Binary Turf

Practice Caution with Experimental AMO Addons

Shivanand Sharma — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 18:16:02 +0000

All Firefox users love addons. They are one of the primary reason that Firefox is the most popular browser today. But while Firefox is a secure browser (and you can count on it), the addons that you install could compromise its security. Thus as an AMO Editor who tries to contribute to the purpose by reviewing addons in my free time, I’d like to share this incident.

One of the users of Firefox — CatThief — brought this to our notice, so due credit to him. We at AMO found two addons containing malware which managed to reach the public due to their experimental status. Experimental addons are the ones which are not reviewed by our editor team at AMO and are made available to the general public with a warning — that the addon is experimental and has not been reviewed/approved by Mozilla. You can read more about the incident at the Mozilla Add-ons Blog.

Thus take extreme caution when installing experimental addons. You never know what is in them and they are still pending review by the Editor team. As a result of this incident we have updated our addon validation tools to detect viruses better. Nevertheless practicing caution and being aware are your best defense against malware and security breaches.

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PayPal Debacle: 15 lessons learnt

Shivanand Sharma — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:56:45 +0000

There is a lot of hatred and criticism about PayPal and its practices. And after what happened to the Indian customers we realized that we learnt these lessons the hard way.

No Protection from Arbitrary PayPal decisions: Their decision is final and cannot be appealed.
No prior intimation: PayPal didn’t intimate India based users about the recent change in their policies did they?
No adherence to regulations: The PayPal payment service is regarded as a stored value facility under Singapore law. The Holder of the PayPal stored value facility, does not require the approval of the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
Customer Service: “Effective customer service requires significant personnel expense, and this expense, if not managed properly, could impact our profitability significantly.” Thus their emails are like replies from automated bots.
Premium fees for brand recognition: PayPal does charge higher fees due to its brand and recognition which though doesn’t amount to much.
Breach of trust: More often than not you’ll face more injustice from PayPal than damage from fraudulent activities. Through our years of experience with PayPal there were no monetary damages from fraudulent activity and maximum from PayPal’s activities.
Always have alternatives: Keeping all your eggs in one basket is not the way of the wise.
Never leave spare balance: You never know when PayPal may freeze your account. As you understand they easily get away with arbitrary decisions. So keep withdrawing periodically.
Favoring the buyer: PayPal’s attitude is more oriented towards buyer protection than sellers. Buyer complaints are settled without interacting with the seller.
Money reversal at will: PayPal TOS state they can choose to reverse transactions at will.
No real merchant account: Real merchants have real merchant accounts and do not direct their customers to PayPal.
Get refund and the goods as well: A compliant by buyer about not receiving the goods easily ends in them getting the refunds and getting to keep the goods as well.
You Waive Your Credit Card Consumer Protection Rights: As soon as you accept their terms and conditions.
PayPal is the investigator, judge, jury and executioner.
Avoid PayPal: This is what we learnt with the above 14 points.

What is one thing that you’d add to this list? Also see Wikipedia PayPal Criticism, Facts you didn’t know about PayPal, Freelancers beware of PayPal and PayPal Evil.

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The Ultimate and Complete Guide to AdSense

Shivanand Sharma — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 09:35:32 +0000

AdSense is the popular choice for the majority of bloggers and webmasters when it comes to monetizing their site. Here’s Binary Turf’s Ultimate and Complete Guide to AdSense Implementation. We’ll attempt to focus on all considerations to maximize AdSense returns and revenues while retaining visitors and traffic etc. Additionally you can also save this as a PDF e-book using the link at the bottom of the article.

Before You Begin
Implementation
- Blending, Complimenting and Contrasting
- Blending vs Complimenting vs. Contrasting
- Image vs. Text
- Ad Formats
- Placement
- Color considerations
- Web-Design considerations
- Fonts
How to Get Better Paying Ads
How to Get Traffic
Improving Earnings
Premium publishers
Reference and Resources

Before You Begin

Here are a couple of prerequisites before you begin implementing our suggestions. If you are reading casually don’t bother.

You’ll need and AdSense account. This will ensure that you have have been approved by the AdSense team with an approved blog or a website.
A working AdSense Account: If you have issues with the PIN or any other issues, this article may not help.
Read the AdSense Program Policies.
Familiarity with web tools. You should be comfortable setting up and managing your site etc. Familiarity with AdSense, advertising and related jargon.
YMMV: Your mileage may vary.
Binary Turf Disclaimer: Please do not hold us responsible for the outcomes of using our advise. We are not responsible if you violate the AdSense TOS. Additionally, this guide is not for the beginners. This is for AdSense publishers who have at least a few months of experience with earning through AdSense.

Now that you have a website, an AdSense account and we assume you’ve already been making some money, let’s try to make more out of it.

Implementation

There are many factors which come into play during the on-site implementation of AdSense code. The majority of these considerations are related to advertisement visibility. Thus a lot of science and theory goes into backing up our advice.

Blending, Complimenting and Contrasting: Blending makes the ads appear inline with the content and blend with it. This is different from obfuscation though so make sure you do not confuse your visitors else you violate the TOS. Complimenting means you want the ads to use the site colors and theme like using the header background color for the background of the ads etc. Contrasting means you are using colors which contrast your site colors. Like having yellow ad background on a site with green or black as the primary color.
Blending vs. Complementing vs. Contrasting: All other things being equal, basically more clicks mean more money. Blending the ads makes them look like the actual website/article content. While adverts which stand out attempt to attract visitor attention by their visibility. As a safety practice and to abide by the TOC, if you are placing the ads in the content, ensure that you leave a decent margin around the ads. This will make sure that Google does not accuse you of confusing the visitors. When blending the ads, make sure that ads do not have a border, the background is that same as that of the content and the links have the color of the links in your content. If you are blending image ads there’s not much you can do. But you can try to place the ads in the place of the post-image thereby replacing it or moving it down the post. Blending works best for in-content ads and complimenting and contrasting works better when ads are implemented in sidebars or adjacent to the post because they are able to draw visitor attention with their colors.
Image vs. Text: Generally speaking, image ads work better when they compliment or contrast the post/site/blog content and text ads work better when they blend. However the ability to customize the text ads means you have more control over how you want to implement them — blend them, compliment the content or create a contrasting effect. Google has its own algorithm which decides whether to show text or image ads. However depending on your preference you may want the ad units to be only one kind — image or text. There’s no clear winner here though we’ve heard claims that one works better than the others. However in our experience its how you implement that is more important that the kind of ad-units you implement.
Ad Formats: When blending make sure to use an ad format which aligns and lays out well with the content. At other times use the generally popular ones recommended by AdSense while you create the ad-unit.
Placement: If you are blending the ads they generally perform the best when placed in-content. However contrasting ads are more likely to perform better when places adjacent to the content like in sidebars etc. Place the ads above the fold where the visitors will notice them without having to scroll down the page. Ideally your page length shouldn’t be more than 1.5 times the vertical screen resolution of the majority of visitors. You can check out the screen details of your visitors if your web analytics program allows you to.
Color considerations: Color considerations mostly come into play when you are implementing text ads and want to retain the beauty of the web design and when you want to contrast the ads. At other times you basically use the colors of the site or the content. Here’s a handy tool to generate a color scheme for contrasting and complementing colors. (Note: Contrasting and complementary colors have a different meaning in the context of color-theory. In this article we’ll use the words as adjectives and not in their literal meaning in the color-theory context).
- Colors on the opposites sides (of point O equidistant from the center) always create a contrast. Though you’ll still find certain other color combinations to create good contrast like yellow on green or black.
- Colors on the same side of point O create a monochromatic effect which better compliment each other. You can rotate this arm on the center O to get colors you want. In most cases they’ll create beautiful color combinations.
Web Design considerations: Ads deteriorating the site design, look and feel is a major concern of publishers. Ads get blended in a minimalist design or just plain simple web page. But for a beautifully themed wordpress blog effective implementation means retaining the look and feel of the design while being to make revenue from ads. Well designed sites are orderly and organized. No doubt these sites are built for long term visitor loyality. As such placing ads such that they are not obtrusive or confusing becomes very important. Thus make sure to use the elements of space, border and colors to distinguish the ads from content while keeping the effect subtle. Google sets the best example here. Remember the Google Search results containing the sponsored links? The ones which show at the top have a subtle yellow background and the ones on the right have a subtle blue border. Such implementation not only retains the look and feel of the design, it also ensures maximum benefit for advertisers, Google and you above all. Such ads have a better conversion rate too.
Fonts: In our experience the default AdSense font or Verdana appeared the most legible. Others showed up small or illegible and also performed poorly. Larger font sizes increase the visibility however “larger” and “medium” are relative sizes and render different text sizes for different layouts. For certain ad formats they have no effect at all.

Additionally Effective implementation of link ads, AdSense search units, AdSense for feeds, AdSense for mobile and AdSense for Domains are the things you want to use for maximum monetization.

How to Get Better Paying Ads

The better the targeting the more the ads are likely to make you revenue. Having better targeting is a result of good SEO while better paying ads could also relate to the niche of your site or blog. Thus, let’s break it into two parts.

SEO: Search Engine Optimization or SEO effectively ensures that your site shows up to the search engines and bots as what it is intended to be. Thus the layout and content should be semantic. To see how your website appears (more or less) to a search engine try to see your site in an all text browser like Linx or disable all javascript and CSS in your browser or the site itself. What the search bots see additionally see are the meta tags, the page title etc. The wordpress theme by default takes good care of the SEO mechanics however ensure that you place the relevant keywords in appropriate place like the meta description, headings etc. When the AdSense bot knows what your site actually is about, AdSense will show more relevant advertisements which are more likely to be useful to your visitors. Additionally use AdSense section targeting and visit our recommended reading SEO links.
Niche: There are certain niches which pay more for advertisements and others that pay less. As a blogger or a webmaster, if your sole purpose is to monetize your site, creating a niche site is the answer. Do your research and create content that is useful for the visitors and advertisers.
Relevancy: Additionally Google AdSense manually allows you to review the site ads and block ads of certain categories which do not perform as well or are not relevant to your site content. Use this feature under AdSense Setup > Ad Review Center > Category Filters. Additionally review the placement targeted ads periodically.

Additionally use the Competitive Ad Filter to block ads that advertise competing products and services.

How to Get Traffic

Ads will earn you nothing if you do not get visitors to your site. Thus the first step is to get your site indexed by the search engines. Once your site starts showing up in relevant search results you’re more likely to start getting visitors. Until then spreading the word of mouth or links to your blog in forums etc. is the way to go. But most importantly the actual concern for you would be to get more traffic than just getting the usual visitors. Here are some of the sources which can get you good traffic. Read our article on 11 Surefire tips to increase blog traffic.

Guest posts on popular blogs
Mentions and links to your site on other sites
Useful information on your site that visitors are search and seek.
Useful downloads or applications
Useful online tools or web application that visitors can find handy
Popular social media sites which rank your content well.
Regularly updated content
Advertising and promotion
Announcing events or awards
Breaking the news

Improving Earnings

We mean learning and refining through experimentation. After all this entire post is dedicated to improving earnings already. Here are certain tools you can use to understand the advertising dynamics and site performance.

Google Analytics allows you to see the site overlay under the “Content” section in addition to providing site analytics.
Click Heat allows you to create a heatmap and a click map of your site.
Crazy Egg is a paid service which allows you more comphrensive data like Click Heat.
Use Section Targeting.
A/B Split Method of testing allows you to alternatively display two ad units and compare their results. This method has been suggested and approved by AdSense.
Track performance through AdSense channels.
Use Google Webmaster tools for effective site management.
Keep updated with the Inside AdSense Blog — the official blog of the AdSense team.
Review and practice Google’s suggestions for improving performance.

Premium Publishers

Premium publishers have a premium AdSense account which provides them additional benefits like designing their own ad sizes, negotiation their own share of earning through ads etc. While they have better control on the ads and earnings, there still is opportunity to squeeze out better performance than counting on revenue-sharing-negotiations.

Reference and Resources

Google Webmaster Tools
Inside AdSense Blog
Google AdSense Help

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How to disable pingbacks and trackbacks on your wordpress blog

Shivanand Sharma — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 05:22:13 +0000

Are you bothered by the pingbacks and trackbacks some spam sites post on one of your blog entries? It’s good as far as they are not being posted by spam sites and is a legitimate way to quote mentions of your post by other sources. However now-a-days it’s mostly the spam sites trying to steal your visitors by posting pingbacks and trackbacks. Here are two things you need to do to disable trackbacks and pingbacks on your wordpress blog.

Disable pingbacks and trackbacks for new posts:

In your wordpress Admin panel go to Settings > Discussions and uncheck the box for “Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks.)”. This will make sure that all newer posts have the pingbacks and trackbacks disabled. Remember this is only for the posts that you’ll publish going forward. The next step disables them for the past posts.
Use SQL to close the pingbacks and trackbacks:

If you are just starting out you can skip this step. All your wordpress data resides in a database. You’ll need to open the database using phpMyAdmin etc. (refere to your webhosting documentation) and run the following SQL query —
```
UPDATE wp_posts SET ping_status='closed' WHERE post_status = 'publish' AND post_type = 'post';
UPDATE wp_posts SET ping_status='closed' WHERE post_status = 'publish' AND post_type = 'page';
```
The first one disables them for all published posts and the second one disables them for all pages.

To disable or enable pingbacks for specific pages or posts, go to the post editor and under the post check or uncheck the box for “Allow trackbacks and pingbacks on this page” under Discussion.

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Notice: Contributions for ColorfulTabs and other software currently on hold

Shivanand Sharma — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:41:18 +0000

Contributions towards ColorfulTabs and our other popular software has been put on hold due to a recent change in PayPal policy. If you have made a contribution after 1st Feb, 2010 it will be refunded back to your account. We appreciate your decision to contribute however currently we are not able to accept any contributions till the existing issues are fixed at PayPal’s end. We request you to please bear with us.

We’ll keep you notified of any related events as they occur. Thanks for using our software.

© Binary Turf. Also learn photography tips, get technical support or provide your feedback.

Advisory: Paypal reverses personal payments to and from Indian accounts

Shivanand Sharma — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:33:01 +0000

PayPal has chosen to reverse all personal payments to and from Indian paypal accounts. The following is the standard email notification that the receiving parties are getting:


Hello ,

Your payment of   has been sent back to the sender of the payment.

We reversed this payment because we have stopped allowing personal payments to be sent to or from India.

If this was a payment for a purchase of goods or services, and not a personal payment, then you may contact the buyer and have him or her resend the payment as follows:  (a) click the Send Money tab, (b) select "Goods," and (c) provide a shipping address.

If this payment was a personal payment such as a gift, then we have requested that the sender find another payment method until we restore personal payments to and from India.

We are trying to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and we're sorry for any inconvenience.

Thank you,
PayPal

The known date for the earliest transaction reversed is 1st Feb 2010. DigitalPoint thread “India: Paypal Returning payments?” and several others are actively discussing this topic. We tried to reach the Singapore PayPal customer service and inquired if there was any policy change, documentation, notification published or sent to the user. However they referred us to the US customer support which currently is offline till the regular business hours resume. Several paypal users who received these payments report their account balance going into negative.

Update 1 —

Dear ,

Thank you for contacting PayPal.

I understand that you want to know why the payment you received for
$ USD from is reversed. This payment was sent as
Personal. We have stopped allowing Personal Payments to be sent to and
from India. We are aware of this issue and I sincerely regret the
inconvenience it has caused you. We are trying to resolve this as soon
as possible. Below are the details:

Personal Payment - Send Money for India Accounts

· India customers are no longer able to see the option to send a
Personal payment on the Send Money page
· They can continue to use other payment options, such as eBay checkout.

If this was a payment for a purchase of goods or services, and not a
personal payment, then you may contact the buyer and have him or her
resend the payment as follows: (a) click the Send Money tab, (b) select
‘Goods’, and (c) provide a shipping address.

If this payment was a personal payment, such as a gift to a friend or
family member, then we request that you find another payment method
until we restore personal payments to and from India.

Although India customers are unable to send Personal payments, they are
still receiving Personal payments from Non India customers.

· In order to stop ALL Personal payments TO and FROM India accounts, we
have started reversing Personal payments sent by Non India customers
starting today. (the only exception will be in cases where the buyer has
included a shipping address – we don’t want to delay any shipment of
goods)
· Emails will be sent to both sender and recipient to let them know why
the money was returned and what options they have to proceed forward.
(see attached for examples)
· We are also in the process of implementing a change on the website to
automatically stop the payment from processing, rather than waiting to
reverse the payment. We will send you additional updates as soon as we
have more details.

The Personal payment option on the International Send Money page has
been updated and India has been removed from the ‘select a country’ drop
down list.

· If the payment was for a purchase of goods or services, and not a
personal payment, then the buyer may resend the payment to the seller by
following these steps on the PayPal website: (a) click the Send Money
tab, (b) select ‘Goods’, and (c) provide a shipping address.

I'll be glad to hear from you if you need clarification, please email us
again and we will try our best to give you immediate answers. Thank you
for choosing PayPal for your online payment needs. We appreciate your
business.

Sincerely,
Dayna
PayPal, an eBay Company

Consumer advisory: PayPal Pte Ltd, the Holder of the PayPal™ payment
service stored value facility, does not require the approval of the
Monetary Authority of Singapore. Consumers (users) are advised to read
the terms and conditions carefully.

Got more questions? You'll find answers at our improved help center.
Click "Help" on the top right corner of any PayPal page to get started
or you can visit www.PayPal.com/101.

Original Message Follows:
------------------------
Form Message
customer subject: Clarification on personal payments being reversed.
customer message: Transaction ID: 'xxxxxxxxx'
Additional Information: 'The payments we receive are being reversed. Can
you please clarify your stand on "personal payments" to and from India?
What is a personal payment? We accept donations for our free software.
What is the solution/workaround for this issue?'

We’ll keep this post updated with the latest so keep watching this post for more information. You may want to digg this story and spread the news. Also read PayPal Debacle: 15 Lessons Learnt.

© Binary Turf. Also learn photography tips, get technical support or provide your feedback.

Normalize Audio Compilations and Music Albums with MP3Gain

Shivanand Sharma — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 20:42:03 +0000

Let’s say you are creating a compilation of your favorite music tracks for a party or to play while you go jogging. There are good chances that the volume of each track will be different and some tracks may sound dull and others may startle you as they start. Good music CD burning programs come with this feature built in. For other MP3Gain comes to rescue. MP3Gain ensures that all your music tracks have a normal volume and it will increase or decrease the volumes of all tracks to bring them to a common volume level. This is best for parties where you want a constant volume of music tracks etc. Grab MP3Gain and normalize your music compilations. MP3Gain is freeware.

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ColorfulTabs 4.2

Shivanand Sharma — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 04:05:49 +0000

Please submit requests and technical issues in the forums. ColorfulTabs has been updated to version 4.2. We’ve implemented recoloring of tabs. This comes real handy when using the random coloring scheme because there are times when you don’t like the default color that is generated by ColorfulTabs. Power to you — right-click on the tab > ColorfulTabs > Re-Color. But we weren’t satisfied with that. Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could hold down a particular shortcut key and have the tab cycle through randomly generated colors instead of reaching the tab’s context menu again and again? The shortcut Alt+Shift+R comes in handy for that.

Additionally we’ve reimplemented the algorithm that generates random colors. Earlier, to get a unique color we use the unique “linkedpanel” attribute of the tab to generate a color from it. It so happens that the linkedpanel attribute of the tabs is only different by a trivial number and what we really needed was a wildly random value. Thus instead of relying on that attribute we chose to generate a real random value to give us colors that are wide-apart. Now there’s a catch.

When it comes to colors there are millions. But your eyes can only differentiate as many. Additionally not all of them are pretty you’ll agree. The power of ColorfulTabs is in beauty and simplicity. Something pleasant yet effective that makes working with Firefox, Seamonkey, Flock fun and easy — that’s what ColorfulTabs has been designed for. So, these colors are still limited by the default values in the Advanced Options of ColorfulTabs (which exist to make sure that the generated colors are pleasant and beautiful). However to get a wider gamut of colors you can change the value of luminance and saturation if the Advanced Options of ColorfulTabs. The bigger the difference between the minimum and maximum values the wider the gamut. However do understand that all those colors may not be as pretty as the default ones generated. But suit your taste.

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11 Surefire tips to increase blog traffic

Shivanand Sharma — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:26:28 +0000

Traffic means the “daily bread” for bloggers. And most of what we see around is that getting traffic is all about SEO and good content. True but not necessarily. Here are our eleven tips to help you get more traffic from various sources.

Guest Posts:

Offer guest posts for high traffic blogs. In addition to being introduced to a big community you’ll also gain incoming traffic from them.
Offer downloads:

Believe it or not, some of the biggest sites get huge traffic because they offer popular goodies to the regular visitor. Create something unique that everyone can use. Amit from labnol.org offered the Google AdSense Sandbox where AdSense publishers can preview ads which may appear on their site.No doubt it’s one of the most popular tools on the internet.
Offer desktop/sidebar gadgets and toolbars:

Some thing downloadable and usable… something that will tuck your blog on your visitors desktop. They’ll be able to reach to your blog easily. Offer an RSS desktop gadget or a Custom Search Engine or perhaps a toolbar to search your site or something they can add to their Google Personalized Homepage iGoogle.
Pitch subscribers to visit:

Most of the RSS visitors rarely visit your site. Pitch them to comment and visit your site. Or perhaps include only the teasers of your posts in your RSS or email updates.
Regularity strikes a rhythm:

Update your blog daily or at least regularly. If you write everyday make sure you have some extra drafts saved for the day when you’ll miss the show. If you write weekly prepare the post in advance so you don’t miss it. Your visitors are real people with human habits and they expect to get to read regularly.
Retain your visitors:

With the traffic you get on your site make sure you retain it. Avoid pop-ups or poor content or any other thing that may be irritating. Ask them to subscribe or perhaps visit again to read the next part of your upcoming post.
Draw traffic from social media:

If you are into social media, build your profile and tap the networking potential. If you are not into social media we’d guess you are not into blogging yet.
Use the right CMS:

Using the correct CMS takes care of the SEO mechanics. Good site navigation, usability, indexing, SEO etc. come as a promise. Use a popular CMS which has a large user and support base. You’ll also have access to a large plugin-base to extend the functionality and power of your blog.
Practice and promote participation:

Encourage visitors to participate. Start an event or start a competition or ask a question. Encourage commenting and do likewise. If you want visitors to get involved be the one to take the first step.
Spare a good post post for high traffic day:

Just when you get lucky to get Digg traffic or even considerable traffic, make sure you have some excellent content or goodies to offer them Or even say a thankyou and try to retain them. The more the traffic the more exposure and potential to increase it.
Design — KISS:

You didn’t expect this one way down the list. But this is a reminder that worrying about the cosmetics should be high in your priority. Most of the CMS come with a good theme. Keep It Short and Simple. Unless you are into graphics or web design you shouldn’t worry about wooing visitors with fleshy and saturated colors. Make sure you have an excellent website navigation menu and architecture. That will do for now.

Hopefully this is enough work for the weekend. Build your first blog gadget that people can add to their desktop — maybe to be able to search your blog or to get the latest blog updates or just to play a trivial game to kill some time. How did you like these tips?

© Binary Turf. Also learn photography tips, get technical support or provide your feedback.

5 essential features to look for in a web host

Shivanand Sharma — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 21:43:13 +0000

A good web host is an essential part of the website back-end. Most of hte web-hosting is readily available for free and if you just want to start a site you can go with Google sites, Wordpress.Com, Blogger or any other service. But when it comes to having your own hosting here are five things to look for when choosing your hosting provider.

Web Server:

Look for a hosting powered by the Apache web-server. Apache is not only extensively customizable and flexible, it is pretty stable also. However Apache has a lot of functionality which almost is magic to the layman. The fine grained configuration, redirection and other website management stuff is real easy and flexible with Apache. In fact you should run on Apache unless your website requires other web server specifically.
Server Side Scripts:

Most of the CMS require PHP and most of the web hosts support PHP. But we mention it here because it is an essential. If you don’t have PHP it won’t be called “hosting” per se.
Database:

MySQL is the de facto standard and is the minimum you’ll require to run any open source CMS.
Multiple Domain hosting:

The flexibility of Apache allows you to host multiple sites and domains on the same host. Look for a web host which offers you this functionality because you don’t want to buy additional plans for every new site you start.
Tech Support:

Look for a web host backed by a strong technical support team available round the clock. You never know when you get stuck setting up a site or some configuration or just in case things go wrong. Look for phone, live chat and email support.

Additionally, as a bonus here are a few things you should stay clear from.

Bandwidth:

If you are on a shared server, unlimited bandwidth really means nothing. Your shared server will be on it’s knees and low on performance long before you demand such bandwidth and performance from it. For eg. most of the shared servers can’t stand the Digg traffic.
Storage:

Generally speaking, websites host plain text html or php files, images etc. Unless you are a software download portal or want to host a huge number of videos etc. you should be fine with anything around 100GB of storage.
Minimum Signup:

Some web hosts only sign you for a minimum of three months etc. Make sure you can sign up for a month. This helps you to move and change your provider if you are not satisfied.
Setup Fees:

Some webhosts tag a one time setup fees when you sign up. A good web host will sign you up without any setup fees etc. Look for money back guarantee and steer clear of any contracts.

Remember, choosing a web hosting service provider is going to be a lasting decision since you can’t readily move your online data every now and then. Thus read some reviews, do your research and even chat with the web host before you sign up. Even if you don’t have any questions to ask them, their customer service and willingness to assist you will speak volumes about their attitude and commitment towards their customers.

© Binary Turf. Also learn photography tips, get technical support or provide your feedback.

Add a related posts widget with Google CSE to retain and engage visitors

Shivanand Sharma — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:53:19 +0000

It has been seen that adding a related posts widget after your page or post content helps retain visitors longer and keeps them engaged by offering them additional content they may be interested in. While there are many wordpress plugins which offer this functionality they are often not relevant, clog the wordpress database or use arbitrary logic to calculate related posts. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could harness the power of Google Search to give your blog visitors related content that is relevant, ranked and from your own blog? Read on.

Google CSE provides functionality to automatically execute and present search results based on particular keywords. This means that you can pre-populate such a search box with a related keyword and automatically present the results after the post content. Bingo, you have a related posts plugin. Here’s the basic code which you’ll need to place in your blog template.

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The key command in the code that will perform the search when the search form loads is the line containing customSearchControl.execute. Depending on you preferences you may want to prepopulate this with the post title. However the ideal keywords will be the post tags or even better — the post category. It is the post category which is the subject, the topic of the post the visitor reads. You can be quite certain that if the visitor has read the post to the end, they will be interested in other posts in the same category. Thus here’s the final code you will use in the wordpress template —

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Given that you’ve taken care to implement the html part and html and php part as php in your wordpress template, this should populate and automatically execute a search using the post categories as the keywords. You can experiment and populate the search box with the first few post tags or any other parameter you find useful (like getting the search keywords from the referring search engine) this will open a wide window to some of the most relevant content on your site extending the reach of the visitors to some of the oldest posts etc.

If you are monetizing the Google CSE unit with AdSense, it is against the policy/ terms and conditions of Google AdSense to prepopulate such search boxes with keywords.

One special thing about such auto searches is that Google does not show any AdSense ads within these results (until the submit button is triggered by the visitor). Thus while it provides safety from possible AdSense exploits, do note that it is against AdSense terms and conditions to prepopulate Google search boxes with keywords. Take case that the CSE unit employed in this widget is dissociated from AdSense monetization. What do you have to say about this related posts widget powered by Google custom search?

5 Search Engine Tips for using Google CSE on your blog

Shivanand Sharma — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 18:41:26 +0000

Google CSE or Custom Search Engine is an immensely powerful tool that you can provide to your visitors. It not only equips them to research and locate the right content, it even allows you to make money using AdSense. That said, an effective implementation makes sure that your visitors and you benefit the most out of this tool. If you are not familiar with Google CSE you can read more about Google CSE.

Use the “Search Element” option:

The “Search Element” option gives you the most benefits. Other than providing you the most layout and customization, it keeps the visitors and searchers on your own blog instead of directing them to a Google hosted page. The Iframe option requires an additional page on your blog which again you’ll have to customize for theme design and layout. The “Search Element” allows you to show the results inline, uses the Google Ajax API thus leveraging its power and retaining the visitors on your blog. The default code offered by Google CSE looks like —
```
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```
Multiple units quirk:

With the “Search Element” option the default code that Google gives you can conflict with another CSE units since they have the same variable names. For example if you were to use the above code twice on the same page, the object names “customSearchControl” would interefere with the second instance of the code. Make sure that if you are implementing more than two search units on the same page, you must review the copied code and rename the variables and the IDs of the html elements that you will populate with the search box and results. For example you can use a different name for the object like “mycse2″ instead of “customSearchControl”. Additionally this code draws the search form in a div with ID ‘cse’. A second instance should use a div with a different ID. Update the code accordingly. See our post in the forum for implementing more than one search units.
Make results open in the same window:

Add .setLinkTarget(google.search.Search.LINK_TARGET_SELF); before the “draw” call to make sure that the search result links open in the same window. This avoids unnecessary new windows and tabs from opening up.
Limit the number of results:

Replace customSearchControl.setResultSetSize(google.search.Search.FILTERED_CSE_RESULTSET); with customSearchControl.setResultSetSize(google.search.Search.SMALL_RESULTSET); for 4 results and customSearchControl.setResultSetSize(google.search.Search.LARGE_RESULTSET); for 8 results.
Decouple the search element from the results:

The “Search Element” option allows you to choose the layout options as per your requirements. This allows you to display the results in the full-width and compact forms or even show the results laid out in a block further away from the search element itself.

For the complete documentation head on to the Google CSE documentation to refine the search control further.

5 Torn Edge Photo-Frame Effect Tutorials

Shivanand Sharma — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 17:26:57 +0000

A torn-edge photo frame effect looks beautiful on family photos while emphasizing the subject as if almost popping out of the photograph. But while our searches revealed that the tutorials are few, we did collect some of the relevant ones:

Simple and Realistic torn edges frame tutorial: Some self-promotion but something we invented that was simple yet realistic and easy to follow. Takes less than a minute.
Ripped Edge Frame Effect: Seems like this one is missing the essential keywords in the title. Nevertheless this one is close only not quite the finish we wanted.
Torn Paper Edge: Another take at it by the same site.
Ripped and Torn Edges: This is the one that we followed to the end and the effect was beautiful, realistic — just what we wanted. But this involved using the brush and we had to connect our tablet device. Not easy to follow and quite lengthy but delivers the result. This is the one that inspired us to invent our own method as in step 1.
Torn Edge Frame: This one is quick and dirty. Not the effect we were looking for but a good one nonetheless. We experimented with this one too and used some of the steps.

So pick up one of your favorite photographs that you’ve clicked and apply the torn edge frame effect. Should be quite some work for the weekend but you’ll make a beautiful wallpaper too. What other photo effects do you recommend?

How to get rid of the comments link in the Thesis Wordpress Theme

Shivanand Sharma — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:11:31 +0000

Seen { 23 comments } at the end of a blog post on any wordpress theme? There are good chances that the blog is using the Thesis Wordpress Theme. While Thesis is a premium wordpress theme, its comments link is a tell-tale signature of the fact that the premium theme though highly customizable is being just like any other theme without any personal touch or uniqueness in design. Customization is one of the prime powers of Thesis. As such you must explore all the possible options and utilize this feature to give your blog a personal touch. Let’s get rid of the comments link for a start.

In your custom_functions.php file add the following code to get rid of the comments link.

remove_action('thesis_hook_after_post', 'thesis_comments_link');

Or you can introduce your own customized comments link.

function my_comments_link() {
  if (!is_single() && !is_page()) {
    echo '[ ';
    comments_number(__('0 comments', 'thesis'), __('1 comment', 'thesis'), __('% comments', 'thesis'));
    echo ' ]';
  }
}
remove_action('thesis_hook_after_post', 'thesis_comments_link');
add_action('thesis_hook_after_post', 'my_comments_link');

The above changes the serpentine brackets {} to the square ones []. Now that’s not Thesis, is it? Get a free copy of Thesis Wordpress Theme.

On Haiti and relief

Shivanand Sharma — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:33:32 +0000

Most of the visitors will know that a recent earthquake in Haiti caused lot of destruction and harm. Binary Turf stands by the people affected and our prayers are with them. We request you to extend your support and wishes to the people undergoing these tough times. In case you’d like to support them monetarily or otherwise you can do so through the International Medical Corps website. Donating $10 to help the people of Haiti is as simple as sending a text message of the word “haiti” to 85944.

Firefox 3.6 final released

Shivanand Sharma — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:23:27 +0000

The final version of Firefox 3.6 has been released today. There are not many changes that an end-user will notice. However there’s more of personas in the new Firefox, better performance and stability, plugin updater and some tablet features. You can read about the changes on the official mozilla blog. We are working on an optimized build and hopefully it will be ready in another few hours.

Code: Auto Drop-cap for Thesis and other Wordpress Themes

Shivanand Sharma — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 19:11:35 +0000

With Thesis you can turn every first letter of the post to a drop cap. There are two ways you can do it. First is to go the official way and include the first letter like so:

.custom .entry-content p:first-child:first-letter {
font-size: 3.571em; line-height: 0.76em; padding: 0.04em 0.12em 0 0;
color: #888; float: left;
}

However if you have a pretty large and old blog, it will be humanly impossible to go in after each post and edit it to include the above the above code and implement a drop cap effect. One way around it is to use a regular expression and do a “find and replace” on the database.

Or else, magic… The following code automatically turns the first letter of each post into a drop cap. Place this into your custom.css (or style.css if you are not using the Thesis theme).

.custom .entry-content p:first-child:first-letter {
font-size: 3.571em;
line-height: 0.76em;
padding: 0.04em 0.12em 0 0;
color: #888;
float: left;
}

As always feel free to play around with this code till you get the effect you want. This works on most standards compliant browsers like Firefox, Seamonkey and Google Chrome. This works on Internet Exlorer 8 too but breaks the layout. And if you are looking for a free copy of Thesis Wordpress Theme, you can save $87 and get it here.

A Custom Thesis Theme 404 page which is more user-friendly

Shivanand Sharma — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 19:13:47 +0000

A 404 page is basically an error page which shows up when the web-page you are trying to access is not found. Some pages go missing for various reasons — maybe the user navigated through a broken link or may be the page no longer exists. While the 404 page shows the visitor that the page they were looking for doesn’t exist, here’s a tip to make it more user-friendly. What would you want the users to do when they hit a 404 error page? A good idea is to place a search box on the 404 page so that the users can type in the search terms for the page they were looking for and see if they can get it in the search results. Here’s how you can do that.

Place the below code into the custom_functions.php file. This function will introduce a search box in the 404 page providing an opportunity for your blog visitors to search for the content.

function search404()
 { ?>

 You can use this search box to look for the missing page —


Think over and you can present more content for your users to browse through like the most popular posts etc. Thesis is a very powerful and effective premium Wordpress theme. You can buy it from DIYTHEMES for $87 or get it free with one of our Wordpress blog design services.
© Binary Turf. Also learn photography tips, get technical support or provide your feedback.
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Firefox 3.6 RC2 – release candidates available
Shivanand Sharma — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 16:14:57 +0000
The second release candidate of Firefox 3.6 has been released to public. A release candidate is a stable build provided to public in order to collect feedback and report any last minute bugs. As usual Binary Turf has the optimized builds tweaked to perform faster on your individual computer. You can grab them from our Blazing Fast builds’ downloads page. The builds are available both as an installer and as zipped version — the zipped builds can be run without installation after unzipping the download. If this is the first time you are running Firefox 3.6, make sure you run them in a separate profile or backup your profile before you run them. The backups always come in handy in case you want to roll back and use the same profile with Firefox 3.5.
© Binary Turf. Also learn photography tips, get technical support or provide your feedback.
Recommended Reading
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Thesis Wordpress theme – a critical take
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10 Reasons to use Self-hosted Wordpress blogs
Shivanand Sharma — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 15:40:16 +0000
There’s quite nothing like a self-hosted Wordpress blog. Here are our top ten reasons in favor of a self-hosted Wordpress blog.

Control: If blogging is about expression and freedom of expression, self-hosting is about the amount of control you have over your blog. Hosting your own blog means you own your space on the server where you can place what you want and decorate how you want. This amount of fine-grained control redefines “freedom” for you.
Plugins: Plugins extend the functionality (and thus the reach) of your blog. Want to integrate a Twitter “Follow Me” badge? Grab a plugin. Whith free blog providers like Blogger etc. this can very limited or impossible. Thus the ability to use your own set of plugins means that you have your own custom CMS unique and different from the millions out there.
Themes: Free blogs have limited theme support. There are only so many themes available and you have to use only one. With a self-hosted Wordpress blog, not only can you use a custom or premium theme, there’s a large community of Wordpress specific designers. The possibilities are just endless.
Storage: Since you are on a free service, there’s always a limit to the amount of pictures and videos you can upload and share on your blog. With a self-hosted blog this limit is as good as your webhost gives you. So if you like to share your personal videos or photos or if yours is a photo blog exclusively, the storage limit definitely hurts.
Policies: different blog service providers force their hosting, content and advertising policies. With a self-hosted blog you set the terms and call the shots.
Forced ads vs. own ads: Free blog service providers mostly force their own advertisements on your blog/site to get revenues for the service. With self-hosted blog you can join your own publisher program like AdSense and start making money from day 1. Chances are that not only will they pay for your hosting, your visitors may find useful products and services and may make you rich.
SEO: SEO is the road to a wide-reach and popularity. When your blog content is optimized for search engines, it is indexed and ranked better by search engines thus showing your site more often in their search results. This means people searching for you site or related products and services find your site easily and access it — means higher sales, greater advertising returns.
Resale value: And finally if you decide to sell away your blog you can sell it away because it is your own. For a free blog service you can’t do that because of their policies and in a sense also because you don’t own your blog.
Easy Switch: Switching to Wordpress is easy. It is easier to switch over to Wordpress from almost any platform than it is to switch to others. Wordpress is a blog platform for every aspiring blogger.
Professionals vs. newbies: And finally let’s put it — Free blog services are for starters. If you want to go pro and need a blog for the long run, a self-hosted Wordpress blog it is for you.

While these are just some of the top reasons to go for a self-hosted Wordpress blog, it is the power of the two combined — your own hosting and Wordpress that makes it a killer combination no one dares compete. If you’d like to start your own blog you can check out our Wordpress Services and contact us.
© Binary Turf. Also learn photography tips, get technical support or provide your feedback.
Recommended Reading
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Add a related posts widget with Google CSE to retain and engage visitors

5 Search Engine Tips for using Google CSE on your blog

Use the “Search Element” option:

Multiple units quirk:

Make results open in the same window:

Limit the number of results:

Decouple the search element from the results:

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