P50 Allied Bloggers » Technology

How To Choose The Best Web Hosting Service?

AlliedBloggers — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 20:18:06 +0000

If you are doing business online or thinking of establishing an online presence, web hosting is something that sooner or later you will be coming across with. Having to choose between a good and a bad hosting provider is now more difficult than ever as not only there so many of them, one could easily get overwhelmed by so much “things” they offer. The real question you should be asking yourself when shopping for your web hosting provider are not necessarily the “cheapest” ones.

So, what should you be looking for to help you decide?

There are many ways to do that? One fast and easy way to do it is simply to ask people that you know. This is a proven method as they can provide you with an honest opinion, since they already have the experience to talk about their providers. However, if you don’t have anyone specific in mind to ask for advice, then this is where things start to complicate a bit. You can of course search for information and scour through the thousands of articles out there, until you get satisfied. This is a way to go, but it can be very time consuming.

Another way to go is to use the experience and insights of specific sites that actually do nothing but review, rate and provide you with just about anything you need to know about web hosting. The advantage of using these sites are priceless compared to “rogue” articles out there, that do nothing but pitch you with crap to make a sale.

Such specific sites can offer you information that goes beyond just prices and the so called “unlimited everything”. The problem is that which of them actually deliver what they promise? Hard to know, unless you are backed by a service that is reputable and rated by humans.

Here are some things that you should be concerned about..

User interface (friendliness)
Tutorials (preferably video)
Upload time
Reliability
Technical & Customer Support
Software
Disk Space & Bandwidth

Web Hosting Deals, is one of these review sites that provide in-depth information on just about every major web hosting providers that exists. More over, they not only rate and compare web hosting providers, they will actually provide you in most cases some great deals. When available, you can also get some cool discounts. They also provide you with web hosting guides, tips and reviews for popular and reputable hosting companies.

So next time you want to shop for web hosting providers, be sure to check out what web hosting deals has to offer. After all, this is what they do, offer a neutral site for comparing and purchasing hosting products. Their ultimate objective is to help you find the solution for your hosting needs.

This post brought to you by FamousBloggers Online Marketing Competition

CurationSoft: Creating Content Has Never Been Easier

AlliedBloggers — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 18:24:28 +0000

Everything is good. You have a great looking site, and ready to take you online business to the next level. You’ve got all your “marketing tools” up and ready to promote your business. You have selected a few elite affiliate networks to work with, and you are all systems go.

Now, what’s missing? The hard part, generating content. Without content, there is nothing for your audience to share or talk about. Without content there is nothing to SEO. Without content, there is nothing for anybody to link back to. Without content, your marketing efforts can be seriously hampered as you need to offer something of value to your potential visitors. Without content, you know the drill…

Read full review of CurationSoft: Creating Content Has Never Been Easier

You can also check out: Best Content Curation Tools

PicFull Free Online Photo Editor

AlliedBloggers — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 19:10:25 +0000

I get a few dozen requests a week from applications that are looking for a review here at DragonBlogger.com and there are many that fall into the online photo editing space. One that just grabbed my attention last week was Picfull which is a free online photo editor that makes it simple and easy to upload photo’s and add some effects to them and share them on your favorite social media networks.

I like varying up profile pics and making them work more than just for a single shared image occasionally. So I decided to take one of my profile pics and modify it with Picfull to see how it comes out.

Read full story on Use Picfull for Fun Online Photo Editing

Tips to Reduce Security Risks in Wireless Networks

AlliedBloggers — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 15:07:19 +0000

Almost everywhere we go, from coffee shops, restaurant, malls and even buses and airplanes, we enjoy the benefit of being able to go online and connect to the Internet. Thanks to the power of WiFi. Most of this WiFi service is being offered for free as part of the additional services being given by different establishments to their customers. If ever there is a charge, like in some hotels, the rate is relatively affordable and it sometimes come wit discounts and coupons or they even offer promos like unlimited surfing for a week, additional hour of surfing after meeting a minimum number of surfing hours and more. Imagine you can connect to Facebook, tweet in Twitter, check your email, shop for shoes and bags on sale, and many more even when mobile.

But as much as we enjoy the convenience and benefits of being online while mobile, it also poses great security risks too. IT experts are saying that cyber crooks are targeting mobile OS, as they are easier to attack. There are even some browser extensions available that can be use to intercept unencrypted cookies from websites on any WiFi network, thereby stealing loin credentials for site such as Facebook, email and more.

Read full story on Tips to Reduce Security Risks in Wireless Networks

Five Best WordPress Plugins For Affiliate Marketers

AlliedBloggers — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 15:44:40 +0000

As a blogger I’m a bit of a plugin hog and I firmly believe that it’s the huge suppository of available plugins that make WordPress the huge success that it is. Don’t get me wrong, even without the plugins WordPress is the best blogging platform out there but adding plugins to the equation just makes it do so much more. There are plugins that deal with spam and there are plugins that make WordPress blogs more efficient. There are plugins that reward your readers, like commentluv and do follow, and there are plugins that help you with your quest to make an online income.

Which brings me to this post where I plan on showing you what I believe to the 5 best free wordPress plugins for the affiliate marketer, or indeed any blogger that wants to boost their online income.

Read fulls story on Five Best WordPress Plugins For Affiliate Marketers

What Steps Have You Taken To Prevent Identity Theft?

AlliedBloggers — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 19:23:28 +0000

Having our website or blog hacked by some lowlife scum would have to be one of our greatest fears. There are many ways that they could do this including placing malicious code on the blog, linking to sites of disrepute or horror of horrors corrupting the database causing us to lose everything. All that hard work gone to waste!

There is something that is so much worse though and unfortunately the Internet has increased this problem astronomically. Of course I am talking about identity theft and this problem is so huge that an industry has grown around identity theft protection. While I’ve talked so much about this on one of my other blogs those posts can only serve as a warning to others.

Read full story: What Steps Have You Taken To Prevent Identity Theft?

Automatically Backup Data Online Free With Dropbox

AlliedBloggers — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 16:55:32 +0000

Dropbox is a great way to auto-update or backup Gigabytes of data online for free, which you can retrieve from the internet wherever you go. Just install the quick-setup package and you’re ready to auto-sync/backup up to 10GB of data on your account. On signing up with a referral link like http://www.getdropbox.com/ you get an additional 250MB, while the referrer gets an additional 250MB for referring you!

Setting up a FREE Dropbox account is very simple:

1) Follow the link above and sign up for a FREE Dropbox account using your email ID and any password.

2) Once the account has been registered, you can download the Dropbox desktop software program to your Windows or Linux based computer

Read full story on Automatically Backup Data Online Free With Dropbox

Page Speed Test, Webmaster Tools And SEO

AlliedBloggers — Fri, 06 May 2011 18:07:04 +0000

You all probably know by now that page speed is an important ranking factor for determining your position on search engine rankings. While this is true, I am of the opinion that more important than this is to provide your readers with the best possible user experience and having your website load quickly not only achieves that but also avoids from “casual” visitor to quickly abandon your site if it takes too much time to load. When this happens, you loose potential readers (or customers) and that is something you don’t want to happen.

Optimize Page Speed

To optimize your page speed, you first will want to know how long your pages load and detect if any, which components are taking too much to fully render. Having the right SEO tools for this is essential as the results will provide you with some insights of what to tackle. One the most obvious tools available for performing this test is Google’s Webmaster Tools. Although Google Webmaster Tools (under the Labs Tab) does this, it provides you with “average” data and basically directs you to use another tool, which is not the object of this post today.

Read full story on: Page Speed Test, Webmaster Tools And SEO

WordPress Blocks Guest Bloggers from Using YouTube Embed Code

AlliedBloggers — Fri, 06 May 2011 02:05:05 +0000

WordPress by default doesn’t allow “contributor” accounts or guest author accounts to put javascript or certain other code like object,iframe into posts. When a guest blogger or contributor account attempts to submit for review or switches between HTML and VISUAL editor WordPress will trim the code and break any attempt to insert or embed video manually into the WordPress blog post. Fortunately there is a fantastic WordPress plugin called Viper’s Video Quicktags which allows you to easily embed YouTube, Vimeo, Veoh or Blip.fm video on your post by clicking a button or using shortcode.

Image Credit: dragonblogger

Read full story on: WordPress Blocks Guest Bloggers from Using YouTube Embed Code

WinX DVD Author – Free DVD Authoring Software

AlliedBloggers — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 16:43:53 +0000

WinXDVD

There are a lot of free CD/DVD burning software available on the Internet that will let you rip CDs and DVDs, burn files into CDs or DVDs but when it comes to DVD authoring software (creates a DVD video capable of playing on a DVD player), it’s hard to find a good free version. So today, I’m gonna share with you a reliable and free DVD authoring software that I use for creating DVDs (complete with chapter menu & subtitles) from video files.

Created by Digiarty, WinX DVD Author used to be a commercial DVD authoring software that cost $49.95 until about 2 months ago when the company offered it for FREE. I don’t know the reason behind it but I’m glad they did and I’m sure a lot of people do too as WinX DVD Author does a great job of converting all sorts of video files ( MKV, M2TS, M4V, MP4, FLV, MPEG, MOV, RM, RMVB, H.264, AVI) into DVD format.

Read full story on WinX DVD Author – Free DVD Authoring Software