Publish RSS news feeds on your website quickly with RSS Include

March 7th, 2010 by Webmaster Punk No comments »

RSS is a great method for quick posting, syncing, and displaying feeds onto your website. If you’ve ever wondered how you can take RSS feeds from Google, Craigslist, Yahoo or any other service that provides a feed, take a look at http://www.rssinclude.com

They offer a totally FREE service to create neat little fancy boxes or simple output RSS into HTML without any issues. Of course, they’ll have to throw in a footer advertisement at the end of your feed. If you upgrade your account, only around $30 a year, it’ll remove the powered by line at the bottom, still a bargain, unless you want to code some JavaScript that’ll spit out HTML via RSS for you.

Take a look, its FREE, easy to use and I’m sure you can put it to use.

The CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business

February 9th, 2010 by Webmaster Punk No comments »

If you own a business/mailing list, or provide any type of communication to your subscribers, YOU MUST ABIDE all CAN-SPAM laws and regulations. Yes, we all hate spammers. The FTC receive millions and millions of Cyber Crime reports regarding users who violate CAN-SPAM laws and regulations, PLEASE DON’T become one of them.

If you own an internet marketing group, agency, or internet marketing software/mailing list, please abide these rules.

  1. Don’t use false or misleading header information. Your “From,” “To,” “Reply-To,” and routing information – including the originating domain name and email address – must be accurate and identify the person or business who initiated the message.
  2. Don’t use deceptive subject lines. The subject line must accurately reflect the content of the message.
  3. Identify the message as an ad. The law gives you a lot of leeway in how to do this, but you must disclose clearly and conspicuously that your message is an advertisement.
  4. Tell recipients where you’re located. Your message must include your valid physical postal address. This can be your current street address, a post office box you’ve registered with the U.S. Postal Service, or a private mailbox you’ve registered with a commercial mail receiving agency established under Postal Service regulations.
  5. Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you. Your message must include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting email from you in the future. Craft the notice in a way that’s easy for an ordinary person to recognize, read, and understand. Creative use of type size, color, and location can improve clarity. Give a return email address or another easy Internet-based way to allow people to communicate their choice to you. You may create a menu to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to stop all commercial messages from you. Make sure your spam filter doesn’t block these opt-out requests.
  6. Honor opt-out requests promptly. Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your message. You must honor a recipient’s opt-out request within 10 business days. You can’t charge a fee, require the recipient to give you any personally identifying information beyond an email address, or make the recipient take any step other than sending a reply email or visiting a single page on an Internet website as a condition for honoring an opt-out request. Once people have told you they don’t want to receive more messages from you, you can’t sell or transfer their email addresses, even in the form of a mailing list. The only exception is that you may transfer the addresses to a company you’ve hired to help you comply with the CAN-SPAM Act.
  7. Monitor what others are doing on your behalf. The law makes clear that even if you hire another company to handle your email marketing, you can’t contract away your legal responsibility to comply with the law. Both the company whose product is promoted in the message and the company that actually sends the message may be held legally responsible.

Source: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/ecommerce/bus61.shtm ; Sept 2009

HTML Ceritifcation by Expert Rating

February 3rd, 2010 by Webmaster Punk No comments »

So you want to obtain a HTML certificate? Why not right? There are online classes you can take that are over $1,000 to receive a certification. Why would you pay that much? I don’t have much spare time on my hands so I’ve hovered over to ExpertRating.

Take a look, they offer many courses for just about anything related to technology. Obviously this isn’t a Degree from Harvard Univserity, but it’s better than nothing!

Expertrating Info:

ExpertRating’s online HTML 4.01 Test. ExpertRating is an ISO 9001:2000 company that offers hundreds of popular certifications suitable for students, professionals, job seekers and companies.

http://www.expertrating.com/html-test.asp

GoDaddy Coupon Codes! Yep, heres a secret that you might/not know..

January 27th, 2010 by Webmaster Punk No comments »

We all love saving money, yes, If I could save up all the money I used with coupon codes, I’d have a nice stack of bills.  So why not save a few bucks and use the coupons below? Their great to save money on domains, hosting, FREE Private Registrations and more. Take a look.

I’ll also teach you a few tricks to look for the most recent coupon codes and one website that is constantly updating its source for more discounts. Yes, Thank you Mr. FatWallet, we appreciate your discounts!

Quick tips:

  1. Navigate to Google.com
  2. Search for (with quotes) “godaddy coupon codes”
  3. Notice, the first link will be FatWallet.com
  4. Click it and browse to the last page of the forum thread
  5. [ http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/725207/?start=940 ]
    or
  6. [ http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/725207 ]

There you will find a list of coupon codes as below- Pretty neat don’t you say?

cjc749fat – $7.49 .COMs (exp 2/28/10)

cjcfat30 – $5 Off w/ $30 Purchase (exp 2/28/10)

cjcfat50 – $10 Off w/ $50 Purchase (exp 2/28/10)

cjcfat75 – 15% Off w/ $75 Purchase (exp 2/28/10)

cjcfat10 – 10% off any purchase (exp 2/28/10)

cjcfat20h – 20% off Shared Hosting (exp 1/31/10)

OYH7 – $2.50 off / $7.49 any .COM

BTPS101 – 20% any order of $50 or more

BTPS111 – 10% off anything

BTPS255 – 25% off $100 or more

OYH5 – 10% off whatever

OYH6 – $5 off a $30 purchase

OYH20H – 20% off hosting

chill5 – 10% off

chill6 - $5 off $30

chill7 – $7.49 .coms

hash5 – 10% off

hash6 – $5 off $30

hash7 – $7.49 .com registration

gdd1101c – 10% off any order of $40 or more

New Theme, New Year!

January 26th, 2010 by Webmaster Punk No comments »

Well it was time for a new theme..this one looks pretty modern. I had to modify sidebar.php a bit, but thanks to WordPress.com for this beautifull theme, it was simple.

PHPFormGenerator Tutorial – Create forms in a jiffy!

January 25th, 2010 by Webmaster Punk No comments »

http://phpformgen.sourceforge.net/ – PHPFormGenerator is one of the greatest tools I’ve ever used. I don’t really like to sit there and create a form in PHP, can take awhile; specially if you need specific functions or to link it to a MySQL database. Who needs that right?  (just kidding for all you hard-core techies) Anyways, back to my point.

PHPFormGenerator is also availble in Fantastico De Luxe, a cPanel automated script installer (The big blue smiley face). With a few quicks, you can setup your form and it will spit out HTML/PHP for you to plop right into your website. You can choose custom colors, specific fields, uploaders, to create a MySQL backup or store info to a MySQL backup, the possibilities are endless. This is a quick and dirty way to get your form up and running ERROR FREE!.

So take a look, the best part is, it’s FREE! (I love freebies!)

To view a tutorial on how to use PHPFormGenerator, please click here.

Fancy Box + JQUERY (Great LightBox Gallery)

January 17th, 2010 by Webmaster Punk No comments »

FancyBox..Lightbox..Yea dont know how they come up with those names …moving on…

http://fancybox.net/ – the latest and greatest! Version 1.26 (They came out with 1.3 RC2 with flash and a bunch more of new supported features).

I’ve been using this script all over my websites – check out a live working version at http://urartucoffee.com/menu.php (a local coffee shop website that I’ve built with open source scripts and code).

FancyBox utilizes JQUERY, a simple quick lightbox javascript popup to display your images via overlay. Simple as adding a <class tag> to your link. <A class=”zoom1″> – take a look at my code on that website, its pretty neat. You can also group multiple images together to create categories and albums. I do apologize for the quick block about this neat script, but I have not had time lately. I promise I will come back with a tutorial to help you guys out. Again, if anything is ever needed, feel free to leave a comment and I will reply back!

Everthing your business needs to grow. – RatePoint

January 11th, 2010 by Webmaster Punk No comments »

“The smaller the business, the more room for growth” – That has to be one of my favorite quotes I saw on a bumper sticker. Anyways, so your looking to expand your clientele and brand awareness. Trying to keep your customer testimonials in order, clean, surveys, email marketing, just trying to grow right? Good! You’re on your first step to sucess.

Http://www.ratepoint.com – RatePoint provides all these tools in one. Customer surveys, sevice rating, email blasts (email promotions) and much more. Take a look at the trial, its free, won’t cost you anything .

I promise!

38 Web Design Mistakes

December 17th, 2009 by Webmaster Punk No comments »

Yes, we all know we make mistakes when designing or developing a website.

Here are some quick tips you might find handy.

  • Confusing
  • Pop up messages
  • Poor load time
  • Over use of Java
  • Poor overall appearance
  • Poor use of HTML tables
  • Spelling/Grammar mistakes
  • Poor organization
  • Inconsistent page design
  • No contact information
  • No ‘about us’ page
  • No privacy policy
  • Different backgrounds on each page
  • Poor content
  • Poor navigation
  • Over powering music set to auto play
  • Broken HTML code links and graphics
  • Poor browser compatibility
  • Large slow loading graphics
  • Too many graphics
  • Large Welcome banners
  • Flashing banners
  • Pages scrolling to oblivion
  • Multiple colored text
  • Multiple use of animated graphics
  • Text difficult to read
  • Animated bullets
  • No Meta tags
  • Too many graphic and/or line dividers
  • Multiple use of different fonts
  • Under construction signs
  • Busy, distracting backgrounds
  • Scrolling text in the status bar
  • Multiple banners and buttons
  • Large scrolling text across the page
  • Poor use of HTML code frames
  • Large fonts
  • Poor use of mouse over effect

How to install WordPress on a subdomain

December 3rd, 2009 by Webmaster Punk No comments »

In this tutorial, I will teach you how to install WordPress via Fantastico on a subdomain created from cPanel.

Phase 1 – Creating a subdomain

1) Login to your cpanel (domain.com/cpanel)
2) Enter user and password
3) Locate your subdomain icon, should be a dark folder (click it)

icon subdomain

icon subdomain

4) Enter in the subdomain youd like to use..in my case.. –”marketing.webmasterpunk.com”

subdomain

subdomain

5) Select “Add”
6) Your subdomain has now been setup. Easy right?
You can now go back to your home cPanel page, or close the screen and login again.
Phase 2 – Installing  WordPress on your new subdomain
 
1) Lets go back to your control panel www.domain.com/cpanel (this is only if you have cpanel linux hosting)
2) Locate “Fanstastico De Luxe” (the big blue smiley face, yes hes cute right?)
fantastico

fantastico

3) Click the smiley face :)
4) You should be presented with a list of menu items on the left, look for WordPress.
wordpress

 5) After clicking it, you will be presented with a few options.
6) Select New Installation (its in bold, you cant miss it!)
7) Now you should see a bunch of fields and dropdowns. Follow my screenshot below. 
Note: My screenshot will install WordPress on – Marketing.webmasterpunk.com (which is the root level)install wordpress

8) Notice how I left the install directory blank? Thats because I want -”marketing.webmasterpunk.com” to be the directory of the isntallation, if you enter in /blog or /news – it will install the blog on a directory under your subdomain such as “marketing.webmasterpunk.com/games/” which I dont really advise people to do.
9) Enter in your login information, password, admin nickname, email, site me, and a description of what your blog will be about.
10) Click install WordPress
11) This wil automatically install and update WordPress into your subdomain.
12)  Click Finish installation and you are done.

This is my subdomain blog. : http://marketing.webmasterpunk.com/

To access your subdomain: http://subdomain.domain.com
To access your wordpress admin panel: http://subdomain.domain.com/wp-admin

Note: Do NOT enter http://www (WWW) will not work in most cases.

Enjoy!