Hazem Torab Blog

How to Generate and Submit Google Sitemap

2011-10-18T05:00:00.000-07:00

Sitemap is the best way to submit your pages to Google, and it's one of the most important steps in optimizing your website for search engines.

Generating your sitemap

Whenever you have changes in your website visit you should update the sitemap xml file, which is an XML file that includes all the website pages.

The most easy way to update this file is to generate it using a Google Sitemap Generator website.

For example you can use XML-Sitemap.com, follow the following steps:

1- Open XML-Sitemap.com

2- Type your website URL in the field and fill the other fields as shown bellow, or change it with your suitable information
3- Click start to generate the sitemap files, download to your local computer

4- Upload the file to your website

Submit Google Sitemap

1- Login to your Google Webmaster Account

2- Click Add a Site, then type your website domain for example "http://www.example.com"

3- You will be asked to authenticate your website site using any method
method 1:
you will be asked to download a file from Google Webmaster Tool and upload it to your website root

Method 2:
You will be asked to add a meta tag in your website head

Method 3:
Using Google Analytics

Method 4:
Using DNS Record

4- After verifying the ownership of your website you will be directed to the domain page, then click on "Add a Sitemap"
6- Type the URL your sitemap xml which already generated and uploaded to your website file for example "http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml"

Now you have a sitemap submitted to Google, wait from 1 to 7 days and revisit your account to see your website statistics.

Search Engine Optimization for Beginners

2011-10-16T04:57:00.001-07:00

View the Presentation:

Search Engine Optimization

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The following article is talking about Search Engine Optimization for Beginners, step by step we will know about Search Engine Optimization and how can we make our websites visible on Search Engines.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a very important topics for webmasters, developers, testers, writers and web designers. You need to know the concept of Search Engine Optimization to know how to build a search engine friendly website and enhance its position in Search Engines following the mentioned SEO Tips and Tricks.

What is SEO?

SEO is One of the most effective methods in internet marketing, by making some activities inside and outside your website to improve the visibility in search engines.

Why SEO?

Unpaid traffic

Continuous source of visitor

21% of traffic come from search engines

Good image for your business

Search Engines Market Share

According to the latest statistics about Search Engines market share which done on 11 June 2011 by http://www.compete.com/

Reference: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2094160/June-2011-Search-Engine-Market-Share-from-comScore-Hitwise

What is Page Rank?

Page Rank or PR is Trade Mark Google products that calculates the popularity of a website and it gives each page in any website a number from 0 - 10 according to a very complicated algorithm that calculates the popularity based on many factors, the main factor is the links from other websites to your website.

How to Optimize My Website for Search Engines?

There are many activities that can be done to optimize your website on search engines.

Inside your website:

1- Specify Your Keywords:

- Be Realistic and avoid choosing very competitive keywords

- Target all related keywords to your business

To be able to specify the related keywords, there are many tools that can help you to generate all related keywords, one of the best tools is Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

2- Re-phrase your text:

It very recommended to re-phrase your keywords to increase the keyword density in your page and to target all keywords.

There are many tools that can help you to calculate the keyword density (don't make any word exceeds 7% density).

Keyword Density Tool

3- Optimize your HTML:

The following images shows the mapping between HTML and its display in the Search Engine result page

There are many SEO Tips and Tricks for HTML the following are the most effective tips:

Use meta tags for description and keywords
Use H1 tag for the main keyword
Use Bold Tag for your keywords
Use tooltips for images and links
Avoid using nested tags
Put JS & CSS in separate files
Check your links (avoid broken links)
Use search engine friendly URLs

4- Eye Catching:

Before you finish your optimization make sure that your link will be eye catching for search engine users by doing the following tips:

Keep the title short
Don't write your website name in the title
Keep the description short and targeting the keyword
Make your keywords in the URL

5- Build and submit Your Sitemap:

After finishing your website generate your sitemap using an online Sitemap Generation Tool then submit it too Google Webmaster Tool

Outside your website:

Directory Submission

Before submitting your website make sure that it’s 100% complete

Submit it to DMOZ and general directories

Find the suitable directories for your business

Social Networking Websites

Don't ever ignore social networking websites, in some cases social networking wesbites are the success key.

Let Others Link to You

Make RSS Feeds

Write original and attractive content

Make good relations with bloggers and other site owners to talk about your site (Not Link Exchange)

Link to others websites

Avoid Penalties

Don’t Copy & Paste Content

Avoid broken links

Don’t make hidden text

Don’t increase the keyword density

Don’t link to un-trusted websites

Don’t duplicate content

Ongoing Optimization:

The search engine optimization never ends, you will usually need to check Google Analytics, check your optimization results using Google webmaster tool, and usually check your competitors progress to make sure that you are on the right track.

The growth rate of your website is one of the main factors that search engines position your website, so try to update your website with original content whenever you can, and sure after adding new pages you will need to regenerate your website sitemap and submit it to Google Webmaster Tool.

Creative Banner for Custom Software Development

2011-05-28T12:55:00.000-07:00

When you are going to design a banner or a logo for a service company like "Custom Software Development", it's not easy at all to find an image that describes your service.
In most cases designers go the easy way by making a banner that has an image of a man or a woman working on a laptop.
You Need to be Creative!!! While we were designing our company's website we thought of a new idea for our banner, our idea was to put an image of a piece of code being cut by scissors to signify software customization, like a piece of cloth is cut and sewed by a tailor to make clothes that suit his customers needs.

Best Practices I

2011-01-10T03:53:00.000-08:00

Today I made a technical workshop for best practices in programming, organized by IRange and Information Technology Institute, the workshop was for 5 hours and covered the following topics:

Naming Database Objects
Optimizing Queries
De-normalization
Comparing Database Versions
Running Scripts Programmatically
Unit Testing
Detecting Application Version
Workshop: Manage Application Versions

Best practice1

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Using Nhibernate in SharePoint 2010

2010-08-19T15:48:00.000-07:00

Running Nhibernate on Sharepoint is not an easy task it might take 1 or 2 days to do it, in this tutorial I will try this task easy by providing a step by step guide starting from how to download NHibernate to how to configure it on sharepoint

You can download the latest Nhibernate version from: http://sourceforge.net/projects/nhibernate/
In my tutorial I am assuming that you know what’s NHibernate and how to use it, if it’s the first time to hear about NHibernate please read the following tutorial first: http://blogs.hibernatingrhinos.com/nhibernate/archive/2008/04/01/your-first-nhibernate-based-application.aspx

HBM & CS Classes Generators

There are many ways to generate HBM and CS classes
1) MYGeneration Templates: I do not recommend these templates because most of them are not updated to NHibernate newer versions and it’s not easy to change in its templates
Download link: http://www.mygenerationsoftware.com
2) Smart Code Studio: it’s a better way to generate the hbm files and CS classes, I’ve modified in its template to be more standard and simple, you can download my template from this link.
(if you are not using Smart Code Studio you can watch a video on how to use it from this link http://www.kontac.net/site/SmartCode/tabid/55/Default.aspx )
Download link: http://www.kontac.net/site/SmartCode/Download/tabid/64/Default.aspx

Using NHibernate in your sharepoint project:

Create a new class library project in your solution called ABC.Domain and generate the hbm files and cs classes then place into it.

Make sure that all hbm classes are compiled as Embedded resources

Create another class library project called ABC.BL to use the Domain project and to be used by the share point project, don’t forget to add both classes to GAC using gacutil command.

Extract the Nhibernate folder and make sure to add reference to the following DLLs + Adding reference to your Domain project
Remotion.Data.Linq.dll
NHibernate.dll
Nhibernate.ByteCode.Linfu.dll
NHibernate.ByteCode.Castle.dll
log4net.dll
LinFu.DynamicProxy.dll
Iesi.Collections.dll
Castle.DynamicProxy2.dll
Castle.Core.dll
Antlr3.Runtime.dll

After adding the references to your project make sure to install them to GAC by executing the following commands on Visual Studio Command Prompt
gacutil -i "\Remotion.Data.Linq.dll"
gacutil -i "\NHibernate.dll"
gacutil -i "\Nhibernate.ByteCode.Linfu.dll"
gacutil -i "\NHibernate.ByteCode.Castle.dll"
gacutil -i "\log4net.dll"
gacutil -i "\LinFu.DynamicProxy.dll"
gacutil -i "\Iesi.Collections.dll"
gacutil -i "\Castle.DynamicProxy2.dll"
gacutil -i "\Castle.Core.dll"
gacutil -i "\Antlr3.Runtime.dll"
gacutil -i "\ABC.Domain\Bin\Debug\ABC.Domain.dll"

Configure your Web.config & hibernate.cfg.xml

Prepare you hibernate.cfg.xml and place it inot your website bin folder (eg. C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\80\bin)

Now All references and configurations are ready, but if you tried to deploy your solution you will get a run time error “Could not load file or assembly 'xyz' or one of its dependencies”, Now you will just need to add qualifyAssembly tags to your web.config (eg C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\80\ ) to allow Nhibernate to load assemblies form GAC and not to expect it in the bin folder.

To use Nhibernate inside your sharepoint project you can refer to this tutorial http://www.codegod.de/WebAppCodeGod/nhibernate-tutorial-1---and-aspnet-AID25.aspx

Part 1:Why Using Data Access Layer

2010-02-20T02:34:00.000-08:00

I know it's too late to talk in this topic, but some times we are using a certain technology or methodology without knowing why we are using it :), we found others using it and we just follow them.

Today I am going to tell you why we are using Data Access Layer (DAL) using an simple application to simplify the idea.

Before we start what is the Data Access Layer:

"A Data Access Layer (DAL) is a layer of a computer program which provides simplified access to data stored in persistent storage of some kind, such as an entity-relational database." Wikipedia

In more simple words, it's an object mapping for your relational database. It means that when you are using DAL you will not access the database directly from code but you will access the DAL which will access the database.

The Example:

Suppose you were asked to design and develop a web application (using any technology) this application will be deployed on 2 servers (Application server & Database Server), the database server will be MS Access or MySQl in phase 1 , then it will be upgraded to MS Sql Server or Oracle according to the increase of data in phase 2.

If you are going to use traditional data access by writing queries inside the code (inline queries) and execute it from your application you will face the following problems:

-Rewriting of common queries ... example if you are going to select from table users with different filters in different files you will rewrite the statement "Select * from users where ...." many and many times

- No Strong Types .. which means that database tables, columns or relations are not presented in your code, so you have to execute queries using text statements with the ability to make mistakes without any compilation errors (you will see errors just in executions) specially if you have change in the database structure or even one column name (you have to go through all the application)

- One database engine support... because all queries are directly written inside the code, so if you decided to change the database engine you have to rewrite many SQL queries because SQL syntax is not standard in all database engines.

-Security Obstacles .. in our example if the database server does not allow opening ports except HTTP port (port 80), your application will not be able to execute queries or even to connect to the database, but by using DAL you can convert your DAL to a webservice and deploy it on your Database server to consumed from your application. as shown:
I've tried to write in few points why I've used DAL in my last 5 years, in the next part I am going to write about how to choose a suitable DAL with a full comparison between available DAL frameworks and generators.