JournalXtra

Crafty Sitemap Building

Dion de Ville — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 05:57:28 +0000

The Sitemap is the Holy Grail of a website. It's the sheet (or sheets) of xml that new webmasters don't know to use and some experienced webmasters neglect to create. Consider that every website has a front, a back, a mouthpiece, a gang of security guards and a guide. Visitors see the front, the webmaster uses the backend to create the front, the RSS feed tells the world what's happening at the website, robots.txt and other little bits help protect it, and the sitemap guides search engine spiders around the it.

Usually, if you use a content management system (CMS) you will be blessed with automatic sitemap generation either through an inbuilt process or a plugin. In which case, you only need to locate it, submit it to search engines, link to it from your index page or the footer of every page, and regularly ping it to tell search engines about updates to it. You will usually find your sitemap sitting comfortably close to your robots.txt at the root of your domain e.g. your-domain.com/sitemap.xml

Free GIMP Button Brushes

Dion de Ville — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 06:02:47 +0000

No, these are nothing like the buttons used to fasten shirts and unfasten women's blouses, these are the type used to create wonderfully stylish clickable areas on web pages. In total, there are 21 free Gimp button brushes waiting to be downloaded. They are easy enough to use but I have provided full instructions and tips below for those who need them. Those instructions along with their usage and redistribution notes are also in the the Readme file packaged with the download.

The buttons are in greyscale so can be colored any way you like; they are without text to make it easier for you to customize them; and they are quicker to use than the scripts that originally created them. The ones shown in the image are only exemplary of the goodies given away in the download.

JournalXtra Events Recap: New in February

Dion de Ville — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 19:32:34 +0000

Welcome to the second JournalXtra newsletter of the year where you will learn what's new, what's hot and what's not at JournalXtra. February was an incredibly busy month for me. I invested a lot of time adding and updating many articles. Here's a brief recap of what those articles were:

New Articles

How to Split a Website Across Multiple Servers

Have you ever in your wildest dreams thought, I wish I could use my domain name on more than one web server so that I can use it with multiple white label sites. No? Yes? Probably? Sometimes white label and co-brand sites just do not provide as much server space, site customization or products needed to build a successful website. Thankfully, what one sponsor doesn't provide another might and, if not, your own definitely server will. This short EasyGuide explains exactly how to configure a registrar to re-route traffic for specific sub domains of a website so you can have site1.mydomain.com and site2.mydomain.com on different servers.

10,000 Backlinks in 1 - The Best URL Submission You Will Ever Make

During February I discovered a new plug in for Wordpress. Called the BungeeBones Remotely Hosted Directory, it aims to provide a remotely hosted and managed directory for Wordpress blogs. It works similarly to a webring but with a difference - it displays as a directory and not as a sidebar advertisement billboard for other people's blogs. It has a lot of potential and will, eventually, provide thousands of backlinks to its members as more and more webmasters take to using it. I highly recommend the use of this plugin. You can see JournalXtra's standalone version of the directory here.

Rant About the Amazon Affiliate Program

Yes, I finally killed off the Amazon ads that littered the sidebar. They were ugly, didn't generate any income, slowed down the site's load speed to an unbearable level and Amazon's we-only-pay-you-if-people-click-the-right-ad-for-their-location ad system is much too fiddly to implement and check (my stats didn't match their stats). Plus, Amazon has made changes to their contract that's too overbearing for a small site like JournalXtra to cope with. If you wish to read more about my decision to remove Amazon's ads then please follow the link.

Happy Songs to Keep us Smiling

A few of my friends felt a bit low at the beginning of the month so I thought I'd add some sunshine to their lives by pointing them to a few uplifting happy songs. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to find happy songs on the Net. It's ridiculous. Eventually, after a few hours of searching, I came up with, and you might want to sit down before you read this, are you ready? Sure??? I found four. Yes, four (4) happy songs. Amazing. I know. I couldn't believe it myself. I was so caught up in the excitement I nearly forgot about you guys. Luckily I didn't and I posted them here for you to enjoy too.

Ebooks Directory List

Everybody who uses a computer knows what an ebook is so I won't go into detail about them but suffice it to say I have added 85 ebook directories to the Webmaster's Toolbox. Ebooks are a fantastic way to advertise and get targeted traffic to websites, landing pages and sponsor sites. Best of all, good ebooks go viral. So, what are you waiting for? Get writing, save it as a pdf and submit it to an ebook directory.

How to Check for Dead Links within a List

This is a must read article for every URL collecting surfer or webmaster with a list of links in a file that need to be checked for life signs. The process is simple - download the right script, properly format your links, run the script. Easy. Even easier when the instructions for using the script and formatting the links are provided in an EasyGuide. Need to check the links on a website? I've answered that one too.

Find Hot Current Search Terms and Keywords

A couple of years ago I stumbled upon a website that listed real search terms in realtime. I thought I'd revisit the guide and update it. I was shocked, the website listed in the original article had changed. It no longer provides realtime search terms, it is now an advert for a web design company. It appears the site's designers played a not too uncommon trick on us - it had used the domain name to provide a service that would gain lots and lots of backlinks while it matured. Once the backlinks were in place, they converted the site to its real function of advertising a web design company. One has to respect the cunning of its architects; nevertheless, I was a little pissed at it but it did give me the impetus to re-write the whole article instead of just updating it. The new article lists several sites that provide near realtime and historical search words and phrases entered into search engines by surfers. I hope you find it useful.

Brand New Download Section

JournalXtra now proudly boasts its brand new, all shiny and sparkling, download section. No, don't go looking for movies and music 'cause ya ain't gonna find any in there unless I've created them. This new part of the site is home to all the free downloads linked within other parts of the site along with other goodies I decide to give away. It is still under development and already has a few GIMP plug-ins, scripts and brushes ready for download. The download area is part of a new strategy I'm using to attract traffic so expect to see it fill up with all sorts of free stuff over the next few weeks and months.

Updated Articles

The Suffusion Review has been updated to show off the theme's new admin panel and its ever increasing list of widgets and config options.

The GIMP guide has had another script repository added to it and the scripts download zip file has been replaced with a larger one (it's better to grab this from the download section than the guide). The guide will be re-written over the course of March so expect a surprise if you view it in April.

The Webmaster's Toolbox has had a lot of updates. To name a few of them, there are more links website and product review sites, more ping services and an ebooks directory and syndication site list. All the links have been re-checked for activity. I am aware that some of the links still point to sites other than their intended targets, I apologize for that and promise the offending URLs will be weeded out over time; you are welcome to help me there by pointing them out (use the contact form listed in the menubar).

March will be just as busy as February. I have several articles half started and several more lined up to be written. I've hinted at what some of them are above but I can't say too much because other webmaster might steel my ideas. I hope you had a good February and I wish you a brilliant March.

To my readers and friends who are in Chile, I sincerely hope you have not been too badly affected by your recent Earthquake and Tsunami. Those of you who have been affected by it, I can not imagine the devastation it has caused and will not pretend to understand what you might currently be suffering. All I can do is pray that you get all the help you, your family and friends need to get through it and get passed it. I am here if you need to talk.

How to Split a Website Across Multiple Servers

Dion de Ville — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:57:13 +0000

Picture this:

you've joined an affiliate program and your sponsor provides you with a hosted free site. You register your domain name, point it to your sponsor's server then set up your free website. A few days later you think about marketing it. You visit lots of directories and send back link requests to hundreds of webmasters but everywhere you turn you see a great massive big bolder blocking your path. You approach it, inspect it and see some words written on it in BIG, BOLD RED LETTERS:

Reciprocal Link Required

You think, Mmm, O.K, I'll put the recips in my website's footer and when that's full I'll stick them in my sidebar.

So you get out your hammer and bolster and start chipping away at it. After a few days of chipping you finally break through the last of the bolder. As it splits into two pieces you step onto the other side of the path, exclaim "Phew! That was hard work" then sit down in exhaustion. Just before you close your eyes to relax you notice all the chippings you've left on the path, What a mess, you think to yourself, How am I going to clear that up?

Well, how are you going to clear it up?

10,000 Backlinks in 1 – The Best URL Submission You Will Ever Make

Dion de Ville — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 10:58:25 +0000

A lonely fact of a webmasters life is the time spent locked away in solitude as we notch up backlinks to our websites. Some come organically through people visiting our sites and bookmarking us on a do-follow social networking site or by placing a link to us on one of their own websites such as a free Wordpress or Tumblr blog. Other links we create artificially by connecting with other webmasters and asking them to link to us in return for a link back to them or we add our sites into the many directories that are available to us. It takes a lot of time to build backlinks even when auto submitters are used.

A couple of days ago I learned about a directory project that is changing all that. It is called BungeeBones and offers 10,000 backlinks for the price of 1. Intrigued, I took a look, thought this sounds good - too good to be true; so I looked more deeply into it and contacted the project's leader to find out more details. After several email exchanges, which I might write about in a later article, and a bit of research I concluded the project is genuine and will do as it heralds, namely, give thousands of backlinks for the free price of one.

BungeeBones is a directory with a difference - it is a remotely hosted human edited directory hub that allows webmasters to plug-in to it and display it on their own websites. Any webmaster can submit URLs to the directory and can optionally place a version of the directory on a submitted site. Each version of the directory is a stand alone product. Thousands of webmasters are already plugged in and connected through it so a link submitted to a directory on one site will potentially display in every other directory that is connected to the hub. It is like using an automatic directory submitter: one click submits a link to thousands of directories.