Where to find Copyright-Free Stock Photos on the Internet

Many people are visual and understand concepts better when they see graphics or images. Certainly websites that include some photos make the user experience nicer. But short of hiring an expensive photographer every time you want a photo, posting photos on your website can become a nuisance searching for copyright-free material. Because of this, we feel that we should let you in on some little secrets of where to find copyright-free stock photos on the web.

Microsoft is a haven for stock photos. Just go to their clip art, free images, photos and sounds page and you will find many categories which include over 3,000,000 (three million) graphics! Because of Word, Publisher, and Power Point, Microsoft offers the images online, as there are too many to put on a disk. Plus they are regularly adding new photos so you might just find what you need.

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Promoting your Blog/Site through Directory-Style Review Blogs

Creating a blog or web site won’t just miraculously bring in loads of visitors. There’s millions of web sites on the web, and it’s very likely quite a few of them are talking about the same things you’re talking about. If you want to stand out on the internet, you better do some promotion.

In our online marketing section, we talk about some of the possible techniques such as article marketing, the more expensive Pay-Per-Click option or even social networks like Facebook or Twitter. There is however one more very realistic option: getting your site reviewed or mentioned on a directory-style “website review” blog. Hundreds of blogs post about web sites like yours, and show them off to their readers. For a new site, being featured on a blog like that is priceless, as it not only brings in visitors clicking through from those blogs – but also a link back to your site that the search engines can follow.

Finding sites like this isn’t hard. Type “site review blog”, “review blogs” or something similar into your favorite search engine, and you’re good to go. Most of these sites have a contact page that allows you to suggest your site for inclusion…

The Importance of keeping file sizes of your images small

weight loss imagesPhotos, images and graphics are great additions to any website. A graphic helps people to understand the topic and gives them an instant frame of reference. Graphics also make beautiful headers or logos which instantly define your website. The funny part about images is – people usually think the site with graphics is better. Even if a plain site has better content and more information, visitors automatically gravitate to images.

Despite the fact that images are beneficial, there are rules in their use, and ignoring internet protocol could be a disadvantage to your website. After all, web browsers give users the option of turning graphics off which means there is a valid reason for not loading images.

Unfortunately, many webmasters get carried away with their perceptions of what visitors need. They either think big is good or they do not think at all, and just upload all kinds of massive file sizes to the server. But, the bottom line is if you use a large photo, expect there to be negative consequences.

Following is a list of reasons why you must limit your images and understand the importance of keeping file sizes of your images small.

  1. Big graphics make your pages load too slowly. This in turn forces your visitors to leave and no-one sees your website anyway. You have now lost your chance to make money!
  2. Search engines are seriously thinking about adding “load time” equations to their algorithms. Specifically, this means that a site that takes too long to load for whatever reason (server, large file sizes, viruses), will be penalized because the pages are not useful to internet users. And if you think about this, it makes sense because there are simple ways to avoid these issues.
  3. Probably the most important reason why your image file sizes should be smaller is how people connect to the internet. Although broadband is popular, dial-up on telephones is still the predominant way to access the internet for most users. You have effectively removed yourself from the market if you post large photos!
  4. Also, although you may think that people should get better computers, the truth is many people still use older computer hardware, older browsers, and older operating systems. No-one cares how good your photos are if they take twenty minutes to load.

Here are a few pointers about making the right size image files.

  1. Do not resize your photos in the html. I am not exactly sure why but there was a period years ago when it seemed to be acceptable to upload any size photo to the server, and within the html code, where the image was called upon, to give it smaller width and height attributes. Now, it just doesn’t make any sense to do this. You are creating more work for the server, and are still causing the page to load slowly because the photo has to be crunched before the person sees it.
  2. Use a compression software or utility to make the file size smaller. There are many free ones available and programs like Photoshop have the feature.
  3. Just make the image smaller yourself. This can be done in so many programs and one may already be on your computer.
  4. For the internet, photos should really not be any higher then 72 dpi. And if your digital camera shoots at 300 dpi, make sure to compress those photos for your website.
  5. Photo quality images are usually given the extension (.jpg) whereas clipart is (.gif). If your photos look good as GIFs, then go ahead and do that, otherwise keep as JPGs but follow one of the methods to resize the images.

How to start using Dom4J

The video is a little bit of a mediocre quality; but the author makes a great and simple tutorial to get you started with Dom4J!

  • 00:20 How to download and start using dom4j?
  • 00:50 How to use dom4j in a java project?
  • 01:40 How to use dom4j to generate xml?
  • 03:00 How to add elements using dom4j?
  • 04:10 How to use dom4j to create a document?
  • 04:30 How to add text to an element in dom4j?
  • 05:30 How to format xml when using dom4j?

Copyright issues with photos on your site: how to prevent them?

PhotographerCopyrights are indeed serious considerations when building and maintaining a website. Unfortunately many people believe that anything on the internet is in the public domain and can be used freely. This is simply false and is actually very far from the truth, and can be quite costly if ignored. The bottom line is using photos, videos or content that comes from another person is simply theft. Nobody in their right mind would go to the work of creating and publishing photos with the express purpose of letting someone else take what is their livelihood. Copyright on the internet should be taken very seriously.

Photos are particularly vulnerable to online theft because everyone wants their websites to look good and basically they do not want to pay for photos. But whether photos are marked with a copyright or not, it is generally assumed that they are owned by the person who created them and published them.

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b2evolution Review

b2evolutionThe number of open source content management systems is on the rise. b2evolution is one such platform that is embraced by many web administrators to host their websites. Like the other competing CMS platforms, the end-user is provided with an assortment of features in b2evolution.

One of the best advantages that are often touted in the geek circles is the ease of installation of b2evolution in a particular web space. The need to edit the configuration files is absent in this platform and this makes the b2evolution an ideal CMS platform for novice web administrators. However, never underestimate the capabilities of this open source web publishing software package.

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Nucleus CMS Review

nucleuscmsIf you are searching for a suitable CMS platform that enacts in a lightweight manner (while completing the tasks), allow me to introduce you to Nucleus CMS. There are certain requirements expected from a content management system. Some of them include stable operation without compromising the integrity of the website and ease of maintenance of the website. The learning curve must not be steep either. Nucleus CMS fulfills all the above-mentioned criteria. Web administrators often consider this software package for swiftly creating good-looking dynamic websites. The vantages that are in store for you if you opt for Nucleus CMS will be highlighted in the rest of the sections.

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Making a Fan Page for your Business/Web site on Facebook: The Benefits

FacebookIt is generally agreed that the more advertising, especially free, that a business or website can undertake, the better. And so it seems that making a fan page on Facebook would have its benefits. But before we speak about the advantages of FB fan pages, we want to make you aware of two critical points.

  1. Just because you already have thousands of “friends” on Facebook does not mean they will quickly and immediately run over to your fan page. We have seen that even seasoned internet marketers and well-known individuals have had to use some creative techniques to get their “friend” base interested.
  2. It is a lot of work to get users to your Facebook fan page. In addition, once they are there, you need to interact with them to make the page successful and keep their attention. You really need to make it useful for them because they are not going to waste valuable time coming to see nothing. Likewise, the page needs to be updated regularly. Ignoring the page will backfire on you and your marketing efforts.

Now that you understand that Facebook fan pages do not equate with instant success, let’s take a look at the reasons why you should persevere and the benefits associated with making a fan page for your business or website on Facebook.

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Review: Microsoft pubCenter

Although a latecomer to the contextual marketing landscape, Microsoft pubCenter was launched in the summer of 2008 to a very small group of web publishers to help advertisers in the Microsoft adCenter program (previously known as MSN adCenter). Like Google AdSense and Yahoo! Publisher Network, publishers or webmasters are paid revenues based on ads that are served on their websites, and on which their users click. Still in Beta mode, the program is offered to US webmasters only with appropriate tax ID numbers.

Interestingly, as early as 2005, MSN announced that they would be soliciting publishers for the program. They even said the new name would be ContentAds. But by 2007, the program remained solely a way to advertise on Microsoft properties only and not an outside network, thereby avoiding the need for website publishers. They did align themselves with large-scale publishers such as Facebook and Digg and served sponsored links, but nothing for the rest of the web community.

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ExpressionEngine Review

ExpressionEngine LogoWordPress, Movable Type and Textpattern were free CMS platforms. ExpressionEngine, on the other hand, is a proprietary platform developed by EllisLab. I fully understand the queries that might pass through your mind – should one opt for ExpressionEngine, especially when there are other free alternatives. The bottom line is simple as well as straightforward; those who have no working knowledge of PHP will find the ExpressionEngine to be exceedingly useful. In simpler terminologies, the novice web administrators will like this CMS platform. The various flavors of ExpressionEngine along with their subtle differences will be outlined in the following passages.

ExpressionEngine is available in three flavors – Core, Personal and Commercial. The Personal and Commercial versions are priced $99.95 and $249.95 respectively. This is a onetime fee, though. The Core version of ExpressionEngine is available for free. If you ask me, I would suggest you to familiarize yourself with the Core version before jumping ships and purchasing the pricier versions. The Core version does not come with technical support too. In case of doubts, you will have to consult the official documentation or ask for support from the community forums.

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