Part Time Webmaster Blog

There are a lot of websites with links that open up new windows. Because of all the spamming and ads that are popups, they created the popup blocker. But, what do you do if you really want to see the pop up window?

Well, you can disable the popup blocker for that site. Another quick solution is to hold down the CTRL key then click on the link. This is a way to override the popup blocker.

I’ve started a new forum section for the website. You can find the link at the top of each page titled “Webmaster Forums”. One of the first forums launched is the Website Software forums.

The website software forum is designed for a couple of reasons mainly:

• Let website owners know there is other software out there, and free software.
• Allow people that have not built their site yet that there is free software out there and you can be up and running in minutes.
• Have discussions on this software. Too many times, we make a software decision based on a word of mouth. Why not have an area where you can see how others did with the software.

Now that we have some hosting forums, you can hopefully determine the software you want, and find a good suitable hosting company for it as well.

You can find the website software forums here: http://parttimewebmaster.com/webmaster-forums/?vasthtmlaction=vforum&g=6.0

I’ve started a new forum section for the website. You can find the link at the top of each page titled “Webmaster Forums”. One of the first forums launched is the Hosting forums.

The hosting forums are designed to allow discussion of any type of hosting. A lot of times, I’ll have different issues and challenges with a hosting vendor. Granted, not all of them are bad, I just didn’t know how to resolve them. So, here is the place.

On a second note, hosting has become soooo inexpensive. I thought it would be nice to see what some of them are promoting and the costs. It seems that today, it’s almost a negligible cost to start up a website if you’re using open source software.

The link to the hosting forums is here: http://parttimewebmaster.com/webmaster-forums/?vasthtmlaction=vforum&g=7.0

Google’s search algorithm is advanced, I’ve never actually sat down and tried to figure it out. But, time and time again, it seems as though, they (Google) always mentions DMOZ.org. So what is dmoz?

According to DMOZ, here is a description of the site and service:

The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors.

So, why do I need to know this? Google uses dmoz to help give credibility to sites. It’s Google’s way of cross referencing a site by having an actual human look at the site. So, if you get your site into DMOZ, chances are your rankings will go up. If your visibility doesn’t go up, so be it. But, if anything, you only lost about 5 minutes of your time, so what do you have to lose.

So, here’s how to submit your site to the DMOZ open directory.

1. Go to dmoz.org
2. In the search box, type in your website address. Example: parttimewebmaster.com
3. If it comes up, you’re golden, if not continue.
4. Search for an appropriate category until you see the option to Submit a URL. Make sure the directory is not too overloaded, choose a more focused and smaller group if possible. This may help speed the process. This hasn’t been validated.
5. Once you’ve found the directory, click on Submit URL and enter your information.
6. Wait…wait. It can take a long time to get into dmoz, but one day you’ll get in there.

Best of luck!

Not too long ago, I wrote an article on how to choose my next blog post. In it, I discussed how you can use Google Trends to find the next topic to write about. Well, most of us may not have a blog. For those of us that don’t and are looking to make money through ecommerce or their services, it would be nice to see what types of leads the competition is getting. So, if I’m selling a service, I want to market the latest trend to get business. After all, I don’t want to optimize my site for something no one wants. So, here are some steps on taking advantages of the latest trends in your industry.

1. Choose a service or product you want to sell.
2. Run a google search on it.
3. Copy down (or keep a browser tab open) of the top websites found.
4. Go to Google Trends
5. Type in these website addresses into the Google trends search box, and hit search.
6. Chances are, you may not get any results, so look below the search box and click on the link titled “Websites”
7. Now, you may see some results.
8. Continue searching until you see something pop up in the section on the right titled “Also searched for”
9. Now, you have your latest trend!

Best of luck!