Way to Increase Blog Traffic

One of the most common complaints that I hear from bloggers is the fact that no matter how hard they try, they can’t grow their blogs past 100 or so daily page vies. Those early days are indeed the hardest, because you need to put hard work in without the certainty of achieving results.

If you are in that same situation, here is a simple strategy that will certainly increase your blog traffic and make you break the 1,000 daily page views mark. In fact, the strategy could be used even if your are already over that number but have reached a traffic plateau lately.

Just make sure to execute the 4 steps as planned and to spend the two hours and a half every day (obviously if you have more time available you can expand the time spent on each of the four steps proportionally).

First Step: Killer Articles (1 hour per day)

Spend one hour brainstorming, researching and writing killer articles (also called linkbaits, pillar articles and so on).

Notice that your goal is to release one killer article every week. If that is not possible aim for one every 15 days. So the one hour that you will spend every day will be dedicated to the same piece. In other words, expect killers articles to take from 5 up to 10 hours of work.

If you are not familiar with the term, a killer article is nothing more than a long and structured article that has the goal of delivering a huge amount of value to potential visitors. If you have a web design blog, for example, you could write an article with “100 Free Resources for Designers”. Here are some ideas for killer articles:

• create a giant list of resources,
• write a detailed tutorial teaching people how to do something,
• find a solution for a common problem in your niche and write about it, or
• write a deep analysis on a topic where people have only talked superficially

When visitors come across your killer article, you want them to have the following reaction: “Holy crap! This is awesome. I better bookmark it. Heck, I better even mention this on my site and on my Twitter account, to let my readers and friends know about it.”

Second Step: Networking (30 minutes per day)

Networking is essential, especially when you are just getting started. The 30 minutes that you will dedicate to it every day could be split among:

• commenting on other blogs in your niche,
• linking to the posts of bloggers in your niche, and
• interacting with the bloggers in your niche via email, IM or Twitter.

Remember that your goal is to build genuine relationships, so don’t approach people just because you think they can help to promote your blog. Approach them because you respect their work and because you think the two of you could grow together.

Third Step: Promotion (30 minutes per day)

The first activity here is the promotion of your killer articles. Whenever you publish one of them, you should push it in any way you can. Examples include:

• letting the people in your network know about it (don’t beg for a link though),
• letting bloggers and webmasters in relevant niches know about it,
• getting some friends to submit the article to social bookmarking sites,
• getting some friends to Twitter the article, and
• posting about the article in online forums and/or newsgroups.

If there is time left, spend it with search engine optimization, social media marketing and activities to promote your blog as whole. Those can range from keyword research to promoting your blog on Facebook and guest blogging.

Fourth Step: Normal Posts (30 minutes per day)

Just like a man does not live by bread alone, a blog does not live by killer articles alone. Normal posts are the ones that you will publish routinely in your blog, between the killer articles. For example, you could publish a killer article every Monday and normal posts from Tuesday through Friday. Here are some ideas for normal posts:

• a post linking to an article on another blog and containing your opinion about it
• a post informing your readers about a news in your niche
• a post asking a question to your readers and aiming to initiate a discussion
• a post highlighting a new resource or trick that you discovered and that would be useful to your readers

While killers articles are essential to promote your blog and bring new readers aboard, normal posts are the ones that will create diversity in your content and keep your readers engaged.

ASP.NET on Linux

We write a simple ASP.NET application on Linux using an IDE called MonoDevelop. The application will uses the ASP.NET Model View Controller framework and LINQ.

The single, popular solution to run ASP.NET applications, on Linux, is Mono (www.mono-project.com/). The reason being, Mono has come a long way to achieve near compatibility and cutting edge features of Microsoft .NET. Mono can be used to run .NET applications on Linux and Mac, besides Windows.

For developers, the exciting part about Mono is that it has started supporting the latest features in .NET like C# 4.0, ASP.NET MVC, LINQ and Moonlight. What's more, using Mono you can start writing .NET apps for Apple iPad, iPhone and iPod, today.

In this article, we write a simple ASP.NET application which uses ASP.NET MVC (Model View Controller) framework and LINQ. We will write this application, on Linux, using an IDE called MonoDevelop (monodevelop.com).

To keep the app simple, we will use a SQLite database which will be queried via LINQ (Language Integrated Query). And we w ill deploy the app on an Apache server, running on Linux.

Setup the prerequisites
The application in this article is written and deployed on Fedora 13. We used version 2.6 of Mono and version 2.4 of MonoDevelop. Installing Apache and Mono packages on Fedora 13 is as simple as issuing the following commands as root:

yum install httpd mod_mono
Fedora 13 ships with MonoDevelop 2.2. To install MonoDevelop 2.4, we compiled the MonoDevelop source RPMs found at http://elsupergomez.fedorapeople.org/SRPMS/. You can download the compiled RPMS from forums.pcquest.com and install them as 'rpm -Uvh <filename>'.

An ASP .Net MVC app
An ASP .Net MVC application breaks through the traditional Web Forms application, allowing full control and replaceable ways to design the UI and access a database. MonoDevelop makes it easier to write a MVC app. It generates the required skeleton and files - just like Visual Studio.
Fire MonoDevelop (Applications>
Programming>MonoDevelop in GNOME). Click on File>New>Solution. Under C#>ASP .Net, ­select ASP .Net MVC Project. Type in the name of the project and click Ok. This creates the skeleton code for an ASP .Net MVC application - see the Solution pane on the left.

You can see the MVC app working, already, by clicking on Run>Run With>Mono Soft Debugger for ASP .Net. You will be greeted by a Web page saying "Welcome to ASP.NET MVC on Mono!"

Add a database via LINQ
Next, lets create and add a simple SQLite database to the project. We will access this database using LINQ. In simple words, Language Integrated Query (LINQ) is a language to query the database as objects, rather than using SQL.
On MonoDevelop, click on Tools>Database>Create Database>SQLite Database. Enter a Name, say PCQuestDB and for Database type in pcquest.sqlite. The database will get created in your home directory (/home/<your-user-name>).
Next, select Tools>Database>Query Database. From the dropdown, in the bottom pane, select the database (PCQuestDB in our case) and type in the following queries:

create table article (id integer primary key, title varchar(100));
insert into article (title) values ('Title 1');
insert into article (title) values ('Title 2');
insert into article (title) values ('Title 3');
Click on the Execute button. Next to generate the corresponding LINQ classes, click on Tools>Database>Generate Linq Class. For Connection, select PCQuestDB and then click on Ok. This will add a new file called Output.cs to the Solution pane, on the left. Open this file and find the following lines:

using DbLinq.Linq;
using DbLinq.Linq.Mapping;
Comment out or delete these lines and add a line as:
using System.Data.Linq;
Next, open the file named Web.Config and add the following lines after the tag </configSections>
<add name="PCQDB" connectionString=
"DbLinqProvider=Sqlite;Data Source=/opt/pcquest.sqlite" />
Next, copy pcquest.sqlite file, found in your home directory to /opt directory.
Next in the Solution pane, right click on References and select Edit References. Click on the Packages tab and tick the checkbox against Mono.Data.Sqlite.
Note, in case you see System.Web.Mvc, in red, under References. Right click on System.Web.Mvc and select Delete. Next, right click on References and select Edit References. Click on the .Net Assembly Tab. Browse to the directory /usr/lib/mono/gac/System.Web.Mvc/1.0.0.0__31bf3856ad364e35. Select System.Web.Mvc.dll. Click on Add and then on OK.

The Controllers and Views code
On the Solutions pane, expand Controllers and click to edit the file HomeController.cs. Modify the code as follows:
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Mvc;
using System.Web.Mvc.Ajax;
using System.Web.Configuration;
namespace Controllers
{
[HandleError]
public class HomeController : Controller
{
public ActionResult Index ()
{
PCQuest.DbLinq.Main pcqDB = new PCQuest.DbLinq.Main(new Mono.Data.Sqlite.SqliteConnection(WebConfigurationManager
.ConnectionStrings["PCQDB"].ToString()));
var query = from q in pcqDB.Article
select q;
return View(query);
}
}
}
In the above code, note the use of LINQ to query the SQLite database.
Next, expand the Views>Home. Modify the code of Index.aspx as follows:
<%@ Page Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage" %>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head runat="server">
<title></title>
</head>
<body>
<div>
<ul>
<% foreach (PCQuest.DbLinq.Article article in (Ienumerable)ViewData.Model) { %>
<li> <%= article.Title %></li>
<% } %>
</ul>
</div>
</body>

Deploy on Apache web server
First, a small configuration change is required for Apache, to serve ASP .Net MVC apps. For this, login as root and open the file named mod_mono.conf found in the directory /etc/httpd/conf.d. Append the following line to it:
ForceType application/x-asp-net
Save the file and reload the configuration change by issuing "service httpd reload"
Next, create a directory named mvc under /var/www/html. For quick and non production deployment, give all permissions to this directory by issuing the command: chmod 777 /var/www/html/mvc.
On MonoDevelop, click on Project>Deploy to Web. Click on Edit Targets button. Click on Add and type in any Name. For Target, select Local Filesystem. For Target Directory, browse or enter the path: /var/www/html/mvc. Click on Ok. Back on the 'Deploying Web Project' window, select the Location and click on Deploy. Make sure that  the SQLite file copied in /opt (see above) is accessible to the Apache Web Server.
Browse to the URL, http://localhost/mvc and you should be able to see a simple list of all the articles' titles in the SQLite database.
The take home is: with Mono, Linux can be used as a platform to develop as well as deploy cutting edge ASP.Net applications.

Microsoft Metro app store

icrosoft today made good on its promise to open the doors to its Windows Store alongside the launch of the public Windows 8 preview.

Windows Store -- Microsoft's name for the app store-style distribution channel it's assigned as the sole source of Metro-style apps for Windows 8 -- requires the Consumer Preview that debuted earlier Wednesday.

Through the stretch between now and the release of Windows 8's final code -- most expect that milestone this fall in time for the holiday season -- all Windows Store apps will be free for the downloading and installing, Microsoft has said.

Among the apps offered today on the Windows Store were eight winners of a contest Microsoft kicked off in early December, 2011 that promised placement in the market as well as prizes that included a developer PC.

The winners ranged from several games and a weather forecasting app to an e-cookbook and a financial portfolio tracker.

Other apps that debuted today included the ubiquitous Cut the Rope game, a Metro edition ofEvernote and apps created by newspapers such asUSA Today and the Los Angeles Times.

Microsoft has said that the Windows Store will be the only authorized distributor of Metro apps -- the touch-first programs that rely on an simplistic interface borrowed from Windows Phone -- but that the store will eventually include links to titles written for the traditional x86/64 Windows desktop.

The company will take a 30% cut of app revenue up to $25,000 -- the same percentage Apple earns for software sold through its Mac App Store -- but will slash its slice to 20% after that bar is reached.

Enterprises will also be able to circumvent the Windows Store by "sideloading" internally-created apps directly to workers' devices and computers. Today, Microsoft provided more information on sideloading and Metro app management on its website.

Earlier versions of Windows, including the now-current Windows 7, cannot access the Windows Store.

Microsoft has not yet disclosed the release date for Windows 8, but Windows chief Steven Sinofsky said today that the development cycle would emulate that of Windows 7, with a near-final "Release Candidate" next in line, followed by a build that will be marked "Release to Manufacturing" to signal it's ready to pass along to computer makers.