Internet Business Tips

Here are a series of videos showing how to use JQuery for absolute beginners. If you are interested, they are great tutorials.

Released from 1WebDesigner, A Simple Magazine is another free wordpress theme designers and developers will appreciate in their future project.

Here are the key features:

Features

* 5 in 1 color schemes,
* Widget ready (footer and sidebar),
* Package with twitter widget and flickr widget,
* Easy to setup with theme options page,
* AJAX-based contact form,
* Social media on sidebar,
* Social share button,
* Integrated plugin wp-page navi,
* Automatic Image thumbnail-No custom field.

To read the whole release, please read the article.

To watch the demo, see here. To download the theme, please visit here.

If you have a free blog on wordpress.com, you don’t need this plugin because it is already built in. But if you have a self hosted wordpress powered blog or website, you may consider After the Deadlineplugin.

Why? Because proofreading is important!

As bloggers, we write all the time; sometimes we may not pay enough attention to the spelling or grammar. Articles with misspelled words or wrong grammar often leave bad impressions to the readers, no matter how great the content is. Proofreading before publishing is absolutely necessary.

After the deadline is a proofreading tool you can upload and use as a plugin. It scan all of your post for misspellings and grammar mistakes. If found any, it flags you with different colors.

Below is a short tutorial:

Of course, it does not catch everything. I typed “I wasn’t like it.”, it did not flag anything. But it definitely would find things you normally would overlook, so use the tool as a tool. You are the person who does the final check.

Another great icon set from Dezinerfolio. Very well designed transparent icons. Can be put on any background colors or images.

As you can see, these are the basic icons covering shopping cart, navigation bars, buttons, social icons and so on. Good for next design work.

As you can see, these are the basic icons covering shopping cart, navigation bars, buttons, social icons and so on. Good for next design work.

Written by vampis06, this article raised my attention. He summarized what he has done to increase traffic in the past 1 year and kindly shared the list with the public.

1. Write posts that is hot to be read right now.
2. Bookmark your site to social bookmarking websites, i.e. digg, del.icio.us, reddit
3. Be among the first with a great blog on your topic, then encourage others to blog on the same topic.
4. Break news.
5. Post regularly.
6. Make groups like Google and Yahoo groups, and then include your URL in it – not spam alike
7. Share your expertise generously so people recognize it and depend on you.
8. Write short, pithy posts.
9. Encourage your readers to help you manipulate the technorati top blog list.
10. Include polls, meters and other eye catchy.
11. Have an e-mail signature and put your URL in your signature when contacting someone through e-mail.
12. Join mybloglog, its a good way of socializing.
13. Make your RSS subscribe button very noticeable.
14. Use a top commentators plugin to improve comments.
15. Be controversial.
16. Be original.
17. Become top commentator on big traffic blogs.
18. Write about Google, Digg and other hugely popular sites.
19. Use images in your posts.
20. Make a fresh design.
21. Answer your email.
22. Digest the good ideas of other people, all day, every day.
23. Be patient.
24. Give credit to those that inspired, it makes your writing more useful.
25. Create a lens and highlight your best posts.
26. Make a content that is worth buying but you give it free – it attracts loads of people.
27. Place alt tags – Placing an alt tag on your pictures will surely help you get a higher Search Engine ranking.
28. Write about making money.
29. Share your knowledge.
30. Use the sociable plugin, It ads all the known bookmarking websites and puts it in your posts. This makes bookmarking easier for your readers.
31. Try and become a guest poster on a popular blog. Be persistent
32. Submit your best and longest posts to article directories.
33. Use Blogrush.
34. Use Technorati.
35. Encourage your readers to digg your posts.
36. Make your blog as different as possible.
37. Never copy posts.
38. Make your SEO as good as possible.
39. Submit Themes, with your link on it.
40. Leave your footstep in forums.
41. Add a sitemap, This helps search engines recognize you more.
42. Redirect your 404 page, Redirecting it to your homepage would help lost visitors.
43. Ping your blog every after you write an article – try Ping-O-Matic
44. Write posts that each include dozens of trackbacks to dozens of blog posts so that people will notice you.
45. Post your photos on flickr.
46. Write eye catching blog post titles.
47. Use correct grammar.
48. Use YouTube and other video sites to market your blog.
49. Use social networking buttons, on all posts.
50. Admit your faults.
51. Be honest.
52. Spend entire days focusing on nothing but getting more traffic.
53. Write long, definitive posts.
54. Write about blogging.
55. Don’t interrupt your writing with a lot of links.
56. Write stuff that people want to read and share.
57. Pull off some jokes from time to time
58. Add translations
59. Never give up.

I am doing some of the things listed above; but I am too lazy or did not prioritize my time and effort on some of the tips. Got to be more consistent and diligent.

To read the whole article, please check here.

I was asked to include a gallery when I was designing a website for a client. Instead of writing it from scratch, I tried to find a ready-made one which can allow me to easily upload and manage photos without too much hard coding. I found a great gallery using ImgBrowz0r and prettyPhoto jQuery plugin made by Chris Coyier. A really fantastic job. He actually showed how he combined these two and made the gallery. I think it is worthwhile to watch this step-to-step tutorial.

Download

Below is how the gallery looks like:

I also found a cool slider: anythingSlider. Photos or any content including hyperlinks can be featured in the slides and they move right or left. According to its creators, it has the following features:

# Slides are HTML Content (can be anything)
# Next Slide / Previous Slide Arrows
# Navigation tabs are built and added dynamically (any number of slides)
# Optional custom function for formatting navigation text
# Auto-playing (optional feature, can start playing or stopped)
# Each slide has a hashtag (can link directly to specific slides)
# Infinite/Continuous sliding (always slides in the direction you are going, even at “last” slide)
# Multiple sliders allowable per-page (hashtags only work on first)
# Pauses autoPlay on hover (option)
# Link to specific slides from static text links

I definitely will use it in the future. Here is a screenshot of how it looks like:

Changing fonts is always the fastest way to change the look of your website, brochure, advertisement. I am glad to share with you my new finding: a great website which hosts 10,000 fonts. And best of all, they are free! So before you go and purchase any fonts, make sure you check this site: maybe you will find what you want without spending a penny!

After having run a blog for a while, how to monetize it becomes an interest for most bloggers. Yes, there are many ways to generate streams of income with your existing blog; but how to manage them most effectively is a concern, esp. when the bloggers do not want to get involved in any code, with the fear of messing up all the settings. Then what to do? Here comes solution: Max Banner Ads widget.

Download

This is a video which explains what this widget does and how to install and monitor your activities. pretty easy, don’t you think so?

You can specify how many banner ads you want to host in one particular position, and you can let them rotate each time when the page gets refreshed. They can be within posts, after certain codes, or simply as widgets on the classic sidebars.

What’s more, in the dashboard you can have a look at the performance of your ads. There is a detailed statistics about impressions, clicks, CTR (%) … Pretty good little tool for any blogger even if s/he is quite familiar with html codes. You can download it here.

CSS tricks showed us how he developed a website for his friend by using photoshop mockup and then html/css conversison. It is quite interesting to see this approach in website designing. I appreciate that he shared this experience with us.

Part 1: Photoshop Mockup
Download

Part 2: HTML/CSS Conversion
Download

Part 3: Wordpress Themes
Download

Marketing is the essential element driving business of all sizes forward. For sure, marketing involves money. But still there are several ways to cut costs while giving quality message to your target audience. Blogdesign mentioned the following 5 “sacrifice-free” ways to save money on marketing.

1. Get to know your target audience.
“Knowing your target audience means knowing their dreams, their aesthetic taste, and, of course, what makes them want to spend money on a product or service like yours.” It is true, marketing to your target audience helps spending time, energy and money on other audience who won’t help generate revenue. Focusing on the right people does not cost anything, but saves you lots.

2. Package yourself to appeal to this market.
“Once you know your customer base, tailor every aspect of your company and products so you appeal to these people. Your materials, website, and even paint job should be in colors that your customer finds pleasant.” Very straightforward. Makes total sense, doesn’t it?

3. Sell yourself to the media.
“Almost every business has a compelling story or a unique person behind it. Many local and even national media groups periodically do stories on interesting people and businesses. Why not be that story?” He made a very good point here. TV show gives not only exposure, but also credibility to public. If you have the chance, do it.

4. Cultivate a referral culture.
“Customer referrals are taken far more seriously than traditionally advertising, so getting your customers to refer you can be one of your most lucrative marketing tools. ” Yes, word-of- mouth is still the most direct and effective way of marketing.

5.Avoid cold calling.
“Cold calling and other types of broad advertising might make you feel like you are getting your word out there, but there are much cheaper and more efficient ways to market yourself such as business networking.” Excellent point. Networking is the key.

If you want to read the whole article, visit here.