Welcome to the new How To Gurus Blog

Where you can always find my latest Demos and YouTube Videos. You will find samples taken from my Training DVDs and also exclusive videos created specifically for my online audience.

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

What are Unique Visitors to a web site?

Unique visitors are figured on a daily basis. So if one person went to your site 10 times in one day he would be listed as 1 unique visitor. If he came back the next day he would again be listed as a unique visitor.

Saturday, July 9, 2005

How do I get my site to the #1 position in Google?

Search engine placement is more of an art than a science. Do a search for Search Engine Optimization or SEO, look for the several different sites that have newsletters and subscribe to a few. There is no way to guarantee a top placement position on Google, unless you pay for placement using their Adwords system. Getting a high placement takes lots of time, means constantly changing and updating your site, keeping a constant eye on your competition who are trying to do the same exact thing, and to be honest a little bit of luck.

But with that said the main things to do for Google placement are to make sure your keywords are used frequently in the first 200 words of the page. Make sure that there is no bad code that could be blocking the search engines from properly indexing your site (such as using white type on a white background, or repeating your keyword over and over). Make sure your site is written in plain English with the keyword scattered throughout the text. If you read the text out loud and it doesn't sound like how someone would normally talk, it will get you a lower placement. Frequently setting up bulleted lists will help. Aim for only one keyword targeted per page. If you want different keywords for the same page, you should break that up into several pages, each page focusing on only one keyword.

You also should try and get other sites to link to your site, but these links should be from highly ranked sites, not link farms. It can take you years to get the quality links you need this way. You have to "sell" each site that you want a link from on the idea that putting a link to your site from their site is a good idea. Don't ever be tempted to add your link to one of the many link farms out their. There are lots of companies who allow anyone to place a link on their site. Google knows this trick and it will send your page to the bottom of the stack.

Again, this is more of an art than a science and you will need to do lots of continuing research and work on your site to get and keep a high search engine placement.

I have several articles in my articles section on search engine optimization
http://www.howtogurus.com/free-articles.html

Thursday, July 7, 2005

Can I set up a web page to allow users to pick their own color scheme?

On allowing a user to pick a color scheme, fairly easy to do, but it does take a full understanding of using Cascading Style Sheets to do it. Basically you would set everything up on the web site using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) including all the color settings. You would then link to the CSS as an external file (easy to do). Then all you need to do is to first create several different CSS files, one for each color scheme you are offering (the color schemes would need to be set up before hand by you). Then you would need to write some JavaScript that would use a link on the web page to select the different CSS files. Not impossible, but it would also take a good understanding of JavaScript coding to do this part of it.

Tuesday, July 5, 2005

How do I add page counters using Dreamweaver?

Most counters are little bits of JavaScript code.
Adding JavaScript to a Dreamweaver page is covered in my Dreamweaver training.
You should be able to find lots of these page counters over at http://www.javascriptsource.com/

Saturday, July 2, 2005

How do I display the current date on a page using Dreamweaver?

What you need to do is to first become familiar with the Dreamweaver Extensions. You will find it under the Commands menu, click on Manage Extensions. This opens up the Extension Manager. Click on the help file and read through the instructions on using Extensions. Real easy.

Now that you are familiar with Extensions, go to the Macromedia site, http://www.macromedia.com/cfusion/exchange/ You can also open Dreamweaver, click on Insert, then click on Get More Objects at the bottom of the menu. This link will take you right to the correct section. Or from the Macromedia home page click on Developers and then Exchange. Here you will find lots of new Extensions, most are free, some cost. Look through the Dreamweaver Extensions section and you will find 2 or 3 Extensions for putting in a Date field on a web page. This is the easiest way to do it.

I think you will also find some other Extensions that you will want to add to your Dreamweaver as well, so spend some time here and see what is available.

Friday, July 1, 2005

How can I align 3 rows of 3 images with captions under so that the pictures and captions line up?

The easiest way to align images and text is to use a table. What you would need for that page is a table with 3 columns and then 2 rows for each visual row. What you do is to put the image in one cell, then put the text in the cell directly below. You will then have all of your images aligned and all of your text aligned, plus you can use the alignment functions of the cells to further control the alignment.

On table size, the table will stretch to fit the text. To keep one line from stretching the table, all you need to do is break that one line up into a couple or three lines and it should prevent it. So make sure that your lines have breaks in them to keep each line no longer than the picture length. You may need to do some tests to get the lenth correct.

To align the cells in Dreamweaver, click in the table cell, then in the Properties palette use the Horz and Vert drop down menus to adjust the placement within the cell.