Easily extract all Images from Google Docs document in just 2 clicks

Simply follow the following steps:

1. Open up the Google Docs document that you wish to extract images from. Click on the “File” menu.
2. Find the “Download as” option and hover over it. You will notice that a sub-menu opens up that gives you the different formats in which you can download the current open Google Docs document. Simply click on the last option, i.e. Web Page (.html, zipped). Checkout the screenshot below:
   

   Extract Images from Google Docs document

That’s it! Google Docs will automatically start downloading the zip file. Once the download finishes, simply unzip it. You will notice a folder called “images“. This folder will contain all the images contained in the Google Doc. So there you have it!

Conclusion

Hope you found this 2-Click solution to extract images from Google Docs document to be useful. Share your thoughts and other tips and tricks by commenting below.

How To Easily Set Auto Increment Value In phpMyAdmin

Lets take a look at both the cases.

1) Start auto increment from 1.

While adding a column, simply check the checkbox under “A_I” column. This A_I column stands for auto-increment. Just make sure that for the “Type” column against this entry, select any type that represents a numerical value such as Tinyint, Smallint, Mediumint, Int, Bigint, Double. See the screenshot below to understand it more clearly:

Set Auto Increment To 1 in phpMyAdmin

Once you create the table, just click on the “Structure” tab and check to see if “AUTO_INCREMENT” appears under the “Extra” column against this field. If yes, then congrats! You have successfully implemented case 1.

2) Start auto increment at any value of your choice.

This is simple too. You will just need to do couple of extra steps in addition to case 1. Once you have your table ready, just click on “Operations” tab. Look for “Table Options” fieldset.  In this, you will see “AUTO_INCREMENT” with a textbox against it. Now this is where you need to enter the new value that you desire. So if you want the table’s count to start from 5000 instead of 1, just enter 5000 in this textbox and click on the “Go” button. Here is a screenshot of how it can look:

Set Auto Increment in phpMyAdmin

You can enter any other positive number that you like instead of 5000. If you have done it correctly, you will see a success message saying:

“Your SQL query has been executed successfully”.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

There is one important note to remember. If you ever truncate the table, then the count will be restored to 1 automatically, even if you have allotted it a custom number. In such a case, make sure to repeat the steps mentioned in Case 2 above, should you ever truncate the table.

Simple, isn’t it?

Do you know of any other ways to manually set auto increment value in phpMyAdmin? Feel free to suggest by commenting below.

How To Increase Session Timeout To More Than 1440 Seconds in phpMyAdmin

I am using WAMP server, so the steps listed below show you how to make this change if you are using Wamp Server.

1. Navigate to the folder where phpMyAdmin is installed. Typically, it would be something like: C:/wamp/apps/phpmyadmin{…version number…}

2. Open config.inc.php. Scroll down to the bottom of the file and just below the ?> tag, add the following line & save:

$cfg['LoginCookieValidity'] = 86400; // In seconds

That’s it! That’s all you need to do in order to increase session timeout time. 86400 seconds equals 24 hours, so you are good to go for one full day at a stretch. If you would like to increase this limit to any other value, then simply use the following formula:

60 * 60 * Number of hours.

So for example, if you would like to increase the session timeout limit to 12 hours, then you would get the value in seconds as:

60 (seconds) * 60 (minutes) * 12 (hours) = 43200 seconds

If you would like to increase session time out to just 5 hours, you can get the number of seconds like so:

60 * 60 * 5 = 18000 seconds

Simply replace the 86400 in the above line of code with the seconds that you receive as a result of the above multiplication and you will be good to go.

ADDITIONAL NOTE:

On some systems such as Debian, it might be mandatory to make a relevant change in your WAMP’s php.ini file. So if the above method does not work, open up the php.ini file of your server and hunt for the variable “session.gc_maxlifetime” and assign it the same value as above. So in my case, as I have increased the value to 86400, I would update the variable in my php.ini file like so:

session.gc_maxlifetime = 86400

Simply update the session.gc_maxlifetime in your php.ini file to any value you desire (note that it should match with the value that you add to config.inc.php file). Once done, make sure that you restart your server and that should do it.

Your Turn!

What do you think of the above way to increase the phpMyAdmin Timeout limit? Did it help fix the issue? Feel free to let us know by commenting below.

How To Upgrade phpMyAdmin In Localhost

Before I actually start off with the steps, let me tell you that I am currently using phpmyadmin3.5.1 and I want to upgrade it to phpmyadmin4.0.4.1 (the latest version as of today).  So you might see references of my version of phpMyAdmin, so you might want to swap it out for your version wherever it occurs. So here we go:

1. Go to http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/downloads.php. Download the latest version & extract to a folder. Make sure that you give out a proper name in smaller case and append it with the version and make sure that all the files are sitting in this folder. So I extracted the files to phpmyadmin4.0.4.1 folder and all my files now reside in this folder and are immediately visible when I open up this folder.

2. Go to the directory in which you have installed wamp in your PC (for example: C:/wamp) and then open up the “apps” folder. So for example, you could find this at: C:/wamp/apps/

Once you access the above path, you will find your current installation of phpMyAdmin. So you may see the path like so: C:/wamp/apps/phpmyadmin3.5.1.

Simply copy the newly extracted phpMyAdmin folder to this “apps” folder. So in my case the path for the new phpMyAdmin would like so:  C:/wamp/apps/phpmyadmin4.0.4.1.

3. In your wamp folder, search for a folder that says: “alias”. Then open this folder and open the file called “phpmyadmin.conf”. Alternately, you can open this same file by clicking your wampserver icon in the Windows taskbar, then click Apache->Alias directories->”http://localhost/phpmyadmin/”->Edit alias

4. VERY IMPORTANT: Here you have to find two occurrences of your current installation path of phpMyAdmin and replace the current phpMyAdmin folder name with the folder name of the new phpMyAdmin version. Without these two changes, Wamp would deny you access to phpMyAdmin.

Typically, the first occurrence would be the first line and the second occurrence would be few lines below and will be visible once you scroll down through the visible portion of the file.

So find the line that begins with: Alias /phpmyadmin …(your current phpMyAdmin install path)…

In my example, it would be: Alias /phpmyadmin “C:/wamp/apps/phpmyadmin3.5.1/” 

I would change the above line to: Alias /phpmyadmin “C:/wamp/apps/phpmyadmin4.0.4.1/” 

Next, scroll down below until you see the line that starts with: <Directory “…(your install path)…”>

In my example, it would be:  <Directory “C:/wamp/apps/phpmyadmin3.5.1/”>

I would change the above line to:  <Directory “C:/wamp/apps/phpmyadmin4.0.4.1/”>

Once both the above changes are done, save the file & exit it.

5. Copy the config.inc.php file from your previous version of phpMyAdmin to your new version. So I copied it from C:/wamp/apps/phpmyadmin3.5.1/ to C:/wamp/apps/phpmyadmin4.0.4.1/. 

The fresh copy of phpmyadmin4.0.4.1 does not have a default config.inc.php file. Rather it has a config.sample.inc.php that you can rename & modify to suit your requirements (if you are really comfortable with editing the file directly or if you are installing phpMyAdmin for the first time). If upgrading from a previous version, then simply copy the config.inc.php and you are good to go. BTW, this confic.inc.php file that you are copying, contains your username and password that you use to login to phpMyAdmin, so you might want to use this file without fail to make this upgrade process as seamless as possible.

6. Last step, finally! Left click Wamp icon in Windows taskbar and select Restart All services. That’s it!

Visit phpMyAdmin as you would normally do (In my case, the URL is : http://localhost/phpmyadmin/)  and if everything went correctly, you should see the latest version of phpMyAdmin!  Enjoy!

Your Turn!

What do you think of the above way to upgrade phpMyAdmin in Localhost for Wamp Server in Windows? Were you able to upgrade your version of phpMyAdmin successfully? Feel free to share your results and views by commenting below.

What exactly is Page Rank?

In simpler terms, Page Rank is a terminology used to indicate the importance of a website in search engine results. The higher the page rank, the much sooner and higher your website appears whenever a visitor searches for a keyword in search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. Google considers over 200 factors when showing up a website in their search results. Page Rank is one of them.

What is Page Rank and how to Increase Google Page Rank for your Blog / Website

Page Rank takes values from 1-10. 1 indicates least importance and 10 indicates the highest importance. Some also call page rank as Google Page Rank. This does not mean that the page rank is owned by Google. It simply means that is the page rank of a website/blog when a specific keyword is searched for in Google. So if someone searches for a keyword in Yahoo or Bing, there might be a variation of Google Page Rank & Yahoo Page Rank for the same website as it depends upon their algorithms, ranking factors, etc.

Today most of the targeted traffic comes from Search engines and hence it is becoming really important to increase the page rank of a website/blog. Trying to push a website’s page rank from 1 to 10 is definitely not easy task, but at the same time, it’s not impossible. And, it does not happen overnight! It takes years to achieve a page rank of 10.  And ranking high in search engines is definitely a sure way to make a website or a blog more visible in their niche.

To increase page rank fast, here are some of the most important factors and tips:

1. Unique and High Quality Content

Undeniably, all search engines want unique content and it is expected of us to provide high quality content, apart from making them unique. Gone are the days when people used to merely copy text off of other websites and then use it in their website and rank high after slight modifications. Such gimmicks won’t work anymore as the search engines have evolved over the years and have become smarter. So content scraping won’t work. Period.

Just focus on writing content on topics that interest you the most. Make sure that the articles you write, add value to your website and make sure that it is helpful. You would not be reading this article if it wasn’t going to provide you tips on increasing your pagerank, would you (unless you are our regular reader)? Similarly, for your visitors, make sure that the information that you provide will benefit them. Benefit for them = Benefit for you. Benefits are directly proportional, you see!

2. Frequent Content Updates

Now this does not mean that you keep on updating each and every post of your blog every day.  Let’s say that you have 20 articles in your blog and you publish your 21st article. You feel that the content in your 21st article is an extension of the first article and would help your readers if you linked back to it from your first article. If you feel so, then go ahead and do it.

So go ahead & update your first article with a link back to the 21st article. Also add a note towards the end of the article with the heading “UPDATE” or “NOTE” and write few words about the update that you have performed. That will help users understand what you are up to and will also benefit them as new readers who arrive on your first article, will easily find the link to the relevant article (the 21st article). All  they will have to do is simply click on that new link to read this article.

One another way is to update content using images. Often, I find that I am writing articles and I simply don’t have the time to search for relevant images. So I simply go ahead & publish the post with just text content. When I get some free time, I come back to this post, do my searches and find an image or two that I can add to this post. When I do find the images that make me feel satisfied, I add them to the article. So this is how I keep updating my posts.

Those are just couple of ways. You could come up with other ways of updating your content. There’s no hard and fast rule. See what works best for you.

3. Relevant Keywords

If Keywords are essential component of an article, then using “Relevant Keywords” are the “life” of an article. Without using the relevant keywords, the chances of search engines finding your articles are slim and the chances of your readers finding your article relevant are slim to none. That does not mean that you can go ahead & include tons of keywords in your content. That’s an absolute NO! Don’t ever do it, or you will be penalized on the grounds of “Keyword Stuffing”.

So when you write an article, make sure that you are using relevant keywords in the H1 tag, Meta Description and in the body of the content. This is an excellent way to increase page rank on Google.

4. Keyword Density

A perfect way to get your website penalized is by including keywords 100 times in the same article, in the manner that it makes no sense. Yes, you may have come across search engine optimization softwares that tell you how important keyword density is and how many times you must repeat the keyword in the article in order to improve the density of the keyword and make your article likeable by the search engines.

Although using Keywords in your article are mandatory, sticking to a XYZ percentage of keyword density is no longer applicable. Don’t try to fill in keywords just for the sake of filling up your article. Do it because you find it natural to include it in a place that you have chosen and make sure it makes sense. If it doesn’t make sense for you, it won’t make sense for your users either. So ignore the age old 10% keyword density rule and focus on the natural flow of content. That will help you increase Google page rank apart from increasing page rank in other search engines.

5. No Empty Rule

This rule is very simple. It states that you should not leave any necessary details empty. This includes details such as Page Title, Meta Description.

Who invented this rule? You may ask. Well, I did. How? Well, it’s simple. I learnt a lot from Google Webmaster Tools. If you have an account with them, simply login. In the left menu, look for “Optimization” & click on “HTML Improvements”. This section will show you any Missing title tags, Duplicate title tags, Duplicate Meta Descriptions, etc. Simply edit any of the articles on your blog that are missing this info & add it. The Page Title & Meta Descriptions are very important as it helps your readers find the page via search engines. So don’t leave them empty and increase your page rank.

You can get more free info for your website by visiting at Google Webmaster Tools

6. Take care of Images

I often see that people merely include images and leave it at that. Agreed that everyone may not have the time to tweak images, add info to them. But let me tell you, it’s totally worth it if you spend time and efforts in adding the info to them. By info, I mean the ALT tag info. If you are using WordPress, you will also see the option to add a Caption. Why not add it if you haven’t done it so far? Do it so that it provides more meaning.

Also if you could keep the sizes of images down to the lowest possible size, that would help increase the web page load speed. Google takes page load speed into account when ranking websites. So the faster your website loads, the better. That said, don’t go ahead & strip off images of your website. Your users won’t like it. Yes, I know. It might sound complicated to find it hard to judge what you need and what you don’t. But you will need to find the right balance to see what your users will like.

For example, if you are running a comic website, then you will need to explain the situation/jokes by using images as they have a great impact. In such cases, using images are unavoidable. But what you could do is instead of including the PNG version of the images, you could include a JPG image compressed at 80% of it’s quality size. In such a way, you can include images and also make them load fast.

If you are running a WordPress blog, then I recommend using WP Smush.it. Its a free WordPress plugin that lets you chop down on image size without having to manually do them. I use it on my blog to optimize all images. I have seen no side effects of using it. In fact, I have noticed an overall increase in load speed of images and hence I recommend it to you.

7. Accessible Website

Make sure your website is accessible. Ensure that there are no time outs, redirects, etc. And AFAIK, Google hates redirects, especially if it’s on the home page. For this, ensure that you are seeking web hosting from a reliable web hosting solutions company. If your website has a large down time or your visitors keep seeing the “Internal Server Error” messages often, that will affect your website negatively & can have a serious toll on your page rank. So make sure you compare web hosting services prior to committing to any one and pick the one that offers the best services at a reasonable price.

8. Using Signature

People often don’t think of this. Although its generally overlooked, using a signature can really help increase your page rank as it counts towards internal link building. Usually these signatures are in the form of images, so they look appealing and inviting. So if you don’t have a signature in your blog, make one now.

9. Social Sharing

Sharing your website / blog over the different social mediums have become really important and easy nowadays. If you are running a blog, then make sure you have placed social sharing icons underneath the post title and towards the end of the article. That way, you will increase your chances of getting your content shared. This will add towards increasing page rank.

10. Offer Newsletters

Newsletters are generally sent out when you need to inform your readers of news and updates. Sending newsletters not only help you keep in touch with your readers, but they also help you in receiving additional traffic.

There are different email marketing services available that also let you send newsletters to your users. Read all about such email marketing services here.

11. Offer RSS Subscriptions

Offer the option to subscribe to your blog’s RSS feeds. In this way, you will make it easy for others to distribute your content over the web and this will help in getting your website indexed by the popular blog engines.

12. Press Release

Press releases are an excellent way to reach the public directly. The only drawback of press releases is that you would need to pay the fees associated with it. But if you look at the positive side of it, you get to gain more traffic and exposure as it lets you connect with your audience quickly.

13. Freebies and Giveaways

We all like Freebies, don’t we? If you can possibly give out a freebie or two on certain occasions, that will help. If you are generous enough and can afford giveaways based on competitions, quiz, polls, etc. that would be great too.

14. High Quality Backlinks

Getting back links is not tough, but getting “High Quality Backlinks” is the real deal. Gone are days when you could simply pay someone to get backlinks to your website and expect to rank real high in the search engines. As per the last info that I have, Google not only looks at the back link, they also look at the source of the back link. So if you have a technology related blog and paid for backlinks on a Weight loss website, then sorry to say, but you have wasted your money. A weight loss website is “not relevant” to a tech website, so that won’t count under genuine back link. And if you ever get lucky with it, that won’t add much to your page rank.

15. Exchange “Relevant” links

Try to exchange “relevant” links with websites in your niche. Don’t try to do this exchange just for the sake of it. Do it if you genuinely think that it will help your users and do it in your niche for “relevancy” sake.

16. Directory Submissions

Directory submissions definitely add to the page rank of a website. There are different article directories  and web directories available and if you can get your website accepted into such directories, then you will have the advantage of receiving high quality back links.

Here are some of the top web directories and article directories that I know of:

• DMOZ
• Ezine articles
• Yahoo Directory
• Best of the Web

17. Blog Commenting

Help your users in issues that have by actively participating and leaving helpful comments. That will help build your relationship with your readers and problem solving will only make your more famous and known for your efforts and time.

18. Guest Blogging

Offer to guest blog on different blogs of your niche. See if you can get them to guest blog on your blog as well. This won’t be of much use if you are discussing on the exact same topic but will work wonders if you are discussing on two separate topics under the same niche.

For example, let’s consider the “health care” niche. Let’s say you deal with “eye health care”. There’s another blog that covers topics on “dental health care”.  You could approach them for guest blogging in this way, you both will get more traffic and will increase your fame.

19. Offer Language Translations

Primarily, most of the users on the web prefer English for effective communication. So if your target audience speaks a different language than English, then offer them language translation facility so that it makes it easy for them to read and enjoy your content.

20. Avoid Illegal Ways

Get creative in the ways of helping your users by providing valuable contain. Refrain from becoming creative in using illegal and/or bad ways of gaining page rank. If the search engines suspect that you are trying to deceive their web crawler bots by misleading or repeated words, nasty page redirects, including hidden text, duplicate site or pages, etc. you stand at the risk of penalization and your website may be de-listed from the search engine index. So avoid the bad ways and instead, focus on providing quality and helpful info to your users.

Your Turn!

What do you think of the above tips to increase page rank in search engines? Have you used any of the tips in the past? Did you see any increase in your page rank? Do you have any tips that you would like to share with us? Please feel free to share by commenting below.

What exactly is a Website Heatmap?

It a web analytics tool used to measure customer experience. It can be used to improve essential components of a website such as Web Usability, Customer Experience, Conversion Rates.

How is a Heat Map Tool different from a regular Web Analytics Tools?

There are Web Analytics tools such as Google Analytics that show how many people visited your website, their “Bounce Rate”, etc. but they are missing a key feature. They can’t show what visitors “actually do” on your web pages. And knowing what your visitors are “actually doing” on your website can be really vital for your business. They don’t show you why your visitors aren’t “Converting”. This is where a “heat map” kicks in.

What’s Converting?

To answer this question, let me ask you a question first. What do you want the visitors to do when they visit your website? Do you want them to buy anything? Or do you want them to subscribe to your email newsletters? Or do you want them to call you over the phone? Do you want them to sign-up for your free trials or the service itself? It could be anything that you think, would be profitable to you, now or in the future. This is what “Converting” actually is. It’s nothing but the “final action” that you want the visitor to perform when they visit your website.

Conversion is inversely proportional to “Bounce Rate”. The higher the Conversion, the lower the Bounce Rate and vice versa.

What is Bounce Rate?

Bounce Rate is nothing but the percentage of users that leave the page of your website, that they first landed upon. So for example, let’s say that visitors landed up on “Services” page of your website and they left the website right from that very page, then the Bounce Rate is 100%. If they navigate to “About Us” and then leave the website, then the Bounce Rate is said to be 50%. So ideally speaking you would want to have as less Bounce Rate as possible.

What can Website Heatmaps actually do?

Website heatmaps can show what visitors are doing when they visit your web pages. There are different companies that provide heatmaps that more or less, include features such as monitoring:

• Mouse Clicks
• Keystrokes
• Mouse Movements
• Elements that cause visitors to leave the website

Apart from that, they can also create videos of your website visitor’s browsing sessions. Yes, you can actually “SPY” on what visitors are doing exactly from the point of time they arrived on your website, what they clicked on, etc. till they exited the website. These analytics data are usually collected together to form an actual powerful and visual heatmaps and actionable behavioral reports are provided so that you can drill down further into the data.

These data can also show you what visitors click on the website, such as an image, link, button, etc. mouse movements, eye tracking and even how far they scroll vertically on a web page.

The heat maps when used in conjunction with form analytics, can also reveal what part of user forms take too much time to fill. They can also show what fields are left blank and what caused the visitors to leave, in case they abandon the form mid-way. In this way you can revise that field and provide additional helpful info to the user so that they take less time to understand what needs to be done. That will help them finish filling up the forms faster and the faster a form is filled, the faster you get your leads/sales.

You can also analyze collective data on what visitors could not find the products/data they were searching for, what caused them to not take an action and what actually causes them to leave the website as well. This way, you can refine the existing elements on your website to your visitor’s liking.

General Features of using Heat Map tools on your website:

Although every company tries to provide a unique product and/or service, they more or less offer the following features in general:

• A Heat Map tools that shows where exactly a visitor has clicked on a web page so that you can retain the items that receive lots of clicks and remove/replace elements that the visitors’ don’t feel like clicking on .
• A Scroll Map tool that shows how far vertically on the website, the visitor is scrolling. That way you will get to know where the visitors are actually losing interest on the pages and you can revise the content following that point. You can try adding new, fresh content, images, etc. to improve the appeal of the content.
• An Overlay tool that shows the number of clicks each of the elements of the web page (such as buttons, images, etc) received.

Additional Benefits:

• You will also be able track multiple domains/ HTTPS pages, IFrames, Flash Objects, etc. (if the company supports it)
• Improve User Experience by introducing improve elements such as Call-To-Action buttons, etc.
• Save money on expensive user testing and do all the testing yourself.
• Eliminate the problem of cart abandonment by fixing usability issues and fix vital business processes in real time.
• Improve client websites (if you are a Web Designer/Web Developer)
• Easily Optimize Sales Funnel by making use of the insights data.
• Demographics let you understand where your visitors are coming from so that you understand your visitors and their needs better.

Using Heatmaps on your website:

Generally you don’t have to go through the hassle of downloading anything extra. In most cases, the deployment of web site heatmaps is as simple as including a tiny piece of JavaScript code (barely 1-2 lines) and you are done! This will be your step towards collecting essential data that will provide you a detailed insight into your customer’s interaction with your website. You can use this data to optimize your customer’s experience and improve your online business performance.

All you will have to do is login into your account and review the Heat Map data to get started with it. It’s as simple as that!

Heat maps Performance Issues:

Usually the companies offering the heat map services are fully hosted and the usage of heatmaps usually does not have any noticeable performance issues as they are light weight and transparent to the user.

Conclusion:

If you have never tried any Website Heat Map tool so far, I strongly suggest you try it. If you are running a very short informational website without having much to offer for visitors, in such cases Heat maps may  be of little use. But if you are running a Shopping cart website or a dynamic website, or a website that deals in selling stuff, interacting heavily with visitors and relies on user decisions to make use of the service you are promoting, then a Visual Website Heat Map can do wonders and help you keep your existing traffic and improve your existing website to attract more traffic and increase conversions!

So try a heat map tool and start optimizing your website, increase your sales and profits today!

Your Turn!

Have you used any Website heat map tool in the past? What is your review of such a tool? What did you find good about it? What did you find bad about it? Please feel free to share your views by commenting below.

How to use Creative Commons

Here is the video that will give you a very quick overview of the basics of Creative Commons:

Your Turn!

Did the video help you learn more about what Creative Commons really is and how you can use it? Do you know of any other ways of legally sharing content online? Feel free to share your thoughts by commenting below.

How to use jQuery to Remove Multiple Classes

Let’s assume that we have different html elements on a web page such as div, image, textbox,textarea, etc. We will see how to delete the multiple classes when a button is clicked. So here we go:

Here is the basic common HTML source code for all the following examples:

  <p>
    <label for="first_name">First Name</label>
    <input type="text" name="first_name" id="first_name" class="first_name blue_text redborder">
    <input type="submit" name="sbt_remove1" id="sbt_remove1" value="Remove first_name Class and Red Border from Textbox">
  </p>
  <p>
    <label for="message">Message</label>
    <input type="submit" name="sbt_remove2" id="sbt_remove2" value="Remove Message Class And Thick Border Class from Textarea">
    <br>
    <textarea name="message" id="message" cols="45" rows="5" class="message thick_border"></textarea>
  </p>
  <p>
    <label for="states">States</label>
    <select name="states" id="states" class="states orange_border">
      <option value="TX" selected="selected">TX</option>
      <option value="AL">AL</option>
      <option value="CA">CA</option>
    </select>
    <input type="submit" name="sbt_remove3" id="sbt_remove3" value="Remove States Class and Orange Border Class from Select Dropdown">
  </p>

  <p>
  <img src="images/money.jpg" id="image_border" class="image_border img_bottom_thick_border" />
  <input type="submit" name="sbt_remove4" id="sbt_remove4" value="Remove Image Border and Bottom Border from Image">  
  </p>

  <div id="my_div" class="my_div width_and_height">This is MY DIV</div>
  <input type="submit" name="sbt_remove5" id="sbt_remove5" value="Remove My_Div class and Width and Height class from Div">

Example 1: Removing multiple classes from Textbox in jQuery using Textbox ID

	$('#sbt_remove1').on("click", function(e){		

		$('#first_name').removeClass('first_name redborder');

		e.preventDefault();

	});

Example 2: Removing multiple class from Textarea in jQuery using Textarea ID

	$('#sbt_remove2').on("click", function(e){		

		$('#message').removeClass('message thick_border');

		e.preventDefault();

	});

Example 3: Removing multiple class from Select Dropdown in jQuery using Select Dropdown ID

	$('#sbt_remove3').on("click", function(e){		

		$('#states').removeClass('states orange_border');

		e.preventDefault();

	});

Example 4: Deleting multiple classes from Image in jQuery using Image ID

	$('#sbt_remove4').on("click", function(e){		

		$('#image_border').removeClass('image_border img_bottom_thick_border');

		e.preventDefault();

	});

Example 5: Erasing multiple classes from Div in jQuery using Div ID

	$('#sbt_remove5').on("click", function(e){		

		$('#my_div').removeClass('my_div width_and_height');

		e.preventDefault();

	});

That’s it!

Do you know of any other ways to use jQuery to remove multiple classes? Feel free to suggest by commenting below.

So what to choose? Joomla or WordPress?

Before I get started with the actual comparison, let me tell you something very briefly about me so that you understand my perspective of doing this comparison. I am a Web Designer and a Web Developer. I started working with Joomla Themes first. I worked on it for quite few years before coming across WordPress. And now I create WordPress Themes and develop WordPress Plugins as well. So simply put, I have practically worked on both the platforms and hence I feel this review should help you in making a good decision from my perspective.

Because I started working with Joomla first, let me talk about it first. I will try to cover the features from both a user perspective and a developer perspective for better understanding. So let’s see whether to use WordPress or Joomla.

Joomla

Intro:

It is basically a Content Management Tool that was developed for users to maintain their website on their own, without having to hire a Webmaster for each and every change that need to be done. It’s a free tool available on PHP platform.

Use of Themes:

Multiple themes can be used (one at a time). All you need to do is use the Template Manager. Having couple of options such as the “Default” and “Assigned” seemed overkill. If you are getting started with Joomla, then you will find having two options is quite unnecessary. Only one option (Assigned) would have sufficed.

Ease of use of Frontend:

Frontend is easy to use, based upon the customization done and the way the theme is built.

Ease of use of Backend:

Backend is complex to understand and learn. It has loads of options and settings and trying to get your head around them especially when you are getting started, could be frustrating and time consuming. When I was learning Joomla, I spent a lot of time trying to understand how the backend works and it took me a significant amount of time to learn what does what.

Addition of Enhancements:

It’s possible to add new features to existing CMS by means of new extensions. But then you will need to decide what is right for you whether you want to go for a Plugin or Module.

Theme Design Learning Curve:

It’s rather easy to learn Theme Design. It used mainly index.php file and all your raw HTML code along with position of different elements. Once the theme is designed,  the content that appears in each of these blocks can be controlled using the backend. But again, because the learning curve of the backend is more and complex, it could affect the overall Theme design whenever interaction with backend is required.

Module Development Learning Curve:

Modules are relatively very complex, when compared to the Theme design. In fact, Joomla theme design is the easiest. Your core understanding of the concepts of Modules and Plugins must be clear in order to understand  what you need to build in order to satisfy your requirements. So the learning curve is high.

Plugin Development Learning Curve:

This is again difficult and complex, especially if you are getting started. If you do not prefer a good guide, You will end up feeling frustrated. So the learning curve is high.

Support:

Joomla has a forum and has a friendly community . People are willing to help but at the same time, in order to understand the solutions they prescribe, you really need to have a good grasp on the subject of how to use Joomla or else even support from others will not help much.

Updates:

The Joomla developers are kind enough to releases periodical updates with newer functionality and bug-fixes.

Client Demand:

The client demand for a Joomla website has really fell over the years. Note that I am talking only about my perspective and my experience. Other developers may have experienced this differently. But according to my experience, the main reason for the fall of demand is because of the high learning curve of the back-end.  Most of the clients that I worked with are not tech-savvy and they really found it tough and time consuming to cope up with learning curve of Joomla.

Yes, a Joomla Theme designer / Extension Developer is not the only one who need a lot of learning curve, but even clients do. Although Joomla developers have tried to make it as easy as possible, I have had clients come back to me with complaints stating that they just can’t do things on their own. They paid me to even do their  part, that is administering back-end  IMO, that really beats the purpose of a CMS. A client shouldn’t have come to me asking me to even perform the CMS work, especially when the role of CMS is to be simple enough for clients to manage it on their own.

So mainly because of the couple of above reasons, fewer clients preferred to go for Joomla over the years.

Preparing Guides for Client (Text and Video):

This is tough job & very time consuming. Although there are tons of resources & tutorials out there, my clients preferred me to write instructions and make videos for them (for payment, of course). They knew that I would cut down the geeky jargon, which in fact would save them more time. This is not the case with just one client or two. Rather many of my clients ended up paying me to make specific and to-the-point short videos so that they can get started easily.

Although this complexity and heavy learning curve for my clients has helped me earn more money in the process, I do not really favor that. Why? Because simply put if the clients are paying me to do even the stuff that they should, then the CMS has failed to keep up to its full value. Preparing Joomla guides and videos with voice narration consumes a lot of time, which again is a bad thing, in my view.

WordPress

Intro:

WordPress basically started off as a blogging tool and now over the years, it has evolved and has become an excellent choice for Content Management Tool as well. It’s a free tool available on PHP platform.

Use of Themes:

Multiple themes can be used (one at a time). Themes can be installed either locally or directly online. It’s easy to manage and use themes.

Ease of use of Front-end:

It’s very easy to use the front-end, although this could vary upon the theme design.

Ease of use of Back-end:

WordPress bring a very refreshing change, especially after dealing with Joomla. It’s very organized and all options of the website can be reached in just a click or two. The back-end is not bloated. Rather, it has only the relevant stuff that makes back-end operation very simple and a breeze.

Addition of Enhancements:

It’s very easy to add enhancements. All enhancements are called “Plugins” and that’s about it. No more geeky terminology here, no more chaos!

Theme Design Learning Curve:

WordPress Theme Design learning curve is a bit higher than Joomla’s theme design learning curve. WordPress can run on a very minimal level but in order to achieve the level of customization that you require, you will need to add more pages. So I usually find myself ending up adding files such as  404.php, page.php, comments.php, etc. for pretty much every WordPress theme I design. This is not hard once you get used to it, but will need you to spend a good amount of time in learning it.

Module Development Learning Curve:

There are no modules in WordPress. So YAY! Less things to worry about 🙂

Plugin Development Learning Curve:

Actually the plugin development is what I have found to be one of the most appealing things in WordPress. If you already deal with Object Oriented Concepts in PHP, then you can use the same to build your plugin. Or if you prefer to use native functions and variables, you can do that too. I really like this flexibility to use either of these coding standards.

Support:

WordPress has a big community of users. But despite that, I personally found that support for an issue could really take a lot of time. I have seen user boards where people have posted all the information they have along with the problem, yet there are no replies. Sometimes, it does feel like as if the entire community has deserted that specific thread. This does not happen normally, but it does happen at times.

Upgrades:

WordPress developers are great and they put a lot of time & efforts in releasing periodical updates with bug-fixes. You can update online automatically without having to manually download packages and perform a manual upgrade. IMO, this a huge time saver!

Client Demand:

The client demand for WordPress based websites and WordPress has drastically increased over the years. I find myself working with WordPress almost every day now, one way or the other. If I was working with a WordPress plugin yesterday, If find myself working on a WordPress Theme today, tomorrow, I might end up working on both. So I have seen a lot of increase in client increase due to its simplicity and very short back-end learning curve.

Preparing Guides for Client (Text and Video):

It’s relatively easy to prepare guides for WordPress websites. But I rarely get any requests of such guides for WordPress. This is really good because that tells me that my clients are able to handle WordPress on their own, without my involvement.

And the Winner is..

The clear winner to me is “WordPress”. There is no question about it. It is relatively very easy to learn, operate and manage when compared to Joomla. Not only that, but even WordPress’ popularity and demand among my clients has increased over the years and I have worked more on WordPress based projects than on Joomla projects. My clients always keep getting back to me because they want their themes to be redesigned or they want a “Plugin” with some new customization ability.

I must say, I am thankful to my clients for having asked me to build more of WordPress based Themes & Plugins. Mainly because I learned a lot. And I developed things that I never did in the past. I developed Plugins that are unique to their product, in the shortest time possible and I can guarantee that this would have never happened so quickly and easily, had they chosen Joomla over WordPress. And the reason is simple. Joomla is very “Complex”.

Although Joomla’s complexity can be regarded as its strength, it’s an overkill for an easy-to-use-and-maintain website. If the website is a community based website and involves user interaction at higher level, then Joomla can be preferred. It has nested sections, deep level navigations that can be useful for maintenance.

If I had to describe WordPress in comparison with Joomla, I would call WordPress as “Simple!” and that’s what everyone wants. My clients want it to be “Simple”. I want it to be “Simple”. Who doesn’t want their choice of CMS/blogging tools to be “Simple”? I guess, we all do!

So if you are thinking “Why to use Joomla?”, here’s my question to you: “Why NOT to use WordPress”? It’s easy, simply, efficient and very popular among clients. So why not give the clients that something that they love to use for its simplicity? Why complicate things when a simpler solution at hand can solve the problems and meet the requirements at a cost of fraction of the resources? Give it a thought!

Your Turn!

Well, I know that I will be designing more WordPress Themes and developing more WordPress Plugins in future. What about you? Are you using Joomla or WordPress? Would you suggest your clients to use Joomla or WordPress? Please feel free to share your thoughts by commenting below.

Email Marketing – What is Email Marketing? How to use it? All you need to know about Email Marketing!

Basics of Email Marketing:

Before we actually proceed, let’s hold on for a moment and understand what marketing is at its basic level. That will help understand the concept of Email Marketing better. That said, our next question is:

What is Marketing?

Simply put, marketing is a way to promote something. This is more commonly used in relation with promoting a product and/or a service. And you do marketing because you want to introduce your product/services to people so that they come to know of it and buy it/use it. So basically you are making people aware of a product and help them understand the benefits of using such a product. This, is Marketing.

What are the results of Marketing?

The general motive of Marketing is to make a sale for profits. If you have a product that solves the needs/problem of a person, then you approach them and make them understand the benefits of using your product. And if the person feels that your product will really solve their problem, then he/she will consider buying it. In broader terms, if you are “marketing”, then the direct result of a successful marketing could result in a “sale”. In terms of a user, the result of “successful marketing” results in a “purchase” or “use of a product/service”.

What is required for successful Marketing?

You need to know pretty much everything about the product that you are trying to market. If you know the inside-out of any product that you are trying to market, then the chances are high that you end up making a successful sale, because you can explain the advantages of the product to the prospective “customer” very well.

You will need to know all the benefits the product has to offer. This is required to “convince” a customer as to why your product is better and how it will help them.

You will need good communication skills. You know about the product, but the customer doesn’t. So it’s in your best interests to communicate effectively and explain the advantages of the product. The ability to present the product also counts. So there’s a lot more to this and so I will try to cover this in a later article.

What are the different forms of Marketing?

Marketing can take many forms. Some of the common ones include, but not limited to are:

• An Advertisement
• Flyer
• Brochure
• Email
• Radio Announcement
• TV Commercial
• Press Release
• Twitter Account
• Google Plus Page
• Facebook Page

What is Email Marketing?

What is Email Marketing?

Now that we have seen the different forms of Marketing, it would now be very easy to understand what Email Marketing. Simply put, Email Marketing is a way of promoting your product, business or service by using emails.

Most of the times, Email Marketing is associated with a commercial intent. But the most important factor in it is to offer products/services that will be useful to people. Apart from making profits, the goal of Email Marketing should be to build brand recognition by means of customer loyalty and trust in your products.

Why to use Email Marketing (Advantages)?

Now that internet has evolved, we are no longer shackled by the chains of traditional forms of advertising. We can leverage the power of internet to promote our products & services and thereby, grow our business.  Following are some of the main reasons/advantages of using Email Marketing to promote your products, business and/or services:

• Unlike other forms of marketing, Email Marketing is very cost effective.  It’s very easy to send emails and hence the rates to market your product via emails is very low. Unlike Television advertising, you don’t have to spend thousands of dollars for a single campaign. So this results in huge savings.
• You don’t have to approach potential customers personally in order to explain about your product to them. And sometimes you don’t even need a website in order to explain about your product. You can simply send an email that tells about the advantages of using your services/product with a link to purchase it. Interested users may visit the URL and purchase it. However, having additional information about the product on your own website with a link to it in the email that you send, can really motivate users to visit it and get familiar with it. That will improve the chances of sale.
• Relies on your efforts more than anything else and hence the much time & efforts you invest, the higher could be your profits. You no longer have to rely on search engines to send you traffic. Simply use Email Marketing to get started and earn significant profits.
• Email Marketing is very powerful once used right, so someone who gets the right hang of it can hundreds and even thousands of dollars every day.
• You can maintain an assorted list of emails that you wish to include in your Email Marketing. That will help you cut down unnecessary costs and focus on the market and people that you truly desire. This email list is prepared based upon feedback from users, the percentage of likes that you received, user’s spending habits, etc.

How to use Email Marketing?

Does the idea of Email Marketing sound good so far? It’s good to use it but it could seem fairly complex especially when you are getting started with it. There is a lot associated with it.

You will need to design the emails so that they look impressive and deliver a positive message. And you need to target the right people so that they can avail your offer and/or respond to your email. Based upon the actions taken by the users, you will then need to analyze the results and work on improvements to make it even better experience for the users.

Types of Email Marketing

Every email that you send, does not necessarily have to sell a product. The email could also include just an intro message or a welcome message, a free offer, etc. That said, there are basically 3 types of Email Marketing. They are:

Direct Email:

This basically involves you sending a message promoting your product and this will be the main aim. You will need a list of email address that you wish to send this promotional message to. If you are able to assemble such a list on your own by interacting personally with people either locally or over the web, then that’s good. If not, then you can also rent email lists from other service companies.

Retention Email:

As the name suggests, the main goal of Retention Email Marketing would be to build your relationship with your customers. It should provide a meaningful and valuable information that the customer can use it to their advantage. Including a promotional message or an ad of your product is optional.

External Emails:

Instead of sending your own emails, you take help of others. You simply include your own promotional messages in newsletters published by others, for their readers and you pay them for doing so.

What are the main requirements to use Email Marketing?

1. The main requirement to use Email Marketing is that you need “permission” of the recipient, in order to receive your emails. Without their explicit permission, your promotional email message can be considered as “spam” even though you have no such intent.

2. The second most important requirement is to have a link to “unsubscribe” the recipient’s email from your Subscribers list.

Failure to comply with the main requirements of sending repeated promotional emails can make you liable for heavy penalties. Also legal action may be taken against your company, which is undesirable. So you have to make sure you follow the guidelines to be on the safer side.

How to get permission from a user for Email Marketing?

Get user permission for Email Marketing

Let me give you an example. Suppose you have a website and you are selling some products. A user purchases a product and while doing so, he opts to receive “promotional emails” by ticking a checkbox (in general). By ticking the checkbox & submitting the information,  the customer has now “legally  opted” to receive your promotional emails. You can now include that customer’s email in your address list to send you next promotional email. So that’s one way to get user’s permission.

Another way to get user’s permission is via Opt-in Form on your website. Placing a form with an option to opt-in just to receive promotional emails is a very good way to get customer’s email. Sending a promotional email to such a user is now perfectly valid as the user has explicitly indicated the interest to receive the promotional emails from you.

Why NOT to use Email Marketing?

• Don’t use Email Marketing to “spam” users. Uninterested people usually unsubscribe from promotional emails and sending promotional emails to such people is considered spamming.
• Don’t use it force a user to visit specific website, especially when it’s not your website.
• Don’t use it when you are wanting to focus on short term money making goals.
• Don’t use it to send bulk emails to targeted users.
• Don’t use it to send bulk emails to database of email addresses.

Who Email Marketing is for?

• Email Marketing is definitely for someone who wants to harness the power of digital marketing by leveraging the power of internet and emails while abiding by its terms and conditions.
• It is for someone who does not want to rely heavily upon search engines for customers.
• It is for someone who wants to take matters seriously and personally in their hands and promote products and services only to targeted groups of people.
• It is for someone who wants to save huge money on advertising costs.
• It’s not restricted to an individual or a company. As long as you want to promote your services/products, Email Marketing is for you. So if you are a Web Designer/Web Developer or a MNC, you can use it to let users know about your products so that they can hire you and or buy your products.

When is the right time to use Email Marketing?

• If you are low on budget and want to reach targeted audience, use Email Marketing.
• Go for it if you have been trying to promote your products and services by using traditional methods but have met with very little success or no success.
• If you have a large audience that you want to reach with minimal efforts.
• You already have an audience and wish to target new markets.
• When you want to build long term relationship with your customers.
• You want to make more profits.

What you need to do for Email Marketing?

What to do for effective Email Marketing?

The main part that you need to deal with to get started with Email Marketing is to collect list of email addresses that have opted in to receive your promotional emails or find companies that can send your promotional message in their emails to their subscribers. In this later method, you won’t have access to the email list.

But should you have an email list, here are couple of brilliant options that you can use to get started with Email Marketing effectively.

1. Use Email Marketing Software

2. Use Email Marketing Services

Email Marketing Softwares:

Email Marketing Software lets you take matters seriously in your hands. You can use it to create profitable customer relationships for your business. Based upon the features offered by the software you will be able to do a variety of things such as design the newsletter that you wish to send, prepare email lists, Import/Export data, perform analysis of data so that you see can see ROI, monitor campaigns, etc.

Email Marketing Services:

If you think that doing everything yourself manually is too much work and/or if you are short on time and wish others to do the “dirty work” for you, then Email Marketing Services are perfect for you. Some of the other benefits of using Email Marketing Services are:

• You can use easy tools such as “Email Wizards” to create email newsletter.
• You can create newsletters on the go using any device such a laptop, mobile phone, etc. without having to carry around your Email Marketing Software (if you own one).
• You don’t have to worry about tracking and reporting. Everything will be provided to you for your convenience by the service you choose.
• You can reliably track delivery.
• You can use API to integrate the data with other business applications you may have.

Where to go from here?

So far if the idea and methodology of using Email Marketing to promote your business, products and services is clear, your next should be to check out the different Email Marketing Services that you can use for your next promotion campaign. I will be posting an article very soon about the best Email Services out there,so bookmark this page and check this section later to find out more.

Your Turn!

What do you think of Email Marketing? Have you ever used it for promoting your business? Have you used any Email Marketing Software and/or Email Marketing Services? What are your reviews on them? Please feel free to share your thoughts and ideas by commenting below.