Responsive Theme Design

We have been playing with various mobile website designs, tried several mobile wordpress plugins, and other free mobile site creation services, but instead of creating a separate mobile website, it seemed creating a responsive theme was a great idea.

Earlier the site content was placed in a fixed width and would not resize at any resolution. This made the site fonts seem very small as the sidebars were also fit in and forced horizontal scrolling was necessary at lower screen resolutions. Now the new responsive design has made our site better optimized for viewing on different screen resolutions and mobile devices, without significantly altering the template html codes and minor CSS code tweaks only.

You can test this site simply by resizing your browser and reducing the width progressively to see how the site design elements get realigned as the viewing resolution changes. You will notice that the sidebar slips down and the sidebar font sizes change; the ad block, search boxes and and social sharing icons keep changing alignment and the content widths also keep filling the width. See the video below, or watch it on the QOT video channel.

Now it is a good idea to follow our posts on your iPhone or iPad too. Do you know you can type this short url qot.co to access our site. I am sure you will continue to enjoy our tips on your tablet and smartphone, and we will soon post how you can also get a responsive theme design for your site.

I am sure there are some design issues, but we can improve with your suggestions. We are still working on the theme and your valuable suggestions for improvement are most welcome in comments.

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Angry Birds PowerUps

So what is special in Angry Birds Facebook game? You can use power ups to supercharge your birds and get additional features for power play which will enhance your gaming experience.

Users can click the lightning bolt button at the top of the screen and can get access to 2 power-ups per level. Check out the 4 power ups which grant your Angry birds unique powers.

1. Super Seeds - increases the size of the bird, so it causes more damage

2. King Sling –  increases the initial launch speed of all your birds

3. Sling Scope - see the  bird’s trajectory, for accurate targeting

4. Birdquake –  shakes the ground, to nudge off pigs and collapse unstable structures for the extra push.

Moreover, you can play to win and compete with your friends – and if you score the highest score among your friends, you win the gold crown!

And if you decide to bring in the Mighty Eagle, then you cna be assured that any level can be crossed easily.

Play Angry Birds Facebook Game

Play Angry Birds Facebook games here
http://apps.facebook.com/angrybirds
http://apps.facebook.com/angrybirdsseasons

Like any other Facebook app, it will need your authorization to share your basic info, your high scores and prompt for posting acheivements etc on Facebook to engage your friends. It has the same addictive appeal as any other popular game like Cityville or Farmville as players engage with their friends. There are rewards, freebies and pay for more options which will keep players coming back for more and I am sure this platform will be the biggest business success for Angry Birds ever.

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The Benefits of Resource Pages

Creating resource pages is beneficial for the blog owner for several reasons.  It can help to:

• increase average visit lengths
• encourage people to come back to your blog
• showcase your best articles on a subject and
• give you the opportunity to get organic bank links

Visitors may stay longer on your site while exploring your resource page because there are lots of relevant links in it.  Because it serves as a reference or “table of contents,” they may return to it again and again for additional information, possibly even bookmarking that page.

With a resource page, you can collect the posts that you think are the best in a particular subject or category, and organize and present them in a way that’s truly accessible, clear and logical.  That’s not something you usually see when you merely click a tag or category link on a blog.

Why make your readers scroll down page after page of posts when there’s a better way to present the material?  You don’t want to beat around the bush; you want to take them straight to where they need to be.

And when you show off the best stuff you have to offer, other bloggers might just take notice.  Your resource page can get you natural backlinks from blogs, websites, forums, social bookmarking and social networking sites.

How to Create a Resource Page

Making a resource page is fairly easy.  The hardest part is the amount of time it takes to compile a comprehensive and impressive list of your posts.

To build your first resource page:

1. Choose an existing category in your blog that has plenty of useful articles.
2. Browse that category and note down your best posts.
3. Create a new static page on your blog.  Give it a keyword-rich title that pertains to the subject.
4. Write a compelling introduction that encourages the reader to browse the links on the page.
5. Make a list of your chosen articles in the page, grouping them under sections or sub-headings.
6. Add the title of each post under its respective sub-heading, and link to the text to the post.
7. Save the page and link to it from a prominent menu (such as the menu above or below the blog header).

Don’t forget to update your resource page with new posts on that subject.  This will keep the list fresh and consistent with your blog content.

How Many Resource Pages?

Ideally, you should have a resource page for every major category your blog has.  So if your blog is about SEO, Internet marketing and WordPress blogging, you should work on devoting one page for each of these.  However a resource page is only as good as you can make it comprehensive.  Try to have at least 12-20 articles in a category to put in the page first, before you start one.  If you have only five posts about social media, it’s probably not time to unveil its own page yet.

Also, don’t try to fill up the page with as many articles as you can.  Choose only the finest of the bunch if you want to make a “killer” resource.

Conclusion:A resource page is a valuable asset for the blog owner and a useful navigation tool for the visitor.  Don’t leave your guests with just a search box or post archive.  Take them straight to where the cool stuff is at.

This is a guest article by Lee J. (Blog Lady) is an Internet marketer and avid WordPress blogger.  Once a full-time freelance writer she now concentrates on running her own blogs and websites including BlogLady.net.

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But what if the feed does not update? … and we had a chance to experience this today as Feedburner feed would simply not sync, and not update. Here is what I did…

Feedburner Feeds Not Updating

1. Check original source feed –  has it updated? When you use caching plugins, there is a high chance your feed is cached and when pinged bots come by, they do not find an updated feed. Clear cache and confirm that the original feed has latest content.

2. Validate Feeds – check your feed with Feedvalidator to see for any RSS errors which prevent your feed from syncing correctly.

3. Ping Feedburner – use this form to ping your feed urls or site url (which should have feed autodiscovery links in the html), then your feed will be quickly updated (or it will point out feed errors). This did not fix our issue as well.

4. Resync Feedburner Feed - If your feed is valid, and even after pinging the feed does not update in an hour, then Feedburner recommends you go to the feed troubleshoot page (after logging into your feedburner account) and then you need to resync your feed and it will get updated instantly.

That worked and synced our feed with fresh content. Have you ever need to fix Feedburner feed issues?

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WP-Super Cache

However, since the release of the latest version, there were some buggy issues and we were unable to delete the cache. It was getting tedious to FTP inside the server and manually delete the cache. Then repeatedly reinstalling the plugin, some strange kind of 403 errors occured. It was time to try a new caching plugin…

Kindly note these are isolated issues affecting only our server and WP-Supercache is undoubtedly an excellent plugin, which is not only the most popular plugin, but also highly recommended.

WordPress Caching

A caching plugin is the single most important plugin to add to WordPress blogs, as it stores php pages as html files and minimizes server load. It will keep your site online even when the server is down, and will help your website survive unexpected traffic spikes even on shared hosting.

I wanted to use W3-Totalcache and combine it with a CDN service like MaxCDN (or Amazon Cloudfront which we already use to cache some static files), but since the plugin is so feature rich and so powerful, the controls and options in the plugin are too overwhelming. Meanwhile, the forums are filled with growing popularity of QuickCache. So I decided to give QuickCache a try…

Install Quick Cache

Firstly QuickCache works out of the box. Simply activate and turn on caching and you dont need to edit any setting unless you want to really customise caching options, which we didnt need, not will most other users. So basically it was simple to start and get working instantly.

At most you might want to increase the caching time from default 3600 (1 hour) to 36000 (10 hours) or higher if your content does not change too frequently. Also note that QuickCache does not cache pages for admin and known users by default, and also refreshes the pages after people post comments. So you need to actually logout to see it is working. Another good option is it will refresh only the single post after edits, and not the whole cache ( for which there is a quick clear cache button on top).

If you FTP inside the server, the files in the /cache folder are also stored differently. While Supercache used to replicate your entire site structure in the folder, Quick Cache stores them as MD5 hash files, which checks with your Salt in a complex interaction before serving cached files.

Quick Cache  Gzip Compression

Note that unlike Wp-Supercache, QuickCache has no option to enable gzip compression of your webpages. Gzip compression is a good idea as it helps to compress pages and deliver them to modern browsers, which helps to speed up you site load times and deliver a faster and better user experience.

Quickcache FAQ does suggest 2 ways to activate gzip compression manually. One is by editing your .htaccess file using mod_deflate, but that did not work for our site. The other alternative did work as Knownhost has installed zlib on our server. Simple create a blank notepad file, add zlib compression

zlib.output_compression = on

and save as php.ini and upload to your server root folder. It works and pages do get gzip compressed. Since it does not output ‘gzip on’ comment in the html code, you can test it using any HTTP compression test tool.

So basically we are very happy with QuickCache as of now and it is caching our WordPress blog error free and it is also highly recommended. Are you using Quick Cache and have some tips to share?

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What is Thin Content?

Simply put it is poor content, low quality content, few words of content which is classified as ‘low quality’ by search engines and fails to generate any significant search engine traffic. So basically it adds to the site bloat and reduces your link equity value. Note that low pageviews does not necessarily mean thin content, its possible the content is good, but not highly searched.

If you autogenerate or scrape content, it can lead to thousands of low quality web pages which get no traffic, so this thin content is what needs to be fixed or moved to different domain / subdomain to fix Google Panda penalty (e.g. we moved our job board to a different domain, as it synced data from a huge dataset).

How to Find  Thin Content?

Since our site was recently stuck by Google Panda update, we have witnessed very low traffic since then. This update especially affected sites with heavy ads above the fold, but then there are several reason Panda can strike. As we looked into the site archives, there indeed was lot of thin content which had accumulated over the years since 2004, when the site started.

So lets get started… Open up your Google Analytics statistics (Google Analytics is a must have site traffic tracking tool, and its free!). Go to Content > Site Content > Content Drilldown. Then choose to review traffic details of the last one year.

We use archives based on months in a path like /archives/year/month/,  we simply browse down to  Content Drilldown > Archives > Year > Month.

Now you can analyze in detail which articles are getting low traffic. Remember to sort by pageviews to get the data.

We tend to delete or unpublish all articles which have less than 10 pageviews in a year!

Depending on your site, you can instead choose 3-6 month data and decide on lower criteria like 5 pageviews. Either way you need to relook at all these pages and analyze why these pages are getting low traffic, fix the content, or move to drafts to fix later, or simply delete them. Since these articles never received any traffic over the year, removing them would not make a traffic drop anyway.

Remove Thin Content

Most articles affected with low traffic on our site were having large blockquoted text. The blogging styles were different in 2004-2007, and there was a tendency to repeatedly quote text from authoritative resources. After a threshold, this might have been viewed as copied / duplicate content from another site (especially since blockquotes are also linked back to the source).

Another important group was articles with broken links. Well WordPress has an excellent plugin to find broken links and nofollow them all in minutes! We are still working on removing broken links from our old archive pages, as over 10% links were broken!

We reviewed lots of old content month by month and  identified lots of low traffic content, removed quoted content, fixed articles which were useful, and yet deleted over 500 articles over the last week! … and plan to remove at least 200  more this week!

Warning: Remove content only if you clearly understand what you are doing. It might be a better idea to unpublish rather than delete posts, in case you need to restore content later. Many of these articles may have backlinks and may have had traffic further in the past, so if you created the content, you know what your past popular content was like nobody else. It is a good idea to edit / delete the content yourself, rather than outsourcing it to an intern.

Note: Low pageviews does not necessarily mean thin content, its possible the content is good, but not highly searched, and removing them can harm your site. So it is essential to check your content, identify why its ranking poorly, and if it is actually good original content, but with low searched terms and therefore low pageviews … keep it.  (Thanks @Sumesh)

It is essential for webmasters to find thin content today to fix Panda updates, or even better to prevent your site from getting penalized. Subscribe our blog as we continue to fight Google Panda and post tips that helped us.

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Highlight Tumblr Posts

I noticed a new option has appeared when you post a new article at the bottom right corner, titled “Highlight this post”. This gives you a choice of text across various categories and also allows you to choose from various logos (besides the default Bolt) and colors.

When you select the Highlight option and then click to publish, you get a popup credit card payment option or Paypal option which you can choose to pay $1. If you have a large number of Tumblr followers – this will make your highlighted post stand out above the clutter and drive extra site traffic your way for sure.  Check this out and share your experience.

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There a dozens of ways to get traffic to your site. Some of the methods include Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click, guest blogging, and solo ads, just to name a few. While paying for visitors can bring immediate rewards, it’s also possible to lose a ton of money while you’re learning the ropes. And when you’re just starting out, cash to invest in your online business might be in short supply.

One of my favorite traffic generation methods involves spending no money whatsoever. All it takes is a little sweat equity, and this is one of the best investments you can make in your business. I’m talking about Forum Marketing. I know, not glamorous and sexy, right? Well, keep reading to find out how to leverage the problems people are seeking answers to by hanging around forums in your niche.

Find The Right Target Audience

This is actually pretty easy using our old friend Google. Simply enter your niche and the word forums and you’ll turn up pages of potential marketing opportunities. Add a few keywords to narrow down your search and you can focus your efforts even further.

For instance, I entered “Tropical Fish Forums” to turn up dozens of potential places where I could check out what fishy people are talking about. But to narrow it a bit further I tried “Tropical Fish Beginner Forums” and found a whole different subset of forums that focus in on those who are just beginning to care for tropical fish. Those that may be seeking advice on how to get started, like the best size tank for their place, or the most economical filter, etc. Someone who may be looking to spend money on their new hobby. If that’s not an AH-HA moment, I don’t know what is!!

Getting Your Forum Feet Wet

It’s pretty easy to do this part. To get started you’ll just need to read through some of the forum posts to get idea of what kind of community you’re getting involved in. Spend some time and really read what people have written. This is the part where the sweat equity comes in. And to increase your chances of getting the free traffic flowing, you’ll need to be doing this same thing for perhaps 5 to 10 forums. So initially there’s a fair bit of “work” involved, but the rewards are so worth it.

Once you have a sense of the community it’s time to start contributing to the conversations taking place. You may actually have to sign up to be a member, so keep track of your username and password in a text file on your computer to prevent confusion and wasting time later on. Then pick some threads that appeal to you and offer opinions and advice. The idea here is to be super friendly and helpful without being pushy or pitching any products. Sales pitches will definitely get you banned from almost any forum. You need to establish yourself as a helpful voice and active member. Soon people will begin to recognize your username and rely on you to provide answers to their questions. This will help position you as an expert in the field.

The forum is a place where people come to converse with liked-minded folks and to find answers to their questions. You should be respectful at all times and avoid injecting your personal opinions on subjects other than what’s covered in the thread or forum you’re on. Absolutely no inflammatory posts should be made. Treat this as a great opportunity to get your name out there as an expert in your field, because word travels fast in these forums, and bad behavior will not be tolerated. On the other hand, if you prove yourself to be helpful and respectful, that news too will certainly get around.

Your Key To Success, Your Forum Signature

Blatant self-promotion is simply not allowed in any forum, period. So how in the world do you get people to visit your website or blog so you really show them what you can offer?

When you sign up for membership at the forum, you’ll probably be given the opportunity to create a profile telling other forum members a little about yourself. In this profile is where you have the chance to point people to your online real estate if they want to find out more about you.

If you do things right, people will begin to trust you and naturally want to find out more information about you. Your profile is your chance to gently point them in the right direction. Again, don’t be pushy. It’s a real turn off, and believe me, the word will get out.

Some forums allow a signature box, and you should be able to mention your website or blog here as well. Just remember to be subtle and you should be fine. People hate being sold to.

I’d like to mention just a few more important points about forum marketing:

• When seeking out forums, make sure the ones you’re considering are active and thriving. Too many forums have been abandoned or only have sporadic use, so be sure to check to see there are current posts and active users before you waste your time.
• Most forums have a FAQ section, and you may be able to get some useful information there.
• Look for LONG threads, the ones with many posts and active participation. These have many eyeballs viewing them every day.

Forum marketing can be a very lucrative source of free traffic. The visitors you get will be laser-focused. They will already know and are visiting your site because of the reputation you’ve built offering valuable and free information in the forums. This is the best kind of traffic you could ever ask for.

Guest Author Ted Begnoche is a writer, internet marketer, and owner of NetProfitPersuasion. His passion for generating traffic sometimes keeps him from sleeping at night.

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Facebook Timeline Movie Maker

First you need to activate Facebook Timeline, which is already rolling out to all Facebook users (and choose correct Facebook Cover Photos sizes).  Once you get started with Facebook timeline, then you will understand the new layout and features well.

The concept is interesting and since this app is official, you can grant access with more confidence. Once you click “Make Movie”, a popup alert asks for app access permissions, and then access to news feeds, and when you are done, it will create an amazing Timeline movie custom made for your Facebook account.

Unfortunately could not complete my Timeline movie as it requires at least 75 photos!

But here is a video of how your Facebook Timeline video could turn out like

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I have been using the amazing Broken Links Checker plugin for quite some time since Panda updates became famous and it has helped us find and fix all broken links on our website.

Check Broken Links

Few months back, the first time we used the plugin it took several hours as it scanned across our entire site and you could continue to refresh and see how many links were broken and how many were redirects. Since over last 7 years, this was the first time we checked broken links in such a comprehensive way, nearly 10% of outbound links were broken!

This was a huge exercise to fix all links in thousands of posts, but the interface integrates very well in the WordPress admin and easily allows you to Edit url, unlink text or mark the url not broken.

There are many options about to optimize as per your schedule, with many other custom options. But as I continued to fix these urls, I realized it would take many weeks to fix up the entire site. The plugin meanwhile also offered a quick and powerful way to nofollow all such links and even add a CSS strikethrough on all broken links so visitors would not click through these broken 404 links.

This is a highly recommended plugin for all WordPress bloggers. Broken links are very bad for SEO and this is a very powerful tool to fix all broken urls in few clicks. Try it out and tell us how many broken urls did you find on your WordPress blog?

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