QuicksBlog

Maybe you’ve just finished setting up your first website and now you need some visitors. Well the first thing to do is to get your new website indexed by Google.
You can start by letting Google know that your site is there, so your first stop is Google Webmaster Tools. You need to create an account if you don’t already have one. You’ll be asked to verify that you are the Webmaster of the site by adding a specially coded file name to the root directory of your site or the alternate method is to add coding to your main web page. Just choose the method that’s easiest for you and Google will verify that the file or coding is on your site.
Next you need Google to index your site which means you need their robots to crawl you website looking at things like content, meta-tags and links. To get this done you need to have a file on you site called a Robots.txt which basically tells the robots what sections of your website they can and can’t crawl or index. Google does have a tool that you can use but it’s a little confusing to some. The easiest way I can recommend to do this is use this tool from McAnerin International. It will properly generate your file which you can download to your computer. Then all you need to do is upload it to the root directory of your website. Then go back to Google Webmaster Tools and verify that the file is where Google can see it.
I wish I could tell you that’s all there is to setting up a website for traffic but I’d be lying.

It’s questionable by a lot of webmasters whether you should put your email on your site because let’s face it, some visitors and robots are up to no good. Even having your email address obfuscated usually doesn’t work indefinitely. On the other hand offering a means of contact is a good idea and usually always necessary, it adds legitimacy to your site and is simply the right thing to do for your visitors. If nothing else it gives your visitors the confidence that they have the ability to contact someone in case they do actually have a problem or a question. If you are planning to provide a means of contact I recommend using some type of secure contact form on your website such as GBCF-v3. If you have a Wordpress site you might check out Contact Form v.2.0WP or another good alternative is WP-GBCF which offers multi-user capability. Whatever you use be sure to check them out carefully and don’t just take the first one you come across. As I said given enough time no method is totally secure.

Adobe obviously leads the pack with some of the most important technologies and applications in modern computing. Like Google and Microsoft, it’s difficult to imagine a normal working day that doesn’t involve using at least one of their products. The only problem is that they are often very expensive but there are great open-source and freeware options like the ones listed below:

Adobe Photoshop - free alternative: The Gimp

The Gimp does get brought up fairly often on lists of free applications but that’s because it’s really good. With tons of functionality and the ability to use filters and libraries designed for Photoshop.

Adobe Premiere - free alternative: Avidemux

Regarded as one of the best free video editing applications available, Avidemux features support for a large number of file types and advanced scripting capabilities.

Adobe Flash - free alternative: SMIL

This is one for the more technically capable. Flash is, obviously a key technology on the Internet. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) offers many of Flash’s capabilities to anyone who can take the time to start using it. It hasn’t really caught on yet but with the support of W3C but it sure is worth checking in to.

Adobe Dreamweaver - free alternative: NVU

NVU (pronounced ‘N-view’) is a free, open-source WYSIWYG web design application. It gives you the option to work in a design layout or edit your html directly, and is generally credited with producing pretty clean, reliable code.

Adobe Reader - free alternative: Foxit PDF Reader

Switch to a free (if not exactly open source) option: Foxit. It’s much faster than the Reader.