How to Reduce the Size of MySql Databases

MySql is one of the most popular choices in databases, used by many online websites to store user details. When a database is being used online however, one of the most important factors is that it shouldn’t take up too much space on the web server. Unnecessarily allowing your MySql database to take up more room than it needs means that there is less storage space for web files that make up the websites. When web storage costs money to purchase, it is pointless to allow space to be taken up by blank areas of database, especially when there is something that you can do about this.

In order to shrink the size of a MySql database, it is important to optimize the database. This can potentially reduce the size of the database to just a fraction of its current size. It is a fast operation to complete, which should form part of your regular website maintenance.

Will I lose any data?

You wont lose any data when you optimize a database. Optimization performs a check on your current database for any empty space and reorganizes the way that the data is stored. Existing data is moved to the empty space so that the database is only being used by actual information. Technically, the empty space is deleted so that the rows in the database that were being taken up by blank cells are no longer there.

How can I tell if my database needs to be optimized?

Running optimization is not always necessary. You should check the size of the overhead in your database to see if it needs to be reduced. The overhead indicates just how much space is being taken up by empty cells.

You can find out the size of the overhead by opening your MySql database from the hosting panel in your web server control panel. Beside each of the tables in your database is an ‘overhead’ column which tells you the size of the free space.

How do I perform the optimization?

The first thing that you need to do is backup your database. This is good practice for any procedure, but because the optimization process moves and deletes parts of your database, there is a risk that something could go wrong.

To run the optimization, open your MySql application with the database open that you wish to optimize. Choose the tables that you wish to run the operation on by checking the boxes beside the tables that you wish to optimize and then click on the “with selected” drop down menu. Choose the “Optimize Table” option and allow it to run.

These are the only steps that you need to take, so if you see that your MySql database size is growing, you should back up and optimize your tables so that you can make the most of the space that you have. By performing a MySql database optimization frequently, the process will be quick and efficient. The more free space there is to clean up, the longer the process will take.

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How To Start a Blog and Make Money Online – in 5 Easy Steps

Here are 5 EASY steps we’ll take together to help you start a blog and make money online.

Are you curious about how to make money online? Think that starting a blog is the way to go?

Great! Starting a blog can be a solid way to make long-term income – just for doing some writing on stuff you actually like and care about. But there’s a little more to it than that AND it may not be for everyone. This is not a get rich quick or plug and play business. If that’s what you’re looking for, this is not the place for you.

Yes, you can make a lot of money online but, like other traditional businesses, it’s not guaranteed. Anyone who tells you otherwise, is not being truthful.

Our goal is to help people who are really serious about building a real online business – because you can make a little, or a lot of money. That all depends on you…

Here’s the big difference between making money online and going to a job every day. If you do it right, the work you do today, this week, and this year – will continue making money for years to come. It’s an investment rather than trading your time for money.

So how does this work? Search engines find and cache the articles that you write, and over time each post is “worth more” to the search engines. That means you’ll get more web site traffic with every passing month as your site gains credibility. This does not happen overnight. It takes persistence and even some hard work – but you can do it if you’re serious and committed…

We did it (Dan and I both walked away from our corporate jobs and now do this full time), and so can you. The good news is that you get to take advantage of what we’ve learned over the last several years and avoid the sand traps that we had to dig our way out of.

So let’s get started – RIGHT NOW!

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How to Write a Successful LinkedIn Recommendation

In LinkedIn, recommendations are nothing but the testimonials or reviews written by other people describing how efficient you are in a particular professional field, how you work and what are the reasons behind their recommendation. Recommendations are really powerful when it comes to increasing one’s professional reputation as well as boosting and adding extra value to his/her LinkedIn profile.

In this article, I am going to focus on various factors that must be taken into consideration while writing a LinkedIn recommendation and also I am going to provide many LinkedIn recommendation examples.

Factors to remember while writing a LinkedIn recommendation:

    Always start the recommendation with a background of the person and you may include here how you get acquainted with him/her.
    Make sure to mention all the qualities that are possessed by the person. In recommendations, employers usually look for qualities possessed by a person. If you are not well aware of the future reference for which it is going to be used, then simply write about his/her professional behaviors. Few of such common qualities are reliability, honesty, integrity, dedication, attention to details, goal-orientation, efficiency, leadership, cooperation etc. For example: “Matt is a dedicated team player and he pays high attention to the details and carefully follows the information which are provided by his clients.”
    Narrate a short success story. It will help people to remember the recommendation for a long period of time. Do not mention your personal relationship with that person in it but try to write in such a way that it shows the person’s excellence in work. For example: “It’s unforgettable that he saved the reputation of the whole company in front of the eyes of the shareholders on a particular occasion and ………”
    Always end the recommendation with a strong note of resolution. You must not leave the reader in curiosity whether that person can be reliable for work or not. For example: “I highly recommend John to everyone who wants to get their website designed in a very excellent way and in a very limited amount of time.”

LinkedIn recommendation examples:

LinkedIn recommendation example for Contractor:
John worked for me to design my company website six months ago. He is a reliable and hardworking guy who pays high attention to every single detail and it helps him to stand out from most other web designers in the internet industry. Also, he grabs the instructions within a fraction of seconds and implements them to come up with the expected output. He is great in graphic designing as well and made my company logo. I highly recommend him to anyone. He can be a great asset to any company.

LinkedIn recommendation example for Employer:

I worked with Joe one year ago in an Advertising campaign for his company. He is a great client and he possesses exceptional leadership qualities. He knows how to provide crystal clear instructions to his employees. Also, he has a good sense of humor that makes him loved by all of his employees and he treats his employees like his friends so that he can get his work done in time and also make sure that his employees enjoy their time while working with him. I recommend him to every employee who wants to work with a friendly and skilled employer.

Conclusion:

Providing a good recommendation will help your contractor/employer to stand out brilliantly in the industry. If he/she likes your recommendation, then certainly he will also send you a recommendation in return which will be a valuable addition to your profile.

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How To Write Your First Blog Post

You’ve got your niche, then what? It’s time to write your first blog post, but how do you choose a topic? With so much to choose from, it gets confusing, but we are here to help you sort it all out.

Congratulations! You’ve made it this far. You’ve got your niche, figured out what you want to talk about, who the other players in the niche are, decided what you like about them, what you don’t like about them, and you’ve started interacting with their readers on their blog and you have begun to build up your presence. Now what?

Write Your First Blog Post

Oh, how this strikes fear in the hearts of many a blogger… “What will I write about?” They ask “How will I come up with a topic.” Writer’s block sets in at this point and for many, but really, it’s not a problem if you’re writing about something that you are passionate about.
Not satisfied? Fine. We’ll give you a sure-fire way to come up with your first subject.

Lock yourself in a room. Literally. No cell phone, no significant other, no T.V., nothing. Sit down in front of a pen and paper and write down every idea that you can think of. Don’t stop until you have a least 50-100. Then pick one. How do you pick you? You pick the one that speaks to you. How will you know which one speaks to you? It just does. Try not to over think this. Your first blog post is important, but the fate of the world doesn’t depend on it. Just your world. Kidding! Just relax, and pick one. You’ve got like a 100 to choose from, right? See, it wasn’t that hard. You’ve done it! You’ve chosen a topic. And now you have your first blog topic ready to write about to your heart’s content.
Here’s something to get your juices going: What keeps your audience up at night?

What are their hopes, dreams, problems, etc? Now pick one of these and write about it. Now we come to blog length. How long should it be? As long as a woman’s skirt: long enough to cover the goods, but short to keep it interesting. Spell check it, and be sure to test any links in it you might have to say, your twitter account or a product page.

When To Publish Your Blog Posts

This is a bigger question than you think. The name of the game with posting is consistency. Do you post every hour or every day or every week? You have to set a schedule and stick to it. If you’re going to make money at this, you need to have people consistently coming to your site to check out your content. It has to be new, constantly updating content. They aren’t going to be checking out your greatest hits, either. They want new, fresh content. It’s not going to help if you post ten times a day for a week and then don’t post again for another month. If you do that, you’ll come off as flakey to your readers and that’s just death to bloggers. You won’t get those readers back, and you won’t be generating any traffic or making any money, either.

But it’s not just readers that hate inconsistency and flakiness. Search engines hate it too. You want to be on their good side, and you’ll need to be posting regularly. We’re talking at least once a week, and there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to manage that. The more posts the better, but don’t commit yourself to something you can’t deliver and end up flaking out. There’s plenty of scheduling software’s out there that can help you make sure you never miss a posting. WordPress even allows you to schedule a post to go live at a certain date and time. So there’s no excuse to not be posting regularly!

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Infographic How To Get A Better Alexa Ranking

Today, any online business needs to find a way to reach the top rankings on the search results by the major search engines. There are many methods in order to boost the ranking as well as gaining more traffic. One way is to make the most out of your Alexa ranking.

If you want to achieve a better Alexa ranking, there are certain steps to follow in order to achieve success in no time. Finding a way to drive adequate traffic to your website in order to get it ranked under 100,000 can be achieved. Alexa basically measures the traffic that it can see. It acquires sample data from Internet users who installed the toolbar and determines the figures. Take note that it is not reliable on websites that do not have any traffic yet. Additionally, it also gathers data from websites that have the ranking JavaScript added. If you want to acquire more mileage from Alexa, there are ways that you should be familiar with. First, you have to invite your readers to leave reviews on the Alexa website, create a customized version of the Alexa toolbar for your readers and do not game the system.

There are certain steps involved if you want to attain better rankings. The first step is to research and claim. All you have to do is to claim your website and update all the important details. You also have to find your domain in Alexa and check the tour – www.alexa.com/tour to familiar yourself on what is Alexa all about. The second step is to add the JavaScript to your website and install the toolbar. The third step is to acquire all the traffic and build the relevant traffic through directory listings, guest blogging, article marketing, and press releases, encourage visitors to share your site, blog consistently, maintain an active social networking and comment on blogs. Check out the following infographic and follow the instructions step by step. Hope it will help you increase the Alexa ranking of your site quickly. The infographic can be found here: http://michelleshaeffer.com/how-to-get-a-better-alexa-ranking-infographic/2012/07/08/

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The #1 Tip To Start A Successful Blog

There are a lot of “tips” and “tricks” available that you can use to initially drive traffic when you start a blog, but after a while, the search engines start figuring out that you’re not really offering your viewers anything once they get to your site – so they stop sending traffic there at all.

This article is very short, but read it and take note. It contains the biggest ‘secret’ to help you start a successful blog.
#1 Tip To Start A Successful Blog

    Publish high quality content on a regular basis

You may have the best SEO keywords on your blog, but without quality content, the search engines are going to start overlooking you. You may get an influx of site traffic for a while, but it will quickly cease as the search engines realize that people aren’t staying on your website very long.

The key to starting a successful blog is to produce quality content that people want to read on a regular basis. If there’s good stuff on there that people are interested in and searching for, the search engines will start sending them to you. It’s as simple as that.
Search engines, especially Google, spend millions of dollars every year on technology that allows them to filter through websites that publish what is known as Internet “crap.”

Perhaps you’ve heard the term “link bait”? These are poorly written articles stuffed with keywords and no real content.

You can only fool search engines with SEO tricks and keywords for so long, if at all these days. If you don’t produce quality content on a regular basis, search engines are going to figure it out and fast.

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The Top 5 Ways to Accept Online Payments

If you want to do business online, you need to find an easy and straightforward way of processing credit cards and other types of payment so that people can actually pay for the products or services they want to buy from you. Here are the best ways to do that.

1. Merchant Accounts
Set up a merchant account with your bank (or the bank that will offer you the best rates). This, unfortunately, can be a time-consuming process. There are credit and background checks involved; you need to tell your bank what you’re selling and how much of it you think you will sell.

On the other hand, once the fees have been deducted, the money you make from your sales will be deposited directly into your account. You don’t have to wait for a third party to process it.

2. PayPal
PayPal is probably the easiest online payment merchant to work with. It is definitely the most popular, and that means that it is one of the most trusted. The great thing about PayPal is that you can take payments from anybody. You don’t have to go through any sort of background or credit checks. You can start accepting payments within minutes of setting up the account.

PayPal also offers a debit card that is linked directly to your account so that you can use the money you earn as soon as it is paid to you. You don’t have to wait for it to be transferred to your bank (unless you want to).

3. Sell Through a Third Party
This is a fancy way of saying that you should sell your products through a service like Amazon. The store takes on the responsibility of processing the payments. You just wait for the money to be sent to you.

This is a good choice because when you sell through a third party, you get to have that third party’s reputation backing up your products. You’ll also benefit from whatever traffic they bring in for products that relate to yours so you stand to sell more of your own stuff. At the same time, actually getting your money can take a while, and they don’t accept all products into their ranks.

4. ACH Payment Processing (eCheck)
ACH Payment processing allows you to accept money directly from someone’s bank account without requiring a credit card. You simply need the information on the check that they would have written to you. The process is overseen by the National Automated Clearing House Association, and they will allow you to use the money you bring in for a variety of purposes (including direct deposits into your bank account).

The easiest way to take these kinds of payments is to set up the account with your own bank—it saves the time of having to be approved for and open an account somewhere else.

5. Mobile Payment Processors
Even if your business isn’t web-based, you can accept payments online thanks to mobile payment merchants. The best example of this is Square, which has become incredibly popular over the last couple of years. You register for an account with a mobile payment processor, get the card reader and plug it in to your smart phone or computer, and viola! You can accept payments.

The best thing about accepting payments this way is that many of the different mobile payment processors will also allow you to accept checks—you just scan in the check and you’re done! Some will even have code in place that will allow you to track cash transactions.

These are the five best ways to accept payments online. The method you choose is going to depend upon what kind of business you are running and where you are running it. Good luck!

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What Are Hyperlinks and Why Are They Important for SEO

Hyperlinks are connections established between a word/phrase/image and a website/file. The World Wide Web is based on hyperlinks. Most often we access websites by clicking hyperlinks.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization which defines the optimization of how a website can be reached through search engines. This process also involves hyperlinking. Actually effective hyperlinking between different pages can help a website secure a good position in the search engine result pages as well.

What is hyperlink?
Hyperlink is a type of link that connect two separate files/websites/articles/images etc. Hyperlink can be placed on webpages, in spreadsheet file, in database infrastructure etc. Their main function is to link some data with others so that users can get the related data at convenience. Hyperlinks are sometimes used to elaborate few topics or points.

It is used in internet as a major element of internet connectivity. Webpage is attached to webpage and further webpages; these are all possible because of hyperlinks. Hyperlinks can also be explained as the path for movement from one webpage to another or from one file to another.

No Hyperlink No Internet
The entire World Wide Web is linked up by hyperlinks. Suppose there was no hyperlink on websites, then users would have to get hold of the URL of websites. Users would require to directly enter the full URL to get to any webpage. However, when you type an IP or domain address on the address bar of your browser in order to view a webpage, the old hyperlinking process actually comes into action. Search engines mainly displays the URLs of websites through hyperlink. If there were no hyperlinks, how would search engines display results. Pages of a website are also connected with each other using hyperlinks.

Webpages provide you information from their database which is again due to hyperlinking process. Without hyperlinks there will be no use of mouse click on  a webpage or image. Everything would work like character based user interface.

Why hyperlinks important for SEO
Internet users seek help from search engines in order to find out desired information and related websites. It is the responsibility of search engines to display various relevant sites which can provide them with the information they are looking for. If websites were not linked with search engines through hyperlink, then search engine would have no value of its own.

Search engines also give priority to the sites that have good number of inbound links (hyperlinks) and rank them well. Google has introduced PR rating system only to sort out the sites that have good inbound links and high quality contents. So there is no doubt that hyperlinks play an important role when it comes to SEO.

Management of hyperlink
Few things must be to be kept in mind and maintained properly in order to establish a good connection of hyperlink with SEO optimization:

    Do not place spammy/inappropriate links in your website content.
    You should always make sure that your links are working.
    Images must be hyperlinked with their full size versions.
    Related contents should be hyperlinked with each other.
    Hyperlinks which are not required must be removed as they may slow down the speed or accessibility of your website and result in poor user experience.
    Do not place hyperlinks on a webpage haphazardly. Make sure that your hyperlinks serve a purpose and add value to your site.

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When To Change Your Blog Theme…

A Word Of Caution About Changing Your Blog Theme When You Start A New Blog…
This is the single biggest place where new bloggers get stuck. I strongly recommend that you focus your energy on writing good content first and foremost.

There is more to changing your theme than simply clicking a button. You will need to understand menus and widgets as well as have some published content before changing your theme. We’ll cover ALL of these in future lessons and it’s highly recommended that you wait until you’ve finished the first 2 training modules before attempting to change your blog theme.
Recommended…
Start with the default theme, add at least 10 posts and 1 static page, set up your categories and menus, and only then consider changing your theme.
Why You Should Wait To Change Your Blog Theme
1. The search engines do not care what your blog looks like.
They care about content, so the faster you can publish a lot of good content, the faster your blog will get listed in the search engines. If you spend weeks (or even months as some do) trying to make your blog look perfect, you’ve wasted that valuable time that could have been spent publishing content.
2. Your theme will look much better when there is content on your blog.
It’s really hard to preview a new theme on an empty blog – they all look bad when there’s no content, menus, or navigation.
Many themes offer a customizable home page, but with no content, what do you feature on the home page?
ake the time to set up your categories and publish at least 2-3 posts under each category so that you can see what a blog listing page will actually look like.
Take the time to at least write your About page so that you can see what a static page looks like.
The more content you have on your blog, the easier it will be to preview a new theme and see what it’s really going to look like.
If you absolutely, must change your blog theme now, here are step-by-step instructions for how to do it.

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Which CMS Joomla, Drupal or WordPress

In order to build a high end website, open source CMS platforms are becoming greatly popular these days. Since there are a number CMS software programs available on the web, many web publishers find it quite difficult to decide which CMS will best serve their purpose – Joomla, Drupal or WordPress? All three of them have their very own pros and cons, similarities and dissimilarities with one another.

The similarities of Joomla, Drupal and WordPress:
    PHP based web development platforms.
    Licensed under the free GNU General Public License.
    Content management system uses MySQL database.
Drupal:
    Drupal is ideal for building complex, advanced and versatile sites and requires high level of expertise and experience for maintenance.
    It is for coding freaks. If you like to use more plugins and less personally generated codes, then Drupal is not ideal for you.
    Modules – plug-in catcher in Drupal has many popular and amazing enhancements and you can craft some really cool stuff that will increase your website’s functionality, performance and scalability.
Joomla:
    Joomla is a mostly a developer-oriented, extensive but user-friendly CMS. It contains much complex options regarding site development.
    Joomla requires moderately uncomplicated installation and set up processes. The terminology and structure of this tool is meant for moderately complex sites.
    It has a huge community of programmers, developers, and designers. So getting help and assistance from expert Joomla developers is easy.
    The designers, developers and administrators often find it amusing to work with.
    Joomla is becoming more user friendly with each new upgrade.
    Extensions – Joomla 1.5 search framework is used to cache pages making it real fast in downloading each page with customizable options. It also supports the System Cache Plug-in. There are many other cool extensions while using Joomla as a CMS.
WordPress:
    This is an easy-to-use platform for both developers and end users. With time, WordPress has introduced thousands of new themes, plugins and widgets that smooth the progress of WordPress as the most popular CMS ever.
    Ideal for web developers who build websites for non-technical users, because once the site is built, the client can take over the site and maintain it of his/her own that requires minimum effort and technical knowledge.
    Plug-ins – WordPress has the richest collection of plug-ins that can increase the functionality of a WordPress to a great extent. They are really easy to install. No coding knowledge is required. But if you have sufficient knowledge, you can customize a WordPress plug-in or create a plug-in from the scratch.
Other major factors for choosing the best CMS among the three:
    Backend:
    – Drupal has a master control bar which adapts the page you visit.
    – Joomla has different segregated pages for each administrative tool.
    – WordPress backend is the easiest of the three to manage and navigate through different options.
    Security – WordPress has a number of loopholes and security vulnerability for its plain construction, the plugins might also be hacked or exploited. Drupal is the best in terms of security, and Joomla is reasonably good.
    Extensions – WordPress beats the others. WP is connected with many third party commercial market places for themes and plug-ins.
    Forums and supports – WordPress and Joomla have many unofficial forums, blogs and websites for support, apart from the official ones. Drupal has a thin line of unofficial support. However, all three have great user community.

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How To Start a Blog and Make Money Online

Here are 5 EASY steps we’ll take together to help you start a blog and make money online.



Are you curious about how to make money online? Think that starting a blog is the way to go?

Great! Starting a blog can be a solid way to make long-term income – just for doing some writing on stuff you actually like and care about. But there’s a little more to it than that AND it may not be for everyone. This is not a get rich quick or plug and play business. If that’s what you’re looking for, this is not the place for you.

Yes, you can make a lot of money online but, like other traditional businesses, it’s not guaranteed. Anyone who tells you otherwise, is not being truthful.

Our goal is to help people who are really serious about building a real online business – because you can make a little, or a lot of money. That all depends on you…

Here’s the big difference between making money online and going to a job every day. If you do it right, the work you do today, this week, and this year – will continue making money for years to come. It’s an investment rather than trading your time for money.

So how does this work? Search engines find and cache the articles that you write, and over time each post is “worth more” to the search engines. That means you’ll get more web site traffic with every passing month as your site gains credibility. This does not happen overnight. It takes persistence and even some hard work – but you can do it if you’re serious and committed…

We did it (Dan and I both walked away from our corporate jobs and now do this full time), and so can you. The good news is that you get to take advantage of what we’ve learned over the last several years and avoid the sand traps that we had to dig our way out of.

So let’s get started – RIGHT NOW!

Read More

Reduce the Size of MySql Databases

MySql is one of the most popular choices in databases, used by many online websites to store user details. When a database is being used online however, one of the most important factors is that it shouldn’t take up too much space on the web server. Unnecessarily allowing your MySql database to take up more room than it needs means that there is less storage space for web files that make up the websites. When web storage costs money to purchase, it is pointless to allow space to be taken up by blank areas of database, especially when there is something that you can do about this.

In order to shrink the size of a MySql database, it is important to optimize the database. This can potentially reduce the size of the database to just a fraction of its current size. It is a fast operation to complete, which should form part of your regular website maintenance.

Will I lose any data?

You wont lose any data when you optimize a database. Optimization performs a check on your current database for any empty space and reorganizes the way that the data is stored. Existing data is moved to the empty space so that the database is only being used by actual information. Technically, the empty space is deleted so that the rows in the database that were being taken up by blank cells are no longer there.

How can I tell if my database needs to be optimized?

Running optimization is not always necessary. You should check the size of the overhead in your database to see if it needs to be reduced. The overhead indicates just how much space is being taken up by empty cells.

You can find out the size of the overhead by opening your MySql database from the hosting panel in your web server control panel. Beside each of the tables in your database is an ‘overhead’ column which tells you the size of the free space.

How do I perform the optimization?

The first thing that you need to do is backup your database. This is good practice for any procedure, but because the optimization process moves and deletes parts of your database, there is a risk that something could go wrong.

To run the optimization, open your MySql application with the database open that you wish to optimize. Choose the tables that you wish to run the operation on by checking the boxes beside the tables that you wish to optimize and then click on the “with selected” drop down menu. Choose the “Optimize Table” option and allow it to run.

These are the only steps that you need to take, so if you see that your MySql database size is growing, you should back up and optimize your tables so that you can make the most of the space that you have. By performing a MySql database optimization frequently, the process will be quick and efficient. The more free space there is to clean up, the longer the process will take.

Read More