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There are many ways to keep the excitement and interest alive in a relationship and most of these ways focus on the interaction between two partners.  There are other indirect ways which can be very effective in rejuvenating relationships.  One of them I will touch upon now and concerns not an outwardly direction of attention to the partner, but instead a change in direction of your own life path.

It sounds a bit dramatic, but really it is nothing more than making better use of your talent in various areas to increase your ability to experience life’s rich variety of creative activities.  The theory is that by increasing your own knowledge and skills in areas which fulfil you, you will then pass on the increased feeling of well-being to your partner.  As well as being more emotionally self-sufficient, you reduce the emotional baggage on your partner that you bring to the relationship.  By this I mean that many people expect their partner to fix all their problems and be a leaning post for everything that goes wrong.  Instead, learn how to bring into your life emotional experiences that do not depend on your partner… in essence, by doing so you are not draining your other half’s energy, but instead replenishing it.  This in turn will lead to an increased sense of well-being in your partner which could then be reflected positively back to you.  In short, both of you will benefit and the relationship will potentially enter a deeper phase of understanding and mutual love.  Many people prefer their partner to have interests outside of their own… it leads to a more rounded, less clingy relationship, which is far more healthy.

Another benefit of doing various activities/hobbies which fulfil you is that you have an increased base of knowledge and interests from which to talk about.  You will feel more confident as you become competent in your hobby and this will lead to renewed focus on the topics in your conversations which interest you and could help your partner respect you even more.  An upshot of this is the possibility that your partner could even show an interest and he too could benefit from following similar hobbies.

All in all, gaining experience in what life has to offer and becoming adept at a few fulfilling skills can work wonders for your self-esteem and independence.  This in turn can lead to your partner feeling less pressure and actually feeling more love towards you.  Many people are turned off by a partner who is too dependent on them as it creates an artificially high level of pressure for them to support their partner.  By removing this pressure and showing that you have an intellectual, creative side that empowers you, you may just find that your partner is impressed, relieved, proud and ultimately even happier to have you in her/his life.

SO what hobbies would achieve all this?  Anything which fulfills you.  It would be even better if some of your hobbies your partner could even share with you (though beware encroaching on their ’spare’ time and this could backfire and you could be accussed of meddling in their life a little too much).  I would recommend an interest which fulfills you emotionally as well as offers some sort of interaction with others.  For instance, the following list should provide some ideas on what many people do to enrich their lives:

• painting
• poetry
• writing
• photography
• knitting
• debating clubs
• dancing
• politics
• history
• horse riding
• flower arranging
• kite flying
• running
• book of the month club
• singing
• sculpture
• glass-blowing
• fine arts
• jewellery making
• golf
• yoga
• martial art

The list could be nearly endless.  The choice is yours, so go out and make yourself more fulfilled, more confident, stronger and more interesting… and watch your relationship reinvigorate itself.

Will relationship_advice

After having spoken to a female friend about her boyfriend recently, I came to the conclusion that many people fail to understand their partner.  Apparently, her boyfriend would sometimes get angry for little reason and act too sensitively in certain situations.  She said he was actually a very nice guy and other than his anger, everything else was perfect.

After discussing this for a while, it transpired than when he got angry, she rose to the challenge and got angry back at him.  Fighting fire with fire is not a good strategy for relationship harmony.  Of course she has the right to get angry with him, but there is a subtle difference in each others anger which, in my opinion places her at fault.  In this case, his anger it seems may be caused by his abusive past (it appears he had a strict, violent father), whereas hers is caused by his irrational actions.   Why is this important?  Firstly, in this case the woman needs to understand that his anger is not a reflection on the current situation and she should view the trigger as nothing more than that, a release valve for the inner pain he has experienced.  He may not even know why he is getting angry and if his partner gets angry back and fails to understand the real underlying cause of his pain, then he will get even more angry and frustrated with both himself and her.  He wants to be in control, but was previously hurt to such a degree that he needs help to sort out his emotions.  Instead of getting angry with him, she would be better to try (if she can, and has the love and maturity to do so) to reach out a hand of patience and understanding.  By acknowledging (in a gentle and unpatronising way) that his anger is a consequence of the pain which was previously inflicted on him, she will be in control of the situation and he will end up feeling a mixture of emotions.  Firstly, he will feel relief – men often lose control of themselves when challenged in an angry state and they always end up afterwards feeling really bad and disappointed with themselves; so by avoiding a confrontation, she is helping him avoid hurting himself, which he will appreciate.  Secondly, love – show understanding to a man who does not (on the surface) deserve it and you will escalate in his opinion of you; you are proving to him how much more in control you are than he is and he will respect and possibly love you more for it.  Thirdly, shame – by your mature actions you will leave him feeling ashamed of his lack of control; this shame will more realistically cause him to look at his anger issues than if you shout back at him – shout back at him and in some way you are reinforcing his belief that you are in the wrong.  Of course if you rise to his challenge and fight back, then he will think you are deliberately pressing his buttons, showing him no love or understanding and basically failing him as his partner, which will hurt him more and cause an endless circle of anger.  More importantly, you are displaying a lack of knowledge of his pain and the fact that he feels he cannot really talk about this pain.  Show tolerance to him and he will start to handle his anger better.  A simple gesture such as touching his arm or even keeping silent may be enough to bring on his shame.

Now, why should a woman do this for her partner?  After all, he is getting angry and it is not her fault, so why should she have to make the effort to be tolerant and patient when he is being angry?   The easy answer is that she doesn’t have to do this.  In fact few women do.  However, if she loves her partner and wishes to end the random acts of anger, then she needs to understand that she is in a unique position in this man’s life to help him.  After all, men also make many sacrifices for women, so is it not the right thing to do to help a man who may be suffering from some sort of emotional trauma?  Alas, many women do not see it this way and effectively take it personally when a man displays his anger for silly reasons.  If he is worth the effort, then give him a chance and see if the gentle understanding way of dealing with his anger brings about results.  If not, then at least you know you have tried your best and the next step is either further professional counselling or a break-up.

Will relationship_advice

So many dating sites appear to have messed up the single most important factor in retaining customer loyalty and driving increased site usage; i.e. the users’ photo album.  The importance in providing good, clear, easily accessible images to people browsing a dating site is well documented.  However, what are the main criteria for a good photo browsing experience?

First, we need to define the website limitations.  The administrator of a dating site can not realistically demand that all users submit professionally-taken photos; therefore the aesthetics of the image itself are not taken into consideration.  Then we are left with what the site designer can actually be responsible for:

• provide large images (a generous reciprocal crop factor should be supported)
• well-proportioned images (no vertical/horizontal skewing should occur during post-upload processing)
• quick load of each and every image after a user-triggered event
• easy navigation between images
• main image must be bigger than the thumbnail
• main image must not extend over the average page dimensions
• if possible, allow user to upload photo description for every image

Most sites flaunt at least one of these rules and a ridiculously high percentage only have one or two of the rules implemented.  I have seen some sites where the thumbnail image is actually the same size as the main image (if it is too small the photo is hard to see; if it is too large it takes too long to download).

I think the best solution is to utilise average size thumbnails, with the corresponding main image at least 4-6 times the dimensions of the thumbnail.  With the pervasive adoption of Javascript, there is no excuse not to allow users to view the images via a rollover function, and all on the same page.  In addition, there should be no need to navigate to a different page or a pop-up window to view the clicked-on image.  Follow these straightforward rules and the user will have a far more convenient browsing experience and usability frustration need not drive them away.

Will datingsite

When writing PHP scripts for a complex website, it can be tricky to debug your code and remove bugs. This is due to the fact that you are running your scripts on a remote server (where your site is hosted). Most PHP programmers resort to using the Echo command or the var_dump() function to send debug info to the browser. Whilst this works, it is cumbersome and involves modifying code on the server. A far better way would be to enable real-time debugging on the server itself, which allows you to step through your code and look at the stack, local vars, etc. Is this possible? Of course it is if you have complete access to the server, but what if you don’t?

There is a solution. In a nutshell you need to run a server on your development PC, configure it for debugging and then use a debugging client to enable code step-through. All sounds a bit complicated and it is in fact a slightly messy task, however I have simplified the process for you and detailed it below.

1. download Apache, with PHP and MySQL (assuming you use MySQL). I find that the Xampp installation is quite convenient and easy to use, with everything you need to run a server on your PC.
2. download the debug extension to the PHP installation on Xampp.
3. download the Eclipse debugger client.
4. follow this tutorial to show you how to setup/debug your new system.

All you need to do is copy your web project files to the project folder (which you set up in Eclipse) and make sure that the project is housed within the htdocs folder of the Xampp installation. Everything should run fine if you followed the steps. I will write a more comprehensive outline of PHP debugging when I have more time. Feel free to ask me questions if you have difficulties.

Best of luck,
Will

Will website_technology

If you are the administrator of a blog, you will doubtless be familiar with receiving a fair quantity of spam on a daily basis. Many of the comments would nearly make you think that they were left specifically by people who had read your blog. Closer inspection will however, show that the comments are usually generic and/or with the title of your blog and/or post inserted into the body of the spam comment. For someone new to blog maintenance, they may be fooled into believing that the comment was a genuine one. The danger here is that they will permit its inclusion in their blog and subsequently provide the spammer with an inevitable backlink to the spamming site. This will also have the effect of reducing the blog owners page’s PR weighting for valid links (PR is distributed amongst outgoing links evenly, therefore 2 links from a PR2 page, would carry more significance to Google than 3 links from the same page – do you really want some of your PR value being diverted to a spammers website?).

How to cope with this is not that difficult. Some bloggers refuse to accept comments at all. I find this approach a bit drastic. One way is to not publish a comment until it has been verified by the administrator, which is something your blog software can help you with by automatically temporarily storing these comments, awaiting for your approval/rejection. If you are unsure of the validity of the source of a comment, you can always remove the web address they invariably add to their post, hence depriving them of the valuable backlink to their site. If I am unsure, I take a sizeable portion of the comment text which looks generic, i.e. without any reference to my site or post title, and then I Google it to see if a similar comment is published elsewhere on other blogs. If so, I delete the post.

Many bloggers who wish to have a successful site and are novices in SEO, may feel that ‘Content is King’ and accept any and all blog comments. This is a dangerous strategy, as usually the comments from spammers are already on other sites and hence would be deemed by Google as duplicate content. As well as that the backlink to the spamming site can influence how Google views your site. Link to a bad neighbourhood and you may be ‘tarred with the same brush’ by Google, i.e. they will assume you are no different from the spammers they are trying to crack down on. This could seriously damage your site’s reputation in the Google index and once damaged, it is very hard to repair. So take the time and perform careful routine maintenance on your blog’s comment… it could mean the difference between a successful blog and a sand-boxed one.

Will website_technology

What is the single most critical factor for dating sites in determining their success?  I guess there are many critical factors but one which strikes me as of the utmost importance is the ease of accessing photos and the quality of those photos.  For example, many sites insist on opening up photos in a new browser window, which can be inconvenient and time consuming.  In addition, the images are often either too large or too small… you would nearly think the site designer was unable to automatically resize an image.  On top of all this, you have the problem of poor navigation and control of images.  Ideally, a profile should have thumbnails loaded of all available images.  This keeps the data download small and allows the page to load fast.  A simple click or mouse rollover should allow a larger image to be seen, but within the same window.  Click in Love has as it’s cornerstone, middle-sized, clear images, viewable immediately after upload and easily accessible.  We believe that this design feature will prove most attractive to dating site users and offer a level of quality that is not matched online today.

Will datingsite

Once the trend in online dating seemed to be to target Eastern European women looking to ‘escape’ to the West.  Though this trend still exists in many ways, as the EU expands and former soviet countries gain new wealth through the exploitation of energy sources, those countries where (traditionally) women migrated from, are finding economic ways to retain their citizens.  The result is that the abundant supply of beautiful, well-educated women seeking to better themselves abroad in Western Europe is drying up considerably.  I personally think this is a good thing for the women and hope that soon some sort of balance will exist between European East and West.  However, for a dating site specialising in intercultural relationships, this could be the death knoll.  By staying ahead of the market in terms of site features and better customer care, Click in Love hopes to facilitate the spreading of culture awareness across the EU and beyond, thus enabling partner searching to be that much more than a sleazy case of exploitation of vulnerable women.

Will datingsite