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Why valid HTML code is crucial to your web site’s search engine optimization efforts and subsequent high rankings:

Many webmasters and newcomers to web page design overlook a crucial aspect of web site promotion: the validity of the HTML code.

What is valid HTML code?

Most web pages are written in HTML.

As for every language, HTML has its own grammar, vocabulary and syntax, and each document written in HTML is supposed to follow these rules.

Like any language, HTML constantly changes. As
HTML has become a relative complex language, it’s very easy to make mistakes … and we do know by now the favorable weight the new msn.com beta search engine places on proper coding practise … see a recent article on msn.com coding requirements

HTML code that is not following the official rules is called invalid HTML code. Why is valid HTML code important to search engine optimization and your whole marketing effort?

Search engines have to parse the HTML code ofyour web site to find the relevant content. If your HTML code contains errors, search engines might not be able to find the content on the page, and there ends your seo efforts and quest for high rankings of that page.

Search engine crawler programs obey HTML standards. They only can index your web site if it is compliant to the HTML standard. If there’s a mistake in your web page code, they might stop crawling your web site and they might lose what they’ve collected so far because of the error.

Although most major search engines can deal with minor errors in HTML code, a single missing bracket in your HTML code can be the reason your web page cannot be found in search engines.

If you don’t close some tags properly, or if some important tags are missing, search engines might ignore the complete content of that page.

How can you check the validity of your HTML code? Fortunately, there are free services that allow you to check the validity of your HTML code.

The search engine optimization community’s HTML validator is the W3C HTML Validator .

It is the service that checks HTML documents for conformance to W3C HTML and XHTML recommendations and other HTML standards.

Just enter the address of a web page at the free W3C HTML Validator and the Validator will tell you what errors are on that page.

Although not all HTML errors will cause problems for your search engine rankings, some of them can keep web spiders from indexing your web pages and spoil your search engine optimization efforts.

Valid HTML code makes it easier for search engine spiders to index your site so you should make sure that at least the biggest mistakes in your HTML code are corrected.

.. run your web pages through the W3C validator, make the recommended alterations and the new MSN.com beta search will love you .. the MSN search engine places a high value on proper coding practise.

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Back in the early 90s, in the pioneering time of Search Engines Optimization meta-tags were the most importance factor when it came about optimizing a page. At that time it was enough to spam your title, description and keywords meta-tags with tons of keywords and rank on top of search engines for most of them. However, as the time passed, search engines algorithm evolved and more and more factors started to be taken in consideration so the importance of the meta-tags constantly dropped over time.

The only one meta-tag that remained very important over the time is the title tag (<title>Title</title>). In fact it is not a meta-tag, but a simple HTML tag, but there are quite a lot of people that consider it as a meta-tag so I mentioned it too. It is important not only for the SEO value it carries (which is quite high), but also for the fact that it appears on SERPS and is the most important factor that affects the CTR ration. When writing titles for your pages you should have a few things in mind: it should be user friendly (so people will actually click it and come to your site), it should include the keywords (so it helps the rankings) and it shouldn’t be too long. An example of good title for a library called “Book Lovers” and located in Boston would be: “Book Lovers – best library in Boston” or “Book Lovers – your favorite Boston library”.

The description meta-tag (<meta name=”description” content=”A one sentence description goes here.”>) is the second most important meta-tag. Again it not only cares some SEO value, but it also appears on SERPS and affects drastically the CTR. Considering that it’s most important role is to increase the CTR and not to carry SEO value I highly recommend you to write it for visitors and not for search engines. If you mention your main keyword it’s enough from a pure SEO perspective. An example of good description for the same Boston library would be: “Book Lovers is one of Boston’s best libraries; we aim to be the first library where you can find the newest book edition.”

The keywords meta-tag (<meta name=”keywords” content=”keyword 1, keyword 2, keyword 3”>) carries nowadays only a minimal SEO value and a lot of SEO experts even ignore it. However, if you’re like me, someone who considers that every bit counts you may want to add it to your site. However be careful to not spam it – use only 3-4 keywords and be sure that those keywords also exist in the page’s text. To continue with our previous example some good keywords would be: “Book Lovers”, “library”, “Boston”.

Any other meta-tag carries no SEO value anymore and using them will only make your pages heavier; so I highly recommend you to stick only with title, description and keywords meta-tags. If you want you can even use only the title meta-tag for your inner page (there are a lot of SEO experts that do so). But, under no circumstances, don’t copy the same title, description and keywords on all your pages because this may lead to a penalty; and I’m sure that this is the last thing you want to happen to your site.

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Content Management System (CMS) Overview.

A content management system (CMS) is software that assists in the organization and presentation of content on a websites.

A CMS is made up on two applications:
• Content management application – allow administrator to create content.
• Content delivery application – present in a viewable way on the web site.

Primary goals of a Content Management System (CMS) ate to:
• Identify users, their roles, and access levels on the site
• Organize content into different sections and categories for ease-of-reuse
• Create and define simple workflow’s for content creation and deployment
• Control versions of content
• Deploy design templates to give a more interesting look-and-feel to a published site.
• Provide advanced tools for adjusting site functionality.

Before make a decision to builds site with or without CMS you need to answer some of the following questions:

• How big of a site do you need?
• Does you system need to be scalable?
• Do you need something to work right of the box, or are you willing to work on the system for a while to set it up?
• What type on information will you be presenting on your site?
• Will there be only one administrator for the site, or will they be spread around the world?
• Do you need varying levels of access for your site or will it be open to all users?
• Are you willing to spend money on the system or would a free, open source solution be better for you?

Compare some of the most popular CMS Joomla vs Drupal vs WordPress.

Drupal – Overview

Drupal is often described as a “content management system” (CMS) it is also a “content management framework”. In other words, unlike a typical CMS, it is geared more towards configurability and customization. Picture a range of measurement where the one end of the scale is labeled “specific” and the other end “abstract”. On the “specific” end of the spectrum, you would have something whose form is very specialized because it’s meant for a specific purpose – like, say, a hammer. On the other end of the spectrum, you would have something much more abstracted, that is available to be configured any way you like, for a variety of purposes – like some wood and a chunk of steel. You could make a hammer, or any number of other things with the wood and steel.
Drupal’s purpose is to sit in the sweet spot between the two ends of the scale, and create a sort of “builder’s kit” made up of pre-designed components that can be used as-is or can be extensively reconfigured to suit your needs. Its design provides incredible flexibility while still allowing people who aren’t programmers to make powerful websites. This principle of manageable abstraction is important to understand, because it is a central concept to all things Drupal. When you understand why a measured amount of abstraction is valuable, you’ll begin to understand why this approach is such a strong argument for using Drupal. (from www.drupal.org)

Drupal Features

Collaborative Book – Drupal’s unique collaborative book feature lets you setup a “book” and then authorize other individuals to contribute content
Friendly URLs - Drupal uses Apache’s mod_rewrite to enable customizable URLs that are both user and search engine friendly.
Modules – The Drupal community has contributed many modules which provide functionality that extend Drupal core.
Online help – Like many Open Source projects, we can’t say that our online help is perfect but have built a robust online help system built into the core help text. Available to you on your own site
Open source – The source code of Drupal is freely available under the terms of the GNU General Public License 2 (GPL). Unlike proprietary blogging or content management systems, Drupal’s feature set is fully available to extend or customize as needed
Personalization – A robust personalization environment is at the core of Drupal. Both the content and the presentation can be individualized based on user-defined preferences. Role based permission system – Drupal administrators don’t have to tediously setup permissions for each user. Instead, they assign permissions to roles and then group like users into a role group.screenshot
Searching - All content in Drupal is fully indexed and searchable at all times if you take advantage of the built in search module. (find out more: www.drupal.org)

WordPress – Features Overview

* Full standards compliance — We have gone to great lengths to make sure every bit of WordPress generated code is in full compliance with the standards of the W3C. This is important not only for interoperability with today’s browser but also for forward compatibility with the tools of the next generation. Your web site is a beautiful thing, and you should demand nothing less.
* No rebuilding — Changes you make to your templates or entries are reflected immediately on your site, with no need for regenerating static pages.
* WordPress Pages — Pages allow you to manage non-blog content easily, so for example you could have a static “About” page that you manage through WordPress. For an idea of how powerful this is, the entire WordPress.org site could be run off WordPress alone. (We don’t for technical mirroring reasons.)
* WordPress Links — Links allows you to create, maintain, and update any number of blogrolls through your administration interface. This is much faster than calling an external blogroll manager.
* WordPress Themes — WordPress comes with a full theme system which makes designing everything from the simplest blog to the most complicated webzine a piece of cake, and you can even have multiple themes with totally different looks that you switch with a single click. Have a new design every day.
* Cross-blog communication tools— WordPress fully supports both the Trackback and Pingback standards, and we are committed to supporting future standards as they develop.
* Comments — Visitors to your site can leave comments on individual entries, and through Trackback or Pingback can comment on their own site. You can enable or disable comments on a per-post basis.
* Spam protection — Out of the box WordPress comes with very robust tools such as an integrated blacklist and open proxy checker to manage and eliminate comment spam on your blog, and there is also a rich array of plugins that can take this functionality a step further.
* Full user registration — WordPress has a built-in user registration system that (if you choose) can allow people to register and maintain profiles and leave authenticated comments on your blog. You can optionally close comments for non-registered users. There are also plugins that hide posts from lower level users. (find out more: www.wordpress.com)

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Your Joomla web site uses CSS to keep the text, background colors, module header colors, headings, etc the same throughout your site.

If you want to change the color of your content headings, your text, or background page color, you would do this from the CSS file. You can also change the color of your links, the background ofyour menus, or the name of image files that show up.

The HTML tells your template where to pull modules in, and includes the footer text on your template (depending on your template). If you want to change the footer text on your template, this is the place to do it. Also, some templates have some alternate options in the HTML file such as making your template right justified, centered, or left justified. Some also allow you to change whole color schemes from the HTML file. Generally, this is found in templates you buy and the template will come with instructions on how to switch between the different options in the HTML file. It’s usually as easy as typing the name of the color or entering a “1″ or “0″.The HTMLl file basically tells your Joomla web site template what to pull into view from the files on your server and where to display them.

How to edit your CSS file in your Joomla web site:

1) Log in to www.yoursitename.com/administrator

2) In the row of menus across the top, go to “site”

3) Choose template manager in the drop down menus

4) Choose Site templates in the menu that slides out to the side

5) When the page loads, put a check mark in the box next to your default template.

6) Click “Edit CSS” in the top right hand corner.

7) Make the changes to your CSS file that you wish to

Click the disk icon to save.

How to edit your HTML file in your Joomla web site :

1) Log in to www.yoursitename.com/administrator

2) In the row of menus across the top, go to “site”

3) Choose template manager in the drop down menus

4) Choose Site templates in the menu that slides out to the side

5) When the page loads, put a check mark in the box next to your default template.

6) Click “Edit HTML” in the top right hand corner.

7) Make the changes to your html file that you wish to

Click the disk icon to save

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This is a comparison of most popular content-management-systems Drupal 6x and Joomla 1.5 series.

Drupal pros: free, professional coded, multilang, multisite, performance, great community, flexibility, power, role-based user access, flexible content types, excellent taxonomy system, seo friendly urls, multi-db-support
Drupal cons: hard to learn, poor online themes, not-core-included important modules, e-commerce, too simple looking forum system,

Joomla pros: free, good coded, multilang, easy learning curve, quality templates, ssl-login-support
Joomla cons: high loads, not seo-friendly urls, not-flexible, confusing arc.

Learning Curve

Joomla is the best choice for beginners. Drupal has excellent online-documentation and great community but it is not enaugh for beginners with less time and poor knowledge.

Installation

You can install both cms over a webinterface. Joomle core comes with Media Manager, Language Manager, Contact Management, Banner Management, Polls, Search, WYSIWYG editor. Drupal core comes with Collaborative Books, Friendly URLs , Search, Polls , Blogs, Blogger API support , Content syndication , News aggregator , Multi-language , Discussion forums. There are also different installation profiles on Drupal site. Drupal modules should be uploaded to modules directory. Joomla components (.zip packages) should be installed over webintarface. Updating Drupal core is much easier as you can put your own modules, templates, config files in seperate directories, which will not be overwritten.

Architecture

Drupal has a clear architecture, uses blocks for right-left-top-bottom-.. etc blocks and modules for plug-ins. Joomla has a bad-named system; uses “modules” for blocks and has components, extentions, mambots etc as modules, which are confusing by names. Both cms have seperated templating systems. Drupal is oop but does not use php-classes in code. Drupal is “database-independent”(Mysql, Postgresql, …), Joomla using MySQL.

Power

Drupal looks more powerful. APIs, Views, CCK make Drupal the winner.

Flexibility

If Joomla were a barebone Drupal would be a desktop-computer. Joomla is easy to start but hard to customize. Drupal is much more flexible. ie: You can add capctas to each form on Drupal but not on Joomla.

Performance

Drupal would be the best choice for high-traffic sites (because of its good caching system and optimized code).

Templates

Drupal is a good system with bad looking-templates. Joomla has much more professional designs, both free and premium. There are live demos of Drupal’s most popular themes on www.themegarden.org.

Search System:

Both cms have good search systems. Drupals advanced search is very flexible.

SEO-Friendly Urls

Drupal has excellent url system using path(core) and pathauto modules. Each content item is avaliable under “node/123″ like Content_ID too. Joomla has seo modules too but they are poor compared to Drupal.

Community

Drupal wins, there are much more professional developers on Drupal forums than Joomla. Most Drupal-module coders make it possible that their modules communicate with other modules using Drupal APIs.

Management & Administration

Drupal has bad looking but easy-to-find admin area. Drupal does not need extra admin login, rights are loaded with user/root login. Drupal has no admin groups by default, there is also one root-admin with userid #1. But Drupal is very flexible you can create new roles with different access settings and assign users to this roles. Joomla uses completely seperated admin area with extra login. Joomla has a couple of both user and admin-moderator levels. Drupal has poor backup-recovery functions. Joomla has better solutions at the moment. Joomla lock content to prevent double content editing from multiple editors same time.

Content, Categories, Menus

Drupal wins with excellent taxonomy-system and flexible menu system. There are also image-upload, file-attachment, WYSIWYG modules for both cms. Joomla has options for meta-data description, keywords for each content item but Drupal not.

Shopping Cart

E-Commerce was one of two most important Drupal Weakness with Forum system. Now there are two e-commerce modules(Ubercart and E-Commerce) on Drupal site. Joomla’s Virtuemart is an excellent shopping cart.

Popularity

At the moment Joomla looks more popular than Drupal, probably because of high number of newbie users(higher Google-PR, better Alexa rang, better placement on Google-Trends and Twitter, more backlinks). But Drupal -the system of future- is getting more popular everyday. Drupal can be next CMS champion with version 7. Drupal’s website is more popular.

Drupal is very popular in:
Czech Republic, India, Indonesia, Russian Federation, Hungary, New Zealand, Belgium, Norway, United States, Canada

Joomla is very popular in:
Indonesia, Netherlands, Russian Federation, Malaysia, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Italy, Germany, Austria, Portugal

Drupal’s Google Pagerank: 8
Joomla’s Google Pagerank: 9

Drupal’s Alexa Rang: 1.285
Joomla’s Alexa Rang: 1.016

Conclusion:

Use Joomla for a small to middle website if you are a beginner with less experience, less time and less money. Use Drupal for a small to big website if you have web programming experiences, enaugh time and enaugh money for layout-designers.

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This article shows you how to get backlinks and increase the pagerank of your website or blog. It also deals with the two methods you could follow to get backlinks.

Backlinks are a very useful internet marketing tool. To make the most of your website or blog, you have got to use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques. Apart from this, if you get backlinks and can spend sometime in link building, your pagerank will increase for sure.

Why do you need to Get Backlinks? Is it related to Pagerank in any way?
The answer is, yes, it is indeed important to get backlinks. Oh and yeah, pagerank and backlinks are most certainly related. Okay, let’s make this as simple as possible. If you have created good quality content and want your pagerank to go up, get backlinks to your site from other sites, forums, blogs and social networking sites.

Backlinks are like those famous quotations you use in your articles. When you use famous quotations in your articles, it drives across your idea to the audience more effectively. Similarly, if you get more backlinks, Google and other search engines understand that your articles are highly informative. Google thinks that due to the high quality of your articles, others are promoting your link.

Backlinks increase your traffic because:
1- Google tracks the backlinks to any site/blog/article. The more the backlinks, the better your pagerank could be.
2- Due to the backlinks you have, your traffic will automatically go up. This again means that Google will get curious, and will realize that your content is popular. Thus, your Google pagerank will go up.

2 Main Ways to Get backlinks.

1- Get Backlinks by ‘One way backlink building’
If you don’t want to put in too much work, yet reap the benefits of  backlinks, there is always an option! Get backlinks the easy way by using one way backlinks.

All you need to do in this method is to directly submit your articles to good article directories and popular social networking sites. This link building technique is effective, but might take a little time at the beginning. So don’t lose hope.

2- Get Backlinks by ‘Two way backlink building’
This method works between your site/blog and another person’s site or blog. So in this case, it takes two to tango and get those backlinks.(LOL).

The easiest way to get backlinks using this method is to surf the internet to select sites that have similar content as yours. So if you write about ‘Gardening tips’, check out some popular gardening sites. Since you would be interested in the site, after some commenting for a few weeks, you could ask the site owner to include your blog/site URL on their site. You do the same for the site owner. That is it, you get a two way backlink. You can get backlinks using this method, with any number of website pairs.

Warning: Don’t go on and spam places. Only carry out this link building exercise on sites and forums where it is relevant. Else, your links might be deleted by webmasters and all your ‘link building efforts’ will not get you anything. We don’t want that now do we?

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Wordpress and Joomla are two popular website content management systems that I have been using for a number of years.

There are certainly many others, but if you are contemplating various software foundations to build a website upon, you would be wise to become familiar with either, or both of these as they would be a good choice for many website developers.

Setting up websites has evolved considerably since the mid 90’s. In brief, it has become much easier.

A person with nominal knowledge of the Internet can set up a dynamic website pretty quickly. Of course, if a person is willing to devote more time to the subject, one can create more specialized and customized websites.

This article is not a technical treatise of Joomla and Wordpress, but is a simple overview, specifically for non-technical users who are contemplating a software platform for their own website, or as a website for a group of users.

Website Content Management Systems

Website Content Management Systems (WCMS) allow non-technical users to work together as a group to easily add website content (such articles, photos, audio files, videos, etc.) on an ongoing basis.

Particularly for groups of contributors, website content management systems readily facilitate multi-user collaboration with varied levels of security access and coordination between administrators, editors and writers. (Which means that certain non-technical contributors, such as writers, would not have access to other portions of the website other than their own articles, and could not inadvertently and adversely effect changes anywhere than their own articles).

Heck, even if you don’t need the power of coordinating multiple contributors to maintain and update a website, these systems make great foundations for websites managed by one person.

Open Source Software

For simplicity’s sake, a compelling note about open source software is that such is free to use. Even more compelling is that popular open source website platforms, such as Joomla and Wordpress, enjoy extensive communities that work independently and/or collaboratively to continuously expand the innate capabilities of the core software, while also building additional applications that extend the capabilities of what the basic software was intended to accomplish. Stated another way, from a user’s perspective, it’s like becoming the owner of a high-performance car (for free), that is continuously being tuned up for you (also for free), with more functionality being routinely added (also for free).

There are many more open source website platforms, but Wordpress and Joomla are two big ones, and when it comes to blogging, Wordpress stands alone as the premier service.

Wordpress and Joomla

The differences between Joomla and Wordpress used to be more significant, enough so, that for simplicity, I used to state:

♦ If you want a larger, more sophisticated website, go with Joomla. (I also used Joomla’s earliest iteration, which was Mambo, before Joomla development forked away from Mambo in 2005).

♦ And if you just need a blog, use Wordpress.

Nowadays that simplicity still has merit, but the distinction has become blurred, and as both systems have expanded, their innate capabilities have overlapped each other. For example, you can use Wordpress for much larger and more sophisticated websites, and Joomla certainly includes blogging functionality and just as well, could be used for smaller websites.

Joomla and Wordpress Features

Even as late as 2008, a comparison of the “basic” feature sets between Joomla and Wordpress would have been more useful. However ongoing advances have served to make those differences less important – at least from the perspective of a non-technical user. (By the way, Joomla and Wordpress are built upon the same technical architecture).

Both Joomla and Wordpress offer tremendous capabilities in terms of how to present the look and design of the site via “themes” in Wordpress and “templates” in Joomla. There are countless free (and paid) themes and templates for both services that you can integrate into your Joomla or Wordpress site to radically change the site’s design. Additionally, since this is open source software, you can start with an existing theme or template and make changes to that, to fine tune the presentation of your site in a way that better suits your needs.

♦ Want your site to look elegant or brash? Just pick a look you like and install it.

♦ Want your site red or blue? Easy! And just as easy to change it again.

♦ Want to use images or design elements that are not on any other site? You can customize Joomla and Wordpress templates and themes as you wish.

Both Wordpress and Joomla offer extensive opportunities to customize and improve functionality via “plugins,” “components” and “modules” for Joomla, as well as “plugins” and “widgets” for Wordpress.

♦ Want to customize the way photos are displayed?

♦ Want to improve search engine optimization functionality?

♦ Want to integrate additional commercial applications?

Each of these (and much more) can be achieved with the various plugins and other add-ons that are continuously being developed and refined.

Special Note About Wordpress

If you are new to Wordpress, there is an important difference to realize: There are TWO different platforms of Wordpress from the same company:

♦ Wordpress.com is a completely free online platform that is extraordinarily easy to set up and use. However, that is not the Wordpress that is being referred to in this article.

♦ Wordpress.org (note the “.org”) is also free, but requires a web host and website address to build your website on (just like with Joomla). For the purpose of establishing a unique online identity that is completely under your own control, the Wordpress.org version is the service that this article is referring to.

Wordpress or Joomla: Which is Right for You?

Although the differences noted above, regarding whether you need a large sophisticated website (Joomla) or a simple blog (Wordpress) have merit, the distinctions are less significant than in the past.

However, I’d say that Wordpress is somewhat easier than Joomla to just simply get started publishing content right away.

But whether you go with Joomla or Wordpress, ultimately you are going to want to customize it. If you have ready access to friends or associates who are already more familiar with one platform or the other, I’d go with the platform that your friends/associates are familiar with, because at certain times it can really speed up your website’s development to simply ask someone.

Having said that, both Wordpress and Joomla have great online support communities, so you should be able to get any question answered relatively quickly.

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AJAX

Introduction

The web has seen a huge change over the last couple of years. Gone are the days when clicking on a link mean a long wait staring at a blank screen, while the next page loaded. In what is popularly known as Web 2.0, today we see websites behaving more and more like applications. AJAX has been instrumental in this paradigm shift. No web developer today can afford to ignore AJAX, as the benefits it brings are substantial.

People have a lot of misconceptions about AJAX, and what it is. AJAX is not a programming language, it is not a software or an SDK / framework. AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, it combines the scripting power of JavaScript with XML to provide data for modifying an HTML web page so that HTML is the canvas on which AJAX operates. Javascript is like the paintbrush and XML is the paint.

The definition of AJAX has now however been expanded to include scripting languages other than JavaScript, and other ways of serializing data than XML. In-fact an application need not even be asynchronous to be AJAX. It has been made from an acronym to the term Ajax, as it is much less confusing then calling it AAAT for Asynchronous ActionScript And Text or AJAJ for Asynchronous JavaScript And JSON! Besides Ajax sounds cooler.

However for this article we will focus on Ajax in its simple form as Asynchronous JavaScript And XML.

Getting Started

So what do you need to get started with AJAX? Working with AJAX becomes much easier if you have the right tools, and the right background. Here are some of its basic requirements.

What you need to know

• Basic HTML, and XML concepts
• Basic JavaScript and browser DOM

What you need to start working

In all essence you could probably make an AJAX application using just notepad, but it isn’t a very efficient approach. For best coding comfort it is recommended that you use some kind of IDE that has HTML and Javascript support. To run AJAX based applications, all you need is a browser (you probably already have one of those!). If you don’t already have something set up I would recommend the following:

• • IDE
    - Aptana Studio (Included in Digit DVD)
    - Dreamweaver
    Aptana is free Eclipse based web development platform which can run on Windows, Linux and MacOS. It supports all major web technologies and has tons of free plug-ins available since it is based on Eclipse. It also comes preloaded with everything you need to start working with AJAX frameworks.
    For most people Dreamweaver will need no introduction. It is a very powerful and versatile web development software, however it costs quite a bit to be used by a casual developer.
  • Browser- Firefox
    It is a browser that is very standards compliant, fast and full featured, with the FireBug add-on, it can become a full debugging platform. Of course every web developer should test his application on multiple browsers running on multiple Operating Systems.
  • Code Editor- Notepad++
    A free open-source text editor with powerful features for working with code. This may seem redundant when you already have an IDE, however starting up an IDE just to make minor changes in the code can sometimes be an overkill. A small light code editor is always a good thing to have around.

What is AJAX

Its Asynchronous

The Asynchronous nature of AJAX application is perhaps the most important. So what exactly does the Asynchronous in AJAX mean? It means that different parts of a page can load at different times. If you’ve used G-Mail, or Yahoo Mail, you will see that when you click on an e-mail, it opens in the same window, in minimal time.

Just a few years ago, clicking on a link meant a long wait, while the server processed your request. generated a new page, and then downloaded it to your computer. Now days most web-sites have pages divided into separate widgets, each of which gets data from the server whenever it is available. Each part of the page can load it’s content separately, so you have something to look at while the rest of the page loads.

It runs on Javascript

Javascript is the part of AJAX which makes it dynamic in the first place. For those of you who aren’t familiar with JavaScript, it is a scripting language that can be used inside a web page to make it more dynamic. From simple cases such as checking whether the information entered in a form is correct, to creating highly interactive web applications, JavaScript is the scripting language of the web.

It uses XML

For anyone who’s familiar with HTML, XML is just a stone throw away. XML (Extensible Markup Language), despite its name, is less of a language, than it is a specification of how once can be created. It is composed of data encapsulated within tags, and is designed to be human readable. Here is an example of how one could use XML to store your contact data:

Why do we need AJAX

Using the internet has always seemed to be a much different process than using an application installed on your computer. This is one of the impressions developers want to change, and Ajax allows them to do exactly that. If you use Yahoo Mail’s new interface, you will see that it resembles a desktop application more than an internet page. Clicking on an email instantly starts loading it in its pane, or in a new tab, the kind of interaction that had, till now, always been associated with desktop applications. This is very advantageous for people who are new to computer, or the internet, and for novices. To this effect AJAX based sites are known more as web applications or Rich Internet Applications (RIA) than websites.

Designing how a user interacts with an application is a field in itself, called Interaction Design or IxD. A very import factor is how the user expects to interact with the application. By making the web appear and interact more like a desktop application, there is no learning curve involved, and the user can jump right into sending email, or chatting or browsing their image gallery.

Ajax loads data asynchronously, so while you are reading your first email message, other’s can be loaded in the background, making them readily available when you decide to open them. You can load the structure of the page initially so that something is readily visible, and load the content separately. This also means that if some of the content changes, that whole page need not be loaded, instead we can just reload the content. This is considerably faster and requires less bandwidth.

Benefits of using AJAX

The benefits of Ajax are only limited by the imagination of the one developing with it. The most common benefits you can immediately see when you use Ajax are:

• You have the ability to make richer, better looking web applications, which behave more like desktop applications.
  • For users this means that the application is easier to use, and faster to use
  • For developers this means they have less support requests
  • For enterprises this means less training costs
• The application can be made more responsive
  • For users this means less waiting and more work
  • For enterprises this means less bandwidth costs, as only a fraction of the page is loaded most of the times instead of the whole
• There are a large no of AJAX frameworks available
  • For developers this means less effort is required to develop and application
  • For enterprises this means that their product is easier and cheaper to maintain

How is AJAX used with other technologies

Since it is only a concept, a tool of design, it can be used anywhere, not just the web. Using Adobe’s AIR SDK, you can make installable applications using Ajax concepts with JavaScript and HTML. It can be used with ActionScript for powering Flash based applications using Flex or Flash. Websites like Youtube use Ajax concepts along with Flash for their videos. Any language which provides facilities like JavaScript can be used, and any means of data communication can be used. XML can be very verbose, so some application use JSON. JSON, or JavaScript Object Notation is a very compact way of representing data, it is the method used by JavaScript itself and as such requires no processing on the client side. Being merely a concept, it has no requirements and as such can be used anywhere.

Ajax: Prosecution and Defense

With so much hype surrounding AJAX, there is sure to be criticism. So what flaws does AJAX have? How would it hold up in Court? We interrogated Ajax these are the proceeds:

Judge: You have been known to be lazy, slowing down our browsers as we interact with your website. What say you?
Ajax: I have only ever tried to do my duty! If my maker makes me slow, then so will I be. The very browsers you speak of are now at their best trying to come up with faster and faster engines to run JavaScript. Increases in speed of as much as 10 times are in the offing! Nonetheless your aging computer offers me no support, but better things are to come.

Judge: hmm… I grant you that, but what excuse do you give for depriving me of the comforts of my browser’s back and forward buttons? Of bookmarking my favorite pages?
Ajax: What you have, sir, is a poorly designed website. If the maker had so desired, he could have used one of the endless measures available against such a thing. The Lord of the Browsers has given them the ability to use the part of the URL that follows ‘#’ in the address to their own means. By other means they may use an invisible ‘iframe’ that my friend HTML so kindly provides.
I am but a tool your Honor. A poor user does not make me a poor product.

Judge: Boldly said! But did you know you are responsible for pages not appearing in the search results, and on Mobile devices? Why should I not check my email on the go? Your insistence on using JavaScript that the web crawlers do not, makes it ever more difficult for me to find you!
Ajax: I was never meant to be a solution for everything nor a replacement for effort. A hard working user will go through the effort of providing another alternative to these primitive crawlers and low powered devices. I assure you, a day will come when all will understand my tongue.

The case went on for a few days, and the Judge and Ajax came out sharing a pitcher of beer, so I think it all went well.

Ajax is a powerful tool to wield and as with anything powerful, it has the capability to do as much harm as good. If poorly designed a website wont appear in search engine results, its pages wont be bookmark-able, history wont work and site may be unusably slow, all in all a disaster!

To see the benefits yourself, try browsing GMail in its ‘basic HTML’ mode and compare it with the ‘Standard’ mode, and you will see for yourself how effective Ajax is.

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If you appetite to get “with the program” as a baby business buyer in this day and age, you artlessly MUST accept a aqueous angle back it comes to your Web presence.

What is this “fluid perspective”?

It is artlessly this: To see your business’s online attendance as revolving about a activating baby business Web Hub, rather than actuality congenital about one of those ancient (and absolutely outdated) changeless brochure-style Websites.

Putting calm a baby business Web Hub takes some work, but it pays huge assets in the way of added barter and an all-around added alive and assisting access to application the Web to do business.

Defining Your Hub Center

When ambience up a baby business Web Hub, you alpha out by defining your center.

The best accepted centermost (and one which I acclaim to clients) is a blog that’s adapted regularly.

If you don’t yet accept a blog for your business, you charge to get one up appropriate away. Or if you already accept a ample agreeable armpit that carries some accurate ascendancy in your alcove (but doesn’t yet accept a blog), you charge to add one.

Why a blog?

Because a blog is allotment of the abundant social=fluid blueprint of the evolving Web. It’s one of THE capital capacity for anyone’s Web attendance appropriate now in agreement of Web company acquaintance & behavior (and it additionally happens to be acutely affable for the chase engines).

The allowances for you back it comes to opportunities for interacting with abeyant barter (or absolute customers), and for accepting NEW customers, are aloof too abundant to ignore.

But you say you’re not a writer …

No charge to worry. You can appoint a acceptable apparition blogger or a blogging adviser to advise you adequately calmly and cheaply these days.

Note: If you do go the apparition blogger route, I’d still advance autograph your own posts already in awhile. This lends actuality to your blog and brings you abundant afterpiece to your readership.

It’s Still All About Sales Though …

The basal band is still sales though, and aloof accomplishing some blogging or added autograph for your armpit isn’t activity to accomplish you money. So in bike with (but abstracted from) your blog, your Hub centermost additionally needs to accept actuating archetype for breeding leads or authoritative sales (or both).

Think of it as defective to accept a agent to abetment your chump back they appear into your abode of business. In this case though, your agent is a “salesperson in print,” rather than a flesh-and-blood animal being. But aloof like a animal salesperson, your agent in book takes your clairvoyant by the duke and leads him/her bottomward the aisle to booty a adapted action, whether that’s a auction or alike aloof an opt-in.

A acceptable aphorism of deride to accumulate in mind: The added money your company is activity to accept to allotment with, the added actuating your salesperson-in-print needs to be.

Keep Your Copy and Your Blog Content Separate

As abundant as possible, you charge to accumulate your sales archetype and blog agreeable separate.

Why?

Because bodies don’t like to be pitched in a blog post.

Having a able alarm to activity at the end of your blog column to get an opt in or subscribe to your newsletter or account (or to accelerate bodies to a sales page) is altogether adequate though, and is absolutely not activity to account any problems.

Pitch bodies too adamantine appropriate in your blog column though, and you’ll lose readership.

So where does the copy go?

If you accept your own hosting, again you can aloof add sales pages appropriate there on your site.

If you’re blogging with a hosted outfit, however, like Typepad or Blogger or hosted Wordpress, you’ll charge to acquirement a abstracted area or domains area you can accept a committed abode for sales copy.

Some baby biz bloggers will alike put their sales archetype on abstracted mini-sites, with area names to bout anniversary artefact they’re selling.

Keep in apperception that accepting visitors to your sales pages is your end goal. Everything you put up on the Web should be focused on allegorical bodies to your sales pages.

There are lots of means to get visitors to those sales pages, which is why links with calls to activity for visitors to bang on to get there charge to be alloyed appropriate into the bolt of your absolute Hub.

Keep Your Paths Simple

The old K.I.S.S. aphorism holds accurate on the Web as abundant as anywhere, and so you absolutely appetite to accumulate the pathways your visitors booty to your sales pages nice and simple. Otherwise they will get afflicted and abashed by not alive what activity to booty or best to make, and they’ll aloof leave.

Use your agreeable to adviser bodies to the added actuating ancillary of your site, consistently befitting in apperception that bodies charge to be accustomed a bright alarm to action. So abounding bodies aggravating to use the Web to do business balloon about the ASK rule. You charge to ask for the auction and a able alarm to activity does aloof that.

In Part II, I’ll allocution about your Hub’s spokes and how to set them up to accompany in new leads and barter like clockwork.

To your baby business Web Hub and business success!

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WordPress, Blogger (blogspot) and LiveJournal are all blog-services that are free, acquiesce users to ascribe text, and are association apprenticed and appropriately accept aloofness features.

Having acclimated all three blog-services, I charge say that out of WordPress, Blogger and LiveJournal, WordPress is best ill-fitted for my needs. Now I apperceive I’m adage this ‘in’ WordPress, and so it looks like I’m sucking up, but absolutely I’ve begin that WordPress, primarily because of it’s categories is added convenient for writing.

But let me accord a added abundant explanation.

Blogger.com (Blogspot)

Blogger.com was the aboriginal blog-service I used. It was free, it was associated with Google (a aggregation that I respect), and it offered me html alteration (a affection that I absolutely enjoyed using). But back I started application it for writing, I begin that I absolutely bare to categorise my work. Meaning, alike if my blog was about one above topic, let’s say Linux, I capital categories, like distributions, helps, reviews etc. Plus I additionally capital to highlight a key post, article that would be attainable for all admirers easily. The way I formed about these needs to was to extend the links on the side, authoritative appropriate links for the posts I capital highlighted. I additionally approved talking about one class in a month, so that the absolute ages becomes one category! It wasn’t that I would accept chock-full blogging if I didn’t get categories, but absolutely I knew I bare them. I enjoyed blogspot, but article was missing. I knew it. (latest update: bottomless letters advance that blogger now has categories)

WordPress.com

Enter WordPress! I saw wordpress.com in activity back addition abecedarian blogger bare my advice to adapt his wordpress blog. Back I saw his blog, I anon capital it. I charge candidly accept that I was admiring by the blogstats! (It was so air-conditioned that it was allotment of the accepted feature). But back I saw categories, I was floored!!! In fact, I anticipation it was a paid armpit because it offered so abounding things that I needed.

As anon as I helped him out (I had never seen/used WordPress before, but it was appealing simple to use). I went to my own computer, registered and to my absolute admiration I saw the affection to acceptation blogs! Beforehand the alone affair endlessly me from alteration would accept been the actuality that I would apart all my beforehand work. But the allure of categories abnormally was so aerial I was accommodating to cede earlier posts, aloof to alpha blogging in a new (more organised) world. But with the acceptation affection I was able to acceptation all three of my blogger.com blogs after too abundant problem. The alone affair that happened was that because blogger and WordPress use images differently, I had to actual the links of a few of my photographs. Since my blogs are primarily argument based, I begin that not so bad.

Another affection that I absolutely admired in WordPress was the adeptness to accomplish changeless pages. This apparent my botheration for accepted pages that I appetite anybody to be able to access. So for instance, this armpit has “which linux?” is on a abstracted page; it is a accessible quick-access page.

Then again, I absolutely like the akismet spam protection… that protects my blogs by default. In my blogger.com account, I accustomed alone about 5 spam messages… which is not so bad because that my armpit is not that important, but at WordPress it has already blocked a few spam letters after me aggravation too much. Nice.

I was additionally afflicted by the WordPress’ dashboard that was added convenient (and added affection rich) than blogger’s dashboard. In fact, initially I adopted blogger’s dashboard because it was simpler… but I’ve appear to adulation WordPress’ dashboards and features.

Finally, I was complete afflicted that wordpress.com is congenital with WordPress software which is open-source… both chargeless and free! Wow, now this is a abundant archetype of a affection open-source artefact that I would absolutely adulation to be associated with!

After all this (and more), I was absolutely awash out to WordPress.

As I connected application WordPress, one affair I absolutely absent (from my blogger.com days) was the adeptness to adapt my folio (CSS and all). Editing my folio was article I absolutely enjoyed in blogger.com and ambition I could accept it in WordPress.

To WordPress’ credit, it was offered convenient arrangement changes which are non-destructive… which beggarly that back I change a template, it preserves my antecedent articulation customization. For those who accept acclimated blogger.com apperceive that back you change a arrangement you lose all your changes. To workaround, you charge to accept a archetype of your accordant changes in a argument file, and adhesive accordingly. This is accidental in WordPress that allows you to agreement in its bound but nice arrangement range.

Another affair I absent was the adeptness to column through email. Blogger.com offers a accessible feature, area you accept a different email abode for anniversary post, and then, you aloof charge to email your uploads. WordPress acutely doesn’t accept this… maybe after it will.

Yet addition affair I absent in WordPress was the adeptness to chase added blogs from aural the top-bar of blogger.com. In WordPress, while the chase affection in our blogs are absolutely accessible (and bigger ill-fitted than on the top-bar in blogger), still I absence the adeptness to browse added sites.

LiveJournal.com

As time has gone by I’ve begin that I’m additionally aberration appear Association Blogging. For that the affair of private/user aggressive blogs accept come. I was told (through accessories etc) that LiveJournal has acceptable association aggressive blogging support. Both blogger and wordpress action users with capricious rights (administrator, editor, user etc) so I was analytical what accession did LiveJournal accept to accomplish association blogging better.

I registered and in allegory to both blogger and WordPress I begin LiveJournal chaotic and effect-heavy. It reminded me of MySpace, Yahoo 360 etc. Not article that I capital for my association apprenticed site.

As it turns out, LiveJournal is absolutely actual geared appear association blogging, with ‘friends’ links all over the place. It has beautiful figure apprenticed alteration sites, but from the looks of it, it’s got a appealing accepted look. But the key affair that put me off… ADS! To add to their chaotic look, I had to accord with their advertising. I accept that these services, are services, but back it comes to ad-free to with-ads, I can’t alike anticipate of application LiveJournal that does such a broken-down job with ad-placement. (latest update: recently, LiveJournal revamped it’s attending and ad-placement and the armpit is attractive neater. But if you abhorrence ads (especially ones that you are not anon benefiting from), you will never like wherever they put them).

I additionally didn’t adore application LiveJournal and bound alone my blog there and apprenticed my “community” to about-face to WordPress instead. We’re primarily argument driven, so maybe WordPress is best for that.

Perhaps LiveJournal and added blog-services are bigger ill-fitted for added video-music-picture administration sites… and for that aspect I’m not abiding whether WordPress matches up or not.

Summary:

I acknowledgment to my antecedent statement. Of the three accepted blog-services I’ve used, I’ve begin WordPress by far the best to clothing my needs. It is organised, simple/user-friendly, growing in features… AND accessible source. There’s not abundant added that I need.

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