Archive for April, 2010

How to Upgrade Gallery 2 to the Latest Version

Friday, April 30th, 2010

For as long as there as been a world wide web, there have been those who surf for images of all kinds. It’s one of the aspects of the web that helped it rise to real popularity. We get to see things we could never have seen before there was the first web gallery script to help a website display the images that it offered. The rise of the php script photo gallery made things easy for even the most amateur web master to create a great collection of images. Thanks to wide availability of online photo gallery software, a huge range of sites have sprung up to offer their own image collections, often relying on what users can contribute to help them grow and expand.

Today, Gallery 2 is one of the most popular scripts out there and some say it is the very best php photo gallery available. There are many who swear by this script and you can definitely see the results when you check out various highly successful sites that are based on images. As a photo album organizer, not many programs compare to what Gallery can offer, so if you are looking for a way to upgrade to the latest version, here it is:

First things first, back up your installation! This is absolutely critical because losing all of your images would be a terrible accident. Be sure to back up both your database and all of the files for your gallery to ensure that everything is safe first.

Next, navigate to the admin section of your Gallery 2 installation. You need to know which version you are currently running so that you know which version you will need to upgrade to. You can find this by visiting the Site Admin area of your installation and then clicking the Maintenance link. Click on System Details and then there will be a line that says “Gallery version” followed by a number sequence. That is the version of Gallery you are running right now.

There are multiple methods to updating Gallery, but the simplest by far is to replace all of the files. To do this, download a brand new copy of Gallery 2, uncompress the file, upload it to your server and run the upgrade program. This is a slower method and it will not save any changes that you made to your installation, so consider it carefully. The advantages are that you should find no errors upon completion since this is a brand new version of Gallery that will go right over the top of your last installation.

Now, all you need to do is navigate to your Gallery section of your site and run the installer program. It will automatically update everything for you, giving you progress reports along the way.

That’s all you need to do before enjoying your fresh version of Gallery!

Popularity: 3% [?]

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How to Use OpenX to Implement Targeted Ads

Sunday, April 25th, 2010

Let’s face it, when it comes to running a web site, the costs easily get to be an issue if you have a substantial amount of traffic or a lot of media that is larger in size than standard text. If you run several web sites then you already know how this goes. While some prefer to go with standard Pay Per Click solutions and context based ads, many of us are looking for a better solution to help monetize our sites. This is where you might find the OpenX download comes in hand for you. OpenX is an open source solution for ad delivery that will give you a very wide range of choices in the ads that you would like to display on your site. In OpenX you have a whole advertising machine that is going to let you showcase banners of any size right on your site and make some money when you send your visitors to sites that really do make a difference for them. The key here is understanding what your visitors want. If you can serve up the right ads to them, if you really know their taste, then it is definitely worth it to install OpenX on your site because you will have more choices than Google Adsense could ever offer you in terms of customization.

One of the strongest points of the OpenX script is that you can actually have a much larger selection of advertisers, but don’t let this fool you into thinking you won’t be able to use Adsense or any other ad revenue generating service you might like. There are OpenX Google solutions that allow you to have Adsense image ads right in along with your other advertising campaigns. You will be able to manage your campaigns on the fly and check results from day to day with detailed tracking statistics. You can make use of the data to try and target the visitors who would most benefit from certain kinds of ads, either by country they originate from or what site sent them your way. This is crucial because different types of visitors to your site are going to be more likely to click on certain ads and you need to know which ones will work most effectively if you want to be able to run successful campaigns and make any level of money you can be proud of.

To implement targeted ads you will want to pay extra attention to where your traffic comes from. Visitors who found you through Facebook are very likely to have different expectations than those who found your site as a search engine result. By sorting your ad delivery out into channels you can more efficiently organize your possible ad delivery options and then go so far as to use the data sent to you from referring sites that let you know the gender of a user, for example. Males and females respond differently to different ads, so if you can use the data provided to your advantage it is in your best interest to do so. By leveraging source parameters to your benefit, you can make sure that users don’t see ads they aren’t interested in. This does a service to the visitor, as well, because you are catering to their particular interests.

In the end, there are a myriad ways to specifically cater to your user base when serving ads through OpenX. If you approach ad management and targeting with the idea of service in mind then you will definitely get far better results.

Popularity: 3% [?]

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Learn to Install Noahís Classifieds

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

In case you haven’t heard about Noah’s Classifieds, it is definitely one script that can add a great deal to your website. Compared with Craigslist, Ebay and other solutions for those who love to shop, the Noah classified system is built to help you provide a community marketplace right on your site. For those running forums or other community oriented sites, this website classified ads solution is the perfect thing to get people truly hooked on your website. It doesn’t take a genius to see that people love both Craigslist and Ebay because it gives them a better way to look for exactly what they want. If you have created a niche interest site then you already have the user base, so why not add this script and get some action going on?

Not only does this particular script have a great level of customization, it is a lot more advanced than almost any other PHP classified ads script out there today. You can use all sorts of custom fields, upload multiple images for the ads, set the system up to let you decide on the ads before they go live or simply have them appear automatically. Noah’s Classifieds will even e-mail ad posters once you have approved their ad and take all the hassle out of running your own classifieds section on your site. Plus, if you want a Noah classified template so you can make your site look a certain way, you have full customization you can do on your own or use an existing template.

Installation is easy once you have the Noah’s Classified download and read the help files for your particular web host. If you want to use Fantastico, here is how installation works:

First, log into your Control Panel of your host and be sure to select the right website that you want Noah’s Classifieds on. Then, you’ll want to click the Fantastico link to speed things up. There will be a category titled Other Scripts which will show you a link to Noah’s Classifieds so be sure to select that.

Next, you see a description of this classifieds script followed by a New Installation link which you will be clicking. Since you get a handy read out of the the amount of disk space required for this addition to your website versus the amount of space left for your account on your web host, you can make a quick decision about whether or not you’ve got the space. Let’s hope so! Be sure to check this, first though so you don’t have a mishap. Once you’re positive click New Installation to continue.

Now you come to a screen of fields you will need to fill in. First, choose the domain you want the script installed on. You can choose a sub directory, or leave that field blank to place it on the root of your domain. This is best if you are only running Noah’s Classifieds as the entire offering of your domain, for example having http://www.YourDomainName.com lead strictly to this script.

Once you decide on a user name and password, enter your e-mail address and click Install Noah’s Classifieds. Then on the next screen, verify your information to make sure the script goes where you want it to and click Finish.

That’s the entire process!  Now you have a very powerful way to interest web surfers and prove to them that your site is the one they want to bookmark and come back to.

Popularity: 4% [?]

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You Can Set Up and Install Advanced Poll On Your Site

Monday, April 19th, 2010

If you are starting up your own web site any time soon, you really need to know that when it comes to design, interactivity is the name of the game. Those who want a site that is going to get users to interact will find that the Advanced Poll php script is one of the finest available for free. While plenty of people are still using the Advanced Poll 2.0 version, you might be better off to consider the newer Advanced Poll 2.03 or even the latest version (as of this article’s writing), the brand new Advanced Poll 2.08 – a definite improvement over the others that offers a much more complex range of highly usable features.

In case you are wondering why you might even care if a poll is ‘advanced’ or not, it really does matter. With Advanced Poll, you get the ability to monitor IP addresses and even lock the script down so that visitors are not allowed to place a huge number of votes from the same IP address. This helps avoid having your voting results ‘thrown’ by an overly zealous visitor who might have good intentions and lots of enthusiasm, but end up ruining the fun and fairness of the voting for everyone else.

Installing Advanced Poll on your own site is incredibly simple. With these easy steps, we are going to walk you through the process of adding this highly alluring tool to get visitors to interact with your website.

Firstly, you will need to create a MySQL database for the script to utilize. To do this, go into your MySQL control panel and click on Add Db. Name your database AdvancedPoll for easy remembering later. MySQL will name it something slightly different such as “username_advancedpoll” so pay attention to that so you know the database name for later.

Next, click on Add User. Then give yourself a user name and password – and be sure to write these down for later! Then put your user name and database name into the dropdown boxes for MySQL and click on Add User to Db. These are the prepatory steps to take. Once you’ve completed them, it’s time to move on.

Now you will need to download the latest version of Advanced Poll and uncompress the file. Once you have the file opened, rename the DB folder to AdvancedPoll. Then, navigate to the subfolder titled /include/ and inside there you will see the config.inc.php file. Open this file in NotePad2 or a similar text editor and find this line of code:

$POLLDB["dbName"]

Change “dbName” to the name MySQL gave you earlier for your AdvancedPoll database.

Then find this line of code:

$POLLDB["user"]

And change “user” to the user name you got from MySQL.

Now, locate this line of code:

$POLLDB["pass"]

Change “pass” to your own MySQL database password that you set earlier.

Save this file and then upload the entire AdvancedPoll folder to your web server. Now, navigate to that folder via a web browser. The address should look something like this, with YourDomainName.com being replaced by your actual domain name:

http://www.YourDomainName.com/AdvancedPoll/install.php

Simply run the install script, follow it’s instructions and viola! You now have a great polling feature on your site

Popularity: 4% [?]

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Templates Express Makes Creating a Site in FrontPage Even Easier

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

Let’s say you have an idea for a web site and you are looking for a way to get it up quickly, but you also need it to look good. Maybe you have been thinking about trying a CMS (Content Management System) the style that so many people are using for their sites these days, but once you see the learning curve you lose interest. Don’t worry because you are certainly not alone. A lot of people turn to solutions like sohotemplates because they simply want their site up quickly without a huge amount of hassle. Not everyone needs all the bells and whistles of a CMS or even a blog. Plenty of websites have something to say, something to offer, and they don’t need to be updated daily or any of that. Those who run these sites want to be able to make a good looking design and let the page do what it is supposed to do, not monitor a digital community. With soho templates, you can create a site, get it online and let it start working the way you wanted it to.

A lot of times, sites like these are simply designed to be an information resource or even something like an online resume or portfolio. Other times, it is the sharing of data like a library 3D Powerpoint templates or other tools and resources that you wanted to make available for people. There is no one size fits all solution when it comes to web site design. The important thing is to choose the design solution that actually suits the needs of both yourself and the site you intend to create. For those of us willing to lay out our sites, templates can be an amazing time saver that will let us use what we know about basic site layout and customize the template to look more how we wanted it to.

In order to use FrontPage to edit Template Express templates to your custom specifications, all you have to do is use the Template Express script which you have installed through Fantastico de Luxe.

Follow these steps so that you can edit the templates of your choosing with FrontPage:

Uninstall any previously installed extensions for FrontPage because you don’t want these in the way, usually this is ‘Clean’ button

Clear the files from your public html folder, generally this is your root directory

Now, install the templates you want through Templates Express and then reinstall your extensions for FrontPage

Use Publish to a folder on your own computer

This way you will be able to fully edit the files so that you can totally customize the templates with any graphics, text or other additions to the pages that you want. You will no longer be tied to the specific template’s design, but at the same time you can alter things to your own desires without having to code everything by hand. Once you are done, all you need to do is upload the files from your computer to your web hosting server and then they will go live. You can do this from within FrontPage itself, as well.

Using Templates Express and FrontPage together definitely creates an easy to use way to get the sites you want live fast!

Popularity: 3% [?]

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