Tracking Time on the Web

Posted by rimel - 16/07/07 at 02:07:53 am

A slew of sites claim they’ll help you track your billable hours, and some will even produce your invoices — free. Are they worth your while? Here’s what 20 CEOs think

Of all the headaches that CEO Melissa McNatt faced while running her sales consultancy, JumpStart Sales, the most pesky was tracking all the 10-minute intervals she spent phoning or E-mailing clients. Sure, she realized that if she actually tracked all those 10-minute intervals, they could add up to hours over an entire project. But why bother? She charged mostly flat fees anyway. And she knew that if she truly made the effort to record each tiny spurt of work, she’d never get any real work done.

But in neglecting to track each and every minute, McNatt was missing some important knowledge about her business. Projects for which she charged a $1,000 flat fee — based on the assumption she’d spend 7 hours on them — were consuming 10 hours. As a result, her projects were less profitable than they could have been. And without time-tracking data to reveal just how much less profitable those jobs were, McNatt didn’t know quite how much to adjust her pricing. “I didn’t have a good feeling for the time I was spending on E-mail and calls,” she says.

For McNatt’s start-up, problems like those were bad. For an IT consulting business with 25 employees, such problems can be a nightmare. In fact, for almost all service businesses — law firms, public-relations agencies, and so on — time tracking affects not only pricing and billing but also project management: how many employees should work on a given job, and for how long? For years companies and sole proprietors have used software programs like Timeslips or the time-related functions on their accounting software to get by. But just as frequently they’ve relied on the just-wing-it method: jot down a ballpark guess in a daily planner and then do a tally at month’s end to produce a bill or determine pricing and profitability.

Now an abundance of time-tracking Web sites have emerged, a small part of the big movement toward Web-based software. They’re hoping that small-business owners will drop their daily planners and time sheets and instead use the Internet to keep track of their time — free or for a low monthly cost. Just type in your client and project information or import it from your Palm Organizer (or other handheld device) or Microsoft Outlook, and — bang — you’ve created an electronic record of your client’s project, on a Web site you can access whenever you need to track those nagging 10-minute intervals. The sites all claim that they will make your life easier: join us, they say, and you’ll be spared paperwork, pricey software, and annoying upgrades forever. It sounds tempting. But it doesn’t answer the real question: Can any of these sites help my business? That’s where our CEOs come in.

We asked 20 small-business chief executives to evaluate six time-tracking sites, some of which offered invoicing and expense reporting as well. There were far more than six such sites out there, so we narrowed down the list based on three criteria: first, the sites had to have some form of free trial, so that our CEOs could check them out. Second, time tracking had to be a major thrust of the site, not part of a bundled suite. Last, the sites had to accommodate all Internet browsers.

McNatt was a quick convert. After she’d used one of the sites for a week, it was easy for her to see just how much profit she was losing by failing to track time spent on E-mail and phone calls. Other CEOs, however, were not so zealous. “What happens if this site goes down or simply changes its line of business?” asked one. “If Intuit goes out of business, I’ll have my QuickBooks running for years, but what happens if all your records are on someone else’s servers? I didn’t think these sites did a good job of explaining why the user shouldn’t feel concerned about that.”

What other thoughts did our CEOs have? Take a look.

Decoding RSS

Posted by rimel - 16/07/07 at 02:07:31 am

1.Individuals copy news feeds from the RSS section of a website and paste them into customized “news readers.”

2.Each time a site is updated, a headline, summary, and link to the article pop up in the news reader in-box.

3.Readers click on a link to be automatically redirected to the site on which the story appears.

Pulling in Profits

Posted by rimel - 16/07/07 at 02:07:52 am

Ask most salespeople to name their rules of thumb, and “know the customer” is likely to be somewhere near the top of the list. That often means collecting reams of news clippings, keeping copious notes on clients’ personal lives, and combing websites for information that could shed light on a customer’s needs–or simply provide an excuse for a friendly phone call.

You’ve probably heard of RSS, or really simple syndication. From a sales perspective, the technology has two main applications. First, it allows websites to “broadcast” content to a self-selected group of people. Visitors to an online store, for example, can sign up for an RSS feed and receive notifications about special promotions and new products every time the site is updated. On the flip side, businesses can also use RSS to gather up-to-the-minute intelligence on everyone from clients to competitors.

For example, the software has changed the way client representatives at Peoria, Ill.-based Marquette Group keep tabs on customers. Before, each rep at the advertising firm spent about 10 hours a week searching the Internet for relevant information. In an effort to streamline the process, Marquette subscribed to a Web-based news clipping service, but found it sluggish. Also, because of the price, $550 a month, all nine reps had to share a single account, which was a big hassle.

So when Dale Granda, the firm’s vice president of sales and marketing, first read about new RSS software called AdSpark last fall, he signed up quickly. The Web-based application–sold by Client Dynamics in Irvine, Calif.–helps Granda’s account executives create supercharged dossiers on their clients. The program imports client information from Marquette’s customer relationship management software. Account representatives also enter search terms manually–the name of a contact’s favorite sports team, say. Then, they spend an hour a day scanning headlines culled from 6,000 local, national, and international news sites.

Sometimes the juicy tidbits spark ideas for new ads. They also give reps a good reason to call clients, who are now contacted four times a month instead of two. “It strengthens our relationships with clients on a professional level, as well as a personal level,” Granda says. The software has cut research time in half. And, instead of sharing one account, each rep has a subscription, for $99 a month per person.

The technology can also provide insights into the competition–some business software companies, including San Mateo, Calif.-based NetSuite, are even incorporating it into CRM applications–so think twice about what information you disclose on your company’s site. Salespeople at Corporate Toners, an online toner cartridge store in Canoga Park, Calif., copy feeds containing pricing information from their rivals’ websites and paste them into their NetSuite dashboards. Each time an interested buyer calls, sales reps check out the latest prices being offered by rivals and offer a better deal. That has improved Corporate Toners’ conversion rate on sales calls by 40%, says COO and co-founder Kapil Juneja. Juneja, for his part, is debating whether to add RSS feeds to the Corporate Toners website. If he does, he plans to be careful about how much he reveals.

Blog On Page Search Engine Optimization

Posted by rimel - 20/06/07 at 03:06:41 pm

How to optimize your blog for higher 

Now, you should have a blog full with content you have passionately written. It should be a very interesting grapevine for the community of your chosen niche, as opposed to a lifeless factsheet.

However, no matter how delicious your content is, if there is nobody to read it you can’t generate profit from it. Traffic is the lifeblood of your blog. In order to attract people, you must offer attractive information. Simple enough.

However, to onto your site, you have to think backwards. Where do people look when they need information? Yes, they search using  like  and , to name a few more popular ones. So, to get these people on your blog, your blog needs to rank high on search result pages of these search engines. When these people search for information through the and see your site among the top results, they will naturally click through to your blog!

The art of getting your blog or website onto high rankings on search result pages is called  It is a very complex and hard subject to master, but that doesn’t stop us from learning simple yet effective techniques to conquer the search results for certain keywords. The more complex techniques are usually needed to fight for very competitive and general keywords such as “fat loss�, but I’ll teach you how to overcome that later.

For now, let’s determine the keywords that you want to optimize your site for. For example, your blog talks about tech gadgets. Now, you’d want to check in Google whether it is a very competetive keyword. At this time of writing, there are 29, 000 ,000 search results. Think you can beat 29, 000, 000 sites at your first attempt? I don’t think so.

Now, let’s try to narrow down our scope. Let’s look for “technological gadgets� instead. At this time of writing, Google lists 792, 000 results. That’s more manageable, but you’d like to search for more focused keywords. However, let’s optimize your blog for “technological gadget� just for the sake of learning.

First, you have to pay attention to the title of your blog. Since you’re optimizing for technological gadgets, you need to have that exact phrase in your blog title. For example, a line like “Your Best Technological Gadget Blog!� would work great. You can change the title of your blog in the Blogger control panel or the Wordpress blog when you’re creating it. If you’re proficient with HTML, you can even do that on other blog engines like Moveable Type. Bottom line? Learn a little HTML!

Other than that, your page heading should also contain the term you’re optimizing for. The page heading is the bit of text in your code that is enclosed within the and tags. This is important as it tells the search engines what your page is about (in this case, “technological gadgets�). Since we’re posting a blog, the tags are usually the post titles, so remember to include the term there whenever relevant.

One last bit, you should also sprinkle the words “technological gadgets� in your posts whenever possible. The frequent occurrence of that phrase in your blog will hint the search engines that your blog is really relevant to that topic.

However, this is the most important bit of all. Always keep in mind that you’re writing for real life people who read your blog to obtain information, so it is very stupid to spam your blog with keywords! In fact, if you do that, the search engines will end up thinking you’re spamming and drop your ranking further down into oblivion… So keep in mind! Write for humans, not search engines!

6 Out-of-Box Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog

Posted by rimel - 20/06/07 at 03:06:24 pm

6 Unique Tips to Make Your Blog Famous! If it comes to creating your new blog, I think what I am talking about will help you make your blog famous to a large extent as it is direct from my experience getting my blog ranked no.1 in a famous blog hosting website in Thailand. Currently I got 8,000-18,000 hits a day with 1,500-3,000 unique visitors. What I have done are very simple and it doesn’t require technical background on computer language and no strings attached! 1. Choose the right blog hosting site. This is one of the most important things at the first start. There are a huge number of blog hosting sites being created to capitalize on business opportunities mostly focused on making money via Google Adsense. However only a few hosting websites can serve that well. Technically you have to make sure that the host of the blog hosting site you’d like is robust enough to handle a large number of visitors coming to visit your blog, easy to manage, and flexible in a sense that you can modify codes or theme yourself. This will also give you freedom in placing adsense ads in any part of your blog. Let’s get back to the point, the right blog host should be of the following: - It must be popular among bloggers. This will automatically make your blog famous as you have chances to get visited from your blog peers. - It can display new posts or updated blogs on the home page(preferably) or dashboard. This increases chance to get visited as well. - The site should accommodate forum so that you can share your opinions/experiences to get your blog known by others. - Importantly it should allow bloggers to place ads onto blogs as long as you’d like to make money. 2. Update your blog during rush hours This will help increase chance of getting hit by those who are updating their blogs or paying visits to other blogs. As I mentioned previously that the site should display newly updated blogs on the homepage or dashboard, people tend to have a look at other blogs before updating their blogs though the chance that your blog is disappearing from the homepage is huge due to a number of blogs updated at the same time. 3. Add videos onto your blog to make it alive. This way is evidently effective. Youtube is a good case study. People tend to digest information through video or audio materials rather than literatures. Doing this will differentiate your blog from others. Importantly you need to ensure that your video files can be played smoothly and clearly otherwise it will adversely affect your blog as people get bored or frustrated visiting your blog. It depends on at what speed your video can be played. Don’t make your guests wait too long. Videos will help keep your guests coming in again particularly if they are music videos. There are thousands of music video codes that you can utilize. 4. Try to communicate with visitors and use informal words. Reading formal articles is a boring thing. You should bridge this gap and get close to your visitors like friends. Blogs already allow your guests to communicate with you via comment form. This will indirectly generate words-of-mouth marketing. If your visitors are impressed, they will make link to your blog. You get one-way links. You should do the same in return if there are some space available in your blog. 5. Make links in the content My assumption is that your blog is related to some specific matters that you would like to deliver to visitors thus by nature, each post or entry will be somehow related to one another. You’d better make links on words related to other posts. This will not just help your visitors get more information but also make them stick to your site and generate page views hence increased chance of getting high click-through rate(CTR) meaning bigger money. 6. Grab Hot Keywords like “Gillian Chung Naked” As of today, there are only 58,000 search results on the phrase “Gillian Chung Naked” while there are probably millions of people from Asia searching for this. You will see a steep jump-up on the number of unigue visitors. Try it. Hope this helps!

Interactions Between Blogs

Posted by rimel - 20/06/07 at 03:06:40 pm

As your blog’s content increase, you will want to initiate interaction with other blogs in your niche. Here’s how to do it.

As your blog’s content increase, people in your niche will definitely mention you for intelligent or interesting discussions. This is, in a sense, an initiation of an interaction. When people speak of you, you should thank them for the mention and build up the interaction!

When you use a traffic tracking script such as the free, you can see where traffic comes from. If a large number of visitors come from a certain blog, you can be sure they have mentioned you in their latest post or linked to you from their sidebar or links page. What you should do is pay them a visit, leave constructive comments on their posts and build up a conversation!

As you continue doing this, you will start to gather a lot of friends in your niche. This is helpful later on when you decide to do collaborations such as interviews. In fact, when you’re out of ideas for writing on your blog, you can interview other blog owners in your niche! Human beings are curious creatures, so naturally they would like to know more about a person whose writings they read so often.

If you’re using Wordpress, Textpattern, MovableType or any other advanced blog engines, you can also post trackback links on your posts. This means you can post an article about what other people have posted! Your particular post will then appear as a link on that post you have written about. This is definitely a great way to if you post brilliant insights about a post on a very famous blog. Since the famous blog already has a per-existing pool of readers, this is like a shortcut to hog their visitors! The only thing you would want to observe is to keep your posts sensible and insightful, or you’ll be viewed as a spammer.

On the other hand, if you’re using Blogger, you would not be able to use trackback links. However, you can post insightful comments on other people’s blogs and subtly include a link back to your blog. You can make it seem like you’re pointing to your blog as an extra reference to the subject of discussion. Of course, this technique is not only limited to Blogger users and users of other blog engines can employ this strategy as an additional traffic source.

General Motors as David: Slaying Goliath’s Smear

Posted by rimel - 20/06/07 at 03:06:06 pm

It’s something the Public Relations Team at ICMediaDirect.com continually stresses to clients – a company must avail itself to corporate blogging.

The interactive world saw the wisdom of this advice on Thursday, June 1st, when some normally sedate corners of the Internet turned into a battleground of corporate messaging that ultimately demonstrated how skilled corporate blogging can be an immeasurable   In this instance an unusual underdog, a giant corporation fought back against a blindsided smear from an influential journalist.

Here’s what happened: a high profile columnist from the New York Times, Thomas Friedman, wrote a column crushing General Motor’s Fuel Price Protection Program and in the process accused GM of some pretty bad stuff.  Among other things he wrote that GM is “more dangerous to America’s future� than any other company and that they play the role of “crack dealer� to Americans addicted to  (I take it Friedman doesn’t hold the American consumer in very high regard, either)  If this wasn’t enough, Mr. Friedman accused GM, along with  and DaimlerChrysler, of buying votes in Congress.  These are not unsubstantial charges.

Only a couple of months ago I wrote here about the blog being an instrument of public relations defense; how it’s a pure platform of control which can be used to deliver a succinct corporate message in order to clear whatever misunderstanding or charge or misconception that may be thundering about the public arena of opinion.

It seems like only yesterday that when a major media property said something bad about your company, the only recourse was to hope that people didn’t read the paper or tune in that day.  Well, we’re in the Interactive Age – and this is a time where relevant people tend to miss stories of interest less than ever, as good content gets passed around the Internet like hors d’oeuvres at a cocktail party.  It is the nature of the Internet that content gets to its most relevant destinations and when a name is being dragged in the mud, it’s safe to say that those who matter most to that name will be the first ones reading it.

Fortunately for GM, their FastLane blog, the very one I cited in my article in February, responded to Friedman’s piece in a rather spectacular fashion.

GM knew that 1) Friedman is, essentially, a writer and not a – with the equal footing that blogs give, what used to be a slam dunk with the advantage to the hit-and-run writer, would actually be advantage to GM – building  is GM’s territory, not Friedman – their expertise would end up shredding Friedman’s assertions to bits.

The issue of public message and the ability to shape its content is vital with corporate blogging.  GM didn’t fly off the handle.  Sure, they were probably angry, but should the goal of a public response is to hurt Friedman’s feelings or win over readers?  Wisely, GM set upon their response in a polite, friendly fashion.  FastLane praised Friedman’s body of work and even invited him to Detroit to check up on some of their based solutions.

As I read FastLane counter Friedman’s charges point by point, I also pondered the scope of GM’s mini opinion coup.  For starters, I had been unaware of Friedman’s article of May the 31st until I saw a blurb about the affair the following day on Drudgereport, the online scandal sheet – a real motor for online media.  I clicked the link and learned of the whole affair – my attention in the matter, as a receiver of the message, was now in play.

GM’s response was not only solid enough to overpower Friedman’s insinuations, but smooth enough in its delivery to educate me about what GM is up to.  I suppose GM felt that if I was there to dig up dirt (and I was), I might as well read up on GM’s stance in alternative fuels and hybrid cars (and I did, interesting stuff).  These guys were turning a negative into a positive.  And they had every right to.  Here was a pro writer getting GM’s story wrong – what right does someone to do that?  Again, in an earlier age, GM would have had to sit there and take it as a columnist of Friedman’s stature could move on to his next piece largely unaffected by the flap he caused.

Well, if this what hatchet jobs are yielding in the Interactive Age, then maybe Mr. Friedman will have to be more exacting in his targets.  And if his name is tarnished a bit by being countered by a high quality blog belonging to the company he attacked, well, so be it.  There is a modicum of justice and a lesson in the democratization of online opinion in this story - elements that are basis of the blog itself.

Well done, FastLane blog of GM, you’ve demonstrated why every company should have a blog.  You turned a surprise attack into a positive.

How To Increase Your Sales Traffic By Publishing Customer Reviews As RSS Feeds

Posted by rimel - 20/06/07 at 03:06:14 pm

By combining customer reviews with RSS feeds, you too can ride a new wave of shopping (or social) traffic.

It is a simple truth. Yet while many of the biggest players on the web know it, most  overlook the fact that customer reviews can provide for a source of constantly updated content that potential customers would find to be an invaluable source of information.

It is also true that by simply combining customer reviews with RSS feeds, you too can ride a new wave of shopping (or social) traffic.

Traffic! It is the one problem that webmasters continually face, and which can NEVER be fully solved. How to find visitors in a reliable, repeatable, and cost-effective way. Because without visitors all your beautiful content might as well be locked away in a vault–no one is ever going to see it. If the purpose of your site is to sell, you will sell nothing. If the purpose of your site is to build a social network, you might remain its only member. You need traffic to succeed. Lots of it.

In this article I am going to consider just one traffic building initiative–one that happens to be enjoying a growing wave of popularity. It involves harnessing the power of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to build traffic. You are probably aware of RSS as a means of syndicating news content. Websites that produce news have been building XML-formatted news stories for years. These files are retrieved by other websites, the new stories are extracted, and the content is placed (on these publisher sites) before a public ever-hungry for new information. The arrangement has worked well for everyone. Those who have displayed the RSS feeds have gained content to feed their visitors. Those who have produced the RSS feeds have obtained backlinks to their websites, which has helped to bring in new traffic. In fact the arrangement has worked so well that webmasters have been encouraged to move beyond simple news syndication.

This makes a lot of sense. News articles hardly represent the only content that surfers are looking for. Recipes, shopping coupons, MP3s, schedules for local events… The list of possible things that people search for is endless, and if you can provide “new” instances of such information, then RSS represents an ideal means of getting that information in front of the people searching for it. Sure, it used to be the case that everything you wrapped up in an RSS feed had to take a very simple form. Every item in your news feed was reduced to a title, a url (to the source of the information), and a short snippet, or description, to hook the reader. But RSS has sprouted wings over the years and now you can package practically any data structure into a feed that you like. Because of this there is no reason why we cannot suitably package customer reviews into a feed.

But what exactly would we put into an RSS-formatted customer review feed? And is this a good idea? Let me answer the second question first. Yes! It is a very good idea to package customer reviews as RSS feeds. Why? Because if you think about it, a customer review is very much like a news item. It is a packaged opinion that has been released for the express purpose of swaying the mindset of someone who is looking for information on the very topic it addresses, whatever that topic might be. To the person searching for the information, this review is news indeed, and more often than not it is welcome news.

So what should go into the feed? Well, a summary of the review, seems obvious. That can be used as the title element, and a snippet of the review can be used as the description. But there are other elements to a review that we have grown accustomed to over the years, and they can go into the feed too. Pros and cons of the reviewed item can be listed and highlighted. We can put in a numeric rating for several different attributes of the item being reviewed (for example, quality and robustness of the item, its ease of use, value for money, and so on). We can put in images too. Stars to represent the numeric ratings, maybe. A picture of the item. We could even put in a link to the profile of the reviewer if we wanted. When we do these things, the final formatted customer review feed can look very enticing indeed.

Of course, the prospect of collecting reviews, let alone formatting them into RSS feeds might very well seem daunting to the average webmaster. But there are low-cost commercial applications available which will do all of this work for you–for example, the review engine known as Red Queen (see the resource box below). Furthermore, you can now upload customer reviews (in RSS format) to Google Base and make them available to the various Google outlets. Admittedly these are early days for webmasters hoping to profitably hook into Google Base traffic sources, but the prospects are exciting nonetheless.

One thing that seems certain is that customer reviews as RSS feeds represent an as yet untapped opportunity for webmasters. Customer reviews have long been profitably used by big players on the web (Amazon.com being an obvious example) but have not been fully exploited. By coupling this popular opinion-based source of information with the technology of RSS syndication, savvy webmasters who take the reins today are sure to get first mover advantage on this new means of marketing, and build the traffic they need to assure the success of their online businesses. And, of course, there is really no reason why you should not be one of them!

Tips for Promoting RSS Feeds

Posted by rimel - 20/06/07 at 03:06:32 pm

There is little argument from  and publishers that RSS brings in traffic. So once you’ve made the leap and created a feed, how do you tell your visitors about the feed?

Publicize your RSS feed.
There is little argument from webmasters and publishers that RSS brings in traffic. So once you’ve made the leap and created a feed, how do you tell your visitors about the feed?

1. Submit Your RSS Feed to RSS Directories.
This will not only increase the number of sites linking to your website and increasing your link popularity, it will also increase the RSS feeds profile. A number of RSS and RSS directories exist that allow you to freely submit RSS feeds. Feeds are generally categorized and grouped together by subject. Web surfers looking for RSS feeds about a specific subject will often search the RSS directories, to locate a feed that matches their specific criteria. Topic specific RSS feed and podcasting directories are also emerging. Choose a web feed’s category carefully and only submit relevant feeds to topic specific directories.

2. Explain RSS
While you have finally figured RSS out, some of your visitors may not have. The concept while brilliant, can be a bit confusing for the beginner. The concept of RSS feeds might be completely new to some of your website visitors. Hence it is generally good practice to walk website visitors through the steps of locating, subscribing and reading an RSS feed. It is generally a good practice to include a page on your website that contains a general explanation on RSS and details how website visitors can subscribe to an RSS feed.

Sample explanation page that can be used to on your website: http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-subscriptions.htm . RSS specifications has authorized the replication of this webpage. It can be republished, simply insert your RSS feeds or otherwise customize the material to explain RSS to your website visitors.

3. Graphic on Website
Since the conception of RSS, bright graphic flags have been used to denote the location of an RSS feed. Now instinctively, website visitors frequently look for a colorful flag on websites. The looks of the flags have changed but a variety of options exists. When you add the image, be sure to link to the location of the RSS feed. Some webmasters use chicklets to indicate the presence of feeds, web surfers click on the chicklet that relates to their RSS feed reader or news aggregator and the feed is added to their list of feeds. Others feel that the volume of chicklets simply add confusion, and opt for a single relevant RSS graphic.

4. Press
As with any important addition to your company, it is completely appropriate to send a press release to let the media know you have RSS feeds available for specific content. This will often garner a little attention. Additionally, key news editors may opt to subscribe to your RSS feed in order to stay abreast of your latest corporate news. Considering the possibility of these subscriptions, makes a press release to signal the availability of an RSS feed simple common corporate sense.

5. Newsletters
Include a mention in your e-mail newsletter that content is now available via an RSS feed. Many newsletters subscribers appreciate an alternative subscription method and will subscribe to a web feed as well.

6. Auto Discovery
Some of your website visitors might be web savvy. Be sure to include an auto-discovery tag in the HTML header of each web page. Many RSS Readers will automatically discover that an RSS feed is available for specific content and notify the website visitor and ask them if they wish to subscribe.

7. Brand a Newsreader
Distribute pre-loaded RSS readers branded to your company name. The big benefit to brandable newsreaders is that you can include all of your RSS feeds in it. Any downloaders will have immediate access to your RSS feeds in the branded news reader.

8. Blog
If you have a blog or know bloggers, be sure to share with them that you have added an RSS feed for specific content. Blogs are a great vehicle to spread the word. Marketers instantly understood the power of word of mouth, but few marketers understand the movement of blog to mouth. This growing phenomenon has added credibility to online blog endorsements.

In order to reap the benefits of an RSS feed, it is important the feed be properly publicized. Taking simple steps to promote an RSS feed will go a long way in ensuring a feeds adoption.

Permissions:
Permissions and notification of use not required.

Blogging - Whats it all about?

Posted by rimel - 20/06/07 at 03:06:53 pm

Back in the day, the only things you could really put on your website were hand-coded pages, images, and maybe the occasional file download.

Back in the day, the only things you could really put on your website were hand-coded pages, images, and maybe the occasional file download. Today, however, huge amounts of software exist that can make your website work however you want it to – and, thanks to the efforts of volunteers, almost all of them are available for free. At the moment, lots of people are into blogging. When you install a blog on your website, it allows you to write ‘entries’ instead of pages – a little like writing a diary. These entries then appear on your website automatically, latest first, without you having to touch any HTML. A similar concept is wiki software, like the software that drives Wikipedia. If you put a wiki on your page, anyone can edit your website, meaning that they can add their own information to what you’ve already written, quickly and easily. However, you need to be careful of vandalism, as it is also very easy for anyone to delete all your pages and replace them with ‘you suck’ – the best wiki software can detect this and revert it instantly. If you want to put your photos on the web, then you can use a piece of . There are all sorts available, but the chances are that your  has already installed one for you anyway that is compatible with their system, so you might as well use that one. Gallery software allows you to upload and display pictures without having to manually make pages to put them on – good if you take a lot of photos. Popular websites can also include forums, where the site’s readers can talk amongst themselves. If you run a website for a hobby with many enthusiasts or something else that you think people are very likely to want to discuss, setting up a forum can be a very worthwhile use of your time.

Blogs - CSS Top Sites