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Ten Good Reasons for using Adsense

2007-10-29T03:03:00.001-07:00

Why is Adsense so popular? What is the difference between traditional banner ads and Adsense? In this article, I'll give you ten good reasons for using Adsense.

1. Displaying relevant ads

Adsense contains a vast advertiser base and its technology can deliver ads that are highly relevant to the content of the page. For example, you blog is about cars. Adsense will automatically selects those cars related ads and shown on your blog. Studies have proved that the percentage of clicks is higher for relevant ads than random ads. More clicks means higher revenue for you, too!
2. One contact point and that's it

Another advantage is that after you've created a blog about cars, later maybe you want to create another blog about movies also. All you need to do is to use the same Adsense code then that's done. Unlike traditional advertising, you'll have to contact different companies for different kinds of ads. You only need one contact, Adsense.
3. One time registration only

As a Webmaster, you may own several blogs. However, you only need to register with the Adsense program once. After you've registered, if you continue to create another blogs later, you don't need to register with Adsense again.
4. Credibility of Google

With the backup from Google, one of the largest search engines in the Internet, you don't have to worry of not getting pay or being cheated by those fake “earn money online" companies.
5. Support different languages

Now you may wonder, is Adsense supports my language or not? Don't worries Adsense supports different kinds of language, not only English.
6. Combine your blog with Google search engine

Apart from earning revenue from ads, joining the Adsense program also enables you to place a Google search box on your site. On one hand, your readers don't have to switch to Google to search something that they're interested; they can search that in your site and make them stay longer. On the other hand, when your readers search it from your site, the results shows up with ads also and you'll get paid when your reader click on it.
7. Customize the appearance of ads

Traditional banner ads made your site looks “ugly" as you don't have much control on its appearance. Let's say you already have a banner on your site and you probably don't want so many banners on it. With Adsense, you can customize the appearance of ads to make it more suitable for your site. If your site is mainly blue, you can choose the color of the ads to be blue also.
8. Text-based ads

Adsense offers you text-based ads as well as traditional graphic banner ads. According to studies, most readers are already getting sick and tired of the traditional graphic banner ads. Automatically, they tend to ignore these banner ads and developed the banner ad blindness behavior. By using text based ads, webmaster doesn't have to face the problem of banner ad blindness and the click through rates will be expected to be much higher, too.
9. Keep track of the performance of ads

You can place your ads in different locations on different pages. Adsense enables you to assign different channels to different ads. As a result, you'll know which location's ad has the highest number of clicks in your site.
10. Customizable reports

Finally, Adsense provides a large range of reports to you. You can analyze these reports and make the corresponding adjustments to improve you site. The reports are customizable, too.

10 Adsense Tips for Maximum CTR

2007-10-29T03:02:00.001-07:00

# You should make your Adsense ads look as a part of your web page

They shouldn't look like an Ad. People are negative to advertising. They search the internet for content not ads. Especially Banners have a less of 0,5% response. Their days are over. Imagine if you have an Adsense ad looking like the typical Banner with different colors. It will not be profitable.
# Text ads are better than image ads

Like before, people are more responsive to text than images. In a way it is considered as a part of the online document and has higher CTR.
# No Border ads

One of the best tricks is to erase the borders of Adsense ads and make them again having the same color with your website's background.
# No other advertisements

The first reason is to be legitimate according to Google's Rules and the second more practical reason is that you do not want to distract your visitor's attention and go somewhere else without clicking your Adsense ads.
# Placement

Even if you have the best Ad, people will not respond if they don't see it instantly. The best place to see the ad is the top of your web page and the next is aside your document's text. Visitors will click it more frequently since it will look like your text.
# Traffic

Try to use legitimate ways of traffic. Some people use Google Adwords and other Pay per Click search engines. The problem here is to search very carefully for the right niche and keywords in order to make your campaigns profitable. Other ways is link popularity techniques like link exchange directories, software or even mass blog submission techniques. Don't use link farms and classifieds for that, because search engine's algorithms are extremely clever and they will ban your listings.
# Do not rely on one website

Yes you can make money with one website but try to make as more as possible.
# Relevant content is King

Articles are one of the best tactics to create huge websites that will be crawled by search engine's robots. Don't forget search engines exist to provide relevant content at first. One excellent resource to automate your article directory procedure is http://www.articleequalizer.com .You can create an article database in minutes which otherwise is time consuming and it would take you a week!
# Use site maps

Google's site maps visit your site and crawl it much sooner that any other submission process. More information is here: http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps
# Relevant ads

It's one of the most important factors for Adsense success. If the internet user can't find relevant ad in your page he or she won't click the ad. Would you act differently? So it's critical to create relevant resource for your web page. In order to do that, you must do the following steps.

First the file must be saved with the appropriate name for example: Golf-Secrets.html if your article is about golf. So the webpage will be: www.yoursitesname.com/Golf-Secrets.html. Second thing you must change is your title tag. For example:

Qurbaani: a Subservient Submission

2007-10-29T03:00:00.001-07:00

All praise is due to Allah The Sustainer, and Protective Guardian of humanity.May His choicest blessings be upon our Master Sayyidina Muhammad and upon his illustrious galaxy of Companions.

We once again commemorate the heroic submission of Ibrahim and the valiant compliance of Ismail u on this day of Eidul Adha.

The life of Ibrahim u serves as an epitome of faith, courage, and compassion.His conduct, conviction, and submission are the vital traits patently absent from a society characterised by its indifferent, selfish, self-centered and voracious ethic.

"The Knife"

"It is neither the flesh, nor the blood [of the animal] that reaches Allah, but it is your Allah-consciousness that reaches Him."

The concept of Qurbaani has a profound impact on, our lives.It is relevant today, as it was in the day and age of Ibrahim u.The "Knife" as an implement, has the potential to disconnect, remove, and extricate. Qurbaani, is really a symbolic declaration to sever, unfetter, cut off and dispense with extravagant, self-centred ostentation. The "knife" needs to go beyond the throat of the animal, it has to be placed onto the heart, and sever the arteries that sustain sentiments of greed, hatred, cowardice, hypocrisy, and malice. The melodies of the heart have to ooze, out like blood that flows from the sacrificed animal.Allah needs neither the flesh nor the blood of the sacrificed animal; He simply ascertains the "Knife" has to be placed on the beast within you so that it may extricate the venom and brute passion.
"The Family"

When he left his wife and infant son at the foot of mount Safa and Marwa, she simply responded saying that: "He [Allah] will certainly never leave us to perish." Likewise, when he concurred with his son about the dream and its implication, his son responded by saying: My beloved father, do as you have been commanded! Allah-willing you will find me from among the patient." What kind of relationship existed between husband, wife, and son? How did Ibrahim u command such implicit trust and dedication from his family? How did they so easily identify with his values and purpose?

Demeanor! Communication! Compassion! Three fundamental requirements for the healthy development of a vibrant, happy, and healthy, family. How often do you communicate, teach, and display love, to those around you? Does your conduct warrant emulation?

"The Submission"
"Verily my prayer, my sacrifice, my very life, and death is for Allah The Sustainer of the Worlds.He has no partner, and with that (belief) have I been commanded, and I am the foremost of those who submit."

The unparalleled submission of Ibrahim, Hajira, and Ismail u lays the basis for our relation with Allah.It highlights the need to identify with the precept of "Divine Rights and Human Obligations" No command of Allah can be made subject to man-made laws.No command of Allah can be measured against the benchmark of common law. How consistent is the Qurbaani of Ismail, the apparent abandonment of Hajira in the burning sand dunes of Arabia with the incoherent concept of Human Rights and Gender Equality?
"The Consequences"

The courage, determination, and faith of single women paved the history of the desolate sand dunes of Arabia. The steadfastness of Hajira u served as the foundation for the eventual establishment of Makkah. The scorching thirst of an infant led to the miraculous well of zam zam. What apparently seemed to be a waste of human life gave rise to the annual pilgrimage where millions of Muslims converge to pay homage to Ibrahim

Too often, we stand petrified of the thunder, oblivious of the potential rain it brings.We forget that dark clouds herald torrential rain.

The Law and workings of Allah are perfect, full of wisdom and are premised on His Mercy and Benevolence. What at first seems to be difficult, crude and burdensome, may really be the beginning of lasting prosperity. Allah says: "Perhaps you may dislike many a thing, whilst Allah has placed abundant good therein." Qurbaani is the very antitheses of subjective obedience or convenient compliance.

May Allah Ta'aala imbue our darkened souls with the true spirit of Qurbaani - Ameen.

THE ANT - A BEAUTIFUL CREATION OF ALLAH

2007-10-29T02:59:00.001-07:00

This particular insect has been selected as a title (Aayat) of a Surah, "The Ants" in the Noble Quran. Briefly, it discusses the advent of Hadhrat Sulayman (Alayhis salaam), gathered with his hosts of Jinn, men and birds and they marched in arranged groups till they reached the Valley of Ants. Said one Ant "Oh you Ants! get back into your dwellings, least Sulayman and his hosts crush you unintentionally".

The Hadith and sayings of the companions are numerous relating to the Ant. Hadhrat Ibn Abbas (Radhiallaahu Anhu) reports that Rasool (Sallallaahu Alayhi Wasallam) said, "Do not kill four of these creatures viz. ant, bee, sparrows (wood-pecker), and any pigeon".

Hadhrat Abdur Rahman Ibn Abdullah (Radhiallaahu Anhu) reports that Rasulullah (Sallallaahu Alayhi Wasallam) descended at a certain place - (house) and attended to the call of nature. Incidentally a man kindled a fire in a heap of ants, (either the house was built on a tree or on the ground). Rasulullah (Sallallaahu Alayhi Wasallam) seeing this exclaimed "Who did this? Extinguish it!! Extinguish it!" Abu Hurayrah (Radhiallaahu Anhu) reports that a certain Prophet from the Prophets (Alayhis salaam) rested under the shade of a tree. An ant bit him. So the Prophet stood to avenge for the bite. He spotted a large group of ants and killed them. A call was voiced to Him, "Did not one ant (bite you)?"

Abu Hurayrah (Radhiallaahu Anhu) reports I heard Rasool (Sallallaahu Alayhi Wasallam) saying, A certain Prophet from the many Prophets (Alayhis salaam) was resting under the shade of a tree. An ant bit him. He instructed his belongings to be removed from there and immediately ordered the heap of Ants to be burnt. Allah Ta'ala revealed to him "Did not a single Ant hurt you and you have ordered a full nation of ants to be destroyed who are engaged in the invocation of Allah Taala? Was it not one ant?

Hassam Dastawani says that the ants and small ants during the season of summer brings love and prosperity to us but during the season of winter we fear they will dissminate/split away from us.

Abu Bakr Najee reports that Hazrat Sulayman (Alayhis salaam) came out seeking for water. Incidentally he spotted an ant facing its bottom downwards the sky and struggling with its legs facing upwards and saying, "Oh Allah we are a creation from Your Creation, we are not independent from your quenching our thirst, either you refreshen us and feed us or either kill us and destroy us.

"Till when they reached the Valley of the Ants, an Ant exclaimed, 'O Ants! Enter your dwellings least Sulaymaan and his armies crush you, unperceivingâ€¦" (Naml 18)

4 Tips to Improve your AdSense revenue

2007-10-29T02:56:00.001-07:00

How many times have you seen an ad campaign running for “Google Adsense” that makes it sound so easy to make revenue by just copying and pasting their code onto your website? After all the research I have done on Google Adsense, I finally realized how it is not that easy just to copy and paste. There is much more beyond this that must be done in order to make Google Adsense revenue..

The Secrets Of AdSense

2007-10-29T02:53:00.000-07:00

If you frequent any of the AdSense forums chances are you’ve come across the phrase ‘AdSense Arbitrage‘, while it’s been around for a while a lot of people don’t understand what it is, or how it works. While I’m not a big player in the arbitrage model I’ve been doing it profitably for a few months, so I can explain how I do it and share a few tips I’ve picked up. In part II AdSense Arbitrage: Keyword Selection I’ll take you through some real keyword options, and in part III AdSense Arbitrage: Automation and Button Pushing I’ll go over some ideas for automating the process I learned recently.

To start let’s take a high level view of what AdSense arbitrage is and how it works. The basic principle is to pay for a low price for keyword in an advertising program like AdWords, Overture Yahoo Search Marketing, or MSN AdCenter and direct users to a page with AdSense or another contextual advertising program on it that has higher payout. You can either bid low on the same term, looking for keywords with a large bid gap (more on that later) or you can bid on very specific keywords with little competiton and drive them to page with ads for a more general and competitive term.

Sounds pretty simple you bid $1 for a keyword, direct the traffic to a landing page with ads that pay $2 sit back and watch the profits roll in right? Well there’s a little more to it than that, it’s not rocket science but the more familiar you are with how both Adwords and AdSense works the more likely you are to succeed. Up until fairly recently most publishers were getting a 60% cut of the adwords price, $0.03 on a $0.05 bid. However now that AdSense has factored in smart pricing it’s a little more complicated. Here’s a decent explanation of smart pricing from Jensense (One poorly converting site can “smart price” an entire AdSense account - JenSense.com)

Google’s smart pricing feature automatically adjusts the cost of a keyword-targeted content click. So if our data shows that a click from a content page is less likely to turn into actionable business results - such as online sales, registrations, phone calls, or newsletter signups - we reduce the price you pay for that click.

The role smart pricing plays in your account varies from one account to the next and is an unknow variable. To keep the math here simple I’m not going to include it, but it is something you should factor into your computations. To keep things simple lets assume you are bidding $1.00 for a keyword. Again to keep things simple lets assume the advertiser is paying $2.00 a keyword, so you’ll get $1.20 a click ($2.00 * 0.6). So you pay $1.00 a click but get $1.20 a click so you make $0.20 every click, not a lot but you’re not really doing any work after you get it running so you’ll make money slowly. The problem is you aren’t going to get a 100% click through rate on your AdSense ads. Lets run some numbers using 100 users coming to your page
Users Cost Per Acuisition Total Cost $ Per Click CTR Income Profit
100 $1.00 $100 $1.2 100% $120 $20
100 $1.00 $100 $1.2 90% $108 $8
100 $1.00 $100 $1.2 80% $96. -$4
100 $1.00 $100 $1.2 70% $84 -$16
100 $1.00 $100 $1.2 60% $72 -$28
100 $1.00 $100 $1.2 50% $60 -$40
100 $1.00 $100 $1.2 40% $48 -$52
100 $1.00 $100 $1.2 30% $36 -$64
100 $1.00 $100 $1.2 20% $24 -$76
100 $1.00 $100 $1.2 10% $12 -$88

So what did our little experiment tell us, unless we have a 90% CTR we are going to lose money. While I’m not going to say you can’t achieve a 90% ctr, I am going to say if you did it would be pretty phenomenal. Let’s take a much more realistic CTR of say 30%. If you were able to get the cost down so you were paying $0.25 per click you would be in much better shape

100 leads @ $0.25 = $25
30 clicks at $1.2 = $36
$11 profit

$11 Profit per day isn’t a lot, in fact it’s probably going to cover lunch at the diner and not much else. So you’re going to have to find something with a lot of volume per day or look for a wider bid gap. A bid gap is what occurs when there is a large gap in bid prices for a particular keyword for example:

Bidder 1 - $10.00
Bidder 2 - $9.75
Bidder 3 - $7.00
Bidder 4 - $3.00
Bidder 5 - $1.25

There $4.00 difference between bidder 3 and 4 is a sizeable bid gap, and these are the opportunities you are looking for when you play the arbitrage game. Adwords isn’t much help in revealing bid in fact the best you can get is a kinda close guestimate, using the Overture Bid tool you can get much more accurate bid prices. Let’s assume you are going to bid 1 penny more than bidder number 5 so it will cost you $1.26 for each bid. The top bid is $10.00 so you will get $6.00 per click, so lets run some number again

100 leads @ $1.26 = $126
30 clicks @ $6.00 = $180
$54 dollars profit

Ok $54 dollars is more like it, now you can take your significant other out to dinner. But let’s slow down let’s say you are running a popular sized adsense block, good old 300 x 250. Well that size block displays up to 4 ads. If the user clicks on advertisement #3 forget going out to eat it’s left over mac and cheese for you. If they click on advertisement #4 you’ve lost money, so you better call up mom and see if you can come over for dinner.

The point to here is it may not always be in your best interest to display as many ads as possible, in many cases you can actually make more money by showing less ads, imagine that! You may even want to use single ads like 125 x 125, 180 x 180, 234 x 60 or the double 468 x 60, and 120 x 240. In addition you want to make sure you have the ads in prominant clickable spots (see Maximizing Profits With Website Design and Layout: Part II :). You may also find you have a lot more success using a landing page with no external navigation. By eliminating options the only choices are clicking the advertisements or using the back button. This means your content is going to have to “add value” along the way just be careful how you add value. Lastly if you use multiple ad blocks give each of them their own channel. If one block consistantly gets a higher CTR, have it appear first in the code so it gets the highest priced ad. Position it where ever you want using CSS. Also remember many publishers bid lower prices for contextual ads than search ads, so this could affect your ability to turn a profit, just again another factor to be aware of.

There are some other points to remember as well like cash management. Let’s say you spend $1000 on Adwords, and get $2000 from AdSense, $1000 profit so what’s the problem? You won’t be getting your AdSense check until the end of the month, and chances are your credit card bill will come before your AdSense check arrives, so make sure you can cover the expense. Letting your bill run up and giving the credit card company 18%-22% of your profit just isn’t cool. If you can’t float the money find a 0% interest credit card.

Getting your first campaign up, running and making a profit is definitely the hardest part. You probably are going to have to micromanage it for a week or two. You may even ask yourself is this worth the time? Well remember you’re just on the learning curve, once you’ve learned how to do it for one the second one is easier, the third even easier and by the fourth one hopefully you’ve found your groove. AdSense arbitrage isn’t rocket science but you do have to be on the ball, and it’s not for the faint of heart.

What is RSS?

2007-10-29T02:48:00.000-07:00

Do you want to keep up to date with the latest posts on ProBlogger?

We have a number of ways that you can subscribe to this site and receive updates. The main one that our readers use is our RSS feed.

What is RSS?

RSS is a technology that is being used by millions of web users around the world to keep track of their favorite websites.

In the ‘old days’ of the web to keep track of updates on a website you had to ‘bookmark’ websites in your browser and manually return to them on a regular basis to see what had been added.

The problems with bookmarking

* You as the web surfer had to do all the work
* It can get complicated when you are trying to track many websites at once
* You miss information when you forget to check your bookmarks
* You end up seeing the same information over and over again on sites that don’t update very often

RSS Changes Everything

What if you could tell a website to let you know every time that they update? In a sense, this is what RSS does for you.

RSS flips things around a little and is a technology that provides you with a method of getting relevant and up to date information sent to you for you to read in your own time. It saves you time and helps you to get the information you want quickly after it was published.

RSS stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’. Many people describe it as a ‘news feed’ that you subscribe to.

I find the ’subscription’ description helpful. It’s like subscribing to a magazine that is delivered to you periodically but instead of it coming in your physical mail box each month when the magazine is published it is delivered to your ‘RSS Reader’ every time your favorite website updates.

How RSS actually technically works is probably a lesson for another day but the key today is for you to understand why it’s good and how to use it.

Let me say right up front that I’m not the most technically savvy guy going around - but even I can use RSS. At first I found it a little strange to make the change from bookmarking to RSS but I found that when I started that I just couldn’t stop.

How to Use RSS

Get an RSS Reader - The first thing you’ll want to do if you’re getting into reading sites via RSS is to hook yourself up with an RSS Feed Reader.

There are many feed readers going around with a variety of approaches and features - however a good place to start is with a couple of free and easy to use web based ones like Google Reader and Bloglines. Either one will do if you’re starting out (I use Google’s Reader) - as I say there are many others to choose from but to get started either of these are fairly easy to use and will help you work out the basics of RSS.

Both of these feed readers work a little like email. As you subscribe to feeds you’ll see that unread entries from the sites you’re tracking will be marked as bold. As you click on them you’ll see the latest update and can read it right there in the feed reader. You are given the option to click through to the actual site or move onto the next unread item - marking the last one as ‘read’.

The best way to learn how to use either Google Reader or Bloglines is to simply subscribe to some feeds and give it a go. Both have helpful help sections to get you up and running.

Note: other options to tracking websites that you might already be familiar with include using pages like MyYahoo, MyGoogle and MyMSN.

Find Some Feeds to Subscribe to - there are two places to look for a site’s feed:

1. On the Site
2. In Your Browser

On Site Subscription
Over the last few years you may have noticed a lot of little buttons and widgets appearing on your favorite sites and blogs. Little orange buttons, ‘counters’ with how many ‘readers a blog has, links called RSS, XML, ATOM and many more.

They come in all shapes and sizes. Here are a few you might have seen:

Rss-Buttons

There are plenty more - but any time you see any of these buttons or anything like them it means that the site you are viewing almost certainly has a feed that you can subscribe to. In most cases it’s as simple as either copying and pasting the link associated with the button into your RSS Reader or clicking the button and following the instructions to subscribe using the feed reader of your choice.

Browser Subscription

Many internet browsers now have the ability to find and subscribe to RSS feeds built right into them.

When you surf to a site you can usually tell if it has an RSS feed by looking in the right hand side of address bar where you type in the site’s URL.

Here’s how it looks for ProBlogger when you’re using Firefox:

Picture 1-21

See the little orange icon on the right hand side? Click that and you’ll be locating ProBlogger’s RSS feed.

Using Safari Browser it is a blue RSS icon:

Picture 2-13
Other modern browsers will have similar icons.

To quickly and easily subscribe by clicking these icons you’ll want to set up your browser to do it with your feed reader of choice as by default they will probably subscribe you using the in-browser reader. You can do this by going to the ‘preferences’ to your browser and choosing ‘Google Reader’ or ‘Bloglines’ etc as your feed reader.

Once you’ve done this and have subscribed to a few feeds you’ll begin to see unread items in your Feed Reader and you can start reading.

Don’t want to Use an RSS Reader? Email is an Option

If the above explanation all just seems a little too complicated for you then please don’t worry. Many sites also enable you to subscribe to RSS feeds via a more familiar medium - Email.

Here at ProBlogger we know that not everyone is into the RSS thing so at the top of our right hand sidebar there is a field where you can enter your email address and get a daily email with a summary of our latest posts. You can unsubscribe at any time and your email will be kept private and not used for any other purposes than to send these daily updates.
Further Reading on RSS

* How to Explain RSS the Oprah Way
* Getting Started with RSS
* Beginners Guide to RSS

Tips For AdSense

2007-10-29T02:44:00.000-07:00

How do you make money from the Google Adsense Program? What AdSense Tips can you share with us?

I have been asked this question so many times in the past few weeks that I thought I should write something on the topic. It seems increasingly bloggers want to try to cover their hosting and ISP costs with some revenue from their blog - and increasingly they’re doing it and are able to make a few (or quite a lot) dollars on the side. Many are turning to Google’s Adsense program.

Covering costs of my Digital Photography Blog is why I originally signed up with Google Adsense - blogging can get expensive when you have high levels of traffic and a lot of pages.

Whilst the agreement you sign with Google stresses that you are not allowed to give specific information about your earnings from the program I can say that I’m glad I’ve signed up because its well and truly covered my costs - and then some. In fact I think its quite feasible to expect that Adsense coupled with other strategies for making money from Blogging could quite easily generate a decent living. It takes time and hard work, but I think its very doable. (Update: Since writing this series I’ve revealed that I am now looking at making over a six figure income this year in 2005 from blogging).

So how do I make money from Google Adsense? Let me share some AdSense Tips that heve helped me.

This will be the first in a series of posts on this topic. Let me say up front I’m no expert - there are a lot of people out there making a lot more money than I am using Adsense - however most of them are not telling their secrets - well not for free anyway. I’ve got no secrets to hide and am willing to share what I’ve learnt since I signed up for the program 8 months ago. If you want a REAL expert’s opinion on Adsense I’d recommend buying Joel Comm’s What Google Never Told You About Making Money with Adsense E-Book. Joel earns $15,000 per month from Adsense and has some good things to share.

I know some bloggers are put off or offended by the idea of making money from blogging so I’ll try not to let these posts dominate my blog - however if you are not interested in the topic, simply skip over these posts.

I am going to assume a few things in this series to cut down the amount of introductory comments I have to make. Here is what I am assuming:

* You have a blog. Whilst most of the following tips will apply to other types of websites I run Adsense on blogs and will speak from that experience.
* You have (or will) read a basic overview of Adsense and have some understanding of what it is.
* You have(or will) read the program policies as outlined by Google. These give details of site eligibility, ad placements and other requirements for using the system.

Enough introductory comments - lets get stuck into the Adsense Tips for Bloggers!

Effective Email Marketing Subjects

2007-10-29T02:41:00.001-07:00

Email marketing has exploded in growth over the past few years, as marketers have continued to see the benefits and outstanding ROI this marketing medium can bring. However, despite the great results being attained, many marketers still overlook a very important component of their email marketing campaigns: The Subject.

Just about everyone who uses email knows about the subject line. It's the little bit of information that is displayed along with the 'sender name' when an email lands in someone's inbox. Some email programs show the sender name, subject and a preview of the message, while other email programs only display the sender name and subject. In these latter scenarios, the subject is an even more vital part of your email marketing campaigns because that may be the single biggest factor in determining whether or not someone will open your email marketing campaign.

Far too many email marketers spend a long time perfecting their message content (which is a good thing!) and then they simply gloss over the subject. An there's the mistake. You may have the world's greatest content, but if your subject line isn't compelling enough to make your readers open the message, all that great content will just go to waste. With that in mind, here are a few tips for crafting your subject line:

1. Short & Simple: A Few Words Can Go A Long Way

A good subject line is short and to the point. Many email programs restrict the amount of characters that are displayed in the subject. What this means is that your subject may get cut short. Worse yet, you don't really know where it will get cut off, which would lead to some highly unexpected results. Imagine sending out an email campaign to business professionals with the subject line: "Learn to Diversify Your Sales Strategy." Now imagine if that subject gets cuts short by your readers' email programs, and all they see is "Learn to Dive". Chances are, your business-focused readers won't care to open that message. On the other hand, if your subject is just a few words, and is direct and to the point, then it will be displayed fully and you will know with the utmost confidence what each recipient is getting the context of your email marketing campaign, regardless of their email software.

2. Pique Your Readers Interest Everyday

People receive a lot of email messages, so you want to make sure your email marketing campaign cuts through the clutter. For your email marketing campaign to succeed, you need to pique people's interest. After all, it is their choice as to whether or not they open your email. And if the subject doesn't elicit some interest or curiosity, then it can easily be skimmed over. The best way to come up with a captivating and interesting subject line is to put yourself in your readers' shoes. Don't tell them what you think they want to hear; tell them what they actually want to hear! This can be tough because you need to keep it short (as per point 1), but a few words is more than enough to get a reader's mouth wet and make him or her want to know more. Remember, if your subject is dull, boring, or completely uninteresting, your reader will go looking for the delete button, and no email marketer wants that.

3. Cheesy or Overly Exaggerated Subjects Doesn't Fool Anyone

If you send out an email and in the subject you promise that "all of your dreams will come true", today's consumer will likely delete your email marketing campaign prior to even reading another word. If your subject guarantees your readers will be rich beyond their wildest dreams, then it will almost always get trashed (not to mention classified as spam). Today's consumer is very savvy and these cheesy, out-dated gimmicks simply don't work. Before writing your subject, assume that each one of your recipients is very well aware that your product or service is not the miracle of all miracles. The moment you send out an email with an overly gimmicky subject, you are really shooting yourself in the foot. This is not to say the content of your message is not special, but with limited reading time for emails, people quickly dismiss anything that sounds "too good to be true". Make sure your email marketing campaigns don't get filed into this notorious group!

4. Be Honest: Describe Your Content

Your email marketing subject should not be conjured up in isolation of your actual email content. They should go hand-in-hand, where the subject nicely describes what the reader can expect in the body of your email marketing campaign. Far too many times in the quest for the perfect subject (and while following the points above) an email marketer will stray so far away from their content that the subject ends up having nothing to do with the message. This is a catastrophic mistake because in addition to the subject acting as a determining factor for opening your email, it also sets up the reader's mentality for what they can expect to see in your email marketing campaign. If they open your message expecting to see tips for effective email marketing, but instead you give them tips for dieting, they will swiftly close your message. While a goal of the subject is to get the reader to open he message, you also want to set it up so that the reader keeps reading. And you can only do that when your subject is honest. After all, if you're trying to fool your readers into opening your message, then you can't expect them to be that attached to what you eventually want to say.

A good email marketing subject can go a long way towards boosting your results and helping you achieve your goals. This important part of every email marketing campaign should be given some serious thought and, when combined with the points above, will help more people open your email and read your content.

Google AdSense

2007-10-29T02:39:00.000-07:00

Google AdSense has been a very good source of income for many webmasters on internet. Many webmasters that have the know-how of implementing AdSense codes correctly into their websites have made lots of money, because if you make the correct implementation you will have more clicks and if you have more clicks then obviously you will have more money on your next payout. Here I will discuss some of the tips that will increase your Google ad click-throughs, it does not matter what kind of design you have or what colors do you use on your website, these tips are valid for all sites and can be implemented safely.
Before you need to implement your AdSense codes correctly, you should have these requirements in place.

1. Good textual content pages.
Your pages should have enough textual content, when you have more text on your pages Google can place ads that are more related to your content. Otherwise if your pages have very limited text then you will end up seeing Public Service ads which won't make you any money.
2. Specific content pages with different Page Titles.
Do not put the same Page Title throughout your site, rather give different Page Titles for every page according to the content of the page. Keep your Page Titles short and meaningful. Putting too long titles might get your website banned from many search engines, so be careful. Keep the content of the page specific, allocate one page for one topic if possible that way your Google Ads will be more relevant to the content of the page. When you have closely related ads on your page, users are more liekely to click on them.
AdSense Tips

1. Place the ads on the upper part of the page
Don't put the ads on the scrolling side of the page, don't hide your ads on the parts of the page where people cannot see them easily. You want people to click on them right? So put them on visible place, upper part of the page is a good choice, place on top of the page or top right column. Give your ads a proper placement, don't put the content so close to your ads, let your ads stand up from the rest of the content so that it can be seen clearly.

2. Match the ad colors to your site
You should modify the colors of the ads to match your website design, that way it will be like part of your website and will be easy on the eyes. You can even blend it to your content pages, but be careful making it seem part of the your content is an offense, and might get you in trouble with Google. Google says too much blending is illegal, if you are making people think that ads are part of the content, and if you are making them click unintentionally then you might want to consider the way you are implementing the ads on your website, otherwise one day you might receive a termination of account email from Google. So blend it to your website but at the same time make sure that it stands out from your content and not taken as your website content.

There are claims that yellow background with red text ads bring a higher click-through, I cannot confirm this at the moment. Try it out and if it works feel free to implement.

3. Use vertical ads and not horizontal
Using vertical ads will bring you more hits, why? Because all traditional ads have been horizontal on internet, 468x60 banners being the pioneers, and people tend to ignore them which is called banner blindness. However when you put a vertical ad on your page "banner blindness" is not that high unlike horizontal ads.

Tips4. Use text ads and not image ads
Banner blindness issue comes here as well, people usually don't pay much attention on the image banners. In this case it is proven that text ads perform better, their click-through is up to 5% while image ads click-through is less than 2%. So use text ads and get better click-throughs.

5. Use channels to monitor your ads performance
Use channels to keep track how different parts of your website is performing. For example you can specify a channel called 'horizontal ad' and run that ad for 2-3 days, and again you can create a channel called 'vertical ad' and implement vertical ads with this channel on your website for another 2-3 days. Then you can compare which ad type has performed better on your site. That way you will know which ad type, size and where exactly to implement different ads.

6. Don't Cheat and Ask Google if you have a question
Lastly don't cheat! Cheating will get you nothing, sooner or later your account will be terminated and all your money will be gone, so play fair. It is illegal to place texts like "Please support us and click on the ads".

Prohibited Uses: You shall not ... encourage any third party to ... generate fraudulent ... clicks on any Ad(s)

Just remember that Google is watching your website and the way you implement the ads on your website.

Ask Google if you have any question or if you are not sure if your strategy breaches their Program Policy. Google's support team is very friendly and fast, just send them email and you should receive answer soon. That way you will be safe from any trouble.

These simple steps will make your Google Ads perform better, if you have any other ways that you have implemented on your site and have seen your click-through rate increase then let me know. And I will be happy to add it here.

Content Management System (CMS)

2007-10-29T02:35:00.000-07:00

A Content Management System (CMS) is a software system used for content management. Content management systems are deployed primarily for interactive use by a potentially large number of contributors. For example, the software for the website Wikipedia is based on a wiki, which is a particular type of content management system. For the purposes of this page, Content Management means Web Content Management. Other related forms of content management are listed below.

The content managed includes computer files, image media, audio files, electronic documents and web content. The idea behind a CMS is to make these files available inter-office, as well as over the web. A Content Management System would most often be used as an archive as well. Many companies use a CMS to store files in a non-proprietary form. Companies use a CMS to share files with ease, as most systems use server-based software, even further broadening file availability. As shown below, many Content Management Systems include a feature for Web Content, and some have a feature for a "workflow process."

"Work flow" is the idea of moving an electronic document along for either approval, or for adding content. Some Content Management Systems will easily facilitate this process with email notification, and automated routing. This is ideally a collaborative creation of documents. A CMS facilitates the organization, control, and publication of a large body of documents and other content, such as images and multimedia resources.

A web content management system is a content management system with additional features to ease the tasks required to publish web content to web sites.

Adding A Regional Component To Your Web Site

2007-10-29T02:32:00.000-07:00

What is a regional web site?

A regional web page is one that focuses in on a specific area such as a city, county, state, country or area of the world. You do not have to have a regional web site to add a regional component to your site. There are two types of sites I am going to talk about. First is the regional site itself and then a web site with a regional section in it. If you already have a web site and want to expand the content and the audience then adding the regional section is a great option for you.

Building a regional web site.

Regional web sites are becoming more popular. Five years ago if you built a site about the community you live in there was a good chance you were one of only one or two sites to do so. Obviously if you were only one of two web sites for a community then you were at the top of any search for information about that community. It is not as easy now. This is still the case for many smaller towns and counties. But there is much more competition for larger more populated areas. Don't just rule out larger areas because if done right then you can still do great in these areas as well.

The first thing to do is decide on the area you want to build a page about. A good place to start is where you live or your favorite vacation spots. This is a good choice because you are already familiar with the area. I will share two things the site will need. The first is more important and the second will bring in more traffic.

Next you need to list the things that make the community you chose unique. It is especially good to find the lesser-known unique things about your community. This can include historical places, unique places and fun places. It can even include the best places to kiss. It can have reviews of local restaurants and business, a history of the community, little know facts about the community and any other things that make your community unique and special.

This is important because most community sites are just a group of links pages about the area. This is part of doing it right. When your page is unique and full of quality content it is easier to get good quality links to your site. Many people forget about this and concentrate on make pages about the key words that people search for. When this happens you end up with a site that nobody wants to link to and nobody wants to spend time looking at the different pages of your web site. Quality is always at the top of the agenda. The goal of any web site should be to be the best web site on the internet about your particular topic. You decide which is better: To have 1000 visitors who visit your site a day, who average looking at 2 pages, or 300 visitors a day who average 10. In the long run when you have hundred of well-ranked sites linked to you then you will get the thousands of visitors who visit many pages on your site.

After you have the above and have a quality site for your community then it is time to start looking at keywords. This is what brings people to your site. A good tool for finding out what people are searching for is Overtures Keyword Selector Tool.

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Type in the name of the community in the search box and click the arrow. It will give you a list of how many times that a term has been searched for in Overture the previous month. I will also list all the phrases that were searched for using that term. This way you know what people are looking for when they search for something in your community. Now you can take the information in this book and apply it to making pages based on these keywords. Remember that with every page you build quality is the key. You want your site to be better than any other site about your community. For an example of how to use this tool try this link.

http://arthritis-symptom.com/adsense/keyword-selector-tool.htm

As an example if people are searching for museums in your community do not just make a link page to the museums web sites. Rather list every museum in the area and add a paragraph or two for each. You can also make a page about every museum and have an index page called museums in your community that link to all the museum pages you have built. If you have 10 museums in your community people will visit most or all of the museum pages. Be sure to add a short description on the museums in your community page.

Adding a regional section to your web site.

This is an idea that has become very popular in the last few years. As the internet continues to grow it is becoming harder to be at the top of the search engines for the most popular terms. So one of the things you can do is to make regional pages for your products or information. I stumbled on this by accident years ago. As I have mentioned I have a very large arthritis web site. As a service to my visitors I decided to add a section to the web site that listed had a page in for every state that listed arthritis resources in that state. It quickly became one of the most popular sections of my site especially in the search engines.

This can be done for any product or service that is not specific to a community. For example I knew a guy who was representative for a Satellite TV system company. He could sell a system anywhere in the country. Once he made the sale the company arranged for the system to be installed. So he built a page for Satellite TV for every city in America. He did this because he found out that many people were searching for Satellite TVs in their communities. He had about pages for over 500 different cities.

This worked well for a while, but he had a problem. Basically every page in his site was the same. The only difference was the name of the city and state. The search engines now frown on this. He tried to fix this by adding unique information about each city. He finally gave up on this and redid the site under a new domain name. Once a search engine punishes you it is hard to get back in their good graces.

So if you are going to do this for a product or service you need to make every page unique. As mentioned above, quality always is important and you can no longer cheat the search engines. So do not take the easy way. Take the time to make every page one that the search engines and your visitors will be proud of.

This can also be done as a service. One of the most popular sites on the internet is topix.net. They have the largest news network that includes news for almost every city and town in America. This can be done for almost any service from adoption to zoos. Some subjects have way too much competition and companies that are spending too much money for you to compete with. Regional travel and legal sites are examples of these. Even though there is a ton of competition for some types of regional sites there are still literally thousands of different topics and services that do not have too much competition.

Web Accessibility: What You Should Know

2007-10-29T02:30:00.000-07:00

There is a lot of talk these days with regard to proper development practices and accessible web design. If you don't think any of this applies to you or your website, you probably don't understand exactly what this is all about. Web Accessibility refers to the practice of creating websites that will be useable for people of any ability or disability. Many things come into play when accounting for a person's eye sight, mobility, auditory and logic skills. Too many web development companies overlook the importance of coding a website in meaningful HTML. Utilities for blind users, such as text-to-speech software, make use of alternate text for images and properly named links. Another downside to overlooking proper HTML lies with the robots search engines send out to read your website. These computers that browse the internet by themselves can learn a lot more about your website, and get a lot deeper into your site when they aren't confused by poor coding practices.

Many people have difficulty controlling a mouse with precision, and can become frustrated while attempting to select a small link. Web designers need to allow for enlargeable text sizes and create larger clickable areas whenever possible. Links should always be styled and colored different than body text so that even color blind users can quickly locate the links on any web page. Pages can even be coded in a fashion that allows them to be navigated without a mouse or keyboard should your audience be likely to require this.

No website should ever rely solely on a video or audio component to convey information. Problems here extend farther than those who are hard of hearing or have poor eyesight. You are relying on certain hardware and or software to be installed on the visitor's computer. If a user has no speakers, or if they are turned off, they could miss your important message or even be annoyed if they were listening to something else. Visitors are valuable and you should never do anything to encourage them to leave your site quickly.

Aside from looking tacky, flashing effects are to be avoided to ensure those sensitive to seizures are not at risk. Content is both more effective and better understood by those with developmental and learning disabilities when it is written in plain text.

The Web Accessibility Initiative

The WAI started in 1999 by the World Wide Web Consortium and is viewed as the standard set of guidelines for creating accessible websites. Although there has been some criticism of their guidelines they have been working since 2003 to release the second edition of accessibility standards which will be much more technology-neutral. This will leave more room for interpretation and adaptability.

The guide goes into great depth on how to create accessible web content and includes a checkpoint summary by topic and priority. They discuss important issues and provide design solutions for a number of scenarios that cause conflicts.

The Future of Accessibility

We are at a point now where there is no doubt accessibility is important, in fact it is already a legal requirement in certain countries. Try searching Google for anything along the lines of 'web accessibility' and you'll see the vast amounts of information available. There's still a lot of work to be done, but we've come a long way over the last few years.

With more and more websites being populated with user generated content, a simple set of guidelines for web designers is becoming less useful. It is impossible to monitor this content for accessibility as it is being created at such a rapid rate. We are also seeing new assistive technologies that support elements like JavaScript, PDF's and Flash which will create many new options for websites that remain fully accessible.

The importance of building search engine friendly web sites

2007-10-29T02:29:00.000-07:00

There are many aspects in regards to search engine optimisation. There are on-page procedures such as optimising meta tags, titles, page copy, urls, alt tags and the like. We also know that another important aspect is off-page seo whereby a lot of time and effort is put in in order to obtain quality inbound links to your site. This normally takes the shape of directory submission, article writing and submission, competition analysis, social media marketing and blogging to name a few.

These are all crucial elements of search engine optimisation and are a major part of any seo specialists daily chors.

One element of SEO that can be easily overlooked is the building of a web site that is not only "user friendly" but also "search friendly". By "search friendly" we mean that the search engines can crawl and spider your site unimpeded which will enable it to extract all of your content and in turn index it within the search engines database. After all, what use is getting thousands of inbound one way links to your site, if your site is not user or search friendly?

There are a number of things worth considering when building a user and search engine friendly web site. They are:

1. Use as much text as possible in the form of HTML - Search engines love plain text. They are not able to read images, video files, audio files or flash, so try to not use too much of these in your site design.

Another thing to consider is that some sites make users log in in order to view certain content or use a form to find content. Both of these are bad. Spiders/crawlers do not know how to log in to your site or fill out a form in order to find your content. So if you want your content to be indexed by the search engines, stay away from this. If you MUST do this, try to produce a snippet of the content to entice users to log in. That way the spider at least has something to chew on.

2. Make your urls understandable - This means creating urls such as www.mysite.com/how-to-bring-up-your-children.html and NOT www.mysite.com/children/article-09876R-YTUR-4tr.html. As you can see the first url is not only "user friendly" but is also "search engine friendly" meaning that the search engines read more meaning and relevance into this url than the second one. Dont forget also that if you were to copy the second url into an email, your signature or post on a blog etc it wouldn't be totally clear where the link was going. This cannot be said for the first url.

3. Structure your site well - This means making your site as flat as possible. Instead of structuring your site in way that means a user has to click 10 times before reaching their target make the content a maximum of 4 clicks away or less.

4. Design your site for users NOT search engines - As much as possible treat the search engines as if they were human beings manually scouring your site for content to index. If it is easy for humans to find what they are looking for on your site, logic says that the spiders will also find what they are looking for and index it. The more "speedbumps" you put in the way of spiders, the slower your site will be crawled and indexed (if at all).

5. Content is king - One of my favorite expressions which is so true. Great content has many benefits, after all, its what we are all after, even the search engines. The search engines job is to find "relevant" search data. When the search engine starts dishing out "irrelevant" results, thats the time when it is going to become out of favour with web users who will move onto another engine.

Having great site content has many benefits such as if your content is good and original, people will want to link to it and your site, so its a good way of building natural links which is something that google likes. If you write good genuine creative content on your topic you will start to become an authority in your chosen field meaning more links and brand/site awareness.

The more content you have the more opportunity you will have of inserting your keywords making it look as natural as possible to the search engines. Although keyword density is no longer a major factor with search engines, it is something that needs to be done.

Well, thats the end of this article with some tips on making your site not only "user friendly" but just as importantly "search friendly". It is something that can be easily overlooked especially as gaining backlinks is viewed as THE most important SEO practice at the moment.

What's PHP?

2007-10-29T02:25:00.000-07:00

Introduction

This is a PHP module for the Apache web server included in Mac OS X.
PHP is a server-side, cross-platform, HTML embedded scripting language.

This particular build of the module is based on the most recent version 5.2.4 of the software. It runs on Mac OS X version 10.4/Tiger and is built as Universal Binary for compatibility with both Intel and PPC Macs.

Note: you should always check the PHP section of the user forum too, new releases of this software are usually announced and discussed there long before they are available on this page as stable builds.

The module includes support for lots of extensions, among them the ones listed below:

* the MySQL and PostgreSQL databases
* the PDFLib PDF library
* the cURL library for various communications protocols
* the GD image creation library (with PNG, JPEG, PostScript Type 1 and TrueType font options).
* the expat XML parser and WDDX support
* XSLT transformations
* LDAP access
* the IMAP client library
* FTP client access
* exif digital camera image metadata support
* transparent session id propagation (--enable-trans-sid) option
* mcrypt encryption functions
* mhash hashing functions
* sockets extension (experimental!)
* iODBC database support
* XML-RPC support (back in after I had to remove it in a previous release)
* GNU gettext
* CLI Version

The distribution comes in a Mac OS X Installer package and is completely self-contained, there are no external dependencies beyond what is delivered by Apple in a regular Mac OS X installation. It does require that you have applied all available Software Updates for the current OS release.

Starting with PHP 5.1.4 the distribution is more modular and the extensions come as separate packages included in one big metapackage. The installer allows you to deselect the ones you don't want if you open the Customize dialog.

All software is installed into a new directory /usr/local/php5 on your boot volume. If you ever want to get rid of the package, you only have to remove this directory, symbolic links called +entropy-php.conf in either /etc/httpd/sites or /etc/httpd/users and, for older packages, a few easily recognized lines in the /etc/httpd/httpd.conf Apache web server configuration file.

NOTE: This module will only work with the original Apache web server as shipped by Apple.
If you re-built Apache from source, you will most likely see an error message like module structure is garbled when you try to restart the server after installing this module. You will have to build your own PHP module which matches your particular Apache. The build instructions might help you do this.

You might also be interested in an alternate PHP Distribution for Mac OS X called MAMP which does not interact with Apple's Apache webserver, includes MySQL and which might work on older releases of Mac OS X. I am not affiliated with MAMP in any way, but have heard good things about it. It seems to be well-suited for personal non-production development setups.
Installation Instructions

NOTE: If you have previously enabled Apple’s PHP module included in Mac OS X by un-commenting the respective lines in the httpd.conf file, you need to undo that change before you install this package, otherwise bad things will happen...

You have several download choices for the PHP module, but note I only support the current version of OS X and PHP. I have no time or interest to support older OS releases or PHP versions.

* If your code does not run on PHP5 and requires PHP4, please fix your code...
* If your hosting provider does not support PHP5, consider changing the provider. If a hosting provider lags behind with software releases, that’s a bad sign.
* If your web server runs an older Mac OS X release, please upgrade the OS.

If you decide to use this PHP package for production use, you need to be aware of this policy, because future versions might force you to upgrade your OS or the PHP version.

* PPC and Intel: The PHP5 package version 5.1.4 and higher is the recommended version.
* PPC and Intel: The PHP5 package version 5.1.4 and higher for Apache 2 can be used with Apache 2 installed into /usr/local/apache2, built from source according to these instructions. Also see the details in this forum discussion.

If you bought and want to use a license key for the commercial version PDFLib from the folks at www.pdflib.com, make sure to enter the Customize screen in the installer, deselect the regular pdflib extension and select the pdflib_commercial one. Remember to do this every time you install/upgrade the package.

If you’re still on 10.3, an older, unsupported, probably insecure PHP 5.1.2 package for Apache 1.3 is available from this forum post. But I really recommend an OS upgrade instead.
PHP 5 on Mac OS X 10.4, PPC and Intel
PHP 5.2.4 for Apache 1.3
PHP 5.2.4 for Apache 2

1. Download the appropriate installation package from the list above.
2. Unpack the compressed .tar.gz file but DO NOT USE StuffIt Expander, use Apple’s BOMArchiveHelper or the command line.
3. Double-click the installer package and follow the directions of the installer application.

PHP should now be up and running. You can test it by dropping a file named test.php into your Sites folder in your home directory. Into that file, write this line:
.

Now open up http://127.0.0.1/~your_username/test.php in your web browser.
You should see a status table with information about the PHP module.
The download storage and bandwidth for this website are provided by my hosting ISP Hostpoint. I am very happy with their service as they have been handling the massive amount of traffic flawlessly for years for a very good price. If you need a reliable hosting partner, please have a look at their offerings.
Update Instructions

If you previously installed an older version of the module, you should be able to upgrade by simply installing the newer version over the old one.

The new version should be active afterwards, you can test with the phpinfo() tip given above.
Examples

* The phpinfo example.
* An example of the image creation abilities. (view source)
* Here is another one, this is an Aqua button generator. (view source)
* Here is the iTunes track I'm currently listening to) (view source, you also need to run this AppleScript in an endless loop)
* Demo of the Type 1 font rasterizer feature. (view source)
* Another one Also look at the t1utils package to convert your Mac PS fonts to the UNIX format required by the rasterizer.
* The clock PDF example from the PHP manual section on PDFLib

FAQ

This section list a few frequently asked questions and their answers. Some of them are rather old and might not be appropriate for current OS X and PHP package releases so if in doubt you should check the forum for the most up-to-date information.
Can I install both the PHP 4 and 5 packages on the same system?

(Since I’m no longer maintaining PHP4 packages, this is for old packages only). Yes, but you can’t run both at the same time. I have configured the PHP 5 package to install into /usr/local/php5 and the PHP 4 package into /usr/local/php. You should be able to switch by changing the Include line in the Apache config file /etc/httpd/httpd.conf accordingly. See this forum post for details.
Where is the php.ini file?

At /usr/local/php5/lib/php.ini (/usr/local/php/ for PHP version 4). I have included the “recommended” file as delivered by the PHP group.

Most people asking for this seem to be interested in setting up e-mail for PHP. This little tool might be helpful in getting OS X's built-in postfix mail server running: PostFix Enabler
My PHP code is not executed.

The package installs with short_open_tags disabled. This means that you need to open your PHP code blocks with
If you use the short form, you should go through all your PHP files and change it.
How do I use it from the command line?

You have to use the full path /usr/local/php5/bin/php and not just php. That will invoke Apple's original PHP module.
Will this run on Mac OS X Server?

It should. You might need to add the MIME type mappings for the .php file extensions manually. Check the user forums, especially the nice explanations here.
How can I get this to work together with the mod_dav WebDAV module? (a.k.a. error message Undefined symbols: _XML_ErrorString)

You need to change the order of the LoadModule and AddModule directives in the Apache configuration file /etc/httpd/httpd.conf so that the WebDAV module is loaded and added after the PHP module. Big thanks to Chris Janton for this tip.

BTW, There are very useful instructions for getting WebDAV and iCal etc. to work on OS X at Greg Westin's site
Why do I get stuff like {\rtf1\mac\ansicpg10000\cocoartf100 on every page?

You probably used TextEdit to edit your .php file. Don't edit your text files with TextEdit! It will insert lots of RTF formatting code into your HTML and PHP code, which is what you're seeing.

Do yourself a big favor and get BBEdit or TextWrangler! This is one of the best programs ever written for the Macintosh (some people say it's a reason to buy a mac), and if you regularly edit text files containing code like HTML or PHP, you definitely need this!
Can I also get the CGI version of PHP?

Yes. It is included in the package in /usr/local/php5/bin, along with many other goodies.
Additional Information

* Check out the book PHP Advanced: Visual QuickPro Guide.
* www.php.net is obviously the best source of information. Check out the excellent tutorial as well as the reference manual.
* Both MacPHP.net and PHPmac.com are web sites dedicated to PHP on Mac OS based systems.
* If you are looking for PHP for Apache 2, take a look at the Server Logistics web site.
* Sheri German has a series of very useful tutorials and tips about integrating MySQL / PHP with GoLive
* Apple's Developer Connection has a page for PHP developers
* Carsten Klapp has some information about activating PEAR for version 4.1 of the module
* Erik Wrenholt wrote a nice, simple PHP application to get you started with PHP and MySQL
* Wincent Colaiuta wrote an interesting article about Mac OS X for Web Developers

Build Instructions

I have automated the entire build process using a bunch of Perl classes and some helper files which I have published. It should be possible to reproduce this build, but I cannot offer any support for this because I just don't have the time for it. Either rebuilding from source packages with this stuff works for you as-is, or it doesn't.

The relevant material is available in the Subversion Repository/
Acknowledgements

Big thanks to

* Andy Liyanage and Jason Justman for access to powerful hardware for the build process
* Finlay Dobbie for cool preprocessor trick tips
* the PHP development team for the hard work they're doing
* ACADEMY GmbH for sponsoring FrontBase support
* Micka Moggia of QX Förlag AB for sponsoring Apache 2 support
* everyone who sent a donation

Hosting

2007-10-29T02:15:00.001-07:00

Cyberspeed.org is a responsible free hosting company. We require all of our customers to read the terms and conditions below.

Cyberspeed.org's services may only be used for lawful purposes. Transmission of any material in violation of International, Federal or State regulation is prohibited. This includes but is not limited to: material legally judged to be threatening or obscene, or material protected by trade secret laws. If you are found in violation of the Cyberspeed.org Hosting Acceptable Use Policy and Terms of Use, your account will be terminated without notice and you will forfeit all of the moneys that have been paid to Cyberspeed.org.
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Chat rooms may be allowed on per use basis, so please ask one of our support staff before setting one up. (Some cgi/perl based chat rooms over utilize the server processor.)Web Site Hosting And Email We make no representation and give no warranty as to the accuracy or quality of information received by any person via the Server and we shall have no liability for any loss or damage to any data stored on the Server.
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Apache HTTP Server

2007-10-29T02:12:00.000-07:00

Apache HTTP Server

Developer:	Apache Software Foundation
Latest release:	2.2.6 / September 6, 2007
OS:	Cross-platform
Genre:	Web server
License:	Apache License
Website:	http://httpd.apache.org/

The Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to simply as Apache, is a web server notable for playing a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web. Apache was the first viable alternative to the Netscape Communications Corporation web server (currently known as Sun Java System Web Server), and has since evolved to rival other Unix-based web servers in terms of functionality and performance. Since April 1996 Apache has been the most popular HTTP server on the World Wide Web; since March 2006 however it has experienced a steady decline of its market share,^[1] lost mostly against Microsoft Internet Information Services and the .NET platform. As of October 2007 Apache served 47.73% of all websites.^[2]

The project's name was chosen for two reasons:^[3] out of respect for the Native American Indian tribe of Apache (Indé), well-known for their endurance and their skills in warfare,^[4] and due to the project's roots as a set of patches to the codebase of NCSA HTTPd 1.3 - making it "a patchy" server.^[5]

Apache is developed and maintained by an open community of developers under the auspices of the Apache Software Foundation. The application is available for a wide variety of operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Novell NetWare and Unix and Unix-like operating systems such as FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris and Mac OS X. Released under the Apache License, Apache is free software / open source software.