Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

Win a luxury house in Cheltenham!

January 20th, 2009 - by admin

28

Ashton Market Now Open

November 28th, 2008 - by admin

Ashton Under Lyne Indoor Market is now open to the public.

 

The old market was burn down in May 2004 and a temporary indoor market was setup in a nearby car park. It took a long time to investigate the cause of the fire (which I believe is still unknown) and this is what caused a delay in the re-build process. The original walls are still in place but a complete new roof and layout has been introduced inside and it is looking very nice indeed.

 

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Google Analytics New Version Released – 7th November 2008

November 7th, 2008 - by admin

OK so google have released an updated version of Analytics, different layout and few new features!

You can now see from your summary page a summary of key data. Including a thumbs up or down image to indicate whether or not you have gone up or down in traffic. Pretty handy!!

Login to your control panel and let me know your views!!

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How To Convert your website to use multiple languages for foreign visitors

November 4th, 2008 - by admin

So you have an old website or even a current one and you not have the need for several languages because of the traffic your getting. There are many ways of doing this and im giving a fairly simplistic method (simple is not a bad thing in this case). I will be doing this tutorial in a few programming languages but i will first show you in PHP as its my favourite :)

PHP METHOD

I will break this down into a few stages for you. Im going to assume that you have some header text you need to be multi lingual and the navigation links (but this is really irrelevant as you can use this method wherever you need). This is designed for the static content on your pages (i will cover a similar method for DB driven content as soon as someone requests it or i get chance!)

Breakdown of Tasks

  1. create languages folder in your web root (or wherever you want on your web server)
  2. create english.php file within that for starters
  3. create definitions within that file, one for each static piece of text
  4. create index.php and create drop down language selector
  5. include the correct language file dependant on the selected language (stored in session data)
  6. substitute your static bits of text with the relevant definition call
  7. Enjoy your multi language website :)

OK lets get started…

1. create languages folder in your web root (or wherever you want on your web server)

OK im going to recommend creating a new folder in your website root called languages. This will be used to hold all your language definition files.

 

2. create english.php definition file

I’m using English as my example but name this after one of the languages you require and create the blank file called english.php in the languages folder.

 

3. create definitions within that file, one for each static piece of text

Edit the new language files in your editor of choice and add the following code (use your own names to define areas on your site you get the idea) 

<?php
define
(“agHeader”“Hello im a title”, true);
define(“agNavigationLink”“Hello im a link”true);
?>

 save the file. Now make a copy of this file in the same folder and call it for example “polish.php” and keep the definition names the same THIS IS CRUCIAL. Change the values though to the new language see below for a polish example!

<?php
define
(“agHeader”“Czesc jestem tytuł”, true);

define(“agNavigationLink”“Czesc jestem hyperłączność”true);
?>

 4. create index.php and create drop down language selector

Create a new index.php file outside of the language folder and within it we need to have a drop down list to select the language we require. Once this is selected we also need to store the language so that when we navigate away from the page the settings are remember. For this we will use sessions.

My Dropdown box code is like this: 

<form action=”<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>” method=”post”>
    <select name=”language”>
        <option value=”english”<?php if($_SESSION['language']==”english”){ echo ” selected=selected”; } ?>>English</option>
        <option value=”polish”<?php if($_SESSION['language']==”polish”){ echo ” selected=selected”; } ?>>Polish</option>
    </select>
    <input type=”submit” value=”Change” name=”submit” />
</form>

this will submit to itself when a language is selected and as you can see, it will automatically start at the current language using a quick check on the SESSION variable we are going to use.

 

5. include the correct language file dependant on the selected language

At the very top of the file i have started the session and done a couple of things. First check if the language has been posted via the form, if it has then it will be stored in a session variable. The next thing that is done is using the session data the language definition is included using a switch statement and not the form data directly for security reasons. We also use the PHP5 filter_input() function to be safe when setting the session data.

This is the code:

<?php
session_start();
if(isset($_POST['language'])){
 $_SESSION['language']= filter_input(INPUT_POST, ‘language’, FILTER_SANITIZE_SPECIAL_CHARS); //filter the posted data just for security
}

switch ($_SESSION['language']) {
 case “polish”:
  include(“languages/polish.php”);
  break;
 default:
  include(“languages/english.php”);
}

?>

6. substitute your static bits of text with the relevant definition call

Last step where you want your text to appear you simple echo out your definitions like so

<?php echo agHeader; ?>

7. Complete!

Thats it!! Below i’ve given a link to the example files and an online demo.

If you do download the example please comment and give feedback as i want to make my blog’s as useful as possible for everyone. If you need any more info or help just ask! I always have time for people if you are keen to learn :)

 Please comment on the article and if you like it link back to me and digg it! 

All feedback welcome, thank you

 

If you would like to download a basic example then please do so here

If you would like to view the online demo go here

 

23

Check Out My Giraffe Mug Collection!! Worth a Digg? Go On!

October 22nd, 2008 - by admin

I don’t know why but from about the age of 15 i thought that giraffes were really cool and i started being bought little giraffe soft toys and they are positioned in various cubby holes around the house. I thought id put a picture on here to show the world!!

anyone else end up getting bought loads of themed gifts because they mentioned they liked them once?!

I do love being bought them now though, it fantastic!!

Giraffe Mugs!!

20

Keyboard sniffers to steal data by analysing signals

October 21st, 2008 - by admin

Swiss researchers have discovered by analysing the signals produced by keystrokes they can determine what a user is typing.

The researchers developed several attacks that work on a wide variety of computer keyboards.

Many keyboards have not been branded as “not safe to transmit sensitive information”.

The attacks were dreamed up by doctoral students Martin Vuagnoux and Sylvain Pasini fromSwitzerland.

The amount of threats on the internet seems to be constantly on the increase and it does worry me somewhat that it will spiral out of control.

What do you think?

19

Win 2x The Killers Tickets for Manchester Gig (UK)

October 21st, 2008 - by admin

ok so i bought a couple of Killers tickets and im going to give them away as part of a relaunch of my music site! so check out the info at my blog

read more | digg story

17

How To Drive Traffic to Your Blog – The Advice of a 12 Year Old

October 21st, 2008 - by admin

Can’t get traffic to your blog? A 12 year will show you how!

read more | digg story

16

How To Drive Traffic To Your Website – Quick Guide

October 18th, 2008 - by admin

Ok ive been doing a lot of work recently on seo and boosting hits to websites. Although i havn`t implemented this on my site i have done it on a few small customer sites and want to do a quick and albeit basic guide of things to do.

1. Site Content

Ok first things first you need to make sure that your site is full of useful and informative content. Google loves keywords and popular phrases so make sure you have lots of content that is updated on a regular basis.

2. Submit your site to search engines

Right so you have a site put together for example a blog. Most blogging software (like wordpress – the one i use) uses URL rewriting to make sure the website address has plenty of keywords in it. Google loves this! And of course you have made sure that you have lots of regular updates with new articles, news, reviews etc.

Submit your website to all the top search engines! You want your site indexed ASAP to get yourself on the search listings.

Submit yourself to the following sites:

http://www.addme.com/submission.htm

http://pingomatic.com/

Get on yahoo quickly by adding a refee in your account like this:

http://add.my.yahoo.com/content?url=http://www.yourblog.com/urblog.xml

You can submit your site to google directly if you want. Id advise signing up for the analytics feature which is free. This gives you stats on traffic to your swhich is great!

3. Link to your site from busy blogs

Digg, technorati and all the sharing/social tools out there are the best way to get traffic. Make sure you are talking on other blogs and that they are getting involved with what your doing. Once you get a few people linking to your site then your sorted. Its always a little bit slow getting going but put in the effort and you will have a busy blog in no time!

i really appreciate others views and comments so hope to hear from you all :)

13

Google Adsense Profits and making the most of `free` money

October 16th, 2008 - by admin

So i havn’t written a blog in a long time so i thought it was about time. I was looking into Google Adsense the other week and remembered id set up an account a few months ago and forget all about it. When researching on the net about ways to make an extra quid or two many articles were talking about Adsense.

This article isn’t about to telling you the way you can make money on the web but just a few thoughts that i have and some pointers in the right direction.

  1. Adsense – Provided by google, a way of placing there ads on your website and generating revenue when people click on them
  2. Amazon Ads – get upto 15% on refferals

 

1. Adsense

BE CAREFULL. Check the Terms of Service (TOS) as you can’t give out specific information about what you make or clicks it takes to earn $100 etc. If you breach there terms by clicking your own adverts you will get a good opportunity for free cash taken away from you!

It takes a few minutes to get setup and working, the longest part is waiting for them to accept your account (make sure you have enough content on your website for them too approve it)

So the big question how much can / do people earn?

In my first month ive earn $6. Yer yer i know, a bit rubbish! But then ive been a bit rubbish and not being using it properly. I had one advert on a website that is getting redeveloped as we speak. Was never going to make me rich! But i have seen stories of people earning $100,000 a month from adsense! If you have a blog, website, a page with some content or somewhere to put an ad box,  you will notice the income start coming in. If your site isn’t busy then yes it will take some time to earn decent money but if you keep writing content that has plenty of informative and interesting text google will like your pages more and thus more people will end up finding them.

So come on, who’s making it big time through adsense? :)

Few Other blogs i read when looking into adsense:

http://www.blogcatalog.com/group/blogging-money-and-traffic/discuss/entry/how-much-do-you-make-a-month-on-adsense

http://www.profitblogger.com/wordpressadsense/

 

2. Amazon Affiliate scheme

With Amazon associates scheme you only earn money for people who buy via your adverts. But you can earn up to 15% on some referrals! Potentially you could earn a fortune from this, but it really depends heavily on the content of your site. If your are reviewing products on your site then people are there probably to find out if something is good. If you have a good review and within that is a amazon advert to buy it – you are likely to get a referral. This all sounds really easy doesn’t it? Review loads of products and make loads of money? If you have a busy site then it is this easy but thats the hard part, driving traffic to your site (which i will cover in my next blog)

 

All comments and monthly taking on your advert schemes (providing the individual ad schemes allow this) are welcomed as i want to here about your solutions and experiences!!

 

 

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