQL. Platform-specific functions are built into the language for 12 databases in all. This native support for database platforms is a boon to any site that needs to track user information, store product data, or collect sales information.

Last but not least, because PHP is open-source, it is essentially free to use. Almost all professional Unix-based Web hosts offer PHP as an included option with hosting accounts. Be sure to check with your host to see if it is available to you.

This article is meant to be an introduction to the PHP language and not a tutorial, but have no fearhere are several first-rate sites that have articles that will guide you along in beginning your PHP development projects:

www.php.net
www.onlamp.com/php/
www.phpbuilder.com

Alan is the lead developer for InfoServe Media, LLC (http://www.infoservemedia.com), a Web development company that specializes in Web site design, hosting, domain name registration, and promotion for small businesses.

How to Stop Digital Thieves with CGISteve Humphrey

I’m going to assume you’re serious about your business. If you’re not, I can’t help you anyway. You’ve gone as far as getting a real merchant account to accept credit card payments online.

You know that this was neither easy or cheap. So does everyone else! So, a merchant account shows that you’ve made a serious commitment to your business. That’s good for customer confidence, which is good for business. So far so good…

Now there’s the issue of selling stuff to people online. Your order form leads them to feed their credit card info to a secure gateway, using software you bought or leased from (or through) your merchant account provider. Finally, the transaction is approved or denied.

If approved, the software generates a receipt and emails you and the customer each a copy. At this point, the customer is returned to a page you specified. In the case of downloadable products, this is often the page where they download your product. So, you’ve got the entire process fully automated.

For a product or service with a fairly low price point and a potential for many thousands of sales, this seems ideal. You can quite literally make sales and earn income 24 hours a day. So, what’s the problem?

The form code on your order page is the problem. If someone uses the ViewSource function of their browser, they can see all your code. If they have even a tiny bit of initiative and skill, they can locate the URL of your download page. After all, it’s right there in your form code!

CGI provides two ways of fixing this problem. One involves using a script that makes it impossible to view the source code. You can find a source for such a script by searching the web. Expect to pay a lot for this technology.

Another way is to make the return path a script instead of the actual download location. The script would be used to create and display the download page. It would not be visible to the surfer, since it’s not an HTML document. The script can also record details of the transaction for book-keeping purposes.

I admit that I discovered this by trial and error - and a lucky guess or two. Your merchant account gateway software may have radically different behavior than mine, but here’s what I’ve learned:

The gateway uses the POST method to send the customer to your specified return URL (which can be a script as well as a web page). It also POSTs most of its input data items at the same time. They are usually ignored, but your script can read them if you want to!

Use the names given to the form inputs. Have your script extract the values of these “named parameters” at the time it creates the download page. Record what you want to save about the transaction in your orders file or database.

Now here’s the real secret to foiling the thieves. Inside the script, check to see that the variables you extract contain non-empty values. Did you get that? Here’s an example:

if ($email eq “”) {exit;}

In this example, the script expects to get an email address. If it contains no characters, the script quits instantly. By testing for the presence of some data in such fields as customer name, email address, item #, price, etc., you can tell whether the script was called after a successful transaction - or by a thief…

Put all your security checks prior to the code that creates the download page. If any test fails, the script exits and the thief is left empty- handed. If your form-handling script can convert a product name to a product ID that’s never visible to a browser, this provides even more security. This will be POSTed back to the script and you can check for it before allowing the download.

Close these security holes and you’ll make more money. You may even sleep a little better knowing that people can’t steal that product you worked so hard to create. I know I do!

Steve Humphrey promises that you can learn to use CGI to turn your own website into a marketing machine in two hours or less with his excellent CGI learning system: “Learn to Use CGI in 2 Hours.” We highly recommend this book as required reading for anyone who wants to automate their website or their marketing efforts. Click here for immediate access: http://www.roibot.com/tk_cgi2h.cgi?cgiAV2b

Computer users and programmers have become so accustomed to using Windows, even for the changing capabilities and the appearances of the graphical interface of the versions, therefore it has remained Microsoft’s product. Although, Lycoris, Red Hat, Mandrake, Suse, Knoppix, Slackware and Lindows make up some of the different versions of LINUX. These companies release their own versions of the operating systems with minor changes, and yet always with the same bottom line. The simple fact that not one of these companies are close to competing with Windows, for the most part causes the difference in market share.

It sometimes seems everyone on the planet is using Windows. Many say Windows is way better than LINUX because of the simple handling of the software or hardware. There are huge differences between the number of users of LINUX and Windows. Many say LINUX is far better because it started as an Open Source software and thus is more flexible than Windows. Then what accounts for the enormous difference in market share between these two operating systems?

Windows and Linux are different in many ways.

1. Windows GUI is an integral component of the OS; speed, efficiency and reliability, while the Linux GUI is optional, are increased by running a server instance of Linux without a GUI, something that server versions of Windows simply can’t do. The nature of the Linux GUI makes remote administration of a Linux computer easier with a more natural feel than Windows computers.

2. The command prompts of the operating systems are very different. The command interpreters in the Windows 9x series are very similar to each other and the NT class versions of Windows also have similar command interpreters. There are, however differences between a Windows 9x command interpreter and one in an NT class flavor of Windows. Linux, like UNIX, also supports multiple command interpreters, but it usually uses BASH or “Bourne Again Shell”.

3. While you have to pay hundred’s of dollars for a new Windows version, you can just go download Linux. There’s no manuals or simple installers for the free version. Although there is quite a learning curve when utilizing the free package. There are some easy automated packages of Linux for low prices.

Microsoft’s “big con” is the supposed security issues with windows. Most spyware, adware and malicious files programs work with Windows just fine. In general you do not deal with these kinds of circumstances unless you are working with Windows. whereas Linux offers a strong protection, password protection for Windows can be bypassed with ease.

The software availability is the key to why Windows wins over Linux in this competition. Most software releases are already configured for Windows. If you chose to use Linux you must copy Windows with special software in order to use your windows based programs. You could always install Windows as a subsystem to Linux, this would take the administrative capabilities of Windows and allow them to funtion on Linux.

If Linux is ever to compete with Windows, it must become more user friendly and provide serious technical support.

About the Author: http://www.sddatanet.com

Linux for Home Users

 by: Pawan Bangar

Hey Guys! Dont raise your eyebrows or fear by hearing the word Linux. It is as user friendly as windows. Just take a look at the articles below and all myths about Linux in your mind will disappear.

Introduction to Linux:

Its a free operating system available to download but you have to pay a tiny bit to mail order it or buy it from a company. Linux came into being about 11 years ago- it was developed by Linux Tornados of Finland along with a group of programmers from the open source software movement.

Linux is growing steadily year after year. With a passionate community backing it, with big companies Like IBM and HP pledging their support for it, its no wonder Linux- the wonder operating system for servers of the past, has also made it to the desktops of today.

Linux is based on the commercial OS, UNIX. All the operating systems try to pack in command line management of systems. System administrators of companies use command lines all the times as their lifeline, but its not really meant for regulars users.

Tips for Home Users:

• If you want to get comfortable with Linux, you dont have to let go of windows. Get Linux installed on a separate partition and you can switch between Windows and Linux. For new users who dont have any computer background learning windows or Linux both takes same time and sitting.
• It is suggested that new PC buyers should get both operating systems installed and should use them equally. If youre getting Linux for more than 2-3 PCs, you can also get training and support at a small free, if you choose to have it. Else its the Linux community on the Net to your rescue.
• You dont have to be a great computer user to work with Linux. There are Desktop environments that let you work in Linux as you work in Windows. As you work with windows, same is the case with Linux.

Linux hands in decreasing PC prices.

PC prices are already on their way down. And you get more choice with operating systems and applications. From being an OS only computer professionals had heard about, Linux, in a short time, has made a transition into the lucrative and high profile home PC segment.

The PCs bundle the operating system. Linux being a free open source operating system means that the code that runs is open for everyone to see, work with, modify and develop their own innovative applications for it. But this is nothing compared to the money people spend on Operating Systems like windows. And a company bundles Linux and applications based on it with a computer, quite a bit of the PC cost comes down. Presently some branded PCs coming with Linux are available for Rs: 25000/- onwards.

Linux is better than other OS

Linux users wont even bat an eyelid before they say an emphasis comes from a deep dislike of Microsofts practice of changing the earth for software. But a lot of it comes from the fact they are ready to swear upon-that Linux is more stable. According to a latest survey Web Hosts are using Linux Based Servers for hosting purposes.

One note here though: the free in Linux stands for freedom of choice, to redistribute, to install a feature, freedom to modify the source code. Thats the spirit of Linux being free.

Security:

Linux has a better security support for multi-users, lets you set up a stable server, internet gateways etc, and still lets it-self to be used as a desktop workstation. There are no blue screens and no viruses to speak of. It is rarely attacked by any viruses and there are very less number of viruses written for Linux. It can be given 10+ points on a 10 point scale for security.

Myths about Linux

Installation:

Linux is hard to install, isnt it? Not really. Most people havent ever installed Windows on their computers either-since it comes preloaded. Linux is as easy-some say easier-to install compared to Windows. You can install it through a graphical user interface like Windows. These days Linux Versions are easier to install than Windows. But what really stumps most people in installing Linux on a second partition on their hard disk, when they want to be able to use both operating systems.

A partition is a way of organizing space on your hard disk by creating virtual sections that are separate from each other. Most computers that are running Windows or MS DOS have one large chunk of space holding the OS. This space is the C drive. If you have a large hard disk, its likely that it has been divided up into smaller bits called partitions to help you organize your data better. These partitions are usually called D:, E: etc. you could have Linux on any of these.

Windows 98 creates a file system called FAT32 on the entire hard disk, DOS and Win95 use FAT16. Linux has many file systems-on the most popular is ext3. But you could have Linux installed on Fat32 partitions also.

Linux is very difficult and based on text command

Linux has come a long way from being the system of brilliant computer users. It has extremely advanced X Windows systems that have a complete graphical user interface-you know, like Windows. It also has a large number of window manager that let you work with different levels of customization of your desktop.

Linux has a robust character-cell interface where commands need to be typed in. x Windows is a free program that runs with Linux to provide a GUI where the mouse and keyboard can be used extensively. But the X system itself is quite primitive and needs a window manager, or a desktop environment- like GNOME or KDE- to be really usable. Window managers are programs that let you interact with the underlying X system and Linux OS by relaying commands. The popular window managers are Sawfish, Enlightenment, Black box, after step and Window maker.

As for desktop managers, they have their own window manager and other tools that make you feel that you are working in Window! GNOME and KDE are the most popular of these. GNOME stands for GNU Network Model Environment and KDE for K desktop Environment. They have tools that allow drag and drop, have panels and taskbar- almost like clones of windows.

Hardware compatibility problem and few applications that run on Linux

Well, most new distributions will detect and configure your hardware in a jiffy, unless you have some really old or exotic piece of hardware. All hardware are properly detected and their drivers installed. Only Win modems (internal modems driven by Window drivers) face problems.

As for software, theres plenty. And most of it comes free-free for you to use, modify and configure according to your needs. Almost all excellent software for Linux is free and you dont lose anything by giving it a try. You get free support on the Net quickly on any query you may have. And you dont even have to wipe out your Windows. Just get Linux on a different hard disk partition and free to switch between them as you please.

Other packages are commercial and you have to buy the software-but this is mostly for the software and training you need, and not for the software itself. Sometimes, if you have the Windows version (as a doom) you can download a small program that will allow you to play the game in Linux. The games in Linux are of very high quality and features. Youll enjoy them. Here whats available?

Office suites: Star Office, Open Office, Applixware, Corel WordPerfect

Graphics: GIMP, Corel Photo paint

Music: XMMS, Free amp, Real Player

Video: MTV, Xine

Games: FreeCiv, Tux racer, Doom, Quake, Heretic, Unreal And the list is growing.

Linux varieties for Home Users:

If there are so many people working on it. Theres likely to be many Linux versions too. Many companies working on Linux have come up with what are called Linux distributions. There are Linux versions that are compiled and packaged and released with additional software.

RedHat: Probably the most popular and in many ways the leading version. Its currently in version 9. The installation and configuration is easy. A blue curve file manager and the default GNOME desktop make it look simply stunning. It comes with a host of tools that allow usage as a server and as a workstation. The Red Hat Package Manger(RPM) format developed by Red Hat has almost become the defector for software distribution in Linux world. Installing new software is a breeze. It also has an advanced and easy font management system that makes fonts in X Windows look cool.

Mandrake: Mandrake Linux is now in its 10 version. It can be installed on a native Windows Partition using the Lin4Win tool, but this may slow the machine down. It also lets you do a traditional Linux install into its own dedicated partition. Mandrakes configuration and software installation is painless. It follows a slightly modified RPM architecture called mdk.rpm but most Red Hat software can also be used for Mandrake. The outstanding feature in this version is the collection of window managers-eye-candy freaks will have a great time.

SUSE: From Germany comes the Chameleon, SUSE. Now in its 8.x avatar, it has one of the most extensive software packages compiled, and getting them installed is easy with yast (Yet another Software Tool) which gives a centralized interface from where you can pick and choose the software to be installed. Among other things, SUSE comes with some stunning 3D games that showcase Linux gamming prowess

Corel/Xandross: Corel entered the Linux market with Corel Linux a few years ago. Now it has merged into Xandross OS, which is based on Corel Linux. This is a Debian-type version, and can be installed without much fuss after resizing the Windows partition. Xandross contains Crossover office, which is a refined retail version of WINE that lets you install and run many Microsoft apps.

Windows applications in Linux

Some applications have been ported over to Linux, other run with a program called WINE (Wine is Not an Emulator). Crossover, commercially available software also lets you use your Windows programs on Linux. VMWare is another program that lets you run Windows under Linux. Now many software companies have started developing high end software for Linux.

Bottom Line:

The cool thing about Linux is that most software is free, and you can legitimately use them without worrying about piracy. If youre worried that Linux wont look as pretty as windows can, all you have to do is check out some of the cool Linux interfaces and Window managers. But you dont find a lot of multimedia titles for Linux. And if youre into a lot of these, Windows is in the way to go. So if you have a PC that runs both, you can easily switch between the two, and get the best of both worlds.

About The Author Presently working in the capacity of the Technical Director of Birbals, an e-consulting firm based in India dedicated in providing innovative and effective web, Hospitality and consultancy services to public, private and non-profit organizations. Successfully founded Birbals and other IT companies like Ebirbals and SeoBirbals. Responsible for strategy, positioning and branding, designing, planning, organizing and executing various business plans. Have set up various systems and procedures for the smooth functioning of Birbals. pawan@ebirbals.com

———————————————————– Permission is granted for the below article to forward, reprint, distribute, use for ezine, newsletter, website, offer as free bonus or part of a product for sale as long as no changes are made and the byline, copyright, and the resource box below is included. ———————————————————– The Linux File System

By Stephen Bucaro

Linux uses a whole different file system philosophy than Windows. Windows automatically assigns a drive letter to every partition and drive it finds. But Linux makes every partition and drive a subdirectory of the root (/) partition. If you are a Windows user, you may get confused when you try to use Linux.

No matter how many partitions, hard drives, or floppy drives your computer has, the Linux File Manager displays everything in a single directory tree under the root directory indicated by a slash (/). Every partition or drive is “mounted” onto the directory tree, and appears in File Manager as a subdirectory.

Linux needs at least three partitions to work, the root partition, the /boot partition, and the swap partition. The root partition is mounted at startup. The root directory itself doesn’t contain any files, just subdirectories. The /boot partition contains files used to boot the system. The swap partition is used as “virtual memory”.

When the operating system needs more memory than there is available in the system’s RAM, it can use disk space to emulate memory. As the system operates, data is swapped back and forth between RAM and the swap partition. The swap partition doesn’t have a mount point because it’s a system file and is never accessed directly by the user.

Note: Linux, the Internet, and the rest of the computing world use forward slashes to form directory paths. Only Windows uses back-slashes to form directory paths. The back-slash also represents an ASCII escape character, resulting in all kinds of bugs in Windows programs.

In Windows you just insert a floppy disk into the drive and it’s accessible. With Linux, before you can access devices such as a CD ROM or a floppy drive, you have to “mount” the drive. For example, to mount the floppy drive, insert the disk into the drive and then select Main Menu | Programs | System | Disk Manager. The “User Mount Tool” utility will appear. In the “User Mount Tool” click on the “Mount” button to the right of /dev/fd0.

Note: Linux abstracts every device attached your computer, including the hard drive and floppy drive as a file. Files in the /dev/ folder are equivalent to device driver files in Windows. Linux provides device files for most common devices, but if you install an uncommon device, you may need a special device file.

After mounting the drive, you can access the floppy disk. Before removing the disk, you have to “unmount” the drive. If you find yourself frequently mounting and unmounting drives, you can right-click on “Disk Manager” in the menu and select “Add this launcher to panel”.

When you installed Linux, information about devices on computer was stored in the file /etc/fstab. If the device that you want to mount was not configured during installation, use the LinuxConf utility to configure the device before you mount it.

For example, if you wanted to configure a floppy drive to access DOS floppy disks, insert a DOS floppy disk into the drive, then log in as root and open LinuxConf - Main Menu | Programs | System | LinuxConf. In the LinuxConf window Config tab, click on “+” next to “File systems” to open that branch. Under “File systems” click on “Access local drive”. The “Local volume” windows appears.

In the “Local volume” window, click on the Add button. The “Volume specification” window appears. In the “Partition” text box type /dev/fd0. Then click on the drop down button for the “Type” text box and select msdos. In the “Mount point” text box type /mnt/floppy. Click on the “Accept” button. Then click on the “Mount” button.

Note: To mount a partition or drive you have to use an existing subdirectory as the mount point. By convention, drives use the /mnt/ subdirectory as the mount point.

To copy files to and from the mounted floppy disk, drag and drop them to and from the directory /mnt/dosfloppy just as you would any other directory. ———————————————————– Resource Box:
Copyright(C)2002 Bucaro TecHelp. To learn how to maintain your computer and use it more effectively to design a Web site and make money on the Web visit http://bucarotechelp.com
To subscribe to Bucaro TecHelp Newsletter Send a blank email to bucarotechelp-subscribe@topica.com ———————————————————–

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What To Do When Windows Won’t Boot-Upotis f cooper

When Windows fails to boot it is normally caused by the installation of a program or device which caused a conflict with one or more other programs. This will no doubt give you plenty of heartache if you’re not certain which program caused Windows to not boot up.

If you recently installed a program or application and know where it was installed,you may be in much better shape as for as correcting the error. Here are common ways to correct the problem of your computer not completely booting up or not booting up at all.

If your computer will not boot-up at all,hopefully you have made a good emergency boot disk. You can always make a windows startup disk by creating one from another computer running Windows 98 or Me.Perform the following if your computer……..

Won’t Boot-Up At All

FIRST……Put your boot floppy disk in the floppy drive and turn on the PC.On some computers, you may have to access the bios and select the Boot priority to your A: drive.Save any changes and select “Start Computer without CDROM support” and press Enter.Once you are at the A> prompt,type dir c: and press enter.

SECOND….If your programs and other files are present,your hard drive is good.Try to repair or restore your system Registry by following the steps below.This may repair Windows,the Config. Sys and autoexec.bat files to where the PC may boot up normally.

THIRD……If the above procedure did not correct the problem of your computer not booting up,type in “fdisk /mbr” and press Enter to restore your master boot record.Type “Scandisk C:” to check the hard drive for errors that may have occurred. You can also type “Sys C:” to hopefully restore files needed to boot up your computer.

FOURTH……If the above procedures fail to repair your computer,you can repeat the first part of step one above and select “Start Computer With CDROM Support” re-install Windows.

Making A Windows XP Bootable Floppy

Windows XP users should create a boot disk now by placing a formatted blank diskette in the A: drive, open Windows Explorer to the C:,select Tools,Folder Options ,show Hidden files and and folders,then View Tab.

Now you uncheck “Hide Protected Operating System Files (recommended).You will see a warning and click Yes and click OK.Copy the files ntldr,ntdetect.com and boot.ini onto the disk.Remove the disk and label it the Windows XP Boot Disk.

After making your boot disk,recheck “Hide protected operating system files and folders (recommended)” in the Folder Options dialog box.

To use the disk when Windows XP won’t boot,place the disk in the drive,and unto re-booting,the computer, Windows simply bypass the basic boot files on the hard drive and continue to boot up.

If The PC Won’t Boot Pass Windows

FIRST……If your Operating System is Windows Millennium,turn on the computer and immediately press and hold down the CTRL key.Once the startup options appear,release the CTRL key. Select Safe Mode and press Enter.You are now in Windows limited version.If you know what caused your computer not to boot,you can now either change or delete that program.

SECOND….Repair your Registry by selecting Start,Run and typing “scanregw /fix” and press enter.This will fix any damage done to the Registry. You can also restore your registry which replaces your current registry with an earlier copy that was backed up by your computer.Click on Start,Run and type “scanregw /restore” and press Enter.

To repair your Windows 98 Registry,hold down the CTRL key as you start the PC and select “Command Prompt Only”.Type “scanreg /fix” and press Enter and “scanreg/restore” to restore a previousely saved copy of the Registry.

If you have Windows XP,press F8 after rebooting the PC should Windows freeze while booting up. You can select “Last Known Good Configuration” after rebooting to allow the computer to boot the last backed up files.And you can choose “Safe Mode” to remove any files you know caused the operating system to hang up.

Otis F. Cooper is solely dedicated to boosting the knowledge and confidence of every computer user that is serious about knowing computers.Use his informative articles and videos to understand every aspect about the PC.Read more about his formula for pc training at http://www.ultimatepcrepair.com