10 Free Website Chat Widgets to Make Your Site Interactive

If you want to make your website livelier, then adding a website chat widget is perhaps one of the more effective solutions for increasing user engagement andgrowing your community.

By putting a proper website chat widget on your site, you will get real-time feedback from site visitors regarding your product, services, or content. For sites that sell services or products, a chat widget will definitely help you communicate with your visitors in real-time and potentially make more sales.

This is a collection of 10 free website chat widgets that you can install on your websites.

1. Chatango

Chatango is a customizable chat room add-on that anybody can install in their website. The main advantage of using this website chat widget is that users can have their own avatar. It also offers different user roles that give participants privileges for becoming moderators and administrators.

2. Meboo.me

Meboo.me is a product of Meebo.com — a popular web-based IM platform service. Whether you are using Typepad, Blogger or WordPress, Meebo.me is just ideal for any of these platforms. The most advantageous part of adding a Meebo.me chat box in your webpages is that it is compatible with Gtalk, Yahoo! Messenger, AIM, as well as with Facebook. Hence, the visitors of your website do not need to register to interact through it. They can use their existing Gtalk or Facebook username to stay in touch with your website.

3. JWChat

JWChat is an Ajax-powered chat script. It only uses JavaScript and HTML, making it an ideal solution for those who want to quickly get a chat widget up and running. It functions like a traditional IM client, with system sounds notifying you of events like if someone sent an IM, support for emoticons, and more.

4. CBox

CBox attempts to merge the features of traditional desktop IM clients with the benefits of the social web. The user interface is straightforward, the installation is a snap, and is plug-and-play because it only relies on client-side JavaScript and HTML. CBox is free, but there is a premium version available for $2.00 a month with additional features like bigger bandwidth, no ads displayed, and custom word filters.

5. Mibew Web Messenger

Mibew Web Messenger, which also calls itself Open Web Messenger, is a free and open source chat messenger that was built with PHP and MySQL. This chat application was developed with live customer support in mind, but works well in other contexts.

6. AjaxChat for WordPress

This free website chat script is a plug-in for adding live chat functionality to a WordPress installation. It enables WordPress users to chat with other visitors on your blog without refreshing the browser.

7. AJAX Chat

As you can probably conclude by its name, AJAX chat uses client-side JavaScript to enable you to run a robust chat client on your website. It can also be used as a shoutbox, a site feature that allows your visitors to quickly leave a message and "shout out" to other visitors and the site admins.

8. phpFreeChat

This free PHP-based chat system is highly customizable and is packed with features you’d only expect in desktop clients. It supports the ability to create multiple chat rooms, private messages, custom themes using CSS, and Ajax for a smooth and seamless user experience.

9. iJab

This web-based IM client, developed using the Google Web Toolkit is free and uses Ajax to simulate a client desktop IM client. iJab can be a great solution for implementing a similar Facebook chat feature that people can use within their web browser while perusing your website.

10. Ajax IM

Ajax IM is a slick and open source web-based IM client for your website. It’s lightweight, weighing only 78KB on a good day (i.e. when minified). By default, it affixes itself at the footer of your web pages, similar to Facebook’s web-based chat client.

By Phong Thai Cao 

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Top 10 programming blogs to follow

A successful blog needs great content. If you are a blogger, and or a programmer you understand that you have only a limited amount of knowledge. That is why you and I need to follow other guru blogs and developers. By following and getting involved in other blogs, we increase our own knowledge, create new ideas for content for your own blog.

Here is a list of the top 10programming blogs you should follow. In no particular order.

1. Scott Hanselman’s ComputerZen.com
His tool list is considered a great resource, and his postings are read by some 20k + subscribers.

2. Coding Horror 
Jeff Atwood has been a programmer for years and years; this experience plus his awareness of the human side of technology makes his blog a top destination.

3. GirlDeveloper 
The irrepressible Sara Chipps is an ASP/NET/C#/SQL developer who holds forth on life in the trenches with a distinctly feminine touch. As she explains: “All marriage proposals must be accompanied by previous year’s W2.”

4. ScottGu’s Blog
Scott runs the teams that build IIS, ASP.NET, Ajax, CLR, Compact Framework, Windows Forms, Commerce Server, Visual Web Developer and Visual Studio Tools for WPF

5. Joel on Software
Probably the leading programming blog in the entire Web universe

6. Dr. Dobb’s CodeTalk
Lively blog site fully devoted to gathering together some of the biggest thinkers in the development community.

7. The Database Programmer
Kenneth Downs has been programming databases since the early ‘90s, which is reflected in his incredibly detailed blog posts on the topic.

8. Dave Thomas – Pragmatic Programmer
Thomas has authored books on programming (“Programming Ruby,” “Agile Web Development with Rails”) and blogs as an expert coder.

9. David Hayden
Is an ASP.NET, C#, SQL Server Developer and Microsoft MVP with over 10 years experience.

10. CodeBetter
A community of developers who publish best practices, superior tools, proven methodologies and techniques within the software development community. Ablog for developers of all levels a place to teach and learn.

Honourable Mention.

Stack Overflow
No matter what programming language you use, or what operating system you call home, if you have a question it’s bound to be answered at Stack Overflow.

Do you have a list of favoured blogs you frequent on a daily or weekly basis? Why not post your list in the comments below.

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How you can monetize your blogging efforts?

You've picked a platform, chosen a theme (maybe even customized it a little), cranked out some content and even set up some social accounts — you have a blog. Now what?

As you develop your voice and grow your audience, at some point you'll make the decision about whether or not you want to earn income from your blogging efforts.

If earning that income is part of your plan, then here are some resources we think you might find helpful:

♦ How Early Should You Monetize Your New Blog?: In this post written by Darren Rowse, of Pro Blogger, he illustrates how it's never too early to start to earn money for your blogging efforts. In it, he answers the question as to how to monetize your blog in the early days.

♦ Ecommerce Basics: 10 Questions to Ask When Creating an Online Store: Perhaps your blog is going to have with it an estore. This post from Entrepreneur.com will take you through the basics of what you should know before making ecommerce part of your site.

♦ Join a Publishers' Ad Network: Technorati Media operates the 8th largest social media advertising network on the web with over 130mm US unique users per month (comScore, January 2013). With our deep agency and client relationships, we will deliver targeted campaigns from top brands at high CPMs.

♦ Participate in blogger/influencer outreach: Are you passionate about what you write about and want to help your audience connect to the brands you trust? You could participate in an influencer outreach program, and your sponsored content would help your readers learn more about the products you use.

What things have you done to monetize your blog? Let us know in the comments.

5 Creative Ways to Drive More Traffic to Your Blog Posts

By  Kimberly Reynolds

Do you want more traffic to your blog?

Are you struggling to catch the attention of more readers?

Does this sound familiar? You write an amazing piece of content. You made sure to craft an attention-grabbing headline. You share the link on Twitter, Facebook, even Google+.

Then you wait in breathless anticipation for your share count to skyrocket. Except it doesn’t.

Never fear, in this article you’ll find fresh ideas to generate buzz and get your posts noticed.

Use a two-pronged approach with a variety of platforms and different types of media to get your post shared. Image source: iStockPhoto.

Promote Your Article Across a “Wider” Variety of Platforms

Everyone is using Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn to promote their content. It’s tempting to focus only on these four networks because they have popularity and community numbers on their side.

However, you get a competitive advantage when you share your content on smaller or less well-known networks. These sites often have active, focused audiences and offer less competition for attention, so your content will stand out.

Here are some examples of smaller networks:

• Quora.com—A question/answer-based website founded by two former Facebook employees. What makes Quora unique is that all content is created, edited and organized by its user community. The user base tends to be more business- and academic-oriented.
• Tumblr—A microblogging site that recently made headlines when Yahoo! acquired it. Its user base tends to be younger and more “hip,” making it the perfect platform to share edgier, niche-based content.
• Empire Avenue—Part social network, part social media marketing tool, Empire Avenue uses gamification to enable users to broadcast content across all of the other social networks. The primary members of EAv are small businesses, social media professionals and bloggers.

Grab Viewer Interest With Different Types of Media

Sharing a link to your post isn’t enough to guarantee that it gets read. You need togive users a compelling reason to click your link.

Use one or more of these outside-the-box, creative methods to promote your posts with images, audio and video.

#1: Use Dubbler to Give a Short Audio Introduction

Available for iPhone and Android devices, Dubbler offers a simple way to record up to 60 seconds of audio on your phone, and then share it with other Dubbler community members.

Dubbler brings the simplicity and fun of audio to the social world. Record your voice, add a filter or photo and share with your friends.

The app includes voice filters and lets you add a cover image.

Spark interest in your blog post and record an audio message that communicates your excitement and passion about the content in a way that text or static images can’t.

Add an image, enter your blog post URL in the description and you’ve got a ready-made sound bite that can be shared with the Dubbler community, as well as Facebook and Twitter.

Add a link to your blog post. Record your teaser audio and share.

#2: Create a 6-Second Preview of Your Post with Vine

Vine is an iPhone app that lets you create 6-second looping video shorts. A Vine video is a great way to give viewers a 6-second teaser about the blog post contents.

For example, this bicycle blog created a short Vine of one of their bikes and tweeted it with a link to their blog post about its features and availability.

Here is an example with the blog post URL in the video description:

Vine has an active and growing community to share with. Additionally, you can alsoshare to Twitter and Facebook.

Since Vine is owned by Twitter, your video will display automatically when you tweet it, as well as provide a link to the blog post and specific hashtags.

There’s another benefit of using Vine. Tweets with Vine videos are four times more likely to be shared than standard video, according to research by Unruly.

#3: Create a SlideShare Overview of Your Post

SlideShare is more than a just a content-sharing platform.

With 51.6 million monthly visitors, SlideShare is a thriving community with five times as much traffic from business owners than Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

A presentation by Pam Moore, the Marketing Nut, demonstrates the cross-promotional opportunities between SlideShare and her blog. In this example, Pam created an overview of her blog post with the slides and then included a link back to her post in one of the presentation slides.

At the end of her post, she embedded the presentation, which links back to SlideShare and more of her content.

Pam put her links at the end of her presentation on her closing slide.

Your finished presentation will be visible and searchable from within SlideShare and you can extend its reach and share it to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and LinkedIn.

#4: Pin Your Post to a Pinterest Group Board

Pinterest allows you to pin on individual boards and collaborate by pinning tocontributor boards. The benefit of pinning to a contributor board is increased exposure. When you pin to a contributor board, your fellow contributors see the pin and so do their followers. The more members and followers a group board has, the more people will see your pin.

Here are some tips for pinning your post to Pinterest:

• Choose an interesting image from your blog post to pin
• Make sure the title of your blog post is visible on the image you choose
• Add keywords to the description
• Use hashtags, if they’re relevant
• If you mention someone in your blog post, you can @ mention them on Pinterest, too
• Pinterest will add the URL to your blog post
  

  A great way to increase exposure for your blog post.

#5: Instagram an Image From Your Post

Instagram has a constantly updating feed of images that is viewed by over 100 million monthly users. Sharing your main blog image, overlaid with the post title, is a great way to drive organic traffic to your blog. You can leverage the sheer volume of Instagram traffic by using the same blog post image that you shared to Pinterest. Instagram is also very hashtag-friendly! Here’s an easy way to post your picture to the Instagram community and beyond:

• Save your blog image to Dropbox
• Access Dropbox from your mobile device
• Upload the image to Instagram
• Add any relevant hashtags and the URL of your blog post to the caption, usingBitly to shorten and track click-throughs
• Be sure to @ mention anyone you referred to in your post
• Remember to share your Instagram image to Tumblr, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, and Foursquare

Pro Tip: Twitter no longer displays the actual Instagram. Instead, it links to the image. You can use IFTTT to circumvent this issue. Here’s the recipe and here’s what the tweet will look like using IFTTT.

Get Creative When Promoting Your Blog Posts

There are many other creative ways to promote your blog post. Don’t be afraid to try something new!

Just because no one else is doing it doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea. Some tactics will resonate with your readers. Some will not. And that’s ok. The important thing is to keep innovating.

What do you think? Have you used any of these creative alternatives? Do you have another, outside-the-box idea for promoting your blog posts? Please let me know your suggestions in the comments below.

Byte Syndrome is Born!

BYTESYNDROME

After a few days of heavy online searching for various kinds of information regarding blogging, customizing blogs, modifying layouts, monetizing your blogs, placing different codes within etc., I found out that the information is available, however, its spread over a very vast universe on World Wide Web.

With all that in mind, we here aim to provide the users like me with all the resources in one place.

Today, June 29, 2013, Byte Syndrome is born!