The problem with many new entrants to the online world is the fact that they see the headlines, they see the multi-millionaires driving about in their new Ferrari’s and they want it – tomorrow!

There is no other business environment which can match the internet for building up your hopes only to scupper them and leave you feeling helpless – but is it really that bad. The sad fact is that many people who join the online revolution come to the party with some great ideas, fresh thoughts and a will to win. However, too many get disappointed and leave the scene before they have given their site and business a chance to breath. It does not happen over night for 99.999999% of people, so give it time and give your new business time to breath. Make sure you don’t give you site and your early start business away for buttons!

More and more people are set to feel real pain and guilt in the future with more and more savvy online business people picking up good sites, good domains and great business ideas for “buttons”. A little bit more “link juice”, a revamp of the site design and the business you sold for a few dollars may well be the success story of tomorrow. Don’t regret it, don’t give it away and don’t lose the faith!

The chance to make a living online is there for all of us, we all just need to take a little more time and work, work, work…..the chance is yours, don’t miss it!

A post from Xavier Media Blog

1. Give the people that buy your editorial services like I did statistics for the number of visitors to their page. At the moment you don’t know how many saw your page at AboutUs.org. For example they say when you sign up that they get 5,000,000 readers each month, but that’s not interesting information to me. I’m more interested in how many saw my page when it was featured and how many will see the page in the upcoming year? Something similar to Google Analytics would be good and it would almost make their services worth the $197 they charge.
2. Paying members should get access to a special members page with articles and a few tools like for example SEO tools to build and improve your site. This wont cost too much to develop and together with point 1 this would make it worth the $197 for their services.
3. They should develop a special badge (or widget if you like to call it that) for domain owners to add on their own pages to drive traffic to their own AboutUs.org page. I’ve for example used the standard AboutUs logo in this article and linked it to aboutus.org/xaviermedia.com. The badge should be updated with something special from your own page, for example get your RSS feed and show the latest head line like you can do with Feedburner. This will both benefint AboutUs since their site will get more readers and the people linking to them will get more visitors to their AboutUs page writing comments. The badge could also ask/request the visitors to add their comments on the site their visiting.
4. Since I’ve already mentioned RSS feeds I think I should continue on that track. Why not get the latest feed headlines like DomainTools.com does it:
   
5. Develop a plugin for your web browser so you can look up domain names by just clicking a button in your browsers tool bar:
   
   When the user is at a site he should just click the button in the browser toolbar to be taken to the AboutUs page for that domain name.

I hope the AboutUs staff like these five suggestions

A post from Xavier Media Blog

A post from Xavier Media Blog

There are three ways to get your domain name listed in AboutUs.org:

1. Wait until the AboutUs.org bot has spidered your site
2. Write your own page
3. Pay AboutUs.org $197 to do the page for you

To find out if it’s a good deal to pay for a page at AboutUs.org I pulled out my credit card and paid. To be honest I didn’t only pay just to be able to do this review, I really really wanted a better AboutUs.org page too . A good Aboutus.org page must be as good as a good MillionDollarWiki.com page or maybe even better

At their site they offer you the following for a flat fee of $197:

• Position yourself in front of more than 5,000,000 unique readers each month.
• Increase your results in the search engines.
• Point more traffic to your website.
• Create an amazing article that will tell the world about your business.
• Build strong relationships with the community.
• Develop ongoing dialog about you and your business.
• Generate another way for clients to find you.

I’m happy with the coach I got to help me build the page, but what I don’t like is that most of the stuff at my AboutUs.org page is copied directly from my site. Hey it’s a page about my site so it actually doesn’t matter…. Or?

The traffic they mention is not something I’ve noticed at all , but I guess it will take until the next pagerank update by Google to see some results on the search engine ranking. I think they should offer some kind of statistics for the people that upgrade their page because otherwise it’s going to be really hard to figure out if it was a good investment or not. Especially since it’s your wiki page that’s featured on their front page, not your actual homepage.

So, was it worth $197?

My opinion is that it’s not worth the money, but on the other hand people spend $100 for a page at MillionDollarWiki and then you don’t get any help building the page at all. At Aboutus.org I got a coach helping me at least.

If you can build your page yourself (i.e. you know the syntax) and have the time to do it then do that instead of paying $197. If you don’t know how to do your own page and really really really really want a better AboutUs.org page, then buy this service.

If you’re interested in having a look at my AboutUs.org page you’ll find it at aboutus.org/xaviermedia.com.

A post from Xavier Media Blog

Over the last decade life has been tough for Microsoft’s MSN searching engine and Yahoo! have not faired much better, but together it could have been such a different story. The innovation of the two boards and the massive firepower of Microsoft could have made a real difference but what does the future hold for both companies?

Yahoo!

The vultures are most definitely circling the company and it would come as no surprise to see a deal agreed with either a Venture Capital company or another of the major online conglomerates over the next few weeks. This episode has not been the best in the history of Yahoo! and they are now in a weaker position than they have ever been before.

Microsoft

Microsoft’s MSN offshoot seems to be lacking somewhat in size to attack the mighty Google and while the Yahoo! deal is a set back they have shown that they are looking ahead and making plans. Do not write off MSN as they will be back, most likely with a larger or similar sized partner in tow. This is just the start of a new life for MSN.

All in all this latest blow, after years of rumours and counter rumours about a possible merger, will further enhance the power of Google and give them a little more breathing space before they see any real contenders come forward to steal their crown. Thankfully for webmasters around the world, Google are of a size that they would never be able to make any sizeable acquisitions in the search engine world so any more growth will be purely organic.

Watch this space, there is more change to come in the not too distant future…….the landscape is changing…..

A post from Xavier Media Blog

Welcome to Beginning PHP!

So you have decided to start learning one of the most powerful Internet programming languages there is - Congratulations! Welcome to Beginning PHP, My name’s David and together we will start discovering why over 22 million websites use PHP to generate amazing dynamic pages.

So what is PHP?

PHP was created in 1995 by an independent software developer named Rasmus Lerdorf. His first PHP script was a Perl/CGI program that kept a log of each visitor that came to his site. The script then displayed how many visits he had received on each page. He soon started receiving emails from other web masters across the Internet asking how he did this (a “Counter” as this is called, were very rare back then.) Because of the interest in his script he started to develop PHP into a new language, by adding more and more features to his script. Eventually, he decided to stop programming PHP in Perl/CGI, and start constructing it with a more powerful language, “C”. Thus the interest in PHP keep growing as more features were added and soon other people started writing code for it. It is now one of the most popular languages on the Internet, with contributing programmers across the world.

Should I learn PHP?

As long as you want to…YES! There is not a person I can think of that would not benefit from the ability to post their own dynamic resume online, or have the capability to list their products or services on the World Wide Web (www). With knowledge of PHP you could do everything from running an Ebay Clone, to managing a Photography site, to building the next Xanga. Don’t get me wrong though, you don’t have to start the next Hotmail to find a use for PHP! It is just as important for giving small sites the leverage to succeed online.

Anything I should know before I start this course?

Yes - HTML. HTML (Hypertext markup Language) is the simplest formatting language on the web. While PHP, Perl, ASP, and others transfer and process information, HTML makes it look good. For example, think of Microsoft Word. What you type into Word is similar to the function that PHP serves - it supplies the data. But just typing text into MS Word doesn’t look very good. That is where the formatting features of Word come in. You can change the size, color, position, and look of the text in your document with the features of MS Word. That is what HTML does.HTML makes the information that you output from PHP look good.
So that is why I recommend having a basic knowledge of HTML. If you don’t know it already here are some good sites to help you learn this basic language.

What do I need?

This is a big question and mostly depends on how skilled you are with other aspects of the computer. PHP requires the core interpreter and function libraries that you have to get from www.php.net. No, window’s does NOT come ready for PHP programming. (Some Linux distributions do however.) This leaves you with four choices when it comes to setting up the PHP language so that you can start programming.

Install and compile the binary distributions for PHP and/or “Apache” web server on your machine. (Advanced) visit php.net for more information.

Install EasyPHP from EasyPHP.org. (Easy, but only features PHP 4 and has some problems with Advanced Programs/scripts.)

Install WAMP (Windows Apache MySQL PHP) or LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP) on your own machine, or better yet, on some OTHER machine on YOUR network. If you are on windows you can visit wampserver.com and download the newest release. (Intermediate)

The way I Recommend: Buy some web space on a server that supports PHP and MySQL. (about $5-10 dollars a month). I highly recommend 1and1.com. They are like the “walmart” of hosting companies. (The largest in the world) they offer hosting for as low as $2.99 a month for 5 Gigabytes of space and 10 MySQL Databases!!! Don’t worry they don’t skimp on features ether! (Free Domain and “.htaccess” support!)

After all, if you are learning PHP you are going to be using it anyway… so you might as well buy hosting space and a domain now before the name is taken. If you already have a web site your hosting company may already have PHP install on your server. (Call/Email them to be sure.)
If you don’t want to pay for web space but want to put a site online I recommend that you look into some free hosting options like 100webspace.com or Dot Geek - or just choose the one that fits you from these lists: PHP Free Hosting List and PHP MySQL Free Hosting List.

But be cautious - they all have their non-monetary price!
Personally… I started out with Easyphp. It is a snap to install (it’s an .exe file) and will get you running fast. It worked great while I was learning PHP and coding small scripts. Then I shopped around and after looking at many different hosting companies like “BlueHost” and “godaddy” I finally chose 1and1.com for a place on the internet to host my first site. Recently I deleted Easyphp as I needed more power for my advanced scripts and took an old computer and installed XP and WAMP on it so that I can build and test my sites on my own personal network and then upload the files to 1and1. So the choice is yours, just remember that if you install a web server, you need to SECURE it BEFORE YOU GO ONLINE! Otherwise someone might use it to gain control of your PC!

A post from Xavier Media Blog

The chances are that you will have seen some changes over the last few days although these vary widely across the board. This is the time when some of those “useless” backlinks that you attracted can actually have a real impact upon your site, with any change in their Page Rank filtering through to your site – and hopefully giving you more power!

But is the Page Review as vital as it once was? Can it still make or break a business?

While there is no doubt that the Page Rank review is vital and can have a real impact upon the power and profitability of your site, the value of the review has diminished over the years. In years gone by it was in many ways a case of the “tail wagging the dog” in that Google was the be all and end all of life on the internet, and the Page Rank review was vital.

Over the last few years we have seen the introduction of other sites, other promotional strategies and other ways of attracting traffic. We have also seen Google completely change the algorithms which update the Page Rank system, meaning that a PR7 site of today may bear no comparison to a PR7 site of yesteryear.

Webmasters are taking some power back from Google and while it would be foolish to suggest that Google are not vital to your success, they are not “as vital” as they once were. The more Google pushes for dominance, the more new and exciting promotional techniques we see appearing. Google is not dead, but the webmaster world is fighting back!

A post from Xavier Media Blog

It’s easy to see that the comment is a spam comment, but it’s a little bit annoying that Akismet can’t see it’s spam

Anyway, the weird part of these spam comments are the URL field because it’s just http://url as web site and not a wokring web site Since the comments don’t contain any links or other contact information these spam comments are completely useless if they somehow should get approved and not marked as spam. They are simply just words Since the spam is coming from everywhere (different networks, IPs and users) it must be some kind of trojan infecting peoples computers and sending the spam.

As you can see on this sample comment, it’s just words and a non-working URL:

I get a feeling that someone did a poor job programming this spam bot/trojan

Have you also seen this kind of poor spam comments lately?

A post from Xavier Media Blog

I’ve been trying to earn some money from Clickbooth Affiliate Network and I have to say that their registration process almost lost me to someone else since it’s over-kill in annoying. For example you have to fill in your phone number to receive a call with a PIN code before you can complete the registration process. They claim it’s for preventing fraud, but I can’t really see how that can prevent any fraud

Next step in the registration are the categories. Unfortunately they didn’t have that many good categories for a webmaster related web site like this so I had to go for “Business/B2B”. What surprised me where all the “Email Submit” categories they had…..

They claim they approve sites within 72 hours, but that’s not the case when I signed up. I sent an email to their support too to speed up the approval process without success. They didn’t even answer my email

From what I can see their just another publisher network for ads, but if you want to earn some extra cash you could try them out (if they approve you that is).

A post from Xavier Media Blog

• validator.w3.org Downgraded to PR9
• web.mit.edu
• www.adobe.com
• www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/index.html New on the list
• www.adobe.com/downloads/ New on the list
• www.adobe.com/products/index.html New on the list
• www.adobe.com/downloads/ New on the list
• www.apple.com/quicktime/download Downgraded to PR9
• www.doe.gov New on the list
• www.energy.gov
• www.google.com
• www.keio.ac.jp Downgraded to PR9
• www.mac.com Downgraded to PR9
• www.macromedia.com (redirected to adobe.com)
• www.microsoft.com Downgraded to PR9 (could be because I was redirected to www.microsoft.com/en/us/default.aspx)
• www.nasa.gov
• www.nsf.gov
• www.real.com
• www.usa.gov/index.shtml New on the list
• www.w3.org
• www.whitehouse.gov
• www.yahoo.com Downgraded to PR9

One of the more funny things about the update of pagerank is that both Yahoo and Microsoft got downgraded. Could it be because of the proposed merger between the two?

I used the Google toolbar in Firefox to check these sites so I may have missed someone . In that case, please let me know and I’ll update the list.

A post from Xavier Media Blog