How can blog forums help a blogger to make his blogs more effective or to make money from blogs? Well, quite a lot. As the name forum suggests, a forum is a place where many people of the same interests meet and discuss problems and solutions. Of course, they discuss many more things like new trends, new technologies, do’s and don’ts on your business or pastime. Beginners and pros who face problems can seek the help and guidance of experienced member bloggers.

I must confess that I am not an expert blogger and just as good as any other new blogger. For this very reason, when I came across a good forum for bloggers, I joined it, read some very useful articles, tips, comments, etc., and posted a few questions. I find it very interactive and helpful. If you too are searching for a place where you want to interact with experienced bloggers, experts or top moneymaking bloggers, go to www.bloggst.com. It pays! After all, it is free to join!

Hi friends, I am sorry I could not post entries, reciprocate to links exchanges, visits by friends and reply to the comments on some of the most important issues, as I was away from my home city. Now I am back and I will be doing the needful as soon as possible. If any of the friends' links are not placed please remind me using the tag board. Thanks.

How many times have you left sites just because the site/blog does not load easily, and you feel that you have to wait for ages? If you have left other sites for this reason, others will also do so. I write this after visiting a few sites after visitors left tags in my blogs. Sorry, I had to leave without doing anything or viewing what the blog is all about (thereby increasing their BOUNCE RATE, a negative SEO and PR aspect).

What makes the page so slow to load? There are hundreds of technical reasons, but the commonly observed things in blogs are 1) Photos/images of extremely large sizes, and several such photos/ images loaded into the index/opening page itself. (2) A very large number of widgets, videos, and other third party files take ages to download into your site.

Here are a few suggestions to solve this problem. Reduce the dimensions/file sizes of photos which can easily be done using Photoshop. If you need the viewers see the original photo, let them click on a small photo or a link. Reduce the number of posts per page. If the blog software allows 100 posts, don’t use all the 100, but reduce it to 5 or 10 posts. This will help your page open up faster. Don’t use heavy videos that load directly into your page. Give a link and ask the viewers to click. Or give just one or two videos in one post. GIFs, animated stuff, flash files, etc. too take too much time to load. Don’t use them unless they are very important and unavoidable for your site.

Try these. After all, people should visit your site. You cannot expect them to wait indefinitely for your site to load. Internet is all about speed!   

One of the methods used by sick-minded SEO spammers to get better search results and higher page rank is using hidden text. Hidden text is words and sentences that visitors cannot see but search engines can read. The practitioners of this SEO black-magic load web pages or blogs with keywords and keyword phrases that would improve the page's rankings in the search engine results.

I have seen sites using this trick in many ways, for example using text color the same as background color, like white text in white background. I have been asked by many if hidden text can be used to gain higher page rank. The answer is a BIG NO, because hidden text is treated as search spam by all the major search engines. As for Google, Google has published guidelines that specifically demand that you should not use hidden text.

You can trick search engines for some time by hiding keyword stuffed sentences on your pages. But search engines like Google can detect them, or some of your competitors or visitors can report it to Google and other search engines. That means your site/web log will be permanently banned from the search engine results, especially by Google. No wonder, it is one of the surest ways TO LOSE YOUR PAGE RANK! Any questions? Ask me (use comment box). I will guide you through SEO without hidden text.

Recently I came across some broken links in a friend’s blog. There were a few broken links or dead links in a single post. Interestingly, it was a paid review and a few links of the paying site were included but none worked. I posted a comment pointing out the mistake and the solution for it. The friend corrected them and thanked me.

However, what are broken or dead links? They just do not take you anywhere, or take you to unexpected sites. A simple, careless HTML code mistake can make a link dead or broken.

Now, click on the links below to see what I explain.

Example 1: Links Exchange

Example 2: Links Exchange

Example 3: Links Exchange

As you can see Example 1 takes you to Links Exchange (the correct page/site). Example 2 takes you to Blogger that says “no such page exists”, but not to Links Exchange. And example 3 takes you NOWHERE, with the comment, "The page cannot be displayed" in IE, and may be to a Bravenet blog in Firefox, and in other browsers, somewhere else. Results can be different when you click.

I give below the code for the above 3 links. Compare and find out where the mistakes are.

<a href="http://celebrity-females.blogspot.com/2008/05/links-exchange.html">Links Exchange</a>

<a href="http://celebrity-females.blogspot.com/2008/05/links-exchange. html">Links Exchange</a>

<a href="http://celebrity-females.blogspot. com/2008/05/links-exchange.html">Links Exchange</a>

I am placing these simple codes here as I received some queries from my friends and readers about the use of href tag / linking problems. So here are a few ways you can use the HTML.

For a simple link for the site http://beautiful-females.blogspot.com use this code:

<a href="http://beautiful-females.blogspot.com/"> beautiful girls</a>.

This will appear to the viewers as:

beautiful girls

If you like to add rel="nofollow" as per the guidelines of Google, place your code as,

<a href="http://beautiful-females.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow"> beautiful girls</a>

This will also appear to the viewers as:

beautiful girls

If you like you can use a title tag in your code to describe your site, use the code,

<a title="This blog shows beautiful girls/ladies from worldwide" href="http://beautiful-females.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow"> .

This will tell the search engines what your link is about and help better indexing by the search engines. This will also appear as,

beautiful girls .

More HTML codes will follow in my next post and will help your HTML for search engine optimization (SEO) and improved page rank. Use the comment box to ask questions on HTML, SEO, etc.

World Environment Day, established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1972, commemorated each year on 5 June, is one of the principal vehicles through which the United Nations stimulates worldwide awareness of the environment and enhances political attention and action.

On the eve of the World Environment Day, WHO reported that 13 million human deaths are caused by preventable environmental causes each year. More sadly, four million children, mostly from developing countries like Sub-Saharan African countries, can be saved from death simply by preventing environmental degradation. Those depending on natural resources for survival and those who do not have access to modern facilities are the worst sufferers.

Because of many consequential effects of global warming, like melting and receding mountain glaciers, melting polar icecaps and melting icebergs, etc., rising sea levels shall submerge large areas of low-lying coastal lands throughout the world. About 60% of rising waters will affect South Asia, especially the coasts of Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka, according to Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Rising seas are expected to throw out 94 million people from their living areas, homes and occupations. This result in not only huge economic losses in the affected areas, but a new problem will arise for finding shelter, food and employment for the affected people.

With the world population touching nine billion by 2050 AD, the cumulative effect will be a huge resource crunch, especially food and drinking water. Food shortage is already felt in many countries, especially among people, who live below the poverty line, as simply they cannot pay for food, because of low incomes, price rise, and a general shortage of food items.

Add to these the health problems caused by climate changes, for example, typhoid, vector-born diseases like malaria, dengue, etc. Air pollution caused by burning fossil fuels release carbon monoxide, oxides of nitrogen and sulphur and CFCs, and they cause cancer, asthma, bronchitis, nervous disorders, headaches, nausea, etc. Water pollution and scarcity of water are causes for gastroenteritis, jaundice and cholera outbreaks. So is the case with soil pollution and contamination with factory chemicals, waste and urban garbage discharge, pesticides, insecticides, chemical fertilizers, chlorinated hydrocarbons, etc. They cause food poisoning, cancer, damages of brain, kidney and nervous systems.

The World Environment Day slogan for 2008 is Kick the Habit! Towards a Low Carbon Economy. Only saving the environment and ecosystems can save mankind from these serious threats that may destroy the chances of human survival.

View flash animation on saving the environment