So far we discussed how to prepare your working environment and selecting a good looking as well as high performance theme. There are more steps you should take towards high performance wordpress blog. Today our focus would be on how to optimize your images and videos for maximum performance.
You can find two types of images in your blog.
Optimizing images and videos in theme is one time process, but optimizing them in posts is an on going process. You must setup a proper system to get them done in a minimum time.
Roadmap
Best Practices for Image
Use smallest possible resolution for images
Never resize images using HTML attributes
If you need several sizes of images, have separate physically resized copies.
Optimize them for web using a photo editing tool
Finally use Smushit for optimum compression.
Smallest resolution will give you smallest file size. If downsized a large image using HTML attributes, still you are using the same bandwidth. It will be slower. So have a separate actually downsized image. I’m pretty sure you have enough space in your web server.
Best Practices for Videos
Better not to host videos unless it’s really necessary
Host videos in 3rd party video streaming service
Embed those videos in your blog posts. YouTube will be a good solution.
Try not to use videos in your theme.
If you host videos in your hosting server, It will consume significant amount of bandwidth. It will be very costly. So use a 3rd party video streaming service, it’s free and highly performance optimized.
What is the Best Way to Compress Images?
Edit your image in Adobe Photoshop.
Set the resolution of you canvas considering original image size needed.
Use save for web and devices
Configure it to give the minimum possible file size
Put it through SmushIt for further compression.
You have to keep using the same process for entire videos and images which you are going to use in your blog posts. This will decrease the web page size drastically and improve page performance significantly.
So far we optimized wordpress theme and hypermedia. Next Step would be optimizing CSS and JS.
Contact me @MalindaOnline to claim your Free Website Performance Review. I’m giving you a detailed report with identified performance bottlenecks and optimum cost effective solution.
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Last time we spent some good time configuring your working environment. It’s essential to walk down the road to high performance wordpress blog. Today our focus is the theme. I’m pretty sure once you install wordpress, first thing you would do is selecting a theme.
Here I’m trying to guide you to select not only a good looking theme, but a theme with good performance. This is a very important aspect in the context of SEO as well as user experience.
Roadmap
Select and Install a WordPress Theme
Once you install wordpress you will notice that it’s having a default theme. Most of the people would like to change it to something unique. There are two ways for you to install a new theme.
Go to wordpress dashboard -> Appearance -> themes -> install themes -> Search and install
Do a Google search for wordpress themes, download one and transfer it to wp-content/themes in your hosting server. For this you could use hosting control panel or FTP client such as FileZilla.
Either way you will be able to see a preview of the theme to get an idea how it looks like. But it’s not enough. You have to pay close attention to below technical aspects.
Clean and valid HTML code
Appropriate usage of JavaScript and CSS
Appropriate and minimum usage of images and videos
In order to verify those you could take a look into source code of theme files. Especially you must take a closer look at below files.
Index.php
Single.php
Page.php
Header.php
Footer.php
Archive.php
You may not be able to find all of the above in some themes, but index.php and single.php will be there.
HTML and PHP code in every page must be properly organized, using minimum lines of codes. You can validate HTML code using W3C HTML Validator tool. It should not be using inline CSS or JS or at least minimizes them. It should have one external JS file and all the JS code in it. It should be linked in footer. Same with CSS, should have one external CSS file linked in header.
With the development of CSS you can avoid usage of images for drop shadows and round corners. Make sure your theme is not using images for those. Try to pick a theme with minimum number of images and check their file size as well. It should be small as possible. If the images in the theme are not compressed you can use Smushit tool to compress them.
Check List
Good looking theme
Easy to navigate site structure
Clean and valid HTML code
No or minimum inline JS/CSS
One external JS linked in footer
One External CSS linked in header
Minimum and appropriate usage of images
Images are properly compressed for web
You will notice that most of the free wordpress themes are not meeting above standards. Yet, if you are good with web development, you can optimize them on your own. If not, you have to go for a paid theme. Finally select the theme, do necessary optimization and install it.
Now you have a working wordpress blog with good looking as well as performance optimized theme. Next step is further optimization of images and videos in theme files as well as in your posts.
Contact me @MalindaOnline to claim your Free Website Performance Review. I’m giving you a detailed report with identified performance bottlenecks and optimum cost effective solution.
Subscribe to my FeedBurner to get latest articles right in to your inbox, follow us @NotesOfGenius to get latest updates in NOG. Stay tuned!
When you are using Google Chrome, you must have used Incognito window at least once. You may remember the Sherlock Holms like face that appear in the browser tool bar when you are in incognito window. This is there in Mozilla Firefox as well with the name “Private Browsing”.
What this actually does is, not letting the web page you visit remember you using any technique. In other words it’s not keeping browser history, not setting cookies or saving passwords when you are in an incognito window.
You can open incognito window by pressing Ctrl+Shift+N on Windows or from options menu. What if you want to open a specific web site in incognito window by default? There is no way to get it done with basic Chrome features. All you can do is manually open an incognito window whenever you need it.
If you like to automate opening incognito window for selected web sites, there is a great Chrome extension to save your day. That is Ghost Incognito, which is under Note Of Genius spot light today.
How to Use Ghost Incognito?
Go to Chrome Web Store, find Ghost Incognito and install it.
Once the installation is done, you will be able to see Ghost Incognito icon next to address bar.
Now visit the website which you need to automatically open in Incognito window. Remember for this you must use normal tab, not incognito window.
Once you load the web page, click on Ghost Incognito icon.
That’s it! You added that website to Ghost Incognito. Next time you visit the same website, it will automaticallyopen in an incognito window.
This is not only for main domain. All the sub pages also will be automatically opened in incognito window.
How to Remove a Domain from Ghost Incognito?
In the case you change your mind and need to remove a domain from Ghost Incognito, the provided mechanism is not that sophisticated. However, it’s not too difficult as well. If you want to remove all the domains, right click on Ghost incognito icon then click on options. By pressing the remove button you can exclude the entire added domains from Ghost Incognito.
If you want to remove one specific domain, you have to go through several steps.
Go to Settings Menu -> Tools -> Extension in Chrome
Enable Allow in incognito for Ghost Incognito.
Visit the website you need to remove from Ghost Incognito.
It will automatically open in Incognito window.
Normally incognito window doesn’t have any Chrome extensions. But since you allowed Ghost Incognito before, you will be able to see it in tool bar.
Click on Ghost incognito icon and it will remove current website from its domain list.
Open a new tab and visit the website again. Now it won’t automatically launch incognito window.
After removing website, make sure you disable allow incognito for Ghost Incognito extension.
Hardware: Intel Core i5 2nd Gen // 4GB DDR2
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium // 64 Bit
Browser: Google Chrome Version 23.0.1271.91 m
That’s pretty much all about Ghost Incognito and how to use it effectively. Now you will never have to remember websites you need to open in incognito window, leave it to Ghost Incognito.
If you want to create a visual presentation THE tool that comes to your mind within seconds is Microsoft PowerPoint. It’s a well functional and user-friendly application that comes with Microsoft office package.
For decades there was no solid competition to MS PowerPoint until Prezi came out. It’s an online cloud based presentation authoring tool going beyond conventional slide based presentation techniques. Let’s go and take a look how it works.
How Prezi Works?
In the first look you might get confused because Prezi works in a totally different way compared to MS PowerPoint. It has few major components and actions.
Map – This is a large canvas where you draw the presentation placing different objects.
Camera – The view of camera is the outcome of visual presentation. It moves down the path while panning and zooming and stops at frames.
Path – This is the path that camera moves.
Frame – This is where the camera stops.
Object – You can place objects anywhere in the map. If you put them in a frame camera will focus in to them while it stops.
This might give you an overall idea of how prezi works. But that’s not enough. Let go and get hands on.
Getting Started
Go to prezi.com and sign up. You can do this with facebook if you like.
You can build your presentation right there in the web, but the best and most performance optimized way is to get the Desktop version. Here is the link. If you want to keep using this you have to purchase Prezi pro.
You can start with blank map or a template. There are lots of cool templates to try with.
Select a template, add Title, other text, images, videos and everything else you need there. You can do it with “Insert” dropdown menu.
Now you have to create frames and edit path.
You can add a new frame from “Frames and Arrow” drop down menu.
Finally click on edit path in left side bar.
It will open up the path editor where you want to move the camera.
There you can connect frames with paths and even create a custom frame with “Add current view” button in left side bar.
Click on “Done” once you done with path and frame editing.
Yeah, that all now click on present to see how it came out.
Use arrow keys to move camera during the presentation.
It’s cool right? And it’s way better than MS PowerPoint. It will definitely add a cinematic look to your presentations. After all it’s not difficult to work with Prezi as well, although it looks complex in the first place.
Final problem, you can find MS PowerPoint everywhere, but Prezi is not. So you might face problems when presenting Prezi. But don’t worry, answer is in the box. You can export a Prezi in to a Flash movie or a PDF which removes all the compatibility issues. If you are using Prezi Web you can save all the presentations in cloud storage and present right in the browser.
Here you can find lots of cool Prezis to inspire yourself to create better presentations.
If you have any questions, ideas and suggestion join the discussion in the comment section below.
Stay tuned with NOG and subscribed to out email newsletter.
Most of the bloggers and webmasters are using Content Management Systems these days. It’s very convenient and less time consuming. Even if you are not a heavy tech person you can still have your own blog or a website.
Down the time you might like to add unique features to your website. For that you have dig deep in to CMS code and edit it as you need. Again, for this you need not to be a PHP guru, only a basic understanding would be enough.
When you try to do that, the major barrier you will have to face is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE), in other words Code editing software. Either they are very expensive or consuming a great deal of hardware resources.
We are living the era of Rich Internet Applications. So we should be able to find such an IDE, or code editor online. I was looking for one for some time and found a complete online IDE for web development. It’s ShiftEdit and let’s see how it works.
Getting Started with ShiftEdit
Go to ShiftEdit website and click on Get started.
It will ask you to sign in. You may create an account or use Google or Facebook to sign in.
Once you complete the sign in process it will take you to the Online IDE.
In the fist look you will notice that interfaces are designed as same as a desktop application. If you make your tab full screen you can simply forget that this is a web site.
At the top you can find the main menu, left hand side hold file explorer and in the middle there is a code editor.
Click on Add new tab button to create a new file.
How to Access and Edit Code in a Website?
Once you are done with editing you can save your code in your server via FTP, Dropbox or Google Drive.
Go to your server and make sure you have FTP access and account. Never forget to get FTP access details.
Go to ShiftEdit and then to file explorer.
Click Options button -> Add new site.
It will give you below window. Enter FTP access details correctly and test connection.
If everything is OK click save and go back to code editor.
In file explorer you will be able to see the list of files which is there in your server.
Double click any file to open it. Then you can edit it and save it easily.
You can use right click menu to add new files, upload files and do many more.
In file explorer you can perform many operations such as find, list functions and add a note.
If you like to work like a pro use keyboard shortcuts. To get the key press CTRL + /
Best Way to Use ShiftEdit
ShiftEdit is designed as a rich internet application. You already know there’s no point of using it in a browser tab. Follow the below steps to make it a desktop application.
Go to Web Store and add ShiftEdit in to Chrome.
After that once you open a new tab you will see a shortcut to ShiftEdit.
Right click on it and create a shortcut on desktop.
Use that icon to launch ShiftEdit and it will give you distraction free high performance environment to use it as a desktop app.
Wrapping Up
ShiftEdit development team has carefully engineered its every aspect including UI, functions and performance to make it a world class rich internet app. It supports wide array of programming languages and provide developer support with keyword highlighting, notifying compile errors, auto complete, connecting to FTP accounts etc as any other professional IDE.
However if you are already using an IDE for web development such as Adobe Dreamweaver this is not a replacement. It’s a minimalistic and convenient IDE for quick code fixes. If you are a programming student you could use this to access and edit your code stored in Dropbox or Google drive.
Try this great online IDE and tell me what you think about it as comment below. Subscribe to our email list and stay connected.
Tags: #Chrome #Online Tools #Rich Internet Applications #Web
In the time we were using Microsoft Windows XP, installation of drivers were a real trouble. But when Windows 7 came, most of the general driver problems were solved since it comes with lots of drivers built-in. However, the driver problem was not completely solved. In my laptop, SD card reader’s driver doesn’t come with Windows 7. Even for the display driver, there is an out dated version. I was always looking for one click solution for these driver problems and finally found one. This is not a new software. It was there since windows XP’s time, but still very important for Windows 7 as well, to deal with uncommon drivers, especially in Laptop computers. The software is Driver Magician and you can download it from here.
This piece of software lets you backup your uncommon drivers, which doesn’t come with Windows 7, in one place and restore them easily. In case if you don’t know what driver to install, it again comes to your help. In some rare cases, drivers give trouble when you try to uninstall them. This software could solve that as well. Take a look at the below sections to use this software effectively.
After the installation you can open Driver Magician using the desktop icon or through start menu. It will open the main window of the software.
Configuration
Before you start using the Drive Magician, I recommend you to configure it perfectly. This is going to be a one-time configuration and you never even have to look in to this.
Click on the options button in the toolbar or go to Tools -> Options from the menu. Then it will take you to Options pane.
Here you have four options, yet I prefer auto-setup package as it allows you to restore the drivers even without the Driver Magician Software installed. You can back up the drivers to a folder or a compressed file. Still it will be a one click process to restore drivers through this software.
In Driver restoration options, remain the default configuration. Default settings that come with the software works fine. After all you can select these options when you restore drivers. There are two check boxes to show alerts and restart computer after the driver restoration. You can opt them in as you need.
After these configurations you are good to go with driver back-up.
Driver Backup
You can access Driver backup from the tool bar and the menu as well. There are two options for you. Search all drivers and search non-Microsoft drivers. The best thing that you can do is backup non-Microsoft drivers since others will automatically come with Windows 7. Once you are done with the search, list of drivers will be displayed in the window. You can check-in the drivers which need to be backed up. Red highlighted items are non Microsoft drivers, which are highly recommended to include in the backup.
After selecting required drivers, click on the button “Start Backup”. It will ask you the location to save the backup file and it will be in the format you selected in the options before.
Driver Restore
To access driver restore, same as backup you can use the tool bar or the menu. Once you click on restore it will ask you the location of Backup file. This could be a folder or a compressed file. Once you select that it will display the list of drivers in the main window. Click the “Start Restore” button to proceed, and then you are done.
If you backup the drivers as auto-setup package, you won’t have to go through this. All you have to do is double click on the .exe file and it will do all the work for you, even without the Driver Magician installed.
Update Driver Database
Update driver section let you to search for the latest updates of the installed drivers and update them automatically. In some cases automatic installation won’t work and you will have to do it manually. After manual installation, back up a fresh copy of all drivers, then next time it will be a once click process.
Tools
Uninstall Drivers
In some cases when you try to uninstall drivers through “Driver Manager” in Windows, it doesn’t work properly. Here you have a solution for that in Driver Magician. Go to Tools -> Uninstall Drivers.
Select the unwanted drivers and just click “Uninstall” button, Driver Magician will do the rest.
Detect Unknown Drivers
If you have no idea what the unknown drivers are, you can let the Driver Magician to find those for you. Go to Tools -> Detect Unknown Devices.
By clicking on each device you can see a description which includes relevant information for you to find the driver and install it.
More Backup and Restoration
If you want Driver Magician to backup your Online Favorites in IE, Registry, Desktop and My Documents, it’s even possible. Go to Tools -> More Backup and Restoration.
Hardware: Intel Core i5 2nd Gen // 4GB DDR2
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium // 64 Bit
The process work the same way as the driver backup and restoration. In back up select what you need and Driver Magician will use the backup option to select the format for backup file. In restore section you can locate the backup file and restore it with one click.
The software comes handy when you format your computer. With one click you can restore your drivers, not only that My Documents, desktop and registry as well. It comes with multi language too. Hope this valuable piece of software will make your life easier.
You can divide any application user based to two parts, Pro and Beginners. If you take a closer look you will see that Pro users are barely touching the mouse and getting most of the work done using keyboard shortcuts. Beginners always trust the mouse.
Twitter your favorite social network is one of the most popular internet applications. Most of the Twitter users trust the mouse as most beginners do. But twitter is also like any other desktop application, so you can use it like a pro with keyboard shortcuts.
How to Use Shortcut keys?
In some internet applications keyboard shortcuts are not enabled by default. If you want to use them you have to manually enable them. But in twitter they are always active.
Actions
Actions are the things that you will do with a specific tweet. You can create one, re-tweet or engage. Here is a list of actions that you can perform with keyboard shortcuts and this list of course contains all the actions. So you never need the mouse to perform them anymore.
Reply Popup
N – Open text editor to create new tweet
M – Create new direct message
T – Re-tweet the selected tweet
R – Reply to selected tweet
F – Mark the current tweet as favorite
Enter – Expand selected tweet
L – Close all the open tweets in the page.
Esc – Close any pop up text editor
Navigate Tweets
Those are the basic actions while you are in any twitter time line. But still you have to use the mouse to select tweets and navigate to another time line. But we are Pro twitter users. We barely use the mouse. Here is how to select tweets in a time line using keyboard shortcuts.
Selected Tweet
Space – Page down
Shift + Space – Page up
J – Next tweet (Currently selected tweet will be highlighted)
K – Previous tweet
/ – Search tweets
. – Load new tweets
Navigate Timelines
Now you are almost there to be a twitter Pro user and you can do anything within a timeline only using keyboard shortcuts. But still you have to use the mouse to switch between timelines. Here comes the solution.
Timeline
G H – First press G then press H. it will take you to twitter Home where you can see all your followers tweets.
G P – Go to your Profile
G C – Go to interactions or Connect
G R – Go to mentions or Replies
G A – Go to Activity
G D – Go to Stories or Discover
G F – Go to Favorites
G L – Go to Lists
G M – Go to private Messages
Great! Now you can switch through any time line the without even touching the mouse. When you go to time line, you can select any tweet and perform any action as well.
Next big Question, how to go to settings? There you have to touch the mouse, do you? Answer is no and this is how you do it like a Pro.
G S – This will take you to settings
Ok, things are going great so far. Now you want to go to someone else’s profile. Again you don’t have to touch the mouse.
G U – this will give you a pop up. Start typing your friends name and select from the suggestions.
Finally
Now you are a Twitter pro user and you barely even touch the mouse when you are tweeting. However when you press G S to go to settings, none of those shortcuts would work there. In that case go back to mouse to go to home or other time line. Then you can start using keyboard shortcuts again.
If you need quick help about keyboard shortcuts press “?” and it will give you a summary of keyboard shortcuts in twitter.
Try these keyboard shortcuts and have a different and speedy tweeting experience. Never forget to share new things that you will come to know with us.
In society different people are having different point of views. Some people are capable of gathering followers around their point of views. We call them leaders. They are influential, trend setting and very rare. Majority of people are following influential people and think based on their ideas.
In the last decade our social experiences went online. With the improvement of social networks we are doing most of the social activities online. There, people are expressing their point of views as a status message, images or some other media. Some content are getting lots of feedback and some are not. If your content are getting lots of feedback, that indicates that you are an influential person on Social media.
Is there any way to measure your influential power on social media and compare it with other people? Of course it will be difficult and you have to consider lots of factors. Fortunately there is an online application named Klout which is measuring your influential power on social media monitoring your social activities.
Start Using Klout
Create an Account
Before you measure your influential power with Klout, you have to create an account for you. Follow the below steps for that.
Go to Klout Home page.
They are offering you two options to sign in, with Twitter of Facebook. Select one as appropriate.
Provide the necessary permissions.
That’s it. Now you have a Klout account
Connect Social Networks
Now you have to let the Klout to access your social activities. That’s how it figures out your influential power which is called as Klout Score. If you have, sign in with twitter, it will be automatically connected to Klout, same with Facebook.
But that’s not enough. If you need to get more accurate influential power score you have to connect all the social networks you are actively using. Follow the below steps for that.
The easiest way to add network is by clicking on social icons on Home page.
Click on any icon to proceed with that network connection.
You can do the same in Settings page which can be accessed by top navigation bar drop down menu.
There you have a section for Connected networks and list of supported networks.
Click on connect now to proceed for each network.
You have to authorize Klout with each network during the connecting process.
After connecting all your social account, your home page would looks like this.
Now go to Profile to see your score analysis. However it might take couple of days for klout to come up with final score.
Things in Profile Page
Score Analysis
You can access this in your profile page and it explains about the total influential power. It shows you a graph with variation of your Klout score over a period of time. The factors that it considered to calculate klout score are mentioned below the graph.
Then you can see more graphs there.
True Reach: How many people you influence in social media
Amplification: How much you influence people
Network Impact: How many influential people you influence
These factors gives you a clear picture about how influential are you on social media.
Topics
Here it’s displaying a list of topics that you are influential about. Some of the topic are algorithmically selected and you also can add your own topics. However, if Klout comes to know that you are not any more influential about a topic it will be automatically removed.
Along with the topic it’s stating your influential power in that topic as a status bar.
Influences
Here you can see a list of people you influence and you got influenced. Those lists are auto selected by Klout and you can manually add an influencer by clicking on the button Add an influencer.
Lists
You can create a list for your Klout contacts for easy management. This is as same as in twitter and you can see what are the lists other people have added you in to.
Klout Style
This is one of the interesting parts that you can see in Klout. There you can see your social media style and its auto generated by an Algorithm. According to my observation, its accuracy is very high.
There is a matrix and each section has a unique name representing social media style. There you can see your style and your friend style as well.
Perks
Here you can participate in perks and receive cool things for free. You get perks based on your Klout score.
Achievements
Here you can see a list of Achievement you made in Klout.
Wrapping Up
Klout is a very interesting tool that I found to measure and benchmark your online social activities. Using this you can get a clearer picture about your behavior in online communities. Further, you can use this as an insight to improve your presence on Social media.
If you like to read more about Klout and how it works click here and carefully read through pages.
I suggest you to start using Klout connect all your social networks in to this and see how influential are you on social media. I’m pretty sure that Klout score will make you rethink about your social media life.
Soon I’ll meet you guys with another descriptive guide about “How to improve your Influential power on social media“.
The Android and iOS operating systems have been battling it out for the right to supremacy since we can remember. Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch products, the first to utilise the IOS operating system, took the mobile phone industry by storm in 2007 with their superlative touch-screen innovation and inspirational new features. Linux responded in late 2008 with the jointly successful Android systems for their Smartphones.
Since then, a significant number of trailblazers in the industry have made use of the Android system, whilst Apple’s dominance in the market has resulted in new and improved iOS updates. Furthermore, advances in technology have seen the introduction of tablets and laptops that also make exemplary use of both operating systems.
The biggest selling handsets over the last five years have all been blessed with one of the two operating systems. Samsung has seen an incredible success rate in sold handsets across the globe, shifting more than 80 million Galaxy SIII’s in 2012. There is no doubt that the Android Jelly Bean integration is responsible.
The Galaxy SIII had to achieve noticeable success to match the iPhone 5 release in late 2012. Instead it surpasses Apple’s model, boasting a quad-core processor, a slim-line, lightweight feel and a 4.7 inch display that is visually overwhelming and truly makes the most of the ICS experience.
However, you may find that with some devices using Android OS, you will be faced with slow loading times. Moreover, there are few tablet-friendly applications meaning that you won’t get the gaming experience available on an iPad with an Android device.
Apple’s response was their own ground-breaking, feather-weight device. The iPhone 5′s modern design left experts purring even before its release. The crystal-clear screen had been enlarged to offer more space for applications and a more enjoyable video and camera experience.
In addition, Apple’s iOS 6 operating system has been upgraded to the max to give you a more effective relationship with the helpful know-it-all Siri, rapid phone navigation and an impressive incorporation with the iCloud feature.
Despite this, the upgraded operating system itself has reportedly had trouble running on many iOS devices. You may also experience some issues with their Maps application as well as the Street View option now being absent.
That’s enough of the advanced technology. It’s time to focus on what these devices have been made for. If you are feeling a little intimidated by what’s on offer here, there’s really not too much to worry about.
Firstly, the iPhone uses an exceptionally straightforward calling and receiving process, whereby the touch screen is utilized to answer or reject a call. An Android device acts in the same manner, making answering or sending calls satisfyingly effortless.
However, take it a step further if you wish and make the most of the iOS Face Time application. This allows you to view your friends and family through live streaming on your device.
Unfortunately, you won’t be able to do this on your Android, although you do have access to Skype should video calls be your preference.
With the iOS service, texting is designed to look like a messaging service that updates regularly and keeps you well informed. The Android uses a very similar messaging theme, although these can change depending on your acquired device.
Overall, both operating systems share an equal amount of prosperity. There are few who can find reasons for criticising the latest instalments from either rival. Whilst the iPhone claims an inimitable elegance, the Samsung Galaxy SIII’s stunning display and sheer power makes it an ideal purchase. In addition, there seems to be a huge potential in the Jelly Bean operating system and we can expect Android to revel in further success.
About the Guest Writer
Simon Lunn works as a freelance writer for UK Essays. Founded in 2003, it has supported students with Coursework Writing for many years.
Social media has made our life simple but at the same time complex. Research shows that most of the people are having more than one social media account and they update at least two of them every day. When it comes to social media promotions you have to work with many numbers of accounts. If you have a staff working on social media campaign they need access to the same account. So how would you find a solution to these problems?
If you have one place to get all the updates from entire social media accounts wouldn’t that be great? If you can interact with them by updating status, liking, re-tweeting etc. it’s even better. What is that same place which gives you the facility to team access to all social media accounts?
This is the perfect solution that every social media junkie is looking for. It comes as HootSuite, a Rich Internet Application. This is a sophisticated enterprise solution, yet it is having a free version. Even the free version comes with all the important features, so everyone can enjoy the service of this amazing social media dashboard.
How to Setup
Web Application
The easiest way to access HootSuite is its website. Click here to go to the web site. It has very streamlined user interfaces with maximum performance.
Once you go to the web site you have to log in, easiest way is to sign in with Google. In addition to Google there are other services as well.
After successful login you can add your existing social media accounts to HootSuite. For that you can use the left menu bar. Go to Settings -> Social Networks to link your social media accounts. After granting relevant permission, they will be successfully connected.
Same as a web browser Tabs, you can add new tabs, rename them and organize them in the way you want by drag and dropping.
By clicking ‘add streams’ you can add streams to each tab. Once you click that the panel will show you available options.
Desktop Application
Since this is a rich internet application, you can get this to your desktop as a short cut. For that you can use Mozilla Prism or Chrome Application shortcuts. In that case this will work even faster and independently.
If you create a desktop application with HootSuite, then you can configure it to auto run on startup. All you have to do is to move the application shortcut in to Startup folder in Start menu.
Hootlet Browser Extension
There are HootSuite extensions to Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. Using that you can easily share any content in the browser to any social network through HootSuite by just one click. After you install it there will be a HootSuite button in the browser tool bar. On click it will pop up the usual update panel of HootSuite.
Bookmarklet
This is also doing the same thing as browser extension. The advantage here is you don’t have to install anything to browser. So I prefer this. All you have to do is drag and drop this in to your bookmark toolbar. On click it will pop up the update panel of HootSuite with current page Title and URL.
Mobile Application
Smartphone users can use HootSuite on the run. There are various versions for iPhone, iPad, Android and Blackberry. They also come with same features as web application.
In here you can see entire setup options and download of HootSuite.
Enjoy using HootSuite and Next Part of the article will be coming soon explaining special features of this social media dashboard.
