Monday, October 10, 2016

How to Make a Perfect Grilled Chicken

Grilling can be a fun, family activity during weekends. Spend your lazy afternoons in your backyard, and take out those grillers for a grilled chicken for your dinner. 

Learning how to grill is not as hard as you would see on television. All you need is the proper temperature for your griller especially if you are using an electric grill. Nevertheless, if you have the conventional griller, try to find some dried wood or charcoal. Ignite the coals or wood by placing crumpled papers below each coal and then set the papers on fire. Do not pour gasoline on the coals or dried wood. The smoke coming from the coals will give a gasoline-like aroma to your grilled meat. These are your best weapons in grilling. 

Choose the best part of the chicken. I usually use chicken thighs and legs since they are the fattiest parts of the chicken. These parts will yield a juicy, barbecued chicken. Although these may sound unhealthy, the taste is incredibly delicious. Some would still prefer grilling chicken breasts with the skins on. 

Before you start grilling your chicken, do not forget to marinate them at least overnight. Yes, overnight. This is because the longer you marinade your meat, the better absorption of flavors happens. I prefer to use store-bought marinades as these save much preparation time in the kitchen. The downside of most ready-made marinades is their high sodium content. But if you have time, you can make your own marinade from scratch. In the recipe below, the marinade and the chicken were simmered together to speed up the process of grilling and also to let the flavors marry together. I like Asian-style marinades such as this: 

For every kilo of chicken: 

½ cup light soy sauce (available in the Asian section of grocery stores) 

2-3 tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon or lime juice 

4 tablespoons brown sugar 

1 medium stalk of lemon grass (pounded) 

3 cloves crushed garlic 

1 teaspoon sesame oil (optional) 

Combine all the above ingredients in a heavy skillet and let it boil for two minutes. Add in the chicken and simmer for another five minutes. Drain the chicken in a colander and reserve the marinade for basting during grilling. Basting is necessary so that the chicken won’t dry out. The marinade can also be made as a sauce by making a basic roux. This is simply done by placing a tablespoon of butter on a non-stick pan and let it cook for minutes. Pour over the marinade and whisk until the sauce thickens. Taste the sauce and adjust the seasonings accordingly. 

You can also opt to make a dry, rub marinade. This dry rub is comprised of herbs and spices and a little oil. For chicken, dried or fresh tarragon and rosemary blends together very well. If you want a spicier, grilled chicken, add a pinch of chili powder and cayenne pepper. There are limitless marinades for grilled chicken. A little imagination and creativity are the keys. Make sure that when grilling the chicken, never let the flame flare up. This will result in burnt chicken. This does not appeal both to the eyes and to the palate. If this occurs, sprinkle a little water over the flame. Some also like their grillers to be covered during the grilling process. 

Personally, I liked mine uncovered. There is just something about the smoke which is, for me, the essence of grilling. Grilled foods are best served warm, right off the grill with some salads or other vegetables of your choice.

How to Get the Search Engines to Crawl Your Site More Often

If you're interested in making your site more attractive to search engine crawlers so you can generate more free traffic for your site then you've come to the right place. The Google crawl rate is nothing but the total frequency with which their bots visit your site and index new content. Some websites go a long time in between crawls and this prevents new material from gaining valuable page rank. But you can change that by making your site more crawlable. 

It's important to invest a little time and attention to optimize the photos on your site. Images that aren't optimized usually aren't good for the overall performance of your site in the search engines. It can also lead to a less than favorable crawl rate for your website. But the real question is how to get that improved crawl rate. You can do many things to optimize images like placing keywords in the name of the file, resizing images properly, and using captions that are designed to appeal to search engine crawlers. While these may seem like simple steps they can have a huge impact on how often your website gets crawled by the search engines. 

You need to make regular updates to your site's content. 

The problem with this is that this might mean one thing to you and something else entirely to someone else. This doesn't mean that you have to update your site ten times a day; just make it happen more often and you're good to go. Google has a deep appreciation for sites that add new information often and rewards that by indexing their information and updates faster. This is the way that Google uses to let website owners know they've noticed them and like what they see on these sites. 

The most basic thing to do when trying to enhance your site's crawl rate is to submit your website's URL to Google. This is something that is quick and easy but effective. In fact, the more search engines you submit to the better your exposure will be. Additionally you'll want to check that you're getting the right header response. 

Give Google what it wants and you'll have no trouble at all attracting those famous Google bots to your site every other day. These are all steps that are easy to duplicate and apply to every one of your sites for fast results. Most website owners have no idea how important proper optimization is for their websites. It only takes a little effort on your part to make your site more attractive to them but the rewards are well worth that effort.

Business Analysis Certification: Improving Business Sense

Business Analysis improves the sense of doing business. It can be defined as a set of activities which can be carried out in order to analyze business situations. A business analyst can identify problems in a project and suggest solutions to overcome those problems. To become a competent Business Analyst it is important to undergo proper training which will enhance your knowledge and provide you with the much needed knowledge. AstroWix has been conducting workshops in Business Analysis providing in depth knowledge on how to address the needs and demands of a business. Often organizations have to deal with complicated projects which need to be analyzed first and then carried out. This will eliminate the possibility of project failures or disasters .Business Analysis is another name for scrutinizing tasks and improving operations by making them effective. The skill set involves critical thinking and analyzing skills.Also communication and relationship building skills play a very crucial role in becoming an impactful business analyst. Programs like Business analysis Training Bangalore & Mumbai will develop and enhance analytical skills and provide significant value to projects and the business enterprise. There are a number of benefits of Business analysis some of which are: 

• Helps in Analyzing business situations 

• Facilitates working with project managers and business sponsors to be able to face the complexity of the business analysis effort needed for the project. 

• Helps to develop strong relationships with project stakeholders. 

• Helps to generate core competencies amongst professionals. 

• Effective communications within the company. 

AstroWix has been providing Business Analysis Training for quite a number of years enriching professionals with the advanced knowledge in business analysis upgrading their knowledge and overcoming the deficiencies in a project. An organization can benefit from business analysis in a huge way by providing a platform for professionals which will help in the growth of the professionals as well as the organization. Applying Business Analysis Training Bangalore & Mumbai will help identify mistakes in projects and bring them to a smooth closure.It will also help in forecasting a company s future in terms of its economic standing, strengths and weaknesses. The better the analysis is the better are the chances of the company doing well in the long run.The main objective behind conducting Business Analysis is converting forecasted benefits of a company into estimated value of a business.AstroWix provides Business Analysis Training to professionals how to become proficient in analyzing business projects and suggesting appropriate solutions.

Is it time to step up to a full service VPS hosting option?

For anybody who is fed up with the inadequate overall performance of their shared web server but not yet in a position to step up to a costly dedicated server than the most suitable option available for you would be a Virtual Private Server (VPS). 

The two main forms of VPS solutions are managed and unmanaged VPS services. Managed VPS hosting services are similar in a lot of ways to hosting that is shared. You'll receive skilled pros who will take care of any issues with your hosting server which could develop. 

Managed VPS hosting servers are the most useful way to go if you're not very tech savvy or do not have the employees available to take care of any technical concerns that will arise with the hosting. You may also decide on Managed hosting if you're a business owner who just desires to focus on operating their business rather than concern yourself with if your server is functioning so that your clients can reach and use it. You can sleep well at night knowing your website is in safe hands. 

Most good Managed VPS hosting providers will ensure you get 24/7 support that should quickly try to deal with any complications with your hosting server or if you would like to add new email accounts or domains to the server. It is possible to usually put in a simple request and this will be taken good care of. 

A great company is Tecsys who make available both virtual offices in India among their services. 

Unmanaged VPS hosting services will mean that you happen to be accountable for caring for your Windows or Linux server. Unmanaged servers tend to be made use of by businesses that either have proprietors that are technically very knowledge and can fix any problems that may crop up or they hire staff who are able to handle the problems on behalf of the company. 

Although unmanaged VPS hosting is frequently less than managed hosting simply because you are not paying for the technical support nevertheless, you have to make sure you'll be able to take care of any technical issues that happen or you might find yourself with no functioning internet site for hours on end or even days which ultimately means that you end up paying much more in lost business than it would should you have had used a managed VPS hosting account. 

If you're willing to take your online business to a higher level then you certainly should consider upgrading from a shared server to a VPS hosting account that you either are comfortable taking care of yourself or opt to have a great hosting company manage it for you.

Saturday, October 8, 2016

Magento SEO: Guide to Better Optimize Your Magento Website

Magento is an outstanding e-Commerce platform with inbuilt SEO. Initially, during its release there were no written rules or step-by-step guide for Search Engine Optimization in Magento. It was basically developed as a search engine friendly platform and the updated current release is 1.2.1. To implement it properly, first the most recent version should be employed followed by the enabling of Server URL rewrites, which is found under System-Configuration-Web-Search Engines Optimization. The following are the Magento SEO tips that can guide to better optimize Magento websites. 

WWW vs. non-WWW version: WWW is known as the secure version and non-WWW is the unsecure version. Below the secure or unsecure options you can locate the base URL and position the preferred domain. This function will permit you to choose among WWW and non-WWW versions. At this moment you can set the favored thing without altering the redirect from WWW to non-WWW or either way. After which you can produce a 310 redirect through .htaccess with mode_rewrite. This action will also check Magneto from accumulating the SID query to your URLs. Always confirm that the Base URL matches the redirect. Put in the index.php to the root when you are editing the .htaccess file. Just about line 119 use the following code: 

Use the following code if your Magento install is not found in the root, conversely in the sub-directory http://www.mydomain.com/magento/: 

Header Settings: The default title of the Magento install is "Magento Commerce" always. Are you looking for augmenting quality traffic to your Magento platform? Then you need to remember the following steps: 

* It is advisable to keep your keywords next to your page title as Search engines lay emphasis on the early words or the words that are nearer to the page title. This will increase the chances of more likely clicks by people who search for result pages. 

* Initially you should eliminate the default title "Magento Commerce". To get rid of the default title, go to Configuration => Design => HTML Head. 

* Choose a comprehensive & pertinent title for your site. This particular title will be employed by many non-content pages without any custom title. Few such pages are "Contact Us" page, "Popular Search Terms" and more. 

* You also have an option of using “Title Suffix” to include the name of your store to all the page titles, products and categories. It is advisable to keep the Prefix empty for the above stated reasons. 

* Following which you should keep “Default Description” and “Default Keywords” empty. For all applications ensure that “INDEX, FOLLOW” is set up and for other non-production environment set “Default Robots” to “NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW” to avoid indexing of the site. 

* This is the right time to add new canonical tag for optimizing your web-store pages. For developing your Magento SEO, you can fix the Canonical URL’s for Magento Module to adjoin them to your head. 

* It is also desirable to take away the empty Meta’s from your code by installing Yoast MetaRobots Module. At times Magento converts non-set Meta robots into a Meta tag in the following style: . This might end up in certain strange behavior in the search engines. 

CMS Pages: CMS (Content Management System) is an exceptional management tool for your business and it lets you to make content alterations. CMS pages are fixed pages such as About Us page, Home Page and Customer Service pages that give information about your web store and these pages are generally managed through the backend panel. These pages are complete pages that are accessible through their own URL address. 

Category optimization: Magento grants you the power to add the name of categories to path for product URL’s. As Magento do not support this functionality well, it forms duplicate content issues and it is a good thought to disable this function. For implementing this, go to System => Configuration => Catalog => Search Engine Optimization and set up "Use categories path for product URL's to "no". 

This is the right time to set the particulars for each category. Go to Catalog => Manage Categories. The most imperative fields are: 

Meta Description: Place an eye-catching description here. Remember that your visitors will see the explanation in the result listings of the search engines. 

Page Title: It is good to keep this empty for using the category name including parents’ categories. At the time of customizing it, the title will look exactly like your input, without the presence of the parent category.. 

URL Key: Strive to keep a small but keyword rich URL. It is good to eliminate stop words like "the", "and", "for" etc. Make a note that you can put this only for all store views and for a multi-language store, you are required to keep it language independent. 

For each and every store view you can denote the Name, Page Title, Description, and Meta data. This is a special feature for multi-language stores. 

Products optimization: Products pages optimization is similar to Categories. You can put the Meta Information for each "Store View" and the "Default Values". Also notice that the "Meta Title", will overwrite the whole page title including categories except title prefix/suffix, and not only the name of the product. Generally, the images will be renamed to the product title, alt tags and titles by default. You can change the alt tags and titles for each and every product image. This can be done for every specific store view also. 

Magento Template Optimization: 

Optimized Blank Template: The default Magento coats like "Modern Theme”,"Default Theme", and "Blue Skin" do not perform well in the use of headings. From the view of SEO there is a lot of scope for development. A Blank Magento SEO Theme, depending on the core Magento Blank Theme is developed for your ease. 

Headings: The default logo is an h1, and this should only appear on the front page, apart from this page, all other pages should be no more than an h3. The significant factor is to obtain the title of the content in an h1 tag. For example a category page should have the category name and for a product page it should have the product name. Next to this you should clean up the excess usage of headings. 

It is recommended to eliminate the usage of header in the side columns. You can also make the text pertinent to the store (ie. include keywords). There is no basis for adding "static" and keyword less titles with an h4. For example it is good to alter all the h4 tags in div class="head" to strong tags. This is the best time for content optimization. Place the category name in an h1 and the product names in an h3 at the category pages and set the product name in an h1 on the On product pages. 

Clean up your code: In general the CSS and JavaScript pages doesn’t contribute anything beneficial to Magento SEO for which the JavaScript and CSS pages located in your template files are to be shifted to external CSS files and JavaScript. This aids in keeping your templates clean and it ensures that your users can acquire those files on the first load and ease the search engines from downloading the same every time. 

Aim for speed: Speed is the most noteworthy factor that directly contributes to visitor’s traffic. The two notable things that can be done to enhance your Magento install’s speed are: 

Facilitate caching. Go to System=> Cache Management and enable the caching features. 

You can significantly increase Magento’s speed by using PHPopcode cache and MySQL. 

These Magento Search Engine Optimization tips will help in optimizing your Magento website.