Blog Tips

Splash Page Tip – Centering your image or text

When using an image on a splash page, it can be such a pain when it aligns to the left, or to the right, or winds up too low on the browser screen that users have to scroll down to see the whole thing.

There is a fix for that.

When using an image in html code, use the "center" tag to place the image in the middle of the page. Be sure to end your tag with "/center" Simply surround the tag names with a "<>" without the quotes.
As I am unable to post the exact coding.. I am still green at it, I've placed a link that shows how it should be done.

More at this site on html tags on how to manipulate your content display

When using html tags in a blog, be sure to save your post or page first, then click on the preview to see what the display result will be before making the page or posting permanent. Depending on the plugins your using, you may see varied results. Tweek til you find what you need it to do.

Blog This – Firefox Extension for Windows Live Writer

Goto: Firefox Extension for Windows Live Writer

For those that are using FireFox, and would like to integrate windows live writer, but cannot find

a version that works with firefox 3.6

How to Stop Comment Spam Dead In Its Tracks

There is a traffic bridge that a lot of bloggers will eventually have to cross. In a previous posting, trackbacks and pingbacks have been mentioned and explained. Unfortunately a lot of abuse happens in this area of traffic generation. It can also drag your site down with those site owners who choose to use automated software to exploit this particular method of traffic generation.

Now I don't mind if someone automates a process, but what really bothers me is one blasts their link out there into space, and plasters it all over my site.

If this is happening to you, and you are having a tough time figuring out what is spam, and what is not, there are at least 2 plugins that work together in harmony to halt this sort of spam in its tracks.

Akismet, and SI-Captcha

Si-captcha basically adds a captcha image, or math question to your comments submission area. This locks out any bots from submitting to the comments area. Bam! Stops them dead in their tracks.

Akismet is a spam detection algorithm Works offsite by pulling spam information from another server and compares it to comments in que. Akismet works, but sometimes marks comments as spam that may not be, so there is always work to sift thru the comments just in case.

Why is my website loading so slow? Tip

Reducing Load Time Through Image Optimization

Even though more and more Internet users switch to broadband every year, a large portion of the web's population is still running on good old dialup connections. It is therefore unwise to count them out of the equation when you're designing your website, and a very major consideration we have to make for dialup users is the loading time of your website.

Generally, all the text on your website will be loaded in a very short time even on a dialup connection. The culprit of slow-loading sites is mainly large images on your website, and it is very important to strike a delicate balance between using just enough images to attract your users and not to bog down the overall loading time of your site.

You should also go to a greater length and optimize every image on your site to make sure it loads in the least time possible. What I really mean is to use image editing software to remove unnecessary information on your images, and thereby effectively reducing the file size of your image without affecting its appearance.

If you own Photoshop, it will be obvious to you that when you save an image as a JPEG file, a dialog box appears and lets you choose the "quality" of the JPEG image -- normally a setting of 8 to 10 is good enough as it will preserve the quality of your image while saving it at a small file size. If you do not have Photoshop, there are many free image compressors online that you can download and use to reduce your image's file size.

On the other hand, you can opt to save your images in PNG format to get the best quality at the least file size. You can also save your images in GIF format -- the image editing software clips away all the color information not used in your image, hence giving you the smallest file size possible. However, saving in GIF format will often compromise the appearance of your image, so make your choice wisely!