Archive for May, 2006

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Using File Manager in Cpanel

Tuesday, May 30th, 2006

You can find your file manager link for your website in your cpanel (control panel). File Manager will let you manage your files, of course, by creating new ones, renaming files, copying and moving files, deleting files, uploading files, etc.

Once you’ve clicked the file manager link, a new browser window should open up with your website contents listed. Beside each file, folder or option listed will be a small icon. If it’s a folder, a small folder icon appears just to the left of the folder name. If you click on the folder name, a list of options for that folder will appear on the top right of the browser window. These options include deleting the folder, changing the permissions of the folder, renaming the folder, moving the folder and copying the folder.

If you click the folder icon, you will be taken inside the folder and a new list of files and/or folders will appear with icons indicating whether it is a file or folder. Again, you can click on the name to manipulate the file or folder or the icon to go inside the folder.

If you click on an icon next to a file or document, it acts as if you clicked on the filename with a list of available actions you can take on the file in the top right corner of your browser. Clicking on ‘Up One Level’ will take you outside of the current folder. Clicking on ‘Upload Files’ will take you to a window that allows you to browse for a file on your local computer hard drive to upload to your website. Clicking on ‘Create New File’ will allow you to create a new file in the current folder. And ‘Create New Folder’ allows you to create a new folder in the current folder.

Working online with your files can be relatively simple and straightforward with a little guidance.

Please let me know if you have any questions about your file manager!

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MySQL Database Upgrade Changes PASSWORD Field Lengths

Monday, May 22nd, 2006

I recently upgraded my server. The new server had a newer version of MySQL installed. And all of a sudden, my scripts that used passwords in the database tables quit working.

After doing some research, I found that MySQL changed the length on the PASSWORD function used in the SQL queries. The length of the field it produces is now 41 characters long. All my password fields were set too short and so they were not converting correctly. I changed my table layouts to 41 characters for password fields and everything worked correctly again.

One way to tell if your version uses the new length is to look for an asterisk (*) in the first character of the generated password. The new version always puts this asterisk at the beginning.

I didn’t research enough to understand everything about the change - I just didn’t have the time. You can find all the details at the MySQL website. I just read enough to know what I needed to change to make my passwords work again. But, I did read enough to know that the change was made to increase security in the encryption scheme used for the passwords. So, I guess that’s a good thing. :)

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Using Tables for Better Web Page Layouts

Thursday, May 18th, 2006

Let’s say that I want to put two pictures side by side on my website like this:

but I want them to be nicely spaced across the page.

One way to do this is to use tables. Tables have rows and columns. Where the rows and columns intersect, they create cells. For two pictures side by side, we just need a 1 row by 2 column grid. I get this by using the table, table row and table data tags like this:


<table width="100%">
  <tr>
    <td width="50%" align="center">
      <img src="http://sonrises.com/images/1.jpg" width="160" height="120">
    </td>
    <td align="center">
      <img src="http://sonrises.com/images/2.jpg" width="160" height="120">
    </td>
  </tr>
</table>

This code will give me this:

Notice that I start with a set of table tags:


<table>
</table>

Then I add the rows - in our example, there is only one row:


<table>
  <tr>
  </tr>
</table>

Then I add the columns or cells - in our example, there are two inside the one row:


<table>
 <tr>
  <td>
  </td>
  <td>
  </td>
 </tr>
</table>

And then I add the code that I want to show up in each cell - in our example, it was a picture. It could be anything. Then I add attributes to the tag to change the width of the table and the cells. I also added attributes to center the pictures in the cells.

Tables are VERY useful in designing your web pages.

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Adding a Graphic to Your Site

Wednesday, May 17th, 2006

If you have a picture named pic1.jpg in your images folder on your domain.com, the the HTML code to make that picture show up would be:

<img src="http://domain.com/images/pic1.jpg">

To make this picture link to your page1.html, you would use the following code:

<a href="http://domain.com/page1.html">
<img src="http://domain.com/images/pic1.jpg"></a>

To center this picture, I just put the <center> and </center> tags around the line above

To change the size of the picture use the width and height tag attributes like this:

<img src="http://domain.com/images/pic1.jpg" width="100" height="100">

Make sure that you keep the relationship between width and height the same or your picture will be distorted. For instance, if your picture is originally size 640×480 then cut the sizes by the same amount. If you want the picture half as big, make the sige 320×240. If you want it 3/4 as big, then make it 480×360.

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Managing Your Default Email Account

Tuesday, May 16th, 2006

Did you know that your domain name usually has a default mail account? Every time someone sends an email to a non-existing email account on your domain name, the email lands in the default email account unless you have specified what should happen in this situation.

Sometimes folks wonder why their website keeps growing and growing in size and they start getting notices that they are about to exceed their disk space limitation. If they haven’t loaded any files lately and they don’t have any scripts that add large amounts of data to databases, the default mail account is usually the culprit.

You can specify in your cpanel exactly what you want to happen if someone sends an email to a non-existing email account on your domain.

Let me explain what I mean…

If someone sends an email to joe@promised-land-services.com and I have not specifically set up an account named joe@promised-land-services.com then the email will be forwarded to the default mail account for promised-land-services.com.

The default is usually the account username@domain.com - so if my username for promised-land-services.com is pls then the default mail account would be pls@promised-land-services.com

If I want to use the default account I can - this keeps me from having to set up different accounts for everything if I want to get all the email myself. I can use sales@promised-land-services.com, info@promised-land-services.com, cindy@promised-land-services.com, support@promised-land-services.com or whatever@promised-land-services.com without ever setting up an email account for any of these addresses.

I can then set up the default account in Outlook or whatever mail program I’m using and get any email sent to any of these email addresses.

But, if I don’t want any email to come to my account unless I’ve set up an account, then I can set the default in cpanel to either delete the emails by sending them to the blackhole or I can make the emails bounce. Bouncing the email just returns the email to it’s sender telling them that this email failed.

You really have a lot of control over your email, but if you set up an email account for yourself and never set your default to bounce or disappear, then your default email account may just take over!! A lot of disk space can be saved by deleting the emails in your default email account, many of which are spam, and then setting it to either the blackhole or bounce options.

If you need help configuring your email, let me know - cindy@team-pls.com

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Use Keywords in Your Page Titles

Monday, May 15th, 2006

When you name your pages on your website, use those keywords! The search engines place a lot of weight on the titles of your pages. You should name your files with the keywords too.

Let’s say that your keyword is: affordable web hosting then I should name my page:
affordable-web-hosting.html

And in the head section of my code I should have:

<head>
<title>Affordable Web Hosting</title>
</head>

Make sure your keywords are words or a phrase that your customers will search for - don’t use your business name unless it’s something that your customers use in the search. You can find good keywords here.

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Keep Your Contact Information Current!

Saturday, May 13th, 2006

It is very important that you keep your contact information current with your hosting company. The last couple of days I’ve had made enhancements to one of our servers and couldn’t not find contact information for some folks with websites on the server. Others, I found email addresses, but they returned because the email addresses are no longer active or are full. I have little to no way to contact these people now.

If your hosting plan allows you access to your cpanel, please make sure that your contact email is up to date at the top of the page. You never know when your hosting provider may need to contact you, so keep your contact information current!

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Check Your Stats!!

Friday, May 12th, 2006

Your website at PLS comes with good statistics scripts already installed - AWStats. But, sometimes you may need a little more. I found a great little page counter program that gives me some pretty awesome stats! You can check it out here

I don’t usually promote page counters - especially for commercial websites, but this little jewel really has some nice statistics, so if your website really depends on statistics, you should check out this little counter. There is a 30 day free trial.

But, to stay safe with Google, don’t use the invisible counter. Google has strict policies about hidden text and it may count against you in the search engines.

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Advertise in Forums!!

Tuesday, May 9th, 2006

Visit forums - get active in the discussions - and leave your website or affiliate links in your signature. The search engines will eventually pick up these links and count them as incoming links for your site.

Try to put a catchy phrase with your link that sparks interenst so that those that read the signature will be curious enough to click on the links. If the link is of interest to the target group in that forum, all the more better, because you may just get sales from the clicks!! But, even if it’s not, it can’t hurt you in terms of getting incoming links.

But, DON’T spam forums, blogs or other websites with your links!! This may do you more harm than good. It certainly ‘turns folks off’ to your product if you are spamming their sites.

And make sure you check the forum guidelines before you leave your signature. Especially when you are leaving affiliate links. Some forums don’t allow them!

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Advertise on eBay!

Monday, May 8th, 2006

Many folks tell me that you can’t put a link to your website from your eBay listings.

But, you can! Of course, you can link to your website if you host your pictures on your website. This may not give your website much publicity, but it does give you an incoming link to your website.

You can also link to your website if you link to a page that has more information about the item you are selling. The page to which you link can’t be a page that sells that item, but you can have links on that page to other pages that sell items.

eBay is a great advertising tool! Sell items on eBay and make sure you put your website address on the packing slip. Also put flyers and advertisements for other items you may sell inside the package when you ship the item.

Another thing you can do in your listing is add your email address so that the buyer can contact you. If I use my address: cindy@promised-land-services.com, someone might just be curious enough to go to promised-land-services.com to see what the website is about. It certainly can’t hurt!

And of course, you can have an About Me Page on eBay that points folks to your website where you sell other items.

Again, the more incoming links you have from reputable websites (they don’t get much more reputable than eBay), the better your chances of ranking well in Google!

And, eBay reaches the WORLD!!! How else can you market to the world with just a few minutes work??

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