This depends on your reasons for choosing a hosting provider, is it that you are changing from one to another and if so why? For instance you may want to look for another provider because your websites are constantly down and you are sick and tired of having to chase up support everythme. You loose money and time. In this case your first question when choosing a host would be how stable the server is.

Another reason you may want to switch is because the webhosting company are not responding to your emails so you need to find out how good the support is if any and how contact is made with them. Your best option would be to look for a company that provides 24hr live chat service. You never know when you might need it. Some may only offer email support and you might not be happy about having to wait for an email to arrive when you have an urgent problem. Also making phone calls which can even be outside your country can be expensive. So you want to have support on hand 24/7. You may also want to add to that question how good the quality of that support is. It can be the most annoying thing to get a response from a hosting company, with high expectations that the response is going to be good, only to find out that its inaccurate and poor. In saying this you cant always trust what one person tells you or what you read about on their website, afterall they are not going to tell you something you dont want to hear. The best thing you can do is go to a host review website like this one and see how other people have rated that host company amd what they have to say.

Also ask the question regarding backups and restores, how you go about moving databases when switching to a new server. Most companies do this for you which is what you want unless you know what your doing of course.

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Here are some tips for getting friends to digg for you

• As we know social bookmarking is all about being social. Even if you have the best story in the world you will have a tough time making the front page of digg if you don’t have any digg friends. An average story submitted by a someone with lots of friends on Digg has a much better chance of making the front page. The key to becoming succesful on Digg is to make friends with people you know outside of Digg as well as inside, make friends with people that submit stories that interest you and vote for the stuff they submit. People do notice you have voted for them and in return in most cases they will vote for yours too and might even befriend you.
• Search for people who are submitting stories in categories same as you or in those categories that you like and add them as friends as well as vote for their stories. This way you will build a good network of friends. Remember its not just about voting for their stories once but being consistent, go back the next day and see if another stories has been submitted by your new friend and if you like it vote for it, in other words give them first preference over others.
• Take some time out and browse to your friends profile for their email or website address. Try to establish a conversation with that person, it could be anything such as leaving a comment on their website or asking a question relating to their website interest. You want to try and gain that persons respect and in return they will gain yours.
• For simplicity a lot of people tend to use the same profile name on various sites, so try to think of a name that sounds friendly and sociable. Don’t use branded profile names that match your domain names for instance. This will just put the user off and give them the impression you are out to just market your site.
• Use avatars as this will give you an identity and try to choose one that shows your personality.

Here are some things you should not do

• Create different login accounts. It requires a lot of work to keep them looking “natural” and Digg are banning users that do this. It’s not worth the risk.
• Create a friend voting list. Digg can track who is voting and any dodgy voting patterns. If the same people vote for your stories all the time then Digg will find out easily and you risk being banned. A story that gets 15-30 votes in a short period of time immediately after you have submitted your story is going to look suspicious.
• Send an email out to all your friends each time you submit a story and want people to vote.

Final word, Don’t be desperate and become a digg spammer. Enjoy it and be patient. Don’t expect 100’s votes if you’re a new member, eventually you will become popular and if you’re lucky your story will hit the frontpage.

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Here is a top 10 list of Digg tools. These tools were created using the Digg API created for the Digg API contest and the following top 10 were the chosen finalists

1. Digg - DiggGraphr Desktop

DiggGraphr Desktop is a desktop application written in Apollo that allows you to look through Digg stories in treemaps structure. It also allows you to modify specific features as well as choose the channels you are interested in.

2. Mini Digg

Mini Digg is a small Apollo Digg application that allows users to view stories and see the story activity, with user settings and a story tracking feature that allows to save favorite stories for future tracking.

3. D’Lite

D’Lite is an Apollo application that utilizes Digg’s API to retrieve their amazing data, information, and processes. Some of the cool features of this application include pagination, favorites, network detection, and smart auto refresh.

4. DiggCity

Digg City shows the 10 newest popular stories. The more popular the story gets, the taller the building. When someone diggs the story, a stick figure representing that user is added. This stick figure will then go inside the building or story that he has just Dugg.

5. Digg Watch

Digg Watch is a tool that lets users browse Digg and grab interesting information from stories, like who Dugg what stories and how many Diggs a story gets over time. You can also browse pages of submitted stories right in the application.

6. Word Web

Word Web analyzes the relationships between popular keywords and the stories they appear within. Words that appear more often are displayed more prominently, and you should click on these words to explore deeper connections. Built using Flex 2.

7. Wheel of Upcomming

Wheel of Upcoming displays recently submitted stories in a spiral pattern that a user can rotate using mouse gestures. Stories are color-coded based on activity. Users can select categories or subcategories. Story details are also made available.

8. DiggMob

DiggMob is a mobile interface for Digg in FlashLite 2.x. DiggMob displays the popular stories from a category, allows reading the teaser, and can direct the phone browser to the full article. Preferences are saved to the phone for easy entrance after the first run.

9. Digg Charts

Digg Charts is a flex application that generates charts comparing popular stories. Additionally, a graph is generated showing a selected story’s popularity over time. The user view allows viewing a user’s popular submitted stories.

10. Digg Expose

Digg Expose takes snap(.com) shots of pages from Digg and displays them in a configurable exposé © view. Drag the images around, sort them, or change the category. Enjoy.

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Top 10 Google Adsense ready Wordpress themes

Here is a list of 10 Google Adsense ready Wordpress themes for you to choose and download. You will see a link included to each theme’s home page as well as a download link.

The screen shots you see have been taken from the screen grabs of bogs running the specific theme.

Feel free to leave comments and recommendation of any of these themes or any that you use that you would like to see added to the list.

1. ProSense | Download



2. BlueSense | Download



3. AdSense Theme | Download



4. Morris Blur | Download



5. Tiglopedia | Download



6. Connections with Adsense | Download



7. Merah Putih | Download



8. Ads Minded | Download



9. Boqpod Adsense | Download



10. Boqpod Adsense | Download

What is it about Google Adsense Wordpress theme templates?

Well firstly if you don’t know anything about Google Adsense or what it is it’s suggested you click here to read about Google Adsense before reading on.

Effective ad placement on your website is important if you want to make good money from Google Adsense. Using a Google Adsense ready Wordpress theme template with noticeable ad blocks and optimized ad placements in the right places will help increase your click through rates.

How are Adsense Ready Themes different from other Wordpress themes?

A key component of all Adsense Ready themes is their consistency on incorporating related ads around content. When you see one of these themes you will notice how the ads and link units are carefully positioned above, beside and below each post to increase its click through rate as well as increase exposure.
Several themes will allow you to easily place Google ads wherever you want them however, the time and effort taking in doing this can be an issue and can also be difficult to master if you are not literate with php coding .You need to be able to understand basic php so you know exactly which template files to add your Google ads to so they appear on the pages you want them to appear on and in the exact spot you want them in. Usually the template files Google ads will go into are index.php, sidebar.php and single.php. You also need to be familiar with how to optimize your ad placement to get the most out of them

Why should I use Adsense Ready Templates?

The most obvious reason why you should use an Adsense ready theme is convenience and it saves times. You don’t have to sit there and plough through code and make any changes to the template files.

All you will need to do is change the Adsense publisher ID and you’re done. This does not take long and can be done easily by locating the code and simply overwriting the existing Adsense publisher ID with your own.

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To view the top 130 Social Bookmarking Sites please click here.

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For many of us we anticipate the long wait for a new release of Wordpress with ever more exciting features to be offered. Well WordPress 2.2 is finally here, and with some good features built in including over 200 bug fixes, here is a couple.

• WordPress Widgets you no longer need a separate plugin as widgets are now built-into the code by default. Wordpress 2.2 allows you to simply reorganize and customize your sidebar by using drag-and-drop. In my opinion having the widgets as part of the code is a great idea and it means that you don’t need to have the Widget plugin installed if you have already.

• Full Atom support, includes updating our Atom feeds to use the 1.0 standard spec and including an implementation of the Atom Publishing API to complement our XML-RPC interface.

Aaron Brazell has a great list of all the new features available in the latest release of WordPress, version 2.2.

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http://www.apollohosting.com
Rated a top Host by CNET and TopHosts
Apollo Hosting has hosted more than 165,000 websites and continues to grow by offering Total Solutions Hosting and award winning service to our customers. With Total Solutions Hosting, Apollo Hosting customers are given everything they need to Host, Build, Secure, Promote and Sell on their website. Premium tools such as Miva Merchant, Postini SPAM/Virus filtering and SiteStudio are included free. Plans starting at $6.96/month combined with 24/7/365 expert technical support and a 30 day money back guarantee.


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There are so many blogs online and more and more being created everyday. With so many free blog tools available it’s no wonder they are becoming so popular. One of the many advantages of blogging, is that the site is made of a few templates only which means easier management unlike, other sites that are made up of several pages. The bonus is you don’t need to be at the same computer to get access to your files, you can be anywhere in the world as long as you have access to the internet and then all you have to do is simply log into your admin panel and start creating, editing pages. Blogging tools like Wordpress also make blogging an exciting project as it offers so many features and plugins you won’t want to stop blogging because it makes it all that more fun. What’s more is that you have thousands of templates to choose from each with its own unique designs, feel and personality unlike some templates out there that just offer standard templates that all look the same.
Making the website is the easy part but what comes next is even more challenging and it can even be exciting if done correctly and consistently. The key is to remember traffic is important and without it your website wont be getting anyone coming to visit it.
I’ve built a few websites and the tips I am going to give you will show you the steps I take when creating a successful blog website. I can’t guarantee your success but I can help you by providing you with a checklist that I use to create my own blog websites. Hopefully you can use this step-by-step guide to create YOUR very own successful blog website. Remember there should be no “Under construction” no broken link, no unfinished posts when you start marketing.

1. Decide on a domain name for your site www.myblog.com. It is a good idea to choose a domain name that includes effective keywords and something catchy that visitors to your site will remember
2. Choose and download a custom blog template from a blogging tool like Word Press and Moveable Type. Word press is my favorite and is very popular. http://www.wordpress.org
3. Modify your blog look and feel. By this I mean changing the logo, replacing the standard footer, removing any unwanted sidebar widgets.
4. Research keywords - a very good keyword tool is Google Adwords Keyword Tool. You only need to enter one keyword or phrase and it shows several keyword variations. You can even order these by Keyword search volume, cost and ad position estimates or search volume trends. Google Adwords also allows you to search for site-related keywords. Another good keyword suggestion tool is Word Tracker.
5. Add social bookmark links for visitors to use so they can bookmark your site. These are available as plugins with blog tools like Wordpress. These can be added at the very every of every post on your site.
6. Use Meta Tags in all your posts. Again these are available as plugins
7. Use SEO title tags – what most people don’t know is that post titles are also used as title tags by Word Press. By using title tags you can ensue this doesn’t happen. You want to be using catchy keywords in your title that you have researched in step 4 above.
8. Create keyword rich categories but keep them short and not descriptive
9. Enable automatic trackback and ping functionality. These can be managed from your blog admin panel very easily.
10. Create Feedburner Pro account and activate feed tracking.
11. Sitemap – using sitemaps is important to ensure search engines like Google know your pages and how often they change and it makes your website easier to crawl by search engine spiders. You may want to investigate Google Sitemap Generator. www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/
12. Create a resource section on your blog, for example within your blogroll. Make sure you don’t just list any. Identify trustworthy blogs and websites that are relevant to your blog topic that others will find useful.
13. Monitor your site statistics to check the performance of your site and make changes if required and keep adding new content. Google Analytics is an excellent tool to use and it’s free. Just register your site, place the required code on your site and validate. It’s as simple as that. You can use this to determind how people find your site and where they are coming from.
14. Optimize your template by showing RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds and comments. You should then submit RSS feed and Blog URL to prominent RSS and Blog directories / search engines. Read RSSTop55 Best Blog Directory and RSS Submission Sites
15. Engage in an ongoing link building campaign.
16. If you have podcasters web sites or video content then submit to Podcast and Vlog (video blogs) directories.
17. Seek feedback on your blog by joining and participating in relevant forums and discussion threads and try to be an active member in the forums you join. Once a member you can create a signature that contains your URL blog address.
18. Research other blogs out there similar to your own and leave comments with your website URL.
19. Write new content regularly and make use of those researched keywords.
20. Monitor comments on your blog and try to respond even if it’s a simple thank you for dropping by. These people are your potential return visitors

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Over the past few years, the number of free web hosting services has gone down significantly. The quality of many of the free hosting services is imperfect and unreliable. Why? Well although the sound of free hosting sounds attractive it in fact is not and may contribute to your website not becoming successful. For some successful would mean making your site popular e.g. a news website where everyone reads the news and for others making it successful would mean earning some money e.g. baby online. Many reasons why this could happen well, for one, the amount of space you are given will be limited so you wont have the freedom to insert as many graphics as you would wish to and you won’t have the functionality to create forms and add interactivity such as forums, live chats etc, secondly, the majority of all free hosting services require you to place advertisement banners on your web pages and you can imagine how your visitors will be harassed by annoying pop-ups and advertisement banners. So if you want your site to attract visitors then this will surely turn them away. The last thing anyone wants is to have to keep closing pops ups everywhere. And thirdly, the support will be very poor seen as they are offering their service for free so if you’d run into problems with your site then you may struggle. There are many top hosting providers that offer excellent cheap hosting starting from as little as $6.95 a month from which you can get top of the line web hosting, with no advertisements, plenty of disk space, and very good customer support and admin tools.

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http://www.yahoo.com
Why Choose Yahoo! Web Hosting?

• Free Domain Name
• Easy web site building tools
• Virtually unlimited web pages*
• 24-hour toll free customer support

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