Unfortunately there are cost involve if you want to install and use Microsoft office package.  If you are a budding IM and tight on budget you might want to consider alternative.

Welcome to OpenOffice. OpenOffice package is not much different from Microsoft office package. In fact if you are familiar with window based application, then you will not find much difficulty in adapting yourself.  Best of all the OpenOffice package is FREE.

Find out more Openoffice.

The method is very simple. However you need to have access to your hosting as the php files need to be placed somewhere in your hosting. Here is how.

In a text editor, type the following codes. Make sure you replace the url with the correct url.

<?php
header( ‘Location: http://www.myaffiliate.com/index.html’ ) ;
?>

now just save the file as index.php or any file name with php extension.

There are two possible approaches. One is to create a directory and use index.php. So when our visitor visits the directory he will be directed to the correct url. We just need to direct our visitor to the directory. There is no need to include the index.php. index.php is the default file that our browser will look for.

http://www.mysite.com/myurl

Alternatively we can name the php codes with different file name. So what we need to do is to point our link to the php file. Just like in the following example

http://www.mysite.com/myurl.php

Our valued customers will not see any of the original urls. The redirection will be fast and quick.

Hope you like the short tutorial.

I’m a big fan of wordpress (wp). It is one of the best blogging platform out there. wp is very flexible and easy to manage. In fact most of my websites are based on wp.

You might want to consider GoCodes if you are using wp. GoCodes helps you hide your urls and give your sites a cleaner look. Lets get started.

1. Download GoCodes and install the plugin. I presume you are familiar with wp plugin installation. Let me know if you need any help. eMail me.

2. Once activated just go to “settings” menu and select GoCodes

3. Then you will be presented with the GoCodes setting. There are two type of setting that you can do. “URL Trigger” is a special folder where Gocodes handles all the redirect. The default value is “go”. You may change the value to any value that you like. But it cannot be left blank. “recommended” and “sites” are two good example. At the bottom there is “No follow” selection. No follow is one of an important SEO elements. However for now we just leave it alone.

4. Next we need to set our urls. Just click on the GoCodes at the “tools” menu. There are two parts that you need to complete. First one is the “Redirection key”. This is the word that we want to use for our new url. Just use any single word. In the example below I’m using “affiliate1″. In addition we need to provide the actual url. This is one of the GoCodes beauty. You can change the destination url anytime, as required.

5. Now we are ready to go. When ever we need to use the url just call for the new url we just created. In this example the new url will be “http://www.noorazman.com/go/affiliate1″ Our visitor will only see that url, nothing more. whenever he click on that url the program will redirect to the actual url which is “http://www.affiliate1.com/myaffiliateid” in the above example.

That it. Very simple plugin.

I’ve used various FTP (mostly freeware) programs. They do works but with minor weakness here and there. Especially with the connection stability.

Few months back I downloaded Filezilla. Honestly I’m very satisfied with its performance. Connection is stable and the program is very easy to use. FileZilla is released under General Public License (GNU). Meaning it is free.

Have a look at FileZilla