Techie-Gyan » Google

Google Starter Guide on SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

shaguna — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 07:49:36 +0000

How does one improve traffic on a website? Well there are various ways e.g. online marketing/advertising, through search engines, social networking etc.
The higher the page in search results, the better probability it has of being clicked and hence more visitors would reach the website through a search engine.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a process of improving the visibility of a website to search engines through natural and organic/unpaid methods. SEO is usually about making small modifications here and there in your website. When viewed individually, these are small changes, but in totality they can have a major impact on the site’s user experience and performance in organic search results.

Here’s an interesting article to get you started – Google’s Search Engine Optimization – Starter Guide.

Before going ahead, do remember that SEO would help your website gain better positioning in search results, but main focus of a website should be it’s content & users, not just search engines.

A list of useful software tools – 3

Aditya — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 17:58:24 +0000

Top100 Tools for Learning 2010

View more presentations from Jane Hart

WordPress – Sending Email with WP Mail SMTP

shaguna — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 12:43:26 +0000

While setting up WordPress/Wamp on my windows machine, I had not configured the email settings. But later realized WordPress needs to send emails to the admin/authors/new users etc for various purposes and it is important to have this ability, specially, if you intend to have more than one user(s). By default, WordPress uses the PHP mail() function for sending emails. But there are various plugins available that can give you some added advantages. One such plugin is WP Mail SMTP. It gives the user an option to send emails via SMTP or PHP mail(). The plugin also adds a configuration page to Dashboard->Settings->Email where you can configure the email settings. This plug-in is especially useful for Windows users who’d like to use Gmail or Google Apps as mail service, since it provides SSL authentication that PHP mail() and many other tools don’t.

This is more usable where you are out of a regular hosting service environment. These hosting services generally provide mail server also with pre configured php.ini file so that you do not need to use gmail for sending email.

Before using the plugin, ensure that you do not use a confidential id since the password stays exposed on the email configuration screen.

Steps for installing and configuring WP Mail SMTP:

1. Download WP Mail SMTP plugin from wordpress.org

2. Install it by unzipping and copying the folder to your /wp-contents/plugins/ folder.

3. Go to Dashboard->Plugins and Activate the plugin

4. You will now see a new Email option under Settings, go there and configure. If you use Gmail or Google Apps, following settings can be used:

From Email: The complete email address from which the mail is to be sent e.g. myfirstblog@gmail.com
From Name: Sender’s name e.g. The Author. I don’t think the plugin utilizes it, the email is rather sent from your the blog’s name.
Mailer: Select “Send all WordPress emails via SMTP“
SMTP Host: The SMTP provider. Google uses smtp.google.com
SMTP Port: Google’s port 465
Encryption: Select “Use SSL encryption”
Authentication: Select “Yes: Use SMTP authentication
Username: Your google user name e.g. myfirstblog
Password: Your password.

: Email Setup Sample

5. Save the option using the “Update Options” button.

6. I know you see a Test button, but wait a minute, you need to enable ssh on PHP first. I use WAMP, if you are using something else, you need to figure out how to do this. To enable ssh, go to Windows Quick launch->WAMP->PHP->PHP exensions and select php_openssl. Make sure that the option is checked. Restart all services.

: Enable php-openssl

7. Now you are ready to test the pplugin. Send a test mail by giving an authentic email id in space for “To“. Check your email, and you have it!

8. You can further test it by making a new user and checking the activation email.

Text to Speech – Free tools

Aditya — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 17:19:40 +0000

For creating IVRs (Interactive Voice Response), TTS (Text-to-Speech) is very essential. Generally two types of voice response is played on IVRs, a) Static Response 2) Dynamic response.

First types of response is generally standard greetings and menu announcements. Second type is the media which is played against user’s input to verify it. Here I am trying to list some free online tools which can help to create first type of media. It may also be used for second type of media but that may require some commercial contract etc.

1. Google Translate: Just try this , Click this link or type following in address bar of your browser, http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?q=This+is+Google+Tts.

This is really cool thing provided by Google and the voice quality is also very impressive. It can used to get mp3 files for the text requires and can be used as needed.

2. AT&T Labs Natural Voices Text-to-Speech: Visit the link, It is more advanced and more options are provided here. You can choose the language and voice and then the text will be spoken in that language and voice.

Other than limited private use, You have to buy this service in case you want to use it commercially. Here is the list of restrictions

3. iSpeech: Visit www.ispeech.org to check this out. Demo can be used for limited use as it is generally mixed with an audio advertisement of iSpeech. For extensive use, It can be used commercially as well. Web service automation can also be used with this service.

You can also convert your blog into podcast here.

Server Not Found – DNS resolution failing

Aditya — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 10:04:28 +0000

I have been facing this problem from some time. When ever I try to open a website, mostly for the first time I get Server not found (Firefox, IE and Chrome) on all browsers. And with a refresh second or third time successfully get the home page opened on my browser. This is bearable couple of times in a day but when it happens mostly during the day it creates productivity loss.

This was not only limited to websites/browsers but also with other services like subversion commits and updates. Initially thought the problem is with the internet service but service was consistent and was not going down frequently. Next suspect was the DNS resolution and that was the actual culprit. Things were working fine with IP addresses but not with domain names.

With the help of one of my friends, It seems that i resolved the issue. There are DNS services provided by OpenDNS and Google which you can use to make your DNS name resolution faster and more reliable. I used Open DNS (208.67.222.222) for preferred DNS and Google DNS (8.8.8.8)for alternate DNS(Please see screen shot below for DNS settings required).

Use above settings and make your internet faster and reliable.