Attackr.com » Developer Portal for web designers, developers and programmers http://www.attackr.com Come To Share, Come To Learn Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:09:25 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Share & Add Link Mash-ups Are Driving Modern Design http://www.attackr.com/share-add-link-mash-ups-are-driving-modern-design/ http://www.attackr.com/share-add-link-mash-ups-are-driving-modern-design/#comments Sun, 14 Feb 2010 00:57:26 +0000 Gregory Milby http://www.attackr.com/?p=708 There seems to be a crescendo of services popping up. Most of the services seem to be outwardly oriented, but a few user-centric applications are also starting to surface. I don’t think anyone can deny that social networking has impacted webdesign, and the rising flood of api’s are making it easier than ever to include one of these tools, and give a designer/site admin more time to dedicate to the website without investing time into “keeping up with the social networking Jones’s”
The one that I’m using on my sites is, “Add This”, but there is an emerging tide of these type of sharing link/mini blogging/social networking web-centric applications springing up everyday.

Add This offers statistical data so you can track how many times your site  was referred using their tool, but you will have to sign up for an account to be able to use that feature… After all, they need to know who to give the tally to :)

The list of networking sites seems to be growing at an unbelievable rate, and it’s great that someone is keeping up with all the js/api links that can connect stories or web items to their ‘circle of friends’ or colleagues.

Another one that has caught my attention is , “Share This“.  Share this seems to have a few more dynamic elements – a smoother presentation, but the number of services it can ‘share to’ are probably equal to any other like-service. One thing that seperates Share This apart is the application method – you’re able to literally download the plugin within a ‘format’ (e.g. wordpress, typePad, or generic script for any regular coding website).

As mentioned earlier, there are a few user-centric web applications starting to come to the forefront. One of the most significant is Threadsy.  At first I wasn’t sold on the all-in-one web tool idea, but after using it for a month, it’s become an essential tool.  It’s so easy to twitter, and if it’s appropriate, I can simultaneously post to Facebook.  It keeps all my email in one place (my tens of throw away/ sole-purpose email addresses [that i would never check otherwise?]).  The irony is I like Threadsy for the very reasons that I thought I would ever like an application like this… It has a vertical bar (as small as I want it to be) that can show me my twitter account/facebook notices without getting an email… if something scrolls by & I happen to want to reply – it’s a matter of clicking a button after typing my response.  At any given time, I used to have up to 20 browser window/tabs open. With Threadsy, it’s reduced to 5.

Regardless which one of these mash-up tools you use, be sure to share your findings in the comments.  We appreciate the comments and participation.

Thanks,

Greg

If you liked this post, please follow me on Twitter

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]]> http://www.attackr.com/share-add-link-mash-ups-are-driving-modern-design/feed/ 1 Free Software Give-Away – Enter Today! http://www.attackr.com/free-software-give-away-enter-today-superantispyware-remove-all-the-spyware-trojans-not-just-the-easy-ones/ http://www.attackr.com/free-software-give-away-enter-today-superantispyware-remove-all-the-spyware-trojans-not-just-the-easy-ones/#comments Wed, 09 Sep 2009 22:35:58 +0000 Gregory Milby http://www.attackr.com/?p=639 Anyone who knows me, knows that I do not endorse many things, and the things I endorse are usually freeware or opensource. Despite my warnings, my wife and all of our friends & family use windows as their primary operating system. Yours truly is the designated help desk for any and all emergencies.
During the past 4 years (that’s about 20+ virus & trojan emergencies [per year]), I stumbled across a product that actually works as described. It’s rare to find something that completely works, but I’ve yet to find anything malware, spyware, trojan issue that this software cannot handle – COMPLETELY HANDLE and REMOVE.
SUPERAntiSpyware-300DPI
During some conversations with the Marketing Director (Mike Duncan), we decided to share the experience by offering a free PROFESSIONAL license for the product – which carries a life time subscription (hence, no surprises later).   We will be awarding one license per month for the next three months.   You need to enter each month in order to be eligible. If you would like to register for a chance to win one of the free lifetime license keys – click on the following link:

Enter The SUPERANTISPYWARE Give-Away

The best part is that you can try this software for free, “NOW” and they even offer a free version. The free version offers some limited features & does not offer the proactive features, but it still will removes ALL of the malware, spyware, and trojans. It just will not self-update, run 24/7/365 and do scheduled scans/remove all the bad things automatically like the professional version does.
If you decide to try the freeware version, there is no nagware – no aggrivating things asking for your information/etc. Either way you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the experience, and more importantly you’ll be shocked at what it finds & removes from your system.

Follow Me On Twitter!
Follow Me On Twitter!

====Ammendment====
Congrat’s to Jonathan Pereira our final SuperAntiSpyware Pro License winner for December 2009!
Need a RELIABLE Web Host?

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]]> http://www.attackr.com/free-software-give-away-enter-today-superantispyware-remove-all-the-spyware-trojans-not-just-the-easy-ones/feed/ 3 Geo Caching For Fun & Profit (a.k.a How to find your arse with a funnel script) http://www.attackr.com/geo-caching-for-fun-profit-aka-how-to-find-your-arse-with-a-funnel-script/ http://www.attackr.com/geo-caching-for-fun-profit-aka-how-to-find-your-arse-with-a-funnel-script/#comments Tue, 26 May 2009 13:18:22 +0000 Gregory Milby http://www.attackr.com/?p=540 Test Page...]]> searchwww.syrbot.com – when you visit the site it should say, “Thanks for visiting from ______ . This can be a critical component since you could ideally store the information from this visit in a database, recording exact zip code regions that your are targeting your marketing to.
If you have any intention of selling advertising, this can be good ammunition to show that you know who your audience is – where they’re located and their demographic profile.
To get an idea of how many variables are available about the person browsing your web page – look at this test page for syrbot.com: Test Page.
The first part of the test page is the geo caching element (finding out where you are, the apache var’s profile you as to which os you’re using, resolution and on and on. All critical info when you want to find out who you’re designing your site for. Knowing if your visitors are all using handheld devices would be a critical piece of knowledge – especially if you think you need to have a heavy flash site or graphic rich site. You could make all your customers happy by trimming the site down to streamlined graphics and mostly text arranged in a friendly format for a tiny pocket pc or iphone/palm browser.
It’s an easy argument to stress the importance of keeping up with who you are serving your pages to.
Please leave a comment if you know of any uses for geo caching/etc that would be useful to other people. A stronger point is to have ammunition when assisting a client with assessing their needs.  Here is a good link if you want to keep tabs on a good thread for how to get started with geo caching. The link is updated periodically – mostly questions, but some time saving advice if you can read between the lines.

bloidericon

Dare I Dream of Becomming Bigger Than Craigs List?

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]]> http://www.attackr.com/geo-caching-for-fun-profit-aka-how-to-find-your-arse-with-a-funnel-script/feed/ 0 10 Reasons Why Your Website Failed http://www.attackr.com/10-reasons-why-your-website-failed/ http://www.attackr.com/10-reasons-why-your-website-failed/#comments Mon, 12 Jan 2009 14:00:55 +0000 Utah web design http://www.attackr.com/?p=291 10. You Hired Your Nephew

So he is an electronic wiz. He plays video games, accumulates 2,000 texts on his phone a month, knows how to use the remote for your entertainment system plus took a website class in high school. You’ve heard that he has created a website or two and see an opportunity to save a few bucks. Sure, you can hire him for dirt cheap, but that’s about what you’ll end up with for your website. A few hundred dollars later, you find that the website he created has done more damage than good. You find yourself taking your URL off your business cards, stationary and email signatures. Worst of all you’re missing out on potential customers and profits.

9. You Hired out Your Web Design and Development to a Near-Third-World-Country

Hiring outside of the country is often difficult and disappointing.  If you caved into the idea of hiring a professional for less outside of the country you’ve probably found like many of my colleagues and myself included that the hassle and work you received isn’t even worth it being done for free. Save yourself the stress, and hire a competent firm close to home.

8. You Used Hosting Software to Easily Build Your Own Website.

How hard can building a website be? The honest answer, not very hard at all. HTML is one of the easiest things to learn.  You can find tutorials or a class that can get you started in building a website within hours. Templates make it even easier. Just about anyone can create a website, but being able to build a website that brings success takes a lot of experience and a lot of talent.  If you’ve decided to try it out as a hobby, go for it, I personally find very few things more enjoyable than crafting new designs and programming new systems.  But if you want a website that gets results, turn it over to the professionals.

7. Your Web Design Sucks

If you don’t take your business seriously, how can you expect your clients to do the same. Your visitors are looking for the latest and greatest products or services. In short, get with it, or fail.

6. You Have an Intro Page

Even if you think your splash page looks “cool”, you’re providing little to no benefit to your visitors. Our studies have shown that websites with Intro or Splash Pages lose a multiple of visitors compared to if they didn’t have Splash Page.

5. Your Website contains little to no content.

Usually in this case you have a website because you were told you needed a website. Not only is this tactic looked down upon by your users, but  search engines as well. Create something of value for your visitors, design a strategy to get them to build your revenue. A one page site says, “I only did this because I had to.” If you only have one page, your site is a failure.

4. Your Site Has No Appeal

Keep things fun, keep things light and above all keep things interesting. It is interest that brought your visitor to your site in the first place and it will be interest that will keep your visitor from leaving.  If everything about your website is boring, you’ll never convince them to stay long enough to take a chance on you.

3. Your Budget Only Included Web Design and Development.

It doesn’t matter how influential, beautiful or amazing your web design or development are if you have no way of getting people to your website.  When budgeting out your website, make sure to appropriate sufficient funds to attract an audience to it. It is suggested that you budget enough to build your website, and hire an Internet Marketer to get targeted traffic to your site. You need both to succeed.

2. Your Website is Too Generic

A good looking website and a well branded website are two very different things. A good looking website might impress your audience but a well branded website will influence your audience to a profitable action. If you’re running a business, the latter is the smarter choice. Every aspect of your website should be communicating the same message, from your design, to your logo, to font, text and style.  Keeping these aspects of your website consistent will create a stronger and more influential  brand.

1. Your Site is Not Based On Achieving Your Website Objectives.

If you didn’t plan out the primary and secondary objectives of your website, then your website is probably spinning your visitors in circles.  Give your website an objective, and every aspect of it should be accomplishing it.  If you’re trying to sell a product make it appealing and easy for them to do so, if you want them to call you on the phone do the same.  Too often a website is about a company and loses its potential influence it can have to make your company more money. If you aren’t getting what you need from your visitors, your website has failed.

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]]> http://www.attackr.com/10-reasons-why-your-website-failed/feed/ 22 Steps to Greater Website Profits http://www.attackr.com/steps-to-greater-website-profits/ http://www.attackr.com/steps-to-greater-website-profits/#comments Fri, 26 Dec 2008 10:00:02 +0000 Utah web design http://www.attackr.com/?p=284 Giving Your Audience What it Wants

Too often web designers make a web site that only contain fluff. The problem is, visitors don’t come to your site to wast time, but usually have a distinct purpose. Don’t give them what they want, and they are gone!

So how do you appeal to these visitors? The easy answer, “Give them what they want.” The more important question you should ask is, “What do my visitors want?” To answer this question, you need to research three imperatives,

  1. Who are your visitors?
  2. What attracted them to your site originally?
  3. What do they want when they come to your site?

Once you know who your visitors are, what attracted them and what they are interested in, it becomes very simple to attract and retain them.

So now your wondering how you find this out about your visitors. luckily there are plenty of tactics to help you do this. First tactic, just ask them. Find a way to speak to them and ask them, you’ll find that this is a very helpful tool. Another tactic is using analysis software like Google Analytics. This software is easy to set up, and can tell you mounds of valuable information about your visitors. These are very helpful ways to learn more about your visitors, and in turn, helps you to provide unique and very valuable content to them.

Attract a Larger Targeted Audience

By catering to your customers needs you’ll see an increase in traffic from past visitors returning to your site. But by extending your marketing reach you can compound the number of visitors your site will recieve. In this section we talk about some of the most important traffic building methods used by professionals each day.

If you want immediate traffic now, Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is the way to go. I offer a fair warning though, carelessness and lack of expertise can lead to a waste of your money. If you are new to PPC advertising we recommended to use a budget of $5 or less a day and use one of the most popular PPC systems: Google Adwords. One great benefit of using Google Adwords is that it connects directly to Google Analytics for extra detailed reporting. If done right, you’ll find PPC advertising as a very valuable tool in bringing in new sales every month.

If you like free relevant traffic, your going to love SEO (Search Engine Optimization). SEO is about optimizing your web pages to become more search engine friendly, adding valuable and unique content and providing trusted links from within and outside of your website. The better ranked you can get your website in the search engines, the more free and relevant traffic you will receive.

Focus Your Website to Make Money

As mentioned earlier, you want to make it quick and easy for your visitors to get what they want. On the other side of the coin, you need to make it easy for your visitors to do what you want them to do. For example, why make them click through endless pages to sign up for a membership or newsletter? The easier you make it for your visitors to do what you want, the more they will do it.

Keep your website clean by only providing content that your customers want, and what you want your customers to do. Draw your visitors attention to a profitable action by using proper design such as color, contrast and varying fonts. Don’t forget to try new ways on different web pages to get your visitors attention.

The number of methods you can use to increase customer action seems enless. A few of the many worthy mentionables are branding, cross promotion, A/B testing and improving your call-to-action. Remember, the higher the rate of visitor to customer conversion the more revenue your website will receive.

Don’t Do it Alone

Too often we look to do our web design and marketing ourselves, and sometimes as a result, we lose more money than we save. Unless you’re dedicated and experienced in this area of specialties, you will find yourself beneath your competition when it comes to building an effective website.

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]]> http://www.attackr.com/steps-to-greater-website-profits/feed/ 1 A Great Little Script for Affiliate Marketers http://www.attackr.com/a-great-little-script-for-affiliate-marketers/ http://www.attackr.com/a-great-little-script-for-affiliate-marketers/#comments Fri, 18 Apr 2008 12:10:50 +0000 Karen http://www.attackr.com/a-great-little-script-for-affiliate-marketers/ There are, unfortunately, some dishonest people who will either hijack or try to bypass your affiliate links while you work your tail off wondering why you are not getting any sales. I’ve found the best solution to stop that from happening.

There are many services on the net offering shorter links, etc., but to me they don’t seem as professional as this script I found recently called simply Free Link Cloaker. Not only will this script mask your affiliate links, but it uses a friendly keyword format such as http://yourdomain.com/recommends/keyword
Nice!

Another added feature is that the script keeps track of the number of clicks your cloaked link gets, so you will know which affiliate products are converting for you.

It does require a MySQL database and it uses PHP rather than Javascript, making it a much more stable link cloaker than others you may find in your searches. It is easy to set up, taking only minutes, but you can get support if needed and upgrades for life. I find this little script to be an invaluable resource for every affiliate marketer, or for anyone who just wants shorter URLs.

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]]> http://www.attackr.com/a-great-little-script-for-affiliate-marketers/feed/ 2 The Power of Free http://www.attackr.com/the-power-of-free/ http://www.attackr.com/the-power-of-free/#comments Thu, 31 Jan 2008 05:19:51 +0000 Karen http://www.attackr.com/the-power-of-free/ Nothing is as viral as giving away something for free that has a link back to your site. Really, it is that simple. For a freelance web designer or a WordPress specialist, creating free templates and WordPress themes would be the smart way to market your talents.

For other businesses, giving away free coupons, free samples, free info (ebooks, articles, etc.) would be the recommended strategies for creating viral traffic back to your site. Using a free blog, anyone can implement the power of good fresh content along with downloadable freebies to give their visitors a reason to return.

Writing free articles and submitting them to article directories is another way of sharing free information and if you are a decent writer or you decide to spend the money on a ghost writer, your free info could end up being syndicated on several sites, all of which link back to yours. Viral!

Everyone loves a bargain and everyone loves to get free stuff so start thinking about what you can give to your Web site visitors. It doesn’t have to be much. Just give them a reason to come back.

What are you doing to attract your site’s visitors and what strategies work for you?

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]]> http://www.attackr.com/the-power-of-free/feed/ 2 Alexa Ranking: What Is It and Why Should You Care? http://www.attackr.com/alexa-ranking-what-is-it-and-why-should-you-care/ http://www.attackr.com/alexa-ranking-what-is-it-and-why-should-you-care/#comments Wed, 20 Jun 2007 13:36:49 +0000 Aeriff http://www.attackr.com/alexa-ranking-what-is-it-and-why-should-you-care/ My fellow readers, to be honest, I haven’t paid much attention to my Alexa rank, but some recent posts around the interweb have prompted me to start thinking about it.

For those who don’t know, your website’s Alexa rank affects the amount of money that advertisers will pay to be shown on your site. The lower the numerical Alexa rank, the more money advertisers are prepared to pay. It’s not all that they will be looking for, but it’s an important factor regardless.

In short: a good Alexa ranking matters. So how do you go about ensuring a good ranking? Well, recently I’ve watched the Alexa ranking of this site get better and better over time so the waiting game is a crucial part of the rank improvement process.

So how do you go about improving your Alexa rank? Here’s a few simple tips to get you started:

Install the Alexa Toolbar
If you install the Alexa toolbar on your own web browser, then every time you view your own site, you register as a hit (and so does everyone else who vists your site with the toolbar installed). If you are an Internet Explorer user you can download it here. If Firefox is your browser of choice don’t feel excluded because you can install the SearchStatus Extension instead.

Encourage others to follow suit
Conformity isn’t such a bad thing in this case; so encourage your friends, fellow webmasters as well as site visitors/blog readers to install the toolbar or the Firefox extension. Give them motivation by placing a link to it on your site. (Hint, hint)

Install Alexa widgets
It seems every site offers a widget for your site these days and Alexa is no exception. Read all about their widgets here. They look something like this:

Use Alexa redirects
Use Alexa Redirects on your website URL. For example: http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?www.forgedeuphoria.com. Replace forgedeuphoria.com with the URL for your website. Leave this redirected URL in blog comments as well as forum signatures. This redirect will only count each unique IP address once a day.

Write or Blog about Alexa
Webmasters and bloggers love to hear about ways to increase their Alexa rank. They’ll link to you and send you targeted traffic (i.e. visitors with the toolbar already installed). This gradually has an effect on your Alexa ranking.

Give people good links
The blogosphere is generally a nice place, so it’s only simple logic that the more times you give people good quality links with good anchor text, the more times you will get the same high quality links in return and hopefully when clicked, will increase your Alexa ranking.

Try Alexa Autosurfs
Do they work? Everyone says maybe for brand new sites with a very poor Alexa rank. Note that there might be problems when you try to use auto surfs alongside contextual ads like Adsense. They aren’t also long term solutions to improving your Alexa Rank so I suggest using this option with caution.

So there are just a few options/tips to increase your Alexa ranking and start moving up in the interweb hierarchy.

Got any other Alexa tips? I’d love to hear them.

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]]> http://www.attackr.com/alexa-ranking-what-is-it-and-why-should-you-care/feed/ 2 Things to Consider When Choosing a Domain http://www.attackr.com/things-to-consider-when-choosing-a-domain/ http://www.attackr.com/things-to-consider-when-choosing-a-domain/#comments Sat, 02 Jun 2007 08:13:40 +0000 Aeriff http://www.attackr.com/things-to-consider-when-choosing-a-domain/ The worst mistake I’ve made with my blog (forgedeuphoria.com/blog) was not choosing a more appropriate domain name, which can be attributed to my attitude to simply rush in and do things without thinking them through.

These should be the steps taken when making a decision into which domain to buy:

  1. Select a niche or core topic for your site.
  2. Clearly define the purpose and goals of your site.
  3. Choose an appropriate domain name.

I think it’s obvious that I missed the boat on all of the steps when choosing my domain. When I started my blog I had no idea what I was going to write about and now that I’ve settled on some topics I’m starting to suffer for it.

Your choice of domain name can be the most important decision you make for your site and can make or break it too.

I’m #1 on Google’s search results page for “forged euphoria”. Surprisingly I’ve actually had a few hits from people looking for this. I have no idea what they expected to find.

Anyway, the reason I’m #1 for that term is because everyone links to this site with the anchor tag “Forged Euphoria”, so naturally I’m up there in the rankings; the only problem is this isn’t the term I want to rank high with.

The key is choosing a domain that relates specifically to your niche and has your desired keywords in the title.

For example if you were going to start a blog about cars, cars-blog.com or blog-about-cars.com would be two I’d consider using. When people link to you the majority of the time the anchor tag they’d use would be “Cars Blog” or “Blog About Cars”.

Having people link to you is great, having them link with relevant keywords in the anchor tag is much much better. If your domain name contains keywords relevant to your niche you force people to link to your site with the exact keywords which will help you get a better search engine ranking.

If you’re thinking of buying a new domain first consider your niche and the purpose of your blog before you even start throwing around ideas for names. Don’t make my mistake and get stuck trying to make the best of a bad situation and suffer for it in the future.

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]]> http://www.attackr.com/things-to-consider-when-choosing-a-domain/feed/ 2 Google Analytics in 5 minutes http://www.attackr.com/google-analytics-in-5-minutes/ http://www.attackr.com/google-analytics-in-5-minutes/#comments Sat, 26 May 2007 06:17:49 +0000 niemi http://www.attackr.com/google-analytics-in-5-minutes/ For those of you unfamiliar with Google Analytics, it’s a tool that logs detailed information about your visitors. More details here.

How to integrate Google Analytics with your homepage or blog?

1. Sign up

2. After you have signed up, you will be asked to fill some forms. Enter your domain address (e.g. www.attackr.com), choose your account name and specify country and time zone.

3. You will be asked to fill in some personal information, do that continue and accept the terms.

4. Google now generates a JavaScript which will looke like this:

<script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript">
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
_uacct = "UA-1925799-1";
urchinTracker();
</script>

The unique part of that script is the numbers “1925799-1″.

5. Insert that JavaScript into your web site. Preferably into the footer or the header. Note that this should be done on all your pages (e.g. index.html, contact.html, portfolio.html).

If you’re running WordPress just paste the JavaScript to the footer.php or header.php. This ensures that the script is called on all pages.

6. Exclude yourself. It’s quite discouraging to see that your brand new blog have 20 visits only to find out that they all come from the same person, namely you. Therefore, after setting up your account and web site, you should immediately create a filter to exclude all hits from your own IP.

To do this go to the filter manager (beneath you web sites), click add filter, choose a name, from filter types select “Exclude all traffic from an IP-adress. Now you will have to enter your own exteranl IP-adress. If you don’t know it check it out here or here.

7. Typing the IP correctly. Now lets say that your IP-address is 80.175.125.99. You would then have to enter a backslash (like this \) before each stop. If you IP was 80.175.125.99 you would have to enter 80\.175\.125\.99

8. Last step. Choose the domain which you want the filter to be applied to and click “add”. Press finish and you’re done. Navigate back to the your welcome screen by clicking “Analytics Settings” and wait a couple of days for the first results.

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