A sitemap of a website is similar to the table of contents of a book. Sitemaps are important because it guides web surfers to the particular part of the website they have a point of interest in. With it they would save time following links and get right to the point instead.

Sitemaps are also where search engines look at if somebody is looking for a particular keyword or phrase. If you have a site map, you can most likely be searched.

Creating a sitemap, now with software technology surging in, is relatively easier than before. You need not be a programming guru to be one. All need is a notepad, a program editor, and some patience. Here’s how you do it:

Create the listing on a notepad.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be a notepad. Any word processing program will do. First off, make sure to type in all the parts and pieces of your website. Include all pages and all links you have. Create it as if you listing the contents of your book. Make a draft first. You’re sure no to miss something out this way.

Create a new page for your sitemap.
You can insert the sitemap on your website on one of its pages or you can create an entirely different page for it. Using your notepad, incorporate all tags necessary to it to make another webpage. Open up your website creator program and tag your sitemap using it. If you have created your website on your own, this will be easy for you.

Create a link for the sitemap.
You won’t be able to view the sitemap if you won’t put a link for it, of course. Create the link on the front page of your website so that visitors can view it right away and be directed appropriately.

Check your work.
It is important to validate the functionality of the links you created on the sitemap. Test each and every one in there and if you get an error, be sure to fix it accurately. Run through every single page to make sure that all are accounted for.

Upload your work.
Place the sitemap now on your live browser and double check it. It should function as smoothly as the dry run. Error should be minimal at this stage since you already have verified it locally.

The steps provided herewith is the manual way of creating a sitemap. These days, if you search hard enough on the web, you will find online programs that will do all these work for you. All you have to do it type in the URL or the link of your website and they will create the sitemap with click of a button.

Of course that method is generic. All of you who have created their sitemap that way will have an end product that is all the same, plus there’s that possibility that something else will be inserted in there too. Then again, the process is less taxing and way, way simpler.

But if you want a more personalized output, and you are pretty good with computers and programming yourself, better make one of your own. And since you made your website anyway, creating sitemap is just like creating any other page on the website. Other than you’ll know for sure the links are accurate, you can organize the links the way you prefer it to be. Major parts of the site are emphasized compared to less significant. This is important especially if you are selling products or offering services online.

Sitemap is vital to a website. People search the web a lot for something. If your website has what that particular person is looking for, and your sitemap reports it, then you have a new customer looking at your items. Not only that, they will see some other things up for sale that they might be interested in as well.

Sitemaps, be it generated by a program automatically or you made it yourself, presents the same purpose. That is to lead your visitors to where they’re likely headed, and for you to be seen on the World Wide Web through search spiders. So with these, make sure your website has a sitemap of its own, lest make one.

Summary:
In our every day lives, we are all guilty of neglecting our minds, allowing our brains to be lulled into a lazy, neglected, and unaware state. It is as if we are allowing ourselves to be sculpted by bland and repetitive consumerism, our individuality being chiselled away by a tedium we cannot even be bothered to challenge with any will.

Life need not be like that. We are each blessed with a powerful mind; but normally people have forgotten or, most likely, never even knew ...


Keywords:
meditation,simple meditation,meditating,meditation techniques,how to meditate,mindfulness,meditate


Article Body:
In our every day lives, we are all guilty of neglecting our minds, allowing our brains to be lulled into a lazy, neglected, and unaware state. It is as if we are allowing ourselves to be sculpted by bland and repetitive consumerism, our individuality being chiselled away by a tedium we cannot even be bothered to challenge with any will.

Life need not be like that. We are each blessed with a powerful mind; but normally people have forgotten or, most likely, never even knew how, to use it. It is such a waste of our own greatest resource.

One way to start to extricate ourselves from the mindless quicksand is to gently exercise our minds, using mindfulness and meditation as a way of bringing ourselves more emphatically into the real world, and start the process of exercising control over our minds and our lives.

Creating a mindfulness meditation is a gentle but powerful exercise. But how do you go about it?

A Simple Mindfulness Meditation Exercise

As with any meditation session, you need to get into a relaxed and comfortable position, eyes closed, and then commence with deep nasal breathing, focusing your thoughts on the breathing to ease yourself into a meditative state.

Once you feel that you are calmed by your breathing and that your breath is under your rhythmic control, then you can move on to focusing on your own body, a part at a time. I was first taught this at yoga class, where we were taught to concentrate first of all on the left foot, focusing on it from a position above ourselves. Then move up the body slowly, left ankle, knee, thigh and so on. When reaching your head, you then do the same in reverse on the other side of the body: right shoulder, right elbow, right hand and so on.

Once you have completed your tour of your own body, as if you were someone else examining it, then it is time to open your eyes and increase your mindfulness of your surroundings.

To do this, focus on any object in the room; it does not have to be anything special: a cup on the coffee table, a vase, a plastic flower, anything. Try to maintain that focus for half a minute, and then move on to any other object. You can repeat this several times, always maintaining a focus on your own body and your own breathing, creating a triple harmony with each object on which you focus.

By using this simple mindfulness meditation you are increasing awareness both of yourself and your surroundings, in a very gentle and easy way. It can serve as a prelude to some mental task, as well as being part of an ongoing mindfulness campaign to strengthen and expand the use of your own mind.

For example, most days I write, but sometimes I just do not seem able to concentrate on what I am supposed to be writing about. I find this type of exercise, even just for 10 minutes, will snap me out of that inexplicable malaise, and I can get right on and write what I should have written earlier.

Summary:
Be careful what you wish for! Birthday wishes may just be a little more powerful than we give them credit for…

Caleb’s Birthday Wish is a wonderful tale about holding on to one’s dream despite whatever we might see as obstacles...


Keywords:
children, wheelchair, fiction, birthday


Article Body:
Be careful what you wish for! Birthday wishes may just be a little more powerful than we give them credit for…

Caleb’s Birthday Wish is a wonderful tale about holding on to one’s dream despite whatever we might see as obstacles. Written by David Villanueva jr. and illustrated by Edmundo Sanchez, Caleb’s Birthday Wish brings us a wonderful, freckle-faced 8-year-old boy in a wheelchair that wanted very much to fly. Caleb goes on a fun and exciting balloon trip where he is briefly caught in a tree, had a slight alligator scare, enjoyed a chimpanzee race, met a sneezing giraffe and had a close call with a zooming jet. Finally, aided by friendly ducks (and his powerful birthday wish) Caleb finds his way back to the birthday party that is still going strong in his back yard.

The last few pages are well designed for this age group with a maze, seek and count games and a word search. 40-pages are filled with a light-humor and the main character has a cheerful and dream-filled disposition. His faithful dog, Ozzy, is there with him throughout the tale – with the exception of the flight itself.

I can say with honesty, that I enjoyed reviewing this book…

Summary:

In order to achieve your goals, you must develop the habit of persistence. You must stay focused and be determined to get to your destination.

Keywords:

life mastery through persistence, success by persistence , determination for success

Article Body:

Once, there was a dog named Manty. She was a typical house pet in a typical middle-income family. The family lived in a rather small house. So, home to Manty was the backyard, which was rather small too.

Manty’s world revolved around the four corners of this small backyard, which was likewise used as the laundry area. Peculiar as it may seem, Manty had a favorite area in this backyard where it slept and stayed. This was the area under the sink, where most of the laundry work was being done.

Manty shared its favorite space with the laundry woman. The laundry woman stored all sorts of soapboxes, pails, basins and tools under the sink, which created obstructions for the poor dog. But still, Manty would be found crawling under its favorite area and making itself comfortable amidst these objects. At times, the laundry woman stored heavy objects in Manty’s favorite spot that the poor dog had to struggle to move these objects aside just to be able to squeeze itself in. Manty could hardly move; but somehow, it still liked the spot very much.

All sorts of combinations have been done to discourage the dog from sleeping under the sink; but still, the dog always managed to squeeze itself in. When Manty found it difficult to fit itself into the spot, she would sit for a while looking at its favorite spot as if contemplating and thinking of a way to get itself into it. And in each of its attempts, it succeeded.

Aren’t you amazed at such a display of persistence? To think that Manty is just a dog makes it more amazing!

If a dog has such level of persistence, why can’t we humans have the same? If we meet obstacles, we easily wave the white flag of surrender. This shows our lack of persistence, determination, and tenacity in pursuing our goals.

It takes persistence to move forward to progress. If we stop somewhere along the road towards success in life, it is like starting from the top again. When we give up, we lose everything we worked hard for: time, effort, money, and most especially, the opportunity to succeed in life.

We will never know how close we are to success if we surrender somewhere in-between. It is a choice between success and failure. Surrendering is accepting failure. Persistence to continue, despite obstacles, is the way to success.

We can accept failures, why not? Our mindset must be programmed to perceive failures as temporary. Failure is a pre-requisite to success and it is only temporary. When we fail, it is time to assess and learn from our mistakes. Then, we must find another way and still move on until we reach the door of success, never wavering to whatever obstacles that may hinder us.

We should open our minds and expect instances when we will be confronted with obstacles that would result to making a decision whether to continue or not. We may be undecided which course of action to take next. The best way is to examine the options and alternatives available to us. From there, we can move forward and continue to our journey towards the achievement of our goals.

Success is never easy, and failure is part of success. The sad part is that most of us are deterred by the mere thought of failure, and this paralyzes us from taking the right course of action.

We see many people who easily give up and are satisfied with their own meager sense of accomplishment. They simply sit back and watch successful people enjoy life while they engage in self-pity, regretting that they have given up too soon.

The choice is ours to make.

In the 1600s Opera started to flourish in Italy. French opera was popular for adding the element of dancing to opera other than the already existing elements such as singing and music. In Italian, opera means works and in Latin it means the plural of labor. This means that there can be duet, trio, and group singing. It also utilizes various aspects of the spoken theater, like costume and backdrop.

Greek were the first known theater artists especially people from Athens. Their theater plays included all the elements like acting, dialogues, singing, scene, dancing, chorus and music. This art was cultivated by different civilizations having few or all the elements. One of them was the opera. The western classical theater arts which involves conveyance through singing and dancing and not through dialogues, is known as Opera. Composition by Jacopo Peri, Dafne, was written in 1597 and was the first known composition specifically meant for opera although it was inspired by Greek theater arts, but it no longer exists. Euridice composition by Peri written in 1600s was the first recorded composition which is available till this date.

The performances are most of the times accompanied by chorus and instrumental music. Libretto is the word in opera and there have been great composers who have written famous libretti like Richard Wagner. Handel was the famous German composer who wrote for theaters in England. Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte are famous for the great musical works which were played during the opera performances.

There are two types of singing in opera. The first is recitative in which the story is being narrated in a non-melodies style and the second is aria, where the performers were more melodious. Chorus is used as a commentator and sometimes as a narrator. Subcategories of recitative are secco or dry recitative and Accompagnato or Stromentato in which orchestra accompanies the performance. Opera can be further classified as singspiel, operetta, semi-opera and opera comique. In these types of opera, dialogues are used on the contrary, instead of recitative. Arioso too is replaced by semi-melodic passages.

Opera started with court performances and then shifted to royal theaters. In 1637 this performance was open to public when the idea of opera festival in Venice was brought up by Monteverdi. It was then known as Baroque opera which had a mixture of both the tragic and comic elements along with some education. This started a reform which was promoted by Venice’s Arcadian Academy. Metastasio was a part of this academy and his libertti became famous till the end of the eighteenth century in Italian opera. And this mixed with baroque opera was known as opera buffa.

The characteristic of Opera Seria is that it had a high tone along with secco kind of recitative. It was greatly liked due to it highly stylized form and the singers at that time were very popular and Opera Seria was in great demand all over Europe except France. The hero had the castrato voice such as Farinelli and Senesino and the heroines had the soprano’s voice such as Faustina Bordoni. Alessandro Scarlatti, Porpora and Vivaldi were some of the great Opera Seria composers.

But Opera Seria had few loopholes. It concentrated more on drama and left music, singing and ballet behind. It was Francesco Algarotti who brought all this elements back with his composition Essay on the Opera. He was then followed by other great composers such as Niccolo Jommelli, Tommaso Traetta and the most successful, Gluck. He used rich orchestra and vocal lines and brought a reform in Opera Seria.