Private Blog Networks

One of the most effective web marketing tools of late, are the usage of private blog networks. Anyone worth his salt in the SEO business knows that the key to getting your business more linking juice and thus more ranking power is being able to do backlinking through private blog sites.

Private blog networks in essence allow you to distribute and post your articles on many different blogs to build backlinks to your web pages from many different IP addresses. Using blog networks can really boost your rankings especially private blog sites which have only blogs with page rank.

private blog network

While it presents a very convenient and powerful “plug and play” method — being that you will be given more link juice — using private blog networks can be a costly enterprise as they often require a monthly fee which varies depending on the number and value of the links you get. However, if you can afford it, go ahead and do it.

As mentioned above, it will do wonders for your page rankings.

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How to Zip Files with WinZip

If you have one really big file, or lots of small files, it's better to squash them down in size.You do the squashing with a zipping programme. The most popular is called WinZip. It's so popular that you may even have it on your computer already. So popular that the Word spellchecker doesn't even give it a red wiggly line when you type it out!

To check if it's on your machine, click the Start button in the bottom left of your computer screen with the left mouse button. When the menu pops up, look for WinZip at the top. (But DON'T click it! You don't need to open the software up.)

As you can see, this computer has WinZip installed. If you can't see it on the Start menu, click on All Programs, and look for it there - again, don't open it!

If you don't have it, you can get it from the CD Rom of practically any computer magazine at your newsagents. Or download a free trial version from the internet. Just type WinZip into any search engine.

Zip a file you want to send to somebody else

When you want to send somebody else a big file (or more than one file), you can zip them up. First, you need to locate the file you want to send. So, do this:

• Double click the My Computer icon on your desktop
• Double click the icon for your Hard Drive (probably C:\)
• Navigate to the place where your file is
• In the image below, we've navigated to a folder called Downloads.

• Click on the file you want to zip with your Right mouse button, and a menu will appear
• Look for the WinZip item on the menu
• From the sub menu, choose Add to ...

You may then get a box popping up asking you whether you agree or disagree. Click I agree, and Winzip goes to work. Your file will be zipped up:

• Our file has now been zipped up. Note that it has the same name as the original file.

If you want to zip an entire folder, then do exactly the same as above.

Unzip a file that has been sent to you

To unzip a file that has been sent to you, or that you have downloaded from the internet, perhaps, do the following:

• Double click the My Computer icon on your desktop
• Double click the icon for your Hard Drive (probably C:\)
• Navigate to the place where you downloaded the Zipped file
• Locate the file you want to unzip
• Click on the zipped file with your right mouse button
• A menu pops up
• The easiest way to do it is to select the �Extract to . . . � option, as in the image below

• Click the option with your left mouse button, and WinZip unpacks the file for you.

How to Set up an Outlook Express Email Account

Your Internet Service Provider has probably given you the option to set up more than one email address. Most come with at least five. So you're not limited to just the one. If somebody else in your household wants his/her own address, you should be able to do it. You'll learn how to configure a new address right now (We're using Outllook Express, the most popular Email software.)

To set up an email address, make sure you are looking at an Outlook Express screen and not a New email screen. Then do the following.

• From the menu bar, click on Tools
• From the drop down menu that appears, click on Accounts (one click, left mouse button)

• When you click on Accounts, you get the Internet Accounts dialogue box popping up. Click the Mail tab at the top to see the following:

The Mail tab shows you all the email accounts that you have set up. In the image above, there are no email accounts set up yet. To set up an email account, do the following:

• Click on the Add button in the top right hand corner
• A popup menu appears
• Click Mail with your left mouse button

When you click on Mail, you get an Account Wizard popping up, which will ask you a series of question. We'll run through the various pages of the Wizard in the next part.

In the last part, we left it at the point where the Email Account Wizard pops up. We'll continue right now.

When the Wizard first starts, it will look like this:

• Type in a name you want for display purposes. You can type in anything you like here. It doesn't really matter because Outlook Express will completely ignore the name you pick!
• Click the "Next" button when you're done. The screen will change:

You need to type in an email address. Type in the email address you got from your Internet Service Provider.

• Once you have entered the email address, click Next. You'll get the following screen

It looks a very daunting screen, so let's break it down.

Your Incoming mail server is probably a POP3 one, so leave the drop down box as it is. The first text box is Incoming mail (POP3, IMAP or HTTP) server. You can usually get these details from your Service Provider's homepage. But yours will probably be a POP or POP3 address. This is a method used to receive emails. The format to type into the text box is this

pop.provider.com

So if your Service Provider was Home and Learn, you'd enter this

pop.homeandlearn.co.uk

The next text box to fill in is "Outgoing mail (SMTP) server". SMTP is the method used for sending emails. The format to use is

smtp.provider.com

So if your Service Provider was Home and Learn, you'd enter this

smtp.homeandlearn.com

In the picture below, we have entered some fake POP and SMTP details

• Click the "Next" button at the bottom when you are finished
• The next screen is this one:

• The Account name is the one you got from your Service Provider. They might have given you a password, too. If they did, enter your Password in the text box. Unless your Service Provider has told you otherwise, DON'T put a tick in the box for Log on using Secure Password Authentication.
• When you're done, click the "Next" button
• There's nothing left to fill in, and you are invited to click the Finish button. Click the Finish button and you'll return to the Internet Accounts dialogue box
• Your new Account will be there:

The Account name is a bit messy. Outlook Express has simply taken the name of the Incoming Server - pop.type_your_isp_here.com. To change this to something more memorable, click the Properties button to the right, or simply double click the name of your account. You'll see this dialogue box:

Delete the text at the top, the one highlighted in blue in the image. Then type something of your own:

Click OK and you'll get back to the Internet Accounts screen. You should see your new name appear, under Account:

When you're done, click the Close button on the Internet Accounts dialogue box. You'll be taken back to the main Outlook Express screen. To check if the account has been set up, we can click on the Send/Recv icon in the main Outlook Express screen.

As you can see, our new account has been added at the bottom. It was a success!

In the next lesson, we'll have a look at email attachments.

Setting a Screen Saver in Windows XP

A Screen Saver is something that kicks in when your computer has been idle for a set period of time. They are usually some form of animation, or moving imagery.

To pick a Screen Saver for your own computer, select the Screen Saver tab strip from the Display Properties dialogue box by clicking on the word "Screen Saver" once with your left mouse button. It looks like this:

Click the little black down-pointing arrow to see a list of available Screen Savers. This one is set to the Windows XP Screen Saver.

You can see that it also says "Wait 10minutes". This means that the Screen Saver will kick in if the mouse has not been moved for 10minutes. You can change this figure. The values go from 1 minute to 60 minutes. When you're happy, click Apply then OK. But play about with the settings on the Screen Saver tab strip. The Energy saving features of the monitor section is not available for all computer monitors, so you may or may not have the part available to you.

There are lots and lots of Wallpaper and Screen Saver web sites out there internet. These sites will offer a wide variety of wallpapers and Screen Savers that you can use to liven up your own computer. But be careful of files sent to you by email that pretend to be a Screen Saver (Check for a file that ends in .SCR). There is a good change it will be a computer virus! If the file has been sent to you from somebody you don't know - don't open the attachment. Just delete the whole email.

In the next section, we'll take a look at how to configure a new email account, and email things in general.

How to change your Windows XP Desktop Wallpaper

Wallpapers are images that appear in the background on your Desktop, behind all your icons. To change your Desktop wallpaper, do the following:

• Click anywhere on the Desktop that is not an icon, but click once with your right hand mouse button
• A menu pops up. The one below

• Click on Properties, once with your Left mouse button
• The following dialogue box pops up

This is the Display Properties dialogue box. As you can see, there are tab strips for Themes, Desktop, Screensaver, Appearance, and Settings. Click on the Background tab strip and the dialogue box will change to this one:

There is a list of wallpapers we can use. Click on one, and you get a preview of what it will look like. Scroll down to see more wallpapers. If you're satisfied, click the OK button to set your wallpaper.

You can use your own images. You are not limited to the ones on the list. If you have an image somewhere on your computer, and you want to use that instead of the ones on the list, you can click the Browse button, in the image above. Doing so will bring up the Browse Dialogue box:

In the image above, no background files are showing. You can click one of the folders on the left to search for a picture, or use the "Look In" drop down box at the top. When some background image are showing, click on one to select it. The name of the file you have selected will then appear in the File name text box.

Click the "Open" button to return to the Display Properties dialogue box. A preview of your image will be displayed. If you're happy with your selection, click the "Apply" button then OK. Your desktop will change to your selected image.
In the next part, we'll take a look at Screensavers.

Finding Files in Windows XP

Sometimes, you will have created a file or a folder and just can't remember where it is. If you have a very big hard drive, there are a lot of places to look for a single file. You may never find it, even with the help of Windows Explorer. One thing you can do to track down a missing file or folder is to use the Windows XP Search tool. Here's how to use it.

• Click your Start button in the bottom left corner of your Desktop
• From the menu that pops up, locate the Search item (in the blue section on the right, at the bottom)
• Click on Search
• When you click on Search, you'll get the following window popping up.

(If you see an animated dog, and it's annoying you, you can turn it off by clicking it with the right mouse button. Then click "turn off animated character".)

Under "What do you want to search for" click the option "All files and folders". You should see the following:

You are given a number of different option to conduct your search. Click inside the top text box, under "All or part of the file name". Enter the name of the file, then click the Search button. (Just enter a few lettters of the file name, if you can't remeber exactly what it's called.) Windows XP will start the search, and you'll see something like this:

In the image above we're searching for a file called "wp projects". If XP finds any files or folders with your search term in it, it will display them in the window to the right. In the image below XP has found two folders with our search term in the name.

Even though we typed all our letters in lowercase, the folders found have capital letters in them. In others words, the search is not case sensitive.

Notice in the picture that under the heading "In Folder" it says "C" and "My Documents". These are the two place where the folders are. So we have a folder called "My WP Projects" in the "My Documents" folder of the hard drive, and we also have one called wpProjects. This one is in the main C:\ root folder.
You can open any of the files or folders found simply by double clicking on them. But double click a file or folder under the "Name" heading of the Window, and not the "In Folder" heading.
Finally, to get rid of the Search Window, click the red X in the top right corner of the box.
The last part of Computing for Beginners is a section without which no beginners guide would be complete - Wallpapers and Screensavers!

Copying from a CD to a Hard Drive in Windows XP

In this lesson, you'll see how to copy the files from a CD over to your own hard drive. Files load a lot quicker when they are on your own computer comapred to a CD. And you won't have to keep inserting the CD every time you need something from it.

The folder we will be copying is called CD Rom Contents. Inside this folder there are more folders and files that are needed for the courses. When we copy the "CD Rom Contents" folder we will automatically copy all the folders inside this one. In other word, copy one folder and you copy everything inside it.
To copy the contents of a CD Rom to your own hard drive, then, do the following:

• Insert the CD into your CD Rom drive
• Start Windows Explorer if you haven't already (see here for how to do this:Windows Explorer Lessons.)
• In the left hand pane, Click on the Drive letter for your CD Rom (It will probably be "D")
• In the right hand pane of Windows Explorer, you should see the name of a folder or folders (In our case, the folder is called CD Rom Contents.)

In the Image above, the CD Rom Drive letter is D. Clicking on the Drive letter displays the contents of the Drive in the right hand pane. The folder CD Rom Contents is displayed.

• Click once with the left hand mouse button on the folder "CD Rom Contents"
• The folder is selected
• From the menu bar at the top of Windows Explorer, click on Edit (once, left hand mouse button)
• From the drop down menu, click "Copy" with your left mouse button

• In the left hand pane of Windows Explorer, Click on your hard drive letter, which will probably be C (click the letter C once with your left mouse button)
• When the folders and files from your hard drive are displayed in the right hand pane of the Windows Explorer, click on Edit from the menu bar
• From the drop down menu, click on "Paste" (once with the left mouse button)
• The files will be copied from your CD Rom drive to your Hard drive

To check that all the folders have been copied over correctly, double click the "CD Rom Contents" folder on your hard drive.

And that's it. Quite easy, once you get the hang of it! You can use the same method to transfer files from a floppy disk in the Floppy Drive (which is the A drive) to your hard drive.
We'll now move on to finding files and folders that have gone missing.

Moving Folders on your Hard Drive

Drag and Drop Moving

The easiest way to move one folder to another folder is to use drag and drop. And the easiest way to explain drag and drop is by doing it!

To drag the new folder you created earlier and drop it inside your "My Documents" folder, do the following:

• Click on your new folder once with the left hand mouse button
• The folder will be highlighted
• Keep you left hand mouse button held down
• Move your mouse around the screen. You should see a faint outline of the folder moving with your mouse
• Now move the folder over the top of the folder called "My Documents" (Still with your Left mouse button held down!)
• The My Documents folder will be highlight as well
• Once your My Documents folder is highlighted, let go of your left hand mouse button
• The new folder will disappear. It has been moved to My Documents

In the image below, a folder called "MyWPProjects" is being dragged to the My Documents folder on the C Drive.

Cut and Paste Moving

If all that was a bit tricky, you can use Cut and Paste to move your folder instead.

To cut and paste one folder inside another, do the following:

• Click on the folder you want to move (One click, left hand button), in our case "My WP Projects"
• From the File, Edit, View, Go menu bar in Windows Explorer click "Edit"
• From the menu that drops down, click the word "Cut" with your Left mouse button
• The folder you selected will appear fainter
• Now, Double Click the folder you want to move your new folder into, or select one from the list on the left hand side. In our case that's the "My Documents" folder. So Click the "My Documents" folder
• Once in the "My Documents" folder, From the File, Edit, View, Go menu bar in Windows Explorer click Edit
• From the menu that drops down, click Paste
• Your folder will be pasted from your root folder on the C drive into your My Documents folder

Instead of cutting the folder and pasting, you can just Copy the folder instead. To copy the folder instead of cutting, follow the steps outlined above, but when the menus drop down select "Copy". Then select "Paste" after you have double clicked on the My Documents folders.Everything we've said above about folders also applies to files. In other words, you can rename a file like you did above, you can copy a file, move it with drag and drop or cut and paste, and you can even create a file with Windows Explorer. Just click on File. From the sub menu select New. You'll see a list of software packages that you can create new files for.
In the next lesson, we'll look at how to copy files from a CD Rom to your hard drive.

How to Create a New Folder in Windows XP

Following along from the last lesson, we'll now create a new folder using the Windows Explorer. So do the following:

• Click once with your Left mouse button on the letter C in the left hand pane of the Windows Explorer
• On the menu bar across the top that has File, Edit, View, Go, Click the File option once with your Left mouse button
• From the menu that drops down, move your mouse pointer to New
• A sub menu appears
• Click the word "Folder" once with your left Mouse button

A New folder will be created on your C Drive. The new folder will appear right at the bottom of all of your other folders and files, under the last one. So you might have to scroll across to see it. You can tell it's your new folder because it says, quite helpfully, "New Folder".

When you clicked "Folder", a new folder was created. But it appears right at the end of your list folders and files, in the right-hand pane of Windows Explorer. That's why you might need to scroll down or across in order to see it. But it will look like the one in the picture below:

The words "New Folder" will be highlighted. It's highlighted so that you can rename it. After all, "New Folder" is not very descriptive. So go ahead and type in a new name for your folder. Type "wpProjects". As in the image below:

If nothing happens when you try to type a new name for your folder, do the following:

• Click on your new folder, but click on the folder with your right hand mouse button
• A menu appears

• From the menu, click once with your Left mouse button on the word Rename
• Type a new name for your folder

You have now created a new folder in the root folder of your C Drive. You can use this same technique to create a new folder inside any of the folders on your C Drive. If you make a mistake and decide you don't want this new folder, you can always choose the Delete options from the menu above, instead of Rename.
But one more thing to notice about the Windows Explorer. In the left hand side, you see a lot of plus signs in a square box.
Clicking one of these plus signs will expand your selection. The image on the left below show a plus sign before it is clicked, and on the right afterwards.

   

The plus sign turns into a minus sign. But the plus sign indicates that there are more folders inside the one that has the plus sign. When you click the plus sign, it will expand to show you all the folders inside a main folder. You can click on any of these folders to see what is inside it.

As for the files inside the folders - try double clicking on one and see what happens. Don't worry: you won't do any harm!
What we're going to do now is to move that new folder we just created, and put it inside our "My Documents" folder. We'll start that in the next part.

The Windows Explorer

In this lesson, we'll create a new folder on the hard drive, but we'll use a tool called the Windows Explorer to do it. To bring up the Windows Explorer, do the following:

• From your Desktop, Click the Start button in the bottom left hand corner of your screen
• Click the green "All Programs" button
• From the Sub menu that pops up, click on Accessories
• The following sub menu appears. Click on Windows Explorer at the bottom:

The Windows Explorer is a great tool for finding your way around your hard drive. You can quickly locate files and folders, or browse for something in particular. Another quick way to bring up the Windows explorer is to do the following:

• Press the Windows key on your keyboard (The Windows key is located in the bottom left hand corner of your keyboard, in between the Ctrl key and the Alt key. If there is a gap between these two keys then you have an older keyboard, and the shortcut won't work. Sorry!)
• Once you've located the Windows key, keep it held down
• With the Windows key held down, press the letter "e" on your keyboard
• The Windows Explorer will appear, and should look something like the one below

If your screen is not split in two like the one above, do this:

• On the menu bar across the top that says File, Edit, View, Go, etc, select the Viewoption by clicking on the word "View" with your Left mouse button
• A menu will drop down
• Move your mouse pointer down to "Explorer Bar"
• From the sub menu that pops up, click the word "Folders" once with your Left mouse button
• Your screen should split in two like the one above

The left hand side of the Windows Explorer screen shows different areas of your computer. In the previous image, the left part of Windows Explorer starts with Desktop. Next we have My Documents, My Computer, 3 ½ floppy, the C drive, the CD Rom Drive, Control Panel and so on right down to Recycle bin as the last option.

Click on the first option, Desktop, once with your Left mouse button. This will show you all the shortcuts you have on your Desktop, including the "My Documents" shortcut we placed there earlier. But the list of shortcuts will appear on the right hand side. And that is the main idea behind the Windows Explorer - Clicking something on the left hand side will bring up a list on the right hand side.

Click on the letter C in the left hand side of your Windows Explorer. A list of all the files and folders on your hard drive will appear on the right hand side. Like the one below, but with different folder names on your computer.

When we create a new folder, it will appear on the right hand side. But because we clicked the letter C on the left hand side, the new folder will be created in the root folder of the C drive.
The Root folder? What's that when it's at home? Well, the rectangular yellow icons on the right hand side are all folders. You can put one folder inside another. All of those folders on the right hand side, and all the single files, are inside the C Folder. The main folder on a hard drive is known as the Root Folder. This is the symbolic notation for the Root Folder on the C Drive

C:\

You can see that notation in the Windows Explorer address bar. (If you can't see an address bar, on the menu bar across the top that has File, Edit, View, Go, click the View option. On the menu that drops down, move your mouse pointer to Toolbars. From the sub menu that pops up, Click the words "Address bar" once with your left mouse button.)
The Windows Explorer address bar looks like this:

Notice how the address bar says C:\. This is the root folder of your C Drive, the folder in which all of your other files and folders are placed. Watch what happens when the folder on the right hand side called "Program Files" is double clicked with the left hand mouse button. We get this:

The address bar now says C:\Program Files. This means that there is a folder called Program Files, and this folder is on the C Drive. On the right hand side is a list of all the folders and files in the "Program Files" folder.

Now that you know how the Windows Explorer works, we'll now create our new folder.

How Big is your Hard Drive?

Find the "My Computer" icon Start menu, and click with your left mouse button. When the window opens it will look something like this one:

The "My Computer" screen shows you different areas of your computer. In the picture, there are icons for the Floppy Drive, The C drive, and the D Drive. Don't worry if yours is not the same. But you'll probably have a D drive icon. There is a CD over the D drive icon, indicating that there is a CD in the disk drive on this computer.

The one we're interested in is the C drive icon. This is the Hard drive. There are two ways you can check your Hard drive to see how big it is. The easiest way is to click once on the C icon with your Left mouse button. The area on the left of the window will change to this:

The "Details" section at the bottom is showing how much space is free on your hard drive. It also shows how big the Hard drive is. GB stand for Gigabytes. So this Hard drive is just over 4 gigabytes. Not very big in today's computer market, where Hard drive ten and twenty times this size are common!

There is another way to check how big your Hard drive is.
Click on the C icon from the My Computer screen. But click on it with your Right mouse button. You'll get a menu similar to the one below.

Click on "Properties with your Left mouse button. You'll get the following dialogue box popping up.

Here, we get a pie chart showing us information about the hard drive: Used Space, Free Space and Capacity (How big your hard drive is). The Capacity is showing 19.0 Gigabytes, Used space 17.9 Gigabytes, and Free space 1.01 Gigabytes.

Click the OK button to get rid of the dialogue box (One click with the left mouse button.)
Get rid of the "My Computer" screen by clicking the red X in the top right hand corner.
What we'll do now is create a folder on the hard drive. But we'll use the Windows Explorer to do it.

Windows XP Tutorials

What is a Hard Drive?

A hard drive is nothing more than a magnetised storage area. Your Operating System is stored on your hard drive, as well as all your software programmes, like Microsoft Word. The hard drive is actually a few circular disks stacked one on top of the other. A little arm moves over the disks and writes things to these circular platters, and reads them. When you save a file or create a new folder, think of these circular platters being written to and you'll have a basic idea of just what your hard drive is.
A hard drive is given a letter of the alphabet for convenience sake, and in most computers this will be the letter C. That's why the hard drive is popularly know as the C Drive. There are other drives on your computer. These are the usual drives on modern Personal Computers:

How to create a Desktop Shortcut in Windows XP

To create a shortcut to a programme, and display the shortcut on the Desktop, do the following:

• Click the Start button on your desktop
• From the Start menu, locate the "All Programms" item
• Move your mouse to the programme you want to create a shortcut to. In the image below, we've gone for the Home and Learn Web Editor

• Right click on the menu item to see a new menu appear:

• On this menu, locate the "Send to" item
• On the Send to item, Left click on "Desktop (create shortcut)":

• When you left click Desktop (create shortcut), a new shortcut appears on your main screen - the Desktop.
• Double click your new shortcut to test it out. You should see a new window opening, and the programme will start

Now that you've had a bit of practice with your mouse, we'll move on to exploring the files and folders on your hard drive.

We'll start with the Hard Drive itself.