How to view .htaccess file and other hidden files on Windows PC
February 28, 2009
How can I view .htaccess file or other hidden files on my PC or a server? Is a question I often come across at the support forum of my Free PHP Directory script support forum, I though a quick and dirty tutorial like this one will not only help answer this question for users of LBS but for other who may want to learn how to view hidden files.
How to view hidden files on Windows
Viewing hidden files on Windows is very easy, I use Windows Vista so I will use Vista as and example.
Having a visual image of what you need to do helps make it easier so here is a screen shoot of an open folder in on Windows Vista.
Open a folder on your desktop, on the folder navigation menu expand the item Folder and Search Options
A new window will open, this Windows has three menu, click on View, you will see option with radio button
Do now show hidden file
Show hidden file
Folder Option
Select the show hidden file option, click on Okay or Apply and you are done. Next time you browse a folder that contain hidden file, you will see the hidden file.
Making .htaccess file visible in cPanel web hosting control panel
You should login to your web hosting control panel which is assumed to be cPanel. cPanel ask’s which directory you wish to access, in a box called “File Manager Directory Selector”, about 2 thirds the way down the box, there is a check box that asks “show hidden files (dot files), if you check that box, then select which directory you want, the .htaccess file will show up.
Web Links – dofollow, nofollow, backlinks and other webspeak
February 27, 2009
A link that is not nofollowed is known as dofollow link. A Dofollow link is a link crawlable by search engine. Dofollow is not a tag, its an attribute you simply don’t nofollow a link if you want it be dofollowed.
A nofollow link on other other hand is one that will not be followed by a search engine robot/spider. This is accomplished by placing the rel=”nofollow” attribute in an anchor tag. This can be useful when you are optimizing a website and do not want to give the destination website credit for the backlink.
No follow links were first developed by Google as a way to control spam links on blogs and sites. By adding the no follow tag to any link, its prevent spammers from posting useless comments simply to get a free link back to a site.
Most people often confuse “noindex” with “nofollow.” In order for a link not show on the results page of SE, the meta robots tag with the “noindex” attribute, <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex” /> has to be used.
This meta tag tell search engines that they should not index that page, so it worth include it on the search results.
While “nofollow” attribute tells the search bot comes across such a link, it will know that it should not crawl the site, this link will not be counted toward the PageRank of the site that is receiving it.
A link with a “nofollow”, would look like this: <a rel=”nofollow” href=”http://www.link.com“>link text</a>
* Google : The Googlebot does not follow that link. It states that google spider takes “nofollow” literally and does not “follow” the link at all.
* Yahoo : If we find a link we make it available to our algorithms to find new content, whether it has a ‘no follow’ attribute or not. However, if the ‘no follow’ attribute is present, it means that no attribution is given to the target from the source of the link. They follows the link, but excludes it from their ranking calculation
* Ask.com : We have never officially supported No Follow, so your questions don’t apply to our crawler. They totally ignores the attribute.
However, Nofollow links may be used in following cases:
* Untrusted content: If you don’t want to vouch for the content of pages you link to from your site you can nofollow those links. This can discourage spammers from targeting your site, and will help keep your site from inadvertently passing PageRank to bad neighborhoods on the web. In particular, comment spammers may decide not to target a specific content management system or blog service if they can see that untrusted links in that service are nofollowed. Though this does not stop some spammers as they are out there not for backlinks purpose but also traffic. NOTE: Whether a link is followed or nofollow its still good for human visitors to your website which can turn to a client.
* Crawl prioritization: Search engine robots can’t sign in or register as a member on your forum, so there’s no reason to invite Googlebot to follow “register here” or “sign in” links. Using nofollow on these links enables Googlebot to crawl other pages you’d prefer to see in Google’s index.
* Paid links: Paid links that are not nofollowed can influence search rankings,a site’s ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it. In order to prevent paid links from influencing search results and negatively impacting users, webmasters are encouraged use nofollow on such links. Webmasters buying such links coming from sites delivering traffic wouldn’t mind the extra attribute being added to their links.
In conclusion, No Follow does not mean that the SE does not see the pages which the attributed links point to, but rather link value nor referral attribution is given.
You can discuss this and other SEO related issues at Search Engine Marketing forum .
How to Grow Your Hosting Company
February 25, 2009
You will need a lot of visitors to come to your website in order to increase the sales of your hosting packages. Getting more customers is the bottomline for any company. In this article we will touch upon few techniques which will help you to increase your website traffic which will positively affect the growth of your webhosting company.
Google as we all know is the most powerful search engine on earth. Wouldn’t it be great if your website shows up on the results page when someone looks for ‘Webhosting Company’? You can easily buy traffic with the help of Google AdWords. This technique will draw a lot of customers to your website which will in turn contribute a lot to the growth of your hosting company.
Apart from Google AdWords there are many other options for increasing your website traffic in order to grow your hosting company. Search engine Optimization is one of the best possible means to get the targeted traffic to your website. Increasing your website ranking on the search engines is an absolutely brilliant strategy to increase your sales.
You can also grow your hosting company by advertising in several forums. Some of the ways to advertise your hosting company in the online forums are as follows.
• Visit the webmaster of the forums and try advertising your services.
• You can also add some valuable posts in the forums which provide valuable content and include the address of your hosting website in your signature. This type of forum marketing is very effective. You can hire a couple of good forum posters to do this job for you.
Once you have the customers for whom you are going to set the hosting, you must provide e-mail, telephonic and Chat support so that they can contact you for any problems and enquiries related to their websites. If you give proper timely solutions for their issues, it will add more value to the reliance and trust of the customers. Therefore, the customer support which you give to your clients will reflect with your company’s growth.
You can also do article marketing to grow your own hosting company. The articles can be on the topics related to “making money online”, “building an efficient website” etc. you can also mention in your articles about the need for web hosting company to create websites. If your articles are good and if the contents are original, you will see your sales increasing in just a matter of time.
You can also provide some advanced control panels for the buyers to manage their accounts efficiently. Good technology will attract more clients and more clients will help you to grow your own hosting company.
You need to adopt excellent security measures to your hosting websites in order to prevent the hackers from destroying your business and your reputation.
The last and the most effective means to grow your own hosting company is by advertising it locally. Having a couple of marketing executives should help you to get more local clients. You can even visit organizations and small business firms and explain the benefits of having a website for their company.
You could also try giving out some freebies like the free web templates to your customers as a value edition service. This will ensure the website renewals with your hosting company resulting in recurring income year after year. You will need to be persistent and patient to grow your own hosting company.
You can discuss this and other web hosting related issues at the web hosting forum section of Webmaster Serve.
Cloud Web Hosting – Host your site in the clouds
February 21, 2009
There are many cloud computing services and to access most of these services it is very essential to have a Web browser. Cloud computing service can be anything for e.g. word processor, e-mail, spread sheet or may be your sale and marketing system and it is as simple as accessing a web site.
There has been immense improvement taking place in internet softwares and infrastructure which has permitted cloud computing to gain a brighter future ahead. It has provided employees to be much more flexible and firms have the tendency to run applications online which provides much more swiftness and flexibility to the business.
Cloud computing refers to processes whereas the elements which are used to complete this processes are availed through internet as services. It is not derived with a help of an IT system which is situated in-house. Cloud computing has become a utility more than a service therefore.
Normally if you think or see in your daily life, software is run by your employee at your premises and managed by him/her. The scenario is completely different when you think of cloud computing as it is accessed through a web browser and through internet and the actual information or data is stored elsewhere and not at your premises, this helps in operating from multiple places according to your convenience.
There is a possibility that even you might have come across cloud computing or may be its sub-categories like application service provider, utility computing and software as a services etc. One thing is common among all these cloud computing services is that they give a tough competition to the traditional limitations IT department has made for itself and its users. It hardly matters to the users where the elements like software or hardware which supports and provides back up to the cloud computing actually is, it might be situated anywhere and its safe, that is what should matter more.
Initially the providers of cloud hosting services were small payers in the IT league but taking note of its popularity, many giant players have come in to the scene providing customers with flexibility and convenience that this service offers.
It is not necessary to hang around with your own laptop to work when you are availing the cloud hosting services as you can store the information over the net. The softwares which were previously stored in your laptop can now be availed through internet and one can avail it anywhere were internet connectivity is available, and that too in any other computer.
However, it should be noted here that cloud computing is not actually a new idea but it has become fresh again due to the infusion of so many new applications with IT giants coming up to revive the concept. Internet infrastructure has improved over years and the services like cloud computing has greatly benefited from it and now individual entrepreneurs as well as companies can centralise their business on the web.
Small business house has been greatly benefited by cloud hostig because they could now avail these applications as well and help run their business in a much more organised way, which previously was able in a similar format only to giant companies who can afford to invest large chunks of money for hardware, software as well as employees.
How to Start Your Own Hosting Company
February 14, 2009
Web hosting is undoubtedly one of the most lucrative online businesses which will yield recurring benefits to you on a long run. Therefore, let us get straight to the point,” How to start your own hosting company?”
Let us first analyze about which type of people who can enter into the web hosting business. The answer is, just about anyone and everyone. You can start your own hosting company in a lot of different ways depending upon your expertise and your budget. Adding the web hosting profile to your existing business is most definitely a good strategy for your business expansion.
If you are marketing any Internet service provider company or if you are into computer repairing business, starting your own web hosting company will be the next level of growth for your company. You will be coming across frequent inquiries about the websites from your existing clients. All you’ll need to do is, do the up-selling to your existing customers. The platform is perfectly suitable for your business growth.
You might have already noticed that the well established hosting companies give out their blogs for free. Anybody can register for free and set up their blogs with those companies. These companies generate huge revenues from the advertisements.
Let us try to distinguish between the various options to start your own web hosting company. If you are a beginner with a shoestring budget, you could go for the web hosting with the reselling packages from the big hosting companies. Your customers will get a feeling that the web hosting is done by your company.
The plus point is that you will not have to worry about investing on the servers, technical problems, tax issues and other terms and conditions which come along with the hosting business.
You cannot stop at this level if you want to start your own hosting company and more importantly grow it. The clients can easily know about the name servers and realize that you are the reseller. The chances are that they might not renew their hosting packages with you unless you impress them with your excellent customer support. You will need to grow out of this level at one stage in order to ensure the recurring income with the renewals every year.
Reaching for new horizons
You can opt to lease out the services of dedicated servers for your web hosting business. However, you will not be able to sustain it for long when your clientele grows. Setting up your own data center for your servers is the best possible option when a look at the bigger picture of your company’s growth. It is not just going to happen overnight and you will need to consider a lot of things along with the server space.
The efficient web hosting company will have excellent sales team, billing department and the technical department to handle the client issues. You’ll also need to think about uninterrupted power supply and other overhead costs like location rentals and the salary for the employees.
It is very easy to start your own web hosting company and you can make the necessary changes as your company grows. You will need to be patient and persistent with building your client network. When your clientele grows, you will surely see the next step.
