Entries Tagged 'Tips and tricks' ↓

The Unicode standard character list provides a great many letters and characters in languages we are both familiar with and unfamiliar with. It also provides a great many symbols for math, science, and other more obscure functions.

When you see a weird character being used by someone—particularly in their listing title—that’s usually where it came from. But for the most part, lists you find are of a few characters somebody thought was interesting before they got bored and gave up.

I have made a list here of the 60,000 possible Unicode characters. If you’re looking for a character to use in your HTML to decorate your page, you may very well find something there.

Note: the page is large and may load slowly if you have a slow connection. Also, if you make a listing title with a lot of characters in it, make sure there are spaces. If you break the front page or a category index page because your set it up without spaces, your listing can be suspended.

Click here.

❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤

Let’s say you have your own domain. You have uploaded files, say, photos, and you intend to sell access to those photos. You don’t want to give access to anyone who doesn’t pay. All you want is to sell access to photo sets by email, not start a member’s area where someone could have full access to all the files you might have.

If you’ve read this far, you probably aren’t sure how to go about this. There are a lot of ways to do it, many of them requiring a fair amount of technical expertise.

I’m going to skip around those and give the one that is the easiest to use that I know of.

Let’s say I have a domain named mydomain.com. The URL of that domain is http://mydomain.com. If I have an ‘images’ folder, as many people do, the URL would be http://mydomain.com/images/. If you have an image in there named myimage.jpg, the URL of that image is http://mydomain.com/images/myimage.jpg.

The first thing you need to do is check to see what happens if you go to that /images/ directory by typing in the address http://mydomain.com/images/. It is often the case that typing in a folder name will by default send you to an index page you have in that folder. But if you don’t have an index page in that folder (because maybe you didn’t put one there), depending on how your server is set up by your host, you may see a default directory page that has clickable links to all your images.

This is a bad thing, as anyone who knows you have an /images/ folder (or anyone who guesses you have one) can see everything you have in there. You may want to contact your host to see if they will change that, or you can simply create and upload a blank index page.

Open Notepad (Start=>Accessories=>Notepad), select File=>Save As. In the window that pops up, choose where you want to save it on your computer first, so you won’t forget where you put it. Type index.html in the “File name” box. Change “Save as Type” from “Text Documents (*.txt)” to “All Files”. Then click Save.

Upload the file into any directory that doesn’t already have an index file of some sort.

Now, let’s say you want to sell someone a set of files named reddress1.jpg, reddress2.jpg, and reddress3.jpg. You may want to sell multiple sets. It’s really convenient to name them like that, because it makes it easy for you to see what you have and work with it. But it also makes it easy for someone else to guess what else might be there. So if someone who bought Set 1 guessed that Set 2 contained reddress4.jpg, reddress5.jpg, and reddress6.jpg, then typed those in, they could very well find them. They might also go looking to see what you named your other photo sets, based on your sales info.

Obviously that’s way too easy. Here’s what I do. I append a random string to the end of the file or folder I am giving access to, using PassUtils, a free password generator. Unzip it and install it. To use it just open and uncheck the “punctuation box”, because having punctuation in a filename can mess up opening that file. Create as many passwords as you like. Then right click each password and copy the password to your clipboard. Rename your files one at a time by right clicking in a Windows ‘Save As’ or ‘Open’ window, or in FTP, by right clicking and selecting ‘Rename’. The name will be selected. Hit the right arrow to put the cursor to the end of the file name, between the file name and the file extension. Type an underscore ‘_’ or hyphen ‘-’, then copy in the random string.

The goal is to change the file ‘reddress1.jpg‘ to ‘reddress1_6cYm2FTg.jpg‘. Now you can still read what the file contains based on what you named it, but nobody can possibly guess correctly what you named it to access it without permission.

You can also do the same thing with folders containing multiple images. If you sell a single set of images in a folder named /Set1_6cYm2FTg/, nobody can guess the folder name, and you can still give the photos easy names inside the folder.

Many girls are now using Photohostess to host their images for Niteflirt. Unfortunately, although photohostess is intended to host photos for girls on Niteflirt and provide them with links to use, it does not provide you with Niteflirt-safe image code or the information you need to fix the links to make them work but keep them from getting your listing suspended.

In my last entry I gave instructions on how to clean up Photohostess links by editing them. That is no longer necessary. I have created a page that you can enter your image url, which will give you a working image link to copy.

There is also a second form which will generate a working link. So you can use it to create HTML code for payment mail buttons, image links to your blog, or whatever you want.

There is a third form you can use to create text links.

You must enter naked links with no tags. There should be no spaces in your links. If you miscopy, it will create HTML code for you that just won’t work. If you are making payment mail buttons, copy the plain HTML link from the window that comes up after you create or edit your payment mail button, not the popup that links from the payment mail index and provides you with a gray payment mail button code.

These are standard links. They will work with any text or image anywhere you need an HTML image or link code on the web. They will not modify your image size for you.

Photohostess link generator

Photohostess is a photo hosting site intended for use with Niteflirt. The site requires photos uploaded to meet Niteflirt photo requirements. Therefore, it is rather odd that of all the links they give you to use your photos, none of them is Niteflirt-safe and ready. (Click to enlarge the image if it appears small to you.)

You have a choice here, but either way you have to do some editing.

You can take the hotlink for websites code, and remove the link (shown in red):

<a href="http://photohostess.com/etc…"><img src=”http://photohostess.com/etc…></a>

Or you can take the direct link and turn it into an image link by adding the parts in green here:

<img src="http://photohostess.com/etc…">

Also see How to host an image on Niteflirt.

Do you have multiple accounts on Niteflirt that you don’t always keep open? See at a glance which accounts have mail. The script will run on your computer, no upload or website needed. It refreshes every 5 minutes. You will need to put your account names and UID in the script to make it work. Instructions are in the script. It looks like this:

(I removed the link because this no longer works with changes to the Niteflirt mail system.)

I made a video clip using a camera. I liked the background sound, but I wasn’t going to be able to get my computer to the location where I would be able to record it again. But I was able to find a free audio extractor that will snag the sound track from a video in most common formats and save it as an mp3, wav, etc. It’s super easy to use.

Hotlinking is when somebody uses an image that isn’t theirs in another page by linking directly to the image url.

It’s a form of stealing. They don’t have the right to use that image, as it belongs to somebody else. But they are also “stealing bandwidth”. When an image loads, the domain that is hosting it pays for the bandwidth out of their bandwidth limit. If people are visiting your site and seeing your image when they look at your page, then it is worth it to you. But if somebody else puts your image on display elsewhere without telling you, and it loads a lot, you can end up having to pay a big premium or get shut down by your host for exceeding their bandwidth limits.

The only way to find this out is to look at your server records. If you see a lot of hits from some site you don’t have a link on, and the page you have loading is actually an image, you’ve probably found a hotlinker.

One girl found a hotlinker this way. Some meathead had found a full-size image on her site of two girls kissing and was using it as his avatar in an Irish soccer forum. Many forums will upload an image off the web and resize it. This one just resized the image using height and width tags. So the full image was loading for every forum post he wrote, for every viewer who looked at any page he had a post on.

I think a couple of us joined the forum and posted that he did not have the right to do this. He was pretty arrogant about it. And this guy was a moderator! So she changed the name of the photo on her server and replaced it with an advertisement. I sent an email to the admin, who sent me back an apology. I guess there was going to be an email going out to forum members on that.

So first, the image must be hosted on your server so you have control of image names. This won’t work with any other image hosting, as they generate unique image names that you can’t change.

Here’s an image somebody might be using as a background:

Like this:

The fun part is that you can put anything you want in there. Somebody who right-clicked your image url to use it may very well not have used height and width tags on that image. So you could substitute a gigantic image for a small one.
Like this:

If the original image is a .gif rather than a .jpg image, you can substitute an animation, which can really get the attention of viewers.
Like this:

Here’s a link to a blog post where the writer got tired of people stealing his content. For him, the issue was not images, but text that other people were stealing. What he did was make a tiny clear .gif image and include it in the code. It did not show, so if somebody stole his text and didn’t realize they were getting an image, they might end up unwittingly hotlinking to it.

Most content thieves don’t do that, but eventually one did. It’s pretty funny when they do. All the author had to do was switch out the tiny, transparent image for one that got his message across.

If you catch someone like this and pull this switcheroo, make sure you take a screenshot so you can show everyone. And if you substitute an animated one, try to get a video screen capture.

I know people are always asking how to convert mp3 files to .wav files, or switch between so many different video file formats.

Here‘s a link to a blog post describing a great many free media file converters. You should be able to find what you need there.

Here’s the thing.

To get placed more highly in a Google search (who doesn’t want that?), you need to make Google think you’ve got a damned fine site. The higher the PR (Page Rank) you’ve got, the better a site Google thinks you’ve got, and the higher you will come up in a search for your chosen keywords.

One of the ways you do this is by getting links from other sites like yours.

One of the things Google looks at when deciding how good a site you have is incoming links. They look at how many sites are linking to you and what kind of sites they are. The people who wrote the algorithm decided that the more highly ranked sites you have linking to your site, the better quality your site is.

So if you’ve got a site that lots of people with good sites think their readers will want to read, they’ll link to you and you may get a boost out of this. The best way to do this is to start by having quality content on your site. Update your content regularly and people will return to see what’s new. They’ll give you links.

Of course, there are other ways to get links. Some sites will trade links with you. Google looks at links like this and sees that they are reciprocal, which means the two sites link to each other. A link like this is not worth as much to Google, but you may get some good traffic out of it.

When you make a reciprocal link, you should place the site’s link at least as well as they have placed yours. So if they link to your front page, you can link to their front page. If they’ve got a “links” page, you can put their link on your links page or on your front page. But be nice. Don’t hide their link someplace on your site if they are giving you a link to your front page. I have offered to trade links with girls who wanted me to link to their front page, while they were putting my link on a page that was behind a tiny text link. Another girl offered me a link on a password-protected page that nobody but flirts whose banners were on the page had the password to.

It’s the same with topsites. If they want you to host their image, then upload it to your site and link to the image there. Otherwise, use the code they gave you and put the link on the page you gave them.

Here’s a banner for this site:

The url for the image is

http://help4flirts.com/banners/banner.gif.

The code for linking is
<a href="http://help4flirts.com/"><img src="http://help4flirts.com/banners/banner.gif" border="0"></a>

I had to type that out in strange characters for you to see that. In order for the linking code to actually show up the way they need to copy it, you need to either type it in special html characters, format it with <pre></pre> tags:
<pre><a href="help4flirts.com/"><img src="http://help4flirts.com/banners/banner.gif" border="0"></a></pre>

your linking code

See how I didn’t actually put the linking code in there? This one doesn’t work in WordPress.

Or you can put it in a textarea. “Cols” is the number of columns. Put more to make the textarea wider. “Rows” is the number of rows. You can increase or decrease, but you want the entire code to show without too much wasted white space.
<textarea cols="40" rows="3"><a href="http://help4flirts.com"><img src="http://help4flirts.com/banners/banner.gif" border="0"></a>
<a href="http://help4flirts.com/"><img src="http://help4flirts.com/banners/banner.gif" border="0"></a>

You can use any of these in an html page. You can’t use the ‘pre’ tags in WordPress.

There are two kinds of recordings you can make, recorded listings and mp3s.

The recorded listing plays for a caller on the Niteflirt system. You can record this over the phone by clicking the Create a Recorded Listing link at the bottom of your My Account page under Other Tools and Links. (I could give you the link here, but it will only work if you are logged in to your account). Follow the directions you are given and say whatever you want to go into your recording over the phone.

One problem with doing it this way is that you have to say it all the way through from beginning to end. There is no way to correct a mistake. So you need to practice in advance.

Many of my recorded listings are like stories. I write out the text exacly as I want it, and then I read it out loud again and again, editing awkward spots and rewriting parts that I realize might sound better a different way. You need to practice until it sounds completely natural. It should not sound like you’re reading from a script.

The other way to make a recorded listing is to make and upload a .wav recording. I am not sure how well this works. I know some girls have had luck with it, though the only time I tried this it didn’t work. And I have heard lots of complaints.

But first, you need to make a recording. So download Audacity and install it. Also download and unzip the Lame Encoder while you’re at it, which you will need to make mp3′s.

You will need a microphone to do this, too, though the one that is built into your computer may be good enough to start.

Open Audacity, hit the red button and start talking.

If you make a mistake, start again with the sentence you flubbed in. You can go back and edit out the error when you are finished. When you are through recording, click the button with the yellow square on it.

Replay what you have recorded. Highlight any mistakes by clicking one end and dragging your mouse across them, then delete.

To save, give the file a name and it will save it as an audacity project. To save as a .wav file, you will need to select Export As .wav. To save as an mp3, you will need to select Export as .mp3. The program will ask you where your Lame Encoder is on your computer. Browse to it and select it. Now fill out the little info form with something, and export.

Now you have a .wav file, which you may be able to upload to Niteflirt as a recorded listing if you are lucky. And you also have an .mp3 of the exact same recording, which is the other kind of recording I was writing about at the top of this entry. If the system was working right, you would be able to attach an mp3 to a payment mail and put the link on your page. As far as I know it is not working right now, so you will have to find another host or put it on your website (if you even sell a few, this will pay for a website).