cPanel Hosting Tutorial - How to Install WordPress, Setup Your Email, Add Domains and More

In this informative 8 minute video, I am going to give you an overview of cPanel and how to maximize your experience as a cPanel user. I will help you get more familiar with your cPanel hosting account, and show you how to use important functions in the cPanel interface.

First, of course, you must have a cPanel hosting account. You can only access your cPanel hosting account if you have web hosting and your own domain name. cPanel is accessible only after you have set up the entire account with these requirements. After you have completed set up, you will be given a username and password to access your cPanel hosting account. After you have logged in, you will see a main homepage screen.

What are the important functions of cPanel you need to know?

In this section, I am going to introduce you to the important functions of cPanel. Knowing these features will optimize your experience as an end-user.

One of the most important functions in cPanel is the built-in video tutorials section. You can click on the corresponding link to access the built-in video tutorials. You will see a large list of available tutorials that are built into your cPanel hosting account.

A large category of video topics are available
The videos are simple and easy to use
The videos will guide you through resolving account issues

Take a look at the video tutorials. They are helpful and very basic. In case you run into any problems now or in the future, the simple built-in video tutorials will help you resolve any issues. The videos will also help you to understand your cPanel hosting account more thoroughly. Take some time now to browse through the videos if you wish.

How To Change The Default cPanel Theme:

Access cPanel
Click on Change Style
Select Skin, Theme, or Template
Accept Changes

Another important feature of your cPanel hosting account is the appearance. You can change the appearance of your cPanel hosting account by clicking on Change Style. Under the Change Style category, there are several skins, themes, or templates you may utilize to change the layout and style of your cPanel hosting account. These changes are purely cosmetic and will not alter or modify the actual functions of your cPanel hosting account. Changing the appearance of your cPanel hosting account will simply enhance your user experience by improving the aesthetics of the interface.

How To Create A New Email Address in cPanel:

It is easy to create a new email address is cPanel. Just follow these steps...

Access cPanel
Click on Email Accounts
Create the new email address
Select Mailbox Quota
Click on Create
Click on Mailbox to access your new email address

To create a new email address that is associated with your domain name, just click on Email Accounts. You will be directed to the appropriate screen. There, you will be able to create your new email address and you can select your mailbox quota. Click on Create to finalize your new email address. You will receive your password once you have added the new email address.

By default, you can access this newly created email address within your cPanel hosting account by clicking on Mailbox. However, you can also access email through third-party clients like Microsoft Outlook. If you need help getting your email account set up on an email client, you can click on the link "Do you wish to configure your account to work with a mail client?" Click yes. You will be directed to a set of directions that will help you configure the email address you have just created with several of the popular mail clients such as Microsoft Outlook.

To access more the more technical specifications of your newly created email address, you can scroll to the bottom of the page. There, you will see a variety of manual settings that list your mail, server, username, incoming mail server, outgoing mail server, and supported protocols. If you know how to set up your email address manually in the email client, then go ahead and get started by using the manual settings.

How To Add Subdomains To Your cPanel Hosting Account:

Access the main homepage of the cPanel hosting account. You will see the option of adding new subdomains to your account once you scroll all the way to the bottom of the page. There are several options listed such as add-on domains, parked domains, and redirects. To add a subdomain, follow the easy steps...

Access your cPanel hosting account
Click on Create Subdomain
Enter the subdomain URL
Click on Create
cPanel will confirm your subdomain has been created

Let's discuss creating a subdomain in cPanel. It is important to know what a subdomain actually is and how it will affect your website. As you can see, a subdomain is simply an extension to your main domain. Take for example a main domain called "youractualurl.com". If you want to create a subdomain for a helpdesk, for example, you can do so by creating a subdomain URL of "help.youractualurl.com". Click on Create to finalize your new subdomain.

If you wish to redirect the subdomain, you may do so by clicking on Manage Redirect. You can also redirect the subdomain to any other website, such as a blog, depending on your preferences.

How To Install WordPress (and dozens of other popular php applications) With Just A Click!

Your Fantastico account will allow you to access and install WordPress and other blog platforms like b2evolution or Nucleus. You will also be able to install several forums such as SMF Forum or phpBB Forum. If you plan on selling products online, free e-Commerce software is available for use. The better ones are Zen Care and OS Commerce. Feel free to explore the other free software in your Fantastico account. Continue to access your Fantastico icon to take advantage of the free added-value products. How To Use cPanel's Fantastico Autoinstaller:

Access the cPanel homepage
Scroll to the bottom of the page
Find the smiley icon
Click on the smiley icon
Access features

Exploring Your cPanel Hosting Account In Detail:

There are more functions in cPanel that you can explore. You can access features like statistics to see how many web messages your account receives. And, you can customize your cPanel hosting account according to your needs. First, if you access your function icons, you can collapse or expand the functions that you either use regularly or those that you do not use at all. Feel free to utilize that feature regularly because it will organize your cPanel functions according to your needs.

You can also click and drag certain components of your function icons in your cPanel hosting account. This is particularly helpful if you hardly use certain sections, or if you want to move boxes and sidebars. You can also collapse the function icons that you do not use. Overall, the changes you make in this section are purely cosmetic, but it will also help you organize the function and flow of your cPanel hosting account.

This concludes the Quick Start Tutorial for using your cPanel hosting account. Feel free to continue to explore the features and functions I have discussed in this cPanel tutorial.

About The Author of this cPanel Tutorial:

Carol Weathers is a WordPress theme designer and cPanel server administrator. She invites you to learn at more about the cPanel at http://WordPressVideos.TV where there are hundreds of free cPanel tutorials waiting for you right now.

What cPanel features can I use to maximize my blog traffic? How can I make WordPress more secure using cPanel? How can I migrate my WordPress blog to a new cPanel host? All these answers (and more) are waiting for you at http://WordPressVideos.TV

The Demise of EZBoard

For years, EZBoard was a community that offered relatively cheap and easy to maintain forums for managers. Virtually anyone could register, design, and layout a site and invite their friends to participate. Indeed, some of the largest forums on the internet are built upon EZBoard. Unfortunately, a recent system-wide hacking attack has destroyed the company's reputation and sent many managers packing. Let's look at the venerable community and the fatal flaw that has toppled the company from its perch.

At one time EZBoard boasted over 14,000 web communities. Many were started by individuals seeking a discussion forum for their favorite topics, while others were started by business people such as myself. The reasons businesses were attracted to EZBoard were two-fold:

1. We were not knowledgeable enough about PHP to create and manage a site for ourselves, and

2. We did not want to go through the expense of hosting our site on a dedicated server and, instead, used EZBoard's vast bank of computers to house our communities.

Admittedly, reason #1 was a huge part of why I stuck with EZBoard. Sure, I knew about vBulletin and related forums but purchasing a license from them and managing the site on a dedicated server was a pricey option, especially since at one time I was managing more than a dozen forums! I could handle the variable charges incurred from being with EZBoard by paying my subscription charges on either a quarterly, semi-annually or even yearly basis. I doubt that I dished out more than $500-600 in any given year, so it was cost effective for my business.

I should have known that EZBoard was not quite up to the task when their system shut down for several days in Spring 2004 after what was supposed to be a simple system-wide update of the forums. A few hours of down time was extended to several days and forum administrators were left in the dark for all of that time. More importantly, many forum members assumed the worst and peppered many an administrator's inbox with queries. Those days were not fun; EZBoard did recover and gave managers credits exceeding the number of days they were down. Still, if you relied on AdSense revenue -- like I do -- you lost big time.

History was to repeat itself on May 30, 2005, when a reported outside attack by hackers brought down EZBoard altogether. Yes, the boards were still working, but the majority of messages were gone and any new ones also began to disappear. EZBoard admitted almost immediately they were hacked and were working diligently to restore the 9000 boards affected. Soon, however, the news came out that much of their backup files were hacked as well. Forum managers wondered if EZBoard kept all their files on vulnerable servers or if the attack was done internally. Messages from EZBoard management were vague "in the interest of security" so nobody knew for sure.

As the days passed and forum managers realized that the restoral process would only be partial and take weeks to accomplish, a steady stream of managers began to hit the php sites to see about moving their boards. With trepidation I visited the PHPBB2 site knowing that my skillsets were limited in this area. However, I soon learned that this particular program was open source -- in effect, free -- and the Flash tutorials explained everything clearly and effectively. So, in one evening I set up the new site, transferred some files, and gave it a launch.

The best part? In the two years since I was with EZBoard my hosting company for web pages had upgraded their site enough to be able to house my message boards. So, instead of having web pages on one server and my forums on another, I could house them collectively. Most importantly, I would no longer have to rely on EZBoard's flawed backup plans and could backup all the files myself.

I still have one EZBoard community and I may keep it, for now. It is a small, but very well established where it is "sitting" and I lost only 4 or 5 files under the attack. Two of my sites I transferred to PHP and two others I decided to delete as they were slower performers. Fortunately, I had gotten rid of several smaller, no performing sites earlier. Still, I felt the pain of EZBoard's hacking incident and decided the time to move was now.

So, what is the future of EZBoard? That is hard to tell. They are promising a major upgrade which would include the ability allowing managers to back up their own sites. That would be a very good move. However, the administrative costs with EZBoard now exceed what managers pay with many standard web hosting companies. Few sites are large enough to require a dedicated server, therefore many managers will likely consider making the move away.

I was twice bitten from EZBoard and did not relish a third hit, thus my two largest sites are now with PHPBB2. The move was time consuming, but the new board has many more advanced features compared to EZBoard. Sure, I have more administrative things to do -- like help AOL users who have difficulty signing up -- but I no longer am subject to the whims of EZBoard. I am glad that a major risk factor has been removed even with the increased administrative responsibilities. You will be too if you decide to make the move.

Matt no longer uses PHPBB2, having moved all of his work over to WordPress, in a bid to save time and money. Please visit his TravelDuties site for more information about the cruise industry.

Tips for Learning Simple PHP

When you are trying to learn a new programming language like PHP, it can get a bit intimidating, especially if you have never had experience with other programming languages before. But trust me, the toughest hurdle is really the starting point. Once you have gotten over that, it is really just a matter of keeping your focus and practicing. Be patient and learn the steps one at a time and you will get there. Here are some tips to help you learn simple PHP:

Learn the basics.

To learn a new language, specifically a programming language, you will need to have basic computer skills. Before you can learn PHP, you need to have a basic background on HTML. This is necessary to make PHP easier to grasp. Plus, you can alternate between the two later on using the same document.

PHP is a language that uses scripting and often used with HTML to supplement functions that HTML lacks. With PHP, you can collect and process data, make comparisons and calculations things that you can not do with HTML. Using this skill, you can create other functions to produce data that is more specialized.

Get the tools.

To create PHP pages, you will need a text editor. A plain text editor is a program that lets you edit files in plain text. These are the ones that come with extensions such as. php, .cgi, .html, etc. These types of text editors will not save formatting on the file, only the plain text. If you have been using a text editing program for your HTML file, that will do. you will probably use either Notepad (for Windows) or Text Edit (for Mac).

Get an FTP.

A File Transfer Protocol or FTP is used to exchange files from your computer to a remote server. This is the one we use to connect on a LAN or to an Internet site.

Get busy.

Once you have the right tools, you will have to practice creating files using PHP. There are some very important stuff that you will need to learn, including basic mathematics and IF statements and using variables. you will have to go through these first before you can hope to build a reliable PHP file.

Once you know your way around these skills, you can then start learning about loops. Loops are just your basic true or false statements that will perform repetitive actions again and again until certain conditions are met. After mastering the loops, you can then learn how to write your very own functions. Once you have learned how to manipulate the codes to create your desired result, there is virtually no limit to what you can do.

Online resources for learning simple PHP

You can not possibly learn simple PHP from a single short article like this, so it is best to expand your knowledge and turn to other resources like books and online sites. Some sites to check out:

PHP.About.com

There are several articles on this site that discuss the most basic information you need to know to learn simple PHP. This is a great source for web based tutorial that features clear step by step instructions on using PHP, HTML, XML and MySQL databases.

PHP Buddy.com

This site contains Quick Start tutorials on PHP and scripts that will make it easy for you to learn the program easily. This includes a brief introduction and learning basic PHP syntax. There are also valuable tutorials on using cookies, data inscription and working with functions and sessions using PHP.

PHP Freaks.com

This is a site for people who want to learn both PHP and MySQL. The site has 90 tutorials on PHP, more than 400 PHP code examples and nearly 3,000 articles that discuss various information, tips and tricks to make learning simple PHP quick and easy.

Ronald Firquain is a writer, marketer, entrepreneur, webmaster and has 16 years of computer knowledge. You can download e-books for making money online, building a website, improve your golf game, playing guitar and much more. For more information go to: eBooks-Mall

How to Make WordPress Themes

Many blogger swear by WordPress as the best platform for blogs, websites and content platforms to publish content, pictures, videos etc. Though popular for blog, people are using WordPress as a Content Management System (CMS). WordPress is open source and the best thing that makes it an absolute favorite with web developers and bloggers is that you can incorporate plugins effortlessly from your WordPress admin panel. You can get these plugins by doing a simple Google search or through the official WordPress site.

You may have seen several WordPress themes and may feel that even you can develop such theme. For those who want to know how to make a WordPress theme, here are some pointers:

1. Designing a theme does require hard work and patience. It is always better to know html or php and the good thing is there are many resources online that can tell you how to learn them.

2. Go to an html and php tutorial website online and find how to use tags, codes and plug-ins. If you are a novice, go to a tutorial site that shows you to build a WP theme right from the beginning teaching you the basics of html and CSS. For those who already know these, you can also go to tutorial sites that show you how to build themes assuming you know these two programming languages.

3. HTML is the most important language, which is absolutely necessary needed to make WordPress theme. So make sure you learn those basic HTML commands and coding. You can make use of Microsoft Frontpage or even Dreamweaver to experiment with HTML codes.

4. Styling a webpage and jazzing it up is the next thing to do after you become familiar with html functionalities. This is where your CSS(Cascading Style Sheets) knowledge come in. When you know CSS, you will know how to make a stylish WordPress theme with colors, fonts, pictures etc.

To sum up, in order to know how to make a WordPress theme, you have to know to create the CSS template which is nothing but HTML and CSS combined. In other words, this is an HTML page stylishly done with CSS. So learn the four following things to make an attractive WordPress theme, yourself:

1. Gain knowledge about using HTML codes and tags

2. Learn CSS

3. Use the above two to create the CSS layout.

4. Convert this CSS layout to form an attractive WordPress theme.

wordpress remix is the only wordpress themes theme that offers WYSIWYG page template editing with unlimited one-click customization possibilities. Visit to download it now!

Server Side Programming Languages

PHP can run on both Unix and Windows servers, which makes it more accessible than its Windows counterpart, Active Server Pages (ASP). Most full-service web design firms will have at least one PHP guru.

PHP uses are widespread, and can include any kind of server functionality that takes user's input and displays or manipulates the input. Some pertinent examples of such work are message boards, auction sites, shopping carts, and more. There are numerous free (open-source) scripts out there for PHP newbies to use. This synopsis is meant to serve only as a gateway to other works; although the main goal is to give a reader enough information so they can make educated decisions about what their web developer should do. For those looking to get into PHP, there are many free tutorials and primers out there: http://www.4webhelp.net/tutorials/php/basics.php is a pertinent example.

PHP generally uses the mySQL database system. MySQL is a server-side system that is included on many Unix, and some Windows servers.

On the other hand, Active Server Pages runs - for the most part - solely on Windows servers. This can cause some problems. Windows hosting or private servers generally cost more than Unix servers, making it less accessible than PHP. Like PHP, ASP can do just about anything. There are considerably fewer open-source scripts written in ASP, another testament to its inaccessibility. For those interested in ASP, here's a great free tutorial: http://www.w3schools.com/asp/default.asp.

ASP can use many different database systems. Many users prefer Microsoft Access. Access, unlike MySQL, offers a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) editor as part of Microsoft's Office suite. In fact, you may already have a copy of Microsoft Access on your computer and not even know it. Its uses aren't limited to databasing, it's also used as a basic spreadsheet application for those who need a more programmer-friendly environment than Excel. ASP can also work well with MSSQL or MySQL.

A third programming language with burgeoning popularity is Asynchronous Javascript and XML. AJAX, as it's commonly referred to, creates interactive web programs just like its cousins ASP and PHP. AJAX uses XHTML and CSS, along with the Javascript Document-Object Model to create interactive pages designed for speed and overall usability. Although AJAX hasn't gained the acclaim of PHP and ASP, its future is certainly bright. AJAX Basics - [http://dhtmlnirvana.com/ajax/ajax_tutorial/]

It's difficult to say which of the three programming languages, or the numerous others for that matter, is the best. There will always be disputes, and no standard is set. With the varying interpretations of what a programming language should be, predilections to PHP or ASP arise. PHP is certainly more widely used, but isn't necessarily the best. When a site is being created to be interactive, a professional can give an educated opinion on which technology should be used

David Davis, is the lead developer and project manager of PHPZEN PHP script. For more information visit http://www.phpzen.com

Exercise Common Sense When You Are Choosing Your Membership Site Software

I am write this with the assumption that you have already decided to go ahead and create a paid membership site business for your online business model. Starting it right with a workable front-to-backend management system that is an appropriate and essential consideration for your business model. Spend some time researching on the best software that offers you the best tools to manage your subscription site.

There are a number of software tools available for you. Some are just open-source software and some are paid ones. Each one has its own functionalities and good points. Some are more comprehensive features than others. Some may have different features. It really depends on what suits your model best. You may not need a sophisticated platform for your business model in which case you are paying more than what you will need.

I would suggest that you check out the features and have one that accommodates to your need. You can always upgrade to a more sophisticated system when your membership subscription picks up. You need an initial system that is easy to setup with the least work and money. It will also offers you a good feel-around with the tools and get familiar with the installed features.

Most important of all though, you will want to look for a system that is reliable and dependable.

PHPbb Forum is a good open-source tool although it lacks some of the full-fledged functions that you might require for your business. This is an easy tool to install and a video tutorial could easily guide you to build up a membership site with lots of good features with PHPbb.

The next one is Moodle; also an open-source software. It is an impressive tool and again, it is very easy to install and use to manage your membership site.

Wordpress is another great open-source software. It is simple enough to build your membership site with it. This platform also integrates seamlessly with some paid software available in the market.

PHPbb, Moodle and Wordpress are very dependable and installation is no-brainer as long as you are guided with an effective video tutorial to coach you step-by-step on how to install. You might want to check out all the video tutorials to determine which suits you best of the three tools. The three software should be available on your hosting provider's C-Panel.

If you feel that you can afford to spend money and need a more sophisticated software, there are several available in the market. One that I know of is aMember Pro. It is a good piece of reliable software and the tools provide you almost all that you will need to run a paid membership subscription site. The tools include a membership interface, member sign-ups and auto-piloted subscription payment plans. The provider has made a 30-day trial download for you to install and test-run the software without you needing to paid any money at the on-start. If you are considering a paid software this is a brand that you can do research with by testing the trial product.

Last but not least, ensure that your hosting provider, that you already have or are going to sign up with, is compatible with your chosen subscription software. If you are not sure, contact the software provider and the hosting provider to ensure that there is compatibility. Most of the time, it has to be PHP server compatible to install the membership subscription script.

Franco Yong is an InternetPreneur and owner of How To Start Up A Membership Site. How To Start Up A Membership Site, helps and reveals those wanting to create a successful business online, The Secrets and the easy "Know-Hows" about the Internet so that they gain Real Confidence of starting up their Internet Marketing business. There is plenty of Instant Free Resource including Video Tutorials to start up an online business such as the currently much raved about Membership Sites.. Visit Franco Yong now to immediately gain free download of useful online resource. And The Formula On How To Start A Membership Site at http://www.universityforinternetmarketing.com/Forum

Build Your Own Wordpress Test Lab

In this tutorial we'll go through how to get Wordpress running on your own PC (running Windows) so you have your own personal Wordpress installation to experiment with or learn from. Yes you could experiment with Wordpress on your live website but if you don't have a web host or don't want to play around with your live Wordpress blog then this tutorial is for you.

Firstly we need to install your own personal web server to run Wordpress. Wordpress requires a web server, a MySQL database and the PHP scripting language to run. Installing and configuring these in the past was hard work but there's now an application called WAMP (Windows - Apache - MySQL - PHP) which installs and configures everything to get your own personal web server up and running.

Normally you'd pay a web host to host your website or blog and they'd provide the web server, database server and scripting but we're going to install our own personal web server so we can do anything we like in our own personal Wordpress test lab at zero cost.

Visit the WAMP site and download the WAMP Server. Once the file has downloaded double-click it to install the WAMP software.

Once the install begins accept the license agreement and all the default installation options and select to create a desktop icon at the end of the installation.

Once installed and running you'll have a WAMP icon down in the system tray in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen (it looks like a semi-circle)click the WAMP icon down in the system tray and select phpMyAdmin - if the phpMyAdmin page displays then this tells us that the webserver is running and the php script can connect to our MySQL database so you're up and running.

We now have a functioning WAMP web & database server running on our PC. This server provides practically all the functionality that a paid hosting account offers but costs nothing and is for your personal use or use on an internal network if you're teaching Wordpress. It would be possible to use WAMP to host your live blog but we'd advise that it's much better for your live blog to be hosted at a web hosting company rather than allowing people to connect to your own PC running WAMP as there are security, speed and availability issues in running your own publicly accessible web server.

We have our web server now all we need to do is install Wordpress. If you haven't already started WAMP start it by double-clicking the WAMP desktop icon. Open 'My Computer' or Windows Explorer and navigate to C:/WAMP/WWW and then create a new folder in the WWW folder called wordpress.

We then need to download Wordpress so go to the Wordpress web site and download the latest version of Wordpress. Once it's downloaded extract/unzip the installation file and copy the contents of its 'wordpress' folder to c:/wamp/www/wordpress.

If you've downloaded Wordpress and successfully copied the Wordpress files into the correct folder you can open a browser and go to http://localhost/wordpress - you should see a Wordpress page asking you to create a configuration file. So go ahead and click 'create a configuration file'.

Wordpress then asks for the database hostname, username and password to connect to your MySQL server. Wordpress is a dynamic content management system so anything you post in Wordpress is stored in a MySQL database so when a visitor visits your blog or you edit a post Wordpress dynamically pulls this information from the database displays it. In order to do this we need to create a blank database with a username and password so Wordpress can connect to it. Wordpress will do all the hard work of populate this database with all the correct tables but we have to manually create the database and username and password before Wordpress can do this.

Click the WAMP icon in the lower right hand corner of your screen and select phpMyAdmin. phpMyAdmin should now load in your browser so then in the 'create new database' box enter wordpress_db and click 'create'.

Now we need to add a user to the database. In phpMyAdmin click the 'Privileges' tab then click 'Add a new User'. In the 'user name' box enter wordpress_user (or a username of your choice) and enter a password in the 'password' and 're-type' boxes. Ensure that under 'database for user' the option 'Grant all privileges on database "wordpress_db"' is selected and then click 'Go' down at the bottom right.

Now if we go back to the Wordpress installation screen we can enter the database name, username and password we just created using phpMyAdmin. The database host should be localhost and we'll leave the table prefix as wp_.

Now click 'submit' and Wordpress should say that it can now communicate with the database. Click the 'run the install' button. We then can fill in the options for site title, username and password - this username and password is the Wordpress username and password that you'd like to use to administer your Wordpress blog so you can make up your own username and password which can (and should!) be different from the database username and password we created earlier.

Click 'install Wordpress' and Wordpress should then say you've successfully installed it and if you click the login button and enter your Wordpress username and password you're up and running!

Just remember to make sure your WAMP server is running first otherwise you won't be able connect.

To login into your Wordpress installation and makes changes or postings in future just go to http://localhost/wordpress/wp-login.php and to view your blog just go to the same URL but without the wp-login.phh

Steve blogs about installing and setting up Wordpress blogs as well as providing Wordpress installation services.

You can catch more of his articles and video tutorials at http://www.blogsetuplab.com

PHPBB Forum Software For Apache Servers

What are the reasons for having a forum?

Forums permit your customers and potential customers to discuss issues. They get the chance to ask questions and make comments while reading the responses from others. This will probably relieve your support/customer service departments of some unnecessary work, and users find it to be convenient.

In addition, it's a great way to obtain free links for Search Engine Ranking.

Why phpBB?

There is no cost involved. It's not necessary to purchase licenses -- is available as Open Source. The program or source code is not encrypted, allowing you the freedom to alter it or make additions to the code as necessary. But if you want to make any major changes, you will need some PHP knowledge.

Installing phpBB

Note: PHP and MySQL (The programming language and Database Engine) are native to Apache Servers. Though Windows servers have PHP emulators, you will most likely be better off finding Bulletin Board Software designed specifically for the Windows Server Operating Systems.

The phpBB forum software can be installed as soon as you download it. You will need some knowledge to perform the initial install -- that is, unless you are lucky enough to have a website host that has Fantastico installed on its server already. It takes only a few seconds for Fantastico to automatically install phpBB. After that, just a bit of configuration is needed before you can activate your forum. If you'd prefer to install it yourself, you must be or become knowledgeable about such things as setting file and folder permissions, FTP, and setting up a MySQL database.

Personalizing and altering the appearance.

You can change the appearance of your forum using various themes. The majority of them are free but some request donations. Or if you are up for a challenge, you can make your own or alter your current theme.

There is a good amount of assistance to be found on the phpBB user forums. Or you can contract a programmer to program changes on a single task basis. It's surprisingly inexpensive and easy to locate good PHP programmers.

Stephen Grisham, Sr. is a copy writer for InfoServe Media, LLC. InfoServe Media is a Houston web design company and hosting company. Or if you just need a few changes to an existing site, InfoServe Media also offers website maintenance.

Yahoo Pipes Tutorial - Learn How To Use Yahoo Pipes In 15 Minutes Or Less

Overview

Yahoo Pipes is a powerful tool for mashing up content and RSS feeds from around the web without knowing any complicated programming languages. You can use Yahoo Pipes by dragging different modules onto the canvas to perform different actions, which are explained below. After you've made your Pipe and mashed up your content, you can save it and export it using different publishing options. We're going to assume that you have a Yahoo Pipes account setup and are on the canvas page, ready to create your first Pipe.

Now you're going to learn what each module does and how you can use them!

Sources

These modules allow you to gather different types of data to build your Yahoo Pipe.

Feed Auto-Discovery - Identifies whether a website has an RSS feed.

Fetch CSV - Grabs the data from a CSV file (ie. An Excel file)

Fetch Data - Grabs data like XML or JSON files (useful for affiliate product feeds)

Fetch Feed - The most popular module in Yahoo Pipes. Grabs RSS, Atom and RDF feeds.

Fetch Site Feed - Automatically discovers if the specified website has an RSS feed and grabs it if there is one.

Flickr - Fetches pictures from Flickr based on keywords or a location that you specify.

Google Base - Gets product listings from Google Base

Item Builder - Allows you to rename and restructure different attributes of your data.

Yahoo! Local - Lets you find local businesses and services and get reviews on them.

Fetch Page - Your chance to "scrape" HTML websites without knowing PHP.

YQL - Lets you perform SQL-like commands to tap into XML and JSON data.

RSS Item Builder - Turns a non-RSS source into an RSS feed by renaming attributes.

Yahoo! Search - Lets you tap into the Yahoo! search results and perform advanced searches.

Input Modules - Lets users specify data to make the Pipe run.

Input Modules - Are self-explanatory and include: text, date, location, number, URL, and Private (where only the Pipe author can see the data)

Operators - Operators manipulate and filter data.

Count - Counts the number of results in the input feed.

Filter - Filter data from your Yahoo Pipe based on settings you specify.

Location Extractor - Examines the input feed for a geographic location and outputs geographic data (so you can plot it on a map).

Loop - Insert a sub-module and run it once for each item in the input feed.

Regex - Use regular expressions to do advanced "search and replaces" on data.

Rename - Rename elements of the input feed.

Reverse - Reverses the order of the input feed.

Sort - Sorts the input feed based on elements you specify.

Split - Splits a feed into two identical output feeds.

Sub-Element - Allows you to extract certain parts of XML feeds.

Tail - Lets you grab the last X items from a feed (where X is the number you specify).

Truncate - Lets you grab the first X items from a feed (where X is the number you specify).

Union - Merges up to five modules into one feed.

Unique - Removes duplicate items from a feed so they are only displayed once.

Web Service - Lets you export your Yahoo Pipe to external web services.

Create RSS - Allows you to convert data into RSS feeds by changing element names from a drop down list.

URL Modules - Manipulates and controls URLs.

URL Builder - Manipulates and controls URLs.

String Modules - Lets you control and manipulate strings of text. In English, a string is simply a word, and a text string is a sentence.

String Builder - Lets you build strings from multiple substrings.

String Regex - Uses regular expressions to find and replace strings of text.

String Replace - Finds and replaces strings, the simple way.

String Tokenizer - splits strings of text into multiple strings using a specified delimiter.

Sub String - Lets you fetch a specific part of a string.

Term Extractor - Picks out the most important words within a text string.

Translate - Translates from one language to another.

Yahoo! Shortcuts - Places strings of text into these categories: place, person, identifier (ie. Phone number, email address), organization, event, and concept.

Private String - Used for sensitive data like passwords. Only the author of the Yahoo Pipe can see this.

Date Modules - Lets you control and manipulate dates.

Date Builder - converts strings of text into a recognizable date format.

Date Formatter - Converts dates and times into different formats.

Location Modules - Controls and manipulates dates.

Location Builder - converts a description of a place into geographic data (so you can plot it on a map).

Number Modules - Performs calculations on numbers.

Simple Math - A basic calculator that can perform: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, modulo, and powers.

Depracated Modules - These shouldn't be used because they've been replaced with new modules.

BabelFish - Replaced with the Translate Module.

Content Analysis Module - Replaced by the Term Extractor Module.

For Each: Annotate Module - Replaced with the Loop Module.

For Each: Replace Module - Replaced with the Loop Module.

Recap

Now that we've covered every module in Yahoo Pipes, you should have a solid understanding of what you can do with Yahoo Pipes and how you can mashup content from around the web. Yahoo Pipes is great for working with data from affiliate product feeds, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, social bookmarking sites and more. Now it's your turn to give er' a try!

What If You Could Recreate The Web? You Can. With Yahoo Pipes. The Pipes Tutorial teaches you how to use Yahoo Pipes, one pipe at a time.

WordPress Tutorial: How to Include Or Exclude Certain Pages From Your Navigation Menu

Today I want to talk about a neat little tip for hiding or displaying certain pages from your WordPress blog or site's navigation menu. It's really quite simple, and very handy if you don't know how to do it already.

Here is the line of code that is either already inserted somewhere in your WordPress template files (most likely the header.php file) or needs to be added to your WordPress template files in order to display the list of your website's pages:

This line of code displays every single one of the website's pages that you have created in your WordPress admin panel. But suppose you don't want three of the pages to be displayed in the main navigation? How do you control which pages are displayed and which are not?

All you need to do is simply add to the code mentioned above. We are going to add the page IDs that you want to exclude.

(Note: You can find the page or post IDs by going to the list of pages or posts in your WordPress admin panel. Hover your mouse cursor over the page or post titles and look at the status bar at the bottom of your screen. The ID number is the number at the very end of the link that shows. Leave a comment below if that is not clear and you need more help.)

Now that you know which page or post IDs you plan to exclude, add the numbers to your code, like the example below:

And that's all there is to it! Now the pages that you want to hide from the navigation menu will not be displayed.

Now - if there are more pages to exclude than to include, you may want to do this the other way around. Add this line of code to define the only pages that you want to display in the navigation menu:

So, there you go - a very easy way to control which pages do and don't display in your WordPress navigation menus! Let me know if you have any questions or need further help or explanation.

TheLibzter.com

Tools You Need to Build Webpages

There are a lot of web design tutorials available on the internet for beginners as well as experts. Web design is not as much difficult task as some people thought it to be. However, with a little extra effort, you can be a proficient web designer. The syntax structure of all the languages, which are used in a web designing, are similar to each other but the compiling of each language is different from each other.

For example, if you write a program in visual basic, the looping system will remain same but the interpreting system will change. In all the web developing programs, HTML is the easiest way to develop a website.

Developers have developed numerous languages and software for web design such as visual basic, C++, SQL and java scripting but the widely used web designing language is HTML, My SQL, PHP and AJEX. All these languages are very much similar to each other in syntax but different in execution.

These syntax include looping, if...else statements, declaration of variables, and printing statements. Every new version beats the old one in its interpreting and execution system and makes it easy for you to learn and develop a web page with its progressed syntax structure. There are a lot of websites on internet which allow you to learn basics and advance in their free courses. I find w3school.com one of the best web designing tutorial website in this regard.

Apart form learning form these tutorial, you can also design your website through the software, you need not to work hard. There are many people, who give their own build website on internet even if they were unknown to a bit of web designing in these languages.

However, the standard of this website is not like that which one has been developed by a professional developer.

You can also get templates by searching on websites. There are a number of layouts for this cause. However, you can also purchase these templates from a professional designer. After making a website using software or language, it is very easy to upload it on Google.

The rate of the visitor on your website very much depends upon the designing sheets and material which you used for your website. However, you need to be expert through the tutorial if you want to develop a good website.

Get more tips on graphics web design tutorials.

Get more free web design tips and tutorials by visiting http://www.designdashboard.com/blog.

This site provides a free comprehensive and easy to follow guide to learn web graphics. It also includes a beginner's web design course relevant to web design and how to create effective sales letters. The site is valuable tool for anyone interested in creating a web site themselves and developing creative additions and supplements to their site in order to increase marketing of products and services.

Hire PHP Developers to Save Time and Money For Web Development

PHP is a very simple language to learn and it can work with a mixture of operating systems. When you hire PHP developers they can provide you with a large variety of websites and various other applications of the web. PHP is preferred by many website developers because it is very clear and easy to use unlike various other web scripting languages.

Some of these languages need an average amount of programming surroundings before the developer can apparel to speed in the development of the website. PHP on the other hand, is so easy that even non-programmers have been able to develop web-based solutions just with-in a matter of days learning the basic tutorials of PHP languages.

To get cost effective and fast development of website you can always hire PHP developers from worldwide community where PHP is an open source product. PHP is always monitored and frequently refined by a huge network of developers striving always to it better product. They have successfully created huge records of very useful inputs periodically to achieve present PHP which has become a very powerful web script. PHP has a frivolous design which helps it perform fast and extraordinarily well. This language is highly capable of handling large amounts of traffic given to it regularly.

PHP will provide whatever is required by website developers, be it a basic website, a powerful database, a user friendly content management system or even a forum site absolutely free if you are a PHP developer yourself. Outsourcing work from PHP developers India could be the best deal to go for when you want your web site to be developed at low prices. PHP developers India has are very talented and experienced at using the language properly and can do it for you at absolutely lower prices. PHP has various different kinds of frameworks available to choose from.

When you hire PHP developers you could always ask them to utilize the framework you would like to opt. The aim of a framework is to make the web-based applications process easier and simple which helps in reusing the developed code.

Mahendra Sharma runs a Software company called Sharma Infoway, they provide prominent php developers India, He also owns web development India company.

What is Drupal?

It is one of the leading content management systems (CMS) available online. Modules are used to display and organize content, manage tasks and customize the site.

Drupal is an open source CMS and is therefore accessible to anyone free of charge. There are some web designers who will sell some of their customizations, but those are not the majority of Drupal users who tend to use the software to design their own websites, blogs, forums, etc. Top do so, however, they have to learn how to use it.

The programming language used is PHP which is a good language for creating dynamic web sites, and is also compatible with many operating systems; among them Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. It also needs a database to store the settings and contents, although the ubiquitous MySQL is good enough for this.

Drupal can be used to create e-commerce systems and photo galleries, as only two examples of the many modules that Drupal has to offer. Even though the system comes with default settings these can easily be changed to allow more advanced forms of website to be built.

The Drupal CMS package has received a lot of praise, but there are some who have found it difficult to learn. However, its dynamic nature allows modules to be modified to produce professional looking websites, and enable communities to quickly and easily create, publish, organize and manage content on their websites.

The difficulty in learning how to use Drupal should not be difficult to resolve, and there are Drupal video tutorials available that can not only answer the question what is Drupal, but also answer 'how is Drupal used'.

One of the benefits of using Drupal in your online business is that it allows for consistent branding. Using this system you can have your images, content, surveys, blogs, polls and e-commerce sites on the same web site. You are therefore able to brand your site accordingly. Drupal is also easy to use if you have the right tuition.

Your website can be up and running in under a week because it is easy to use once you have mastered the basics. You will quickly be able to insert videos, create documents, put up images and sell products on your site. Drupal is also is flexible. There are a large number of modules you can use in your design, and you can ignore those you need not use.

A Drupal video course is the easiest way to learn, and once mastered you can design forms, ecommerce stores, polls, survey and blogs with ease. Manuals are fine, but most people learn best by video, where they can pause and follow exactly what is being done by carrying out the same actions on their own computer. The truth of a video is that if you do exactly as shown, you will get, exactly the same results. You can't say that of a manual.

If you are a first time user of Drupal then a video tutorial will be an excellent choice. You will have someone walking you through every step of the site creation process. This means that you will not get lost or feel overwhelmed in the process. Additionally, a video tends to be interactive unlike a book or manual. You watch the person demonstrating the actions being taken in the video, and as they demonstrate one step you can follow along, pausing if necessary.

What is Drupal? It is a method of designing the physical form of what is seen by others online: websites, blogs, forums, shopping pages and so on. If it looks good people will stay on your website, and Drupal makes it look good.

For details on a Drupal Video Tutorial, check out Pete's website Drupal Tutorials where you can not only download Drupal, but also learn how to use it.

Finding the Current URL With the PHP Language

When you go about building your PHP scripts, you will soon find that there are many cases in which you need to know the current URL. PHP 5 comes loaded with several functions in which to do so, meaning that there will be very little programming on your part in the process.

PHP uses what are called server variables to access different pieces of information about the current HTTP request, as well as a myriad of other miscellaneous server information that can come in quite handy. It should be noted before we get into the specifics of server variables that some information can be spoofed or faked- so be carefully when trusting HTTP information.

The first server variable to consider is HTTP_HOST. This server variable will allow you to find the current domain that is being browsed. Most of the time you already know the domain, so this is probably one of the least useful variables to you. Also keep in mind that this variable will store the domain in the format of "ThisDomain.com" - so you will have to include prefix or trailing path information to build a proper link.

The SCRIPT_NAME server variable is also of great use, as it can find the actual path to the running script. This is most used to find the current location of the file so that the developer can make a link to the current page. This is mostly done for search engine optimization reasons, but also helps out in the overall ease of use of the application you are working on.

The query string is a valuable tool used to pass information from one script to another. We use the server variable QUERY_STRING to reference it. Be very careful that you don't forget to encode all of your URL strings, so that malicious users don't try and befuddle your database information. With even a simple line of code and the right security hole, your entire database could be deleted in seconds without URL encoding.

A great way to get the current URL even if you are using rewriting on your domain is to use the server variable REQUEST_URI. This variable will ignore any rewriting information that the ".htaccess" file tells the server to perform, and instead report the actual name of the running script. This is must-know tool for anyone who makes use of the Mod Rewrite tool.

Closing Comments

As another warning, consider the many security flaws you can put into your application by relying on server variables without regards to your application's health. Always be sure to sanitize all input when interacting with your database and query strings, and remember HTTP information isn't always trustworthy.

Learn more about current URL in php and php basics.

Drupal - Simple System For Everybody

Drupal is CMS, created on the base of PHP, it uses a database as a data warehouse. Drupal is free software and it is developing thanks to enthusiasts' efforts all over the world. A Belgian, Dries Buytaert has started working on it in 2000, and he has been still supervising the project. The word itself is the distorted pronunciation of the Dutch word druppel ("drop") and was born as a result of an error.

In 2000 some students used the common modem for access to the Internet, and Dris created an internal site for users of this small local area network to intercommunicate. The program on which the site worked had no name until Dries had to register a domain name for the new site and as a result of a misprint, instead of dorp-org (dorp - the village, quite a good name for a small community) drop-org was registered. A lot of people became constant visitors of the site, the community, interested in web technologies development, grew bigger. As a result, the new site has imperceptibly transformed from an experiment into the web programming project.

In 2001 Dries published drop.org system under the name "Drupal". That time development and programmers' intercommunication moved to the site drupal.org which has gained and up to this day has the status of the official site. Hundreds people were involved in the developing process since the time the site was created. Official developers now are a score of people, but also many people send the units which are possible to include in a system code. Still system functionality is extending with the help of units of distant developers which embody in them the necessary functional.

The Drupal architecture gives an easy possibility to use it for construction of all kinds of sites: from blogs and forums to informational archives and news sites. The major functionality part is provided with the connected units accessing to a common Drupal API. The standard set of units includes many functions such as RSS, a forum, files uploading, a blog, voting, search and many other possibilities. A large quantity of the additional units considerably expanding base functions, is possible to find on an official site and, actually, in the Internet.

Alesia Arefjeva is an author of web design tutorials, photoshop tutorials and other articles

Why Aren't You Marketing With Testimonials?

You mean you really aren't? Lots of experts have noticed that there are too few e-commerce sites using testimonials. In the brick-and-mortar world, testimonials have been used for decades. They provide a very low-cost and effective tool for adding credibility to your promotional message.

And credibility is what you need in order to convert prospects to sales. The majority of consumers say that knowing and trusting the sender is the key factor in determining whether they would open an email. With email open rates declining, trust becomes more and important in getting your message across effectively:

"Hey, don't just take our word for it--listen to what our customers are saying! You don't trust us? Then trust our customers. Folks like you." Here's the mystery. Creating trust online is a big, big thing. So why don't we see more sites using testimonials? [Usborne 1999]

Testimonials Work

As marketing experts have shown time and again, testimonials work: "I'm a big advocate of testimonials on websites, even though some people call them hokey. Why? Because Web visitors read them and are influenced by them.

In some tests, Web users spend 85% more time on Web pages with testimonials, and transactions have increased by as much as 300%." [White 2006]

Your visitors naturally don't want to lose money and, just as important, they don't want to feel foolish. Eliminating their natural fear and skepticism is exactly the job that testimonials do best.

You can blow your own horn, and should, but when it comes from someone else then people start to truly believe it.

Testimonials may have a long history, but they are essentially the basis of the hottest and most recent strategies for doing business on the Web: word-of-mouth, social networking, viral marketing. [Nicholls 2006b]

You Can't Fake It

Testimonials work but if you don't handle them properly they can, and will, work against you. A botched testimonial can easily backfire and do you more harm than good. Faking it will not work; authenticity is certainly the most important factor:

"Resist the urge to turn your testimonials into marketing-speak. It is important that you retain the voice and style of real people. Don't make up your testimonials, because unless you are very clever, the effort will be transparent. And put full attribution on your testimonials." [White 2006]

Generic, questionable or obviously phony testimonials will do you no good, and may actually harm your reputation. On the other hand, succinct, believable, benefit-specific testimonials from real people, properly placed on your Web pages, can enhance your website's credibility and boost your conversion rate.

A Web page of endorsements by itself is not enough. The effectiveness of endorsements and user feedback depends on leveraging some specific strategies. The basic steps are:


Specify your goals and objectives
Gather the testimonials
Choose the best ones
Use the testimony verbatim
Identify the source completely
Position your testimonials effectively
Let the viral process do its stuff.

There is one potential downside to testimonials, too, that you must keep in mind along with the many benefits. And that is the danger of obtaining a great testimonial but later wishing you hadn't. This rather interesting topic is discussed further in Nicholls [2006a]

How to Do It

Collecting usable testimonials should be an organized ongoing process - never miss an opportunity to get one. Read your incoming mail carefully and keep a file of customer comments. Follow up on the ones with potential and put them in usable form.

Analyze your customer list and develop a sub-list of your top 10% of customers by sales volume and frequency of ordering. Carefully craft a letter to this select list "Asking for their help." Suggest to them what you are looking for in the way of comments and then let them provide you with the raw material.

The key here is that you can't sit back and hope for testimonials to come your way. You have to go and seek them out. Overall, the four essential qualities of every great testimonial are:


A real person talking
It's not too long
Expresses an emotion
Mentions a specific benefit.

Automatically ask for feedback from your members and visitors. A follow-up email asking for feedback is one way to do this. The visitor's book is another way. When you get a good testimonial ask for permission to use it - they will almost always say yes. Keep an eye on the Web in case somebody says something good about you. If they do, see if you can reprint it on your own site.

Scatter your testimonials all over the website. Many webmasters make the mistake of creating a testimonial page and putting all the testimonials there. Instead, scatter them throughout.

If you have testimonials pertaining to a specific product, place them under that product. Another great area to place testimonials on your website is on the right and left borders. They will serve as a constant reminder of your credibility. [Frey 2002]

Done correctly, testimonials work, increase conversions, and are cost-effective to collect and use. So, if you are not already using this proven effective tool to market your e-business - why not?

References

David Frey. "What to Do with What You've Got: Using Testimonials Effectively," 09/24/02.

MarketingProfs. http://www.marketingprofs.com/2/frey5.asp.

Paul Nicholls. "The Down Side of Testimonials," eBizTutors Blog 09/16/06a.

http://www.ebiztutors.com/index.php/?p=219

Paul Nicholls. "Using Testimonials: Going the Extra Mile," eBizTutors 11/20/06b.

http://www.ebiztutors.com/tutorials/testimony.shtml

Nick Usborne. "Where Are All the Testimonials?" Small Business Advice 12/03/99.

http://www.clickz.com/ebiz/small_biz/article.php/818921.

Steve White. "Using Testimonials," Internet Business Coach 2006.

http://www.internetbusinesscoach.net/article.asp?PageID=337.

Dr. Paul Nicholls is a regular fixture at eBizTutors.com where you can find many more e-commerce resources for the new or seasoned online entrepreneur - blogs, tutorials, programs, and support. We also keep an intermittent eye on Asian e-commerce in Paul's Zanshin blog. Visit us at eBizTutors.com

A Beginner's Guide to Building and Hosting a Web Page

A beginner's guide to Building and Hosting a Web Page Web design and development is incredibly fun. For those just getting started, I've developed the following guide to take you through all of the steps necessary to successfully embark on your web design and development adventure!

A) Index:

PRE: The 3 D's

1. Gathering

2. Concept

3. Photoshop

4. Client Approval #1

5. HTML (front-end)

6. Code (back-end)

7. Client Approval #2

8. Uploading & Testing

B) Tools Required: (I'll go through all of these tools in detail below)

1. Pencil

2. Paper

3. Photoshop (or other design tool)

4. Dreamweaver (or other web-development tool)

5. Copies of all the common browsers (see below for more info)

6. Filezilla (or other FTP tool to communicate with your web server)

7. Domain Name (your www. address)

8. Web Host such as GoDaddy (or something similar)

9. A computer

10. A passion for being creative!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A) Index:

PRE: The 3 D's

All websites in the world require 3 things.

A Domain Name. Through companies like GoDaddy, you can purchase names for small fees per year. If the name you want is something popular, consider purchasing it at the beginning of your build-process, after all, it's good for a year.

A Dedicated Host Once you've selected a hosting package, you'll have to log in and set everything up. You'll have to point, or park your domain name at your hosting setup as well. Once all of that's done, setup your FTP program so you're connections to your server are working.

A Designed, and Developed Web Site (your stuff!). This tutorial will cover off on this one!

1. Gathering

The type of site you use and the tools you'll need will vary a lot depending on the requirements of your client. A website built to do nothing but show pictures will have significantly different technology in the back-end than a page built to allow for discussions. Likewise, a site built for security with employee data and a login system will look entirely different yet.

Knowing what your client needs is the first real step in the building process. Make yourself a checklist and take it with you when you speak with your clients. Over time develop the checklist into a comprehensive consultation document. Be prepared for additional chat though. The most critical component of early web building is proper communication to ensure you and your client remain on the same 'design' page. The last thing you want to do is misinterpret their interests and spend 5-6 hours building something they didn't want in the first place.

2. Concept

You've got all of your initial information. Now it's time to sketch our concept design. You DO NOT need to be an artist for this. The purpose of this concept phase is to remove the computer and other distractions so you can visualize the design in your head.

Throughout this stage, we're looking for general themes. What colours will we use, what header / body / footer layout will we go for? 2 column vs 3 column? Fixed or Liquid layout? Will the news display over here, or over there? What kind of navigational menu do we want, image based or CSS based? Sketch until your pretty little fingers bleed. You want to have an actual design on paper, something you're pleased with. It's incredibly easy to start over while your using a pencil but 3 hours into a designing session in Photoshop is NOT where you want to be when you realize eggplant yellow and rounded corners weren't the way to go...

3. Photoshop

So we've got our concept on paper, now it's time to transfer this design into Photoshop (or other similar program).

This phase is critical to ensuring we have a flexible method through which to make changes later on. It's also paramount in ensuring our web page is cross-browser compatible later.

I'll assume you're using Photoshop and I'll also assume you know something about it, ie: what layers are the general process of creating a graphic by using multiple layers to keep elements separated. If you not familiar with this process, head on over to HERE and spend some time learning the ground-work.

Assuming all of that (I assume a lot, I know!) let's begin...

Typically if I were to create a picture in Photoshop, of a house on a lake, with a sun overhead I would do the following:

1. Delete the background later.

2. Create a new later 'page' to hold everything.

3. Create a new layer 'house'.

4. Create a new layer BELOW that 'lake'.

5. Create a new layer BELOW both of those 'sun'.

In this way, I'll have automatically setup the depth of my picture. The sun will appear behind the lake, which will appear behind the house. I can then design within each layer to keep things organized.

When designing a web site, you follow these same principles, but in a much more complete way.

If we think of the typical web page as having 4 components, those components would be: PAGE (or WRAP) to hold everything, HEADER, BODY, FOOTER. Keeping this in mind, in photoshop we create 'layer groups (or sets in older versions)' which follow the same flow.

1. Create a new layer group called 'page'.

2. Within that, create new layer groups called 'header', 'body', and 'footer'.

3. Within each of those, create individual layers (not sets) to break apart the various design elements.

When you're done in Photoshop, if you look on the right, you should literally have a collapsible hierarchy of design elements that all collapse up into one top-level

element called 'page'. Clicking that one layer group should reveal 3 layer groups within called header, body and footer. I've left out navigation and sidebar etc but those would have their own layer sets as well if you are building them.

By following this method, you'll have a very organized and clear layout. You can come back and edit specific sections later on without having to worry about layering, depth, or moving the wrong components etc.

4. Client Approval #1

It's not time to show our client our Photoshop (or similar) design. At this point it's a picture only. We should have placeholder text and links in though so it appears exactly as a full, written web page would look. Use fake pictures if you need to. We want this to represent the web page as closely as possible.

We'll go back and forth in this phase until the client approves of our graphical design. Once that's done - congratulations! The design work is complete!

5. HTML (front-end)

Open up Photoshop and ensure all of your individual layers are saved as .GIF or .JPG or .PNG, or whatever format you want to use. We're going to need everything in that format for the web.

NOTE: When saving in Photoshop, ensure you choose 'save for web or devices' as this offers some additional compression options for low bandwidth environments.

Open Dreamweaver (I know, I know, you're EXCITED!) and create a new XHTML page. Yes, I said XHTML, not HTML (though they can be labeled the same when picking from the Dreamweaver 'new' menu. If you'd like to know why, check out this article. In a nut shell, it's better, cleaner, more proper, and will ensure your code is more functional and valid.

Your new blank web page will look something like this:

Untitled Document

Start by creating our basic layout with DIV's. It should look like this once complete.

Untitled Document







This is the header!

This is the content!

This is the footer!

Once that's complete, build your page, placing the design elements into their appropriate spots. Once you've got this single, XHTML page working, in multiple browsers, you can stop if you wish at this point. However, there are a few more steps we can take to further clean up our code.

Currently, this page is large and unwieldy. As we add content, it will become difficult to discern where on the page certain things begin and end. To combat this, we can use PHP files to store our content and simply include them in our index page. Note, to do this you'd need to change your index page from a XHTML page to a PHP page.

I won't get into includes, but this is essentially what the page could look like after you've finished including everything.

This is the only actual content on our page. Everything else

is being included using PHP. It doesn't matter how large the other

files are, this is all we'll ever see when we're working in

development mode on this page.

Clean eh!?!

REMEMBER: Nothing is dynamic at this point, we're building a basic, static page, with default news, fake pictures, etc. Nothing is coded in the back-end at this point.

Regardless of how little or how much organization you work into your page layout, the goal of this entire phase is to have a STATIC page, that looks exactly like our photoshop page, that works in multiple browsers. If we've gotten this far, we're almost there!

6. Code (back-end)

Aside from the navigation buttons working, everything else on the site is probably broken. We've manually written in all of our text, and none of our gadgets work.

At this point we want to start coding in the back end, gadget by gadget.

For example. If we have a news section on our page, right now in our static page we've simply written that news in there. Instead, we'd like that news to be automatically entered when we create a new article, with some automatic program that doesn't involve opening Dreamweaver each time. This is what we call a 'Content Management System' or CMS.

There are various forms of it out there. I won't get into it at all, but Joomla and WordPress are great ones to begin with.

Alternatively, if you're like me and like learning how the gears work from the bottom up, you might challenge yourself to learn MYSQL and PHP more extensively and simply write a little news gadget that reads and writes to a databases - it's completely up to you!

Either way, the important part of this phase is to leave the design alone and work on adding life to all the gadgets and widgets on your page. Create that login system, create that user system, how about a gallery, a calendar, a CMS, maybe a guest-book or a comments box... it's completely up to you. Remember, for every gadget, you should have designed it FIRST so you have it in Photoshop as a design. That way the design component is gone and you're just coding the back end.

If you get caught up trying to design, AND code something in at the same time, trust me... it can sap your days away as you struggle to fight with misaligning CSS boxes etc.

Design it, then Develop it. Rinse. Repeat. Success.

7. Client Approval #2

It's time to go back to the client and show them the development work you've been doing. Show off your login system, show off your gallery. WOW them! If they aren't WOW'd, go back and tweak some stuff, sometimes all the way back to the design phase.

Rinse and repeat until you, and your client, are comfortable and satisfied with the current site.

8. Uploading and Testing

Up to this point, you would have either built everything locally and uploaded it piece-wise to test on the web server, OR, you might have used a program like WAMP to run a local server.

If you've been uploading everything to the web server, you're finished! The website will already be up there.

If you've been running everything locally and using something like localhost to test the site, you'll now need to upload everything to your web server. Once that's done, you have to test everything again. MYSQL databases will likely be broken and need re-pointing, likewise things might operate slightly differently on that server for whatever reason.

Go through and ensure everything works up on the server.

Once that's done, you're finished! Congratulations on building and uploading your first web page!

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B) Tools Required:

1. Pencil

A pencil or pen, it doesn't really matter. You're going to need something to do the conceptual design with.

2. Paper

To go with the pencil or pen

3. Photoshop (or other design tool)

You'll need something to do the graphical design with. Photoshop it self is quite pricey. If that's not an option for you, or if you don't have access to it via some shared resource, then do some research and find some free or cheap alternatives. I won't comment on those here as I personally use Photoshop.

4. Dreamweaver (or other web development tool)

This is your bread and butter. This is the tool you'll spend most of your time in. This is the tool that allows you to actually build the web pages, to write the code, to create your functions, to tie your graphical genius in with your buttons, forms and dynamic content.

To be quite honest, Dreamweaver it self is the most complete and by survey, most popular tool for the job. If you're planning on getting into design and development seriously, this is worth the money.

However, there are alternatives if you can't afford that. Again, do some research and you'll find some cheaper/free alternatives that will do the job as well.

5. Copies of all the common browsers

I'm not going to specifically reference the browsers you should code for. The intention of this article is to be valid for more than just the several months in which it was written.

That said, visit this WC3 resource to get a listing of the currently used browsers and their market share of the internet. The list as of today, looks like this:

2010 IE8 IE7 IE6 Firefox Chrome Safari Opera

April 16.2% 9.3% 7.9% 46.4% 13.6% 3.7% 2.2%

March 15.3% 10.7% 8.9% 46.2% 12.3% 3.7% 2.2%

February 14.7% 11.0% 9.6% 46.5% 11.6% 3.8% 2.1%

January 14.3% 11.7% 10.2% 46.3% 10.8% 3.7% 2.2%

If I were building a site today for a client, I'd ensure it was compatible with Firefox, Chrome and IE 7+. That's 85% of the market. Personally I don't believe in backwards designing sites to reach back 3 browser revisions (IE 6). The types of hacks and fixes needed to get a site to operate correctly back that far are not worth the time. Shoot for 85% and you'll be golden.

6. FileZilla (or other FTP tool)

You'll need a tool like this to upload and download files from your web server. This is going to be a common task for you once you begin so find something you enjoy using and stick with it.

7. Domain Name (your www address)

Every site needs a registered name. I'll get into the specifics more in the instructions but essentially, you will at some point need this before you can complete your client's website.

8. Web Host (such as GoDaddy)

Every site needs physical space on the web somewhere. Hosting companies provide this. Companies like GoDaddy sell you space on one of their servers on which you can park your website files. For this you pay a small monthly fee.

Personally I've had incredible success with GoDaddy, but there are many out there to choose from.

9. A computer

Sorry folks, not optional. Laptops work great as well for you coffee-shop coders

10. A passion for being creative!

Corny, but true. This is NOT a business to get into simply because you want to pay the bills and have good computer skills. If you're not really vested, and interested in the work your doing, it'll show in the lackluster designs, rushed coding, and sloppy work you do.

Do yourself a favour, ask yourself this question: "Could I build websites as a hobby and enjoy it?" If you answered "yes" then this is a great business to get into.

This article written by Joey Alain, owner and operator of Rubix PC, a kamloops web design - development, and PC services, company. Check us out @ http://www.rubixpc.com.

Online Learning Tutorials - An Easy Way to Become Professional

From the past decade, it has been observed that so many technologies are changing the way of lifestyle. One of them is the internet technology, with this technology; so many people are getting opportunities in different continents. To obtain these opportunities, every one of us needs some fine quality of qualifications, and we need to improve professional skills. However, everyone's life has become busy scheduled and so many people are having no time to add some more qualifications to their skills.

The online tutorials are one of the best ways to learn our desired courses. Every one of us believes that the computers are an ocean subject to learn. With these tutorials, everyone can become professional towards computers. And learning through online tutorials will give you more fun and enjoyment. In these recession days, adding some qualifications to you skills will boost up your opportunities. Most of these online tutorials are available at free of cost, some of them are charging a few dollars to provide some additional features. In these technology days, the computer courses like Photoshop, HTML, PHP, Java Script and adobe Photoshop are providing numerous job opportunities. Here we will discuss some of these online courses.

If you are interested to learn Photoshop, the online Photoshop tutorial is the best place to learn. Obviously, this online Photoshop software is used to creating and manipulating graphics and photographs. The tools and advancements provided in this software are very much helpful to learn this software easily. There are so many well experienced tutorials are available in internet. With this online learning Photoshop tutorial, definitely you will get a very good opportunity. The web development in these days would be the best business, designing and hosting web sites and e-commerce websites and many more. To become a professional web designer, you should have to learn the HTML basics. With these online html tutorials, definitely you will become professional to design your own web sites. And also it is mandatory to learn PHP programming to become an experienced web developer. However, learning these PHP tutorials could be the expensive one. To resolve this issue, online learning PHP tutorial is the best one for you.

If you are very much an interest to become a developer for e-commerce web sites, it is a best idea to learn java tutorials. The online java script tutorials add some additional functionality to your web designing skills. Finally, learning this software would definitely increase your chances to get more income. And now a question rose in your mind that was to find these online tutorials. There are some well established and experienced web sites are offering these online tutorials to their valuable customers. For more information, please visit their web site.

Welcome to Tutorial Machine - Get Tutorials, tutorial, Photoshop tutorials, html tutorials, php tutorials, online learning tutorial, online learning Photoshop tutorial, online learning html tutorial, online learning JavaScript tutorial, and online learning php tutorial, learn adobe Photoshop at Tutorial Machine. Need of more information Visit us at http://www.tutorialmachine.com

Knowledge Based Programming Scripts For IT Aspirants

The World Wide Web can educate you, making you aware of the latest technologies evolving day by day. IT professionals are now well informed with knowledge at par that provides them with better paying jobs leading to a bright future and acclaim in the IT industry. Its real good news for IT aspirants as they can get all time online guidance on topics related to computers and education on software development and designing from websites that aim to provide with knowledgeable and informative scripts and tutorials on ASP.Net, java script, VB.NET, XML, Flash, Database, Remotely Hosting, HTML, Payment Gateway, ASP.Net, Ajax tutorials and many more topics of vital importance.

Many of the websites today consists of scripts that serve as tutorials that help programmers and students in understanding the essential characteristics about a particular tool and its functions that are well arranged, categorically. These websites present with free downloadable scripts of ASP, ASP.Net, C and C++, XML, CFML, Database, shipping implementation and payment gateway. Learners have access to best tutorials of ASP.net, C#, ASP, Perl, PHP, Java script, C & C++, ASP.Net Ajax Tutorials, J2ee, J2Me, Java, Python & Ruby Rail and Ecommerce etc. The tutorial websites also consist of interview questions to help young aspirants to face job interviews with confidence as this section prepares them with expected questions mostly asked during interviews.

The ASP.Net Ajax tutorial can provide in-depth analysis and lessons on topics related to Ad Management, Auctions, and Blog scripts, Calculators, Calendars, Classified Ads, Communication Tools and Content Management. ASP.NET stands for Active Server Pages. It lets you create dynamic web applications. This popular Microsoft technology creates pages that work in all browsers. Additionally, when programming in ASP.NET, you can build web pages using far less code than with classic ASP. ASP.NET has better language support, a large set of new controls and XML based components. A variety of ASP.NET scripts are viewable online and a study on it would be a wise thing to do.

AJAX, popularly known as Asynchronous JavaScript and XML is not as easy as it might seem. It therefore becomes important to learn correct techniques through Ajax tutorials. Gaining acclaim by Google in the year 2005, AJAX involves the use of the nonstandard XML Http Request object to communicate with server-side scripts. It can send as well as receive information in a variety of formats, including XML, HTML, and even text files. As the name suggests it is "asynchronous" in nature, which means it can do all of this without having to refresh the page. This allows you to update portions of a page based upon user events. Though it is not a new programming language, Ajax has given a new means to create user friendly web applications. Ajax tutorials consists of ECMAScript for XML topics namely Simple Asp.Net + Ajax example, ECMA Script for XML, AJAX Http Requests, Adding AJAX to a website step by step, AJAX and Session "Race Conditions", AJAX and Session "Race Conditions", Alternate Ajax Techniques, Part 1, Ajax - JavaScript on Steroids and other related topic that essential are useful in the long run. Therefore, get on with your online study and reference and to learn more about website development and designing.

Peter Parker, content writer and author of this article writes about Ajax tutorial and how internet has been regarded as the knowledge based environment for I.T aspirants and developers. For more information visit at http://www.soloscript.com

Xdebug Installation Tutorial

Xdebug is one of the best debuggers for PHP. It is completely free and continously maintained by its developer. Most of the PHP development environments have the posiblility to connect to a server side environment running PHP with Xdebug. Ability to debug can dramatically reduce the time to market for a PHP application.

In order to install xdebug, first you need to gather detailed information regarding your environment structure. You need to know the exact versions for all the environment modules (PHP, Apache, etc).

After you are done with this, please proceed:

Download the package. There are many versions available, you need to make sure that you download the appropriate one. A note: xdebug must match your php installation. Let's say we run PHP version 5.2, we download xdebug version 5.2VC6.

Double check the file downloaded. Must contain the php version in the name. Our currently downloaded file is php_xdebug-2.0.2-5.2.5.dll

Copy the file in the PHP extension folder. The folder usually is under the PHP main installation folder and it is called ext.

Install the file under PHP as follows:

Open the php.ini file for editing. Double check it is the actual ini file that gets loaded when php runs.

Ensure there is no entry with the key zend_extension_ts. Our installation will actually insert a line starting with this key and it is important they don't collide.

Copy the following lines:



[xdebug]

xdebug.remote_enable=1

xdebug.remote_host="localhost"

xdebug.remote_port=9000

xdebug.remote_handler="dbgp"

zend_extension_ts="c:/environment/php5.2.8/ext/php_xdebug-2.0.2-5.2.5.dll"

Please note that the zend_extension_ts file contains the full path to the downloaded xdebug dll file. Also, 9000 is the port used to connect to the debugging environment (the environment listens on this port). Make sure the port is not currently in use by other process, otherwise it will not work.

At the end, please restart apache and display again the page containing the phpinfo(); call. Carefully look at the displayed result, and you should see mentioned that xdebug is currently installed. There will be an entry called xdebug and all the properties for this module are listed underneath. The port should be listed there as well and must match the one you just configured. If you don't see anything with xdebug, please look at the Apache error log and surely you will see something there - either the dll version is the wrong one, or maybe its name was misspelled and because of that the system could not load it.

The latest test is to install a sample php file under the main htdocs folder, open it in a development environment, connect the development environment to xdebug (make sure the port on the xdebug client side matches the one that was configured as above) try to set a breakpoint and then run the program. Once you see it stops at the break point, try to see if the variables are communicated and you can inspect them.

Once this done, you are ready to run your applications in debug mode and dramatically improve your performance.

A number of tutorials, free of charge, can be found at http://proghowto.com/

Shortcut Keys on Firefox 2

To those who have upgraded their Mozilla Firefox 1.5 to Firefox 2, you will found that the shortcut keys are a bit messed up. This is especially for bulletin board users - who are used to the "Alt-S" shortcut key to submit their reply. I'm one of those too who are used to the "Alt-S" key, and now it can't be used to reply post anymore - but open the history tab instead.

The old "Alt-S" shortcut key has been changed to "Alt-Shift-S" - so you can use "Alt-Shift-S" to replace to "Alt-S" shortcfut key. But if you are still not happy with it and would want back the Alt-S's old function, you can do this by editing the config. Follow the steps below.

Goto "about:config". (Do this like going to a normal website)
On the config page, find ui.key.chromeAccess and ui.key.contentAccess

Modify ui.key.chromeAccess to 5

Modify ui.key.contentAccess to 4

If you have done all these steps correctly, you should now be able to use "Alt-S" to submit post in forums. Please do follow the instruction very carefully, and make sure you understand it before making any modification. This is to avoid any misconfiguration that may lead to errors.

For more information, you can visit the MozillaZine forum at http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=446830 - where this matter is discussed. Start a new thread in MozillaZine if you have further doubts on the Firefox 2 shortcut keys. By following the steps above, it doesn't mean all shortcut keys will be the same like it is in Firefox 1.5.

"If you are not a Mozilla Firefox user, you can get a copy at http://www.getfirefox.com"

Author's Blog - http://www.VincentChow.net

How To Make Dynamically Generated Title Tags That Are Indexed By Search Engines

First off you need a bit of basic scripting knowledge of both Python and PHP. If you don't have knowledge in these areas look towards the end of the article for a link to a great Python tutorial. It's lengthy but worth it - its great for automatically generating text. Once you have done that tut, you'll be able to get by with minimal PHP knowledge using the greatest tutorial of our time – "Google it" (not strictly a tutorial but you get the idea). Secondly, somewhere in the source code of the page you are wanting to have a dynamically generated title tag for, you need to have a line that contains the title you want – e.g.

African Lions.

You need a line with just one tag so if its not, make it so. Thirdly, you need, in the dynamically generated page an URL that contains a unique identifier value – eg. [http://www.somesite.com/index.php?id=9898] (the id=9898 being the identifier). Fourthly, this article is a follow on from my previous article "URL Rewriting - Get Rid of Those Ugly Dynamic URLs" so please read that first. Then you're ready to go, just edit that line mentioned above so it contains the words "forPython" in the code – eg.

African Lions .

Then you want to write a Python script that extracts the line mentioned above and then extracts the words African Lions (for example) from that. You'll need to have at least version 2.5 to do this. I used code similar to the following:

from cStringIO import StringIO
from xml.etree import ElementTree
import urllib2

def gettext(url):
for line in urllib2.urlopen(url):
#Created special id in the line where I want the information (lion cubs & lioness)
if 'id="forPython"' in line:
parsed_line = ElementTree.parse(StringIO(line))
root = parsed_line.getroot()
x = root.text
x = str(x)
return x
#You'd want to change the line below so that it ranges in the range of the unique identifier that you've got hold of (e.g. id=9898)
for page in range(0,10000):
page = str(page)
#The line below should be changed to your new mod rewritten URL
x = gettext("http://www.africapic.com/index/closeup/102-"+page+"-0.html")
print page, x
myfile=open(page+'.txt','w')
myfile.write(x+"n")
myfile.close()

The import values that you would want to change would be in the lines "for page in range(0, 10000)" and "x=gettext("http://..."). The first line that would be changed so that between the two numbers all the possible values for the unique identifier are accounted for. For example if my pages ranged from id=1000 to id=9999 I would put "for page in range(1000,9999)". The second line would be changed so that it "fetches" your newly mod rewritten pages (e.g.[http://www.somesite.com/this/that/50-]"+page+"-28.html) or even (e.g.[http://www.somesite.com/this/that/]"+page+".html) in some cases. This script would write 10000 text files (if the values for range were correct) each containing the words in the tag. So what do you do with these files? Upload them to your server in a folder and then on to the PHP.

You'll need to edit your index.php file here (or at least a PHP file called by index.php). Firstly put the following code in the title tag:


Then you'll need to add code similar to the following to the beginning of the file (above the title tag):

// if URI in format index.php?...id=1000 assign value to id
$id =$_GET['id'];
// sitemap = string file name with id;
$sitemap = "./sitemap/100-".$id.".txt";
// This will open the file, in folder 'sitemap' that has the Media Name on the first line, and assign that file to an array;
$file_lines_array = file($sitemap);
$title = $file_lines_array[0];

That should do it. Any questions feel free to email me at blindlemonsam@hotmail.com I did this successfully for the site http://www.africapic.com ; go have a look (the easiest way is to navigate to the site's sitemap). The Python tutorial I promised is http://docs.python.org/tut/tut.html.