ProgrammingThe new age of open source and simplicity makes things easier and easier for new self taught webmasters to start making pages. These dynamic creations use many redundant resources and are packed with the most features possible on the main page, with it usually taking in excess of 100k to load. In the following I'll tell you some tips that I've gained from 4 years of programming with PHP and making custom pages, and even longer just making crummy pages and articles since 2000.
It's incredibly important that you're able to upgrade your webserver, portal, and server side scripting versions. If by chance any have a security error, there's always malicious people that will scan thousands of websites using the software to catch a few to exploit. If you value your data, ugrade your software.
Backing up a mysql table is pretty simple
mysqldump -h IPHERE -u root DATABASENAME > file.sql
It takes all of .013 seconds to delete 1000 entries on your database, so be sure you backup your data regularly. You never know when you'll be changing someones username and you'll accidently put everyone as the same name. Even worse, screw up changing their password.
Make your page a smaller filesize. There's many free speed tests that you can use for your websites that automatically give you recommendations. Keep your site under 50k. Don't have a bunch of javascripts, applets, and flash/animated gif junk moving around to distract people. Be nice to your users and they might stay.
Use gzip compression. Gzip basically makes all text pages half size and even does minimal compression on images. I cut my bandwidth from 60 gigs per month to 30 gigs just by using gzip. Installation of gzip is beyond the scope of this article, but just know there's an apache module you have to install, then configure in htaccess.conf. Installing Gzip for apache.
Black, white, and pastels usually work best. Overall the best color thats used by most large internet companies seems to be blue. Don't use red, like, at all. Ask jeeves can go to hell too.
Mysql even has a optimize table command. Use it. Index your mysql tables. It's really simple just type
alter table x add index(x1(3))
Where x is the table you're altering, x1 is the table field you want to edit, and 3 is how many characters you want it indexed.
For example if you're searching a title of an article or just selecting comments in your database: if your database in undexed; search all of them, even if the result is found, search through all just to make sure it doesnt exist twice, if your database is indexed; search only once and skip to the place it's likely to be based on the search.
It's much more efficient, and it's a requirement for people who want to make large websites, without stupidly continually upgrading serves to faster and faster processors. MySql is fast. Period.
For reasons like the above, don't use shared servers. They contain a lot of newbys that dont know what they're doing and will lag, and even take down your site. The admins are also usually really stupid and just care about reselling space in the most bulk possible. THey will boot you without reason if your site gets popular despite claims of bandwidth availability. They have no concept of server workload, and know its more convennient to get rid of people than deal with them. Be sure to read your information, JimmyR has a detailed webserver tips before buying article. Shop around first.
To increase hits simply add yourself to the webservers and have people link you. For a detailed list of how to get more people check out our howto increase website hits & traffic article.
Be sure and use the right keywords in your text. The best way to add content and related information is to try out the google keyword select tool and google suggest. Order by popularity, it's simple. Once your done with your page you can use the suggest by site feature to give more keywords.
Follow the guidelines to getting more people then join yahoo publisher of google adsense. Simply get wider ads that have the same color background for optimum results. Some keywords give you 10 cents while others give you a dollar. To get a better idea of what related keywords to use more on your site use Yahoo suggestion tool, formerly overture (IE only). Embed smaller ads as if they were part of the navigation.
Keep adding new features and building pages.
Checkout my Mp3 and files search that uses google to find music/albums, anime, games and movies with direct downloads. It's very safe and easy to use, just search for a song, then right click save as to download it.
See my new funny pictures blog. I accidently deleted some of the old blogging software which I made, so I just rewrote everything from scratch. This blog won't be updated anymore =/.
I make video tutorials on a variety of topics on youtube. Please help me out by adding me as a friend if you have a youtube account. It really helps.
Clicking the links above will give you a random but extremely high rated video. There are over 15,000 awesome videos indexed so click as many times as you'd like.
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