SEO Importance

Simply stated, Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the process of optimizing a website in order to make it easier for search engines like Google and Yahoo! to crawl or scan your site. When executed properly, search engines will come to understand what your site is actually about. This is important because it helps determine where your website will rank in their search results.

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In today’s web-based marketplace, SEO is one of the most profitable skills you can possess. Never before has it been possible to “catch” prospects as they are in the heat of looking for exactly what you sell. Furthermore, customers who find you are more motivated than customers you approach yourself. Unfortunately, all your competitors are aware of that, too.

Without proper optimization, you lose twice: not only do searchers not find you, they then find one or more of your competitors instead. The same goes for bloggers who have nothing to sell but are competing for readers.


 

Courtesy:http://www.contactme.com/blog/advice/what-is-seo-and-how-can-i-rank-higher-in-google/

Get Manager approval in SharePoint Designer 2010 - Step by Step

A fundamental condition that you always encountered when gathering workflow requirement is to get the user's manager approval, a tedious amount of coding to connect to active directory retrieve user profile information, get his manager login name, pass it as a parameter to the workflow, create a custom task for the manager with a notification. 

SharePoint 2010 Designer to the rescue, you can do all the above in 15 clicks, with ZERO code involved. Just by doing the following:

1. Open SharePoint Designer 2010 and connect to your SharePoint site.

2. Click Workflows and select the workflow type you need, for this presentation I'll use reusable workflow with All content types as my scope. But this doesn't affect the following logic, the same steps applies for the List and Site workflows.

3. From the Workflow ribbon select Actions > Collect Data from User, you can also select assign a to-do task but collect action from user allows you to create a custom task for the manager

4. This will show you the Action in the workflow editor.

5. The action is constructed from three parts:
   1. The data, which is the custom task that will be collected
   2. This user, which in our case the manager
   3. Output to variable: collect. Collect is  the task ID which you can change it, use it to refer to the task when you need to pass a variable through this task.

6. Clicking on data will allow you to create the custom task by starting the task wizard, open the wizard and click Next.
7. You will need to specify a Task name, and you can also specify a description. For now lets call the task "Review Task". And click Next

8. Now you can Specify the Task custom field by clicking Add and select the field type, I will specify two field:
   1. Approved as a choice with Yes/No.
   2. Comment as a text area.

More Here

Courtesy:http://blogs.technet.com/b/meacoex/archive/2010/11/01/get-manager-approval-in-sharepoint-designer-2010-step-by-step.aspx

Remote Active Directory Administration with Windows PowerShell

Windows Server 2008 R2 automatically installs the Active Directory Module for Windows PowerShell and Active Directory Administrative Center when you add the Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) or Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS) role. When you promote the server to an AD DS domain controller or create an AD LDS instance, the system then installs and activates Active Directory Web Services, which is everything you need to manage Active Directory using Windows PowerShell on that computer.

However, administrators often want to manage Active Directory from another computer at a remote location, and you can do so with the Active Directory Module and ADAC, as long as you are running Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows 7 on the remote computer.

To manage AD DS or AD LDS resources from a computer running Windows Server 2008 R2 that is not an AD DS domain controller and that does not host an AD LDS instance, you must install the Active Directory Module for Windows PowerShell and (optionally) the ADAC module, using the Add Features Wizard, accessible in Server Manager or the Initial Configuration Tasks window. If you prefer, you can also install the features using Windows PowerShell cmdlets or the Servercmd.exe command-line tool.

Install Remote Server Administration Tools with the Add Features Wizard
The Active Directory Module for Windows PowerShell and the ADAC are part of the Remote Server Administration Tools feature, which you can add as a whole or by selecting individual modules. Both modules require you to install the .NET Framework 3.5.1 feature as well, and to install ADAC, you must also install the Active Directory Module for Windows PowerShell and AD DS Snap-Ins and Command-Line Tools features.

Note that your server must be a member of an AD DS domain with at least one Windows Server 2008 R2 domain controller.

Install Remote Server Administration Tools with Windows PowerShell
You can also install individual parts of the Remote Server Administration Tools feature from the Windows PowerShell prompt, using the capabilities provided in the ServerManager module.

More Here

Courtesy:http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/gg413289.aspx

The Benefits of Private Cloud Computing

While we've all heard the terms private and public cloud over the last year, those terms may still seem vague to some. So it's probably a good idea to discuss each concept in some detail, and since it's near and dear to my heart I'll start with private cloud. No, it's not a gated community in heaven; though it can be a religious experience when properly implemented.

To use the formal definition: A private cloud pools and dynamically allocates your IT resources across business units, so that services can be deployed quickly and scaled out to meet business needs whenever they occur. Usage of these resources can be tracked and billed back to each business unit. With private cloud you get many of the benefits of (public) cloud computing with the additional control and customization associated with using resources that are dedicated to your organization.

What's that all mean? It means that a private cloud takes the concepts of a dynamic datacenter to the next level. In a dynamic datacenter, we use virtualization to - for all intents and purposes - divorce hardware considerations from your IT workloads. The infrastructure you have siloed to different departments, buildings, campuses or what have you, can now be combined into one virtualized pool of resources - infrastructure that IT can offer as a service, quickly and elastically, anywhere in the organization where it's needed. Hence the moniker, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Servers, platforms and applications run on virtualized servers that are quickly deployed and scaled without requiring much integration with the hardware layer. IaaS is currently the beating heart of a private cloud design, but Platform as a Service (PaaS) is coming soon to a private cloud near you (see below).


The private cloud enables this next-level of IT service, using identity management and advanced systems management tools to enable IT pros and even end users to build up, maintain and tear down resources that before would have required lengthy IT intervention. Take the case of a developer looking to test a new software product. Previously, she'd have to ring up IT and request a server be built to her testing specifications. Wait two weeks for IT to approve the request and someone might then get around to giving her a machine. Meanwhile, her testing process is in limbo. In a private cloud, she'll be able to log into a self-service portal, build her own virtual server decked out just the way she needs it, test till her head turns blue and then tear the whole thing down in the end. To the IT manager, this whole transaction will simply take place in his event and audit logs.

Does this mean he's out of a job? Heck, no. For one, the elements that comprise a private cloud are the same ones you need him for today - Windows Server 2008 R2, Active Directory, Hyper-V, System Center and more. For another, even with these platforms optimized into a working private cloud, you'll need to align these new capabilities with your company's workflows and business requirements. Yes, the IT pro role will likely need to evolve in this scenario. Grow from being solely a technologist to being able to strategize with technology - add new value to the business by combining technology expertise with business expertise . Find new ways of doing things and push that competitive edge.

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Courtesy:http://blogs.technet.com/b/itinsights/archive/2010/11/09/the-benefits-of-private-cloud-computing.aspx