Xarex

In the beginning, Google cared only about indexing every website on the Internet. It managed to accumulate over 4 million pages in data. This was at the start of Google.com around the year 2000. Over 10 years later, Google.com has acquired over 4 billion pages on the Internet. It has been the most successful website on the Internet: its purpose: to deliver to billions of eyes easily accessible information. Google is getting smart. And that is a good thing. Google used to chase after meta tags, have websites submit their data. They no longer need to do this anymore. Google has bots that crawl through sites and eventually discover them either through link exchanges, clicking of links, sites with Google Analytics discovering links from other areas either from or to these websites. Google will eventually find your website. Whether your website is relevant or not.. has now become part of the Google algorithm. Google noticed something a while ago. Something that was never meant to be. A search query returned all of the same content on the first page. Each page had copied content on it and yet all of these pages were seen as relevant enough to be on the first page. In reality, none of these pages contained any useful information or only one contained it, because all the pages were the same. Keyword, Tags, SEO and many other tricks to get Google to put your page first became all too easy, but that did not mean that these pages pulling these tricks were actually relevant, and this led Google to come up with an algorithm to defeat these websites. There are several algorithms at work with each query on Google. And Google is only getting millions more bytes of data each day with query the world is searching. Googleâs new algorithms began eliminating these websites, deemed duplicate content. Unfortunately, there was some collateral damage and some websites that did not contain copied content were hit. They found their websites no longer appearing on Google at all. Google states they are trying to improve their algorithm, but those sites now must find a new way to exist and be seen. Google wants original content. It is very understandable. It is very annoying to search for something and get the first few pages of results giving you the exact same content. If you do not find what youâre looking for within these first few pages, even if the information does in fact exist, than the authentic information is lost forever. If there could be some way to eliminate all the websites that have no relevancy, than what Google is doing is completely understandable. This guide was meant for honest webmasters who do have original content but may have somehow messed up somewhere along the lines. A while ago, my site received a penalty for duplicate content. It went from 250 visitors a day to 30. I checked Google Webmaster and realized I was ignoring all the suggestions on the HTML page. However, this page of âsuggestionsâ were not suggestions at all. They were warnings. And if nothing was to be done about them, than Google would penalize the website. So here are several steps that can be taken in order to recover your website from any Google penalty. 1. If you do not have Google Webmaster (https://www.google.com/webmasters/), sign up for it. Upload your sitemap.xml and ensure that a Googlebot has crawled through it. If not, give it several days. Use the Fetch as Googlebot under Diagnostics. 2. In Google Webmaster, click on Diagnostics and check your HTML Suggestions. If you have duplicate content, remove it. Do as many of the suggestions as you possibly can! 3. Validate your CSS. Go to a site like http://www.cssportal.com/. Validate and optimize your CSS! I went from 316 errors down to 17 after I was done. It took me about an hour manually to do everything. There is an automatic optimizer, but be careful and make sure you back up your CSS file! The optimizer may change things, especially when you begin to check for Cross-Browser compatibility! So I suggest you run the automatic optimization, but make the changes manually. If you do not already have them, depending on your web browser.. get these tools: Google Chrome: Inspection, Refresh CSS Firefox: Firebug, Refresh CSS They will save you a lot of time because you can see changes and make them before you actually change anything with the Inspection/Firebug tool. And then once you make changes, often times, browsers will cache the CSS and it will not always refresh with an F5 or refresh button. The refresh CSS plugin will show you immediate changes. 4. Write your own content! ONLY WRITE ORIGINAL CONTENT THAT IS YOUR OWN! In college, you were not allowed to plagiarize your papers. This is the same concept with Google! So get rid of anything on your site that might be on other sites. The only way to bypass this is if you provide a link to the original content. This may still affect your site. 5. REMOVE DUPLICATE TITLES AND META TAGS AND DESCRIPTIONS! If you have several pages on your website or thousands, and they all contain the same exact Title, Google will read these pages as duplicate web pages on your site and your site will receive a harsh penalty. 6. Do not stuff your keywords. There are many tools that can detect keyword stuffing. Use keywords to explain your page, your website, but donât over do it! And certainly donât hide it with CSS or hidden text, because bots will detect this. 7. If you link exchange, make sure youâve exchanged with good sites. Remove your site from Bad Neighborhoods and Link Farms if applicable. Use this tool to detect what sites are in bad neighborhoods, or contain links to them. If they link to some bad neighborhoods, this will affect your website ranking greatly. (http://www.bad-neighborhood.com/text-link-tool.htm) 8. Creating authentic content in subdomains and making those subdomains popular visitor areas may help your site. 9. Understand how SEO works, specifically Google SEO. (http://www.seobook.com/learn-seo/collateral-damage.php) 10. Stop putting all your eggs into one basket! Utilize all your resources! Yahoo Site Explorer, Bing Webmaster Tools, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, StumbleUpon, and every social media tool you can think of to help your website! Google is not the only resource out there. There are so many other places you can help to recover your site and get more visitors, even in the eyes of Google, especially since your site is being seen through eyes of popular websites. These are my own suggestions and things Iâve come across from researching. I hope these suggestions help everyone to avoid what I went through.

I like http://www.co.cc/ the most because you can redirect to your site and you can either have it do a redirect to your exact domain, or have it keep the mydomain.cc. I noticed I get traffic from co.cc, either through their site, or through search engines.Another thing is basically.. if i wanted to create a subdomain on my website for someone else, and I didn't want people to know that they were coming to my site, than I could just give them a link to that domain.For example...mydomain.comPerson subsection is:myfriendsarea.mydomain.comThe domain I give people:myfriendsarea.co.ccWhat people will see:myfriendsareas.co.ccAnd then through .htaccess you can just have all your links look like they are actually on that domain. So then your friend can get a free fake domain and be hosted on your site.This could also be a service anyone could offer.. and charge a few bucks a month for it.I tried dot.tk but it didn't seem to work for me.

My only complaint about your site: Google Adsense. You have two ads placed almost right next to each other. What is the point of this? One ad at the top is fine. There should be a picture by "What is Human Anatomy?" It looks unprofessional to have two of the exact same Google Ads by each other. Maybe not exactly alike each time. But put a picture there. At the moment, my page rank is 3. Some days, I don't add anything. Some days, I add 100 videos. Each week or at least once every 2 weeks, I'll add an article to my site. It's not bad that Google has ranked your site as informative. An informative site would be deemed as say.. me typing something like, "Pangaea" and the first result is? Wikipedia. You want it so that when someone types in "Femur", Google knows that the content on your site is easy to read and relevant to this topic, so your site comes up. Again, the Page Rank drop probably means less people are coming to your site at the moment. Look at the season. What day is it? What month? It's July. It's summer time. Not too many people are searching about parts of the body. Whose in school right now? Come September-May, your site will probably get a spike in hits. If you don't get spikes and the number is regular, than I guess everything is normal. You need to manually submit your site to these search engines. Search Google or even search their own search engines for submitting your site to Yahoo and Bing. A suggestion if you want more traffic and to get your site name out.. something I would do.. sign up and gain a small reputation on major forums. If you have an hour extra per week, put aside this time to do exactly this: Go to Yahoo Answers, people will ask questions on there about Human Anatomy. You can even search for questions people have asked -- monitor the new questions and answer them. It asks for a source (where you got your information from), put your website down and Google and other search engines will index it quick, especially if people click on it. Make it a priority to answer quite a few of these questions that people ask. The more, the better. Search for other major sites related to your subject, things that you might be able to answer -- and sign up for them - and make sure you have a signature to your website in your link. Even Xisto forums and Xisto are heavily indexed sites -- I search my site, and I always find a result "youtrippy" from here on a google search. Ultimately what you're doing, more people will click from OTHER SITES. And Google will notice the traffic from these majors sites GOING TO YOUR SITE AND GOOGLE WILL LIKELY INDEX YOU FASTER AND INCREASE YOUR RANK. Since my site is related to music and it could even be related to drugs, I often post about music-related topics, or I might even comment about some type of drug or whatever, and in that, I always include a link to my site. If you can do this on major sites -- your site will get indexed and noticed in no time. The more people that go to your site, the more likely your results are going to come up as #1 on Google. But just remember, you're definitely going up against giants -- such as WebMD or SymptomChecker.. these sites are hard to bypass. Heavily indexed with a reputation. Be happy if you're #3.

Google dropped a lot of page ranks. Your site might not be keeping up. Ever since Google instilled their new Panda Program. A search of Google will provide you with a load of information as to what happened: https://www.google.com/search?q=Google+Panda But I think you should agree with your responders on the Google forums. Your page is extremely informative without being too cluttered. It's even less cluttered than a Wikipedia page on the same information. And it's very simple and beautiful to the human eye. You're likely not going to attract the average adult (unless they are curious) or child to your site. YOU WILL BE ATTRACTING MEDICAL STUDENTS, NURSES, DOCTORS, etc. Google has probably ranked your page as an informative website that doesn't change too often. How often do you add new content? Google loves pages that change daily. Don't worry about the drop. The only way you can ensure that your site doesn't drop: Google hates duplicates and plagiarism. If your site is copying information from another site that isn't your own words. Google will eventually detect it and classify your site as a copy of another site or something like that. I assume that your site doesn't do this. And add new content! Keep your sitemap.xml file up-to-date. How's your Google Analytics? Do you get spikes? And how's your site in competition with other sites on the Google search engines? If you search for something in a related area, what page does your site land on? Maybe develop a randomly changing tags area with human anatomy keywords and when clicked, people are taken to that page? Or FAQ area at the end of each article on the page with questions and they can be taken to a FAQ area about the body? You need something more that attracts people and keeps them scrolling through your pages? Maybe more articles on different areas of the body? Or just how far the human body can go? It would make your site unique. If you want to attract people beyond the doctor or nurse or medical student, and start attracting a heap of average people... than you might just need to add these unique articles.. articles that teach people new things about the body.

Great tips. I will contribute as well. This is a set of links to help you optimize your website: To speed up websites, here is a great article on Gzip Compression: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ It's a very easy compression method and just by adding a few simple lines of code, you can speed up your site using .htaccess. There is also another method called PHP Flush. Here is a link to an article on how to use code to do that: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ To test your website for SEO Optimization: http://seositecheckup.com/ Great site to help you improve your keywords, meta tags, and security as well as give you a little insight into what search engines are likely seeing. To get even more detailed insight into your webpage with a ranking: https://www.woorank.com/ Test your website speed and compare it with others (find other websites similar to yours and make sure the speeds match or are faster): http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Check your Alexa ranking: http://www.alexa.com/ Check your Google PR Rank: http://pagerankchecker.com/ Great tools to use: Firefox - download a plugin called Firebug. Google Chrome - comes with a built-in plugin called Inspection. Also from both programs, download a plugin called CSS Refresh. You NEED THIS TOOL IN ORDER TO SEE INSTANT CHANGES ON YOUR SITE. If you don't have this tool, you could refresh for 10 minutes before seeing any changes. Use right click and look at some of the source code. Learn how to use these tools. They are your lifesavers! Especially to find and change colors or even how something is done. Also, look at sites that might be similar to yours.. and see what attracts you on their site. If you find yourself inclined to leave.. than they aren't doing something right. If you find yourself a bit more interested and everything is easy to go through and you want to stay, you might want to copy that method of style. I haven't written any official list, but definitely planning on starting one. #1: THE LESS - THE BETTER! #2: MORE SIMPLE - MORE BETTER! Lots of times companies think that by offering more tools and more things to do and more images and more things to click, they will attract more visitors and keep them there. But in fact, the less clutter there is with your website design, the more inclined people are likely to stick around. Clutter loses the eyes very fast. A simple design is very attractive to the eye. The eye will grasp the webpage and your visitor will be more inclined to return.

Damn, that girl is hot. My first (ex) gf was a gamer.. no wonder why sex wasn't.. much topic of debate. But there are certainly a great amount of girls that are gamers. I remember when you could play a game and guys would play male avatars and girls would play girl avatars and you could flirt and not worry about who was actually behind the screen. Probably remember the same thing with a screen name! Haha. Boy, times have changed. Now girls hide behind the mask of male avatars and guys are playing female avatars.Girls enjoy gaming just as much as we guys do though. And there have been some that have become way too addicted to gaming. I know there are a few WoW Gamers who are actually celebrities.I wonder what would happen if they did the same poll for guys. Sex and Gaming.

Thank you manuleka. I am discovering this too. A whole lot of potential. I realized this when I was always searching for videos and reading the comments to see the reactions of the videos. There is a huge subculture that is just so spread out. So eventually, I'd like to make it more social-community based -- as in -- making friends with these people who have very similar interests. Even just the domain name itself is a very good domain name. I am always creating subsections and experimenting with new ideas, different CMS, even posting on Twitter or Facebook to have people visit those areas for a week, and see if its working.. see the general reactions, how long people are spending on the site, and if they are involved or interacting at all -- through Google Analytics. Very awesome tool. But it can't determine everything, and a week isn't always enough time to really say anything. But it seems, no matter what kind of site I'm designing.. I'm attracting a certain amount of visitors, and always getting a few people registering. I'm sure it's frustrating for some of my returning visitors who have signed up more than once and seen multiple websites, but I was trying to find something that worked for me, that was easy to manage and maintain. And what I've come to is the video site. It was a video blog .. but that just happened to be too much work right now -- to deliver music and write about it. And maintain a forum sections (which was an extension of my blog -- for various different topics & articles such as psychology, philosophy, tutorials, etc.) -- a lot of work. And this is just a part time job (well, not paid actually) and a learning experience for me. But I'm taking a lot of what I'm learning and applying it to my professional resume -- such as the marketing and design of the site -- learning what attracts people, using specific keywords. Anyways, I appreciate your positive feedback. Always work to be done and when you think it's done... there's still always more. Probably for the best -- to improve the experience and attract daily visitors who hopefully "convert" (register).

Hello zenia, I thank you for writing this. Any contribution to anything helps. And it certainly seems like a Chan could be something useful. However, I do have suggestions for you.1. I had to read through your posts in order to find out what a "Chan" is.If you are going to explain how to do something, explain what it is first and the benefits of possibly using it. I had no idea what a chan was. Then I typed that in Google and the first thing that comes up, basically, is 4chan, which is a somewhat entertaining site, but also isn't appropriate for all age groups. So before you even explain how to install something.. what the heck is it that I am installing? What does it do?2. You wrote this manual or tutorial in many posts. I don't know why, but my Xisto Forums view is in a tree standard format and I have to click each link to open up your new posts. There is no limit to the amount of characters a post can contain. Your thread would've been much better had you included all the information in the first post. In the future, keep it all on the first post.3. Short list of actions. I hardly consider 27 numbers a short list. 5 or 10.It's a great thing you've done this in steps. It makes it much easier to understand. Though I think you could have narrowed down some of those steps of multiple tasks into one.4. I've tried to understand the logic behind your setting up 5 email accounts. When I first found a free host and started setting up everything, I realized the importance of not using my primary / business / school email address for anything any longer. I decided to set up a Gmail account after my site name. And then once I was with Xisto - Web Hosting, I got 50 emails from the package and set up 3 of them. I only use one away from the master "admin" account. Setting up 5 emails is not logical. Setting up one that isn't linked to anything else and contains a completely different password not related to your website or anything that anyone can guess about you seems much more logical.5. Why are you posting plane pictures in each post? Is it relevant to the topic? If it isn't, don't do it. It's more annoying, as I'm on a slightly slower Internet connection and it makes the page load slower.Don't mean to be harsh. But I am not the only one who sensed frustration of even opening up your thread. Even the site that you linked to hardly contains much information about itself. (The information I eventually found in its "Wiki" link) It looks like it's a good program that's starting up, but it also seems very "underground." A site like that usually contains people already backing it. I can log on to WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, or another type of site and the first thing I see on the front page is what it is and what it does. The front page / news site and even the FAQ page doesn't even contain information about what it does, it assumes a person visiting will figure it out easily. So this site doesn't even look like it was designed for the average visitor.I am certainly not knocking you for this site's lack of information. I would just hope that you could have explained it better in your tutorial post. You kind of just jumped in like the site does with an expectation that everyone knows what you are talking about. And certainly, without even a link to a download, I was wondering why you wrote 27 instructions to install some program you didn't even include.That is just my advice and 2 cents for writing a better tutorial and informing people.Thank you for sharing. I'm likely going to check it out because this seems to be the first time I've seen a program like this ... and looks like, after a Google search, there aren't many of these types of CMS / Chan programs that exist.

When I was with PHP Fusion, I gave that option to have like 5 themes to choose from. With the default theme being lighter -- and that's actually when reviews were being directed as the site was too bland. I am going based on past experience. When I had a default MySpace profile -- it was crap, it wasn't attracting people or anything. I then decided to make my MySpace profile a fan page -- dedicated to my favorite band, Pink Floyd. I spiced it up with a lot of my personality -- designed with the way I felt was comfortable. I really made it for myself, to express my love for Pink Floyd. BUT .. it happened to attract a lot of people. I get thousands of visitors a week and even at one time, I asked what I should change about it, and told people I was thinking of changing it, only to receive some critical emails telling me to leave it as is. I haven't changed it in over 5 years. MySpace has since updated their whole system and I can't even edit my profile anymore because it will force me to update it. So I just leave it. And still, it attracts so many people. So my point is.. I think when I stick to what I feel is more my personality, I am more successful with it. When I listen to others -- and believe me, I do my best to receive, listen to, and change based on visitor feedback -- because it is you who are visiting and can tell me the truth of my site -- so your feedback is certainly never ever ignored. But I also feel like when I change it too much, I lose interest in it myself, because it's no longer my personality, but someone else's design that I am catering to. The only thing I can think of is to try a slightly lighter black color, and I will try this and see if it works. I am just wanting to generally make it work with that top image. It is the theme of the site -- perhaps there is a story behind it that I just haven't revealed yet, but maybe someday I can figure out how to incorporate the story in with it. I am using the Google Analytics tool to determine bounce rate. If it was so horrible, I'd have people leaving immediately. I also put my site on Linkreferral and another forum that I've been posting at for like 10 years. I get a lot of general advice about user experience from those. One of the hardest things with using black is finding a font color that is easy on the eyes. White is the easiest to read abut reading large amounts of texts with white on black hurts. I established a light blue color that seemed to be much easier on the eyes. It is interesting to discuss this -- when does personal become professional and when does professional become personal? Years ago, I might make a website with tables, some graphics, and writing, and that was my personal website. Hardly professional. A professional website would be typing in AOL.com or CNN.com and getting news and other stories. What is the personal now considered, with so many advanced websites and tools to make those websites? Is every website professional now? I want my site to look professional -- more YouTube style but with my own hint of personality within the mix. So that it remains personal yet still looks slightly professional. However, my goal is not to really attract businessmen or someone at work. My goal is to attract these people when they are at home, winding down, looking to relax, watch a few videos and listen to some great music. This way, they are more inclined to stay on the site longer when they are relaxed and not at work. Okay, so perhaps I could attract that audience as well, but as Ahsaniqbal111 put it: start small. But my expectations that they will stay on the site longer is even less -- because I observe my own behavior on YouTube. Once in a while, I might be more inclined to spend a lot of time on YouTube, listening to songs one after the other, while others -- I watch a video and leave. I would love to just attract a daily fan base who want to contribute music to the site. My site is now -- for now -- a YouTube / Dailymotion portal. I could add others but for now, that's where the majority of everything comes from. I know it's small. This is my first site and I'm just doing a lot of experimenting. I consider my site more of a categorization site -- of music. Something YouTube does not do. And probably a good thing because it keeps it so general, and has given me a reason for making such a site. I'm actually liking the CMS I'm using because I can create categories and subcategories of music. The only thing the user has to do is submit the link to the specific category. If they don't see their specific category, than they can just upload it to the general category and I'd move it to a specific category. What is lacking -- and the CMS isn't extremely advanced -- is the ability for users to create their own subcategories. But that could also become chaotic, if a user comes along, thinks he doesn't see a specific artist (subcategory), and creates one on his own, while it really does exist. I guess a more advanced system would determine what the user is submitting and actually automatically create or insert it into the existing category. Definitely a project I'm not up to messing with right now. I guess that's what makes it slightly more personal. So for starting small, I think it's good the way it is. And I will experiment with a few lighter colors.

Hey Ahsaniqbal111, sorry it took me a while to get back to you. Real life and the site. I did away with the adult section. The VIP section is for people who make a certain amount of posts -- it encourages users to be more interactive with the site. To participate more and earn enough points to "buy" VIP with the point system. You could easily sign up and post blogs and have them on my site. That wouldn't be a problem. There was more to do on the site than just music. It was philosophy, psychology, and other types of discussion on the forums. I must admit, it has been several weeks since I've posted this and I remain very enthusiastic towards my site. But I decided to go back with my original idea and stick with something a bit more simple. ocPortal is an amazing CMS with a lot of built-in features. Comes with nearly everything. And I noticed more people were sticking on my site longer -- around 10 minutes rather than what i have now - a video site, where people stick around for about half that time. However, it was getting to be just too much for me and my heart lied more on what i currently have at my website right now. I still highly recommend ocPortal to anyone looking for a CMS with a lot of built-in features as it comes with nearly everything. But again -- each CMS has its own great features and sometimes, we find more of those features more advanced or pertaining to our needs more in one CMS than another. And now I'm just using a simple Video CMS. I originally wanted a site like YouTube or Break.com. My site isn't as perfect as those two. As I want to attract more visitors and get a general flow of people coming. Then I'd definitely consider buying a more advanced Video CMS. I am very open to taking your advice, and your absolutely right. I was thinking too big all at once and it was getting to be too much and more than I could handle. I was also pulled between a blog & video site among other things within that site and just having a video CMS. I decided to try my original idea only -- the video site. I think if things go well, I'll add a blog section or go back to using ocPortal again. Everything is new to me. I am still learning greatly. About what works and what doesn't. I'm using Google Analytics heavily to determine the underlying logistics. Starscream - thank you for your suggestion, some others had mentioned that too, and in fact, one person went as far to say: "Introduction pages are for porn sites..not regular ones." I loved that video and it was the only way I could show it. I've since done away with an intro page and now go directly to the content. Also, I had tried a lighter theme - and had a few comments that it was too boring and bland. It's very hard to figure out a lighter background. The darkness represents more of what the site is about -- it's psychedelic. The site is for anyone, but more directed at audiences who love music and also the world of psychedelia. And sometimes -- its easier to look at and watch these videos when the surroundings are dark -- I made it that way so there is not as much distraction around. The site is also more personal than professional. I completely understand the idea behind having a lighter website. Nearly every professional website has lighter background. But again, I'm not running a personal business and selling products. It's more of my personal website and just attempting to gain visitors and members with similar interests. I have since made a website that is much lighter -- using WordPress that looks very professional and clean. I've looked at gimp.com and the colors go together - for that site. It doesn't seem to mesh well with mine. I am probably obsessed with the header -- and that determines my entire site. And it's dark, therefore I need colors that mesh with that. I had given WordPress another chance and learned that when you install the most essential plugins that you need and good ones -- everything is fine. I will probably play around with Joomla again soon sometime. Thanks for your input everyone. Your suggestions for my site are always considered. I don't know everything! I'm always learning! So I do take your feedback as constructive and use it to help me make better choices for my site. And in discovering other CMS as well!

I don't know how true it is, but Google released a report on a page that loaded slowly.. I think it was something about.. regular page load is about 4 seconds vs slow page load is anything after 10 seconds -- and it was enough that people actually left the page. It's crazy to think that even 10 years ago, when DSL was the connection and things were a bit faster -- although you still had to wait for things to load, we had the patience to actually wait for it.And then go back even further to 56k and you were actually waiting almost 5 minutes for an image to load. Images that load in seconds today.It is quite amazing how fast our Internet speed is becoming, specifically in America. I've been living in another country for the past year, and although not the slowest, certainly not up to American standards. We are basically spoiled in America. In the US, I was on a server at my university where I could download a movie in 10 minutes. I am now in another country where it takes about two hours to download a movie. And while I can remember when it took me anywhere from 3 or 4 days to a week to download a large file like that, it is certainly faster than what it was.As Internet has become fast, we expect things to be instant. That's just the way it is. If it takes longer, we presume it's broken, though it probably isn't.I've been doing all I can to speed up my pages.. using the htaccess gzip method and setting image expiry dates, and attempting to compress pages, so that they use the cache from the users' computer, and the visitor will only see the latest pages if they have been updated. There are a lot of things to do to speed up your own site.One of the hardest things that a webmaster must do: Be critical of your own website. It's hard -- a website you spent hours doing, making sure it works, gathering code, and finally adding content, and also making sure it's good content and updated content.But after all that, you must return to the frame of mind where you are not the webmaster, but just a visitor.I try and go on to my site using different browsers and different computers to see the load time. I like to think of myself as a visitor when I'm doing this. Do I have the patience to wait? What happens if I get that occasional error? Or the other error.. "MySQL server has gone away." Would I really be a visitor whose going to click the refresh button in hopes that it works? Or will I just close it out and go somewhere else? Creating a webpage and being a webmaster is not easy. I'm always checking out my bounce rate.. and for my blog, it was 38% with an average of 8-10 minutes on the site and about 6-10 page visits.I have since tried a few different ways of presenting my site.. and now it's ONLY videos. The bound rate is over 50% with an average of 5-6 minutes on the site and about 4-5 page visits.Is this higher bounce rate okay for my current site? I would think so. For my blog site -- people were reading content and then going to the videos that I linked within the content. Not only did you read the blog, but now you could look through the videos, head over to the forums for more discussion, check out the wallpaper section I had.*No longer using my blog site at the momentFor my video site -- there is no content to read. Only videos to go to. After your done viewing a video, you either view more videos, you comment, or you leave. That's all.So the bounce rate makes sense.I also wonder ... how much of a bounce rate does YouTube, Facebook, or other popular sites have? I mean.. and how can you even compare your own site to these sites? My site gets maybe 100 visitors a day, if I'm advertising my site. If I don't, I get about 50. So the accuracy of the bounce rate in comparison to my site.. probably shouldn't be compared.On my blog site, I was getting a ton of hits .. almost 1000 a day, but these weren't hits from Unique visitors. But Google Analytics said very different. I was only getting about 30-80 unique visits a day. So I'm not sure what the CMS was counting.Many count banner, clicks, visits themselves (so refreshing might count as a visit -- which is not a good way of doing it)I think Google Analytics does the best job to give you the most accurate details. And you can get a lot of details from it.So I've since set up a new Google Analytics tracking system for my video site .. and one of the most important features I like is the New vs. Returning. Very useful. I usually have around half. I just started it 2 days ago .. 66/33 new/return. It's not too bad for only 2 days. My hope is that people will understand what my site is about and keep coming back to view the videos or check it out.But as for errors and other things .. slow page loading.. I really try and put myself into my visitors' place -- and I get upset when I do come across an error and try to fix it as fast as possible. It's just like walking into a store or learning in a classroom -- you expect things to run smooth, be professional, and work. If they don't.. you question the credibility of everything.------As for my blog site.. my speed score was around 71/100. I was using the Google Chrome Speed Test addon.Interesting enough.. my results for the video site... 38/100. Though it looks like it loads fast.. think about 10-13 seconds.

Hey Ahsaniqbal, the website is free to view for guests. But every user who wishes to get more involved and post a blog must register. Every account comes with blogging abilities. Each person can have their own personal blog and choose to display it publicly or not. If they choose to make it public, the blog is posted to the main section [front page] of the website (either through a required validation process [my approval] or I can grant access for auto-submissions - more trusted users have this privilege. Once the blog is posted to the main page, their name is also added on the side.. "By .... " While my primary focus is on psychedelic music and artists, blogging about everyday topics can also be posted, but I've made the forums an extension of blogging. So people can post articles in there and it will also be shown on the first page. RSS also feeds the blog and specific topics in the forums which function as blogs. ocPortal also has a Point System, and I've pre-set the amount of points I want my members to receive: So just some things about the point system: blog post = 40 pts forum post = 5 pts video submission = 10 pts vote in poll = 5 pts submit a poll = 40 pts submit image of the day = 30 pts upload wallpaper to the gallery = 5 pts participating in games can earn 5-100 pts. You can also gamble points and you set the success rate as well. For example, setting it to 100% wins all the time. Also logging in every day earns 10 pts. And so on and so forth. And I can use the default prize system, or I can set up custom prizes. For example, a member who earns 1500 pts can use those points to buy an @youtrippy.com email address. I also have a top prize which is a lot more points and probably for the most dedicated and loyal member who earns 15000 pts (I know this is a lot, but the prize is worth it), and that is an Invitation to the Demonoid torrent website. Other prizes include 100 pts = name change, 500 pts = name highlighting, 150 pts = topic pinning for a week in the forums, and so on and so forth. These are either options that come with ocPortal or I've got to actually manually set them -- such as the name change. I also have a VIP section with hidden forums -- such as an Adult links section and forums. Although my site is not an adult site by any means nor do I list it as such, it does have links to adult sites, but these are hidden to regular members and guests. If a member chooses to purchase this VIP access through the point system, they can gain access to it. I also require each member fill out their birthdate so I can keep an eye on whether they are allowed to have access to these areas or not. That is why I switched to something I became more comfortable with . Thank you for your insight into WordPress and BuddyPress. I would never just stop using them. Especially for business and job purposes -- a professional is more willing to hire you and pay you for your time and development if you are familiar with WordPress. I probably did install a few plugins that just didn't mesh well together and that may have caused BuddyPress and WordPress to malfunction. I will keep this in mind, and if I was just focused on blogging, my choice would have surely been WordPress. ocPortal runs on PHP and a mixture of their own personal developed code called Comcode which works exactly like BBcode. Brackets [ ] around a (reversed) ] b [ ... ] url="Hello World" [ https://www.helloworld.com/ ] / url [ While ocPortal does have some bugs, the programmers are very active in ensuring the code is bug-free. I have run into only minor problems - and every time I've always run to the forums and was helped immediately. I am glad I looked past those minor problems and developed a fully functioning website that I wanted. I doubt a bug-free system exists and the ones that do probably don't do much. But of the list of problems I've run into with others ... I've run into far less with ocPortal. ... Where was your site when I took Anatomy a few years ago in college? Your site looks great and definitely serves a great purpose. Very easy to navigate and very informative. I've actually bookmarked it as I found it useful. .... And I also thank you for your input and your sharing of your experience with WordPress .

Hello everyone, For those who have been here for a while and still come by to post, lets have a discussion. If you're still using plain old HTML, Javascript, and CSS to do your site without any type of CMS, than I'm pretty impressed. And you should still include yourself in on the conversation and let me know how that's going for you. If you aren't so hardcore and using a CMS, than let me know some details. I am continuously searching for the best CMS out there. I have come across some top-notch stuff and I've noticed that each CMS is different and everyone likes a different CMS. There really is no single best CMS. It all depends on what you are trying to do with it. So this is the information I'm interested in finding out. Name of your site: URL: Details: about your site such as what its intended to do for the public. And what you originally intended for it to do. CMS: The history of all the CMS you have used and why you are currently using the CMS you are using. Also include some of your favorite things about the CMS and things you don't like. *Also if you want to give feedback about my site or if you want feedback on your site, I am always looking to improve my website. If you want a complete redesign of my website, you will have to do it for me. But constructive feedback is welcome. Name of site: YouTrippy URL: http://www.youtrippy.com/ Details: A portal into the psychedelic world. My website was designed with people who are into the world of psychedelia. It is a music website for those who enjoy the art of psychedelic music and all things psychedelic. A lot of this music is not always known and you have to really search and get into it. So I figured, why not just have one main area that reviews this music? And has videos that can be found in one place. With many people contributing.. it would help to get all these videos from YouTube into one place instead of having to search for hours on end, or finding them in the related videos after the video ends. People can blog about their favorite artists and listen to some great music. There are also forums, a chat room, instant messaging, a link exchange, a wallpaper gallery, a video gallery, and prizes. The major part of the site is the music. Most of it comes from YouTube. What I originally intended for it was just a chatroom, forums, and music for people to just come hang out and comment and rate their favorite music. Also a wallpaper gallery. While not much has changed, the main thing added and the central part of the site is the Blog area in which I, and encourage others, to write about their favorite psychedelic artists, bands, or find new ones and write about them, as well as share the music. In my reviews of these CMS, I declare that I am not: saying any of these are bad systems. Although I have some negative reviews on them, there are also positive reviews about them. And I would likely use them all again depending on what I might need them for. They all have their functions and purposes for everything and everyone. They are all helpful and can be used to build a professional website. But it all depends on what you seek to do with it and how it works for you. On the CMS: To each his own and what he feels most comfortable with. CMS: History PHP Fusion I started off with PHP Fusion after being introduced to it by a friend. It was my start into learning about CMS and PHP. I learned quite a lot, especially about modification, and PHP code. It started off great and I found many plugins to be very useful. I had a free web host at the time, and made the entire website. After doing this, I figured it to be ready for public use, although I had still been working on a few codes . So I eventually found Xisto / Xisto - Web Hosting and bought a domain. After setting up everything, I just was not satisfied with it. I was getting a lot of visitors, but no one was really signing up. I realized there was a lot of bugs in the code itself and even at one or two points, my visitors weren't able to register or login. The YouTube gallery was also very buggy and after the second page, no more pages would load up. And I attempted to fix the code, and tried to rewrite the entire code, but it just wasn't going to happen. So I made my peace and thanked PHP Fusion for its time and said my farewell. I was off to find another CMS. https://www.php-fusion.co.uk/home.php WordPress I wasn't really thinking about turning my site into a "blogging" site but I had read about all the plugins that could change WordPress into a type of Social Network - with help from BuddyPress. So I installed WordPress and everything was going well. The whole blog system worked great. Once I installed BuddyPress, however, along with a few other plugins, I began to receive errors in the code, so much that I actually had to reinstall it to gain access to anything again. After reinstalling it for a second time, I decided I would not install BuddyPress. I installed a few different plugins this time around, and still must've ran into a bad error, because the same thing happened again. So I really needed to move on and find a fast fix for my already-live site. WordPress is great for blogging and although there are literally hundreds of plugins, you must be very selective and picky and choosy about what you are going to use, because there are quite a few plugins that really just don't seem to work with WordPress. https://de.wordpress.com/ Joomla! Joomla is a CMS that I would have loved to explore more, if I had the chance to get past the plugins area. A new release had come out of Joomla and I read about a plugin that made old plugins work. I sought to install it but could not find it in the plugin list at all. What drove me to try Joomla was a website that I came across and wanted mine to be almost like it. I emailed the creator and he told me how much it would cost and what he made it with. Of course, while his price wasn't bad for someone wanting to build a site without any knowledge, I could've made the same thing in a few hours for less, and only the plugins would have cost me money. I checked out the plugin he made with Joomla for his site and read a lot of reviews -- all were very mixed. The fact was.. the plugin was just too commercial for me. It seemed to work well, but it just seemed it was too much of a social network. And there is a certain balance. I hate to say it.. and I hate that it is this way, but Facebook is the monopoly. It is best to compliment and work with the Giant than against it. So my motivations for wanting to create a social network were pushed aside to become something else. I moved on. In the future, I hope to get another chance to explore the realms of what Joomla has to offer. https://www.joomla.org/ ocPortal ocPortal has been the final major CMS that I've checked out and the system I've stuck with. ocPortal offered exactly what I was looking for: Video gallery (that worked), photo gallery, Point (reward) system, blog/news for the admin and for members, forums, chatroom, instant messaging, and more. It also offers e-Commerce shopping and a Ticket Support system. Although I ran into a few very minor bugs with ocPortal, mostly on the part of not configuring the system properly, I was on the forums and helped almost immediately by the programmers of ocPortal. Unlike with PHP Fusion (which I think has changed in the latest 7.02 version), ocPortal does its best not to show errors to your visitors, and only to you so you can try and fix the problem. You can also undo what you've done for mostly everything. Great SEO and security system. Monitor and logging. There is just so much about ocPortal that I liked. And it is a system that I stuck with and it works for me. More features of ocPortal can be found here: http://ocportal.com/site/features.htm http://ocportal.com/start.htm So that is my reviews and what I'm currently using right now. I am still always looking to see what else I can learn and what else is out there -- what else is just as good or better. Let me know the details of how you are powering your website!

So it took me a while to find a CMS that suited my needs. I was into website design many years ago, in my teens, and left it, as I really had no good ideas for a website then. I am now older and had an amazing idea for a website and decided to just go with it. My website is a psychedelic music blog. Everyone can come and read the articles, blog about their new or existing favorite artists, post on the forums, chat, submit, and watch videos and participate in the occasional site contest/game. So a friend helped me make this idea a reality by showing me the world of PHP & CMS, which I had no idea existed. I'm now 3 months into it and have learned quite a bit. Though I have only tried out a few before stumbling upon a CMS that really fit my needs. He started me off with PHP Fusion. It was great. I could easily customize it, found just about every plugin I needed, and had everything set up and working great. Problem was... too many bugs. Many of my visitors had trouble registering, logging in, and the "infusions" (plugins) themselves were also quite buggy. I had learned PHP quite easily and made many changes to the existing code to make it work for my site. Everything was great, but I really wasn't satisfied. PHP Fusion also seemed to display errors to my visitors without really saying why.. such as a blank, white, or black page that wouldn't do anything. So I left PHP Fusion. I won't knock PHP Fusion.. it got me started, it has its uses but I think once you want your site to have much more advanced features, PHP Fusion can only go so far. I moved on to WordPress. But WordPress is really just a blogger with a lot of plugins to enhance it, and I was looking for more than just a blogger and more than just people being able to view videos, register, and comment. So I won't knock WordPress for its most basic use. However, I attempted to customize WordPress, I added BuddyPress and a few other plugins hoping to make a kind of Social Network, but soon after adding the Addons, the pages got corrupt and I couldn't even load it. I attempted to do it again -- this time installing one plugin at a time, only to run into the same problem again. So while there are literally hundreds to probably thousands of plugins, many are quite buggy and probably should have never been made, or at least been coded to work better with WordPress. After WordPress, I was looking for another one. I came across a site similar to what I wanted. So I emailed the designer of the site and asked him how much it would cost to make a site like his. He told me he used Joomla and the exact plugin. So I installed Joomla and since Joomla is out with a new version, there are not as many newer plugins for the new version - or at least at the time, there wasn't, but I read about a plugin that makes old plugins work. I attempted to install it but I couldn't find it for some reason. That kind of cut out a lot of the plugins that I was hoping to use for my site. So I logged on to the plugin site he sent me, and the only difference in the site was that the theme was changed, but everything else was just that same plugin -- so it seemed very commercial to me. I also noticed that, although his site was definitely very beautiful in design and does attract a member base, there just seemed to be something that put me off about it. So again, I won't knock Joomla. But it just didn't seem to be cut out for my needs, or at least, it seemed like it was going to take too much time to try and get everything to work. I haven't tried Drupal out yet but have read the pros and cons. So I won't knock any CMS but there are some that work for people and some that don't. It all depends on what you want your site to do and how you want to interact with your guests. I ended up redesigining my site completely after going with a CMS called ocPortal. This CMS was like a dream come true.. it offered everything I was looking for - chat, built-in forums, blog, photo and video gallery, shoutbox, easy-to-use & setup navigation/menu bar, and even games. So the features I'm using and needed: Forums Chat Instant Messenging News/Blogs Video/Photo Gallery Random Quote Random Video Poll Picture of the Day Points/Reward System Facebook / Social Network System login capabilities Link Exchange RSS feeds Displaying Active Forum Topics/Latest News/Blogs Tag Cloud Search Engine Site Statistics Archives Feature There are tons more features that you can read here including e-Commerce and Ticket Support:http://ocportal.com/site/features.htm It was quite overwhelming at first to learn and it certainly has scared away quite a few people, but once you get past the little learning curve, it truly is an amazing CMS that works pretty much right out of the box and comes with everything you need. Other than the addons that are already offered, there really doesn't seem to be a need for much more than that. I've read pros and cons.. pros being that it works out of the box, it's small, fast, etc. And the cons being that there aren't many themes and that the support community is small. But themeing is fairly easy after reading through "Jean's Tutorial." And also, despite there being a small community, you get individualized attention and support from the programmers themselves, among with many others who have remained loyal to the ocPortal CMS. Of course, I have become quite loyal to this CMS as well, because I was able to get a fully functioning website up that I wanted to display to my visitors. But I am always looking for just-as-good or better, to always improve my own site design and code to make the least buggy most efficient systems to my visitors. I am still working on little side projects such as a video section that is more like YouTube -- you can view that here: http://www.youtrippy.com/ (not currently being used for the public) You can view my website at: http://www.youtrippy.com/ So if you've come across a CMS that has really worked for you. Please list the following information: Your website and what its about or what you wanted it to do. History of CMS use: good and bad. Current CMS or the CMS you are loyal with and its features and why you became loyal.

Just thought you all might find this link useful. I like to stick to one kind of coding system for my website. To switch back and forth between HTML and PHP (.html or .php) just seems unprofessional.So I wanted a site that could convert my Javascript / HTML code to PHP and found a great site here:http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ paste your code in, select how you want to return it.. ::: choose echo which returns echo "my code";Awesome tool to have for php programmers who want to implement Javascript / HTML into their code.Hope you find this useful as well. Enjoy!

For my website, I had my brother test it on his iPhone. My very first page is a flash video, which is the introduction and/or [after] you click a button to enter the home page. But my brother says the button wasn't working.So I needed to figure out a way to make Mobile phones automatically be taken to my site:I found a great site that has all the coding information here: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ this helps anyone in search.

When it comes to your website, you want to make sure you know whose visiting and how many visitors you are receiving. Sure, you could get one of those counters, but those are likely counting your refreshes and each time you click a link to that main page, you are getting counted as a visitor. Very unreliable and not the best way to know whose visiting. While I'm here today to cover CrawlTrack, there are 2 other ways that I recommend, and those will not be covered here: Google Analytics which is as easy as placing a file or a code on your server, and of course, the Control Panel's statistics that record who visits the pages. CrawlTrack will give you detailed statistics in graph format about who is visiting, the referring site (site holding the link to your site they clicked on from another site), the bots who visited your site and how often, the server load, hack attempts, how many pages were visited and for how long, among other useful information. You want to know as accurately as possible whose visiting and from where, so you know who to cater to and of course, when it comes to a flow of people, whether its time to get some advertising on your site. So here is another very reliable program that many sites use called CrawlTrack. The easiest way to display this information is in steps. 1. Download it here: http://www.crawltrack.net/download.php 2. After you've downloaded the package, unzip, and upload the entire folder as is or into a folder of a similar name (CrawlTrack, Tracking, etc.) You will want to CHMOD the entire folder including subdirectories to 777. 3. After the CHMOD, type this in to the address bar: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ This is the installation and you will go through a series of screens. Part 1: Language Select your language and click Ok. Part 2: Explanation Part 3: Database information -> SQL Username-> SQL Password -> SQL Host -> SQL Database If you've entered in the information correctly, CrawlTrack will automatically set up everything for you and you should see: :::Connection files OK. :::Tables creation OK. Click Go. Part 4: Website Information. Website name: Domain: http:// Click Ok. You are now set up. If you want to add your site to the CrawlTrack directory, you may do so by visiting this link: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ I believe they do ask for a reciprocal link. If you check out my other tutorial about Advertising and Promoting your Website, it is probably not a bad idea to link exchange with them, as it may help your site greatly. Site Information for crawltrack.net on Alexa Traffic Rank: 80,313 Click Go. You should be taken to the login screen from here. If not, type in the address: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ and the login should appear. Type in your information and enter. You have now installed CrawlTrack. 4. Make sure you CHMOD all your files to 655. 5. In order to activate CrawlTrack, place this code in the index file that is your home page where your visitors are entering, above everything: <?php$crawltsite=1;require_once("/home/www/mysite.com/CrawlTrack/crawltrack.php");?>If you are already using php, than you just need to copy the code between the <?php tag and the ?> tag. Congratulations. You can now use CrawlTrack to gather an assorted amount of useful statistics data. To visit your daily track record, you can simply type in http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ and enter from there. You also have the ability to make this a public view and your visitors can see your data without you having to worry about any security breaches. The first thing you should do is test it. Once logged in, click on the Wrench Icon which is your Administration page, and create a Test Crawler. You can leave this test on from 2-24 hours but don't forget to delete the Test Crawler afterwards, or your server is taking quite a bit of the load from a test bot. Explore around. It's an amazing tool to have in addition to Google Analytics and your AwStats in your Control Panel. --------------------- For more advanced protection, download CrawlProtect: http://www.crawltrack.net/crawlprotect/download.php While a tutorial on setup for CrawlProtect will not be covered at this time, installation is very similar. Upload the files to a directory called CrawlProtect, chmod to 777, type in mysite.com/CrawlProtect/index.php and enter in the information. Chmod the files back to 644 afterwards. CrawlProtect protects you in two ways: By making changes through Chmod to important folders and by making changes to the .htaccess file, which can be very useful in stopping any attempts at hacking to your site dead in its path. Caution: CrawlProtect will make changes to the .htaccess file after you specify it to do so. A more detailed tutorial on CrawlProtect may be released in the future. You should only take certain things from this .htaccess file or else you could be locked out of your site. So be very careful when making any changes to the .htaccess file!

I loved Linux when I was using it. And searched extensively around Google to figure out this answer. I came down to Fedora and Ubuntu as well. And while Fedora definitely looks beautiful, Ubuntu is just as customizable. I went with Ubuntu as I read that Ubuntu has a lot more help and support for people who are just learning the system. it was very easy to install. Probably the easiest thing I attempted to install ever. I tried to instlall Red Hat and Knoppix a few years ago (on my Windows computer) and was not successful. I suggest you install a Virtual Machine first and then test both of them that way to see which you like more. This way, you won't have any problems and you can just delete the file and eventually install the one you like on your primary system. I was pretty impressed.. Ubuntu seemed empty when I first installed it, but after typing a few things into the Terminal, which is essential to learn and use, you'll have an OS filled with software. I also went to the download area.. and everything was free. So many applications, games, etc. The only thing I could not get to work was the animation effects which are just eye candy anyway. As for usefulness and space.. the Linux package is very small, doesn't require much space, and you shouldn't have too much wait time for application to launch. Although sometimes, I did notice you had to click the application twice in order for it to launch. And as for viruses and anti-spyware that slows down machines ... Linux stands unimpressed and unhindered by most. Even just being familiar with Linux gives you this feeling of confidence of knowing What Lies Beyond ... the normal Mac OS and Windows operating systems. I think more advanced users of PC, programmers, etc. should have at least experienced Linux once or twice in their life

I have to agree with you there. Search Engines have changed their strategy a lot. They no longer favor those link farms, and in fact, you get penalized, which is why it's very picky and choosy depending on which ones you join. And certainly not even worth it to pay for any of them.I think I came across 5 or so and signed up... all I do is either get spam email, some crappy newsletter acting as if it's delivering the most important information that no one knows about, or just requests that all these non-related sites want to put my link on their webpage -- actually clicked on one of those sites and it had no content on it. So certainly not worth it.The web rings yielded results but not very many. But having your link on that site definitely won't hinder you.I only know DMOZ from the hyped-up nonsense about t.. it actually seems very inactive.I've actually stopped advertising lately because I'm working on a new project right now for my website which is taking some time to learn and go through all my mistakes. But I think it's just relevant and new content that attracts users. You win some and you lose some. But you basically have to become your visitor. And that can be hard too. I've opened up a whole different browsers, visited my site as a guest, registered for a user name, just looked at different areas of the site, and tried to make it as appealing as possible. It's always best to just get constructive feedback. Though that's only good to an extent -- because I've had someone tell me my website was too dark -- and then another person tell me it was bland and boring and asked what happened to the black. So I've learned a website should be a reflection of your personality.. which hopefully is more interesting than just setting up a website with plain colors.But I would say my best advertising has definitely been the social media and the link exchanges. There's just a large database of so many people looking for connections, looking for something to do, looking for something to check out, and if you can get them away from Facebook long enough.. you might have put them on to something new ;)I've link exchanged with quite a few music sites and even drug-related sites as my music content can be appealing to that audience. It has definitely helped quite a bit. Can't say it's done me absolute wonders, but it has driven my rank down on Alexa.Thanks for your reply and assertion.

I know you said that you were curious about how to advertise in your website. But I figured you need visitors to advertise. So, kind of why I posted such a long post. Hopefully it's not too off topic!

I've been using Google Adsense for my affiliate program. There are so many out there. But I've been with Google ever since it came out and I trust their products. I've never had a problem with Google [yet]. So what is the best way to advertise? Site Submission & Directories Word of Mouth Web Rings Link Referrals / Exchanges Other Suggestions Site Submission & Directories This is probably the easiest thing you are going to do. Submit your site to every search engine you can. DO NOT PAY FOR SEARCH ENGINE SUBMISSION! A search of Google "Submit my site" will show you endless links that will do it for free. Personally submit your search engine to the major players. Google. Yahoo. Bing. But there are other programs that will submit your site to smaller search engines. Whatever you do, I repeat this: DO NOT PAY FOR ANY SUBMISSION. Even if you are offered your site to be submitted to 100 search engine sites. These sites are small and although people do use them, it only matters that you at least submit your link in some form, but without paying. But like I said: there are plenty of websites that will submit your link to them for free. What you really want is your site to be picked up and indexed. This is not done through submission. A few years ago, search engines used to just go by submissions and meta tags. This isn't really done much anymore, other than search engines using the meta tag information to display something in the search engine results. Now your site is found from being linked by others. I will discuss this further in the Link Exchange section. You want to definitely submit your site to directories. DMOZ is one of the most popular and the best to get entered into, though it sometimes takes a month to get in, as the site is just run by volunteers. Here are some useful links for site submission & directories: FREE http://www.freewebsubmission.com/ http://www.dmoz.org/ https://www.somuch.com/ http://www.txtlinks.com/ http://www.theseoking.com/ http://www.jayde.com/main.html PAID https://botw.org/ http://www.goguides.org/ http://www.joeant.com/ http://www.gimpsy.com/ This is it for site submission. Word of Mouth Are you popular on MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter? Do you have family and friends? First step: Friends and Family. Tell your family to visit the website if they haven't already done so and ask them what they think. If the reviews are generally good, than they will likely support you. Tell them to tell their friends, and just spread the word and talk about it with others. It's not like they are selling something. Simply talking about their brother, son, husband, daughter's website or whatever. Most of their friends will likely be curious to see what it's about. Do the same exact thing with your friends and tell them to tell their friends! Keep talking about it! No matter what! Keep talking about your website! Even if you think it's getting annoying. You don't have to bring it up in every conversation, but if it's got relevant content to what you are talking about, than you should mention it! And even mention it around strangers. Even mentioning you have a web site, which not everyone has, will spark some curiosity, especially if it's got something good on it! Second step: Social Networks. Facebook My sister has 1200 friends on Facebook. My brother has 400. I have 450. I am not close with every single one of these people, but many know who I am and many I have had some decent conversations with. The people who I know would at least take a look at it are the people I went after first. This was about 10 people. These 10, we'll label A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J. These 10 do not include my brother, my sister, or myself. A has 300 friends. B has 1000 friends. C has 600 friends. D has 250 friends. E has 800 friends. F has 500 friends. G has 100 friends. H has 230 friends. I has 1600 friends. J has 2000 friends. These people are potential visitors to your website. Lets first add these friends up including my brother, my sister, and myself. 450+1200+400+300+1000+600+250+250+800+500+100+230+1600+2000=9,680 people That is 9,680 potential visitors. Not all these friends probably view their friends profiles, not all view my sister or my brothers or even mine. A lot of the time we remain hidden to our friends because Facebook only displays in the feed who you interact with most unless you change it. So I'm going to give the example of 3,000 people who work in a building and enter and exit through the same door everyday. Across the street, clearly visible is a sign that shows a big (\/) (M) for McDonalds and McDonalds is right underneath it. 3,000 are not going to go to McDonalds everyday. 3,000 people are not going to go to McDonalds every week. Some will stay in and eat their lunch. Others will go elsewhere. But some will on some days! Of these 3,000 people, lets be hard on ourselves and say only 100 people go to McDonalds a day, but they go daily. They aren't the same people. But it's just 100 people at any given time of 3,000 that go to McDonalds for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Has McDonalds made money? 100 people are still people. 100 people bring money and make business. If you can get 100 visitors to your site a day, would you consider that some kind of success? I haven't given us the benefit of the doubt. The benefit of the doubt would be that at least 300-500 people go at least daily, either for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. So these Facebook friends are visitors to your website. When it comes to Facebook and friends, however, I caution you: DO NOT SPAM YOUR FRIENDS! YOU WILL LOSE VISITORS THIS WAY! AND YOU COULD EVEN LOSE FRIENDS! If you post it once and the next day it's gone, post your link again. Tell your friend to just take a look. It's guaranteed that besides your friend, someone else is going to see that link. In another week and a half, ask your friend if he's checked out the link. Make it personal and direct. A bad message is just posting the link without any comment. A good message is like this: "Hey Gemma, check out my web site. I think you'd appreciate a lot of the music content on it. Let me know what you think " I am not telling her: "when you get a chance, check it out." I'm actually asking her for her input. She is less likely to delete the comment/post because I'm asking her directly and it's not spam. She'll probably leave this up and her friends will see it as well. Three more forms of advertising on Facebook: 1. There are several artists and people with thousands of friends on Facebook who will befriend you just for being there. Or you can befriend them personally by request and they are fine with it. Real live people/artists/musicians/etc. managing their Facebooks. Their pages are great for posting your link. Again: DO NOT SPAM YOUR LINK! Just mention their name personally and that you think they should check out your website. There are more eyes watching these pages! 2. Advertise your link on site's that are related to your link. Just search Facebook. My site is http://www.youtrippy.com/ - a site dedicated to music of many genres including psychedelic, classic rock, trance, acid, techno, experimental, alternative, rap, R&B, Hip Hop, etc. So what do I do about this? I search for this type of music. Classic Rock has a fan page. Psychedelic has a fan page. Psychedelia has a fan page. Trance has a fan page. With over 100,000 "Likes" on these pages, potential visitor to your site who can see these pages. And you are actually going after people who will favor your content and keep coming back. Trust me: People are using Facebook because they have nothing better to do. They are looking for stuff to do on the Internet. Your site could be the next place they are stopping at and returning for more. 3. Create a Fan Page on Facebook. I created one for my website: /areyoutrippy?_fb_noscript=1 You can create your own page here: /login.php?next=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fpages%2Fcreate.php&_fb_noscript=1 Under Brand or Product, choose website and fill out the information. Like your page and get other people to like it as well. This will also help you later if you decide to add a Facebook Like or Login button to your website. Think about who your friends are. It's crazy, but in life, such as in Hollywood, it's not WHAT you know. It's WHO you know! Use your friends to your advantage! If they have a lot of friends, get them to catch on to your website! Get them to like the idea, get them to continuously visit your website! And if they do like it, remind them to tell their friends to check it out as well! Their friends are more likely to listen to them than they are to you! If you have a friend is in advertising, see what he can do for you. If you have a friend who is good with video editing or photoshop, see what he can do for you. If you have a friend who is good with public speaking, even he could be useful! Of course, you are sure to return the favor in some way and help your friend out if he/she ever needs it! But definitely utilize the skills your friends have! They are the portals to allow many visitors to enter into your domain! So there you go. Facebook is a powerful advertising tool! MySpace A few years ago, I made a MySpace page. I wanted to be popular like everyone else. I had about 40 "friends", give or take. But I wanted more. I wanted people to know who I was! So I decided to make this page completely about something I was interested in. I made it about Vampires. I got just a few people who added me, and that was it. I realized this wasn't me. I love Pink Floyd. I am obsessed with Pink Floyd. So what did I do? I turned my MySpace page into a fan page. I invited others to join and friend me. I invited bands to come on to my MySpace page and advertise their music. And that's what they did. And MySpace was slow, I could barely load my page for some reason. And I realized how much I hated MySpace after that and visited occasionally, like once or twice a week. Little did I know, I was becoming popular without even realizing it. More and more people kept adding me. And to this day, continue to add me. My site gets popularity depending on the months or seasons or whatever. I logged in once a few weeks ago. Nothing, not a single friend request. I then logged in about two more weeks after that to about 70 friend requests. I added them all. No one is ever denied. They love my page. I haven't changed it since 2005 and the last time I posted that i was thinking about changing it, many people said I should keep it the same and not think about changing it. And so, I haven't changed it since. I have over 1500 friends now. Some actually read my few blog posts. So I advertised my website on there. I put my website in my About Me section. Anywhere I could see fit. I blogged that I wasn't very much active on MySpace and that people were welcomed to continue to read the page, but that I would be much more active on my website and to visit me there. MySpace advertising explained! Twitter A while ago, I had an idea, and I realize this is the same with domain names: Come up with a good name and you can become popular: it's what people remember. Of course, this idea failed. And I've only got 14 followers and I'm following 28 people. I post my link occasionally. And I try to follow those with many followers, and get a post to my link in or whatever it may be. I'm not as familiar with Twitter and Twitter wasn't as successful for me, so I can't write a whole lot about it. But if you've got a lot of followers, they'll be reading what you post. YouTube Huge potential number of visitors here. A few years ago, I got into making accounts and just posting random videos about anything -- mostly comedy. Some Family Guy stuff. Some South Park. Etc. Almost all videos I post have to deal with comedy, and people love things that make them laugh. I've posted some music and concerts too, which also get a daily amount of viewers. I'll also upload scenes from movies which is also very popular. These accounts I created became popular and I was getting thousands of views. On one of my accounts, I have 530,000 visitors in total to my videos and it seems it only increases each year. These videos don't get removed because the copyright owner doesn't mind having them there. It's definitely a nice advertising technique. These videos are not owned by me so I can't make any money off them despite YouTube advertising to me to become a YouTube Partner. I have a link to my website in my profile. This doesn't do it any justice. I only have about 3,000 visits to my profile. That's it. 530,000 video views. So people are watching videos, but not looking at who I am. Who cares who I am? My videos are more important! So target where people are looking! Guess where I put my link? Before I even write a description about the video, my link goes first. Here are just some lines I've used: Description: "For more videos and music like this, check out http://www.youtrippy.com/! Dave Chapelle making fun of the word '*BLEEP*'" Description: "If you liked this video, check out more on my site: http://www.youtrippy.com/ Spaceship I saw when I was in Jerusalem" Description: "For psychedelic music and videos, check out: http://www.youtrippy.com/ Will Smith sneezes bulls.." You get the point. YouTube displays only the first sentence that you write. After that, you have to click "More" and unfortunately, not everyone who sees the video is going to do that. So put your website link first and the description after. MAKE YOUR LINK AVAILABLE IN EVERY WAY AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE! And there you have it. This takes care of advertising on Social Networks. Web Rings A web ring is a collection of websites linked together in a circular structure, and usually organized around a specific theme. You usually must keep a link or a banner on the main page of your site somewhere. This isn't so bad for a potential number of visitors that you could possibly receive. My website is a part of http://dir.webring.org and you can join through the link. This seems to be the most dominant web ring and most popular on the Internet, at least from what I searched on Google. The good thing about my website is that it's music-based around many genres so I can join just about any category, and there are a lot of different categories. The more categories your site can associate with, the better. I had wondered how I was going to be a part of many web rings and fit all the banners on my site. The good thing is they don't require that. They only require that you have one navigation code on there. And then you can apply to as many web rings as you want. It works on an approval-based system, so there is a moderator for every web ring who either accepts you or denies your submission. Link Referrals / Exchanges Referrals I was quite skeptical when I first joined a referral service. It was free to join. But I did join quite a few of them, only to find that my inbox was spammed out. There are several that are good and do what they say. I did come across one known as LinkReferral.com in which you submit your site and you are usually placed right at the beginning. They claim that you will get at least 40-60 views per day. While this isn't far from the truth, it certainly does take time. The catch: you have to view sites [30 per day], review sites [5 per day], post on their forum [1 per day], and favorite a site [1 per day]. If you don't, your rank starts to drop and your site goes below in pages. This is great for a few days as you don't mind checking out what other people are doing, talking on the forums, and favoring sites. But after a while, it just becomes annoying and tedious. Sometimes when viewing sites, the count won't register. I don't really know the logic behind what makes me #4 one day, #9 the next, and back to #5 on another day. This is actually a great site to start out with .. get your site reviewed, just get some hard feedback about your site, as there are plenty who are willing to check out your site and review it. But after about a week, there are just better methods to promote your website. You can always buy a paid membership and they'll keep your listing in the #1 or #2 spot, but it's probably not even really worth it. But I do suggest signing up for at least a week to try it out. Exchange This is probably by far one of the best and most superior methods to get your website noticed. It is probably one of the most important things you need to do as well. When you use this method, you are creating backlinks. Sites that are linking into yours. Google favors this type of method and will rank your page based on the popularity it gets from other pages. You will want to exchange links with sites that are getting noticed and have visitors as much as possible. You can check website ranks by visiting http://www.alexa.com/. The closer to 1 the better. Before we continue, know that this is a method of: I'll watch your back if you get mine. So do yourself a favor and create a link exchange section page. You don't have to have the link exchange on your main page, but have a link to it on the first page that is clearly visible. Most of these websites will want to see a link on your page before they add you. Give them the benefit of the doubt. I often give 48 hours or so before checking back. I will send a second email usually giving another 24-48 hours. Sometimes, depending on their rank and their popularity, I will actually ask them to add me first. This can depend on your descretion. My emails are often very polite. In the subject, I put Link Exchange. In the body, I state my business: I would like to link exchange with you. My website is: http://www.youtrippy.com/. Description: A portal into the psychedelic world: music, videos, wallpapers, friends, and more. You can link to me using this code: You can find a link to your site on my reciprocal link is: http://www.youtrippy.com/ I look forward to exchanging links with you. I will leave your link on my site for 48 hours. If I do not hear back from you, I will assume you did not want to exchange links. Let me know! Sincerely, ... You will want to exchange links with sites that are related to your website categories. Music. Art. Blog. News. YouTube. Videos. Movies. Etc. Look through the first 2 or 3 and maybe even 4 pages of Google, open up all the links, and see if there are link exchange sections. If they have a link for submission, than fill it out. Many of the more dominant websites will try and charge you to post a link on their page. If this is the method you want to use, than go for it, but no results are guaranteed. If you're trying to save some money, than offer to exchange links. If you have to exchange links with a few lesser known but growing sites, go for it. But do your best to just exchange links for free. It's easier, less expensive, and its supposed to be a partnership. Don't link exchange with every single website you come across. You can be picky and choosy. When I first started, I had many types emailing me and I was getting referred to places in Turkey and China, but the sites had nothing to do with what I'm promoting. Link Exchanges are helpful to both parties because it allows for your members to see a link with your link exchange partners on it. They will get some traffic because people are curious and they will likely get more traffic if their site is more closely related to yours. You will also get more traffic if they do the same. And if they are up to date with their tools and all, they could easily tell where their visitors are coming from. Utilize link exchanging as much as possible. It will help your rank greatly. Other Suggestions SIGNATURES If you post regularly on any type of forums, make sure you put a link to your website in your signature! If you are regularly sending out emails, have a signature with your website in it! If you post a comment on a forum, a blog, a photo, a website, make sure that after your comment, you put a link to your website at the end! If you make YouTube videos, music, or any kind of art, make sure you have a signature link to your website somewhere in there! --------------- If your website has anything on it -- whether it be music, wallpapers, videos, games, etc., make sure you mention the words: Free! This word is very powerful to most human beings. The human ear hears it. And the human eye sees it. It does get attention! If you look at Google analytics, there are tons of keywords with the words "free" in it. So it's always good to put something like: "free music, free videos" in your keywords. If your site is not free, than offer something free! --------------- World Market: Europe. Africa. Asia. Russia. Australia. South America. Mexico. Internet is everywhere. We are in a global market and a global economy. Do not just aim for visitors from the United States. Do not just visit and exchange links with sites that only speak English. Find some sites in other languages that are common with your site. With Google Chrome and Firefox extensions, there are translators built right into the web browser and should translate the page automatically for you. --------------- I only went over 4 social networks. There are dozens more. Find these, learn them and make use of them, get your links on them in some way! https://del.icio.us/ - to name one, which is a bookmarking site owned by Yahoo. http://hubpages.com/ - another very popular social networking site. http://blog.friendfeed.com/ - yet another social networking site. Here is a list of Social Networking sites. Check some of them out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites Social Networking is going to be your primary form of advertising, and keeping it fresh in people's minds. Social Networking is a huge market for potential visitors, clients, and friends. ---------------- Sign up for Yahoo Answers! and reply to the Questions. In the source, add your link. Or just sign your link after your answer. ---------------- Write on GoArticles.com, EZineArticles.com, and Helium.com. Write about something completely not related to your website, but include your link in some way. At the end, for example, "Check out more of my articles at http://www.mysite.com./; These sites are huge and Google will index them and you'll likely get a few people reading them and many more visiting your site if they are good articles. More sites to write articles on: digg.com, Ideamarketers.com, Articledashboard.com, Articlealley.com ---------------- Write interesting articles and blogs on your own website! ---------------- Sign up for a free co.cc account and have it redirect to your website! I don't know why or who is using these, but apparently co.cc is Australia. And it might just be, that when Australians search Google, your search results are likely coming up with that specific domain name. ---------------- Come up with a very juicy description of your website! Don't just post a link, post details about what you want people to click on! The more appealing details, the more likely it is that people are going to click on it! ---------------- Use Adwords from Google and pay for advertising. ---------------- Graffiti. Remember you used to get in trouble for this in school? Writing on desks, walls, the ground. Honestly, write some graffiti on walls with your domain on it. Of course, I'm not encouraging you to do it illegally, nor do you want to deal with the authorities, as they will eventually find out who you are through your domain. But take some chalk and walk into a city like Chicago and go to different areas, and just write your website down on the ground, on a tree, on a building. I used to live in Chicago, so a place I noticed where people are everyday is the Biker's Path. Constantly jogging. Many areas along there where chalk could easily be noticed! ---------------- Link Bating: If your website is unique, than you can create a certain demanding idea around it. For example, why do people visit YouTube in the first place? Google? or Facebook? They visit these sites for the search engine, to keep in touch with friends, and to watch videos. Your site needs to hold something that people want, need, and will continue returning to everyday. This requires creativity, research, and a lot of thought - basically, the next "big thing" - but it can be done. ---------------- Direct Emails to all your friends asking them to check out your site and review it. ---------------- As I stated in the Link Exchange section, submit your link to sites that have ratings close to 1! http://www.coolsiteoftheday.com/ has a rating of 37,117 in general, and 18,254 in the US. If your site is featured on here, it will surely drive in some major traffic. Find sites like these, check out their Alexa ranking and submit your site! ---------------- Make your members feel as welcome as possible. Greet them. Make them a part of your life, make them a part of your website, and the daily things that you do and the daily things they do! Inform them of updates you are working on and things you plan to incorporate. Have a Chat Room if possible. Some kind of live communication where they can chat with you. A discussion forum is great and all, but live communication is even better. I recommend [url="http://www.shoutmix.com/v3/login.php%5B/url]http://forums.xisto.com/ which is a Shoutbox-like chatroom. Java-based and works well. The free version is about 60 posts an hour. And a certain limit bandwidth a month. Once your site gets more popular though, you should purchase the full version. It's only $20 for a year. Great deal. Come up with creative ideas, contests, or other things for the people visiting your website! Make your visitors want to come back! Not just because of the content of your website, but because of you and because of the community! Update your site daily with new content! ---------------- MAKE USE OF WHAT YOU ALREADY HAVE! When it came to figuring out how to get people to come to my site, I began with Facebook. Then I thought about MySpace. Twitter. YouTube. Delicious. Stumble-Upon. Blogger. BlogSpot. Google BlogSpot. Google Buzz. You want to be putting your website, especially if it's an easy catchphrase into people's minds! ---------------- ---------------- There is always work to be done on your site. If you are finished with your website, than you are finished with hosting it and you should just let it run out and disappear into the abyss like so many websites have done before it. YOU ARE NEVER DONE WORKING ON YOUR WEBSITE! ADD NEW FEATURES! ADD NEW CONTENT! KEEP IT INTERESTING! KEEP IT FUN! KEEP ADDING NEW THINGS SO THAT EVERY TIME YOUR VISITORS RETURN, THEY ARE SEEING SOMETHING NEW! ---------------- ---------------- My site is only in it's first few weeks and I'm already receiving about 160 visitors a day and the numbers are increasing. My website has become my full time job. I am always working on ensuring that there are no bugs, ensuring that new cool features are added, and making sure that content is constantly being added. My next step is actually getting more people to interact with each other on the site! As I said, always work to be done!

I've learned quite a bit about advertising a website which is a loaded job with lots of work to do and lots of creative ways to do it. So the following is a complete guide on how to get your website into the public eye, get it known, get web browsers like Google to start seeing it, and especially, getting visitors to your site. Ok, you've done so much work. You came up with a good idea for making a website and you've actually managed to go through with it. Congratulations. You've signed up for free web hosting, spent hours on end, running code, making sure it works, had a few friends and family members check it out and they were quite interested in what you were doing, and everything is fine. Your website looks awesome, functions well, and your friends and family love it. So what now? Did you design it for yourself or for others to enjoy as well? It is about you? Or is it an interactive website? If it's for you, than you don't have to worry too much about advertising. If it's for other people to visit and hopefully keep coming back, then you should start wondering about how to advertise and get your site out there into the world eye. If you build it, they will come. This is very true. But they won't come if they don't even know it exists. So now your next full time job is getting the word out and spreading it. So what is the best way to advertise? Site Submission & Directories Word of Mouth Web Rings Link Referrals / Exchanges Other Suggestions These are the ones I'm most commonly familiar with. You could also put ads on Google using Adwords, ads on Facebook, ads on MySpace, ads on YouTube, and anywhere else you can think to put ads. An easy spot would definitely be on your car advertising your web site. But for now, we'll stick to the free and cheap methods of advertising because we want to make some money and spend as little of our own as we can. Before we start to advertise, what is your domain like? Are you still using a free web host? If you are, consider buying and registering for a domain and paying for web hosting. It doesn't have to be expensive. You can find plenty that are cheap. But there is a difference between GOOD AND CHEAP. Before you give over any credit card information, make sure you GOOGLE the GOOD and the BAD. So for example, enter in some terms like: mywebhost.com reviews, mywebhost.com is amazing, mywebhost.com sucks, mywebhost.com is horrible, mywebhost.com negative reviews. Spend about a week or so just reviewing different web hosts. If they offer unlimited space, they're probably lying. No one has unlimited space. Besides, you don't need unlimited space unless you're storing your mp3s or your movies. And there are storage places where you can do that for free -- YouTube, Photobucket, box.net, etc. There are dozens of free sites that will give you storage space. So you don't need "unlimited space" for your web host. I've only got 1 GB on my web host and I'm currently using about 130 MB. That is already a lot. But most sites consist of only text and databases and you could probably get away with 50 MB of space on your site. So there are a few things you want to look for in a web host: Good reviews Good uptime Good storage space (1 GB is plenty) Good bandwidth space (5-10 GB should be plenty, you can always buy more) A domain name is probably the most important decision you're ever going to make. A domain name says something about what your website is about. If I typed in https://mustang.ford.eu/, I expect to login to a site that is probably Ford Car Manufacturer. If I type in https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us.html I am surely expecting to login to the McDonalds restaurant website. Your domain name should be closely related to whatever your site is about. There is a lot of confidence and respect in buying and owning a domain name. When you begin sharing your link, and your friends see it's a domain name, they will probably be more interested in visiting your website. You also feel much more confident to give out that link when you have a domain name with a functioning website than if you are a subdomain on some free web host. With a good web host and owning your own domain name, you are also offered more protection than on a free web host service. And security is something you will need to think about while you've got your site up and running and the visitors are flowing. So the domain name is very important. And you could be stuck with it for a while. So choose wisely. When it comes to advertising a domain name, especially a website, you want a memorable name. We are the information generation: There is so much information available to us. And with information comes a lot to remember and a lot to know. People don't have the patience to remember something unless it really means something to them. So make your domain name and your website something easy to remember. Lets test this out, what do you remember more? Hey Angela, check my site out at music-4-u.info Hey Bill, visit my web site at music4u.biz Hey Joe, while you're on the computer, take a look at my web site at musicforyou.com. Which would you remember more? Sure, they are all fairly easy to remember. And I don't want to knock the ending .biz and .info domain names. They can definitely pack a punch depending on the domain name and the advertising done! You should try and avoid hyphens but if your goal is to simply have a website, than go for it. If you have no choice, than you have no choice. But it's more likely that music4u.info is going to get more hits than music-4-u.info. It's just easier to type and easier to remember. And not only do you have to explain that it's music-4-u.info and not music4u.info, but it takes time and people forget by the time they get home or probably even open up a browser. So I don't want to knock hyphenated domains and other domain names are very hard to come by and some are even cash crops. But .com is the most professional and .com is the one people will remember. Why is this? Because .com has been in existence and in our minds since the creation of the Internet. Do your best to get a .com. You might even have to change your website name and the original domain name you thought of, but seriously, take some time and play with your words to figure it out. If you can't seem to find something better, than go for the hyphen. What you want is: something that slips off the tongue and sticks into people's minds. If possible, think of something that is not common. You will realize this later when sites begin to index your website. For example, my website is YouTrippy.com. Before it was even indexed, in just a few hours, it was picked up by Google. I typed it in the search engine and it was on the first page to be displayed. Why did this happen? Because no one ever types "YouTrippy". If I type in "You Trippy", my site is actually the second to come up. Before I began link exchanging and advertising my website, "You Trippy" yielded absolutely nothing about my website. It was not on the first, second, or even the third page. However, when I wrote my meta tags, I included the words "YouTrippy" and "You Trippy" in order for search engines to be able to recognize my website. So when choosing a name, choose something that isn't so common and it's so much easier to get on the first page! Unfortunately, if your website is not on the first or second page, your likely not going to be seen as much. I read somewhere that being on the third page is the same as being on the 300th page. This is just something I read. Just think about your own habits and behaviors when you're searching: Are you likely to scroll to the third page? Only if you can't find what you're looking for on the first or second! And if there are a dozen other websites with your name on it, and they've done all the advertising and became popular, than you are going to have quite a bit of work to do before you can even get to the top, the first, the second, of anything. YouTube Facebook Google Do I have to explain these to you? Twitter Do I have to explain this one to you? Twitter came in a bit later. I remember when I was trying to figure out what this "tweeting" business was. I caught on soon as I signed up. But by now, even Twitter needs no explanation. If you don't know what Twitter is, you can Google it while you ask your friends on Facebook, and they'll probably get back to you as soon as they finish tweeting on Twitter about what they saw on YouTube earlier. You need to come up with something easily memorable that people won't forget. A little over 10 years ago, Google wasn't even a word. Now Google is both a noun and a verb, and in every person's mind. In 10 years, it's hard not to find a person who has never heard of Google. Welcome to the #1 Search Engine on the planet. Welcome to the #1 Master of Advertising. While we're on the topic of a good name, you should definitely think about coming up with some good graphic banner to advertise your site. It can be simple and easy or something complex, but to have words that say: "My Web Site" in plain text is really just bland and boring. Spice up your site with a banner and show your personality and the personality of the site you created! Put an image into people's minds. My banner is nothing special, but it's a blue background with floating trippy hippy like text ⦠YouTrippy. I used BannerSnack to make it. Now that we've got your domain and website name figured out, lets move on to the work of advertising your website. Site Submission & Directories This is probably the easiest thing you are going to do. Submit your site to every search engine you can. DO NOT PAY FOR SEARCH ENGINE SUBMISSION! A search of Google "Submit my site" will show you endless links that will do it for free. Personally submit your search engine to the major players. Google. Yahoo. Bing. But there are other programs that will submit your site to smaller search engines. Whatever you do, I repeat this: DO NOT PAY FOR ANY SUBMISSION. Even if you are offered your site to be submitted to 100 search engine sites. These sites are small and although people do use them, it only matters that you at least submit your link in some form, but without paying. But like I said: there are plenty of websites that will submit your link to them for free. What you really want is your site to be picked up and indexed. This is not done through submission. A few years ago, search engines used to just go by submissions and meta tags. This isn't really done much anymore, other than search engines using the meta tag information to display something in the search engine results. Now your site is found from being linked by others. I will discuss this further in the Link Exchange section. You want to definitely submit your site to directories. DMOZ is one of the most popular and the best to get entered into, though it sometimes takes a month to get in, as the site is just run by volunteers. Here are some useful links for site submission & directories: FREE http://www.freewebsubmission.com/ http://www.dmoz.org/ https://www.somuch.com/ http://www.txtlinks.com/ http://www.theseoking.com/ http://www.jayde.com/main.html PAID https://botw.org/ http://www.goguides.org/ http://www.joeant.com/ http://www.gimpsy.com/ This is it for site submission. Word of Mouth Are you popular on MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter? Do you have family and friends? First step: Friends and Family. Tell your family to visit the website if they haven't already done so and ask them what they think. If the reviews are generally good, than they will likely support you. Tell them to tell their friends, and just spread the word and talk about it with others. It's not like they are selling something. Simply talking about their brother, son, husband, daughter's website or whatever. Most of their friends will likely be curious to see what it's about. Do the same exact thing with your friends and tell them to tell their friends! Keep talking about it! No matter what! Keep talking about your website! Even if you think it's getting annoying. You don't have to bring it up in every conversation, but if it's got relevant content to what you are talking about, than you should mention it! And even mention it around strangers. Even mentioning you have a web site, which not everyone has, will spark some curiosity, especially if it's got something good on it! Second step: Social Networks. Facebook My sister has 1200 friends on Facebook. My brother has 400. I have 450. I am not close with every single one of these people, but many know who I am and many I have had some decent conversations with. The people who I know would at least take a look at it are the people I went after first. This was about 10 people. These 10, we'll label A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J. These 10 do not include my brother, my sister, or myself. A has 300 friends. B has 1000 friends. C has 600 friends. D has 250 friends. E has 800 friends. F has 500 friends. G has 100 friends. H has 230 friends. I has 1600 friends. J has 2000 friends. These people are potential visitors to your website. Lets first add these friends up including my brother, my sister, and myself. 450+1200+400+300+1000+600+250+250+800+500+100+230+1600+2000=9,680 people That is 9,680 potential visitors. Not all these friends probably view their friends profiles, not all view my sister or my brothers or even mine. A lot of the time we remain hidden to our friends because Facebook only displays in the feed who you interact with most unless you change it. So I'm going to give the example of 3,000 people who work in a building and enter and exit through the same door everyday. Across the street, clearly visible is a sign that shows a big (\/) (M) for McDonalds and McDonalds is right underneath it. 3,000 are not going to go to McDonalds everyday. 3,000 people are not going to go to McDonalds every week. Some will stay in and eat their lunch. Others will go elsewhere. But some will on some days! Of these 3,000 people, lets be hard on ourselves and say only 100 people go to McDonalds a day, but they go daily. They aren't the same people. But it's just 100 people at any given time of 3,000 that go to McDonalds for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Has McDonalds made money? 100 people are still people. 100 people bring money and make business. If you can get 100 visitors to your site a day, would you consider that some kind of success? I haven't given us the benefit of the doubt. The benefit of the doubt would be that at least 300-500 people go at least daily, either for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. So these Facebook friends are visitors to your website. When it comes to Facebook and friends, however, I caution you: DO NOT SPAM YOUR FRIENDS! YOU WILL LOSE VISITORS THIS WAY! AND YOU COULD EVEN LOSE FRIENDS! If you post it once and the next day it's gone, post your link again. Tell your friend to just take a look. It's guaranteed that besides your friend, someone else is going to see that link. In another week and a half, ask your friend if he's checked out the link. Make it personal and direct. A bad message is just posting the link without any comment. A good message is like this: "Hey Gemma, check out my web site. I think you'd appreciate a lot of the music content on it. Let me know what you think " I am not telling her: "when you get a chance, check it out." I'm actually asking her for her input. She is less likely to delete the comment/post because I'm asking her directly and it's not spam. She'll probably leave this up and her friends will see it as well. Three more forms of advertising on Facebook: 1. There are several artists and people with thousands of friends on Facebook who will befriend you just for being there. Or you can befriend them personally by request and they are fine with it. Real live people/artists/musicians/etc. managing their Facebooks. Their pages are great for posting your link. Again: DO NOT SPAM YOUR LINK! Just mention their name personally and that you think they should check out your website. There are more eyes watching these pages! 2. Advertise your link on site's that are related to your link. Just search Facebook. My site is http://www.youtrippy.com/ - a site dedicated to music of many genres including psychedelic, classic rock, trance, acid, techno, experimental, alternative, rap, R&B, Hip Hop, etc. So what do I do about this? I search for this type of music. Classic Rock has a fan page. Psychedelic has a fan page. Psychedelia has a fan page. Trance has a fan page. With over 100,000 "Likes" on these pages, potential visitor to your site who can see these pages. And you are actually going after people who will favor your content and keep coming back. Trust me: People are using Facebook because they have nothing better to do. They are looking for stuff to do on the Internet. Your site could be the next place they are stopping at and returning for more. 3. Create a Fan Page on Facebook. I created one for my website: /areyoutrippy?_fb_noscript=1 You can create your own page here: /login.php?next=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fpages%2Fcreate.php&_fb_noscript=1 Under Brand or Product, choose website and fill out the information. Like your page and get other people to like it as well. This will also help you later if you decide to add a Facebook Like or Login button to your website. Think about who your friends are. It's crazy, but in life, such as in Hollywood, it's not WHAT you know. It's WHO you know! Use your friends to your advantage! If they have a lot of friends, get them to catch on to your website! Get them to like the idea, get them to continuously visit your website! And if they do like it, remind them to tell their friends to check it out as well! Their friends are more likely to listen to them than they are to you! If you have a friend is in advertising, see what he can do for you. If you have a friend who is good with video editing or photoshop, see what he can do for you. If you have a friend who is good with public speaking, even he could be useful! Of course, you are sure to return the favor in some way and help your friend out if he/she ever needs it! But definitely utilize the skills your friends have! They are the portals to allow many visitors to enter into your domain! So there you go. Facebook is a powerful advertising tool! MySpace A few years ago, I made a MySpace page. I wanted to be popular like everyone else. I had about 40 "friends", give or take. But I wanted more. I wanted people to know who I was! So I decided to make this page completely about something I was interested in. I made it about Vampires. I got just a few people who added me, and that was it. I realized this wasn't me. I love Pink Floyd. I am obsessed with Pink Floyd. So what did I do? I turned my MySpace page into a fan page. I invited others to join and friend me. I invited bands to come on to my MySpace page and advertise their music. And that's what they did. And MySpace was slow, I could barely load my page for some reason. And I realized how much I hated MySpace after that and visited occasionally, like once or twice a week. Little did I know, I was becoming popular without even realizing it. More and more people kept adding me. And to this day, continue to add me. My site gets popularity depending on the months or seasons or whatever. I logged in once a few weeks ago. Nothing, not a single friend request. I then logged in about two more weeks after that to about 70 friend requests. I added them all. No one is ever denied. They love my page. I haven't changed it since 2005 and the last time I posted that i was thinking about changing it, many people said I should keep it the same and not think about changing it. And so, I haven't changed it since. I have over 1500 friends now. Some actually read my few blog posts. So I advertised my website on there. I put my website in my About Me section. Anywhere I could see fit. I blogged that I wasn't very much active on MySpace and that people were welcomed to continue to read the page, but that I would be much more active on my website and to visit me there. MySpace advertising explained! Twitter A while ago, I had an idea, and I realize this is the same with domain names: Come up with a good name and you can become popular: it's what people remember. Of course, this idea failed. And I've only got 14 followers and I'm following 28 people. I post my link occasionally. And I try to follow those with many followers, and get a post to my link in or whatever it may be. I'm not as familiar with Twitter and Twitter wasn't as successful for me, so I can't write a whole lot about it. But if you've got a lot of followers, they'll be reading what you post. YouTube Huge potential number of visitors here. A few years ago, I got into making accounts and just posting random videos about anything -- mostly comedy. Some Family Guy stuff. Some South Park. Etc. Almost all videos I post have to deal with comedy, and people love things that make them laugh. I've posted some music and concerts too, which also get a daily amount of viewers. I'll also upload scenes from movies which is also very popular. These accounts I created became popular and I was getting thousands of views. On one of my accounts, I have 530,000 visitors in total to my videos and it seems it only increases each year. These videos don't get removed because the copyright owner doesn't mind having them there. It's definitely a nice advertising technique. These videos are not owned by me so I can't make any money off them despite YouTube advertising to me to become a YouTube Partner. I have a link to my website in my profile. This doesn't do it any justice. I only have about 3,000 visits to my profile. That's it. 530,000 video views. So people are watching videos, but not looking at who I am. Who cares who I am? My videos are more important! So target where people are looking! Guess where I put my link? Before I even write a description about the video, my link goes first. Here are just some lines I've used: Description: "For more videos and music like this, check out http://www.youtrippy.com/! Dave Chapelle making fun of the word '*BLEEP*'" Description: "If you liked this video, check out more on my site: http://www.youtrippy.com/ Spaceship I saw when I was in Jerusalem" Description: "For psychedelic music and videos, check out: http://www.youtrippy.com/ Will Smith sneezes bulls.." You get the point. YouTube displays only the first sentence that you write. After that, you have to click "More" and unfortunately, not everyone who sees the video is going to do that. So put your website link first and the description after. MAKE YOUR LINK AVAILABLE IN EVERY WAY AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE! And there you have it. This takes care of advertising on Social Networks. Web Rings A web ring is a collection of websites linked together in a circular structure, and usually organized around a specific theme. You usually must keep a link or a banner on the main page of your site somewhere. This isn't so bad for a potential number of visitors that you could possibly receive. My website is a part of http://dir.webring.org and you can join through the link. This seems to be the most dominant web ring and most popular on the Internet, at least from what I searched on Google. The good thing about my website is that it's music-based around many genres so I can join just about any category, and there are a lot of different categories. The more categories your site can associate with, the better. I had wondered how I was going to be a part of many web rings and fit all the banners on my site. The good thing is they don't require that. They only require that you have one navigation code on there. And then you can apply to as many web rings as you want. It works on an approval-based system, so there is a moderator for every web ring who either accepts you or denies your submission. Link Referrals / Exchanges Referrals I was quite skeptical when I first joined a referral service. It was free to join. But I did join quite a few of them, only to find that my inbox was spammed out. There are several that are good and do what they say. I did come across one known as LinkReferral.com in which you submit your site and you are usually placed right at the beginning. They claim that you will get at least 40-60 views per day. While this isn't far from the truth, it certainly does take time. The catch: you have to view sites [30 per day], review sites [5 per day], post on their forum [1 per day], and favorite a site [1 per day]. If you don't, your rank starts to drop and your site goes below in pages. This is great for a few days as you don't mind checking out what other people are doing, talking on the forums, and favoring sites. But after a while, it just becomes annoying and tedious. Sometimes when viewing sites, the count won't register. I don't really know the logic behind what makes me #4 one day, #9 the next, and back to #5 on another day. This is actually a great site to start out with .. get your site reviewed, just get some hard feedback about your site, as there are plenty who are willing to check out your site and review it. But after about a week, there are just better methods to promote your website. You can always buy a paid membership and they'll keep your listing in the #1 or #2 spot, but it's probably not even really worth it. But I do suggest signing up for at least a week to try it out. Exchange This is probably by far one of the best and most superior methods to get your website noticed. It is probably one of the most important things you need to do as well. When you use this method, you are creating backlinks. Sites that are linking into yours. Google favors this type of method and will rank your page based on the popularity it gets from other pages. You will want to exchange links with sites that are getting noticed and have visitors as much as possible. You can check website ranks by visiting http://www.alexa.com/. The closer to 1 the better. Before we continue, know that this is a method of: I'll watch your back if you get mine. So do yourself a favor and create a link exchange section page. You don't have to have the link exchange on your main page, but have a link to it on the first page that is clearly visible. Most of these websites will want to see a link on your page before they add you. Give them the benefit of the doubt. I often give 48 hours or so before checking back. I will send a second email usually giving another 24-48 hours. Sometimes, depending on their rank and their popularity, I will actually ask them to add me first. This can depend on your descretion. My emails are often very polite. In the subject, I put Link Exchange. In the body, I state my business: I would like to link exchange with you. My website is: http://www.youtrippy.com/. Description: A portal into the psychedelic world: music, videos, wallpapers, friends, and more. You can link to me using this code: You can find a link to your site on my reciprocal link is: http://www.youtrippy.com/ I look forward to exchanging links with you. I will leave your link on my site for 48 hours. If I do not hear back from you, I will assume you did not want to exchange links. Let me know! Sincerely, ... You will want to exchange links with sites that are related to your website categories. Music. Art. Blog. News. YouTube. Videos. Movies. Etc. Look through the first 2 or 3 and maybe even 4 pages of Google, open up all the links, and see if there are link exchange sections. If they have a link for submission, than fill it out. Many of the more dominant websites will try and charge you to post a link on their page. If this is the method you want to use, than go for it, but no results are guaranteed. If you're trying to save some money, than offer to exchange links. If you have to exchange links with a few lesser known but growing sites, go for it. But do your best to just exchange links for free. It's easier, less expensive, and its supposed to be a partnership. Don't link exchange with every single website you come across. You can be picky and choosy. When I first started, I had many types emailing me and I was getting referred to places in Turkey and China, but the sites had nothing to do with what I'm promoting. Link Exchanges are helpful to both parties because it allows for your members to see a link with your link exchange partners on it. They will get some traffic because people are curious and they will likely get more traffic if their site is more closely related to yours. You will also get more traffic if they do the same. And if they are up to date with their tools and all, they could easily tell where their visitors are coming from. Utilize link exchanging as much as possible. It will help your rank greatly. Other Suggestions SIGNATURES If you post regularly on any type of forums, make sure you put a link to your website in your signature! If you are regularly sending out emails, have a signature with your website in it! If you post a comment on a forum, a blog, a photo, a website, make sure that after your comment, you put a link to your website at the end! If you make YouTube videos, music, or any kind of art, make sure you have a signature link to your website somewhere in there! --------------- If your website has anything on it -- whether it be music, wallpapers, videos, games, etc., make sure you mention the words: Free! This word is very powerful to most human beings. The human ear hears it. And the human eye sees it. It does get attention! If you look at Google analytics, there are tons of keywords with the words "free" in it. So it's always good to put something like: "free music, free videos" in your keywords. If your site is not free, than offer something free! --------------- World Market: Europe. Africa. Asia. Russia. Australia. South America. Mexico. Internet is everywhere. We are in a global market and a global economy. Do not just aim for visitors from the United States. Do not just visit and exchange links with sites that only speak English. Find some sites in other languages that are common with your site. With Google Chrome and Firefox extensions, there are translators built right into the web browser and should translate the page automatically for you. --------------- I only went over 4 social networks. There are dozens more. Find these, learn them and make use of them, get your links on them in some way! https://del.icio.us/ - to name one, which is a bookmarking site owned by Yahoo. http://hubpages.com/ - another very popular social networking site. http://blog.friendfeed.com/ - yet another social networking site. Here is a list of Social Networking sites. Check some of them out. http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Social Networking is going to be your primary form of advertising, and keeping it fresh in people's minds. Social Networking is a huge market for potential visitors, clients, and friends. ---------------- Sign up for Yahoo Answers! and reply to the Questions. In the source, add your link. Or just sign your link after your answer. ---------------- Write on GoArticles.com, EZineArticles.com, and Helium.com. Write about something completely not related to your website, but include your link in some way. At the end, for example, "Check out more of my articles at http://forums.xisto.com/ These sites are huge and Google will index them and you'll likely get a few people reading them and many more visiting your site if they are good articles. More sites to write articles on: digg.com, Ideamarketers.com, Articledashboard.com, Articlealley.com ---------------- Write interesting articles and blogs on your own website! ---------------- Sign up for a free co.cc account and have it redirect to your website! I don't know why or who is using these, but apparently co.cc is Australia. And it might just be, that when Australians search Google, your search results are likely coming up with that specific domain name. ---------------- Come up with a very juicy description of your website! Don't just post a link, post details about what you want people to click on! The more appealing details, the more likely it is that people are going to click on it! ---------------- Use Adwords from Google and pay for advertising. ---------------- Graffiti. Remember you used to get in trouble for this in school? Writing on desks, walls, the ground. Honestly, write some graffiti on walls with your domain on it. Of course, I'm not encouraging you to do it illegally, nor do you want to deal with the authorities, as they will eventually find out who you are through your domain. But take some chalk and walk into a city like Chicago and go to different areas, and just write your website down on the ground, on a tree, on a building. I used to live in Chicago, so a place I noticed where people are everyday is the Biker's Path. Constantly jogging. Many areas along there where chalk could easily be noticed! ---------------- Link Bating: If your website is unique, than you can create a certain demanding idea around it. For example, why do people visit YouTube in the first place? Google? or Facebook? They visit these sites for the search engine, to keep in touch with friends, and to watch videos. Your site needs to hold something that people want, need, and will continue returning to everyday. This requires creativity, research, and a lot of thought - basically, the next "big thing" - but it can be done. ---------------- Direct Emails to all your friends asking them to check out your site and review it. ---------------- As I stated in the Link Exchange section, submit your link to sites that have ratings close to 1! http://www.coolsiteoftheday.com/ has a rating of 37,117 in general, and 18,254 in the US. If your site is featured on here, it will surely drive in some major traffic. Find sites like these, check out their Alexa ranking and submit your site! ---------------- Make your members feel as welcome as possible. Greet them. Make them a part of your life, make them a part of your website, and the daily things that you do and the daily things they do! Inform them of updates you are working on and things you plan to incorporate. Have a Chat Room if possible. Some kind of live communication where they can chat with you. A discussion forum is great and all, but live communication is even better. I recommend [url="http://www.shoutmix.com/v3/ http://forums.xisto.com/ which is a Shoutbox-like chatroom. Java-based and works well. The free version is about 60 posts an hour. And a certain limit bandwidth a month. Once your site gets more popular though, you should purchase the full version. It's only $20 for a year. Great deal. Come up with creative ideas, contests, or other things for the people visiting your website! Make your visitors want to come back! Not just because of the content of your website, but because of you and because of the community! Update your site daily with new content! ---------------- MAKE USE OF WHAT YOU ALREADY HAVE! When it came to figuring out how to get people to come to my site, I began with Facebook. Then I thought about MySpace. Twitter. YouTube. Delicious. Stumble-Upon. Blogger. BlogSpot. Google BlogSpot. Google Buzz. You want to be putting your website, especially if it's an easy catchphrase into people's minds! ---------------- ---------------- There is always work to be done on your site. If you are finished with your website, than you are finished with hosting it and you should just let it run out and disappear into the abyss like so many websites have done before it. YOU ARE NEVER DONE WORKING ON YOUR WEBSITE! ADD NEW FEATURES! ADD NEW CONTENT! KEEP IT INTERESTING! KEEP IT FUN! KEEP ADDING NEW THINGS SO THAT EVERY TIME YOUR VISITORS RETURN, THEY ARE SEEING SOMETHING NEW! ---------------- ---------------- My site is only in it's first few weeks and I'm already receiving about 160 visitors a day and the numbers are increasing. My website has become my full time job. I am always working on ensuring that there are no bugs, ensuring that new cool features are added, and making sure that content is constantly being added. My next step is actually getting more people to interact with each other on the site! As I said, always work to be done! ---------------- ---------------- This is quite long, my longest article/tutorial I've ever written. I hope this information was very informative and helpful for you. If you do everything properly, you will have a lot of visitors in no time. Good luck and may you have lots of success for your website traffic!

A light color with easily readable font is always good for the visitor.I actually had my website black with white text and although it looked amazing, I got complaints: mostly it was too dark and the font was hard to read.So I've changed it to a whitish gray background with dark blue text and everyone seems to be fine with it. Of course, this was after a friend suggested that I change the colors.He said: Look at all the professional websites. Ever seen one in black? MySpace, Facebook, Google, Twitter - they're all lighter colors because it's more welcoming.And if you think about it, if your intention and goals are to keep the visitor coming back and on your page for a few minutes to hours at a time, you're going to want to have their eyes be comfortable.For me, it's actually black that's comfortable - because I'm mostly on my computer at night and I have to dim the screen in order to tolerate the light. But I've chosen a theme for my site that I'm generally comfortable with and is easy on the eyes. I also left the option open to change themes -- including my old black one.So to answer your question: YES! KEEP THE DESIGN. It's fine

When I was younger, I was more of a programmer, writing my own code and implementing a lot of new things that hadn't been seen before. Much more energy, more focused, more motivated and a love of programming, but that died out after about 7 years when I "retired." I've known it and been on and off ever since.As I'm older now, I still consider myself a programmer for smaller tasks, especially when I need to get a task done and I can't find a program to do it, I'll just code it and do it myself. But often times, I find myself more as a coder, especially with PHP, often just modifying code to fit my needs more than programming it on my own. Occasionally, the programmer mode sets in when I need something done and can't find the code to do it, or the code is exactly what I needed but doesn't do exactly what I need and just needs to be changed in order to perform in the same manner, than I will hard code it.Whenever I refer to programming, I always call it "hard coding." Coding: modifying, rearranging, using pre-written scripts.Hard Coding: writing, rewriting, changing entire scripts.

You have to make your choice.First of all: If he's still a trouble maker, than don't deal with him. Don't deal with that crap. Believe me, run the other way. It will only lead to pain and heartache and possibly heart break.Also, if he hasn't finished school, this is another indication of staying away.I don't care if your in love with him. You have to get out of love with him. A man without an education isn't going anywhere and love certainly isn't going to do anything about it.Now if you don't know if he has changed or not, than you should just try talking to him. Get to know him and figure him out. Don't go into things. But just talk to him. Feel him out.As you get older, you will realize you should not sweat the small stuff, and if you can make a connection, develop a relationship, or make a friend, you should. Especially if you have a grudge or anger towards someone, you should definitely do all in your power to forgive. You don't have to forget. But holding it in your heart is going to drive you crazy.I suggest you not exploding with anger or with your loving feelings towards him until you see who he is, how he has changed, what he is about. DO NOT LET YOURSELF BE BLINDED BY LOVE. If you see that he isn't for you.. if you sense any red flags, they are red flags for a reason! Don't ignore those! So if you see him again, stop being so mad. And just let him talk to you and have a conversation back. You'll feel better if you do.And you won't always have to wonder what if, or have any regrets because of it.If things don't work out, that's life. You'll move on. He'll move on. And life will continue as it always has and always will.Best of luck to you.