Talibiddeen Jr.

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Blogging Resources

Webmaster Resources

Blogging & Webmaster Resources

Blogging Resources

Want to start a homeschooling or personal blog? Here are some resources you'll probably find handy, insha Allah.
Blog Providers (free)
First of all, you'll need a blog provider to host your blog.
Here are some that I am familiar with or have used:
Word Press (my favorite)

Homeschool Blogger, specifically for the homeschool blogger
I like the homeschool community aspect of this one, but when I used it about two years ago, it just wasn't as simple as I have found Word Press to be. But that was two years ago, so improvements have probably been made. One of the things I had a hard time with was placing images.

BlogSpot

Blogger.com

Type Pad

Blog Software for composing offline
Wanna blog offline? I know of two great options.
Microsoft Word 2007.
You can create blog entries and post them to your blog from Word. It also lets you add categories (as they are called in Word Press), in other blogs I think they are just called tags. I type offline, but the category feature seems to be disabled when you open up a blog post offline. So I end up copying my entry and opening up a new blog post and paste it when I am online. There may be something simpler to do, but I haven't discovered it yet.
Qumana software
With Qumana you can write posts offline and then hop online and post them to your blog. Its fairly simple and it gives you the ability to edit previous posts as well, still while offline. You can even place your categories in Qumana and add them while offline. I can't remember if you can add new categories while offline. With Qumana, you can also add context click ads for cash as well.
Qumana has a help page with tips for using Qumana but I have found in handy as well for learning a little more about blogs in general.

Webmaster Resources

Want to start a website?

Getting Started

As in blogging, you'll need a web provider. If you are making a personal web page/site, there are a lot of free hosts out there. If you are making a business site, its best to go with a paid account so that you won't have annoying ads which may make your site look less professional.

Here are a few out there:

Amanah Hosts

Offers web hosting for Muslims. Free and paid accounts are available. This is my web host and I am happy with the service. You can use the web site builder to work on your site (great to use if you have little or no experience with web authoring software) or work on your pages in an offline program and FTP your pages.

I have maintained free sites with the following hosts:

Out of all three, I liked this one the least. I always had trouble with the page builder loading.

Some tips for starting out:

I was asked for some advice regarding setting up personal websites. I am not an expert, by any means, but these are just some things that I have learned along the way and thought they might be helpful for others:

Free Site vs. Paid

There are many free sites available, but many have advertising banners and sometimes there are "Islamic" ads that are questionable. Paid ones can be as low as $1.99 a month; most basic ones I have seen are around $4.99 to $8.99/month. Some free ones that I have used are Tripod, Yahoo Velocities, and Free webs. Out of the three above, Tripod was the easiest for me to use. I currently use an Islamic host , Amanahhosts.com and am very happy with it.

Domain Names (i.e. www.yourname.com )

These can be purchased and can follow you even if you change your webhost. The prices vary, but they can be relatively cheap. This is a recurring cost. It is not necessary to have your own name, but if you will be doing business, it is recommended to have your own domain name. If you do not purchase a domain, you will have to use a sub domain of your web host ( i.e. http://talibiddeenjr .amanahwebs.com) where amanah webs is my host.

Also, if you do not purchase a domain name, and you sign up for an account, be sure that when you select your username, you choose wisely because this will most likely be part of your URL. i.e. http://username.yourhostsname.com

Payment Methods.

If you will be running an online business, you will need to determine how you will receive payments from you customers. One of the most popular payment methods is PayPal (www.paypal.com). Many businesses also use Shopping Carts.

Site Maintenance.

Many webhosts have site building software that you can use online. These are usually relatively easy to use. The downside is that you have to do all your designing online, which is inconvenient or costly if you do not have DSL. Alternatively, you can use a web page building software on your computer such as Front Page, Dream Weaver or you can download a free one from (I can get the name, I forgot, lol). I prefer using this type of software as it gives you more control over your site (design) and you can design offline and then jump on and upload your pages to your host's server by publishing it or by using FTP ( I currently use FileZilla to upload my files and I love it.

Out of all the online web builders I have used, I prefer Tripod's. I always had trouble loading Yahoo's Page Builder ; many people like Free Web's builder, but I preferred Tripod's, although, it is kind of limited. I have recently used Bravenet.com's page builder and I think it is the easiest (for me) out of them all.

Other considerations:

Templates.

Use a webpage template to give your site a more professional look. Your host most likely will have a selection of Free one or you can download them from many places on the internet. Out of the web hosts I have mentioned, I thought that Bravenet.com had the best selection of free templates. Google to find more free web templates. You can also purchase web templates online as well.

This site is also great for free templates:

http://www.oswd.org

If you are running a business, most likely you may want to purchase a template.

Web Tools.

You will definitely want to check out Bravenet.com for web tools. They are great! They have counters, guestbooks, mailing lists, guest maps, polls and more for FREE. All you have to do is copy the code and paste it into your web page (in an appropriate spot). You do not have to have a web page with Bravenet, you just sign up for an account and can use the tools on any site, insha Allah. But note, if you go for the free services, many will have ads, so if you want to be ad-less, its gonna cost ya.

Planning your site.

I suggest taking the time to plan out the structure of your site in word or on paper before you go to your web builder. Good design and navigation are important and it is a pain to change these major things (usually) later.

Pay close attention to navigation as it will either aid your visitors or turn them away.

Page Names.

I suggest a system for naming your webpages. This will make it easy for you to find pages when you are in your file manager. For example, my Islamic studies related pages begin with is. i.e. is_adab.htm and is_salaat. This way, when I view my files, all my Islamic studies pages are in one spot when sorted by the name. Also, I am still learning not to be too specific on your file names, meaning that once you name a page, you are sort of locked into it because people may be looking for that name or have it bookmarked and they will get an error if you have changed the name, so plan wisely. An example I saw online was that if you had a homeschooling conference every year, don't name the page with that information something like 2007conference.htm. The source had advised naming the page conference.htm and then when 2008 rolls around you can put that year's conference information there and just archive the info from 2007. Again, if you are too specific, then you are likely to get locked in too easily.

In an Search Engine Optimization class that I took, it mentioned that using hyphens (-) to separate phrases in your page name was better for SEO than underscore (_).

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Once you get your site up and running, here are a few goodies for getting/keeping your site in tip top shape.

Site Maintenance/Optimization

Link checkers.

There are a lot of free link checkers available. Checking your links regularly is essential to keep from frustrating your visitors with broken links.

India Book link checker
"Free check the validity of your links on any web page on the net by indiabook.com. Just put url and it will check all report all good and dead link on a particular page it will check both url link and images link.
2 Bone.com's LInk Checker.

It is also good to check the pages yourself. A link may not be broken but the content may have changed and be inappropriate. If you use FireFox, there is a plug in called Linky that can be used to open all the links on a particular page.

Other Useful utilities

Search Engine Position - Check your search engine positions on Google Search Engine.

Google PageRank Prediction
Predicts your future Google PageRank.

Rank Checker
Use this online tool to see the ranking of a specific website.

Backlink Checker
Find backlinks linking to a website and their URL information.

and there are many others which can be found by googling.....

Learning HTML

Here are a few tutorials for learning HTML:

Web Developers Notes

I did these tutorials in about 2 evenings. They are simple and easy to understand.

HTML Goodies - HTML Primers

Gadgets and Extras

While gadgets and extras can be fun to have on your site, you have to make sure you don't get carried away. In this section, I'll be listing some of my favorites.

Javascript
If you want to display today's current date on your web page, provide random content (such as a daily quote or ayaah or tip), add a calculator to your website, password protect a page, etc, etc, etc, one way to do so is by using javascript. Javascript code can be easily pasted into the code of your web page.
Here are some links to free javascript libraries, just grab the code (copy) and paste it into your page. Be sure to follow any directions carefully as bad or misplaced code can mess up your web page.

Javascriptkit.com
Dynamic Drive
If you'd like to learn how to write your own code (or tweak a code you found), here are a few places with Javascript tutorials: