Dating Site Blog & SEO

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The experts will give you many techniques to try and make your relationship feel special and last longer.  I believe the best way to achieve this is in doing things together.  Develop shared interests which make you closer as friends. For instance, if you are both able to share hard work, as well as have a laugh and experience the ups and downs of working on a project together, then you create an additional  bond which otherwise could have been missing.  

The problem to overcome first of all is the common attitude of not wanting to share a hobby with your partner. There are many reasons why people do this, especially men: I need time alone; we cannot be with each other for too long without arguing; we have no common interests, etc.  You need to get out of the defeatist attitude and actually aim to make this joint hobby work.  The relationship should be there to benefit you as well as your partner, so make it happen.  Demand more and give more.  Most importantly, treat your partner as a friend and make the effort to move closer to them.

By working together on some project or hobby, you form strong bonds, reignite lost passion and both gleam a sense of achievement which you both understand and see in the other.  It really is a win-win situation and should form part of any healthy relationship.

Will relationship_advice make a Relationship Work, relationship advice

When I talk about maintaining discipline in a relationship I am referring to raising children.  A friend told me a story about his other married friend.  It seems this married man has two troublesome teenagers.  Now the man was a good father, kind, sensitive, thoughtful and never ever hit the kids.  Now that the kids have gorwn up a bit and reached their teens, it seems that they are getting out of control.  His wife confided in someone that she was disappointed that her husband was so weak with the children and not disciplining them enough.

Which brings me to my point.  Women want a caring sensitive man to get married to.  They want him to be a gentle hands-on father.  Yet they also want him to deal out the discipline as well.  if he is nice to the children he is too soft, if he is tough with them, he is too hard.  Why is it that men in a relationship cannot be accepted for what they are and always seem to be blamed for everything that goes wrong.  Women want equality (and rightly so), but with that equality comes a responsibility that they too show equality.  It does not sound equal to me if the man must be both a mother and a father, whilst the mother need only be the mother.  Does anyone else think that relationships are not balanced anymore?  

Whilst I see that equality in the workplace is getting nearer and women are gaining on men, I wonder are these same women failing to ensure equality in their relationships where men are appearing to be putting in a lot more effort than they are.  Equality works both ways and until women realise this and try harder in relationships, then we will continue to see the average age of marriage rise and divorce rates soaring.

Will datingsite relationship advice, relationship dicsipline

A lot of expats (expatriates are people who live in a foreign country) moving into a new country are often faced with difficulties most of us rarely encounter.  Things such as getting legal advice, finding accommodation, updating a CV, etc, all take on a new dimension of difficulty when doing so in an unfamiliar language and city.

This is one way in which the Internet has been such a great help to expats, via the expat forum.  In Munich, the population is expanding at a fast rate which includes over 50% of the new residents being of foreign descent.  There is a huge market for those who don’t speak the language well enough to settle in easily.  This is where ‘Talk Munich’ comes in.  Talk Munich is an English-language expat forum that helps people in Munich and the surrounding Bavarian region to settle into life there.  It can be a great resource for finding out all the little things which can be so troublesome if you don’t speak the language.

Will munich bavaria, expat forum, munich

Does anyone else think that the major churches are against gender equality?  We know that the Catholic church believes the woman’s role in a relationship is as a stay-at-home mother; but what about other churches collective attitudes?

This question is a pivotal one and more important than even feminists probably realise.  European scholars in the last few hundred years have been predicting the demise of the church as science and rationality take hold and push superstition out of the way.  Yet religion and the church have managed to hang on and still look strong.  If they really are against gender equality, then their existence effectively is working against women being equal members of society.

So the question is whether or not women will rebel against organised religion and the very subtle persecution they have suffered up to now.  Only time will tell, but for the moment it seem the atheists and feminists have something in common.

Will relationship_advice Gender Equality

Can you trust your partner?  

The cornerstone of every good relationship is trust.  Without it, the relationship cannot survive.  Yet there appears to be a common theme emerging in recent years in Western society – female equality is impacting relationships in ways unforeseen and not always beneficial.  

Statistically women are more likely to cheat on their partners now that at any time in the recent past.  When men cheat they try to be clever and hide it, but men just aren’t as clever socially or in picking up subtle body language or signs as women are.  Quite often the woman knows her partner has cheated even before he does (joke).  The point is that women are better at reading men than men are at reading women.  In other words, a woman has a better chance of spotting her partner cheating than a man does.

Where does this leave men?  In a changing world where women have more equality (and rightly so), they do seem to be picking up some of the bad habits of a certain type of man.  Cheating is on the rise amongst women… and men have a big disadvantage in fighting this:

• In divorce, men tend to lose more (highly debatable statement, but let us assume it for now). 
•  If a man cheats and his partner does not find out about it, she will not raise the child which he may father.  If a woman cheats and her partner does not find out about it, he will spend a sizable portion of his life raising another man’s child, without even being aware of it.  
• Men will often find it hard to spot if a woman is cheating.

Put these few points together and the stakes are suddenly quite high for a man to get married; he stands to lose a lot if his partner proves not to be trustworthy.  Yet he may never know this about her.  Hence another reason why men are slowing moving away from marriage.  

I understand this is very controversial what I am saying, but sometimes it is healthy to play devil’s advocate and see what debate it provokes.

Will datingsite fidelity, honesty, relationships, trust

The proliferation of free online dating sites is reaching unmaintainable levels.  There is so much competition and so few quality sites which deliver on their promise.  Niche sites are the real area of growth.  By this I mean sites which cater for a particular subset of society.  Like for instance, dating aimed at a certain religion or sexual persuasion.  People want their choice reduced in the area of dating sites as most people think they know what they want and wish to avoid all the unnecessary profiles they have to wade through.  If you can successfully target a niche which is in demand for dating, then you stand a better chance of tackling the SEO and winning than if you kept your site generic and hence went into direct competition with the big dating sites.

Furthermore, by making your site free, perhaps you are telling your customers that it is a cheap site.  I think there are too many free sites now and it lowers the expected quality of the people using it… spammers, scammers and fake profiles just jump into my mind when I think of free online dating sites.  So consider a nominal fee for your niche site in order to show that your site has a bit of class.  People are willing to pay for that.

Will datingsite free online dating

Are you familiar with SEO and how it can impact your site?

For any web business owner, SEO is a vital ingredient in their marketing plan.  Search Engineer Optimisation (SEO) is a collection of techniques employed by a webmaster to improve their site’s placement in a search engine’s results page (SERP’s).  This will lead to more traffic (in SEO lingo  ’traffic’ refers to people/site visitors).  Normally the SERP’s in question relate to the Google  search engine as this is the biggest in terms of overall usage on the Internet.

Why is SEO important.  Well, if you rise in the SERP’s because of a successful SEO campaign, you will get more targeted visitors and hence more sales or conversions (’conversion’ is a sales term to represent some action performed by a customer, e.g. buying a product or signing up as a forum member).  This will lead to a more profitable or successful  site.  The problem however is conducting a suitable SEO campaign which will generate good results within your budget.  For most small online businesses, spending on SEO services is usually an afterthought.  Unfortunately, this is a critical mistake; if you save on SEO, then your site has little chance of becoming the runaway success you are hoping it will be.

One solution is to get greater results for your SEO investment.  By this I mean getting more work done per unit currency than you are currently able to acquire.  This is possible via SEO outsourcing.  There is one company which is specialising in this and other optimisation services; www.Hot4SEO.com.  They get your contractual marketing performed in a highly skilled foreign market, where the exchange rate benefits the site owner.  By contacting this company they can slice your marketing budget to a fraction of what it would normally cost.  Well worth considering if you are a website owner and need a bit of help to get your business promoted in Google

Will datingsite outsourcing, seo

Divorce rates in Western countries are extremely high.  One has to ask why are people even bothering getting married nowadays.  In Germany and Austria, over 50% of marriages in any one year end in divorce.  So why does marriage still exist when the after-effects are so devastating for everyone involved?

I have a theory.  I think everyone starts out with good intentions, but living in a greedy, self-absorbed culture makes the reality of good goals harder to attain – and a prolonged marriage is a good goal.  Marriage is a pact between two people whereby they declare a lifelong committment to each other.  How can the average Westerner make this level of committment to another human, when statistics show he/she cannot even control their own level of junk-food intake, do not have the self-discipline to exercise enough and live in a society which is obsessed with self-fulfillment at the expense of those around them.  In the West, we are not encouraged to show committment to anyone but ourselves.  The truth is that few Western people really have the self-drive, thoughtfulness and ambition to treat other humans well, and this applies equally to their partner.

Sure, they might think they will treat their spouse differently, but statistics are showng them they are wrong.  Over 50% of them are wrong at  least.  I think the trick to a successful relationship is dedication to the other person.  Going the extra mile to give them something more than what comes naturally to you.  Be thoughtful, give your partner a reason to love you and make their life easier.  Assuming your parter can match your efforts, then going the extra mile could be the technique that makes your marriage work.

Will datingsite

Working at a relationship is often easier said than done.  We all have many reasons and grievances which make us stop short of fulfilling the obligations we make in a relationship.  Why do we sometimes fail to do what we set out to achieve in our relationship and end up hurting ourselves and our partner in the process.  A few human attributes spring to mind as the cause of this: anger, selfishness, greed, to name but a few.

Making a relationship work is all about facing up to the relationship challenges.  The number one challenge is about putting the other person first.  We naturally wish to defend and protect ourselves first, but in doing so we can cause problems.  By first putting yourself in your partner’s shoes (methaphorically speaking), you should be able to see the situation from their perspective.  Often that is all that is required to calm your own feelings of resentment or anger and hence approach the problem more unemotionally.

It is not easy to tackle relationship problems if your motivation for being in a relationship is materialistic, i.e. for money, security, physical satisfaction, etc.  First try to develop true feelings and understand your partner.  Place your partner’s happiness at least as equal to your own.  Only then are you in a position to maturely handle conflict as it arises.  Remember to make them happy, and put in as much effort as you do to make yourself happy.  If you find you are treating yourself so much more better than you are treating your partner, then you need to look a little at yourself and be honest about your reasons for being in that relationship.  Is it really about love, or about comfort?

To achieve relationship harmony, you need to make sure both you and your partner are happy.  Remember, to follow the path to happiness, it is often easiest to send your partner ahead first.

Will datingsite happiness, relationship challenges, trust

So you have your site completed and you are ready to invest some time optimising it for Google.  Where do you start and what are the most important elements of optimisation?

Well, SEO can be divided into two sections, i.e. ‘off-page’ and ‘on-page’ optimisation.  First you need to start by getting the on-page factors correct.  I will not go into the details of on-page optimisation as there are many sites which detail this.  Suffice to say that you must get this right from the start and make sure each page has a dedicated and well-defined set of keywords and that each page is optimised for those keywords (links, images, text).  If you ignore this step your SEO efforts will be severely hampered and may result in messy stats for your site.  Equally important in your on-page SEO efforts is following good practice guidelines and avoiding certain coding style/techniques which might be considered black-hat or even grey-hat (e.g. using Javascript to disable the browser’s ‘back’ button).  These might work for a short time, but you risk being penalised by Google and having your site thrown into the sandbox.

Off-page optimisation is quite labour-intensive but a critical part of SEO.  This is where most of your attention will be focused.  You will need to get links to your site from other sites.  These in-bound links should come from a wide variety of sites, of different page rank and with different keywords in the anchor text of the link.  Google wants a site’s popularity to grow naturally, so any SEO practices which follows an unnatural pattern will flag your site to Google and potentially result in a penalty.  Get your in-bounds links in an organic fashion by creating good link-bait and absorbing content.  As you manually harvest links, try to do so in a gentle exponential manner, starting with a few links and gradually acquiring more and more.  Make sure the links come from a statistically viable range of PR’s.  I.e. most of your links should come from pages of PR 0, 1 and 2, with a decreasing number of links from higher PR pages.

The rule of thumb is to make all your SEO efforts look as natural as possible.  Stick to this rule and your site should enjoy an increase in PR and traffic.  Flout it and you run the risk of being sandboxed by Google.

Will datingsite keywords, Page Rank, pr, seo, SEO Techniques

There are so many different dating sites to choose from and so many varied interfaces.  This poses problems for end users of these sites.  How do you know which dating sites have real members and not loads of fake ones.? Are there hidden charges and annoying marketing techniques such as ‘Sign up for free’ (but pay to email someone)?  Many poor examples of dating sites exist and a lot of them are nothing more than the same sites franchised out to people wanting to run their own web business.  Many more are filled nearly completely with fake profiles and even the big sites have been caught out a few times in this manner (as a few big US court cases will verify).

How do you spot a decent Dating Site?   Well, a good dating site should meet the following criteria:

1. A good Page Rank (PR is a measure of Google’s opinion on the importance of this site)
2. No fake profiles, i.e. no profiles made up by the site owners and serious anti-spam measures in place to prevent spammers loading fake profiles
3. Fees detailed up-front and clearly identified
4. Clean, uncluttered layout, easy to use and non-stressful user interface
5. Terms and Conditions (T&C), plus a privacy policy
6. Plenty of members (but beware sites which say they have millions of members, many are cheating their customers – most of the big Dating Sites are well known, so if you see a site with millions of members, but nobody has heard of them, then the alarm bells should start to ring)
7. A policy of opt-ins rather than opt-outs.  What this means is that many sites will, by default, sell/share your details onto their ’sister’ sites or other third parties (on these sites, by default you need to opt-out of such blatant privacy violations – reputable sites will only allow you to opt-in to them).  Avoid these opt-out sites and read the small print carefully to make sure your email address does not end up on some mass-mailing list

Pay attention to those 7 points and you should be able to avoid falling foul of scammers or at the very least having your time wasted.  Clickinlove is a reputable site which adheres to the above points and engages only in ethical marketing, so feel free to check it out and see if it has what you are after.

Will datingsite dating, online dating, online dating sites

Valentines Day is associated with romance and love.  But is it a little one-sided?

 Stereotypically, women crave their partner to be more romantic and this is one day when traditionally they should receive some gesture of love from the man in their life (we can ignore for now the glaringly obvious shallowness of this).  But what should the man expect on this day… how many men are expecting a nice surprise?  A very controversial comment to say that perhaps the woman should make an effort for the man, but try to see it from another angle; how can women achieve equality if they choose to act as the weaker gender in relationships.  In other words, why should the man be the one running after the woman and why does she allow this?  Some women might think this is great, but I think it shows that women are both allowing themselves to be patronised and also failing to show mutual love in their relationship.

Think about it for a moment and you might see that perhaps by making the man do the running, women are losing the respect of that man.  I personally respect a woman who is both capable of showing love as well as receiving it.  Valentines day is a day for both genders and if women really want equality, then they need to realise that equality is not only meant for the work environment.  Only by both partners showing consistent mutual love to each other can they be truly equal.

Will datingsite Female Equality, surprise, valentines day, valentines day surprise

It would seem that Western culture is not always making the right moves.  A British 3-year study concluded that children had a harder life now than their parents did when they were young.  Part of the problem, the report states, is that parents are working more in recent times and consequently children are lacking the emotional stimulus they would normally have acquired from them.  In previous generations this would have been provided by the stay-at-home mother, whereas nowadays women are far more likely to go back to work after pregnancy.  This is leading to some important questions being asked about the plight of female equality.  The implication is that many would see this as a call to return to old-fashioned values because of the so-called proof that working mothers damage their children’s development.  I think differently.  Women’s equality in the workplace and motherhood are not mutually exclusive.  There is a solution to be found and it is not in the family home, but in the workplace.  Working laws and culture have created an environment where men benefit more.  If these laws changed to fit in more with a varied lifestyle, such as non-standard working hours, maximum number of working days, flexible working arrangements, then everyone would benefit.  The rigid 9-5 working culture is geared towards the stereotypical male employee and is really a relic of a darker age.  Employment flexibility is the key to ensuring that both men and women work in cultures suited to their gender and allows both parents to spend adequate time with their children.  Making women the scapegoat for a fall in family cohesion, is really only a symptom of the subtle inequality which still exists in Western culture today.

Will relationship_advice Female Equality, mothers and children, women at work

There is often confusion about the difference between SEO and SEM, so let us clarify what they both are.  Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) does exactly what it says, i.e. it is all about optimising a site (or more specifically a page on a site) to rank well in the various search engines for a select few keywords, i.e. words which people type into the search engine to find a page.  SEO involves techniques which can be broadly categorised as either on-page or off-page.  The former means optimisation which deals with the actual page being optimised, such as the title, headings, image optimisation etc.  Whereas the latter deals with other sites and how they interact with the page you are optimising, i.e. inbound links.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a superset of SEO; what this means is that SEM involves many techniques to market your site,  one of which is SEO. SEM (leaving out SEO for the moment) concentrates on branding, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising (such as Google Adwords), affiliate subscribers and other such marketing ploys.

A big difference between SEO and SEM is that SEO is largely free (unless you pay for SEO services through a consulting company) whereas SEM, like any form of marketing requires financial investment.  Another difference is that SEM is totally legitimate, whereas the search engines do not like SEO all that much as they consider it an artificial way to manipulate their algorithmic search result pages (SERP’s).

Will website_technology affiliate marketing, pay per click, PPC, search engine, SEM, seo, SEO and SEM, SERPS

SQL stands for Structured Query Language (some people call is Sequential Query Language) and is a language used to interrogate and save data to a database.  MySQL is a more lightweight version of Oracle, but both are based on SQL.  Websites developers tend to use MySQL as it is the most popularly supported tool for dababase manipulation amongst hosting providers.  

As a web developer, you may wish to learn MySQL, but I would advise taking it one step further and also learning Oracle.  Both are based on SQL and similar in syntax, but Oracle is used by major corporations and is a very powerful tool to help you develop your career.  Combining Oracle and PHP leaves you with a skillset which is much in demand and which pays very well.  It is worth adding Oracle to your arsenal of languages not only for the improved job opportunites, but also because it is more flexible than MySQL and can achieve things which are hard to achieve otherwise.

Irrespective of which dababase language you use, try to learn some language to complement it.  I find PHP to be the best language I have used.  It is object-orientated and very well supported in terms of documentation, updates and a helpful large user community.

Will website_technology MySQl, Oracle, SQL

Online dating is generally safer and more convenient than blind dates, but you sometimes hear tales of things going wrong.  Strangely enough, it appears that the stories which hit the headlines usually involve gullible men being ripped-off or travelling to some exotic country to meet a woman, only to be abducted and held for ransom.  There are indeed some real issues with arranging to meet someone you have not previously met and a certain level of common sense should prevail.  However, in matters of the heart, logic and common sense are not always the controlling factors and people do make mistakes.

Firstly, never give money to anyone you have never met.  Secondly, only meet a person for the first time in a place that is neutral and public.  Thirdly, never pass sensitive information to anyone you do not know or trust.  Lastly, for that initial date, always give exact meeting details such as location, time, etc to a friend.  Of course these tips mostly apply to situations where there appears to be a lot of doubt in the authenticity of the person you are meeting, but it won’t hurt to apply them to more apparently ’safer’ dates.

The trick is to keep optimistic, be practical and not let your imagination pick trouble where none exists.  On the same note, do keep your wits about you and play it safe till you know the person you are dealing with, on a face-to-face basis.

Will datingsite dating safety tips, online dating

Software which allows non-techie people to publish online content is referred to as a Content Management System (CMS).  These systems, like Joomla, Drupal and Wordpress make it easy to put up a website and get your content out on the Net.  As well as being relatively easy to use, they usually employ the latest techniques in security and anti-spam measures, which allows the site owner to have a certain level of confidence that they could survive a hack attempt.  The crux of this is keeping your CMS software updated and hence staying abreast of the latest security patches.

Of course the alternative is to completely design the site yourself, which is the case for Clickinlove.  However this does involve a lot of effort and knowledge of how to protect your code from exploitable vulnerabilities.  Sometimes it is best to grab a CMS and learn how to use that.  The downside is that these CMS sites are hacking targets, as the hackers do indeed have access to the source code and if they see a flaw, will likely know how to attack it.  So patching your site is really an important task when you use CMS’s.

Whatever you choose and however you design your site, stay abreast of hacking techniques and try to keep your site secure.

Will website_technology clickinlove, CMS, joomla, security vulnerability

The dating site has received a few updates and is now looking a lot more modern and Web2 aligned.  Though I need to complete another section prior to launching it, I suspect that as soon as TalkMunich.com goes live, Clickinlove.com will follow shortly afterwards.  Actually, Talkmunich is already live, but work is ongoing to complete some features and provide complete functionality to registered members.  I will keep you all posted on how development is going.  As it stands I am sure the dating site is into the final stretch and will soon be online and free for everyone to use.

Sorry for the delays caused whilst restructuring the site.

Will munich dating blog, dating site

The English-language expat forum for Munich, TalkMunich.com, is live and ramping-up.  It will take some time for the Munich expat crowd to learn of its existence and to start using it.  Once they do so however, it is my guess that many will find it a very useful resource and a friendly community.  The trick is to make it an actual community and not just an online forum.  Therefore real meetups and other events will need to take place to cement the relationships formed on TalkMunich.  Hopefully the forum will grow quickly and work as a very real and practical support network/resource for all those English speaking expats based in Munich, Bavaria (or Muenchen, Bayern to give it its German name).

Will munich expat, forum, munich

As Web2 sites become more complex, web developers need to become more organised and efficient in their coding techniques.  One area of particular growth is that of Javascript libraries.  The Javascript language is very powerful for modifying DOM elements on a web page and providing the type of functionality which is making the Internet more user-friendly (effectively the driving force behind Web2), but it comes at a cost to the developer in terms of complexity and time-to-market for customer websites.  Pre-written Javascript libraries provide a means to cut down on development time and to reduce the inherent complexity required to power many of the new features of a Web2 site.

Libraries like Scriptaculous, Moo, Mootools and Prototype offer the web developer ’shortcuts’ to functionality which would otherwise take too long to create by themselves or prove insurmountably difficult for the average developer to implement.  By utilising these libraries, time-to-market is greatly reduced and the actual Javascript code is kept neat and small.  As an added bonus, these libraries are usually fully compatible with the major browsers… something which is not always easy to achieve if you write the scripts yourself from scratch.

There is a learning curve to using the various Javascript libraries, but once you have made the effort to become acquainted with the peculiarities of any one of them, you will find your coding time greatly improved and your range of  Javascript capabilities expanded to an impressive arsenal of Web2 techniques.

Will datingsite Javascript Libraries, Moo, Mootools and Prototype, Prototype, scriptaculous

If you are short of ideas for link bait, then perhaps it is time to target the online social networking audience.  Sites such as Facebook, MySpace etc, offer developers the chance to create small web applications which their users can install on their customised pages.  For instance, if you run a site selling DVD’s, then you could create an app which showcases your latest DVD’s and even run competitions from this app to allow users to win prizes.  

The benefit of targeting the social networking user base is that you can reach a far larger market than if you simply ignore it.  There are millions of people registered on these sites and providing a presence for your business there is quite important for both exposure and building your brand.

Will website_technology Applications, Social Networking, traffic

So we now finally have a launch date set for Clickinlove on Friday 5th December.

On this date users will be able to complete their profiles and start messaging other members.  There may be small bugs which need ironed-out, but I am confident that most major features are working smoothly.

For the first few days however, I shall limit the search feature and the display of random photos on the front page.  This is to allow enough members to upload their photos and for the database to pad out a bit.  We have 7000 members waiting to complete their profile, so it should not take too long to get a sizeable number of profiles populated with photos.

From Friday 5th December, members will start to receive an email informing them of the site launch and how to fill out their profile and upload their photos.  I anticipate high bandwidth usage during this period.  If this persists and is a problem, then the site may need to be relocated to another faster server.

Best regards, Will

Will datingsite dating, dating site

Are you the type to get stressed when you have many things to do and consequently fail to complete your tasks?  I find it is a good idea to break everything down into small bite-sized chunks of work and then to spend a little amount of time every day chipping away at the work.  The problem is to organise the many small tasks into something manageable and easy to follow.

One such tool I use is TiddlyWiki (download it free from tiddlywiki.com).  This is basically a single web page which allows you to write entries, update your journal, create a ‘to do’ list etc.  It is very easy to use and self-contained.  You can create your page and save it to a memory stick to carry around with you.  You view and edit your page on a web browser and the functionality it provides is very impressive, considering how small it is.

For my Wiki I have a few menu items which I use regularly: Todo list, Favourite links, Journal, Appointments, and others.  The page loads quickly and you only view on the page the things you are currently interested in looking at.  It is a great portable tool that is intuitive to use and perfect for organising your small projects.

Will website_technology TiddlyWiki, wiki

Following on from earlier articles about graphic design, today I want to touch upon a concept that most people may feel is beyond them: designing the artwork for your own site.

Art is, well… an art!  However, even naturally-gifted artists need to learn the tools of their trade and this is where science plays a part.  I am assuming that, as a webmaster and hopefully a competent programmer, you have a decent ability to logically approach any subject you set your mind to learning.  Well art is no different. By learning the science behind the art, you can develop skill in knowing what colours work well with other colours; how to utilise negative space; when to use gradients; how to shade and create contours of shapes, to name but a few. By learning these techniques and teaching yourself the basics of sketching, it should soon become apparent to you that creating web images/designs is actually not beyond your ability.

Instead of searching for hours online for an image you can use (with permission from the owner of course), would it not be more fulfilling to create your own.  If you practice your art skills, you can even create the image you wish just as fast as googling and then photoshoping it.  Furthermore, by becoming proficient at Photoshop, you can scan your image and then vectorise it, allowing you to manipulate it to your heart’s content.  This is often easier than taken an exisiting image and trying to change it to fit in with what you want.

Drawing and creating artwork for your own site can be an engaging and enjoyable way to create your site and give it a unique feel.  Of course you need to practise your art and to pay attention to the subtle techniques employed by graphic designers to give your work a polished look.  Yet, by doing it, you will get better and better and eventually you will have created a great level of freedom for yourself and your web design abilities. Be brave, do some online tutorials and utilise any talent you may or may not have known you had.  Do not despair or give up if you find you lack artistic ability… as I said, a fair portion of ‘art’ is actually a science and for this you only need dedication and perseverance.  Give it a try and see if you get the taste for doing your own graphic design – just be patient.

Will website_technology art, graphic design, photoshop

It is becoming more apparent in SEO circles that site bounce rates are increasingly being used to help rank a site.  For those in the dark, the bounce rate refers to the action of visitors landing on a site’s page and effectively bouncing straight back off into the ether, without having explored the rest of your site.  If 100 visitors within a certain time-frame, e.g. one hour, viewed a page on your site and 10 of them left that page without viewing others, then your page would have a bounce rate of 10% (which is excellent).

You can see why Google might treat site bounce rate with a certain level of importance.  If your visitors can’t be bothered to stay, then this is effectively a big thumbs-down on your site… they are voting with their feet, or in this case, fingers.  Google can use this knowledge to compare how people view your site and your competitors.  The more relevant and useful your site is, the lower the bounce rate and this is exactly what Google wants to promote.  Hence, if you can maintain a lower bounce rate than your competitors, then you stand a better chance of achieving a higher Page Rank as your site is considered more relevant than that of the competition.

Will website_technology bounce rate

The Munich Christmas Markets are just around the corner and one of the biggest actually starts on Wednesday 26th November.  Tollwood is held at Theresienwiese where the Oktoberfest is held (though obviously at a different time of year) and is definitely worth visiting if you have never been before.  Not only is it very large, but it also houses many stalls within large tents, which is quite nice to shelter you from the often icy weather that greets you around this time of year.

As usual the omnipresent Xmas Market ware is on offer, the same as with most other markets around this time, but Tollwood also specialises in alternative gifts and splits from the traditional crafts to include handmade products that have a slightly less than festive feel.  If you fancy a skull-shaped candle, or a bone necklace, then Tollwood is the place to be.

There are also tents offering various types of exotic foods as well as the more common Currywurst and Pommes, half-metre hot-dogs and the like.  Gluehwein is available in abundance and there is no shortage of bar stalls to provide you with a little something to help you wash down the Xmas indulgences.

Opening times are:
Mon-Fri: 14:00 – 01:00
Sat/Sun and holiday: 11:00 – 01:00

Tollwood runs from: 26-Nov – 31-Dec-2008

On Silvester (New Years Eve) there is a big party to close the 2008 Tollwood Xmas Market.  Read more here.

Will munich Theresienwiese, Tollwood

If you plan to pay someone to design your site for you, then there are certain questions you should ask to protect yourself.  But how do you know what questions to ask and if their responses are correct?  That is a little more tricky.  You can use forums to explain your situation and seek the solutions.  Also, feel free to comment on this entry with your question and I will answer it.

The one question I would ask, is to see the web designers oldest and latest works.  Then I would look at ‘wayback machine’ to verify her/his claims to the dates.  Check the PR of the old site.  Verify XHTML compliance.  Email the owner of the site via their contact page and ask them to verify the designer was involved in creating their site.

These steps are important and become more so with the intended complexity of your site.  If you intend on having a payment system or a database, then making sure the web designer/programmer is competent is critical.  If they are not then they may take a lot longer, leave the site open to attack and charge more to fix their own errors.

On the subject of attacks, I noticed one designer promoting himself recently.  His own website was powered by Wordpress.  Now, here is a designer of websites who did not even bother to create a flagship website for himself, but instead put one up based on open source software.  He did change the design, which looked nice and professional.  However, the point is that I suspect he will create sites for other people based on this free software and he will get paid for it.  Ok, there is still work to do to make it look good and suit the customers’ needs, but using Wordpress for a customer’s site is a bad idea.  Wordpress on the whole is great but is unfortunately (because of its success) a notorious hacking target.  By putting someone’s site online and then walking away, he is leaving them with a site which in a few months or years will definitely need upgrading to protect it from the various attacks that this software invites.  A hacker could in 6 months use a commonly available script to access the customer site’s code.  

The point is that you need to be careful that your designer is not a cowboy and this is especially true if you intend to host a payment system and store customer’s details.  If in doubt, find a forum and ask questions.  If you are still lost or confused, post your question here.

Will website_technology site design, Wordpress

Look at the top Alexa rankings and check to see where Google.com is placed.  Now check out the other search engines like Windows Live, Yahoo Search, Rambler, Baidu and Yandex.  You will see them littered all over the top 100 sites on Alexa (Note: Alexa is not totally accurate, but can be used as a very, very rough guide to what is the most popular sites online).

Why is this important?  Well it is important for two reasons:

1. Google may be the biggest SE and accounts for over half of all searches, however, there are other search engines which can drive considerable traffic to your site.
2. recent research has shown that the most competitive keywords do not actually bring as much traffic as originally though.  Long-tail search terms seem to grab the majority of the traffic.

What this means is that webmasters should not spend so much time focusing on Google optimisation for competitive keywords.  By aiming for longer keyword phrases (called long-tail keywords) and optimising for other search engines, you can reduce the number of your competitors and size of competition.  This may result in increased traffic with decreased workload in getting it.

Another benefit of aiming for optimisation of other search engines is that demographics play a part and Google is not always the most popular search engine for a particular country, especially non-English speaking countries.  For example in Russia, Yandex and Rambler are the big sites for search.  They have a different set of ranking criteria to Google and whatever techniques you employ for Google.com will probably fail to work for the Russian SE’s.  By ignoring their algorithm you are effectively cutting out a target audience of many 10’s of millions.  China is another example of a massive market which Google is not penetrating too well.  Baidu is the biggest search engine there and targets the largest online nation in the world, i.e. the Chinese.  Furthermore, a very high percentage of Chinese users access the Internet via their mobile phones, which in turn brings new challenges for webmasters.

Keeping track of the changing landscape of search engines may help you find new traffic and opportunites. Do not be frightened of branching out to other languages and targeting non-English speaking countries. Also try to optimise for sites other than Google; it is wise not to place all your SEO eggs in one Google basket.

Will datingsite Baidu, Google, Rambler, Search engines, Yandex

I was just researching the benefits of trackbacks and trying to determine if I should enable them on this blog or not and I have to admit I am still not convinced of their value.  The problem lies in the way spammers attack every little vulnerability they can find… and trackback links just strike me as very open to abuse.  The problem is that there are so many of them and moderating can become a full-time job.  It would be easy to miss the odd link or two which is actually spam; trust me when I say you do not want to be linking to some of those dodgy sites which spam blogs.  Google can be a little merciless at times and making mistakes such as this can be costly.

Yes, the trackback links can be useful to your readers, but also they can dilute the look and content of the real comments to your article/blog post.  I personally do not like to scroll to the comments on a blog only to spend an extra 10 seconds scrolling past the trackbacks which make up the majority of the ‘comments’.

Additionally, I prefer to pass on my PR to those sites I deem worthy.  I will link to only useful content for my visitors (to provide them with more information), but also to provide the author of the blog a big thumbs up with some added PR value for her/his efforts.

Will website_technology inbound links, pr, trackback

When dealing with any task that requires a learning curve, there is always the risk that motivation will run out long before finishing the task.  For instance, if you are new to web design and you want to put up your own site, you are faced with a plethora of skills to acquire, as well as having to apply those skills to generate the end result, i.e. a well designed, successful site.  Keep in mind what web development has come to mean these days: HTML, XHTML, SHTML, Javascript, PHP, ASP, MySQL, XML, XSL, XSLT, XPointer, XQuery, XLink, Graphic Design, Photoshop (or equivalent), and a host of other tools.  You do not need to be an expert in all of these to do a website, but it helps to know some or all of them and this list is not exhaustive by any means.

However, whilst learrning those skills your motivation to complete the learning process and apply your new talent might waver and the project may never get completed.  That is why it is important to establish a working principle prior to starting any large piece of work.  By that I mean agreeing with yourself a set of rules to which you will adhere and which by doing so will help bypass the motivation obstacles you will face. In short, you need to detach emotions from your work.  Self-discipline and motivation are great allies in your attempts to finish that site, but only self-discipline will get you there.  The problem with motivation is that it comes and goes.  Sure it gives you a huge burst of emotional energy to get you started or running for a while, but it inevitably disappears to be replaced with apathy or complete disinterest.  Self-discipline however, will keep you focused and paying attention to the end goal.  With self-discipline it won’t matter if the weather is a bit overcast today, or you had an argument with your partner.  A little bit of self-discipline every day will keep your goals alive and bring you closer to them, slowly and surely.

The trick is to make sure you do a little bit of work everyday.  This is especially important when you are not motivated to do the work that day.  By forcing yourself to do it, even if you don’t feel like it, you can be sure that the project will be completed.  This is because the only thing that can stop the project being finished is your lack of effort to finish it.  With a little bit of work everyday, you are investing effort in your project and eventually the goal will be achieved.  Furthermore, this self-discipline will extend to unexpected areas of your life and have far-reaching impact on the level of success you enjoy in various arenas.

Will datingsite, website_technology ambition, motivation, self-discipline, web design

In the next few weeks Munich’s Xmas markets will have been assembled and ready for the Christmas festivities. Already in places around the city, the characteristic wooden huts are being put up, wired for electricity and being decorated.  Among my favourite of these markets in Munich, are those located at Weisenburger Platz and English Garden at the Chinese Tower.  The one at Marienplatz can be a little too busy and consequently turns into something other than the relaxing/exciting atmosphere it should be.  The Tollwood market is good if you catch it when it is less busy and it has the added benefit of many stalls being in tents and hence sheltered from the chilly weather.

Outside Munich, I would definitely recommend the Xmas market at Passau in the old city.  Passau has a charm all of its own and this carries to the market as well.  It takes about 2.5 hours to get there by train, but is well worth the day trip.

Will munich Christmas Market, Tollwood, Xmas market

The media is forever picking up on the latest research in different areas, but one arena of particular interest is that of relationships.  Journalists know that a mixture of social commentary and recent hard stats on factors concerning relationships is extremely readable and a proven hit with the public, especially women.  Certain publications thrive on these stats.  For instance, a recent article examined the relationship between women and promiscuity, as seen over a trend of 4 years.  The result that women appear to be getting more promiscuous is a headline catching snippet and a surefire way of getting the author noticed.

If you own a dating website and if you are mathematically inclined (my own background is in mathematics), you can create legitimate statistical experiments which produce results which can act as linkbait.  It is possible to put up an online questionnaire and ask members to fill it out; conduct an email questionnaire campaign or just analayse the logs olinkbaitf your site users. By gathering these stats and statistically analysing the results, you may be able to produce evidence of certain trends which are both useful to your visitors and the population in general.  Compose a press release based on these stats and publish your findings.  Be inventive and try to gain as much publicity as possibly.  If you make the effort and do your homework, these stats will be a major source of linkbait and traffic.

Will datingsite dating site linkbait, dating statistics

Further to yesterday’s comments on Javascript libraries, today I would like to touch on the server side of things and focus on PHP.

PHP, like Javascript is a object-orientated scripting language.  This means classes can be created and instantiated when needed.  However, online resources for PHP most often fail to treat it as an OO language and instead prefer to offer tutorials and solutions based on the procedural side of things.  This is a big mistake and makes the code hard to port and reuse.

If you take the time, you can create classes which perform many tasks and which you can cleanly use over and over again.  You can create a library of such classes and use the ‘require_once’ construct to include them in your code.  All very straightforward.  An example of a predefined class is the PDO class.  This wraps around your database and provides a nice consistent interface to connecting to your MySQL DB.  PHP has many such classes which come pre-installed with the package, depending on the version you are currently using.

Besides creating your own classes and using those already defined as part of the PHP package, there are sites where people upload classes they have created.  With care you can use these classes and increase the modularity of your code.  For instance, it is possible to find classes for standard form manipulation, emails systems, payment systems and others.

There is not much you cannot pack into a PHP class and keep for reuse later.  Not only is this design methodology good for reusing your code, it also promotes good coding practices and reduces bugs due to the increased amount of testing on each instantiation of the class.

Another step in good website programming practices (after reusing PHP classes and standard Javascript libraries), is to decouple your logic from your site design.  I shall leave this discussion for tomorrow, but in the meantime you can read about Smarty to give yourself a headstart.

Will website_technology OOP, PDO, PHP, PHP classes, website tutorial

Have you ever looked at a website and seen some cool feature which you thought you would like to implement on your own site?  Many times I have hit this scenario and I am surprised at the number of times I have traced the feature down to one of a number of popular javascript libraries.  The point to take from this is that using one or more of these javascript libraries appears to be the fastest and neatest way to implement client-side functionality on your site.  Some of the benefits of using these libraries include:

• a set of API interfaces already written for you
• encapsulation of the data – classes are already well designed and implemented
• regular updates keep the code current
• well tested and open-source availability (and all the benefits that come with that)
• well documented APIs
• impressive feature set

One downside is that some of them can be relatively large and it is an unnecessary bandwidth overhead (for both you and your visitors) if you only want one or two of the features the library provides.  However, Google has anticipated this issue and now provides a service to host these libraries for free on their servers.  If you use the libraries hosted on their servers, there can be many benefits.  Most notably of which is the improved load speed for your site visitors.  The more webmasters use these libraries hosted by Google, the more their visitors are exposed to them and hence have already downloaded the relevant libs.  The obvious benefit is that many visitors will have loaded the library into their cache prior to visiting your site, which both saves your bandwidth and increases their speed of access.  It is a win-win situation.

Current popular libraries which are hosted by Google are:

• jQuery
• jQuery UI
• Prototype
• script.aculo.us
• MooTools
• Dojo
• SWFObject

Click on the links above to visit the respective sites and find out which features they offer. For instance, on the clickinlove dating site, you have the ability to upload multiple images and see a loading progress bar for each image. This feature is not technically available using just javascript functionality, but is possible by combining javascript with a Flash module). The SWFObject library makes this relatively easy to implement and the end result is a streamlined intuitive interface for visitors to clickinlove to utilise.  The development time for me to have written this by myself would have been much longer than simply using the library they provide.

I anticipate that the future of web development will make good use of centrally-served popular libraries, such as what Google is offering.  To me it makes sense to utilise these libraries for the reasons mentioned above, i.e. well-tested code, great functionality, good support and easy to implement.  In addition, it makes sense to have them centrally retrievable (as opposed to storing them on your own server), as it provides bandwidth savings, increased download speed for visitors and a convenient one-stop shop for all the scripts you need.

Will website_technology Dojo, jQuery, jQuery UI, MooTools, Prototype, scriptaculous, SWFObject

How easy is it to design a site when you are not a grapic designer?  I can vouch that creating a professional-looking site is a lot harder than it appears.  ’The devil is in the detail’ is a common phrase which applies in this case and basically means that some of the more important aspects of creating a good looking site are wrapped up in small subtle details which can be easily overlooked.  The key areas of site design (i.e. the look and usability) I have had difficulty with are:

• colours – you need to choose a complimentary colour scheme which not only looks well, but actually fits in with the theme of your site and reinforces the image you are trying to project.  
• positioning – the positioning of on-page elements (text, images, buttons, etc) should be the right size and spaced appropriately.  Different spacing strategies can give a site a completely different feel and one which may pull the user in the opposite direction to what you are intending.  An awareness of how to place the content relative to other content is subtle but important.
• gradients – these are the subtle transitions in colour between adjacent areas which allows elements on the page to look smoother and more natural.  It adds a professional touch as it takes time to create the gradient effect and doing it properly is an art… without using gradients, graphic edges can appear sharp and look less professional.  Gradients are one of the more subtle effects you can use but which can have quite a dramatic effect if used correctly.
• negative space – this is the name given to blank space on a canvas.  On a website, negative space can aid in providing a Zen-like atmosphere, which is useful if you are aiming for a calming, relaxing user experience.  Negative space also works by placing extra emphasis on the visible content.
• lines – factors to consider when using lines in web design are length, orientation, colour, thickness, composite lines (made up of things like dots, small shapes, etc).  Lines can (and often are) combined to form shapes and this is a complete science in itself which you should not underestimate. 
• shapes – different graphic shapes unconsciously imply different meanings and instill feelings which may or may not reinforce your site theme.  Choose the shape and orientation of shapes on the site carefully and try to made them strengthen the message you are imparting.
• font – this is greatly underestimated and can completely ruin a site.  Choosing a suitable font is critical.  The wrong font can make a site look unprofessional. Certain fonts are better suited to certain types of sites and an awareness of this can help you strengthen your site’s theme, as opposed to pulling it in a different direction.
• packing – this refers to trying to get all your useful content onto the page in question.  Sometimes doing so can cause a site to be cluttered and difficult to navigate, which adds to the feeling of confusion.  You need to remember that new users will be looking upon an unfamiliar page and won’t know where all the critical data is… you need to give them what they are looking for within a few seconds, else they may go elsewhere.  Internet users are an impatient market to cater for and your content must be uncluttered enough to allow them to easily find what they want.  This may involve using tried and tested navigation techniques (which new users may be already familiar with) or somehow masking less-important content until required.
• usability – being innovative is good, but if you have completely re-engineered standard navigation features, then your users might struggle to use the site.  Stick to common usability features.
• SEO – when designing a site, always have an eye on SEO.  Though this is primarily a technical consideration, factors such as image sizes, masked-out content, duplicate content and other such influences can all have a progressively bigger impact on the on-page rating of a site by a search engine.

These are just a few of the major considerations you need to be aware of if you plan to design the look of your site yourself.  You do not need to be a graphic designer, but a basic knowledge of these concepts can help you get closer to the type of site design you want and also help you avoid making common mistakes which can look unprofessional.

Will website_technology graphic design, site layout, website design

There are so many dating sites online that it is hard to break into this field with a new site.  Extensive SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) ability can help reduce the headstart other sites have.  By this I mean being innovative in the use and implementation of unique SEO strategies.  ’Link Bait’ is a hot SEO term at the moment and refers to the organic harvesting of inbound links (links from other sites pointing to yours).  Get the link bait correct and you stand a chance of ramping-up link growth to a useful level which will bring an increase in traffic (people visiting your site).

What is link bait exactly?  It is any site content which causes your visitors to naturally want to link to your site.  Perhaps it is a piece of code which you give away for free which does something useful, i.e. an innovative script to allow visitors with their own website to track graphically what part of the world their own  visitors come from.  If you are able to offer your visitors something which they can use and for which they will require a link back to your site, then you are on your way to creating useful link-bait.

The trick to a successful SEO campaign is to be consistent in manually acquiring inbound links, whilst at the same time being innovative in generating genuinely useful link bait for your users.  After a while you should reap the rewards of your dedicated link-building attempts.

Will datingsite, website_technology dating, link bait, seo

Using CSS it is relatively easy to position page elements and produce a design where the content is where it is meant to be (I am ignoring cross-browser compatibility for the moment).  What is less easy is to generate a site design which is pleasing to the eye and follows mainstream graphic design principles.  For the clickinlove dating site I have opted to use a clean zen design, intended to be ordered, uncluttered and very simple to navigate.  The benefits to site users are obvious, i.e. a more relaxing and less confusing experience, intuitive usability and quick loading times.  The benefit to the designer is that CSS is more simple to implement with less clutter on the page to align.  Cross-browser compatibility can be quite tricky when using certain CSS attributes, so the less content you need to position, the more likely your site will look uniform across browsers.

Implementing a zen design is a win-win situation.  On saying that, making a simple clean design look professional, is another thing altogether and requires close attention to the graphic elements on your site. The Clickinlove zen stlye for the dating site will be live next week.

Will datingsite css zen, dating site, online dating

Recently a number of blogs I own were hacked and spam links added to the posts automatically.  The solution to removing the hacked code involved delving into the footer code in the default template folder and modifying the footer.php file to reflect what it was prior to the hack.  Needless to say this took a few hours of diffing files to find the main culprit.  The outcome is that the wordpress blog software has been updated and security has been improved.  However, Wordpress is a prime target for hackers and it is only a matter of time before it is hit again.  Therefore, make sure you do regular backups and keep your blog software current and patched.

Will website_technology blog, fix, hack, patch, spam

On the Clickinlove dating site there is currently no anti-spam measures in place. There is a need for such a mechanism due to the possibility that spammers may pointlessly sent their robots out to populate profiles with fake details.
I have a measure implemented, but it exists on the revamped site design, which I have not rolled-out. However, for a trial period I may allow the new design to go live and see if I experience a drop in registering users.

Will datingsite

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is a boring and repetitive task that takes a lot of time and dedication. Results with SEO are not obvious and take a long time to be seen and appreciated. All of these factors lead many people to lose interest in this field and to give up.
One needs to persevere. You are in it for the long run and results will be few and far between for many months or even in some cases a few years, depending on how competitive your field is. Be unemotional about your work. Everyday get those links, write that blog, update the forum and scour the Internet for related content on which to obtain a backlink.
Do not expect results and get used to disappointment. Again, as I said, do not get emotional about your work. Treat it as an investment. Overtime you will see returns, but only if you are dedicated enough to keep going when no results are on the horizon. Once you do make your site competitive from an SEO perspective, then you are well on your way to using these skills you have developed, as well as the tricks you have learned along the way, to do SEO for another site… and another. it just gets easier and easier. Eventually, you will have created a site or two that ranks well in Google and generates revenue (if you have monetised your site in some way).

Will website_technology

So the US presidential campaign is kicking off and McCain has chosen Palin as his running mate. The problem here is that they are conservative and by definition should be pretty strict on the likes of, say, teenage pregnancies. Everyone knows that when you start dating, things can get out of hand and young women are particularly at risk as their knowledge of contraception is limited and they are inexperienced in these matters. Hence why good parenting is important to help a young adult navigate this minefield. So how can the presumptive Republican presidential candidate choose as his running mate a mother who arguably may have failed her daughter to a certain degree – teenage pregnancy is a blight on Western society and conservatives normally look down on this sort of behaviour.
In today’s world, normal people accept that teenagers can get pregnant and accept that even with the best parenting, ‘accidents’ happen. However, we are talking about normal people, and bible-bashing, god-fearing conservatives may not fall into this category. The question is, will the religious folk (you know, those who voted in George W.Bush two times) expect McCain to publicly flog Palin and banish her to Devils Island? Or will they forgive McCain for choosing a 44 year-old grandmother, with little experience in public life who encourages her teenage children to have babies?

More to the point, why am I writing about this on this blog. Well, the connection is that conservatism and reality are not always good bed-friends when it comes to relationships. McCain has highlighted the flaws and contradictions in conservatism when he chose Palin. Why does this matter? Well, I believe politics and the beliefs of an individual in this area are actually quite fundamental to how compatible couples are. The Governor of California, a Republican, is married into the Kennedy clan – I find this how to digest and think this sort of marriage of people across the political divide is not as common as those successful relationships within their own borders.

Here is an article by the BBC on teenage pregnancy in the UK.

Will relationship_advice

So the new Google Chrome browser became available yesterday amid a lot of speculation as to how good it is.  So how good is it?  I downloaded it last night as soon as it became available and installed it on my XP-64 machine. My first reaction was a little confusion as to where bookmarks were added and accessed, but it is actually far simpler than I had imagined and very convenient to perform these actions. The tabs fitted nicely along the top and the speed of startup, loading new tabs and traversing them was very fluid. Amazingly, I noticed little in the way of compatibility issues with other browsers. I have been used to dealing with the eternal Firefox/IE battle when designing websites, but I was surprised at how few bugs I found on this browser. I did notice one or two javascript anomalies which I will notify Google about, but on the whole, an excellent job has been done by the Google engineers.
The browser does start up fast, but the speed improvement I was expecting did not materialse. I am hoping this will be ironed-out over the coming months and we can start to see the full benefit of this innovative browser.
I was a die-hard Firefox fan beforehand, but in one fell swoop, I suspect Google may have displaced the competition.
Yes, there will be issues with Chrome, but it is open source and that counts for a lot. Give it time and you could see this browser really taking off. IE8 is trying to compete and itself has a few innovations which may compete or even slightly surpass Chrome; however I am off the opinion that making Chrome open source will effectively force the other browsers creators to take note and improve their own offerings.

Will website_technology

It appears Google is on the verge of releasing it’s new browser, which has been in development for around 2 years.  This will be open source and includes many new features and innovations which are sure to please.  The most important thing about this new browser, called Chrome, is that it is the first new browser in many years which is written mostly from scratch.  Tomorrow or this evening I shall use this blog to link to the Chrome download page as soon as it becomes available, so post a comment here and I will notify you via email when it is available and send you the link.

A few of the highlights:
The Chrome process manager decouples each tab from the other tabs and houses the data in an encapsulated environment.  This should prevent one site causing the browser to ‘freeze’  in the event that the site hits some issues.  In addition, phising and malware are tackled by the way that Google identifies suspect sites, but also by the way that permissions are handled.  Another neat feature is the way that search boxes on some sites will automatically be accessible to the user even when not viewing that page.  Could be a handy feature. for when you wish to search for something without having to load the page beforehand. Of course this capability does exist as an Add-on on some browsers anyway, but still nice to have in included by default.

Webkit and V8 form the internals on Chrome.  Webkit is a simple to follow API and should prove a nice tool for the web developer to play with, if she/he so wishes. Another great innovation is the change from ‘interpreting’ Javascript, to the generation of machine code.  This could speed things up a lot in the long run. Actually, there are so many great features that I am rambling on a bit.  Visit Google Chrome Overview for a rundown of what the new browser offers.
Don’t forget to bookmark this page and come back later to get the download link, else leave a comment and I will email it to you.

UPDATE: the link to the Google Chrome Browser download is here.

Happy browsing,
Will

Will website_technology

On the subject of Munich dating, it has been noted that Munich is the singles capital of Germany, so why would there be any need for a dating site devoted to the people of Munich.  The truth is that dating in germany is not a concept that makes much sense to those outside the English-speaking world.  A date is such a foreign idea here.  The reason is that people in Germany develop relationships and don’t aim for a ‘date’ – i.e. an evening spent with the intention of developing a relationship.  I can see where the concept of a date does indeed sound a little silly.

However, there are a lot of foreigners in Munich and dating is normal for them.  Consequently there is a difference in expectation between what they want and what they get.  To clarify and clear up any cultural misunderstandings perhaps both parties shoudl make the effort to make it work.  English-speakers should try to make friendships first before delving into something deeper, whereas Germans could try and embrace slightly the concept of a date.

Munich speed-dating could be a very big flop here.  On the other hand, it could be just what the ex-pat population need.   Post comments here if you feel there is a need for speed-dating in Munich.

Will datingsite, munich

It is not always easy to remember all the places one needs to visit on a holiday, or all the details of one’s own city, hence why it is sometimes helpful to have a useful tool to assist.  Google maps is just such a tool.  On TalkMunich.com the Google map API is utilised to allow users to log in and set place markers with descriptions for any location in Munich.  This can be useful to remember where certain buildings are located for both those who live in the city and those who wish to follow the tourist route and explore.

Check out the map on Talk Munich and use it to save your favourite and important locations in Munich.

Will munich

It is easy to dismiss blogging and blog comments as nothing more than a passing fad that Google will eliminate as a source of quality in-bound links in due course, however, for the moment it is a valid and useful way to build traffic.

An SEO colleague of mine recently based a successful campaign on comments on other peoples blogs and forums.  He did not spam these forums, but instead added small snippets of valuable, relevant content.  Everyday he gathered about 10-20 inbound links.  Within 2 months his campaign was paying dividends in terms of a 100% increase in traffic and Adsense revenue.  Google saw fit to acknowledge the links and list them in it’s Webmaster Tools for the account in question.

By regularly posting on others’ forums and blogs and sticking to this strategy for a few months, it seems that it is indeed possible to dramitically improve your site exposure in the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Page) .  Blog and forum comments are not dead yet, so make use of this technique whilst the window is still open.

Will website_technology

A sitemap generator is a much needed tool for a website with a lot of content.  Getting this right is actually more important than many people think as Google follows the sitemap and omits anything not included in it.  For TalkMunich I will require such a tool but need to create it myself as I do not like trusting other companies’ software.  Being able to tweak your own code is a big advantage and allows a level of flexibility that you would not normally get with code written by others.  I suspect that writing your own sitemap generator is a useful process as it allows you to nicely parse those files which contain the links you really want to follow as opposed to unimportant links.  I am aware of course that some sitemap generator tools allow you to use regular expressions to produce an exclude filter, but nevertheless, creating your own software tool means yo need to increase your understanding to a significantly more illuminating depth.

I can make my tool available for free to anyone who wishes to use it.

Will munich, website_technology

It is nearly that time of year again, when the big tents go up at the Wiesn and millions of people descend on Munich for just over two weeks of festival fun, i.e. drinking.  The Oktoberfest, so-called due to the traditional start date of the festival in October, actually now always begins in September; the date was brought forward to utilise the better weather.

What can you expect from this festival?  Beer.  Loads of it.  It is not known as the Munich Beer festival for nothing.  However, there is lots to gain from attending even if you are not a big drinker.  The fairground is absolutely massive and a big crowd pleaser, which makes the event family friendly.  The traditional clothing worn by many locals and non-locals alike can be very beautiful and adds to the traditional atmosphere.  In the beer tents, which can house thousands of people each, you will find live entertainment, food (usually roast chicken and bread are the favourites), dancing (usually on the seats after a few drinks) and good conversation.  Anti-social behaviour is rare and dealt with very quickly, so a relaxed atmosphere is guaranteed.

At the opening ceremony at the start of the Oktoberfest, the 12 local breweries who partake (only Munich breweries are allowed to take part in the festival) all form a horse-drawn procession from their individual premises to the Wiesn, carrying huge casks of their beer on wagons.  Once the first keg is opened by the Munich Lord Mayor, the beerfest begins.  Just over two weeks later the festivities are capped off with a fireworks display.  In-between, the stats are impressive; check out how many chickens are eaten, beer drunk, women impregnated, people too drunk to find their way back to their hotel, etc.  Very interesting indeed.

All in all, well worth the effort to visit Munich during this period.  Be aware though that hotel prices and travel over these weeks is very expensive, so book well in advance.  Alternatively, bring some camping gear.  Check out www.talkmunich.com for more information and discussions on the Oktoberfest, cheap accommodation, local advice etc.  One last piece of advice… the beer is served in 1 litre glasses called a Mass and the alcohol content is a lot higher than normal beer, usually about 2 times the amount.  So be careful as it goes down far too easily… before you know it you will be sleeping on a park bench wondering where your hotel is.

Will munich

At certain times of the year it is very difficult to get a hotel in Munich.  One of the reasons is that Munich punches above it’s weight as a city of international reputation.  With only 1.3 Million inhabitants, it still enjoys status as one of the best places to live in the world, as well as hosting some of the biggest festivals and events to be found anywhere on the planet.  Not every city can claim to have hosted the Olympics and even fewer of these select cities have had such a small population.

The combination of having such a relatively small population and hosting massive events like the Oktoberfest (the Munich Beer Festival) means that what little accommodation available is quickly snapped up.  So if you are planning to come to Munich, be sure to plan in advance and book your hotel.  There are large festivals other than the Oktoberfest, so don’t be surprised if, when you try to book during an off-peak period, that hotels are still unavailable.  Give yourself plenty of time and you stand a better chance of not being disappointed when you try to book accommodation.

If you find there are no hotels or hostels available when you wish to travel to Munich, then consult the www.talkmunich.com forum and post a request there for people renting out rooms or apartments.  Often at busy times of the year, local ex-pats see the shortage of accommodation as a means to earn a little extra cash, so you may get a good deal if you post what you are looking for on talkmunich.

Will munich

Getting content on your site is critical (on average) to helping your site rank well.  However, this usually involves a lot of work.  One way to ease the workload, is to allow user-generated content on your web site.  This can take the form of a blog which you write, but which can be commented on by others, or maybe even a forum.  Both these examples (and there are many more such technicuqes) offer advantages as well as challenges.  Two main areas of concern are spammers and illegal/offensive content.  If you allow user-generated content, then you must make sure that you adequately moderate what is posted on your site.  The last thing you need is a lawsuit on your hands or your customers being barraged with offensive material.

Both blogs and forums can be enabled with free software.  For forum software try SMF or phpBB; for blogging try Wordpress.

Will website_technology

There is a serious lack of English-language forums for ex-pats in Munich.  Perhaps it is time to supplement the dating site with a sister-site in Munich for ex-pats.  I shall call it TalkMunich.  The problem with the sites which currently exist is that they are hopelessly moderated and fail to provide anything other than advice and chat.  Whilst Chatting and advice are the cornerstone of any forum, there should be other things as well.  For instance, TalkMunich has a translator on the front page which defaults to German to English translations.  It also has a currency convertor, defaulting to Euro to Dollar.  A map, centred on Munich, where you can save your favourite locations is on the site.  A calandar of events is available, which shows public holidays (in English), as well as forum-specific events and local festivals etc (hard to get this information in English).  Another handy feature is that there is Munich news on the front page, also in English and updated daily!!!!  That is a great feature and one which is very useful.  Not enough to tempt the ex-pat community to visit, then it also provides Munich weather reports.  Now add to all these front page features, links to the latest forum posts and you have a winning recipe.

The forum itself is better than most other competitor forum software and has the advantage of supporting Karma, i.e. the ability of users to rate other users’ posts.  This helps to self-moderate and reduce the likelihood of unpleasant posters ruining the atmosphere on the site.  I think TalkMunich.com stands a good chance of becoming a serious resource for the Munich English-speaking ex-pat community.

Will munich

Most people put a relatively decent amount of effort into a relationship.  I would guess that not enough effort is made on average, but instead of that, I wish to focus on another aspect of relationships and that is the commitment one makes to oneself.

Even if you are the best partner in the world (maybe especially so), you could easily find yourself in a position where you neglect yourself and suffer from this neglect.  By this I mean, not dedicating enough time to your own development and relaxation.  It is not difficult to get into the habit of always putting other people first and eventually finding yourself emotionally and physically tired.  Now, this is not a green light to be over-whelmingly self-centred; more like a gentle reminder to look at your own life and find ways to make time to do those things which give you your energy back.

I find having a nice relaxing walk helps, or even going for a run.  Sometimes instead of compromising on what DVD to watch, choose something you personally want to see.  Even in conversation, sometimes it is best to expect your partner to listen to you, rather than you always listening to them (not that you should have to fight for this ‘privilege’).  There are many ways to look after yourself and rejuvinate your energy levels.  Being in a relationship does not mean that you cannot also think of yourself.

Remember that a lifetime of compromising can leave you unfulfilled, resentful and unmotivated.  Take charge of where you want to go, what you want to do and make sure it happens… all the time without detracting from the dedication and thoughtfulness which you show others in your life… it is possible to look after others and yourself at the same time.

Will relationship_advice

The new dating site layout is ready to be published online.  A few modifications are still required, but largely everything is ready and should be visible soon enough.

A lot of work still needs to be performed on the SEO side of things, as well as a few smaller bits of technical design.  Hopefully in a few weeks traffic to the site will start growing once the new-improved SEO-friendly design has been rolled-out.  This blog still plays an important part in keeping Google visiting the site, despite the constant ‘in development’ status of it, so I will keep posting to it until the site starts growing in strength.

Will datingsite

As ClickinLove is predominantly a dating site dedicated to intercultural dating, I thought I would touch on the subject of language problems couples may face when they are in an intercultural relationship.  Besides for the inevitable misunderstanding which can arise due to both people having a different set of reference customs, there are also issues which occur when one or other misconstrues the meaning and nuances of idiomatic expressions and language peculiarities.

For instance, sarcasm, which may be a common conversational element in one culture, could prove hard to understand for someone from another culture.  Often an incomplete grasp of the language can make understanding sarcasm a little tricky and the meaning can go very awry.  Yet the person being sarcastic may not realise that their comment was misunderstood and the person who misunderstood may probably not even know that they made a mistake in their understanding of what was said and meant.  Consequently, communication between both people has suffered, yet neither may actually realise this.

That is why it is especially important in intercultural dating to avoid relying too heavily on cultural traits when talking, to try and avoid idiomatic expressions, colloquialisms and other such sentence constructs which can cause ambiguity.  The danger is that, unlike normal communication problems where issues can be identified and eventually resolved, with cross-cultural language issues, both people may not actually realise that the other person has misunderstood them.  Eventually, somewhere down the line, these issues will surface and the underlying reason for them will be hard to determine; by that stage it may be too late to backtrack and resolve the issues.

Will relationship_advice

If you do a lot of work with Macromedia products and image-editing software like Adobe Photoshop, then you really need your development system (i.e. personal computer) to be able to cope with the workload.  For example, in Photoshop, you can open and edit many images simultaneously.  You might perform various actions on each of these images and if you are dealing with large JPEG’s (in the region of MB’s), then the history of those changes you are making could result in an awful lot of system memory (RAM) being used up.  This most likely will slow your system considerably.  Throw into the equation the processing power required to cope with using Dreamweaver or a video-editing suite of tools and then your system will really be under stress.  The consequence is a sluggish and slow to respond computer which will reduce productivity and increase your frustration as you try to work.

Recently my computer could not seem to keep up with my demands.  I had deleted unused data, uninstalled redundant applications and defragmented my hard disc, but still the development work I was doing was eating the system resources too quickly and slowing my work to a grinding halt.  After various tweaks, I decided that an upgrade was needed – well actually I opted for a completely new system.

Here is the specification of my newly self-built computer:

• Motherboard – I chose the Gigabyte X48-DQ6
• Processor – Intel Quad Core XQ9450
• RAM – 4 GB
• Power Supply – 500Watts
• Hard Disc – 2 x 320GB SATA, arranged in a RAID0 array
• Graphics card – 512MB
• Fan – the bigger and more silent, the better
• Backup – external hard disc, 80GB in an IDE (PATA) enclosure

I installed XP 64-bit on the system partition and keep all my data on a second partition.  I also have a smaller third partition to allow me to archive old data.  Note that I use XP 64 for various reasons.  Not only is it faster, but it also supports the large amount of RAM I have.  For instance, on my system if I run XP 32-bit, the OS only sees 2.9GB RAM, yet there is 4GB RAM installed.  On XP 64-bit, it can see all the RAM; this is because 32-bit systems only have an address range of 4 GB and this must be shared with other resources, such as the graphics card.  Hence if you use 4GB or more, it is worthwhile getting the 64-bit OS, which can fully utilise your sizeable memory.  Just make sure that your processor can cope with the 64-bit system.  I use the quad core q9450 from Intel, which is a great processor and one which overclocks very well.

All in all, my system was easy to install and to get working.  The improvement in my productivity is actually measurable in terms of time saved and the noticable reduction in frustration, as my computer no longer has to struggle to cope with Photoshop’s extensive RAM usage.

So, my computer upgrade was a very worthwhile exercise in improving my system and allowing me to work faster.  I would recommend taking the same action if you find that the common performance tweaks you can normally use are not really helping you get the speed you need from your machine.  Just remember, building a system from scratch is not as difficult as you may at first think.

Will website_technology

When it comes to an easy life, only you can provide it; do not depend on your partner to fill the gaps which you have created in your own life.  I find that doing a little bit of work everyday keeps my mind active, keeps procrastination at bay and allows me to achieve things which would normally be difficult to achieve if I set out to do it within a competitive time-frame.

One of the biggest factors in failure, is a lack of belief in one’s own abilities, coupled with an incomplete understanding of how to work.  The truth is that humans need to achieve to feel good about themselves.  It is nearly impossible to sit all day doing nothing constructive and feel at the end of the day exhilarated and happy at what you have not achieved… yet when you work hard for an hour or two you are able to spend the rest of the day relaxed and happy that you are in control of your life and actively building skills and achieving results that will accumulate over time into things which will make you feel good about yourself and which will make your life easier and more happy.

The truth is that a good, happy, relaxed lifestyle only comes with daily effort and you must be patient to wait for the results.  If you spend 30 mins everyday running, then don’t expect to breath deeper and feel more energetic and fit in two weeks time (though you will probably see improvements within that time-frame) – keep at it and then in 6 months time you can feel proud of what you have done.  Just remember that self-discipline is your friend and procrastination is your nemesis.  If you sleep with the wrong one you will end up in trouble and consequently deserve the lifestyle you create.

Will relationship_advice

Running from the 20th – 28th June, this years Munich Filmfest conincides with the 850th anniversary of the founding of Munich. This is Germany’s second largest fim festival and offers the following program:

• New German Feature Films

• German TV Movies

• Nouveau Cinéma Français

• American Independents

• Retrospective

• Kinderfilmfest

• Open Air

Many venues throughout the city are utilised for the festival. For a full timetable and listing of the various events, see the official Filmfest Munich site.

Will munich

Many people use relationships and their partner to patch up areas in their life which they should be fixing themselves.  Self-improvement helps a person to become more balanced and less needy and hence able to choose a partner based on desire as opposed to need.  But what are the critical factors in self-improvement?

Over time I have come to identify one particular area which seems very neglected in today’s popular psychology craze; this is self-disciple.  Without the technique to control ourselves when we need to do work, we lose a lot of our potential and ability to make life more successful and consequently more fulfilling and easy.  With self-discipline we can learn that new language, stick to the exercise regime, maintain a healthy attitude to those around us, finish that important project and make better use of our time.  Without self-discipline, we sit around worrying about finishing the work and getting stressed, not learning the new language, not exercising regularly, taking our frustration out on other people, etc.  There is a massive difference in the quality of life between those who know how to make an ambitious life plan and stick to it and those who only dream.

The choice is yours.  We all know we need to be more disciplined, but few of us really take it seriously enough to try and tackle it once and for all.  Yet if we do it right, self-control and the world are at our feet.  Life improves when we plan our future and make the goals happen, as opposed to being a spectator in your own life and watching your dreams disappear, one after another.

Will relationship_advice

How do you make your website a success?  SEO – Search Engine Optimisation, is the process by which you tweak critical factors concerning your site (both on-page and off-page factors) to try to make it rank well in the search engines for key words or phrases that people search for.  if you rank well, more people see your site in the listing and hence you gain more traffic (i.e. site visitors).

SEO is a risky business and can fall into three categories; Black Hat, Grey Hat and White Hat techniques.  The first two should be avoided as they involve practices which could see your site banned from the search engines.  White hat SEO is a different matter and is a legitimate way to try and improve your site’s positioning in the likes of Google, Yahoo and MSN.  As Google accounts for over 50% of all searches, it is worth focusing on this search engine (SE) for optimisation.  Note that the different SE’s require slightly different optimisation techniques as their algorithms (which stipulate the rules for how sites rank for various keywords) are different from each other and evolve over time.  Nevertheless, if you focus your SEO techniques on Google, which has arguably the most successful algorithm, then you stand a great chance of doing well in the other SE’s as well.

So what is good SEO practice?  There are two types of optimisations efforts; on-page and off-page.  On-page optimisation concerns tweaking your content, positioning of page elements and proper use of HTML tags/attributes.  There is a wealth of information about this subject… just go to Google and type “white hat on-page SEO”.  You need to get this form of content optimisation right!  The second area you need to deal with is Off-page optimisation.  This revolves around getting your site noticed online, via in-bound links, i.e. other sites linking to your site.  There are many techniques to acquire in-bound links and this is where most of the spade-work of SEO is performed.  It is not an easy task to do and will require a lot of effort and time.  I think a good starting point is to make sure you have around 4000-8000 good quality in-bound links, and keep building it from there.  There are ways to check the quality and number of these links, but that is for another post.  As with on-page techniques, look up Google to find out the best ways to acquire in-bound links, or search this blog to find some tips.

Will website_technology

Though it may seem more like a personal objective, being a more positive person can have a dramatic impact on your relationship as well.  By increasing your ability to appreciate what you have and trying to foster a more realistic, optimistic outlook on your everyday life, you are able to remove some of the obstacles to a happy healthy relationship.

For instance, if you were to look at the various actions you have performed which have negatively impacted your partner, how many of them were as a result of some bad feeling on your part? Maybe you were tired and depressed and you lashed out at your partner for some minor reason; or maybe you were stressed with the daily grind of working life and sometimes thought it necessary to remind your partner that his/her life was easier (which inevitably would lead to conflict).  Now imagine those circumstances if you had been more optimistic about the underlying cause of your annoyance.  Instead of complaining about your job, a more optimistic you would maybe find reason to be thankful and pass on this new found appreciation in the way you treat your other half.  This in turn would hopefully cheer your partner and cause her/him to treat you better and hence avoid a conflict.

By learning to appreciate your life and surroundings a little more you will most likely improve how you feel about things and in turn be less likely to take out your frustrations on those around you.  It is definitely a win-win situation with a positive feedback loop for all.

Will relationship_advice

The importance of getting the sitemap right cannot be underestimated.  If you have many pages of content and your sitemap lists every page but one, then you can expect Google to ignore that one page in its listings.

I have found this out on a number of different occasions.  Recently I installed a Wordpress plugin which automatically creates a sitemap everytime I write a blog post.  Everything seemed fine until I noticed that the blog was dropping in the SERP’s for keywords I knew it had previously ranked well for.  I decided to investigate and noticed that my blog had first started to perform badly around the time I loaded the plugin.  On checking the auto-generated sitemap created by the plugin I noticed that it had errors (every entry was missing the ‘category’ name in the path) which invalidated every single link to a post on my site’s blog.  Google picked up my sitemap and consequently determined that every page  that was identified in it did not exist and hence was not indexed.  Overnight I lost the ability of my blog content to be indexed.

So, treat your blog with care and make sure that there are no issues with it.  If you find there are problems, immediately fix them and resubmit your sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools.

Will website_technology

It does seem obvious that two people verbally fighting with each other will not produce any productive conclusion, but in the heat of the moment it is difficult to remember this. There are many reasons why people get hot under the collar and lose their temper with their partner, but how can this be avoided?

I think the solution lies in the appreciation of the need of each side in the argument to be ‘right’ and ‘win’ their case. To understand and to listen to their side of the situation is the key to calming them down. By trying to ignore what they are saying, by refusing to listen to them, by demanding that they listen to you, by screaming, by crying, by throwing childish tantrums, by not communicating, you are killing any chances of maturely resolving the argument and will most likely escalate it. If you are acting in this way and not communicating effectively, then eventually your partner will either walk away from the relationship or develop a mistrust of your ability to act like an adult and resolve your differences, which will put a barrier between you.

So, to negotiate an argument I would follow these steps:

1. Calm down – allow time (in silence) for both people to relax a little
2. Listen – let the other person put their side of the story first (make sure you actually do listen though)
3. Understand – try to see things from their perspective
4. Communicate – once you understand their anguish, then put forward your side of events
5. Accept your own faults – if you are to blame for the argument, accept it
6. Compromise – reach a solution where both people are happy, assuming you are both to blame for the fight

Just remember, that contrary to popular belief, not every argument is caused by both people. If you are guilty of being selfish or immature, not communicating or getting angry, then it is your fault and you should accept this and make amends in some way. For every feeling of hurt you cause you need to address this and try to undo the damage. When you hurt someone and ignore the consequences, it has a habit of accumulating in intensity over time and spells relationship disaster, eventually.

Will relationship_advice

So you have completed your site and you now need to focus on traffic.  At this stage you are starting to investigate SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and what it means for your site.  SEO is a popular area right now and has been for a while; basically it revolves around good practices aimed at increasing your site’s exposure in the search engines (and more explicitly in Google).  There are many techniques to try, but one sure fire way of getting noticed and rewarded is by having what we term ‘link-bait’.  This is nothing more than attractive content on your site which other webmasters/bloggers, etc will naturally wish to link to.

As an example of effective link bait, look to Google Gadgets and Social Networking sites for inspiration.  It is possible to write small applications which could be useful for your visitors and for which they can then load onto their Facebook profile (for example) or on iGoogle.  Your application can either be hosted on your own site or at least contains links/adverts to it.  Everyone benefits as your visitors get a useful tool, whilst you benefit as you get inbound links that were organically and ethically harvested.

Be inventive and creative and with a little bit of technical knowledge and the right direction, your efforts could result in a link-building campaign that works and generates targeted traffic to your site.

Will website_technology

When it comes to relationships (as in many things in life), being truthful to your partner is as important as being truthful to yourself.  What I mean by this, is that by knowing the difference yourself between the truthfulness of your thoughts and actions, and being able to pass this to your partner (either by words or actions), you will be able to build up an incredible level of trust.  Without trust there can be no close relationship… trust and love go hand-in-hand and breaking one severely damages the other.

If you are able to be truthful to yourself and to understand your true intentions behind your actions (which many people are unable to do), then you are in a good position to use this ’strength’ to build your relationship.   Truthfulness takes courage and knowing who you are, and why you do what you do, is a major milestone on the path to complete self-awareness and maturity.  The next step after this is to learn to share your talent and display this openess with your partner.

Many people say you can be too honest, but I believe it depends on the maturity of the people involved.   The truth is never something to shy away from and if you strive to be a better person, then being open to the truth will make you stronger.  Therefore I think it is better to be wholly truthful in a relationship as long as your partner is strong enough and willing enough to accept it.  The end result should be a new found level of trust and a consequently heightened feeling of love.  Ultimately, your relationship is in your hands and to make any relationship work you first need to overcome the obstacles set by the biggest protagonist in the relationship, i.e. you.  Fix your own problems first and then start dealing with those of your partner’s.  Learn to be truthful to yourself and your partner and you will reap the rewards of your efforts.

Will relationship_advice

Die Lange Nacht der Musik (The Long Night of Music) for 2008 is upon us and it really is worthwhile to make the effort to visit the events on show. For one evening/night on the 31st May (8pm – 3am), venues across Munich will host various shows, cabarets, bands and music festivals. These shows will continue throughout the night and will be hosted in around 100 places such as bars, churches, concert halls, etc… just about anywhere really.

In addition, as 2008 is the 850th anniversary of the founding of Munich, you can expect a bit more for your money this year. Munich is well worth a visit for this event.

Will munich

There is a phenomenon, usually I suspect amongst younger adults, where some people are more in love with the notion of being in love than with the actual act of loving somebody. Their desire for love and their need to find someone to match their requirements can be so strong that they are in danger of never finding someone to meet their expectations. When they are in a relationship they can often mess it up by focusing on how much love they are receiving as opposed to how much they are giving.

The truth is that in our lives we should do all we can with what we have. You cannot really determine how much someone loves you, but you are able to make a big effort to show how much you love them. Make that effort and try not to dream so much about how much love you wish to get back. The latter will only leave you feeling short-changed and frustrated, whilst at the same time probably neglecting your relationship, whereas the former is more likely to make your dreams become reality and the relationship to work. Being in love with being in love is slightly infantile and not the best strategy for relationship success.

Will relationship_advice

Without goals in life, we are liable to underachieve. The same applies to relationships, in that it is healthy to have something for a couple to aim for. The crucial factor is whether or not each partner has their own personal goals as well as generic relationship goals.

People in relationships need to be dependent (to a healthy degree) on their partner – this promotes closeness and strengthens the relationship. The human desire to be needed and useful to other people is a very important aspect of our social interactions and extremely important for couples. However, we also need to not place too much strain on our partner by being too needy. Remember, strength is attractive and energy-giving; if you lack strength you can damage the relationship by tiring out your partner and depending on him/her too much, which they may come to resent (I am not referring to dependency caused by disability, which is entirely different). Hence, why it is healthy to have personal goals in life. Of course both partners need to work together for their relationship goals, i.e. to achieve increased trust, understanding, save for that elusive perfect home, etc. In addition, to keep the relationship healthy and vibrant, give yourself personal goals. Things such as increasing your standard of education, combating irrational fears, taking up a hobby, etc all contribute to your own strength and self-esteem. These factors can increase the total energy in a relationship and both partners will benefit. Additionally, once your partner sees you improving yourself, he/she may be motivated to improve themselves also, which will have a doubly positive impact.

Self-improvement, via the goal-orientated approach, should keep you enthusiastic and breath new life into your daily routine. This increase in energy and strength is very attractive and will keep a relationship on the right track. Many failed relationships derail due to personal problems and are not always directly attributable to the actual relationship per se. Improve yourself, achieve your goals, keep your mind young and energetic and then watch as your relationship reinvigorates itself. Like in many aspects of life, the key to succeeding in something is to first inwardly critically analyse yourself and then set goals for self-improvement.

Will datingsite

I find it a strange paradox that so many people love reading poems which describe love, yet fail to live that poem in their own lives. How can it be that something as artistic as a love poem can do so little to inspire the reader to act out the essence of what they read, for the benefit of their partner. Does this make them hypocritical?

To clarify my point, I need an example. Typical, many love poems centre around the death of a partner and the desperate longing and pain which a cruel twist of fate can wreck upon an otherwise blissful union. The reader of this type of poem has their emotional appreciation for beauty and value elevated (albeit temporarily) whilst they ‘experience’ the poem. Momentarily, they feel the loss which the poem describes and it touches them. Yet, do they return to their partner with a new found sense of urgency and a desire to treat them with more love and appreciation? Not usually, I suspect. The benefits of a poem appear to be short lived and appeal more to those who wish to engage in the quick fix of an emotional high, without accepting that this fix should come at a price of increased thoughtfulness.

An underlying truth about love poetry is that it helps us focus on what we have. It reminds us of the feelings, security, companionship and ‘pure’ love that we currently possess. However, even with this reminder, we still return home to our partner and threat them as a vehicle for our own happiness. Sometimes, understanding the essence of a poem can help us understand our own actions or the lack of. The trick, is to use poetry to heighten your own powers of appreciation. As you become more thankful for what you have, you can use this energy to benefit the person you love. This should in turn strengthen your relationship and hence the poem becomes more than just words, it becomes a tool to enrich lives in a very real way.

Don’t read poetry and miss the point – leaving a feeling inside you without providing an action to complement it is such a waste. Therefore, the next time you read a love poem, make up your mind to carry the essence of that poem through to some gesture which will highlight the love that you have in your life.  Creating a love poem need not mean putting pen to paper – a completely selfless act by one partner for another can write an entire love epic.

Will relationship_advice

There are a wide plethora of dating sites available on the Internet, from those which claim to be free (be wary of the ‘free’ marketing tag)  to those which cost a small fortune to become a member of.  Like with any investment in both time and money, you need to really understand what it is you are after.  Some of the biggest dating sites are able to offer you a lot in terms of a large user database and confidence in the product, however you should be aware that there have also been a few law suits against some big names in this business for faking profiles!  In addition it is hard for a site to protect against scammers loading false profiles, so you really should be careful that anyone you contact is in fact genuine.

Smaller sites are often quite localised and popular within a certain geographical region.  These sites are also better able to cope with people loading fake profiles as they have a more personal approach to how they maintain their site.  You may find that the smaller dating site has a better offering for what you are after.  Though of course it is all about what your are looking for and whether or not those sites can provide you with it.
When it comes to the adult personals side of dating (and I use the term ‘dating’ loosely here), again, you would probably find that the big names suffer somewhat from fradulent postings.   However, with the smaller sites you should be aware that many of them are in fact serving niche markets and/or have a very strict critieria for the services they offer and the type of people they are trying to attract.  If you go online just looking for sex, then make sure that you are using the right site as it can cause offence and violate many sites’ terms and conditions of usage.

So, do your research, think local and don’t automatically choose the big players in the online dating game, there are many alternatives which may suit you better.

Will relationship_advice

The problem with online dating is that you need to be sure that what you are after is provided by the site you are using.  There are many sites which serve a niche market and you do not wish to inadvertently end up there if it is not your intention.  For instance, trying to find a soul-mate partner on a sexual submission site might not work to your advantage.

On the same note, make sure that what you are after does not cause offence to the majority of users on a site.  If PVC and whips are your thing, then think again about joining the various Christian dating sites… they might not be too happy when you contact them looking for willing dungeon dwellers.

There are many sites out there for many different tastes in relationship and interests.  If you need a specialist site, then find one.  On a more general level, most people in the Western world wish to just meet someone for a few dates to see what develops.  If you are hungry for children and desperately want marriage, then perhaps this could also be deemed a specialist interest and you would be better suited to joining a marriage agency.  As a hint for women, if you appear too desperate to get married, men sense something is wrong and start to run… and rightly so.  Go for the relationship first and if you are well suited, then marriage would normally follow… try it the other way round and people in the Western world will doubt your sincerity to your new found partner.

Click in Love is both an introduction agency and a dating website.  We aim to facilitate the dating/meeting process for genuine people in search of love.  We believe in love, romance and all things that come with a dedicated genuine relationship.  People who use our site do so with the intention of forming relationships; not business relationships (such as what many intercultural marriages appear to be, where the man gets someone to have sex with, who irons his shirt and cooks for him, whilst the woman gets money, stability, visa and a family all based in a rich Western country).  At Click in Love, we deal with intercultural relationships where both partners want more than the basics.  If you feel you want something like this, then this site is for you.  If you are after something different (and there is nothing wrong with that) then I ask you to respectively remember that this site is for people looking for love and romance, so perhaps you are better suited choosing a more fitting site for your requirements.

Will datingsite

‘Laughter is the Best Medicine’ – this is a very common phrase and one which many people associate with the therapeutic benefits of humour for people experiencing illness of some description. It can equally be applied to any situation, including relationships. I have seen couples exist under a complete absence of any form of obvious enjoyment of each other’s company – no laughing, no joking around, no silliness – just polite, respectful, relatively unimportant conversation. What type of relationship could survive such a boring environment!

I think partners need to understand that every system needs energy to survive. Whether that system be a mechanical one such as a motor engine, or a biological one as could be found in an ecosystem, or even in the smallest sub-society, such as a relationship. Here, the emotional balance of the partnership requires energy, yet it is often neglected. Without this energy, boredom results, complacency thrives and the rot starts to set in.

So where do we get this energy from to stop the relationship becoming emotionally ill – as with many things, laughter is the best medicine. Inject a little humour into your daily actions. Find out what makes the other person smile and laugh and aim to bring a smile to their faces as often as you think they need it. Reinvigorate your lifestyle by doing things which creates adrenalin, increases endorphins, challenges both of you and ultimately faciliatates the flow of energy through your lives. This energy is what life is all about. Use laughter to bring it into your life and everyone around will reap the rewards.

Will relationship_advice

Often the reason for disharmony in a relationship is the level of expectation from one or both partners.  It stands to reason that if one partner expects very little from the other then they will indeed be extremely happy if their expectations are exceeded, which most likely will happen.  However, if someone in a relationship has high expectations, then their partner may struggle to fulfil those elevated desires.  This can have a two-fold impact.  Firstly the partner with high expectations will feel frustrated and disappointed if their expectations are not met.  Secondly, their partner will feel hurt and stressed at failing to live up to what their partner demands from them.  This will of course put strain on a relationship.

I think the answer lies somewhere between what a person expects and what their partner can realistically provide.  With a little bit of practical evaluation of one’s expectations, it is possible to change them slightly to make them more accessible for the partner, without compromising too much on the end goal.  If compromise is encouraged, then both parties in the relationship can more easily achieve a happy medium where their needs are addressed without causing hurt and frustration to the other.

Will relationship_advice

In relationships, as in business, going the extra mile can really work wonders.  What does this mean exactly?  Well, ‘going the extra mile’ is a phrase which translates into someone making an extra effort for some reason.  Normally it would mean giving your employer a better deal by trying to work harder, or in this case, by making your partner’s life a little easier by increasing your thoughtfulness.

For many people, love is an abstract concept and a little hard to have its exact definition pinned down.  For me, love can be measured by the level of sacrifice and thoughtfulness.  Love makes people ‘go the extra mile’ to look after their partner.  If you truly love someone, you care about them enough to want to make their life easier, even at the expense of your own comfort and energy.

Parents are often ready to lay down their life to protect and care for their offspring, but how many would do the same for their partner?  Yet the love of a partner can and should be just as strong as the love for a child (albeit a different type of love)… many people seem to doubt this and let the child be the main reason for their relationship – this is a ridiculously immature mistake with obvious unpleasant consequences.

So, to make your relationship stronger and to show your love, make that extra effort to show how you feel and to let your partner know that you are capable of giving things a bit more effort and go the extra mile.  Some people believe this is unnecessary and sacrifices are not warranted in a strong relationship, but looking at the relationships these people endure may tell you of their emotional maturity and ability to comment on such things.

So what type of things count.  As a rule of thumb, treat your partner as you want to be treated.  Here are some suggestions:

• breakfast in bed
• a massage, even if you feel a little tired yourself
• get up from your chair and offer to make tea, even if you don’t want tea yourself
• meet them half-way coming from work
• a compliment, completely unexpected and heartfelt
• tell them you love them
• buy them a small, cheap thoughtful gift that required some energy to think of
• look after their emotional health and make sure you understand how they feel about their life
• occasionally be prepared to back down if they are angry and in the wrong

These are just some simple suggestions, but by making that extra effort in a relationship, you are showing how thoughtful and loving you are and your partner will most likely recognise and appreciate the attention.  As a word of warning, you should not turn yourself into a slave, just learn how to be more thoughtful occasionally.  It is a good habit to get into and you will also benefit from doing the right thing.

Will relationship_advice

As you climb the pyramid the needs, your need for self fulfillment tends to force you to look at more refined ways of preserving your self-respect.  For instance, as you become financially secure, your thoughts move from worrying about the next paycheck, to less pressing concerns, such as what tennis racket you are going to buy this weekend.  With this rise in the quality of living comes a corresponding responsibility to broaden your skill-set and increase your inner harmony with yourself and your surroundings.

One way to improve yourself in this matter is to focus on your honesty level.  When life is harder, it can actually be more practical to be dishonest about certain things.  For instance, if money is tight, sometimes it is necessary for some people to think they can skip paying the ticket to travel on the train to work some mornings.  Whilst this is wrong, you can understand that some people have more need to save that money for food.  Yet, when money is not a problem, it is often the case that these same people still try to cheat the system and continue not paying their way in society.  This level of dishonesty is bad for them and as they rise into their new social class, they will be labelled in a negative light by their peers once they find out about their dishonest ways.  Honesty is necessary for self-respect and self-love.  Hard times force some people to abandon their self-respect in order to survive, but it is still wrong.  However, to be fair, honesty seems to be a value that is easier for those whose life is less harse.

With regards to relationships, honesty is critical to trust.  If a partner is found to be lying about small things, then the natural conclusion is that the partner will most definitively lie about big things (such as cheating).  This can (and does) breed an atmosphere of distrust in a relationship.  Without trust, a relationship is very severely limited in how far it can proceed.  People in a relationship have to remember that trust is hard to earn and easily lost, so even one or two moments of dishonesty can be enough to ruin the trust in a relationship for a long time.  If you find that your past, i.e. your ‘hard’ life, encouraged you to be dishonest, then ask yourself, as an adult, is this stil the case; are you still unable to lead a life of honesty.  By trying to incorporate truthfulness and honesty into your life and being intolerant of any form of dishonesty and lying in your own behaviour, you are effectively telling the world that you are climbing the pyramid of needs and are existing on a higher plain of self-actualisation and maturity than your peers.  This makes you a more valuable person in most peoples’ opinion and one which other emotionally-rich people will endeavour to become acquainted with.  Even more importantly, it tells your prospective partner that you have risen above your animalistic/self-centred instincts and have goals and standards which make you a very attractive person… someone who will rise to the challenges imposed in life and who will always aim for the right path to follow.  This attitude you foster will encourage trustfulness in your partner, which in turn will lead to a feeling of security.  If you are dishonest, you stand every chance of making your partner feel insecure and this may manifest itself in relationship disharmony.  If you are totally and consistently honest, you have acquired one of the cornerstone skills of a truly successful relationship and you will reap the rewards for your mature attitude.

Will relationship_advice

Through observation in my own life and the life of others, I have come to believe that many unpleasant acts are borne out of fear. Not all acts of course. For example, everyone is born with a genetic predisposition to self-centredness, which, if left unchecked will lead to the development of an adult whose self-centred attitude will hurt those around him/her. However, it is not those types of situations I am referring to; it is the actions of one person hurting another due to a misguided belief that they are protecting themselves.

So what sort of actions am I referring to exactly. Let us take the personality trait of ’sensitivity’ as an example. In theory, being a ’sensitive’ person is a great life-affirming natural talent to possess. You can understand people better, spot emotions in others that many people fail to see, be more empathetic to your partner and hence enjoy closer relationships. In reality, it also means that you are vulnerable to how you perceive other people’s emotions/opinions/actions to affect you. This should not be a problem in a fearless person as they will generally not read the small print in a person’s actions and assume that person wishes to hurt them. However, mix fear and sensitivity and you have a potent mix which can make the possessor of these attributes a nightmare to live with. As explained above, a sensitive person will pick up on subtle emotional meanings in a partner’s actions… if fear resides in the heart of the sensitive person, they may start looking to protect themselves by checking to see if their partner is secretly trying to hurt them (fear causes us to look for the root of our fear and protect ourselves from it… it becomes an obsession and is addictive). Their fear causes them to probe their partner (albeit at a discrete, subtle level) to see if there is anything to be frightened about. This can cause a fearful person to inadvertently start engineering the very things they are frightened off.

Let me give an example. If a frightened man is generally fearful of his wife cheating on him and one night in mixed company he notices her tiny, extremely subtle flirtatious attitude towards a male colleague (which he will notice as he has the gift/curse of ’sensitivity’), then how will he feel? The mature man who has eradicated irrational fear in is life, may see this as a sign that his wife is enjoying attention from another man and therefore must be feeling undervalued in her daily life… perhaps he would surmise that he has been neglecting her slightly; afterall, she is married to him and they both love each other, so maybe he can change his attitude to her slightly and improve his actions as her partner. Eventually he will be able to tell if his effort paid off and she ceases the flirting. As a side-note, obviously they would need to discuss her actions in a mature calm way to try to determine if there is actually any real serious relationship problems beginning. Now, let us image that the man is in fact quit fearful and instead of having a rational heart, has one filled with fear of ‘what might happen’. Instead of being mature about it, he might let his fear take control and his imagination work towards the worse case scenario (i.e. she is, or will, cheat on him).

You need to understand that humans have an inbuilt mechanism to protect themselves. When a certain danger presents itself, humans need to make a choice and often the choice which is generally wisest for most situations is to prepare for the worst outcome, so you are not surprised, caught off guard and hence harmed. Unfortunately, in one of life’s bizarre twists, this has the effect of causing the exact opposite… prepare for the worst and you stand a wonderful chance of making exactly that happen. The reason is that emotionally, you are focusing on your worst fear to protect yourself, and consequently all your mental resources are pointing at the cause of your fear… this has the effect of preventing you from lateral thinking and solving your problem through other means. In other words, you are increasing the likelihood that your worst fears will become reality. Try riding a bicycle and focus subconsciously (if possible) on not trying to hit a lamppost in the distance… you will be surprised at how unnecessarily close to that lamppost you cycled in your effort to avoid it. Normally you would naturally have cycled further away from it when passing, but now you are focusing on avoiding it and bizarrely riding closer to the object you are trying to avoid. This is a psychological phenomenon and well documented in science.

Now, back to our example. The fearful man may now be frightened of the worse possible meanings of his wife’s innocent reaction to another man’s attention, i.e. her subtle flirting. He may imagine that infidelity will follow and all sorts of images will flash through his mind. Perhaps he will start to get angry and resentful. Maybe because he now feels hurt by her potentially innocent actions he may decide to hurt her back, just to let her know how he feels (many men do this because expressing emotions on subjects like this can be hard for them, so actions are easier for them to utilise). Whatever his actions, his suspicions and fear are likely to alarm, offend or push away his wife. In essence, his actions and interpretation of the offending situation have been perverted by his fear and consequently he has set himself on the path of realising his fears, i.e. she may become resentful of his lack of trust in her and this could lead to a relationship deterioration and hence her actually becoming more likely to cheat. A mature man would eradicate his fears and look on the situation with a clear problem-solving ability; a fearful man immediately jumps into ‘fight or flight’ mode and exasperates the situation. It is like cracking a nut with a sledge hammer.

This is just one example, but there are many daily events in our lifes and relationships where fear can cause us to misjudge the situation and hence actually make it worse. Fear is a healthy thing if controlled and experienced with the right stimuli… it is always healthy to experience fear when you turn a corner and a hungry looking tiger is sitting looking at you, licking it’s lips. It is not healthy to experience fear when that fear is a result of misuse of your imagination. Learn to eradicate imaginary fear and you will see yourself become more relaxed, happier, less stressed and more mature. You will most likely see an improvement in your relationship if your fear has so far been hurting it (which you may not even have realised).

Footnote: a word of caution, fear exists for a reason, so learn to differentiate between real and imaginary fears.

Will relationship_advice

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.

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Yes and no.  In the sense of SEO as it was a few years ago, then no, it does not work.  By this I mean no quick results are possible, no killer ’secret’ techniques exist to shoot up the rankings and no ‘experts’ exist who know how to make things happen with their ‘proven’ formulas.  If however, your expectations are realistic, then SEO can work.

Ask your SEO consultant for demonstrable evidence of their prowess in this field.  If they are any good, they will have an online setup (a work in progress) which they use to analyse the latest trends, to tweak their own on-page parameters and to show potential clients what they know.  For instance, I often use this blog as an example of what is possible.  It is a small blog, offering small tit-bits of advice, but by no means a ground-breaking Google-smashing piece of research.  Yet, in its own way, this blog can do what many major corporations are unable to do… i.e. it ranks well for whatever I wish to make it rank for and it does it very fast (i.e. in minutes… not hours, days, weeks or years).  For my clients, this means I can show them how quickly I can rank at the top for keywords they also may want to rank well for.  By using my blog I can show what I have been able to do, and by inference, what I can do for them.

Of course, to get another site to rank well for keywords which my blog ranks well for, takes a lot of time.  But by being able to demonstrate this ability in my own blog, I can show potential clients that I have the tenacity and ability to make it all work for them as well.  Nothing is guaranteed of course, but a little display of your own ability goes a long way to instilling some confidence.  Showing clients various other sites you have optimised and which rank well for certain specific keyword phrases is very much a cheap trick and one which should be frowned upon… it is too easy to pull the wool over people’s eyes with this.

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Recently a few pages on the Click in Love dating site had a dip in PR.  Actually, the pages affected were all related to the Wordpress blog and they were scattered across several sub-domains.  I suspect the culprit is either Wordpress being penalised by Google (for some reason) or an initiative last week whereby old deleted blog entries were resurrected and re-posted onto this blog… perhaps Google may consider these reproduced entries duplicate content and punish accordingly.

Either way, the PR dropped one place and will need to be improved.  I just need to find the time to finish both the site and the SEO work required to make it successful.  If anyone else has noticed a drop in their blog PR for no apparent reason, then please let me know and we can try to work out what has went wrong.

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If you have decided to go down the route of doing your own SEO work, how do you manage to maintain the work level when there are no immediately obvious results from which to measure your success?  Without something to show for all your effort, it is human nature to lose motivation and eventually give up.  SEO is a tedious business, with nothing to show for many months and even years, which makes it even more likely that you will lose heart and neglect your SEO work.  So how do you manage to stay motivated?

I use imagination.  Imagination and self-discipline.  I suspect my SEO efforts will pay off eventually, so I imagine the success that I hope to achieve.  I do not fool myself, as that is a dangerous ploy and one which could sink your entire project when your expectations are invariably dashed at some stage in the near future.  Instead, I focus on the likely position of my site in terms of traffic and popularity.  I try to taste the success and instill in myself a belief that with a good framework of solid SEO practices and a healthy dose of self-discipline, I will reach my goals for the site.  Effectively I am rehearsing success in my head before I can even achieve it.  Many professionals do this in the course of their careers to focus and project an image of where they want to be.  By focusing on a desired goal and trying to make it as livid as possible, we condition or minds to expect that result and consequently find that we move towards it subconsciously.  This increases the likelihood of actually reaching our goal.

Self-discipline is an important trait you will need to foster to keep the goal alive.  By this I mean an unemotional commitment to the work required to reach your SEO targets.  Do not let a lack of motivation or any other negative emotion impact on your single-mindedness when it comes to doing the necessary work. I find both self-discipline and a focused mental attitude help keep me working on the SEO for ClickInLove.  Soon enough you will see the benefits of your work and your attitude will be rewarded.  Not everyone is able to work so hard on something with little to show for it for so long, so when you reach your SEO goals, you will have proven something to yourself… as well as reaping the benefits of conducting your own successful SEO campaign.

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This blog is a work in progress and I often use it to test my SEO ideas.  What I have noticed recently is the speed with which Google is picking up these articles and placing it in their index.  I am referring to their main index and not their Supplemental index which has been discontinued.  For instance, I took the article title of my daily blog entry a few days ago and I timed how long it took from when I posted my article to the blog to when Google placed it on the first page in it’s SERP’s.  It took 8 minutes.  This is by no means an isolated example.  I find the search results display my blog entries no later than 20 mins after I post them.

So how is this acheiveable and can anyone do it.  I am not sure.  For me I believe it is a combination of constant maintenance, perseverence, unique content updated on a daily basis as well normal SEO practices.  The result is a blog which Google attaches enough significance to it to enable first page placement in the SERP’s in a matter of a few minutes for whatever topic I choose to write about (though this depends on the competitiveness of the keywords in the blog title).

Hopefully this will serve to remind blog owners that a consistent approach to writing your blog will help you achieve success with Google.  If you have decided to monetise your blog, then this could result in increased revenue for you.  So keep writing everyday and do not miss even one day.

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So, if like me, you are not the greatest at backing up your data, then maybe, like me, you have found your data has a propensity to go walkies on occasion.  So what happens when this happens and you lose the entire contents of your blog… perhaps months or even years worth of work!  Ouch!  First thing, always make sure you back up your blog database, which can be done on the  php admin interface to your MySQL database (assuming you have both of these, which most webmasters do).

If it is too late for this and you are reading this article because you have lost you blog and need to get it back, then do not despair.  Despite losing my entire blog at least twice in the last year due to buggy Wordpress plugins, I am still here and have managed to retrieve most of my data.  How did I do that.  Here are a few tips.  Firstly, whenever you keep a blog, you may or may not be aware of a handy feature of certain blog utilities (CMS’s) like Wordpress, which generate a feed for your Blog.  This allows you to subscribe your feed (which is nothing more than a description of recent blog entries you have made) to a feed reader (such as Google Reader – just type this phrase into Google to find it).  The beauty of this is that certain feed readers like Google Reader, actually keep a complete copy of all your blog entries.  Now the only problem here is that you will have to manually re-enter (via copy/paste) all the entries, including blog titles, into your blog admin/entry page.  A painful exercise, but one which should not take more than an hour or so, depending on the size of the blog you lost.  There is a risk however.  If you used the ‘<more>’ command (as in Wordpress) then you will have cut off all the content which comes after that tag and the reader will not have a copy of it.  So you need to determine if you really wish to use the ‘<more>’ tag or not.

Another way to retrieve your blog data, is to look for sites which keep a cache of other sites.  Here is a website which details other archiving places which you can use to see if they have a copy of your blog’s contents: www.searchengineshowdown.com/others/archive.shtml.  I was able to get a fair amount of my data back from these archiving sites.  Yet again though, it may be tricky to get any blog entry back that was redirected with the ‘<more>’ tag.

Nothing beats keeping a backup of you MySQL database though (which is really easy) and it is well worth kicking off a Cron job to automate this sort of backup.  You can export to a number of different formats, with just raw data, or data and MySQL commands as well (to load the data), which is what I would recommend.  If you do lose your blog entires, then simply going to the latest backup and running the generated script will give you back all the entries you lost till the latest backup was created.

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Work is still ongoing with the firefox extension toolbar I have been developing. Over the last couple of days I have started to appreciate the power of the Javascript capabilities present in the Chrome XUL API. In layman’s terms, this simply means that the toolbar can do a lot more than I realised. I plan to utilise the potential and merge into my toolbar some useful additions which will ease the SEO workload. For instance, auto-generation of forum RSS feeds and instant submission to aggregate feed readers would be a very handy feature. I have named my firefox toolbar ‘SEO Link Tracker’ and plan to release it for general download to anyone who wants it. This will be complete in the next few days.

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Continuing on from yesterday’s post, I am making good progress integrating my SEO Javascripts with Mozilla’s XUL interface. Up to this point I have been learning how to use the various controls and propagate events through the DOM hierarchy. I have reached a stage where I can smoothly pass data between listboxes, monitor key events, parse user input and generate useful output (amongst other things). These capabilities will fuse together to form my SEO toolbar for Firefox. I plan to launch ‘SEO Link Tracker’ very shortly.

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Today there appears to have been a mid-month Google update which has drastically improved the exposure of Click in Love in the SERP’s. Keywords for online dating sites are competitive and difficult to rank well in. However, I wonder is it worth gathering traffic via other means. For instance, if I write on this blog about engineering topics, it should attract engineers… which in turn may see that it is a dating site and decide to browse and see what is on offer. Today I noticed that my site for the last few weeks has been doing just that… i.e. by targeting various keywords, I am ranking well and getting traffic I would not normally have obtained for a dating site (thanks to Google’s recent minor update). The question is, will this traffic convert to useful leads? Only time will tell.
Will

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How do we know when an SEO campaign is effective? Ultimately, every SEO campaign exists to increase targeted traffic to a particular site. However, it can take many, many months of hard work by an SEO engineer before any visible results are seen in terms of increased traffic. How then, can an SEO engineer prove that they are providing value for money to their client. This is a grey area and is a source of debate due to the ambiguity of the various limited metrics available to someone trying to measure the success of an SEO campaign. Some say that the number of inbound links pointing to the domain in question is a relatively accurate measure of how hard-working the SEO engineer is. However, this is misleading… links as reported by Google are only the tip of the iceberg and more work will definitely have been performed than what is visible to the customer. Another measure is the volume of traffic, but again this is also easily misleading due to the fact that the traffic could be non-targeted. The only way an SEO practicioner can prove to their client how effectively they are working, is to stay in regular communication with the client, discuss progress and provide status updates on a monthly basis.

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How does a woman make a perfect photo for her dating profile? Well, ‘perfect’ is a subjective term and will vary depending on what image you are trying to convey. Often this image is determined as much by what you think others wish to see, as what you wish to portray yourself. After all, you are trying to show yourself in a light in which men will take notice. For instance, on some dating sites there seems to be quite a few photos on the front pages of scantily-clad women, often in poses intended to emphasise their body shape and suggest their sexual desirability. What type of image does this give to the men browsing? For many men, body shape is important, but women should not assume that is all they want. I will stick my neck out a little here and guess that once in a relationship, not many men want their partner posing in a sexually suggestive manner for all the world to see. In fact, many men would disrespect a woman who did that. If you are after a one-night stand, then feel free to pose like this. If you are after a long-term relationship, then maybe opting for a more modest image might help net the type of man you want.

Ideally, the ‘perfect’ image, is one in which you come across as being ‘balanced’. By this I mean, neutral, professional, warm of heart, etc. Sexually suggestive photos will lead to the wrong type of man showing an interest. Cover up. Wear beautiful clothes of course, but wear them in a way which does not suggest you are auditioning for a centrefold position. If you wish to show how physically attractive you are, then be inventive… posing in a bikini comes across as cheap and desperate. Show a man you have more than just a body to offer… do this and men who want more than just a body will start showing an interest in you. Women make the mistake by assuming that all men are basically animalistic and judge women on their shape; that is wrong. Initially, they are attracted by this, but it quickly vanishes. Despite what women think, men want more than just looks and your profile photo should somehow support this.

Instead of the bikini pose, why not opt for a sporting photo instead (assuming you wish to show your body, then do so in a less sleazy way). Better still, if you have a nice smile, don’t detract from it by wearing nearly no clothes… instead, get a closeup photo of your face, taken with a large aperture setting (this blurs the background and gives emphasis to your face in the photo). If using makeup, it should be subtle and not overpowering. Less is best.

Avoid photos which fail to show your face clearly. The face is the single most critical part of your photo to display information about yourself. Smiling is not always a necessity as a neutral expression can also say a lot. Obviously, frowning or negative facial expressions should be avoided.

To summarise, try to place your character in the photograph. Leave out the sexually suggestive poses; it impresses only the easily-impressed and you will attract only short-term interest from a man. Of course, if you feel that sex is the main gift you bring to the table, then by all means do as you wish to attract a man who wants a woman like this. There are many different types of relationship and I am giving an opinion on the types of relationship which lead to marriage and children… not a relationship based on lust and a disregard for what each partner has other than shallow attributes. Humans are incredibly complex and to sell yourself as a body, would (for most women) be selling yourself short.

If you need photography tips on how to take a good portrait image, then let me know and I can forward you some good resources.

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Google is reaching a stage where its algorithm is catching up with the spammers, black-hat tricksters and those who wish to manipulate the SERP’s. No longer is it easy to trick the search engine with dubious coding and clever text-placement techniques. Whilst it is good for the end user to have more relevant search results, it does pose problems for webmasters. Until recently, the web was a level playing field and the small site could effectively compete against the big players (to a degree). With the advent of the constantly improving Google algorithm, smaller sites are finding it harder to rank well.

The reason is that, what were once considered safe strategies for improving your site’s SERP positioning, have now fallen foul of the advancement of the algorithm used by Google and instead it now favours big sites with the money and momentum to rank well. Gone are the days when a simple link exchange would have helped make you popular. Buying links is also frowned upon. Instead, you must have a relatively old site, an organic linking strategy, constantly changing content etc. All of these things favour the bigger players and make it more difficult for smaller sites to survive long enough to make it economically feasible to continue trading online. Of course, this is the way business has been throughout history, i.e. the big companies always managed to keep the biggest slice of the cake for themselves. However, one of the greatest benefits of the Internet was the fact that Joe Bloggs could kick-start a small concern and see it grow quickly to eclipse the companies which had been trading for years. I think those days are coming to an end, unless something drastic happens to the Internet model which will safeguard the economic interests of the start-ups.

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One of the more successful website phenomena of recent years is the rise of social networking sites. For the traditional dating site, there is a potential threat in this rise. For example, a large subset of the online dating community also subscribe to these networking sites and the possibility to make new friends has increased dramatically for them… why should they bother with a dedicated dating site. The likes of Facebook and Google’s new API allow developers to create applications which social networking site users can install and access from their profile. One hot area for developers is to tie in their application with a dating site’s database. Many of the more traditional dating sites are failing to take advantage of this opportunity. Facebook alone has many 10’s of millions of subscribers, so by creating an application for this medium it is possible to increase your slice of the potential new dating market segment.

As the owner of a dating site, I need to look at ways to increase ClickInLove’s exposure online. Utilising the massive user base of the likes of Facebook and MySpace, offers small site owners like me, a chance to reach a target audience that would otherwise probably elude me. All it requires is a little programming savvy, the will and time to write a Facebook application and the viral methodology to get the application subscribed to by interested users. Eventually the big sites will squash all competition in social networking, but until then, there is always a chance this ploy will succeed.

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When it comes to web design, you often have a choice of which scripting language to use for a particular effect/task. For client-side scripting you are basically limited to the prevalent Javascript language (Java Applets, Java and the like are also alternatives). However, for server-side scripting, you have PHP, ASP, VB scripting etc. For this discussion and ease of writing, I shall refer to client-side scripts as Javascript and server-side scripts as PHP. Which language should you choose? Well, it depends on three criteria:

1. target audience
2. scripting capabilities for the task to be performed
3. compatibility and usability

The target audience is a consideration, because it is important to know if your demographics include people who are likely to have limited browser functionality, e.g. those who may be using an Internet cafe (browser restrictions may apply for these site users imposed by the cafe IT administrators) or those who are more web savvy and disable non-essential browser services (such as image display, scripting, etc) and those who may actually prefer client-side scripting (for whatever reason). You need to take these factors into consideration when choosing which scripting language to use. This leads onto the next point, the actual ability of the language to provide the functionality you wish to deliver. For database manipulation, you cannot use Javascript, only a server-side language will suffice, such as PHP. For fancy usability techniques, Javascript is the right choice. Lastly, you may wish to consider the compatibility and usability of the scripting language. If the task to be performed can be implemented by either Javascript or PHP, then ask yourself what is more important… speed of use, or coverage. By this I mean, using PHP (or any server-side script) will be universally accepted by the browsers (as this script does not run on the browsers), it runs on the server… so everyone will be able to run it. However, if many people access your server, it may slow down the browsing experience for all those users. Javascript on the other hand, may not be supported or switched on for all browsers employed by the end user, so you might lose a percentage of your visitors through non-usability, however, as Javascript runs on the host machine and not the server, then heavy usage of your site will impact each end user less than if you implemented a popular feature exclusively in PHP. It is a trade-off and one which the site designer needs to consider when planning which language to use.

My preference is to use PHP whenever possible, but to make the assumption that Javascript is enabled on the end users’ host machine. In my opinion, AJAX should be incorporated wherever possible, which uses both Javascript and PHP. This allows a very quick way to query the server’s database and transmit the results back to the end user. For more on AJAX please use the search feature on this blog.

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There are a number of tools which allow you to check search engine traffic.
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
http://www.wordtracker.com/

This one is interesting:
http://google.com/trends

Type in two keyword phrases in the previous link, separated by a comma and see the comparison in chart form. E.g. to compare ‘online dating’ with just ‘dating’, just enter in the search field “online dating, dating”, as below:
http://google.com/trends?q=online+dating%2C+dating&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

The keyword phrases above are good examples, but you may want to see how they compare to each other and other similar keyword phrases. Use Overture and Google trends to get an idea of which are the best. I would recommend ‘Free Online Dating’ and ‘Online Dating’, though both are very very competitive and it may take years before you appear in the top 1000 SERP’s for Google. Good luck.
Will

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All websites need a helping hand up the SERP’s and adhering to a good SEO plan is one way to help your site reach it’s maximum potential in terms of traffic generation.  There are many different techniques to use during an SEO campaign, but one outcome is consistent in most techniques, i.e. the acquisition of inbound links.  Most of your endeavours are aiming to build your inbound link base and this is something you should not lose sight of.  It is easy to forget this end goal when you are trawling through directory listings, writing articles, contributing to forums and blogs etc.  If you manage to keep in the mind that you are essentially building quality links to your site, then make it your goal to achieve a certain number of these links on a weekly basis.  Keep the momentum going and stick rigidly to your strategy and remember that you are in it for the long run.  Looking for quick results will lead to demotivation and a floundering of your SEO campaign.

In fact, campaign is a bad word to describe the effort required to achieve SERP success: it implies that a concerted effort for a finite time is required.  Rather, an SEO campaign is a never-ending battle and one which requires continuous investment of both time and (for bigger sites) money.

So, my advice to people doing their own SEO ‘campaign’, is to set realistic goals.  Follow the SMART approach:

• specific
• measurable
• agreed upon
• realistic
• time-based

By being methodical and planning your work realistically, aiming for a sustainable campaign with measurable weekly results, you will be able to unemotionally commit to your SEO campaign for the long run.  Seek no immediate results and stick to your plan.  In 6 months to a year, the traffic to your site will have increased a lot.  Keep it going and within a few years your site will be competing with the best.  Remember, most people do not stick to their SEO plans and this is one area in which you can beat the majority of competition.

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Munich is a very multicultural and ethnically diverse city.  The student population alone reaches 100,000, yet the total population is only about 1.3 million.  For a city of this size, the transport network is second to none and boasts an underground system (U-Bahn), trams, surface trains as well as a fast intra-city train system (S-Bahn) and of course the ubiquitous buses and taxis which every city has.  Add the English Garden (the biggest inner-city park in Europe), a multitude of galleries, museums, restaurants, bars, cafes, shopping areas and an enthusiastic lively attitude by the Munich City Council (which organises free street festivals, concerts and the like) and you end up with an excellent place to live.

Throw in the high quality of life here and low crime with the affluent status Munich enjoys and the only thing left to make it a dating mecca are the single people.  Luckily, Munich is the singles captial of Germany.  What more could you ask for.

With that in mind, ClickInLove shall organise various dating events throughout the year.  Things like Speed Dating, excursions (both city and county-wide), relaxed social evenings, etc.  In such a lively, vibrant city with such a fluid, diverse population, it should make dating that much more enjoyable and accessible for all those interested.

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People search long and hard to find their perfect partner, yet many (maybe even most) eventually manage to seriously mess up the relationship in some way. Often this is exasperated through poor communication. There are many texts on communication in relationships, but this short article will bring to your attention a lesser known angle to communication which should first be addressed, i.e. do you actually want to communicate.

Actually, at this point let me define what I mean by communication: for this article it is the process of listening, interpreting, analysing and replying to a partner’s words and actions on subjects relating to the everyday interactions in the relationship. No matter how good at communicating you are, if the will is not there, you will not actually use your fabulous communication skills to their full effect. There are many reasons why someone would not genuinely wish to talk/listen to their partner about important relationship concerns:

• apathy
• lack of comprehension of the seriousness of the partner’s concerns
• lack of desire to listen due to various reasons (heard it all before, perception of nagging, tiredness, futility, etc)

to name but a few. The truth is that it is often hard to judge the earnestness of your partner’s needs, especially if they are always moaning, arguing and generally tiring you out with their complaining. However, if the relationship is worth working at, then you should dedicate a little energy to determine if you are ready to communicate and then do your best to communicate effectively. At the bottom of any diatribe lies a truth, at least in the mind of the person expressing it. Are you ready to be impartial? Are you balanced and eager to be fair? Are you calm and rational? These are questions that you need to answer before you even attempt to communicate. If you answer ‘no’ to any of them, then sit back and rationalise your attitude. Going into a serious debate about a relationship issue should not be done lightly and will require a certain level of maturity and thoughtfulness. Without thoughtfulness you will be unable to understand your partner’s needs and consequently potentially misunderstand the issue which could lead to frustration on your partner’s side.

Clear your mind, remember that your partner is bringing up an issue because they consider it important, expect criticism and don’t get offended by it (this is where maturity comes into it). Once you are prepared emotionally and mentally, then ask yourself, will you be able to have the mature conversation that is required to resolve the issue.

A few pointers here. Don’t communicate if you are not ready – in this case ask for time to prepare yourself or for when you are in a better mood; however make absolutely sure you stick to the designated time you choose (failure to do so shows disrespect to both yourself and your partner and sends out the message that you do not take their concerns seriously). Do make sure you refresh your memory about why you are with that person and why you are communicating – it is not to apportion blame, it is to align both partner’s views on an issue which is potentially causing a problem.

I believe most people do not want to communicate because they feel deep inside that they will be hurt in some way; either via a truth that is painful to accept or a latent criticism which undermines their confidence in who they are. Being a good communicator is important, but even a good communicator needs to be honest with themselves and determine if they are giving their best to the partner’s concerns.

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