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!