Top 5 Free Online Blogging Platforms

WordPress.com

WordPress.com is perhaps the most feature-rich blogging service out there. It uses the popular open source web software WordPress, and offers many features in its free version — traffic stats, anti-spam filters, SEO, gorgeous themes and more.

Blog.com

Blog.com is another popular WordPress-powered blogging platform.

Just like other services, it has its own share of pros and cons. For a start, it offers many beautiful premium themes in its free accounts, as well as advanced plugins that one can expect only on a self-hosted blog. However, on the downside, the free service displays more ads as compared to WordPress.com. (But you can opt for paid upgrades to remove the advertisements.)

The free storage space offered on Blog.com is 2GB in the basic plan, which is less compared to 3GB that WordPress.com gives its users.

Microsoft .NET development tools (contd)

SharpDevelop – If you don’t want to use Visual Studio Express editions then you can give a try to SharpDevelop.

CoffeeScript Compiler – If you are building Web Applications and are not familiar/used to writing JavaScript (or jQuery), you should give a try to CoffeeScript.  You can create complex JavaScript files easily using CoffeeScript and its compiler.

Storm – Other than SoapUI, Storm is a perfect tool to test cross-platform Web Services.

CruiseControl – There are several continuous integration software available in the market, but truly CruiseControl is the leader due to some obvious reasons (read: free, no-cost, no-royalty).  You can download the CCTray to get real-time build status of your projects.

Microsoft .NET developer tools

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express Editions – Unless you have MSDN license or a authorised copy of Visual Studio 2010, these express editions are really MUST-TO-HAVE products.

Notepad++ – A great text-editor with Explorer context-menu and a IDE-like experience.  If you are using TextPad or Notepad, I would highly recommend downloading this.

FileZilla – A fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTPS and SFTP client with lots of useful features and graphical user interface.

WebMatrix – A free web development tool from Microsoft that includes platforms such as WordPress, Razor (ASP.NET MVC3) and other open-source blogging, wiki tools.

Online Meetings, Webinars and Collaboration

AnyMeeting – Hold large or small meetings and web conferences.  This is one of my favourites allowing me schedule and manage my webinars.  You can pay $17pm if you want an Ad-free version, else it’s free.

TeamViewer – A very handy tool for Remote Access and Support over Internet.  You can hold conferences for up to 25 participants, or conduct training sessions.

Skype – One of the most used video conferencing tools across globe does not need any introduction.

Windows Tools

Fences – helps you organize your desktop and can hide your icons when they are not in use.  You can resize your fences (read areas) to keep your desktop clean and organized.

Dell Dock – bring greater organization, personalization and productivity to Dell customers around the globe.  You can use it not just on Dell laptops/desktops, but on any make.

7-Zip – An Open-Source file archiver with high compression ratio.  There is a commercial license for organizations but you don’t need to pay anything for that too.

Paint.NET – free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. This program is a very good alternative to Photoshop for developers (if not for professionals).

Raj Web Solutions - Los Angeles, CA (California) | 949-608-0531

Raj Web Solutions - Los Angeles, CA (California) | 949-608-0531

Don'ts for Website Designing

1. Don't use meaningless words: Do you have a cool site with hot subjects? Or a hot site with cool subjects?
On some hype-sensitive sites these kind of words might be useful but on most sites you'd better refrain from meaningless words.
2. Don't write technical: Don't write technical. Your visitors don't care how you created your site and that you prefer Perl over TCL/TK (or the other way around). Instead write about your subject.
3. Don't split topics: Try to write one topic at one page. If your page gets too large, try to rewrite the text in two minor topics. Avoid using pages that force people to read sequential. In that situation the links only interrupt the process of reading.
4. Don't show any page under construction: Don't publish a page that's under construction. People will hate you if you do. If the page isn't finished, it's not ready to be published. In a sense most pages are always under construction because they are updated (more or less) frequently.
5. Don't use jargon: Avoid jargon. That goes for Internet jargon but also for jargon for any other subject. Only if your site is focused on a selective group of specialists jargon might make sense.

Do's for Website Designing

1. Do know your audience: It's important to know your audience. If you write for a site that sells toys you'll use other words, colors, images etc. compared to a site for online banking. Write and design with your visitors in mind. Don't get tempted to write for yourself.
2. Do write about the subject: Write about the subject.
Saying: This page is about breeding goldfish talks about the page.
3. Do use short sentences: Use short sentences. The World Wide Web is fast. Your visitors want to get your info in a snap. So read and reread your text. Then cut out as many unnecessary words as possible.
4. Do use correct spelling: Use correct English or whatever language your site is written in. As a standard routine use a spelling checker but don't rely completely on it. Human proof reading is necessary.
5. Do use the first screen: Be sure to put important text on the first part of your page, the part that will show up first on a screen.

Bad SEO

1. Hidden keyword’s: Don’t try to hide a list of your keywords in a very tiny font in the footer or in the same color as your website’s background. Google will find it sooner or later and flag your website as spam.

2. Purchase Links: Incoming links are an important factor from the SEO point of view, so web sites that pay for incoming links or publish links that have been paid for by another site are flagged as spam and removed from search results entirely. Now the question is: How Google knows which links are paid and which are not ? Google doesn’t know that, but Google knows that the rapid growth of incoming links isn’t natural behavior of web sites.

How to Step Up in SEO

1. Ramp up Your Content Marketing

Content is a huge part of SEO. After all, without content what is there to optimize? Obviously it takes time and resources to create quality content on a regular basis and that’s why many businesses falter in this area. They either don’t have the manpower, the time, or even the skills to do it right. In order to really be effective it’s important to create a blog and submit content to it daily, submit guest blog posts and articles to industry websites, create videos and upload them to video sharing sites, and create other “link bait” materials such as infographics and free whitepapers, guides, or E-books. Content needs to be taken seriously and content writers should be hired or the work should be outsourced to a trusted writer in order to really give your SEO campaign the boost that it needs.

Eight Rules for Effective Web Forms

1. Build Conservatively and Design With a Purpose

Let's face it: No one likes spending a long time filling out a form. Keep it short and simple and eliminate elements that aren't absolutely necessary or that don't offer a tangible benefit. Make sure every part of your form is pulling its weight, and your users will thank you.

The structure of your form should serve just as much of a functional purpose as its elements. When laying out your form, keep in mind that, at least in the Western world, people read from top to bottom and left to right. They also often use the Tab key to move around the form. Your design should reflect this through intuitive labeling and natural placement of elements. And, of course, your form should never look scattered or haphazard — make sure everything is evenly spaced and neatly arranged.

Here are a few standard form layouts that you should use as a starting point for more creative designs:

Left-Aligned Labels With Vertically Stacked Fields

This form features left-aligned labels with neatly ordered fields stacked on top of one another. This gives the eye an easy-to-follow path down the form, which is especially helpful if you're asking questions users may not be familiar with. Because they're able to read down the list of questions without the visual interruption of an input field, they'll be able to concentrate more on what you're asking. This layout does tend to make for longer form completion times because of the amount of time it takes for the eye to move from the label to the input field.

7 Golden Rules for Investing in Domains

1. Quality over Quantity

Domains are cheap so if you want to, you can hand register over 1,000 domains for less than $10,000. Would that make you happy? Would you consider yourself a “big shot domainer” if you were to own 1,000 domains? Wake up!

Most of the people who are just starting out as domain name investors make the mistake of hand registering worthless domains. For example, lots of people thought they would make it big by hand registering as many five letter domains as they could afford. Needless to say, practically all of them ended up learning a fairly expensive lesson. If you want to invest $10,000, buy a handful of domains which are actually worth it for 2 simple reasons:

a) A domain with inherent value will always be in demand

b) If you own about 1,000 domains, you’ll end up having to pay around $10,000 yearly in registration fees. If you own 10, you’ll only have to pay roughly 100 bucks per year in order to keep them all.

2. Stay Away from Over-Hyped Extensions

Do a bit of research and you’ll understand why. Dot mobi domains are one of the best examples: people have initially paid a lot of money for them but as time went by, these domains started losing more and more value for one reason: the fundamentals just aren’t there, dot mobi is an extension which has been over-hyped and nothing more.

The rule of thumb? .com is king.

10 Unusual Domain Name Search Tools to Find Hot Domains

1. NXdom

NXdom has indexed millions of DNS records of expired and unused domain names. You can search by prefix and suffix, and sort the results by length, readability, and popularity. The advanced options help you refine the results by giving you five more criteria to filter the results.

2. Nameboy

Nameboy is a popular domain name search tool that bases its results on a primary word and a secondary word. Nameboy says that its intelligent engine creates name variations from the sound and meaning of the keyword. The feature that I like is that it immediately color codes the results depending on the availability status of the domain name.

3. Namestation

Namestation comes with a slick interface. With just a few clicks you can enter your suggested keywords and combine them with prefixes and suffixes. Set a minimum and maximum word length and get your domain name results. The application also lets you combine keywords with hundreds of categorized wordlists for a search engine friendly domain name.

Web Design Mistakes You Should Avoid

1. The user must know what the site is about in seconds attention is one the most valuable currencies on the Internet. If a visitor can not figure what your site is about in a couple of seconds, he will probably just go somewhere else. Your site must communicate why I should spend my time there, and FAST!

2. Make the content scannable: this is the Internet, not a book, so forget large blocks of text. Probably I will be visiting your site while I work on other stuff so make sure that I can scan through the entire content. Bullet points, headers, subheaders, lists. Anything that will help the reader filter what he is looking for.

3. Do not use fancy fonts that are unreadable: sure there are some fonts that will give a sophisticated look to your website. But are they readable? If your main objective is to deliver a message and get the visitors reading your stuff, then you should make the process comfortable for them.

Top 10 Mistakes in Web Design

1. Bad Search

2. PDF Files for Online Reading

3. Not Changing the Color of Visited Links

4. Non-Scannable Text

5. Fixed Font Size

6. Page Titles With Low Search Engine Visibility

7. Anything That Looks Like an Advertisement

8. Violating Design Conventions

9. Opening New Browser Windows

10. Not Answering Users' Questions