I was cruising around the Xsitepro.htm" target="_blank">xsitepro forum and noticed a poor fellow had gotten himself in a pickle.

He had hired a friend, who was a website designer, to build a website for him. He had a very nice site, but before they could wrap things up the web designer died. So….this guy was looking for a way to rebuild and/or edit his website.

He was concerned because his friend was a mac user and used his mac to build the site. He thought he would have to purchase a mac to edit his website.

He wanted to use Xsitepro, and felt it would be easier to manage his site. But the existing site would have to be converted into an Xsitepro template. One of the guys, named Websight (knows his stuff) commented that the conversion shouldn’t be a problem. The only problem I see is finding someone to take his new existing site and convert it into Xsitepro.

I had some other ideas, trying to say this poor fellow some cash. See what you think?

Hi Peter…..really nice looking site. Sorry to hear about your friend, hope he knows what you do

Looks like a job for version 2.0, and as usual websight1 really knows the capabilities of xsite and I’ve come to respect his advice.

A couple of things to consider.

First, I don’t think it matters that your friend used a Mac to build your site. Maybe someone knows more than me, but I wouldn’t let that bother you at this point.

Second, Do you have access to your server? If you do, you might want to consider doing a backup of your entire site. It could save you one big headache in the future. Also, you can use the Get and Put feature in Dreamweaver and get the site to your local computer, and do any necessary edits until you can make a decision on whether or not you want to reproduce the site using Xsite.

Third, there is a free program called HTTrack that will allow you to download the entire site to your hard drive. I would consider doing this even if you make a backup. You can then use Dreamweaver to work on the files that were downloaded with HTTrack which will allow you to maintain your website until you decide what to do.

I use Httrack for a variety of purposes. It’s perfect for grabbing anyones site for the purpose of learning how to do something or recreate a feature that is new to you.

http://www.httrack.com/

Fourth, As long as you own the domain and have access to the server you could install a wordpress blog. Posting weekly or so about the various projects you’re doing, having a category about customers, guitar types, various other products……does wonders for search engine spiders and ranking. If you choose this option you could leave the existing site and put your blog in a new directory http://www.cornerstoneguitar.com/blog but I would use a name that is more relative to the content of the site like http://www.cornerstoneguitar.com/customguitars

Hope that helps a little.

Good luck Brother

Scott

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In this series of autoresponder videos you’ll learn some of the basics of using aweber autoresponders. The one tool everyone needs to make money online is an autoresponder like aweber. These videos about autoresponders will help clarify the purpose of an autoresponder and demystify the unknown for a newbie marketer.

After watching these aweber autoresonder videos you’ll have a handle on how to create a simply campaign consisting of 3 messages which are automatically sent to anyone who opts in to your list. I highly recommend Aweber for your autoresponder.

If you are just starting out, please sign up for an Aweber Autoresponder Account. I made the mistake of using a hosted autoresponder to save money. First more than 50% of my email didn’t get through. Second, my server crashed and I lost my list of 5000 good opt ins….. Please don’t make the same mistake I did. Watch these autoresponder videos and get yourself an Aweber Account.

Creating autoresponder lists with aweber

How To Set Up Your Lead Capture Page & Autoresponder Part 1

Setting up your autoresponder

Tags: aweber, autoresponder videos, autoresponder account

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I have used the table function in Xsitepro version 1, but the new version of xsitepro…. version 2 has really blossomed into tool that let’s you really create and decorate your tables. You can created dotted borders, multi cells…in general the formatting has 100 times the options in the new version of xsitepro.

Xsitepro Version 2.0 has some great features for working with tables. The ability to enhance and customize a table has been greatly enabled in Xsitepro version 2.

Tables have long been the most popular way to design a website. Although those that command the web would like to see everyone using CSS, it still remains that working with tables is easiest and a great way to put together a quick website ranging from a simple salespage style to more complex forms of websites.

Xsitepro allows you to easily add or customize your site with css and I suggest you learn how to use it. The reason is because that is the direction webdesign is headed and it is most compatible with just about all the popular browsers. Websites load faster when using css, and I’ve been told that they are easier on the search engines.

Still for the newbie creating a webpage with tables is the simplest way to get started and organize a webpage. For instance you can draw out your webpage on a legal pad and visualize the page as a series or boxes or tables. It becomes easy to take your concept to webpage design.

Xsitepro really does make it easy to work with tables. In fact, the templates are all based on a table with a series of cells organized to give you a header, navigation tables, main table, footer tables plus a few extra with xsitepro ver. 2.0

I found a couple of videos that will help you understand the concept of tables and Xsitepro version 2.0, please check them out.

Xsitepro Version 2.0 Video 1

Xsitepro Version 2.0 Video 2

Great table videos…. don’t ya think!

Tags: xsitepro, xsitepro version 2, tables in xsitepro, create tables in xsitepro

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I was cruising the Xsitepro forum the other day and some of the people were showing off their websites. Lots of great looking sites when I stumbled on one guys site and it took forever to load…..I’m on a super fast cable line too!

Never upload your images in fullsize you images must be optimized for the web.

I did a little investigation and noticed his images were really huge. It’s an easy thing to overlook if you don’t know about image optimization. Basically the image is reduced in size by removing pixels, you want to degrade the image to the point where the image just starts to look a little fuzzy.

I took the time to explain a little about image optimization…thought some of you readers might like to take a look…..maybe you have some full size images on your site

Ben….checked out your site and it’s loading really slow for me.

So….I checked out some of your images and it looks like you haven’t optimized any of your images….except maybe the header.

Your screenshots and book images are all around or over 1000 KB….you could optimize those…..I think to at least 50% of the current size or more without losing too much quality.

You’ll get even more sales when you page loads faster Laughing

Hope that helps

Scott

Ben….I’m procrastinating on doing my work Very Happy

I said above:

Your screenshots and book images are all around or over 1000 KB….you could optimize those…..I think to at least 50% of the current size or more without losing too much quality.

If you or anyone else doesn’t know what or how to optimize an image, I thought I’d explain it a little.

In photoshop you have the option of saving the file or saving it for web. When you save it for web, you have the option of deciding how much to optimize the image. For instance the image of you book covers is over 1000KB that’s actually over 1 MB which is huge. Some poor guy on a dial up will start cussing you out if he clicks on your link Laughing

When “Saving for Web” you can reduce the file size by reducing the quality of the image. Often times the image will look virtually identical to the naked eye when optimized but will be minus a few pixels Smile

Since most people don’t have photoshop, there are services on the web…just google “image optimizer” and you should find a few services.

I found one service at: http://www.imageoptimizer.net/Pages/?

Just follow the directions to optimize your image.

I saved your book cover image (which is actually all the book covers) on my computer. And for Step 1====> locate the image on your computer

Step 2===> Fill in the image size…in your case 563 x 2326. In case you need to find out how big an image is, you can use your graphics program or just use your browser “right click” the image and you’ll get all kinds of information……You can play around with the next category “Optimize for” I think I used Normal

Step 3===> Use “No Special Effects”

Now click “optimze Now”

I was able to reduce your image down to 202 KB….That’s an image that is 5 times smaller and just might load 5 times faster!

When I first designing websites I made the mistake of not optimizing my images. My site seemed to load fast so I didn’t see a big deal…..Well, what happens is once you load your site through your url in your browser the computer remembers the site and loads it from memory….so you’ll never really see how fast or slow the site loads.

If you google website optimization and image optimization you’ll find some good stuff.

Good Luck,

Scott

Tags: optimize image, full-size image, image optimization, website image

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I sell an assortment of clickbank message sets that are designed to be used with an autoresponder. Currently I have a set of a 52 Health Related Messages for any autoresponder that are related to the health niche.

These email messages are designed to promote clickbank products that have good sales and are related to the health niche. All you have to do is copy and paste the message into your autoresponder and then include your clickbank affiliate link.

Included with the package is 2 scripts that can be used to create redirect links or cloaked links for your clickbank affiliate links. I had one of my customers get a little confused so I tried to explain how to use the scripts for creating a redirect link for their clickbank affiliate link. I thought it might be helpful to anyone else who is having problems creating redirect links and stumbles upon this page

Hi Joe

Thanks for the kind words and for your purchase!

Sorry to hear that there is some confusion with redirects.

There is a READ_ME file in the download. It has the instructions for hiding your clickbank links. The process is called a “redirect” or “link cloaking”

You are given 2 files.

hide-hoplink2.html
hide-hoplink-php.php

For the first one, right click the file and open it in notepad or some text editor. Copy the code and open a blank file in notepad…now paste the code into that file.

Next look for all instances of “http://INSERTCBID.REPLACE-PUBID.hop.clickbank.net” and replace http://INSERTCBID.REPLACE-PUBID.hop.clickbank.net with your clickbank link.

Next save the file as anything you’d like…such as joeslink.html and use an ftp program to upload it to your server.

Typically people will create a folder on your directory and call it something like “recommends” and then save the new file in that folder.

So you would have www.joeswebsite.com/recommends/joeslink.html …..which will redirect to your clickbank link.
================================================

I like using the php redirect.

In the file “hide-hoplink-php.php” you’ll find a snippet of php code like below:

<?php
header(‘Location: http://INSERTCBID.PUBID.hop.clickbank.net’);
?>

Copy that snippet of code and paste it into a blank or empty notpad file.

Remove the url http://INSERTCBID.PUBID.hop.clickbank.net and insert your clickbank or other url.

Now save the file as “joeslink.php” and upload it to the your website. The same deal applies….you could create a folder called “recommends” and save joeslink.php in that folder.

So your url will look like http://www.JoesWebsite.com/recommends/joeslink.php

Remember by doing redirects or cloaking you maintain control of your links and it isn’t so obvious that it’s an affiliate link….will help keep most visitors from stealing your commissions.

You might want to check out a blog post I did a short while ago at : http://desktop-wealth.com/blog/affiliate-marketing/free-link-cloaker-information/

As far as I know you can’t do redirects through Xsitepro. You’ll be able to manage them better if you use a free ftp program like Filezilla to upload the files and manage your links.

If you still end up having problems and not understanding the concept….just go ahead and use your clickbank links in your autoresponder messages. You can change them when you get cloaking and redirects figured out.

If it will help, I could create a quick screen capture tutorial and show you how to do it, but won’t be able to get to it for a week or so.

Hope this helps,

Scott

You can use the 52 Health Related Autoresponder Messages in conjunction with just about any health related product. The great part of owning this message set is that the work is already done for you, the messages are written and include a clickbank affiliate product to promote. The messages are futher categorized in Health subjects so you can use all the messages or just some of them in an autoresponder series.

Tags: clickbank, message sets, redirect links, health related messages for autoresponders, autoresonder messages

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Someone asked me how to do a redirect or how to cloak links. The entire subject can get quite complex but bottom line is that you want to disguise your link and/or control your links…..mostly in the case of affiliate links.

I also had the question from an Xsitepro.com/index_r.html?p=scottpar&w=home ">Xsitepro user, and I didn’t think that xsitepro could or would control redirects. Turns out I was wrong, Xsitepro definitely has the capability to form, manage and create redirects. I outlined the process below that shows how to make redirect links with xsitepro.

When you join someone else’s affiliate scheme you will usually be given a url that you must use when linking to that site. The reason for this is so that any traffic you send can be monitored so that, in the event of a sale, you can be paid your agreed commission.

Unfortunately, many affiliate urls can be both unattractive and look quite obviously like affiliate links, which can be off putting to some people.

Here are a few fictional examples:

http://www.toys-toys-and-more-toys.com?aff=123456&pg=98765

http://www.carpets-for-your-hallway.com/sales/affiliate/a/12345.html?aff=54321

http://www.big-cars-go-faster.com?affiliate=10004564576567

All of the above are unattractive and not the kind of web address you’d want to use or promote by choice.

From a psychological perspective web visitors immediately form an opinion, often incorrectly so, when they notice a link is an affiliate link. They might think you are only recommending this site because you are getting paid some money. This might be true, but on many occasions you will be recommending a product that you really like and that you’d be happy to recommend for free – if there’s a chance to earn a commission for making the recommendation should you turn that down just because some of your visitors might form the wrong impression.

To solve the ugly url problem and to display a link that won’t be as immediately apparent as an affiliate link you can use redirect pages. Here’s how you might set up a redirect page for an affiliate link to the big-cars-go-faster.com web site to replace the long url listed above.

Setting up a redirect page to link to affiliate sites

1. Click on the Redirect Pages button that is found on the Other tab.

2. Click on the button.

3. In the Page Name type something such as cars.

4. In the Redirect Delay type 0. This will make the redirection happen three seconds after the person arrives at the redirect page, which gives them just enough time to read the message

5. In the Redirect URL box enter the full url for the page that you want the visitor to be redirected to, which in this case would be http://www.big-cars-go-faster.com?affiliate=10004564576567

6. On the Design tab enter an appropriate sentence such as You are being transferred to the big-cars-go-faster.com web site. My recommendation for anything to do with Big cars. This message will rarely be seen, because you entered 0 seconds in the redirect delay, but it is polite to display the message just in case anyone should land on the redirect page and not be automatically transferred, which is a rare occurrence, but it can happen

7. At the bottom of the Redirect Page window you will notice a box titled The url for this page will be:

This is the url you need to use for this redirect page. In this case it would be something like http://www.examplesite.com/cars.html Rather than type this in it is better to click on the folder icon, on the left and determine the appropriate page from the list of pages displayed. If the page you are redirecting to exists on your site this is a preferable way as it prevents you from typing in an incorrect url

For more advanced link cloaking and redirection check out Phantom Link Cloaker.…you’ll find a total solution for cloaking and redirecting your links.

Tags: link cloaker, xsitepro redirect, link redirect, xsitepro

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