Blogging is a big part of many internet users day to day lives now. People use blogs for many different reasons, from just an outlet for your thoughts and ideas to a business platform. However, it is difficult to make money off a blog if this is your only aim, so we’re going to just run you through a few tips to get your blog up and running and hopefully get some interested visitors to it.
1. Pick a topic
As basic as this might sound, you need to think this over carefully as it’s the most important part of your blog. A passing interesting in a particular field probably means your blog will die a quick death. Pick something that interests you, if you’re an expert on something this would be a great topic to write about, but equally interesting can be if you’re taking up something new and writing about your experiences learning it as many people will be in the same situation. Of course, you could talk about your life, but if you’re looking for an interested audience, you need to pick a niche which you can write on that you won’t get bored with in a few days.
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Jump start your business
An excellent way to jump start your business is to sign up for a twitter account. Signing up is an extremely user-friendly process…you just click the sign up link, put the requested information in the form provided, and start “tweeting” (tweeting refers to little messages user’s post about themselves, or their business). You need only take a quick glance at any marketing material written in the last couple of years, to realize social networking sites like Twitter, are a “must have” in your company’s promotion arsenal. Twitter marketing works similarly for both online and offline companies, giving you an opportunity to network in the same place as many of your current and future customers do.
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The speed of a website isn’t something that should be left out of the web development process, but if it is, there are still many ways to improve it. Even if you aren’t the most web-savvy person in the world, some simple fixes can speed up your website significantly.
“Why does a website have to be fast?” I hear you ask – well there are a number of reasons. To start with, a planned update for Google named Caffeine is due anytime soon, with an emphasis on website speed and performance. This means that faster loading websites may start to rank higher in search engines. Another reason is that some Internet users may not necessarily have a fast connection (or even broadband), so it’s important to ensure you are catering for all of your users – not just a majority.
Here we explore some top tips to speed up a website running a WordPress CMS. Read More »
The amount of freeware available on the Internet today can seem overwhelming. Gone are the days when you have to spend lots of money to do simple online tasks. You can simply download the software you need, and start using it to achieve your goals. Firebug is such a tool, offered free to users, it provides a platform to debug problem code and scripting that may be preventing users from staying on your website.
For the purpose of this post, I’m going to touch on what this little do-it-yourself website debugging tool can do for the average user. Firebug works in real-time with your FireFox browser. It allows you to: View HTML, PHP, CSS, and Javascript, fix any problems with the script or code, view the changes as they will appear to visitors, then upload the changes to your host – all from your browser window! Read More »
What is the best CMS? This is a difficult question, and depends on what kind of site you are building. Content Management Systems (or CMS as they’re also known) are an essential tool for any webmaster who’s moved beyond basic blogging platforms such as Blogger. CMS’s offer a number of advantages which allow the user to modify and manage virtually every aspect of a website. They create a platform for dynamic management of web pages and can serve as an interface for both blogs as well as more advanced sites requiring a login system. Here we review some of the top free CMS’s and show which you should use for your site, depending on your needs.
1. WordPress
Primarily known as a blogging platform, WordPress offers enough customisations and plugins to be called a CMS. An excellent choice for a beginner, WP can be up and running in less than five minutes. A basic knowledge of HTML is not required to be able to work with WP as it comes with an in-built WYSIWYG editor allowing you to edit elements as you create your posts. The admin section is clean and self-explanatory, it requires no special knowledge and should be easy to use even for someone new to blogging. Updating WP is also efficient and painless with all back end code updated automatically with subsequent versions, along with the plugins as well. WordPress offers some of the most versatile plugins to address almost every need you may have, from SEO to controlling spam comments. WP comes with a vibrant developer community which offers thousands of free and paid templates suited to whatever kind of site you want. Read More »
Research recently carried our for Cisco jointly by Oxford University’s Said Business School and Spain’s University of Oviedo’s Department of Applied Economics has placed the UK 25th out of 66 countries in terms of the quality and reach of its networks.
Out of the 4 classifications, ranked in quality order from ready for tomorrow, comfortable for today, meeting needs for today and below needs for today the UK only managed to be ranked as “meeting needs for today”. South Korea and Japan are leading the way with the former promising 1Gigabit per second speeds by 2012. Read More »