Web Style Press, Best Practices from all the Web, Build Better Websites

RSS Feeds not Showing Latest Posts

Hiroshi — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 10:35:53 +0000

One of my blogs was not displaying the latest posts in feeds. Feedburner and default feed for blog was not displaying my few latest posts. For example: http://www.blogname.com/feed/ and http://feeds2.feedburner.com/feedname/ were returning old posts. Fresh content was absent. On checking my feedburner account everything was fine. Further checking and validation gave me the following information:

Your feed appears to be encoded as “UTF-8″, but your server is reporting “US-ASCII”

So what is the solution for missing latest posts from feeds?

I read the article about encoding mismatch after validating feeds. Feeds were valid according to the result.

The problem was with the cache. I was using ‘W3Total Cache’ plugin and had not removed old cache lately. I was told by someone that do not minify feeds and disable minify feeds option from cache plugin. On emptying all the cache solved the problem and feeds started reflecting fresh content.

RSS Feeds not Showing Latest Posts is a post from: Web Style Press, Best Practices from all the Web, Build Better Websites

Worth of Google Plus and +1 Button for SEOs and CEOs

Hiroshi — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 03:58:57 +0000

Launch of Google plus is a disaster for FaceBook. That is what I believe. If not now, it will be. Atleast 50% users from Facebook will leave and join Google Plus. All the spammers, SEOs, webmasters, networking gurus who were at Facebook for spreading their websites will move to the Google Plus. Because Google Plus is the social networking website from the Google Search Engine. Google makes rules for webmasters and developers. Google Plus will decide which website to promote and which to demote. They have a +1 button to promote content. This is what I claim that the content with more +1s will be getting more search results and web traffic. Google Plus and +1 button will affect site traffic and site ranking.

They say:

Add +1 to your pages to help your site stand out
+1 buttons let people who love your content recommend it on Google search

If they are saying it directly then what doubt is left behind?

Proceed the following link to get the Google Plus +1 button for your website today.

Google Plus +1 button code

While this can be a trick from Google to attract users from all over but this is what they have to say in addition to above.

How does +1 affect search results?

+1 helps people discover relevant content, a relevant website or a Google search result from the people they already know and trust. Adding the +1 button to your pages lets users recommend your content, knowing that their friends and contacts will see their recommendation when it’s most relevant in the context of Google search results.

Does +1 affect my site’s performance in search?

Content recommended by friends and acquaintances is often more relevant than content from strangers. For example, a movie review from an expert is useful, but a movie review from a friend who shares your tastes can be even better. Because of this, +1’s from friends and contacts can be a useful signal to Google when determining the relevance of your page to a user’s query. This is just one of many signals Google may use to determine a page’s relevance and ranking.

How will the +1 button affect my traffic?

Personalized annotations next to your page in search results may increase your site’s visibility and make your site’s snippet more compelling, which may in turn increase the odds that users will click through to your page.

Will +1’s from my site show up in search results?

If a user +1’s a URL on your site, the Google search result snippet for that URL may be annotated in search results.

All this means that if you are a webmaster, web developer, SEO, CEO of any web property – you can not ignore the importance of the +1 button and Google Plus. This is the next best thing for SEOs and CEOs. I have even started getting emails from different SEO companies offering several +1s packages as SEO service.

More +1s is directly proportional to the more visitors to your website and more authority for your website. Get the Google Plus button and use Google Plus to exaggerate about your website and you will be the next successful webmaster or publisher or even blogger from rest of your fellows.

Worth of Google Plus and +1 Button for SEOs and CEOs is a post from: Web Style Press, Best Practices from all the Web, Build Better Websites

12 Excellent Website Speed and Performance Test and Compare Tools

Hiroshi — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 23:45:31 +0000

It is estimated that if a page doesn’t load within 5-8 seconds you will lose 1/3 of your visitors. If your website load speed is slower than that you should revise your design, site structure or just move to a faster web hosting server. How will you check your website performance and speed against different other websites? How will you test website load time and performance? We have collected 12 excellent online tools to test website load time and performance and compare it with any other site.

Stella

Stella is a tool for monitoring and debugging websites. Find out how fast your website/blog is. Enter its URL and click “Run checkup”. You’ll get a result indicating how your site compares to the average speed of others checked that day, as well as an idea of how fast your site is considered in plain English. For example: “Not so fast.”

Webpage Test

Enter the website URL and test website’s performance. Check website performance against different web browsers. It will give you estimate of website load time and optimization checklist to optimize website performance.

Pingdom

Test webpage performance in detail. You can also get the email and sms alerts on website downtime and check website performance every minute. The Full Page Test loads a complete HTML page including all objects (images, CSS, JavaScripts, RSS, Flash and frames/iframes). It mimics the way a page is loaded in a web browser. The load time of all objects is shown visually with time bars. You can view the list of objects either in load order or as a hierarchy. The hierarchy view allows you to see which objects are linked to in for example a CSS file. Every test also shows general statistics about the loaded page such as the total number of objects, total load time, and size including all objects.

Browser Mob

A quick and easy way to get performance data on any website. Browsermob is website performance analysis tool that can be used to test website load time and performance and give results in many way.

Rapid Website speed check

The website speedtester shows the load time duration of a given website. This value can be used for showing how long a website takes to load and if it is better to optimize the website or change a (slow) ISP.

Which Loads Faster

Compare two websites side by side for speed and load performance. Pages compete head-to-head in your browser to see who’s fastest!

Website Optimization Speed Test

Website complete speed test report and optimization suggestion.

Website Speed Test

Calculate website load time and page size.

WebWait

Calculate website average load time.

iWebTool Websites Speed Comparison

Compare average speed for multiple websites at the same time. Find out how fast your website loads.

Self SEO Website Speed Test

Compare your website speed with the sites of your competitors. Calculate page size, page load time and average load speed.

Vertain Speed Test

Calculate website load speed.

12 Excellent Website Speed and Performance Test and Compare Tools is a post from: Web Style Press, Best Practices from all the Web, Build Better Websites

Lorem ipsum Ready to Use

Hiroshi — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 20:17:10 +0000

Lorem ipsum is a place holder text. Publishers and graphic designers need it every day in almost every task. Lorem ipsum is commonly used to demonstrate the visual presentation of fonts, typography or layout. An example of lorem ipsum paragraph is below:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

What if you need lorem ipsum ready to use in different forms. e.g. lorem ipsum long paragraph, lorem ipsum medium paragraph, lorem ipsum one sentence, lorem ipsum ordered lists, lorem ipsum unordered lists, lorem ipsum form, lorem ipsum definition list, lorem ipsum navigation and more?

HTML Ipsum is a resource that offers ready to use Lorem Ipsum text in many forms. If you do not know HTML and want to use HTML elements, then this is a handy site for that as well. HTML Ipsum will make adding tables, ordered lists, and more headache-free. Find the HTML you’re after, copy and paste it into your HTML editor, and replace the text with your own. No sign-up, invite-requesting, tweeting or liking required. Just head to the site and use it.

HTML Ipsum
What is Lorem Ipsum
Lorem Ipsum at Wikipedia

Lorem ipsum Ready to Use is a post from: Web Style Press, Best Practices from all the Web, Build Better Websites

Traffic Widgets Can Get your Website Banned

Hiroshi — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 01:15:35 +0000

Many websites exchange website traffic with you by giving you a piece of javascript code to place in your website and your website starts displaying catchy misleading images which lead visitors to other websites. At every image click you might see a pop up and if you keep visiting more and more these websites more pop up will appear and your browser may crash. The important thing is to note is this, these all target websites share same widgets which lead you to many other such websites. Many times the images displayed are tempting but those are modified and are specially prepared in photoshop to only catch user’s attention.

The important thing to note is, you can not do any activity like this where you exchange traffic to website only for more website traffic. This whole concept is wrong. Your website should not offer misleading links and images to other websites. These widgets shockingly provide you almost same traffic as Google does. Your website analytics will show you that. In such case be aware that your website will be penalized. This is also against web accessibility standards.

These guys are involved in promoting crappy websites in an unethical way. On asking they will say that:

Our exchange program is not a paid-to-click program. The site owners do not need to visit any link. The visitors just read news they like and they don’t get paid for it. We are not engaged in sending unwanted emails. We send the offers personally only to sites that have good and valuable content. Our widgets don’t redirect visitors without their knowledge or consent. People just click the news that attracted their attention on their own.

Thus, our program doesn’t break Google AdSense TOS and can be used together with Google AdSense. Most of our partners use the Google service and they are happy with the result of our exchange program as well.

Fact is, your Google AdSense account might get banned if you display such widgets at your website and Google might remove your website from search results as well. Google says that they actively monitor landing pages of your website and ban publishers who do not follow web standards. Placing traffic widgets might give you instant adsense cash but not for long and you will land in adsense blacklist.

Avoid such websites which give you widgets like that and claim to double traffic for website. Trust in going slow and steady. Write quality content, post regularly and be patient. Only organic traffic would lead your website to success. Let others find you via quality of your website content and do not indulge yourself into invalid activities to promote website in unethical ways. If you are into making money online avoid traffic widgets.

Traffic Widgets Can Get your Website Banned is a post from: Web Style Press, Best Practices from all the Web, Build Better Websites

Remove Single Post Title Self Link in WordPress Themes

Hiroshi — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 04:34:57 +0000

In many WordPress themes developers make mistake of linking single post to itself which is not necessary. I mean why anybody will reload the single post page when he is already at the same single post page by clicking the title of that same post? The title of single post is linked to the same page in many many WordPress themes. This is against the quality standards of webmasters.

Besides Google can also ban you in this case because many publishers use the ad code below the post title and above the content. That is the title link is above and right below are the Google AdSense ads. Google mentions to remove ads from that location because users can get confused and take those ads as a part of post title or use sponsored links or advertisements text above ads in this case.

Even besides, why use that title link to the same page? Use only title without link at the single post.

Remove Single Post Title Self Link in WordPress Themes is a post from: Web Style Press, Best Practices from all the Web, Build Better Websites

No Follow Your Own Blog Pages for Better PR

Hiroshi — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 00:56:48 +0000

Nofollow is an attribute used in HTML to tell the search engine to follow the links or not, to give credit to links or not. It stops crawler if you have used this attribute at a link and crawler won’t escape from that link and it won’t give page rank to that link you have nofollowed. its used like the following.

link

If you have used external links in the site then it is wise to target blank to them and nofollow them. If you don’t use nofollow then it means that you are giving credit to the external site or link and you will increase the external link’s PR and decrease yours. What I am saying here is to nofollow some of your own pages. Yes, some pages in your blog, website do not need the Page Rank or credit or link juice or PR juice or whatever it is.

How about contact page, privacy policy page, faqs page, possibly about page and pages like these? Do you need that these pages need PR. Your website index page need Page Rank and important articles in your website or blog need PR. So open your header or footer file and add rel nofollow attribute in these links which go to these pages and chances are your website PR will be better.

What do you think?

No Follow Your Own Blog Pages for Better PR is a post from: Web Style Press, Best Practices from all the Web, Build Better Websites

Redesign Brainstorming – Keep in Mind Before you Redesign

Hiroshi — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 00:44:56 +0000

Sooner or later you will feel dissatisfied with your current blog / website design. You will have to change the website design for better either for expanding needs or better look and feel. I recently needed to redesign my one of blog’s theme. I have much experience in designing websites and blogs so luckily I know how to take it to the best level and what you need to keep in mind and what to take care about while redesigning your current theme / design so that you may not have to start over and do the tweaks. Alright I will share everything and process what I went through in designing my new blog theme. Once you go through reading all this, you will know what to keep in mind for best results. I have also included updates which I did to my blog for better user experience, better SEO and better ads placement.

I needed to redesign the blog theme. Why? Let me explain:

What I was Unhappy About?

Current theme was kind of lame.
Header needed to be professional. There was a lot of free space in header.
I needed a clean theme with all white background so that user may focus on content and theme may load faster
I needed to remove recent posts, recent comments and popular posts from sidebar.
I needed a single sidebar. There were two thin sidebars. I needed one wide sidebar.
I needed a sidebar where 300px width ads can be placed.
I needed two ad spots at the top of the post. So I needed content area where 336px and 300px width ads can be adjusted.
I needed two ad spots at the bottom of post similar to top.
I needed to remove categories from the right-sidebar and bring them down to the blog content.
I needed to take categories, tags, pages at the bottom of the blog because search engine crawler crawls pages from top to bottom and left to right.

Research – RnD – Preparation

The Google ad width was 336px which I was using at the top.
Next to that, ad can be of 300px width.
Sidebar can be of 312px width inwhich 300px width ad could be easily adjusted.
The screen area available for display is 1004px width.
I need to place two ads at the top of post and two at the bottom.
Categories can go down to content.
Below the bottom ads, I can place ‘tags’, ‘share buttons’, ‘top searches’ etc.

So here is the model.

Top header
Rightsidebar with 312px width
Leftside area for content (336+300px+extra space)
Two top ads below title
Content
Page navigation
Two bottom ads
Tags and category for post
Share buttons
Related posts + 300px ad spot
Related searches

Give a look to mashable.com, instantshift.com and smashingmagazine.com for layout and elements orientation and style because pros do it best in every way. Blog the should be SEO ready, search engine friendly, user friendly, clean and there should be no empty spaces and you should choose ads spots wisely so that you have enough space for ads yet site / blog may look good.

Then I redesigned the blog keeping these things in mind and after that checked for W3C validations.

How to Use Sidebar Wisely?

There is no need to display recent posts widget. Anybody can view your blog’s main page for recent posts and activity. Infact do not display widgets in sidebar. Display sharing / subscription options and RSS buttons at the sidebar top. Make sure you have 300px min. width available in sidebar so that you can place ads of 300px, or two 120px or two 150px ads in sidebar. Keep sidebar for the ads. You don’t wanna put all the eggs in one basket. Place ads from different advertisement networks.

Content Area VS Ads Spots

Alright, you have got the main content area where you gonna post the actual stuff. I have been placing one 336px width google ad at the top and one same at the bottom of the post but you know that left some empty space infront of ads. My writing style did not allow me do ad float left and type some text infront of it, so it was always the post title, then 336px google ad below and the empty space infront of it and then below an image and then below the text for post.

The best practice to do is to not leave any area empty in your blog or website. Fill the website with proper elements and stuff according to space available and other limitations. What I did was this. I made content area bigger enough to fit two ads at the top of the post. one 336px width ad and one 300px ad side by side at top of the content and then content below. Same I did for area below the post. Two side by side ads below post. One 336px and one 300px width. That’s it. All spaces filled and I used more space for ads as well.

Where is the space for More Ads?

You know, sometimes you need more ads space to experiment with another advertisement network to make some extra bucks. Now the sidebar has got ads, top of the post and bottom of the post has got ads and what next?

There is a cool plugin many bloggers use named as ‘related posts’. It displays related posts for the topic. We use it below the post. That related posts area can be of 336px width and infront of that you can have 300px width ad.

Categories, Tags and Pages Links Placement

You know what? These are not important. You do not need to show whole category tree in the sidebar. Soon you will have lots of categories and lots of tags and even lots of pages. Take all these at the bottom of blog. Above footer you can use categories and few popular tags. In footer use page links. That’s it. Search engine crawler crawls from top to bottom and left to right. So the actual content should be near top and left of all the available area.

Based on the stuff I described, I have designed my theme and I am pretty much happy about it. What do you keep in mind before redesigning the theme? or what did you find useful in your latest design technique and approach?

Redesign Brainstorming – Keep in Mind Before you Redesign is a post from: Web Style Press, Best Practices from all the Web, Build Better Websites

Convert from InPage to Urdu Unicode Text

Hiroshi — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 06:05:18 +0000

You can enable Urdu Typing in any program by Urdu font. I mean we have shown you ways to type Urdu in, lets say…Notepad, Microsoft Word or any program by installing additional languages support in windows or Urdu language support. I will mention links below. There are online tools to type Urdu and then you can copy that Urdu text and paste in any application or program or even in email. You can write Urdu emails using these techniques.

The problem is, you had to install an Urdu font or Urdu keyboard with additional languages support or use the online tools for that and also you need to type everything. What if you have got an inpage files and you do not want to type Urdu again and you simply want to convert inpage files into Unicode text of readable Urdu text. We know that inpage can export image. But we need Urdu text from inpage. We have got solution for that. You can simply convert inpage file into Urdu text to use in emails, web pages or anywhere online or offline.

Let me give you previous tools before.

Urdu Typing Facility in Any Program

Type Urdu in Any Windows Program
Write / Type Urdu in Webpages
Enable Urdu Text Writing in Windows

And there are tools to Type Urdu using keyboard and mouse click online right away and then copy that Urdu text anywhere.

Online Urdu Typing Tools

Write in Urdu
Urdu Typing
Type Urdu Online using keyboard or mouse

Download Urdu Fonts

Download Urdu Fonts (17.7 MB)

Above fonts file will give better look and feel to your written Urdu text in windows.

Convert inpage into Urdu Text

And now folks here is the tool which will take inpage file and give you the Urdu text which is Unicode text to use anywhere and it will be readable Urdu text and not the image.

Convert Inpage to Urdu Text

Copy/paste the text from InPage editor in that tool and hit convert button and see the magic.

Bonus – Urdu Books Download

read online Urdu Books and download many Urdu books free

Convert from InPage to Urdu Unicode Text is a post from: Web Style Press, Best Practices from all the Web, Build Better Websites

Write Urdu In Web Pages

Post Audio to Your Blog Using Any Phone – Call You WordPress Blog

Hiroshi — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 03:50:38 +0000

Post by voice. If you have got a phone (any phone), you can dial your blog (Yes WordPress Blog) and post your audio message, voice, podcast, concert or whatever from anywhere to your blog. After you’re done, the audio file from your phone call will be posted to your blog for all to listen to and enjoy and added to your RSS feed for podcast support. So now you can post to your WordPress via the web, email, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, desktop clients, and now any telephone in the world. Of course when you post it can be pushed to Facebook, Twitter, and more using the Publicize feature. What more could you want?

Post by Voice is a way to publish audio posts to your blog from your phone. You call a phone number, enter a secret code, record a message, and WordPress handles the rest.

How to do that:

In order to use Post by Voice feature in WordPress you need to enable the feature on your blog and generate a secret code. The secret code is unique to you and your blog so it is important to keep it secret.

Visit Dashboard -> My Blogs
Locate the blog that you wish to post to and click on Enable.
Call the phone number listed on the My Blogs screen, enter your secret code when prompted, and follow the instructions.

If your secret key is compromised, others will be able to publish audio posts to your blog. Go to the My Blogs screen and use the Regenerate link below the secret key to create a different one.

Post by Voice is powered by the Twilio API. The maximum length of a recording is 1 hour for now. If there is 10 seconds of silence, the recording will end. Normal calling rates will apply for the phone call.

Telephone can post audio to your blog
Post by Voice

The feature is not new becuse Livejournal has supported something like this for years. However, it should make for thousands of interesting, late-night posts in the near future to WordPress.

Post Audio to Your Blog Using Any Phone – Call You WordPress Blog is a post from: Web Style Press, Best Practices from all the Web, Build Better Websites

Blog Using Microsoft Word – Microsoft Word to WordPress

Web Style Press, Best Practices from all the Web, Build Better Websites

RSS Feeds not Showing Latest Posts

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Worth of Google Plus and +1 Button for SEOs and CEOs

How does +1 affect search results?

Does +1 affect my site’s performance in search?

How will the +1 button affect my traffic?

Will +1’s from my site show up in search results?

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Lorem ipsum Ready to Use

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What I was Unhappy About?

Research – RnD – Preparation

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Where is the space for More Ads?

Categories, Tags and Pages Links Placement

Related Posts

Convert from InPage to Urdu Unicode Text

Urdu Typing Facility in Any Program

Online Urdu Typing Tools

Download Urdu Fonts

Convert inpage into Urdu Text

Bonus – Urdu Books Download

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Post Audio to Your Blog Using Any Phone – Call You WordPress Blog

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