Managing a Portal Archives - Page 4 of 7

Favorite Firefox Extensions

Browser extensions or add-ons are bits of software to extend the features of your browser. Firefox browser has probably one of the most prolific numbers of extensions. We use quite a number of these firefox extensions for our daily grind. And we share some of the nifty add-ons here. You may already have a few extensions tooled up in your browser. You can check and modify their behavior all in one place. Just type about:config in the address bar and Firefox will share its internal details now – including the various extensions installed. You can right click on any of the parameter and modify its value.

Firefox Extension for HTML Validation

Though we use WDG HTML Validator for validating our pages, we like to use a quick way to validate the newly built pages right from our browser with a tiny validator.

You head to this URL provided below for this Firefox Extension.

http://users.skynet.be/mgueury/mozilla/download.html
Allows you to validate with Tiny validator from the status bar.

We list in addition to the above, a few of our favorite extensions below with some information about what they can do:

For the Web developers, this is one of the most useful extensions to have to plod around to tweak the pages.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60

That adds a menu and a tool bar with various web developer tools. Right from a spot magnifier which lets you view a part of the page magnified to viewing your page in lesser sized screens is available from the toolbar. Incidentally this extension also has an external page validator.
This versatile add-on features response headers which lets you see the server response details. This is invaluable for checking out the status code of any redirection.

For those inclined to do search engine optimization, the following might be of interest:

http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html

This extension lets you query information like backlinks, cached and related pages from Google,Yahoo,MSN and Alexa.

You need to check out on the weather ? Try Forecastfox from here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/398

Hyperwords is another interesting Firefox extension which lets you do a host of things from its popup menu – “Search, References, Conversion, Translation , Shopping, Blogging, Tagging, Email and more in a single click“. We use the translate mode often as we have associates spread across the world. Simply block the text and you will find a popup menu with an option to translate the blocked text from most European languages (arabic, Japanese, Korean and Simplified Chinease languages included too) to English or the other way round.

Running a Niche Directory

Targetwoman women directory was conceived to complement our main vertical information portal. To summarize our blurb on the home page of the directory – targetwoman directory “lists thousands of high quality websites – carefully chosen by human editors exclusively for women. Combined with the painstakingly written articles from the Women Portal section, we strive hard to offer one of the most rewarding experiences on the Net.”

Initially the idea was to include websites, which will add/throw more light on the information provided in the main body of the article. Alternatively, if we are talking about digital photography, a listing of hand selected sites detailing software, techniques or processes would add to the “rich user” experience we so strive hard to create.

In another instance we have added a site where the owner of the site is selling hand crafted metallic jewelry – tailor made and customized for individual preference in the appropriate section of the directory.

Running a niche – in our case – women directory calls for hard work and tons of patience. These days most stand-alone directories have become staid collection of links. There are literally thousands of such directories dotting the landscape of the Net.

There is profound wisdom in these words – “Creating additional services around your directories sends a very clear message to your site visitors and potential advertisers. It is telling them that you mean business, you understand what they want and you want to provide the most value to your visitors and advertisers.” – http://www.youshouldknow.com/directories/directory-owners-%E2%80%A6-incredible-bright-people-doing-incredible-stupid-things-25.html

There are many kinds of directories now – free directories, paid directories and the new avatar of paid listings in the form of bid-for-position directories. If you look closer, the number of free to list directories has started dwindling down for a reason. The cost of running a high traffic directory is not exactly cheap. Marketing a plain Jane directory and the cost to make them appear in the primary SERP space is very high.

You must carve a niche in your area in order to succeed in the web as in all things in life. So when it came to take stock of the situation, it was decided that we must add more value to the visitors – enrich the user experience and provide value for their time. The first step was to make the directory internals more accessible to the search engines and users alike. No matter how hard you try, URLs like “targetwoman.com/links.php?cat25& …” is not going to make search engines robots and humans alike to sit up and take notice.

So the internal linking structure was modified to look more meaningful – http://dir.targetwoman.com/Aerobics

It was decided to shift the contents to a subdomain for more effective management. In addition, to emphasize the correlation between the information section and the directory section, a corresponding navigational aid had to be stitched together. Hence, the left pane was introduced where articles appropriate to the category appear now.

To alleviate the monotony of the text, we added suitable images on the right, keeping in tune with the regular portal section. The individual page displaying the site in more detail now has more space to show additional information. We are not using the space as of now.

After all the cosmetic makeover of the section and the changes to the internal linking structure was effected we checked out the server stats. We were rewarded with better in-depth crawling of the entire directory section by most of the leading search engines.

Now on to more ambitious changes (to –do list ):

1. Add more detailed information about the site – Contact number and contact details if you are selling a service. We plan to display (edited for clarity and objectivity) information about any product, services you may have. This adds value to the eventual visitor.
2. Use our internal crawler to make the directory more responsive to real time changes. This would eliminate the manual task of weeding out defunct websites.
3. Use some element of popularity to rank the sites when listing them.

1000 Articles and still growing

Targetwoman – the major genuine information portal for women has notched up its 1000 articles this week. In fact, we have crossed over to about 1005 articles with today’s publication of Antique Furniture article.

We have covered almost all the topics – a woman would be interested in – women health, beauty, apparel, shopping and managing money to name a few. We have spent a fortune in researching, collating and writing out the articles. All our team members have slogged for day and night to achieve this land mark. I must specifically thank my able colleague – the Webmaster and the Chief Editor without whose complete dedication and sacrifice, this would not have been possible in such a short time.

Many sites, literally thousands of sites have linked to our articles which shows our popularity.

Thank you – our Readers and our loyal visitors. We will toil hard to make your visit genuinely worth your while !