This looks like it will be good. The challenge starts on Wednesday, August 1st, 2007. So far, I have learned about some great new tools for your website, some I haven’t even heard of before. If you haven’t already, sign up now! Catch up on the blogs, podcasts, video podcasts, and do a little research on the websites he mentions in the videos such as Facebook, Technorati, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Digg, delicious, and Flickr. I don’t know how to use every one of them to their full advantage, but I think everyone’s in for a treat on Wednesday! Thirty Day Challenge Sign Up

CodeIgniter is an awesome tool if you want to learn PHP or start to use object oriented programming (OOP) with your new website. CodeIgniter is flexible with a small footprint and offers tons of features already built in, such as session management, active record use with mysql databases. The best part is it lets you use Model-View-Controller (MVC) programming. This way, your styling (view) is separate from your content (generated by controller) and lets you manipulate your raw data with a model. There are two awesome video tutorials on CodeIgniter to show you how powerful and easy CodeIgniter...

Nowadays, there are so many rules one must follow for a good rank in the top search engines. Search engines are almost as smart as humans reading your page content making sure your site is where search engine visitors want to go. The best way for potential customers to find your site is organically. After all, if someone clicks an ad to your website, and can’t find what they are looking for or the landing page isn’t relevant to what they are looking for, they will bounce (leave your site), leaving you paying for your ad that did no good. If you run an event planning company and someone...

When I went away to college I was only 100 miles away from my hometown, yet I seemed detached from what was happening in the world. I didn’t know what the cool songs on the radio were anymore; I didn’t know the lingo that my younger sister was talking (I felt like the parent in the text messaging commercial with the girl that talks to her BFF jill all the time). I fell behind in my area of expertise: web design! One day I received a call from a friend who wanted to partner up in a new classifieds website he was starting. He asked me what my opinion was on Ruby on Rails, Ajax and Web...

No, You aren’t going to lose any weight on this challenge. Well, maybe you will from the way the guys are talking on the website. The challenge is to make $10 in 30 days online. It starts August 1st, 2007. I haven’t participated in the challenge before, but it sounds interesting and fun! Especially with all my time spent researching SEO, blogging, online marketing, etc., this will be a great challenge and a chance to learn from the pros. Already having some experience building websites and general marketing may help, but I’m a newbie to the online marketing and website monetization...

A short but sweet list of guidelines to follow while building a web 2.0 website. Learn XHTML. Make sure your pages are XHTML transitional or strict. This will help with your visibility to search engines and cross-browser compatibility. XHTML Tutorial by W3Schools Learn CSS. With CSS, you can start separating content from appearance and CSS is more cross browser friendly than tables. One thing to avoid while programming with CSS is to use too many nested divs. If you start using too many, it’s kind of pointless to start using CSS rather than tables in the first place. If you are just...

Getting a dba (doing business as) can be good if you want to start a company but can’t come up with a name for it yet. I created an LLC which was just my last name, LLC until we could come up with a name for our new web company. When we did find a name for the company, all we did was file for a dba so we could do business as the LLC, just under another name. This way, you only have to have one bank account when you create the holding company. I am not a lawyer, but it seems like a good idea for the future if you want to create new companies under your original business name.

Just Do It! If you haven’t done it yet, it’s really easy to set up a company. 1. Come up with a name (this is the hardest part). 2. Visit your state’s website and do a preliminary search to see if the name you want to use already exists. 3. Apply for a corporation online on your state’s website! 4. Call the state and get your employee identification number over the phone. 5. When you receive your articles of organization from the state in the mail, go to the bank and open a bank account with your newly acquired papers and EIN. Easy! I think the whole process minus waiting...

Welcome to my first blog! After realizing that I spend a good amount of each day researching weblogs such as 9Rules (my favorite), I decided to start my own blog and share my research with everyone. I can start by providing links I found useful today. WordPress - www.wordpress.com 9Rules - 9rules.com P.S. Don’t try to use Safari 3 with WordPress 2.2!!