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Archive for the ‘Blogging’ category

How To Autoplay Your Youtube Video

September 30th, 2009

This tutorial is going to show you how to place a YouTube video on your own website or blog, and also how to make it automatically play when your site loads. The reason you might want to auto play a video on your website are for various reasons. One being, the number of your YouTube plays on YouTube will increase, giving you a better position. Rather than waiting for someone to play your video online, you have a view every time someone visits your website.

So for the first step is finding the YouTube video that you are looking for.

Once, you know this you need to copy and paste the Embeded code given to you shown in the screenshot below.

YouTube Embeded Code

When you first copy and paste your code to your website, this is the code that you are given.

 <object width="425" height="344">

<param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/-5ftmBBhssY&hl=en&fs=1&"></param>

<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param>

<param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param>

<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/-5ftmBBhssY&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed>

</object>

Notice in the code above I have highlighted the everything in the embed tags. This is the code that you are going to keep in order to auto play your video. You can go ahead and delete the rest.

The next step after you have cleaned up the code, is to add &autoplay=1 to the end of the embed source url (embed src) as shown below.

<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/-5ftmBBhssY&hl=en&fs=1&autoplay=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed>

</object>

Not as bad as you thought I’m sure. Let me know if you have any questions or comments!

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Posted in Blogging, Direct Marketing, Education, Web Design Tools, entrepreneur, search engine optimization

Tags: Amp Autoplay YouTube blog Embed Src Hl En Http Www Youtube im internet Lt Own Website Param Name Plays screenshot Source Url X Shockwave Flash Youtube Video

Installing Your Own Wordpress Blog

August 6th, 2009

### This instruction guide assumes you have some prior knowledge to PHP and MySQL and experience with web hosting. If you are a beginner to programming you can learn the languages mentioned at W3school.com while also contacting your hosting provider for more details.

This guide is for those that would like to install their own blog. According to Wordnetweb.com a blog is “a shared on-line journal where people can post diary entries about their personal experiences and hobbies.” The blog software is the system that allows you to post, and read others posts. Anyone can set up a blog for themselves, and hosting it on their own website. I am going to share with you the process of installing a blog, so you can start blogging today.

1. Finding and installing a blog

There are many companies that allow you to use their software to blog. They give you the system, and all that’s left to do is install it and you are ready to start writing. The most popular companies that make blogs are Wordpress, B2Evolution, Text Pattern, and Nucleus. The one that you have most likely heard about is Wordpress, as it is among the most popular. I am going to focus on Wordpress in this article, but feel free to explore the others.

The first step is downloading the necessary files to install Wordpress to your website. You can download the latest version here: www.wordpress.org/latest.zip

Once you finish downloading the latest version you can open this .zip file with your favorite unpacking tool (such as WinRar). The first file that you will notice is the ReadMe.html file (look below) that will give you your next set of instructions, don’t worry we are going to go through this together.

So first things first. You need to drag the folder Wordpress from the .zip file somewhere on your computer. We are going to change a few things before uploading it to your server.

The file that needs to be changed is wp-config-sample.php, which is located in the folder Wordpress that you just placed on your computer. Open this file with a text editor. In windows open Notepad (programs > accessories > notepad) and click file, then open. Find wp-config-sample.php which is, again, in the Wordpress folder. Once you open this file you should be seeing this code:

The first thing you have noticed is that you need a database, user name, etc. This is the point where you call up your hosting provider and find out this information (that’s what they are there for — although they might disagree).

You are going to need to ask these questions:

a. What’s my username to access MySql
b. What’s my password to access MySql
c. How do I create a database –> then get the name of the database you created

Also don’t forget to go to http://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/, to get your authorization key, secure auth. key, logged in key, and nonce key.

The fields that need to be changed are highlighted in the picture below:

After you have updated this information it’s time to rename wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php.

Now you need to upload the entire Wordpress folder to your server. Before doing so rename your Wordpress folder to “blog”. Log in accordingly and upload the folder to your main directory (generally this is public_html), I recommend using www.YourDomain.com/blog because this is a standard in the industry, a standard worth following.

You have everything uploaded and now it’s time to go to www.YourDomain.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php, to finish the installation of your blog. The instructions are fairly simple and will give you the password that you need to complete the installation as well.

Well now you are ready to start blogging! Of course there is a learning curve involved in installing your own blog, so if you don’t have the time or it’s not your specialty, I recommend getting someone to do this for you.

Let me know if something was left out, as I will surely give you the information necessary to complete the installation.

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Posted in Blogging, Wordpress

Tags: blog Blogging DIY hosting mysql php Wordpress

Tips For Blogging

July 1st, 2009

As Blogs are becoming more prevalent, there seems to be a lot of questions on how to make your Blog more successful. There are a few tips that can help you attract and retain the right audience needed for your Blogs success.

Stay On Topic

Finding your niche and sticking to it is a must. Find a few topics within your niche that you feel that you can talk about everyday. It can be a challenge to speak about the same industry everyday, but if you truly have a passion for it will come with time. Not only will your audience come to you for their answers, they will stay around for what you have to say in the future. Sometimes it’s nice to read Blogs for entertainment purposes only, but most people go to their favorite Blogs to gain information that they believe you will provide.
Create Original Content
This can be hard at times, but if you want viewers for the long term it is a must. Even if you have read ten entries on a certain topic, you can still add your twist without just reiterating what you read. Creating content that is not seen anywhere else is also a sure way to attract attention, although difficult, it is well worth it.
Focus On The Reader
We all know it’s much easier to talk about ourselves than providing information for others. You have to remember that people are viewing your Blog because they want to gain a new insight or paradigm than they are currently faced with. They do not want to hear about you, that is unless you are doing an experiment like Polyphasic Sleep. It’s okay to provide your readers with updates about your company, but do so sparingly as too much can look salesy.
Give Information For Informational Purposes Only
All too common are Blog posts that give half of the information the headline states, only ending in a sales technique for you to know the entire answer only after you pay for a service that person (or affiliate) is providing. People are smarter than you think, once they sense that you are not providing the information they were looking for, rather trying to sell them something, it will leave a bad taste in their mouth and they probably won’t be back. Even if that was the only Blog entry that was like that. Perry Belcher has some great information about this subject and social media in general. The purpose of your blog is like entertaining guests at your home, you invite them in and give them a hamburger and treat them like you would like to be treated, a friend. And maybe later, (although you shouldn’t bet on it) they will refer their friends to you, that is if they respect you and look to you as an authority.