How to build a Website

How to Caption an HTML table using the caption tag

Kian Clayton — Tue, 17 Nov 2015 02:30:44 +0000

In this tutorial, we will learn “how to Caption an HTML table” using the Caption tag. We will also provide you with an example so that you can have its practical knowledge.

What is Caption tag?

It is an HTML tag using which a Caption is added to an HTML table. By default, unlike the td tag text alignment, the caption tag adds a center-aligned caption above the table. However, if you want to align it to the left or right, text-align property of CSS can be used.

Rules to use the Caption tag

The Caption tag should conform to the below rules:

It is always used along with
the tag in HTML
It must always be used as the first tag after the

tag
Only one caption per table can be specified
Attributes of the Caption tag
Every HTML tag has some attributes that give it more power for functioning as per the user’s requirements. The caption tag supports following attributes:
- Element-specific attribute: It does not have its own attributes.
- Global attributes: It supports all Global attributes in HTML. Some of the examples of Global attributes are class, hidden, id, title, lang, and style.
- Event Handler Content attributes: It supports all Event Handler Content attributes in HTML. With the help of an even handler content attribute you can call a script within HTML. Some of the examples of Even Handler Content attributes are onclick, oncancel, onselect, onshow, onerror, and onfocus.
Browser Support for the Caption Tag
The Caption tag is supported by all major browsers, such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari.
Example
Here is an example showing “how to Caption an HTML table using the caption tag.” It has four rows with two columns.

Monthly Fuel Expenses
Month Expenses

January 1000 rupees

February 1050 rupees

March 900 rupees

April 1500 rupees

Read More:
Caption Element

HTML Tag

Monthly Fuel Expenses
Month	Expenses
January	1000 rupees
February	1050 rupees
March	900 rupees
April	1500 rupees

Regular website maintenance tasks that should never be skipped

Kian Clayton — Sun, 15 Nov 2015 01:55:14 +0000

As with all the other gadgets and devices, maintaining your PC regularly will keep it operating smoothly for years to come. Here are some of the essential website maintenance tasks that should never be skipped.

Change passwords

When you regularly change all your passwords, you can maintain the online security of your computer. However, make it a point not to use the same password on different sites. If you do not have such a good cranial storage, then you should consider using password-management websites for the task.

Anti-malware

You should use a separate, stand-alone tool in order to verify whether your anti-malware program is doing its job properly. It should also remove the malware that was left behind by the anti-malware program. Also verify whether your anti-malware program is up to date.

Check for updates

Your Windows Operating System should be up-to-date. If not, then check regularly for the updates offered on it. While you are at it, you should also consider checking for updates of the other individual software programs such as Java, Adobe Acrobat, etc. from their individual websites.

Verify firewalls

Even though firewalls are known to be reliable, they can be breached when there is malware in the system, software problems, and accidental changes to the settings. Verify whether your firewall is working properly by using free tools that are available on the internet.

Clean up temp files

The more you use your computer, the more the number of temp files that would be gathered in it. If it is left unchecked, the number of temporary files will go up and drag down the performance of your system. There are many tools available on the internet in order to help you clean up the temporary files on your computer.

Clean your registry

The registry is one of the most important parts of your computer. There is, however, no way to check whether there are any erroneous or obsolete registry entries and to rectify them, since Windows does not offer that facility. Fortunately, there are many registry cleaning tools available on the internet for free download. Do not, however, expect these tools to over-perform, since they only over-promise their ability to improve the performance of your system, but cannot actually do more than simply clean your registry.

Remove obsolete update files

Some of the newest versions of Windows retain the copies of the old Windows update files, even if they are of no use any longer. If you have been using your computer for several years, then it is possible that you have been carrying many gigabytes of these useless files on your machine. Clean up these obsolete update files, so that you can have more space for the other things.

Maintain backups of your files

The integrity of your data is all about taking the backups of your computer files. Take the backups of the most important files on your computer, so that you do not lose them, in case the computer crashes or if anything else happens to your machine.

A website maintenance checklist

Website Maintenance: clean up old posts & pages

The Importance of Researched Keywords

James Beebe — Sat, 10 Jan 2015 01:05:34 +0000

With the many regulations placed on marketers, researching on keywords has throughout remained the constant tactic for search engine optimization. It is crucial in terms of profiting your business.

The right keywords will determine the value and success of a website. Researching key words does not just let one know what clients are looking for, it is a chance to know what the clients are thinking as well. This is of course in relation to your industry. This allows the marketer to know when and where to make changes depending on what client’s demand or are likely to demand.

The properly researched key words will not only increase traffic to the website, but especially the targeted audience. With all the information available on the internet, online searchers can only get to your website with the help of relevant and well researched keywords.

Using tools for keyword research can be quite helpful. Some of the services provided by these tools include updated keywords by the different search engines according to the market. They will also change and update your list of keywords. Other tools will have links to search networks to let one know the popularity of their area and what sources of information people are going for.

Blunders to avoid when researching keywords

Do not go for the extremely competitive keywords. These are keywords that are overly common. Going for them means you have a lot of competition you will have to keep up with.

Avoid over reliance on keyword research tools. These tools will mostly give just a mere estimation of the information you need including more of qualitative data rather than quantitative data when it comes to analyzing key words.

Quite a number of SEO marketers will only do their research once and come up with their list of keywords. Carry out the research on a continuous basis to ensure that you are updated with what is new and what is not trending anymore. This should then be followed by appropriate changes on the website.

Specializing too much in the keywords identified from your research will only make your website too monotonous. Expand and be more creative when it comes to implementing the researched keywords as it will make you stick out from the crowd of similar websites.

Tips on using a research keyword list

The keywords you are researching on should be applicable to the content on your website. This means having keywords that actually relate to what the website is about and that which clients can use to get the information they need.

Knowing the right keywords is not enough; it is also about applying them to ensure they are effective in improving your rank on the search engine.

Avoid the stuffing of keywords all over the website content and instead ensure that they are well distributed in the areas of most interest. This is for instance the most important pages on the site.

Organize the keywords to enable easier placement as the list may be too overwhelming. This will also help in fitting the keywords into the right pages.
Keyword Research for Web Writers and Content Producers

How to Do Keyword Research: A 6-Point Checklist

Keyword Research: The Definitive Guide

How to Speed Up your WordPress Website

Kian Clayton — Wed, 24 Dec 2014 01:00:43 +0000

Any website visitor would grow impatient waiting for a website to load. Also, a dawdling website will understandably lose its subscribers. Not only does the site’s speed affect the user’s experience but it’s also a significant factor when it comes to ranking of your website by the search engines. Obviously, everyone needs to maximize their web page load speed so as to accelerate their website or blog growth.

There are various ways on how to speed up your WordPress website:

1. Prefer a good Host. For a super fast website, it perceptibly needs a good host. Choose a good non-shared host like the WP Engine.

2. Detect the plugins that are slowing down your site. If your WordPress website is sluggish, it’s might be because of mis-configured or inactive plugins. Plugin Performance Profiler(P3) is a free tool that WordPress users can scan to uncover which plugins are triggering slow performance in their sites. It evaluates the influence the plugins have on your web page’s load time. The Social-sharing plugin is an example of a generic malefactor plugin that dilates a WordPress page loading time. Once you discover the plugins that retard your website, you can then decide whether to replace them or remove them completely.

3. Compress your website. Another way on how you can improve your WordPress website load speed is to compress your website. Similar to how compressing files on a computer leads to reduced total file size, compressing your website’s files saves bandwidth as well as speeding up the page loading times. This can be done using Gzip application which is more efficient.

4.Compress your images. Images are acknowledged to consume a lion’s share on most websites. It’s therefore more important to make use of WP Smush.it, a grand plugin that instinctively compresses images once you upload them. This plugin doesn’t distort your images’ quality whatsoever.

5. Host your video externally. Hosting your films and video on sites such as YouTube and Vimeo will help speed up your website speed if your server is slower and limited in space.

6. Control the browser caching. Despite there being loads of impressive caching plugins, incorrect set up may worsen your problem. If a user has a version of your web page in their caches collection, expires headers will dramatically speed up your speed. First, they would disdain the need for recurring visitors to download similar files again. Also they lower the HTTP request number made. With guided set up of plugins like WP Super Cache, it will make your speed fly to the peak.

7. Tidy up the database. WordPress is known to auto-save everything making your database jam-packed with loads of stash. The WP-Optimize plugin provides a resolution to this issue by customary cleaning up your database’s gibberish thereby maintaining the database efficiency making it possess only what is required.

8.Optimize your CSS and JavaScript files. It’s more efficient to put all CSS and all JavaScript into a single CSS file and a single JavaScript file respectively to reduce your WordPress website page links to individual JavaScript and style sheets. Better WordPress Minify plugin assists you to compress this files into one.

9. Empower Keep Alive. Once in need to download a file, a message known as HTTP Keep Alive is conveyed between the user and the web server seeking permission to download. If you enable Keep Alive, it will allow the client machine to download several files without asking for authorization repeatedly hence saving bandwidth.

10. Disable Hot Linking. Hot linking crops up when another internet user uses a link on their web page to display an image hosted on your WordPress website. This robs your bandwidth as it makes your server load progressively more high.

11. Turn off inter-blog communication. WordPress is designed to communicate with other blogs that are fitted with ping backs and trackbacks. If another blog remarks on you, it alerts your site which consequently brings up-to-date data on the post. Disabling this won’t raze links to your site but only the settings that breeds a bunch of work for your site.

12. Update regularly your WordPress Version. WordPress keeps on releasing new and improved versions. So as to benefit from faster and more secure platforms, it’s certified you pick the latest releases.

Image credit: Phil Oakley , JOHNNY RODRÍGUEZ

How to find a good WordPress theme

Kian Clayton — Tue, 22 Apr 2014 08:08:31 +0000

There are a lot of WordPress themes available, and it’s easy to get lost when searching for the perfect one. Most of them are free, and even the professional themes usually don’t cost more than 100 dollars.

Do you have anything specific in mind?

That’s the first question you’re going to have to ask yourself. What is the goal of your website? Is it business oriented, or is it more along the lines of a personal blog or image gallery? Depending on the type of site you have, you might be looking for some specific features, while others may not be as necessary, or not needed at all. For example, some themes allow you to change the colors of the theme, and some don’t. Make a list of criteria the theme needs to meet.

Portraying your website

If you’re running a company, it’s extremely important for your site to project your company’s overall style and image. If you want to imply professionalism, pick a theme that uses a lot of blue. That’s what the psychology of colors says. However, if you’re a company with a lot of emphasis on individuality or humor, it’s your best best to go with something minimalistic-looking.

A good WordPress theme offers a lot of customizability options. For example, probably the most important feature is being able to upload your own company header, so make sure the theme includes this feature. Check whether the theme enables you to switch between different layouts. That’s another obvious plus.

Taking a sip

The best way to decide if a theme is right for you is to play around with it. WordPress themes are super easy to install – it can literally be done within a couple of seconds. If you come to the conclusion that you don’t like it, you can instantly return to the previous one without consequences.

And if you don’t want to install it, that’s fine. You can view demo versions instead. Usually you’ll be able to tell within a glance if the theme includes what you’re looking for.

Technical support

Not everyone is a tech wiz, so if the theme has some form of technical support, that’s a huge plus. Whether it’s live chat, a phone line, email, or ticket system… it doesn’t matter. But it’s important to know that this is a feature you usually won’t get unless you purchase a premium theme.

Search filters

WordPress includes a search engine that lets you browse through the themes with ease. To quickly find the features you’re looking for, just use the tick-boxes in order to filter the results some more. By using it, finding the right WordPress theme becomes a breeze.

It’s extremely important to choose something that fits the context of your website. If you look at it from the visitor’s perspective, a website that looks engaging will hold their attention, while an outdated look might quickly scare them away, which means lost revenue for you if you’re selling a product or earning through display ads. So make sure you take your time with it.

Here is a video that will be useful installing your favorite theme:

How to choose a good web hosting service

Kian Clayton — Mon, 31 Mar 2014 07:33:26 +0000

In the last post we saw how to choose a good domain name. The next step is to find a good web hosting service. The following are important aspects that you ought to consider when picking a web hosting company for your website as it will determine the income you will make eventually.

Reliability

The reliability of the web host is very important as it dictates the up time and the down time of your website. The website remains profitable to you and your business only when it is online. Many customers are always frustrated never to return when they find an error message on your website. Most of the web hosting companies will claim to offer reliable hosting services to you and even offer you money back guarantees after some given time. They provide you with the services for a given time very efficiently, but they end up giving you low quality services after the grace period is over. It is always advisable to get services from renowned providers with positive reviews from their clients. Search around for hosting reviews and see what the existing customers are saying about them. The Web hosting Talk Forum is a good start.

Support

One will require to be an expert to resolve any problems as they arise. Since not everybody can be an expert, it is always wise to get a web host firm that will offer support services every hour of the day or week whenever you need it. When you choose web hosting that has a great customer service, you will never be disappointed as they will handle your queries in good time and help you fix the problems you may be experiencing. Try sending a few sales & support queries before purchase see how fast and detailed they respond. While this does not guarantee great after sales support, is a good test to try.

Bandwidth & Speed

If you have been to a website that takes ages to open, you can be sure that your clients will feel the same feeling you had when they visit your sluggish website. To avoid this choose a hosting firm that offers a wide bandwidth and has an efficient server. This will give your clients a great experience as they do business with you. The speed of your website will as well be determined by the amount of space that you have online. Some providers will lure you into their service by promising unlimited bandwidth.Don’t fall for that. As a starter, you need only limited bandwidth. As you grow, you can always shift to larger plans.

Getting online is a great experience, and it indeed drives customers to your business. This is what makes it important to choose your hosting service wisely.

Some more hosting comparison sites

(image credit neospire, statefarm)

Introduction to Web Hosting

Kian Clayton — Sat, 29 Mar 2014 07:24:05 +0000

Once you decided to build a website for personal or business use, the next step is to decide on the best web hosting option for you. Website hosting is basically a service provided by a company to store a website (including all files such as HTML and images) on their servers and make it available to Internet users. Such companies are called web hosts or web hosting providers and often offer different hosting services.

Types of web hosting

There are different types of web hosting services available. Just like when you set out to open your shop, you can chose from small shopping space to large area of shopping with huge parking area, you can get spaces of various scales in the online world too.

1. Shared web hosting

This is the most common website hosting service as it’s typically cheaper than most other hosting options but still offers all the features needed by business websites. With shared hosting (sometimes called standard web hosting), many websites are hosted on one server at the web host and therefore share system resources such as bandwidth, disk space and memory.

If you’re looking for an economical way of hosting your site, Shared Web Hosting may be the best option as users share all the costs, meaning lower expenses for you. The main limitation of this type of hosting is that the server performance can be significantly affected especially when there are several clients with huge traffic on the same server. Good professional hosting services, watch the server performance continuously to make sure all the websites on the same server performs well.
The additional advantage of this setup is that your hosting service does regular periodical maintenance of the system like upgrading the software, installing patches, backups, security from attacks etc. The service is ‘managed’ so you don’t have to worry about all server maintenance tasks.

2. Dedicated web hosting

With dedicated hosting, a server is fully dedicated to one client and not shared in any way. You enjoy complete control over information stored, accessed or shared on your site .This form of hosting is often the best option for a website with very high traffic volumes or business sites that demand highest levels of security, full control and increased server performance. You will be able to install the software you want on the server. For example, if you are custom developing an online application, you will need the flexibility of a dedicated server.

One key advantage of dedicated hosting is that the server will not be overwhelmed or slowed down by traffic from other sites as system resources like processor power and memory are not shared. Additionally, it allows users to access web pages more quickly. Compared to other hosting options, however, dedicated hosting is often very expensive to maintain. Moreover, you need to have deep networking expertise to run or manage the server and a website hosted on it. Alternatively, the hosting service may offer you ‘managed dedicated server’ where the hosting service will manage regular server maintenance tasks.

3. VPS Hosting

Another common hosting option is VPS (Virtual Private Server), which is basically a partitioned section of a server. Clients usually have their own small environment within one server and are allowed to reboot it, make any alterations they wish, and access only their little part of it. VPS hosting mimics the dedicated hosting in this way, but you’re not actually on a dedicated server. It can be ideal for a business that plans to use a dedicated server but is not ready yet.

VPS web hosting is typically less expensive than dedicated hosting and may offer the ability to spread out the cost of the server as it houses several users on one server. Despite this, it’s still more expensive than shared hosting since there is more upkeep on the back-end with those costs being passed down to you. It also requires regular security patches, system updates and other maintenance tasks though not as much as dedicated web hosting.

For most websites, shared hosting is good enough. It is good enough initially, when the traffic is less than a few hundred unique visitors per day. If you are with a good hosting service, even when you cross a few thousand visitors per day, the web site will keep performing well.
[image credits Robert Scoble]

Reasons You Should Invest Money In Your Website

Kian Clayton — Fri, 28 Mar 2014 12:00:05 +0000

In today’s market, business owners cannot afford to have a sub-standard website. Investing money in your website helps cut down long-term costs. Businesses that try to cut corners when it comes to website investments will most likely experience fewer sales and lower revenues.

Original and unique content

If you want your website to stand out, you will need to invest in quality content. This means providing your target market with the information they want. Customers are easily attracted with unique and original content. You can employ the services of a reputable writing company which will write content for your site that is unique, original and sufficient. This is only way to keep visitors coming back to your site. In addition, quality content helps to improve your overall brand image.

Better SEO strategies

SEO or search engine optimization is one of the main pillars of a successful and effective website. SEO involves identifying keywords that are search engine friendly. Due to the constant evolution of SEO strategies, it is most likely that you will not be able to keep with all the changes that take place and this is why you need to invest in your website. You can hire professionals who are familiar with effective SEO strategies that can land your site at the top of major search engines websites such as Google, Yahoo or Bing. Effective SEO campaigns are primarily based on placing the right keywords in your content so that they make sense and reach the targeted audience. If you fail to do this, you might put off your readers.

Good website design

Having a good and practical website design is very important for any business. It allows you to appear more professional. If you have a poorly designed website, you can lose a huge number of potential customers. Internet users are interested in websites that have a touch of sophistication but still very practical. If they come to your site and see that that it is poorly designed, they will quickly leave and go to another website. This means no sales for your business. If you are not a professional in website design, you should hire a person or firm that is. They can give your website a design that is practical, appealing and engaging.

Obtaining assistance

Coming up with original content is not always an easy thing. If you are not an expert in writing articles or creating videos that will attract the customers’ attention, then you should seek outside help. In today’s market, it is easy to find businesses working together with creative agencies to come up with quality content for their websites. In addition, it is important that website owners get advice or information from experts on how they can make their sites better. You can employ people to do online surveys to bring various issues to light.

Consistency

Having a successful website involves a continuous process. Trying to gain the trust and loyalty of your customers’ takes time; websites that are not up-to-date are most likely to fail in this task. Running a successful website is a long term investment that eventually pays off. Any form of effective online marketing requires constant attention to provide the best results.

Investing money in your website is a good business decision. It might seem hard at first, but you definitely will see the long-term benefits to both you and your business as time goes by.

[image credits: brewbooks,kenteegardin, dreamstime.com]

Buying A Suitable Domain Name For Your Website

Kian Clayton — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 08:23:12 +0000

The internet changes everything today, including how business is done. It presents massive opportunities for business individuals who want to generate decent traffic and income out of their businesses. The web currently hosts billions of users, and they are all able to reach a wide audience just at the click of a mouse.

However, because the web presents a unique platform to do business, the only challenge that people face is how to get their message across. Having a website of your own is part of the solution, because websites bring you out as an authority of what you are doing.

To solve the challenge, you’ll need to come up with a relevant and good domain name for your website. These are the actual titles of your website, sometimes called the URL of your website. A relevant domain will enhance your SEO(Search Engine Optimization) efforts and also represent your website nicely.

That said, how do you figure out whether a domain name is suitable or not?

Relevance to your business

The surest way to get a nice domain is by customizing it to stay relevant to your business. If you can’t fit it in your company name, then it only means two things: Either the domain name is too long, or it has already been taken.

Your safest bet would be to incorporate primary keywords into your domain name because these keywords are the most sought after. For instance, if you operate a company that provides painting services in Utah, then you could get a domain that reads like; www.paintingutah.com.

Is it catchy and easy to remember?

When choosing a domain name, it should be unique and easy to remember. For instance, if your business involves providing tax services, then something like taxfilingtoday.com would do well.

During your marketing campaigns, you need to ensure that your domain name is always standing out, and easy to recall. It must fit in your business card and easy to pronouns and remember. You don’t want prospects to keep wondering what the name of your website was.

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes/Compare your rival’s domain

If you were searching for a particular service online, what keywords would you use? What domain names would you find attractive. Check your rival’s domain and their ranking as well. To customize your domain name to stay relevant to the keywords you are targeting, you’ll need to use Google keywords tool. Key in your competitor’s domain and see how it would measure up. Then add your own unique spin and come up with something interesting, catchy and relevant.

Creativity and combination

Finding inspirations to formulate your URL and domain name is simple. Just try some different combination. For example, if your product or service promises to solve certain needs in the near future, then you could try and customize your domain name in such a way that it answers those needs. If you are promoting weight loss products, you could say www.10dayweightloss.com. The idea is to combine those keywords in question or answer form.

Visit the online auctions

Check GoDaddy and Flippa for some inspiration on what domain names could do well. These two websites are a rich resource for finding brilliant domain names to pick on. Of course these domain names have been ranking very high in search engines, and that’s why they are worth auctioning.

It’s a difficult task to create a high-conversion domain name. If you can find a domain name in one of the two websites above, then it will simplify your work because everything has been done for you.

If you are launching a website for your business, your domain is what determines whether you succeed or not. So it only needs to be unique, relevant and engaging.

Here is a video on choosing your right domain name:

Register your domain

Once you have decide on the domain, next step is to grab it and register in your name. Here are the top domain registrars

Name Cheap ($9.98 a year)
Go Daddy ($11.99 a year)
Search for godaddy coupons. You may get the domain for way cheaper rates!
Name($9.99 a year)