Wahms Helper

Archive for October, 2009

There seems to be a lot of concern, and even paranoia, over the innocuous cookie, and I don’t mean the kind with sugar and chocolate chips! Wikipedia, the online free encyclopedia, defines this kind of cookie as follows:

“In computing, a cookie (also tracking cookie, browser cookie, and HTTP cookie) is a small piece of text stored on a user’s computer by a web browser. A cookie consists of one or more name-value pairs containing bits of information such as user preferences, shopping cart contents, the identifier for a server-based session, or other data used by websites.”

The key thing to note in that somewhat techie definition is the phrase small piece of text. If you know much of anything about computers you will know that there are things that do stuff on computers (programs, widgets, applications, scripts) and there are things that don’t do stuff. A small piece of text is one of those things that doesn’t do anything. It just sits there. That’s an important thing to know about cookies!

Cookies are small pieces of text that contain information collected or created by a website you have visited and then poked it is onto your computer so they, the website, can recognize you when you come back to visit — and so they can use the space on your computer to store your information instead of using space on theirs.

Cookies do not (can not!) collect information from your computer or send information from your computer to others or steal your passwords or credit card numbers. They CANNOT do this. If you are paranoid, and don’t believe me about that, it’s okay, too. You’re safe anyway.

Here’s how a cookie works. You visit a website. Let’s say it’s because you followed an affiliate link. The link contains the registration code for the affiliate associate sending you to the site. The affiliate associate will get a commission on anything you purchase on the site for the next 90 days. You look around the site but you don’t login this time. You don’t create an account or provide any information. You plan on coming back later but you just aren’t ready to buy anything on your first visit.

The site could store information about your visit in a database on its own server but what exactly could it store. It knows the affiliate code from the URL you clicked to get there (that information is passed by your browser to the site you go to) and it knows your IP address (that’s also passed by your browser but that’s discussion for another post if anyone is interested) but it really doesn’t know who you are and, even if they do store your IP address, you might actually have a different one the next time you return.

And, for all they know, you may never come back so why use up their own space storing the little bit of information it now has about you and millions of others like you. Those little bits add up quickly and, ultimately, take up a lot of space.

But if they don’t store something somewhere the associate who sent you the first time would lose out on his commissions when you eventually do return if you didn’t use the same link with the affiliate code that got you to the website in the first place.

Enter the cookie. The website server sends your browser a little piece of text, like a note, that basically says: “You (someone unknown) visited (our site) on (date) using (this) affiliate code.” It says it in a more geeky way but that’s the general idea. When you come back to the site the server asks your browser, “Does this visitor have a cookie from “our site”? Your browser checks through its stored cookies and finds the one with (our site) and says, “Yes, here it is…” and gives the server the cookie. The server checks the date and if less than 90 days have passed it gives the affiliate who’s code is also in the cookie the commission on anything you purchase on that visit.

Cookies sometimes have expiry dates. In the example above the cookie should have an expiry date of 90 days from the date it was created. Your browser should do periodic cookie maintenance deleting expired cookies. Should doesn’t always mean “does” so fortunately you can also manually delete cookies from your computer if they build up excessively or you still feel unsafe. The important thing to remember, though, is that cookies cannot look at your computer and cannot grab information and cannot send it to others. They just can’t.

Okay, so how did some cookie get my credit card number? I looked at my cookies with a cookie-viewer and I saw it! Easy. YOU entered your credit card number when you made a purchase and the site sent it back to you in a cookie so they could use it next time IF you returned to their site. This way they don’t have to store your information on their computer, saving space and reducing risk! Can you imagine how much information they would have to store for millions of one-time visitors who may never come back? Cookies mean you keep your information, I keep mine, we each keep our own. This way the website servers get to store a whole lot less!

Okay, so if a cooking on my computer has my credit card number can’t anyone (any other site I visit) get my credit card number from the cookie? No. Well, sort of no. You see, each cookie has a unique identifier that prevents your browser from giving it up to any site but the one it was issued from. Another site asking for that cookie would have to know the identifier in order to get the cookie. It’s a relatively safe process though there probably are ways to get around it. The thing is, those ways would take more work, and cost more, than getting your private information in any of a number of other easier and cheaper ways. Generally cookies are pretty safe. And you shouldn’t fear them.

For what it’s worth, though, up to this point we have chosen not to use cookies on any of our free or commercial sites including WAHMs Helper. We’ve found other ways to deal with information and, where possible, we don’t take private information at all. We simply choose not to use cookies. It’s not for safety reasons, though, but because of public perception.

You won’t be able to go through the Internet without running into sites that do use cookies. You can turn the feature off in your browser so it won’t accept cookies but, if you do, you are limiting a lot of great things you could do on the ‘net which rely on cookies.

Cookies are actually one of the safest things on the Internet and probably the least likely place you will ever loose personal information. I really don’t know why people spread bad news about something they know little or nothing about but some folks do seem to love drama. Ijust thought you might want to know the truth.

This delightful, easy to follow, step-by-step guide to selling books on Amazon is written by a five-star seller, who gives away some of the biggest money making secrets to selling books online today. Although the guide is designed with the stay-at-home mom in mind, it is appropriate for anyone who wants to make a few-hundred extra dollars a week, or the model can be blown-up for those interested in starting a profitable fulltime business.

Buy this book on Amazon now: How to Sell Books on Amazon: The Stay-at-Home Mom’s Secret Guide to Selling Used Books on Amazon

New Life Auctions, an eBay seller, offers a lot of good (free!) advice and a few useful tools. One of the most helpful we’ve found is their eBay and PayPal Fee Calculator. It’s an online form where you can enter the various considerations for your eBay listing, click a button, and see what the fees are going to be. It’s a very helpful exercise for beginner and seasond seller alike.

If your morning sounds something like this, “Wake up! C’mon! You’re going to be late! You’ll miss your bus! This is the last time. I’m not telling you again…” then you have a problem.

You can change that! There are a few basic thing you can do to bring things under control. Just remember, YOU are the parent. The key, though, is consistency. Decide on the plan and then follow it through.

Mornings are built upon one thing: bedtime the night before. Having a standard, consistent, evening routine will assist greatly in how smoothly the next morning will run. There are some standard procedures you should follow. Here are a few:

1) The old adage early to bed, early to rise was never more true. Determine a suitable bed time for each child and stick with it. If applicable spend a little time and explain about older children being up a little longer.

2) Going to bed is about preparation. Pack lunches and backpacks ready for the morning. See that all homework is done and books and papers rounded up. Double check any special requirements for the next day. There is no time for this in the morning.

3) Have showers or baths before bed. There’s really no time for those in the morning either, especially if the number of children doesn’t match the number of bathrooms.

4) Select and ready all clothes for the next day. Looking for a missing shoe or matching socks while the bus is honking just doesn’t cut it.

Both at night, and the following morning, you need to stay calm. Be forceful, if necessary, but don’t yell. If you raise your voice, and show your frustration, your kids will sense an opening and take it. Be clear and precise. Don’t give a litany of instructions and commands all in one breath. That just goes right over the kids heads. Stop. Get the child’s attention. Tell them one thing at a time. And give the instruction one time only. If it doesn’t get done your child will learn to listen and respond the next time or do without. Saying this is the last time several times serves no purpose except teaching the child you don’t really mean what you say. Determine suitable punishments and let them be known in advance. If consequences are warranted deliver them as previously presented. Empty promises produce empty results. Stick to your guns.

You will be amazed how far structure and consistency will take you.

Main Street Mall Online is a virtual shopping mall featuring merchandise specific malls where sellers offer their products and/or services in their own stores. It is a premium selling site with all the features of much more expensive venues however there is a single monthly flat rate for services. There are no listing fees and no sales commissions.

Three packages are offered, two featuring unlimited listings. The first, a single store in one mall, is $29.99 per month with no contract and no hidden fees. The second, multiple stores in one or more malls — as many stores as you need, is just $49.99 per month. The third is a free store. Completely FREE! No monthly store fee. No listing fees. No final sales commissions. It is limited to 10 listings and is a great choice for someone with only a few items to sell or who wants to try before committing.

See Main Street Mall Online here: http://mainstreetmallonline.com/

After many years of false starts and fitful fluctuations in the publishing industry it looks like the time has come for a new approach to the serious distribution of professional quality e-books. There is a small number of quality contenders in the e-book reader market but it appears, at least at present, that the number one choice climbing to the top is the Kindle from Amazon (shown left).

It certainly doesn’t hurt that America’s number one online retailer is seriously in the mix. The Kindle is exclusive to Amazon and features a proprietary publishing format (AZW) and supports several others including TXT, Audible (formats 4, Audible Enhanced (AAX)), MP3, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; and PDF, HTML, DOC, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP through conversion.

At 10.2 ounces, the base model Kindle is lighter than a typical paperback and as thin as most magazines — barely a third of an inch in profile. A Kindle fits perfectly in your hands and the 6″ diagonal E Ink® electronic paper display, 600 x 800 pixel resolution at 167 ppi, 16-level gray scale makes it easy to read in natural light.

The purchase of a Kindle ($259.00 with free shipping for the base model at time of writing) includes lifetime connection to Amazon’s Kindle book source by 3G wireless which lets you download books right from your Kindle, anytime, anywhere with no monthly fees, service plans, or hunting for Wi-Fi hotspots.

Click the image above to see Kindle on Amazon.

One of the most useful utilities I’ve found for my computer is AZZ Cardfile (http://www.azzcardfile.com/). It’s like a Rolodex, scratch pad, address book, birthday list, to-do list, and general database all in one.

The website says, “Azz Cardfile incorporates many useful tools in one piece of software: simple and powerful, totally customizable organizer software without predefined fields, Recipe Software, Contacts Database, Address Book, Rolodex, Contact Management Software, Simple Database, Organizer for Notes, References or any other items.”

It is easy to install, fast, and flexible. I use it for addresses, contact and client notes, code snippets that I use rarely enough to need to look up but often enough that I want available, ideas, to-do lists, etc. The free form entry means that it is suitable for almost any small data storage task that comes along, even information for transient short-lived projects. It’s just there when I need it.

If you use your computer for working from home you should have AZZ Cardfile installed. Shareware: $29.95

It’s unseasonably cold this morning. 27F with the wind chill factor. That’s cold, folks! But it’s a good Sunday morning. The website is all but done. Oh, sure, there’s a few bits and pieces that need a little messing with but all in all it is ready to go. We’ve added the link to MSMOsites and we’re looking forward to our first visitors.

The amazing thing to me is that from concept to near completion the site took only three days. Three days! Most comparable sites would take a week to ten days minimum and could easily drag out for weeks. We are really more and more impressed with this WordPress website engine. It’s powerful, easy to use, and the theme (template design) process is fast. It makes the whole process enjoyable.

And it means we can offer fully installed, configured, and hosted, websites at a much more affordable price than ever before. If you are looking for a website of your own talk to us and we’ll discuss your needs and match them to the options available.

We have become quite enamored, of late, with the WordPress website engine and the extensive collection of themes (site designs) available for it. This powerful, stand-alone, package offers the framework for establishing a multi-page website that features a built in blog. Various free and commercial theme offerings provide hundreds, perhaps thousands, of page layout choices. You don’t need a great deal of experience to get your own great looking website up and running.

We have now used the WordPress engine for several of our own sites and have installed it for several clients. We have also worked with website developers around the world who are using it. Tim Mooney, from near Sydney, Australia, has made it his standard. Dan Therrell, from Fairhope, Alabama, has used it for a couple of his own sites and is now offering it as one of his main selections. Our own MSMOsites website community offers three different packages built on the WordPress framework.

The more we work with it, and especially on our own projects where we have full creative input, the more we are amazed by its flexibility, capability, function, and resilience. We are thoroughly impressed by the range of plug-ins and add-on features as well. There is even a full-function shopping cart plug-in which turns it into a web store.

The thing to understand is that WordPress is no longer just for blogging. It has become a full-fledged content management system. This means you can use it for almost any website task from personal blogging and information sites to photo galleries, full-function e-commerce web stores, and fully customized multi-purpose website projects. WordPress is, without a doubt, incredibly versatile. It can even be used to create a website without a blog!

Our site (this one) is a multi-page semi-custom content management site built using the WordPress engine as it’s base. There is very little additional HTML and content can be added and changed readily. If you are looking for a new website the WordPress solution is worth considering. It can actually be used without any knowledge of HTML or other coding. If you have been holding back because of cost and/or complexity you need not wait any longer. This is something you can do yourself or hire done at a very affordable price.

There are a lot of articles around about Flash and fancy and Web 2.0 and how the Internet is changing. Well, I hate to break it to you but the Internet has been in a state of constant change since its inception. Features, services, functions, and whole sections have come and gone as new ideas have dominated old ones and new and better ways have been found to do old and familiar things. Does anyone here remember Archie, Veronica, and Gopher? And I don’t mean comic book characters.

But there are some things that have not changed and, probably, will not ever change. They are those principles, the basics, the foundation upon which a good business — any business — is built. Here is a little more than half a dozen that apply to website design:

1. Your website should have pages which load in under five seconds. Longer, especially on the home page, and you will likely lose some visitors.

2. Your website should convey an understanding of its purpose within the first 3 to 4 seconds of viewing it. Get the message across and provide a call to action.

3. There should be traditional navigation links, preferably text based, that are easy to find and easy to follow. Visitors to your site should know where they are and easily find where they want to go.

4. All text should be easy to read in provided in standard fonts. Cartoon fonts and curles are great for titles and should be in graphic form. Information should be delivered in one of the standard universally available fonts. Arial, Times New Roman, and Georgia, are all good choices.

5. Provide content written simply to address your visitors concerns and answers the questions they are likely to have.

6. All forms and especially your checkout (on e-commerce sites) should be obvious, easy to fill out, and necessary. Don’t have a form just to have a form. Have, and state, a purpose.

7. Check your links regularly. You don’t want link rot (dead links) to set in. Especially verify that off-site links still go to active sites and that those sites are still what you expect them to be. Domain ownership changes and people change their minds about what they want their website to be.

Designing a website requires a little organization and planning. Owning a website requires a little work and responsibility. Doing it right will produce far better results.