So you’ve created a new website, and you want to make sure Google finds it so that you can get search traffic. Back in the day, you had to submit your website to the search engines and it could take months. Luckily, there’s now a much faster way to make this happen.
Anyone using WordPress, especially on a popular (or high Google PageRank) site knows that spammers love to use the comment section to peddle whatever crap they’re selling. If you don’t want to be a free medium for advertisements, you either have to stay on top of the comments constantly, or install a plugin to help manage the problem.
Let’s face it – the latest offering from Google is nothing short of a disaster. Privacy concerns aside, do we really need another social networking tool? The answer is no – so here’s a quick way to disable Buzz.
The best way to get Google to crawl your site and index your pages is to have a sitemap. Even better is a dynamically updated xml sitemap, but how do you create one? The easiest way is to use a sitemap generator. Input your site’s URL, and let this application do all the work – in just a few minutes (depending on the size of your site), you’ll have an XML sitemap ready to download. So now what do you do with it?
If you’re not using Firefox and AdBlock Plus, you can still block a good number of ads from showing in your web browser. Not only that, but you can use a hosts file to prevent your software from “phoning home” as well. I personally use a combination of Firefox, AdBlock Plus, a custom hosts file, a firewall, and PeerBlock to lock down my PC. Between all these, I feel pretty secure 
Continue reading “How To Use A Hosts File To Block Ads And More” »
Remember when Adobe Acrobat used to be a great little tool? Before all the bloatware, spam, and constant phoning home to Adobe? The days of using Acrobat to efficiently view PDF files are long gone – but there is a good, free alternative. Foxit Reader, a free PDF reader from Foxit Software, is currently the best alternative to Adobe’s popular PDF reader.
Continue reading “The Best Alternative To Adobe Acrobat PDF Reader” »
Let’s start this off by saying there’s no 100% sure way to be completely safe online. Regardless of how many precautions you take, the chance of trouble is always there. However, you can take a few steps to greatly reduce your chance of having your identity or banking information stolen.
We’ve all been there. We see a great video on YouTube and wish we could save it to our computer instead of just streaming it over the Internet. If you’re using Firefox, there’s a quick and easy way to download YouTube videos for free. I’ve put together a list of the top 5 extensions that will allow you to save YouTube videos to your hard drive.
If you’ve ever used a bit-torrent program to download files or music, you’ve probably worried about the RIAA or government spying on your downloading habits. Anti-P2P organizations are becoming more and more aggressive about pursuing file sharers, so it’s important to protect yourself even if you’re not doing anything illegal. Your browsing and downloading is your own private personal business, and no one has the right to invade your privacy as far as I’m concerned.
Sometimes webmasters and site owners want to know how well Google likes their site. This is important from an SEO perspective, but also just for curiosity’s sake. There are a couple of easy ways to check your PR:
Continue reading “How To Quickly Check Your Google PageRank” »