Net Covered Blog

Miscellaneous by admin

Hello everybody. If you have already visited this blog before you must have noticed some big changes going on around. I have created absolutely new design. I have kept the previous color scheme though I’ve smoothed the colors to be easier on eyes. In addition, I have tried to make the content more organized - reduced number of categories and more comprendious sidebar. Hope you like it. You can download my previous theme for free here. Enjoy!

Secondly, I have started to use the Entrecard in order to exchnage relevant traffic with other bloggers. You can see it in the “Featured ad” box. I’m also planning to make better comments template. Something similar like at this blog. There are more upcoming changes and few really great ideas in my head so be prepared.

Wordpress by admin

By the time you read this, you should already have archive.php, header.php, index.php and page.php completed. Now we will move to a single post and a comments template. Read the rest of the article

Miscellaneous by admin

What would you say if I told you that a very simple trick can save up to 75% of your bandwidth, visibly make your website load up to four times faster and make your visitors more satisfied? The data on the web is forecasted to grow exponentially over the next few years. In addition, even today the number one complaint among web users is lack of speed. The answer to this challenge is HTTP compression.

HTTP Compression?

The basic idea is to compress data being sent out from the server and have the browser decompress this data on the fly, thus reducing the amount of data sent and increasing the page display speed. The data is being compressed dynamically on the fly so you don’t need to upload any pre-compressed files. Read the rest of the article

Making Money Online, Miscellaneous by admin

Many of you are already probably familiar with the story of John Chow but for those who aren’t I’m writing this article. Long story short, he is one of the most successful bloggers out there. John Chow is the owner of the famous site John Chow dot Com with his miscellaneous ramblings of a dot com mogul. He makes money online by telling other people how much money he makes online. Despite his struggle with Google, he’s making tens of thousands dollars each month just with his blog.

Back in December 2006 John Chow started a very aggressive backlink campaign, in which he would give a link back for every review of his blog when the text anchor ‘make money online’ was used. He managed to get 870 links from various sites as a direct result of the campaign. This turned out to be very successful for him as in just two months from the beginning of the campaign his revenue has almost trippled. His blog income has grown very fast from $352.94 in September 2006 to $7,011.05 in February 2007 (increase in revenue is amazing -> $6,658.11). Read the rest of the article

Miscellaneous by admin

First of all, the last week was deadly for me. I was struggling in college, trying to get enough credits to pass the exams plus I had to take care of about a thousand other troubles. There are still few problems ahead (driving license exam on Wednesday…) but at least the college stuff is all gone for few weeks.

Secondly, I have suddenly (I was planning to wait for few more months but somehow couldn’t wait) switched to Wordpress 2.5. That’s right folks, this blog is running on completely new engine now and so far I like it. I haven’t encountered any problems while switching to version 2.5. Just copied all Wordpress files into my blog directory (without wp-config-sample.php and wp-content directory of course) and upgraded the database (one click process) and that’s it.

Honestly, the whole “switching process” took me about 2 minutes. I’d like to thank all Wordpress developers for their hard work and especially for making the jump from 2.3 to 2.5 so smooth and fast. Thank you!

Oh and one more thing. Check out my new logo and give me some feedback. Personally, I think it’s awesome but my opinion is very subjective and maybe biased…

Free webmaster resources, Wordpress by admin

Hello. I’m offering the Net Covered theme for free download. Click here to download this elegant theme with emphasis on the content. Feel free to check out my blog to see how it looks. Of course you will need to make your own logo and banners.

April 18 - uploaded the latest version…

Read the rest of the article

Wordpress by admin

Make sure you have read the first chapter and have done everything I’ve been explaining there. In this part, I will show you how to create the wordpress loop. The loop is the most important portion of your theme. It takes care of displaying posts and articles. Read the rest of the article

Featured, Wordpress by admin

Does your wordpress blog look too dusty? Need a new refreshing theme? You’ve probably already spent hours browsing the web in order to find an ideal one but most of the free themes you’ll find just won’t be good enough. Well, what about making your own theme? Yeah. It’s not that hard. All you need is some experience with HTML and CSS plus maybe a little knowledge of PHP syntax (though this isn’t necessary - it’s enough to copy and paste all PHP codes). Read the rest of the article

Free webmaster resources by admin

I’m giving away for free download few ready to use css templates. All are created with an emphasis on easy modification. Featuring valid XHTML and CSS markup.

If you need any help with them, drop a line in the comments. I’ll gladly help.

Webdesign by admin

It’s really difficult to explain to your client why he ought to want his website coded using CSS layout rather than outdated tabled layout. The person usually knows only very little (or absolutely nothing) about HTML or CSS. It’s best to give him/her few reasons anyone without coding experience or knowledge can easily understand. He/she needs simple answers to complex questions.

Attractive Website

This is the best answer and will persuade almost every client. Everyone wants to have beautiful, modern looking website. The reason why to use CSS isn’t just to make a text bold, italic or underlined. The true reason is tables just cannot create so stunning visual experience. Show your client few professional and modern looking websites and say: “This is done with CSS.” I can guarantee almost everyone will be convinced right away.

Make More And Save More Money

What if you still haven’t convinced the client? Don’t worry, this will do it. Everbody wants to gain profit from his or her website but most of the people think that all websites have equal profit potential. The truth is that cleaner and semantic code that separates content from presentation is more valuable and it will rank better in search engines. That means more traffic, more customers and finally more money!

On top of that, CSS will also save your money in a longer run. Sooner or later, you’ll certainly want to change something about your site - whether it be color scheme, font or anything else. Instead of editing every HTML or PHP file by hand you’ll just need to edit the stylesheet and you’re done. It’s less time consuming and will save you much money especially when you are hiring a professional coder to modify your site.

Think Forward

The Internet keeps changing from day to day and so do browser capabilities. CSS is a guarantee of longevity and endurance. CSS protects your site from becoming outdated too soon. It protects your investitions and business interests. When your potential client finds out that CSS will ensure his website’s future and capacitate it for future growth, you won’t need to convince him further.

Blind People

“CSS helps blind people.” Mentioning that when discussing the layout will help a lot. Businessmen don’t like to be seen as ones limiting opportunities of disabled people. That would ruin their reputation. They will come to a conclusion that making their website accessible to blind people will shape their image as a highly professional and smooth company. “It will make things look shiny and reliable,” they will think. And rightfully so.

Conclusion

Of course there are instances where tables will do better job than CSS. Over and above, some things can be done only in tables (I might write about that in the future). When you see that tables would be a better solution be fair about it and tell it to the client. But honestly, those are only extreme cases. Most of the time, the CSS will do better. The only problem is that people still don’t know what the acronym means (even though it’s been around for quite few years). They are familiar with the HTML but don’t know what CSS really is about. That’s why you need to give theme simple and persuasive answers when they ask something like: “Why not use tabled layout on my website?”. The four I’ve listed will do the job sufficiently.