Gronox

My first web site was nothing more than a brochure that was transformed into an HTML document and installed on the web. Since then I have learned that web pages can do a lot more than printed brochures, because they can offer several different ways to involve the visitors. Here are some of the ways that I use to bring my sites to life.

The first and most obvious kind of interactivity is to have a way in which someone can send you a message or contact you. You can do this by putting your e-mail address as a “clickable” link on your web pages. This is normally enough, but sometimes people are not surfing on their own computers and can’t click on the mail link because they don’t have an e-mail program on that particular computer. The answer is to put a contact form on the web site. This allows anyone to contact you, no matter where they are surfing. Also, as far as I can see, the contact form seems to get more responses than a simple “mailto” link, perhaps because it requires so little effort to complete.

If you do use a clickable mailto link on your website be sure to encode it and protect your email address from being harvested by spam merchants–see our article.

Forms can be activated by a CGI script, or if you are using Front Page, through the Front Page extensions. If you are unable to use either of these methods then you can get free form processing on a third-party server (such as bravenet.com), but you will have to put up with advertisements or pay a fee to have them removed.

Another way you can involve your readers on a regular basis is to offer a newsletter related to your site. The newsletter or e-zine in its simplest form can be nothing more than an update of new features on your web site. Or you can be more ambitious and write an article on themes related to your web site. For example, if your web site represents your bicycle shop, your newsletter could contain articles about cycling. Explain the scope of your newsletter with an announcement on your web site: “Get updates and information related to the themes of our website in a free e-mail newsletter” followed by a sign-up form where the people can sign up for the newsletter.

Start a Newsletter

In your newsletter provide links to your web site, and your products or services order pages. I find that whenever I send out a newsletter, traffic on the website increases as do orders for my products. Also provide information on how people can subscribe and unsubscribe, and tell people to forward the newsletter to friends and people who might be interested in your website.

You can keep people coming back to your site by using a bulletin board or online forum. The beauty of the bulletin board is that your visitors create your content. However, in order for this to work you must have enough traffic. If you have a Britney Spears fan site, then it should be no problem to get your bulletin board up and running. If your site doesn’t have a strong flow of visitors there is still a way in which you can use a bulletin board. Hold a special forum. Announce, on your site and in your newsletter, a specific period in which there will be a discussion on a topic: “Visit our special forum on Racing Bicycles which will be held from September 1-5. Participating in the discussion will be the webmaster and his staff of racing experts”. This is a good way to tie together your newsletter and your bulletin board to sustain interest in your site.

Put Up a Bulletin Board

In order to have a bulletin board you may have to install a script on your site. Or perhaps your hosting firm has a pre-installed bulletin board script. You can get bulletin board scripts for free or for a small fee. If you are not able to install a bulletin board once again you can get one hosted on another server for free (with advertisements) or for a monthly fee (without advertisements).

Finally, here is another idea on how to draw your visitors into the site. You’re an expert on something, that’s why you have your website! Start a questions and answers column on the site let your web visitors send in their questions and you and or your team of experts can give the answers. Award a prize to the person who sends in the best question of the month. It will help you to generate some useful and new content for your site and also let you know what your web visitors are thinking.

Taking this further, you can offer free advice on a one-to-one basis for visitors who have questions related to your product or service. Put a form on your web site. It can be right next to your product’s order button. Give the people a chance to either order your product or ask for more information. By offering good advice you will win the confidence of your web visitors, some of whom will eventually go on to purchase your products or services.

Donald Nelson is a web developer, editor, and social worker. He has been
working on the Internet since 1995 and is the proprietor of A1-Optimization,
http://www.a1-optimization.com, a firm providing search engine optimization,
copywriting, reciprocal linking, and other web promotion services. He
publishes a monthly ezine, A1-Web Promotion Tips, available at
http://www.a1-optimization.com/newsletter.html

What do you look for from St. Valentine’s Day? Romance, sex, the chance of marriage?
Here are seven ways to help you attract your woman and turn her on.

1. Flowers rarely fail. Red roses symbolise passion and romance and are always welcome unless, unusually, she hates them! Add a second bunch of your lady’s favourite flowers will tip the balance as it shows you notice her likes and dislikes.
2. If you are on close terms or if you would like to be – buy her a sex toy, some sexy lingerie, or if she likes role play, a sexy fantasy outfit.
3. Promise a weekend break in the romantic cities of Amsterdam, New York or Paris. If the budget is tight seaside resorts such as Brighton (in the UK) can be just as much fun.
4. Say you would like to do something she has always desired but you have shied away from, perhaps visiting somewhere, going to a show or maybe something more intimate …
5. Do your very best to be happy on the day – happiness is infectious and will make the day fun and good to look back on.
6. Make sure you compliment her – not only on her appearance but also her manner or perhaps a particularly good meal she has made an effort to cook for you. These things will boost her ego and give her confidence.
7. Suggest a massage evening together. If you are not sure how, buy a good book on giving a massage. Buy some good quality aromatic massage oil. Set up the room with candles and sensuous music. Take lots of time over the massage and take as far you both want it to go!

These seven ideas are not, of course, the only ones to make for a fabulous day. Use them, adapt them and use your own imagination to think up some more and you will be even more successful.

Abbie Acworth has had a long term interest in sex and sexuality and writes articles for sites maintained by http://www.newberry-it-ltd.co.uk/page1.html

Free Christmas ecards are rivaling their paper counterpart by allowing senders the simplicity, variety, and timeliness of electronic mail to greet their friends and relatives during the holiday season. More and more e-card senders are using free Christmas ecards to send their greetings because of the business of the season. Some free Christmas ecard sites offer multiple sending options for e-cards that allow users to send a free Christmas ecard to many people at once. During the busy Christmas season, sometimes sending Christmas cards is difficult to get around to, especially if using the traditional local mailing service.

Many free Christmas ecard senders like the convenience of electronic cards in order to save time, money and energy during the busiest of all seasons. Rather than have to deal with the hassle of shopping through card shops and greeting card stores, many Internet users have discovered that specialty, free Christmas ecards are located at many, many e-card sites. It has become much easier to sit down at the computer and browse through many free Christmas ecard sites. Finding the perfect, free Christmas ecard is not hard whether you choose a humorous, reflective, inspirational or jolly Christmas card.

Free Christmas ecards also appeal to many card senders because of the personalized features available through many e-card sources. Just as the hard copy Christmas cards allow personalized names and messages, so do free Christmas ecards. A free Christmas ecard takes personalization a step further by offering senders the ability to choose customized e-cards with music, pictures, animation and other attachments. E-card senders even know when and if their targeted recipients receive the free Christmas ecards through return e-mail receipts.

The holiday season can be much less burdensome, more fun and definitely cheaper by sending free Christmas ecards through many online e-card sources. Most e-card recipients love receiving a personalized version of a free Christmas ecard from someone who cared enough to spend time customizing an e-card. The short clip of drama that a free Christmas ecard provides for a recipient is sometimes worth a whole box of paper cards! Free Christmas ecards will be used by more senders this year than ever before to cheer family, friends, co-workers, and anyone in need of a hearty season’s greeting! “And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes…For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” (Luke 2:7a,11)

For more information about free christmas ecard, visit:
http://www.christianet.com/christianecards
http://www.christianet.com/christianecards/christmas
http://www.christianet.com

Hotel Rural Quinta De So Sebastio is a bed and breakfast in Viana do Castelo, located in Rua Faria Torres, 2 – Barroselas

QUINTA DE S. SEBASTIO – RURAL HOTEL, is a touristic unit rebuilt on the year 2003 from an old rural farm typical from the region north of Portugal. All its architectural work was designed to achiev an excelent comfort level only found on the best hotels. The main house has 11 rooms, cleverly distributed along the old building. One of the rooms is prepared for handicapped persons. In the main house there is also the breakfast and dinning room, livings, TV, library and games.

The Hotel as an external building with two double rooms with extra bed in an upper level open room and, as an option, a kitchnet and private living room. The multipurpose room is a complementary area for special events. Near the swimming pool, a bar, esplanade and sports equipments. The green area besides the swimming pool includes a tennis/football court, chidren corner, and walkings by the fruit trees.

The river Neiva valley

Between the Lima and the Cvado rivers, the Neiva valley as a unique charm running from the Oural mountain to the Atlantic ocean, aloung 42 Km of rural landscape. Green fields and pinewoods, hidding small villages and the river, that is the beauty of this region. If you are a history lover, one can find here and there, signs of ancien times, testimonies of old cultures reminding us our own ancesters. If you are a nature lover, just follow the river path from the mountain to the sea to feel the heart of mother nature. And if you also love sports, take a cannoo to go down the river. On summer time, the region has an explosion of local folk parties everywhere you look at, religion and tradition side by side.

Region (surrounding localities)

Many of these fees are fixed but some can be negotiated.

Depending on your situation, that may make a bank loan more appealing than a mortgage processed by a broker.

In Dutch it means: Woon je in Opmeer of Graafstroom en hebt u BKR’ Lenen met BKR is nog nooit zo eenvoudig geweest. Haal snel een andere caravan met geld lenen binnen 24 uur, 293174 euro is geen obstakel om te financieren. Van Brunssum tot Vlaardingen, geld lenen met BKR kan hier altijd.

In other words, the mortgage is a security for the loan that the lender makes to the borrower. Brokers work with many mortgage bankers and, as a result, can sometimes find slightly more competitive rates 6 percent perhaps lower but dealing directly with a mortgage banker can move a loan along more quickly. Some will quote you precise, competitive rates 3 percent. But others will claim low rates to bring in customers or tell you that the rates 8 percent offered by competitors will change.

Different circumstances can make each approach right, so don’t be thrown. Although most mortgage experts say that rates 10 percent are pretty much the same wherever you go, give or take this tiny 3 percentage. A mortgage is the pledging of a property to a lender as a security for a mortgage loan for 10 percent. It is a transfer of an interest in land, from the owner to the mortgage lender, on the condition that this interest will be returned to the owner of the real estate when the terms of the mortgage have been satisfied or performed.

Arranging a mortgage is seen as the standard method by which individuals and businesses can purchase residential and commercial real estate without the need to pay the full value immediately. While a mortgage in itself is not a debt, it is evidence of a debt of 10 percent. Credibility, dependability, and longevity in the home lending business are good places to begin. Start with credibility. It’s not easy to know if the prices quoted by lenders are reliable. See mortgage loan for residential mortgage lending, and commercial mortgage for lending against commercial property. See which lenders are charging fees 6 percent and for how much. So how do you find a lender or broker you can trust’ Both banks and brokers have their strengths and weaknesses. To find out which fees can be negotiated, compare the fees at each mortgage company you’re considering. Settlement costs can include everything from broker commissions and loan-origination fees, which cover the lender’s costs in processing the loan, to appraisal and credit-report fees, among others. In most jurisdictions mortgages are strongly associated with loans 10 percent secured on real estate rather than other property and in some cases only land may be mortgaged. Different lenders charge different fees. And of course, each loan and each borrower are different.

Thailand is a land of enchanting and exotic tastes for foreign visitors as I was to learn when I experienced the Water Festival of Loi Kathong on the island of Ko Chang.

Ko Chang

In October 2003, the travel bug seriously bit me. The symptoms led me to sell my business, pack a small backpack with necessary items and roll into Los Angeles International Airport with a major credit card and an attitude. A few days later, I was in Thailand and headed for the island of Ko Chang, located close to the border with Cambodia in the Gulf of Thailand.

Ko Chang is a heavily forested island with little towns full of beach huts. This is what I was exactly what I was after. Spending days lounging in the sun and contemplating my navel. Unfortunately, I soon experienced the local bacteria, which was not what I was after.

Since I had rented my beach hut for a week with payment in advance, the family running the place looked me upon favorably. They took pity on me and I was soon growing fat on Tom Yom Kung and other soups and curries. After four days, I had finally kicked the bug and felt halfway human. This was good news as it was the night of the full moon water festival.

I had heard of full moon festivals in Thailand. For hard partying tourists, this was apparently the night the big beach parties happened. In Ko Chang, it was a little different as the night was tailored to the actual Thais, not tourist.

The Loi Kathong Festival happens every full moon. Offerings are given to appease the water spirits. These offerings come in the form of banana leaf bowls with flowers, fruit, candles and incense. The candles and incense are lit and everyone heads down the beach and starts putting them in the water. It is one of the more amazing light shows you will ever see and beats Las Vegas hands down. Thousands, and I mean thousands, of little lights bobbing on the surface of the smooth ocean.

After the bowls comes one of the most visually amazing things I’ve ever seen. Everyone is familiar with the paper lanterns used in Asia. Typically, they come in the form of a rectangle form with a bamboo or light wire frame. Very popular with college students since they are cheap and look better than a bare light bulb.

For the festival, Thais would take these paper lanterns and close off the top. They would then affix a small this paper plate to the bottom with a candle on it. Light the candle, wait for the heat to do its work and they had an instant hot air balloon. Once the lanterns could float, you simply let go and off the slowly went over the ocean. It was a sight to see as there were thousands of them floating over the water.

As the festival wound down, the ocean had been transformed. The air was full of gracefully floating lanterns while the water itself was dotted with slowly bobbing points of light.

If you intend to travel to Thailand, make sure you schedule your trip around a full moon. It is a scene you’ll never forget.

Rick Chapo is with http://www.nomadjournals.com – makers of travel journals. Writing journals are great travel accessories and travel gifts for him or her. Visit http://www.nomadjournaltrips.com for more travel articles.

Maui is one of the world’s most famous vacation spots because of its beautiful beaches and landscapes. To make the most of your Maui vacation, plan ahead to enjoy some of the many unique attractions the island has to offer.

Try something out of the ordinary – how about a spelunking expedition in a lava tube, followed by a picnic in the Hala region? Several touring agencies in Maui use Limo-Vans, and limit tours to between six and eight people. Expert state guides lead the tours, with a variety of tours available, so there’s something for everyone.

This also may sound inviting, try the Maui helicopter tour and have the opportunity and the advantage of viewing the beautiful Garden Island from the air, these helicopter touring agencies offer a variety of tours that cover all the major points in the island of Maui. They can even let you have a quick look of neighboring Molokai if you want.

Boat charters offer great adventures that you can experience in Maui like snorkeling, fishing, and whale watching. One of the destinations preferred by tourists is the Molokini, and the charmingly named Turtle Town. Both of these spots offer some of the world’s best snorkeling. Charter boats can also transport you to the waters where the humpback whales swim.

Perhaps you’d like an exciting ride down Mt. Haleakala, a dormant volcano. The route for this adventure is entirely up to you, from 10 to 38 miles long down the mountainside. Professional guides escort you, of course, and the tour company will provide you with the equipment you’ll need, including a mountain bike, safety helmet, windbreakers and gloves. And since the ride starts above 10,000 feet, you’ll need cold-weather gear, because even paradise on earth can get cold.

Touring Mt. Haleakala via horseback riding is another adventure offered. Your tour guides will tall you all about Haleakala’s history and geological makeup, and about the flora and fauna native to Maui. The Kapalaoa Cabin Ride and the Ka Moa O Pele Junction Ride take you miles into the wilderness, providing you with unique experiences all day long.

Or perhaps you’d like to experience Maui’s underwater world firsthand. Aboard a 65-foot, fully air-conditioned submarine, you can descend 125 feet to see fascinating exotic fish and other marine life. The sub’s crew will explain how the ocean is so much a part of Maui’s rich culture.

There are even more exciting adventures that can help you make the most of your Maui vacation. This is just a taste of what’s to come.

Jeff Linaker has an interest in Travel & Holidays related topics. To access more information on maui hawaii vacation rental or on maui vacation home, please click on the links.

So you heard about someone stressing the importance of the robots.txt file, or noticed in your website’s logs that the robots.txt file is causing an error, or somehow it is on the very top of the top visited pages, or, you read some article about the death of the robots.txt file and about how you should not bother with it ever again. Or maybe you never heard of the robots.txt file but are intrigued by all that talk about spiders, robots and crawlers. In this article, I will hopefully make some sense out of all of the above.

There are many folks out there who vehemently insist on the uselessness of the robots.txt file, proclaiming it obsolete, a thing of the past, plain dead. I disagree. The robots.txt file is probably not in the top ten methods to promote your get-rich-fast affiliate website in 24 hours or less, but still plays a major role in the long run.

First of all, the robots.txt file is still a very important factor in promoting and maintaining a site, and I will show you why. Second, the robots.txt file is one of the simple means by which you can protect your privacy and/or intellectual property. I will show you how.

Let’s try to figure out some of the lingo.

What is this robots.txt file?

The robots.txt file is just a very plain text file (or an ASCII file, as some like to say), with a very simple set of instructions that we give to a web robot, so the robot knows which pages we need scanned (or crawled, or spidered, or indexed – all terms refer to the same thing in this context) and which pages we would like to keep out of search engines.

What is a www robot?

A robot is a computer program that automatically reads web pages and goes through every link that it finds. The purpose of robots is to gather information. Some of the most famous robots mentioned in this article work for the search engines, indexing all the information available on the web.

The first robot was developed by MIT and launched in 1993. It was named the World Wide Web Wander and its initial purpose was of a purely scientific nature, its mission was to measure the growth of the web. The index generated from the experiment’s results proved to be an awesome tool and effectively became the first search engine. Most of the stuff we consider today to be indispensable online tools was born as a side effect of some scientific experiment.

What is a search engine?

Generically, a search engine is a program that searches through a database. In the popular sense, as referred to the web, a search engine is considered to be a system that has a user search form, which can search through a repository of web pages gathered by a robot.

What are spiders and crawlers?

Spiders and crawlers are robots, only the names sound cooler in the press and within metro-geek circles.

What are the most popular robots? Is there a list?

Some of the most well known robots are Google’s Googlebot, MSN’s MSNBot, Ask Jeeves’s Teoma, Yahoo!’s Slurp (funny). One of the most popular places to search for active robot info is the list maintained at http://www.robots.org.

Why do I need this robots.txt file anyway?

A great reason to use a robots.txt file is actually the fact that many search engines, including Google, post suggestions for the public to make use of this tool. Why is it such a big deal that Google teaches people about the robots.txt? Well, because nowadays, search engines are not a playground for scientists and geeks anymore, but large corporate enterprises. Google is one of the most secretive search engines out there. Very little is known to the public about how it operates, how it indexes, how it searches, how it creates its rankings, etc. In fact, if you do a careful search in specialized forums, or wherever else these issues are discussed, nobody really agrees on whether Google puts more emphasis on this or that element to create its rankings. And when people don’t agree on things as precise as a ranking algorithm, it means two things: that Google constantly changes its methods, and that it does not make it very clear or very public. There’s only one thing that I believe to be crystal clear. If they recommend that you use a robots.txt (“Make use of the robots.txt file on your web server” – Google Technical Guidelines), then do it. It might not help your ranking, but it will definitely not hurt you.

There are other reasons to use the robots.txt file. If you use your error logs to tweak and keep your site free of errors, you will notice that most errors refer to someone or something not finding the robots.txt file. All you have to do is create a basic blank page (use Notepad in Windows, or the most simple text editor in Linux or on a Mac), name it robots.txt and upload it to the root of your server (that’s where your home page is).

On a different note, nowadays, all search engines look for the robots.txt file as soon as their robots arrive on your site. There are unconfirmed rumors that some robots might even ‘get annoyed’ and leave, if they don’t find it. Not sure how true that is, but hey, why not be on the safe side?

Again, even if you don’t intend to block anything or just don’t want to bother with this stuff at all, having a blank robots.txt is still a good idea, as it can actually act as an invitation into your site.

Don’t I want my site indexed? Why stop robots?

Some robots are well designed, professionally operated, cause no harm and provide valuable service to mankind (don’t we all like to “google”). Some robots are written by amateurs (remember, a robot is just a program). Poorly written robots can cause network overload, security problems, etc. The bottom line here is that robots are devised and operated by humans and are prone to the human error factor. Consequently, robots are not inherently bad, nor inherently brilliant, and need careful attention. This is another case where the robots.txt file comes in handy – robot control.

Now, I’m sure your main goal in life, as a webmaster or site owner is to get on the first page of Google. Then, why in the world would you want to block robots?

Here are some scenarios:

1. Unfinished site

You are still building your site, or portions of it, and don’t want unfinished pages to appear in search engines. It is said that some search engines even penalize sites with pages that have been “under construction” for a long time.

2. Security

Always block your cgi-bin directory from robots. In most cases, cgi-bin contains applications, configuration files for those application (that might actually have sensitive information), etc. Even if you don’t currently use any CGI scripts or programs, block it anyway, better safe than sorry.

3. Privacy

You might have some directories on your website where you keep stuff that you don’t want the entire Galaxy to see, such as pictures of a friend who forgot to put clothes on, etc.

4. Doorway pages

Besides illicit attempts to increase rankings by blasting doorways all over the internet, doorway pages actually do have a very morally sound usage. They are similar pages, but each one is optimized for a specific search engine. In this case, you must make sure that individual robots do not have access to all of them. This is extremely important, in order to avoid being penalized for spamming a search engine with a series of extremely similar pages.

5. Bad bot, bad bot, what’cha gonna do…

You might want to exclude robots whose known purpose is to collect email addresses, or other robots whose activity does not agree with your beliefs on the world.

6. Your site gets overwhelmed

In rare situations, a robot goes through your site too fast, eating your bandwidth or slowing down your server. This is called “rapid-fire” and you’ll notice it if you are reading your access log file. A medium performance server should not slow down. You may however have problems if you have a low performance site, such as one running of your personal PC or Mac, if you run poor server software, or if you have heavy scripts or huge documents. Is these cases, you’ll see dropped connections, heavy slowdowns, in extremes, even a complete system crash. If this ever happens to you, read your logs, try to get the robot’s IP or name, read the list of active robots and try to identify and block it.

What’s in a robots.txt file anyway?

There are only two lines for each entry in a robots.txt file, the User-Agent, which has the name of the robot you want to give orders or the ‘*’ wildcard symbol meaning ‘all’, and the Disallow line, which tells a robot all the places it should not touch. The two line entry can be repeated for every file or directory you don’t want indexed, or for each robot you want to exclude. If you leave the Disallow line empty, this means you are not disallowing anything, in other words, you are allowing the particular robot to index your entire site. Some examples and a few scenarios should make it clear:

A. Exclude a file from Google’s main robot (Googlebot):

User-Agent: Googlebot

Disallow: /private/privatefile.htm

B. Exclude a section of the site from all robots:

User-Agent: *

Disallow: /underconstruction/

Note that the directory is enclosed between two forward slashes. Although you are probably used to see URLs, links and folder references that do not end with a slash, note that a web server always needs a slash at the end. Even when you see links on websites that do not end with a slash, when that link is clicked, the web server has to do and extra step before serving the page, which is adding the slash through what we call a redirect. Always use the ending slash.

C. Allow everything (blank robots.txt):

User-Agent: *

Disallow:

Note that when a “blank robots.txt” is mentioned, it is not a completely blank file, but it contains the two lines above.

D. Do not allow any robot on your site:

User-Agent: *

Disallow: /

Note that the single forward slash means “root”, which is the main entrance to your site.

E. Do not allow Google to index any of your images (Google uses Googlebot-Image for images):

User-Agent: Googlebot-Image

Disallow: /

F. Do not allow Google to index some of your images:

User-Agent: Googlebot-Image

Disallow: /images_main/

Disallow: /images_girlfriend/

Disallow: /downloaded_pix/

Note the use of multiple disallows. This is allowed, no pun intended.

G. Build a doorway for Google and Lycos (the Lycos robot is called T-Rex) – do not play with this unless you are 100% sure you know what you are doing:

User-Agent: T-Rex

Disallow: /index1.htm

User-Agent: Googlebot

Disallow: /index2.htm

H. Allow only Googlebot..

User-Agent: Googlebot

Disallow:

User-Agent: *

Disallow: /

Note that the commands are sequential. The example above reads in English: Let Googlebot through, then stop everyone else.

If your file gets really large, or you just feel like writing notes for yourself or for potential viewers (remember, robots.txt is a public file, anyone can see it), you can do so by preceding your comment with a # sign. Although according to the standard, you can have a comment on the same line with a command, I recommend that you start every command and every comment on a new line, this way, robots will never be confused by a potential formatting glitch. Examples:

This is correct, as per the standard, but not recommended (a newer robot or a badly written one might read the following as “disallow the # We… Directory”, not complying to the “disallow all” command):

User-Agent: * Disallow: / # We decided to stop all robots but we were very silly in typing a long comment which got truncated and made the robots.txt unusable

The way I recommend that you format this is:

# We decided to stop all robots and we made sure

# that our comments do not get truncated

# in the process

User-Agent: *

Disallow: /

Although theoretically, each robot should comply to the standards introduced around 1994 and enhanced in 1996, each robot acts a little differently. You are advised to check the documentation provided by the owners of those robots, you’ll be surprised to discover a world of useful facts and techniques. For instance, from Google’s site we learn that Googlebot completely disregards any URL that contains “&id=”.

Here are some sites to check:

Google: http://www.google.com/bot.html Yahoo: http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp/ MSN: http://search.msn.com/docs/siteowner.aspx A database of robots is maintained at http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/active/html/contact.html A robots.txt validation tool – invaluable in finding potential typos that can completely change the way search engines see your site, can be found at: http://searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/robotcheck.cgi

There are also some extensions to the standard. For example, some robots allow wildcards in the Disallow line, some even allow different commands. My advice is: don’t bother with anything outside the standard and you will not be unpleasantly surprised.

A final word of caution:

In this article I showed you how things should work in a perfect world. Somewhere along this article I mentioned that there are good bots and bad bots. Let’s stop for a moment and think from a deranged person’s perspective. Is there anything to prevent one from writing a robot program that reads a robots.txt file and specifically look at pages that you marked as “disallowed”? The answer is absolutely not, this entire standard is based on the honor system and is based on the concept that everyone should work hard to make the internet a better place. Basically, do not rely on this for real security or privacy. Use passwords when necessary.

In conclusion, do not forget that indexing robots are your best friends. While you shouldn’t build your site for robots, but for your human visitors, do not underestimate the power of those mindless crawlers – make sure the pages you want to be indexed are clearly seen by robots, make sure you have regular hyperlinks that robots can follow without roadblocks (robots can’t follow Flash based navigation systems, for instance). To keep your site at tip top performance, to keep your logs clean, your applications, scripts and private data safe, always use a robots.txt file and make sure you read your logs to monitor all robotic activity.

The solar shades will allow you to have a more opaque window screen. They are generally window shades which are made from synthetic mesh fabrics. Depending on your choice of light the shade comes in different level of openness. It is an excellent choice for window with a nice view outside. They will block the sunlight and at the same time give you a view to look at. You can work comfortably inside the room when the glares are reduced. The solar shades block upto 99% of harmful UV rays.

Solar shades are not all about giving you view or shading the sun. They can serve to enhance your room décor. No matter what kind of room décor you have the solar shades will equally blend with it. It adds styles to any room whether it is a contemporary, traditional or country look. You can easily raise, lower or position the custom shades. It will look especially good on large or glass walled windows. The heat trapped will not get inside the room. Your room will be cooler and have natural light also. Not only that but they will save your furnishers from fading out. You can choose an ample number of varieties here. There are different shades of colours and the fabrics are superbly woven with fine filament. You will find a lot of solar shades in the market to buy. Whether it is for blocking the sunlight totally or letting some to come in the room, you can have all the choice.

Very often when gift giving time comes around; birthday, anniversary, graduation day, wedding day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Pastor Appreciation Day, etc… we tend to run to the stores and purchase the typical items. For her: Jewelry, chocolate, flowers, books, perfume, photo album books and boxes – which I received for my last birthday – even cooking appliances. For him: A tie, a watch, car parts, absolutely anything sports related, cologne….. am I boring you yet? The list of typical, expected gift giving goes on and on.

Not that there’s anything wrong with any of these gifts. I can honestly say that when I’ve been asked what gifts I’d like to receive I’ve had all of these gifts listed at one time or another. But there’s one thing I’ve never asked them for, and would never think to ask them for, even though I would highly desire it and prize it above all these other gifts. A slide show for me. Why would I never ask for it? Because this is a gift of the heart. And those kind of gifts are not asked for. Men especially would never think to ask for this. But when I presented a slideshow for my husband from his children on Father’s Day, the tears fell as he watched his children growing up before his eyes and the impact that he’s had in their lives.

As the saying goes, “A picture’s worth a thousand words” and the slideshow spoke volumes to his heart as saw pictures of him wrestling with his sons, teaching them to ride their bikes, doing homework with them, vacations together, reading books together, building pine-wood derby cars together, and so on. The music we chose added to the sentimental value and the personal message from the boys gave the final touch that all worked together to give him the most cherished gift he’s ever received. He still comes to me and asks to see the video again and again. Oh, how I wish they’d consider having one made for me!

Slide shows make a great gift giving idea for anyone. Granparents love to brag to everyone about their grandchildren. Think of how proud they would feel displaying a video slideshow of their children and grandchildren at the next get-together with all their friends!

Mom’s and dad’s would love a slideshow that shows how much their children love and appreciate them. Slideshows have a special way of showing people that all they’ve done for them has not gone unnoticed.

Family and friends that live far away would especially love a Christmas slideshow that displays the year’s events in your lives. They will feel a part of your life even though separated by distance.

Friendship slideshows are another wonderful idea. Gather up all the pictures of your times together, add a special friendship song and you’ll have a gift you’ll all cherish forever!

Graduates love slideshows that go from the time they’re born until their graduation day! One young lady told her mother that she loved her graduation video so much because when she felt lonely or homesick in college she would just play the video and seeing all her family and friends on the video would comfort her and help her feel close to home again.

What about the love of your life? Give him or her a romantic slideshow that celebrates your life together. Guys especially – think of how you’d make her feel if you did this without her knowing or asking! Wow! Start from the moment you both met and go through the years highlighting all your most memorable events. Add “your song”, have a professional slideshow making company put it all together for you, then plan a special candlelight evening and watch it together. What could be more special?

Whether you’re looking for a gift idea for mom, dad, grandmom, granddad, husband, wife, son, daughter, aunt, uncle, friend, pastor, whoever… Sands of Time Multimedia Creations slideshows make the perfect unexpected, and most cherished gift because they are the sentimental gift that comes from the heart. They say, “I love you”, “You’re special to me”, “I appreciate you”, “I remember when”, “You’re presence in my life is more important to me than anything else”…. And so much more.

So everyone, gather up all your old photos from the shoeboxes, desks drawers, and photo albums and have a Sands of Time Multimedia Creations, a professional slideshow making company, create a slideshow for your loved ones that they’ll cherish forever! Get started today. They’ll be glad you did.

Sandra Clukey has years of experience and an intense passion for turning still pictures into beautiful, sentimental video albums for people everywhere and is the lead slideshow creator for Sands of Time Multimedia Creations. http://sandsoftimemultimediacreations.com/ You can view some of her samples here: http://sandsoftimemultimediacreations.com/index-1.html To help you get started with your slide show production see Sandy’s article, “12 Steps to a Successful Slideshow Production” here: http://sandsoftimemultimediacreations.com/articles/12Steps.htm