To prevent against this (without creating lots of new ‘index’ files, you can enter a command into your .htaccess file to stop the directory list from being shown:

Options -Indexes

The .htaccess File

Adding password protection to a directory using .htaccess takes two stages. The first part is to add the appropriate lines to your .htaccess file in the directory you would like to protect. Everything below this directory will be password protected:

AuthName “Section Name”
AuthType Basic
AuthUserFile /full/path/to/.htpasswd
Require valid-user

There are a few parts of this which you will need to change for your site. You should replace “Section Name” with the name of the part of the site you are protecting e.g. “Members Area”.

The /full/parth/to/.htpasswd should be changed to reflect the full server path to the .htpasswd file (more on this later). If you do not know what the full path to your webspace is, contact your system administrator for details.

The .htpasswd File

Password protecting a directory takes a little more work than any of the other .htaccess functions because you must also create a file to contain the usernames and passwords which are allowed to access the site. These should be placed in a file which (by default) should be called .htpasswd. Like the .htaccess file, this is a file with no name and an 8 letter extension. This can be placed anywhere within you website (as the passwords are encrypted) but it is advisable to store it outside the web root so that it is impossible to access it from the web.

Entering Usernames And Passwords

Once you have created your .htpasswd file (you can do this in a standard text editor) you must enter the usernames and passwords to access the site. They should be entered as follows:

username:password

where the password is the encrypted format of the password. To encrypt the password you will either need to use one of the premade scripts available on the web or write your own.

For multiple users, just add extra lines to your .htpasswd file in the same format as the first. There are even scripts available for free which will manage the .htpasswd file and will allow automatic adding/removing of users etc.

Accessing The Site

When you try to access a site which has been protected by .htaccess your browser will pop up a standard username/password dialog box. If you don’t like this, there are certain scripts available which allow you to embed a username/password box in a website to do the authentication. You can also send the username and password (unencrypted) in the URL as follows:

http://username:password@www.website.com/directory/

Summary

.htaccess is one of the most useful files a webmaster can use. There are a wide variety of different uses for it which can save time and increase security on your website.

Alternate index files are entered in a list. The server will work from left to right, checking to see if each file exists, if none of them exisit it will display a directory listing (unless, of course, you have turned this off).

DirectoryIndex index.php index.php3 messagebrd.pl index.html index.htm

Banner ads are one of the most common and oldest forms of Internet advertising although its usefulness is becoming increasingly overlooked with the increasing popularity of keywords. Nonetheless, there are a great number of options out there for banner advertising and the competition is often still as aggressive as ever.

The concept of banner advertising is indeed pretty simple. Basically, a banner is designed and placed on a webpage other than your own. If the banner attracts the viewer’s attention and s/he wants to find out more, then they will click on the banner which will redirect them to your website. A banner ad is generally based on a picture or company logo with an enticing advertising slogan superimposed upon it.

When a surfer clicks on a banner ad, not only are they redirected to the site concerned, but something called a click-through also occurs and every time the banner receives a click request, the online marketer earns money.

Banner ads are an efficient and cheap form of advertising and they greatly benefit the company concerned because of this. Essentially, they act like billboards in the real world, and although many people may not click on them, they will have learned some basics about your company and what it has to offer and may remember the name and come back to it later. However, unlike a billboard and the vast majority of other forms of advertising, banner ads are extremely cheap.

One of the most effective uses of this advertising method is to place the banner ad in an article such as the type you may submit to free online article directories.

In addition to these attractive reasons to market your company in this way, banner ads are also much more likely to be followed up by potential customers, since it is only a click away for them to your company website.

One of the first things you have to take into account when it comes to Google’s indexing service is how old your site is. If you have a new website or even an old website with no inbound links, then Google might take some time before it indexes your site. The average waiting period here can be anything from 4 to 8 weeks. For those who have just revamped an existing website that already has a couple of inbound links and had some basic SEO in place, that period could be much shorter.

So if you’re in the first category of old or new websites, there are a couple of things you should be paying attention to, to ensure that the indexing period is shortened as much as possible.

1. Spider Accessibility One of the main things to pay attention to when submitting your website for indexing is whether or not it is accessible by search engine spiders. If not, then you might have to review the code of your website.

To find out if this is you, have a look at the errors you receive in Google’s Webmaster Tools. In addition, it will be wise to include an XML sitemap of your website to ensure that Google’s spider finds all your pages.

2. On-Site SEO Is your website currently optimized? Now if you don’t know what we’re talking about, then it most probably isn’t and you’ll need to enlist the services of an SEO expert right away.

On-site SEO pertains to the optimization of a variety of tags in your website’s code as well as the optimization of content to ensure that web users will be able to find a specific page according to a set of predefined keywords.

3. Link Building This relates to off-site SEO and is probably one of the most important features of SEO. The reason for this is that if other sites link to you because your content is valuable, then Google will assume that you are a source of good information, thereby supplying its users with your website first.

There are a couple of things to be careful of though: too many links too fast could earn you a couple of penalties. As such the road to the top is best taken gradually.

It will also help to ensure that you familiarize yourself with other SEO-related concepts to ensure that your site is perfectly optimized. Getting to the top, especially if the amount of competition for your specific keywords is high, you might want to focus on other techniques to help you in the interim and that will also assist you with your rankings, such as link building.

You can block an IP address by using:

deny from 000.000.000.000

where 000.000.000.000 is the IP address. If you only specify 1 or 2 of the groups of numbers, you will block a whole range.

You can allow an IP address by using:

allow from 000.000.000.000

where 000.000.000.000 is the IP address. If you only specify 1 or 2 of the groups of numbers, you will allow a whole range.

If you want to deny everyone from accessing a directory, you can use:

deny from all

but this will still allow scripts to use the files in the directory.

Practically everyone on the internet trying to explain what makes a good site will say to you, ‘Content is King’ and ‘You need good content’, but we believe that this is still not taken seriously enough by the majority of webmasters. There are still too many sites around which have no real content, nothing original, or are just plain boring. What many people don’t realize, though, is that good content does more than just keep your visitors interested and give you a good site. It can also help you to promote your website.

Increasingly search engines are ignoring the traditional method of reading the META tags for keywords and descriptions, as these are often abused by users. Instead, search engines like Google now read the whole web page and use it to generate matches. It stands to reason that, the more pages and words you have, the more chance you have or being returned as a search result.

Similarly, if you have good content, other websites may link to your content and this will bring in even more visitors to your site. Links to your pages will also boost your ranking on Google, which counts links to your site.

The main reason for having good content remains, though, that it will make your website popular with your visitors and will give it a good chance of surviving and doing well. So how can you get good content on your website?

Write It Yourself

By far the cheapest way to generate content is to write it yourself. For a number of reasons, though, this may not be the easiest way to do it. Writing quality content takes a lot of time, and you will need a good knowledge of your subject to be able to write effectively on it. If you have the skills and time to generate content, though, this is really the best route to take. You will be guaranteed to have exclusive content and you will know that you have copyright permission to publish it. When trying to create a lot of content, it is a good idea to set a timetable, for example planning to write one article every week. Although this won’t seem like much at first, you will end up with a large amount of content at the end of it. Free Webmaster Help has been developed in this way.

Get Someone Else To Write It

This will save you a bit of time but could be harder to administrate. You can either ask friends/relatives/employees to write some content for you (this works especially well on fan/community sites) or you can hire someone specifically to write content. This does not have to be a dedicated journalist working for you. Many people online have excellent content-writing skills and are more than willing to work for you - for a price. If you need a lot of good quality content quickly, and cost is not too important, this is the right choice for you.

Get Your Visitors To Generate It

It has become common recently for sites to invite their visitors to contribute. This could be in the form of user-submitted news or articles, comments and feedback from readers or even a forum or discussion board. This is cheap to do and will save you time, but you will need quite a few visitors to make this worthwhile. The popular website Sitepoint, has the majority of its content submitted by visitors.

Syndication

A good source of content is to use syndicated content from other sites. Many news organizations will provide a free ‘news feed’ where they give you some code to display news headlines on your site, and because the headlines link to their pages, they are willing to do it for free. There are also many authors who write articles etc. which can be used in exchange for a byline (a small paragraph of text and a link at the bottom). This is common in many newsletters, where guest authors write featured articles.

Conclusion

Whichever way you choose to generate your content you must remember that it is the most vital part of your website. However
good your design or however fast your site, people come for content, and that is what you should be giving them.

Each is a full-featured notebook with displays in the 7- to 10-inch range and all are easy to tote around. Nearly all offer several USB ports, a webcam, LED backlit screens, integrated speakers, Wi-Fi and more, so there are very few differentiators. But the many choices in this growing netbook market can be overwhelming, so the choice in deciding which netbook to purchase as with any computer purchase is dependent on your business or personal needs. We will say this though, in no way are these meant to replace the fully featured laptop or desktop.

There are several reasons why you should consider starting a blog for your business. I will cover just a few of them here, but keep in mind that the motivation to blog is different for every business. Just like any other aspect of a marketing strategy, you need to know why you are doing it before you get started.

Connecting With Customers
Blogging gives a company the ability to connect with their customers on a more personal basis. Lots of people like to “shop the net”, but that cuts down on customer loyalty. Why? Because customers don’t know you and therefore feel no commitment to you. Blogging gives you an opportunity to help your customers know you, and in turn, replying to their comments makes them feel known by you.

Helping Customers
Using your blog you have the potential to help your customers. Instead of only informing them about your product or sevice, as is usually the point of a web site, you can cover topics which help them to better themselves or their business.

Low-Cost Marketing
Blogs are useful as a low-cost marketing tool for businesses. Of course, “time is money” so having a strategy is essential. Check back as I’ll follow up with a post on how to strategically plan for your blogs success.

Increased Traffic to Your Site
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a science, because we can’t know for certain the specifics of what Google wants to see in order to get us top Search Engine Results. SEO experts try, and tweak, and try again in order to find out what works. That is why an experienced SEO firm is far better than someone new to the industry.

However, one thing is clear - content rules. Great content, loads of content, content all focused on the same general subject, is bound to establish you as an expert in that area, and what is a blog besides content. Fresh, unique ideas on your blog will attract incoming links from relevant sources, which will increase your Search Engine Results further still.

These are just a few of the reasons to consider starting your business blog. For many companies, using social networking, including blogs, to connect with their customers on the internet has become an essential part of their marketing plan.

Visitors can relate and converse not only with the website owner but also with each other. This can lead to a vibrant on line community that further attracts more visitors who may also return more regularly to keep up to date.

The search engines love all of the activity and the content that it provides, too. This can help with search engine rankings.

This interaction enhances the experience that the webmaster has and can increase their enjoyment and satisfaction of running the website. Businesses can have a great benefit, too. They can poll customers and ask them all manner of questions about existing or new products and services. This is high quality market research for free! Any problems with service can soon come to light and be rectified much quicker than would otherwise be the case.

You can create your forum in many different ways. You could ask a website develop to create one for you. There will be quite an expense to this!

One trick is to think about having a forum before you have bought your web hosting. You can then choose a provider that offers you the ability to add a forum to your website easily, here at Graphic Horizons we provide that as a standard option. The really great thing about this is that you can automatically install a forum onto your website simply by ticking an option to do so. Hey presto, you have a website with a forum!

One of the biggest issues with a forum is having to keep an eye on the content. This is called moderating the forum. This needs to be done to ensure that content is suitable for its audience. You can get people trying to out unsuitable material on to a forum, or blatantly advertising, both of which can be annoying.

Now, you can reduce the amount of time that you spend doing this. First of all, create forum areas or groups where like minded people can talk. It could be about a particular issue, service or product type, for instance. Then, ask your visitors for volunteers to moderate the discussions.

Very often, people will do this completely for free. However, you can always offer some sort of incentive by offering them privileged access to forthcoming products, or give them something for free or at a discount.

So if this has convinced you to ad a forum to your site and you need help with it, please contact us. We will help you if your hosted with us or somewhere else.