Web Media Magazine » Web Design

Create Dynamic Images With PHP/MySQL

John Owen — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 22:57:12 +0000

You can view the demo of what we will be creating here: Dynamic Images
I will be using my local server to do this tutorial, first off with need to create some data to use in this tutorial. I have provided a MYSQL Query string for you to use. I am using PHP 5.3 and MySQL 3.2.0.1.

-- Table structure for table `people`
--
 
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `people` (
  `id` int(8) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `first_name` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
  `last_name` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
  `email` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
  UNIQUE KEY `email` (`email`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM  DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=7 ;
 
--
-- Dumping data for table `people`
--
 
INSERT INTO `people` (`id`, `first_name`, `last_name`, `email`) VALUES
(1, 'Tim', 'Carpenter', 'tim@carpentercentral.com'),
(2, 'Joe', 'Woolen', 'joewoolen@gmail.com'),
(3, 'Harry', 'Melvis', 'hmelvis@live.com'),
(4, 'Jane', 'Suden', 'janes211@yahoo.com'),
(5, 'Sue', 'Baxter', 'suebax@hotmail.co.uk'),
(6, 'Jeremy', 'Yun', 'jerry@jerry123.com');

Summary

You will be retrieving an email from the database then getting the length of the email and inserting it into an image thats size is custom to the length of the text. This prevents email spiders from reading the email.

Step 1 – Connecting To The Database

Create a new file called “config.php” and put this code in it:


define('MYSQL_USER', 'root');
define('MYSQL_PASS', '');
define('MYSQL_DB', 'data_db');
define('MYSQL_HOST', 'localhost');
 
$dbc = @mysql_connect (MYSQL_HOST, MYSQL_USER, MYSQL_PASS) OR die('Could not connect to MySQL: ' . mysql_error() );
 
@mysql_select_db (MYSQL_DB) OR die('Could not select the database: ' . mysql_error() );
?>

Enter your details at MYSQL_USER/PASS/DB, you wont need to change localhost unless you know you need to change it.

Step 2 – Index.php

Create a new file called index.php with this code:






Dynamic Images

This is our template. In the index file we will list the names and then you will be able to click the name and view their email.

Step 3 – Listing The Names

Before we delve into the actual image creation we need to list our names. Insert this PHP code between your two body tags (HERE).


	// Will select all fields except email from table 'poeple'. You can select all fields by using a * (eg. SELECT * FROM people)
	$query = "SELECT id,first_name,last_name FROM people";
	// Run the query & grab the result , if error it will display the error
	$result = mysql_query($query) or die('Mysql error: ' . mysql_error());
	// We now have all data in the result, to retrieve this we need to use the mysql_fetch_array in a while loop
?>
Names

	// the while loop will go though each row and display data from the coloumns
	// the view email link will link to a page called view_email.php with a $_GET function
	while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) { ?>
		 } // in between the two PHP sections the code will go, this makes it easier to read?>

	
    	ID
    	Name
    	
  	

    		 echo $row['id']; ?>
    		 echo $row['first_name'] . ' ' . $row['last_name']; // combines the first & last name to display full name ?>
    		 echo $row['id']; // links the ID to the view_email.php page ?>">View Email

Step 4 – view_webcam.php

Create a new file and name it “view_webcam.php”, enter this code in.

 include('config.php'); ?>




Dynamic Images



	//check if the $_GET variable 'id' isset, if it is run the image creation blabla
	if (isset($_GET['id'])) {
		// include the img.php file to create the email from the var id
		echo ' . $_GET['id'] . '">';
	} else {
		// If no var has been set tell the visitor
		echo 'No ID has been given.';	
	}
?>

Not much but it basically inserts an image with a link to a PHP script, the PHP script acts like a image by chaging the header content type to png.

Step 5- img.php

Create a new PHP file and name it img.php, this is the main part of out tutorial so i’ll explain a lot more


	// Check if the ?id= has been set if so continue
	if (isset($_GET['id'])) {
 
		// connect to the database
		include('config.php');
 
 
		// retrieves info from the row relating to the ID
		function retrieve_info($id) {
		//Build the query to retrieve the email, will retrieve the email by the ID
		$query = "SELECT * FROM people WHERE id='$id'";
		// Run the query and do any error stuff
		$result = mysql_query($query) or die('MySQL Error: ' . mysql_error());
		// Convert the data into an array
		$data = mysql_fetch_array($result);
		// Since this is a function we need to return the data.
		//
		return $data;
	}
 
		// CHANGE THESE VARIABLES
		// Replace path by your own font path
		$font = "sanford.tff";
		// Font size (reccomended do not change) (make divisible by 2 for better results)
		$font_size = 14;
 
 
		//set var
		$data = retrieve_info($_GET['id']);
		$email = $data['email'];
		// Count the amount of characters in the email
		$chars = strlen($email);
		// each character is about 14 pixels so lets width a bit more
		$extra = $font_size - 3;
		// calculate width by multiplying each character by the character width plus extraspace
		$width = ($chars * $extra);
		//height of image
		$height = $font_size + 10;
 
		// Create the acording to the calculated size of the text
		$im = imagecreate($width, $height);
 
		// Create some colors (B&W)
		$white = imagecolorallocate($im, 255, 255, 255);
		$black = imagecolorallocate($im, 0, 0, 0);
 
 
 
		// Add the text
		imagettftext($im, $font_size, 0, 5, ($height - 7), $black, $font, $email);
 
		// Set the content-type
		header('Content-type: image/png');
 
		// Using imagepng() results in clearer text compared with imagejpeg()
		imagepng($im);
		imagedestroy($im);
 
	} else {
		// if there is no $data variable then echo text
		echo 'no data avaliable to create image';
	}
?>

To put it simply this script grabs the users ID name from the GET method using variables in the URL, it then calculates the size of the image by finding out the amounting of characters and multiplying them by the font size. On the white background we grab a font in the current directory to use and write the text of the email around the center of the image. Then it outputs the image, to make the browser read it as a image file we need to change the header. Thats what the header part of the script does.

If no $_GET var for the user ID is found then it will just echo an error.

Conclusion

If you want me to put up a demo just post a comment and i’ll put it up ASAP.
This method can be used to track visitors, give custom user images or an array of other things. Here are the files to download:
Dynamic Images PHP Files (Includes Font) (343)

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50+ Different Ways To Vastly Improve Your Wordpress Blog

John Owen — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:24:21 +0000

Navigation

Navigation is essential for wordpress blogs to thrive, without good navigation visitors can become confused and might leave your blog.

1. Related Posts

Related post’s can provide quick navigation to different post’s of the same nature. If a visitor likes the current post they are bound to like a similar one. There are quite a few plugins to choose from, here’s a simple and easy one: Related Posts

2. Most Viewed Posts

Similar to before, the most viewed post’s are obviously your best posts. Most visitors would be interested to see the most viewed posts. Having the most viewed post’s readily available will increase your most viewed post’s traffic even more. There is also a plugin for this, check this one out: WP-PostViews

3. Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs are navigation links that shows where you have come from, example: Home -> Photoshop -> Text Effects -> Firey Text Effect. This helps if the visitor wants to go back to the same category or home page quickly without any hassle of the drop down menu’s etc… As before, there is a plugin. Breadcrumb NavXT

4. Multi-page Posts

There are three reasons why this is done, 1. Faster loading page times (Multi-page Posts is also in performance section) 2. Easier for the user to read 3. Better SEO (more pages indexed). Yes, you guessed it, there’s a plugin for it as well. Multi-page Toolkit

5. Category Icons

Usually the sidebar is clogged up with meta data, advertisement’s and tag clouds. We sometimes miss the categories in all the mess, assigning images to your categorys is a great way to fix this and will help your visitors navigate your blog with ease. Download this plugin. Category-Icons

Design

Without design your visitors can’t tell your blog from the others. If your blog looks exactly the same as someone elses, the visitor will be likely to forget about the blog. Changing a few design features around a theme can make it stand out dramatically and give it a personal feeling.

1. Improve Your Sidebar

Going back to the sidebar, every theme has to have a nice usable widget ready sidebar. The widgets must be easily definable to tell which is which. Here’s an example, your links could get mistaken for advertisements and ignored. You want the visitor to fully understand your website quickly. Also dont forget to make good use of the sidebar, eg. don’t put useless junk on there.

2. Remove Advertisements In Posts

If you want your suscribers and visitors to dislike you then put advertisements in the middle of your posts. Anywhere I see this I instantly dislike the blog unless it’s a really good one. Having adverisements in your posts makes the reader confused and can’t tell the post apart from the advertisement. Most webmasters are try to achieve this to get more cash but it’s a surefire way to loose suscribers & traffic.

3. Subscribe Area

I always love seeing new ways of trying to get subscribers, I want to see different RSS icon’s, not just the boring plain old shaped buttons that everyone uses (including me). If you want some inspiration check out the images below that I’ve compiled.

4. Image Styles

You might of noticed in most of my posts that the images either span the whole width of the post area or have a gray box around the image spanning to the edge of the post area. This makes the post a lot more neat and readable. The image cuts off the post into a smaller chunks allowing the reader to understand and digest the information easier.

5. Comment Numbers

Comment numbers arn’t essential but do help if there is a question that need’s to be answered or there is a discussion. People can specify the post number for quick reference etc… Heres how to implement them! Adding Comment Numbers To Your Wordpress Theme

6. Highlight Author’s Comments

If asking a question about a post, it might be hard to spot the authors reply in the mess of comments. If you were smart you would add some nifty code that would highlight the authors comment. Check it out. Highlight Author’s Comments or ff you don’t want to get dirty with PHP then use this plugin.

Performance

Before we indulge into the performance section of this list, here’s the facts: 1. 10 seconds is about the limit for keeping the user’s attention focused on a loading page, according to Jakob Nielsen and other studies. 2. At the moment, almost 20 % of US households still use a narrowband internet connection, according to Leichtman Research Group (via WebSiteOptimization.com). 3. The average web page size increases by 20 KB per year, according to this author’s empiricism. Users are thus continuously forced to wait, albeit and probably slightly less due to increasing connection speed.

Bearing that in mind, heres some tips to improve your blogs performance.

I can’t sum up performance any better than this post, so I put it in the post for easier reference.
All credit goes to this post: http://maketecheasier.com/8-ways-to-improve-your-wordpresss-loading-time/2009/01/21 and this blog: Maketecheasier.com

1. Reduce the number of images and image size in your site

Images take up a lot of bandwidth and can slow down the page’s loading time to a great extent. One of the best way to reduce loading time is to reduce the number of images in your site.

There are main two types of images that most WordPress blogs contain: theme images and post images. Theme images are those images that are used in the theme. These can be the header images, the small bullet images you use for any list, the small icon beside the comment link and many more. If you are not the designer of your theme and you know nuts about coding, there is really nothing much that you can do. You can either live with it or change your current theme to one that uses lesser images. For those with some coding knowledge, you can use CSS Sprite to combine several images into one big image and use CSS background-position to shift the image around (more detail here).

Post images are images that you inserted into your posts to illustrate your points or to beautify the post. If possible, reduce the number of images used in the post (not more than 5). If your site is a tutorial blog that uses plenty of screenshots to get your points across (just like Make Tech Easier), the best way out is to optimize and compress the images before posting them in your site. Adobe Photoshop has this “Save for Web” function that you can use to optimize/compress your images easily. Most free image editors (such as GIMP) also provide you with the option to compress your images. Online tools such as online image optimizer and JPEGWizard are also great tools you can use to reduce the filesize of your images.

2. Split up long posts

If you are in the habit of writing long posts (more than 1500 words), it is best to split the post into several small pages. Not only does it leads to a faster loading page, it is also easier for your visitors to read and digest. In WordPress, you can easily split your post with the ‘nextpage’ tag. Read here for more detail.

3. Upgrade your WordPress and plugins

It is important that you update your WordPress and all your plugins to the latest version. The WordPress team is working hard to make sure that every release of WordPress has a better performance than the previous version. The only way for you to make use of their effort is to follow the development cycle closely and update whenever a newer version is available.

4. Deactivate unused plugins

Most of the plugins introduce extra javascript and css file to your site and choke up your bandwidth. If you have no use for any of the plugins, make sure you deactivate them and get rid of those miscellaneous javascript and css. You’ll be surprised how much faster your site will load when these unused plugins are not around.

In addition, check out your existing list of active plugins and see if any of those have overlapping features with the latest version of WordPress. For example, prior to WP2.7, I used the Admin Management Xtended plugin to better manage all the administrative tasks. With the release of WP2.7, most of the features in the plugin are integrated into the software itself, which means I can now retire the plugin and free up the valuable resources.

You may also want to check out the WordPress plugin repository regularly for any other plugins that can do the same function as your existing plugins, but have better performance.

5. Install WP-SuperCache

If there is one plugin that you must keep, it have to be WP-SuperCache. The SuperCache plugin caches your page as a static html file. When your visitors arrive at your site, they will be served the static page instead of the actual page.

If your Web host can support compressed file, you can further improve your site loading time simply by checking the Enable Compression feature within the SuperCache option page. When this option is turned on, the static html will be compressed as a gzip file, making the filesize even smaller.

(Note that the compression feature might not work for everyone. Some have reported problems with different browsers. Please test it thoroughly before using it live)

6. Streamlining your theme

Your theme (especially header.php and footer.php) contains a lot of redundant dynamic content that can easily take up valuable server resources. You can easily streamline it to reduce the number of php and database queries.

Here is an example of how you can streamline your code. Log in to your Admin dashboard. Go to the theme editor section and load up the Header file. You should see something like this (without the color coding):

(Screenshot taken from classic theme header.php in a html editor. Depending on the theme that you are using, result may vary.)

Here is how I change some of the dynamic content ( tag) into strings of text. Also, look how I have reduce the number of items in the header file.

By streamlining your theme, the site won’t have to keep going back to the server to query the database, thus the time taken to load will also be faster.

7. Add Expires header to static resources

One of the great way to improve your site loading time is to add an Expires header to all your static resources (such as css file, javascript, images etc). An Expires header is a way to specify a time far enough in the future so that the clients (browsers) don’t have to re-fetch any static content. Here is an example of how you can add Expires header to all your images.

Download your .htaccess file from your server.

Add the following lines to the file:

ExpiresActive On
ExpiresByType image/gif A2592000
ExpiresByType image/png AA2592000
ExpiresByType image/jpg AA2592000
ExpiresByType image/jpeg AA2592000

The A2592000 means that the cache file will expire one month (in seconds) from the time the visitor first visits your site.

8. Install php_speedy

From the above, you can see that I did not mention anything about compressing and minify your CSS and javascript files. That is because php_speedy has all of them covered.

PHP Speedy is a WordPress plugin that optimizes your site and reduces the loading time of all your pages greatly. What it does is to compress and minify all your CSS and javascript files, set expiration-header for CSS and JS file, streamline the html tag and cache it in the server for quick loading.

Security

Security is a key feature in any blog website, without it every blog would be hacked constantly. Here are some tips on how to improve your blog’s security.

1. Upgrade Wordpress When Possible

Always upgrade to the latest wordpress version, this will ensure that you have all secuity fixes. It is also good to remove the wordpress version in the header tag. Doing this will ensure that the hacker can’t tell which version you are using.

2. No Directory Should Be Browsable

On some servers if you don’t have an index file in a directory it will show a sitemap of the contents of the directory. This is a serious security issue and need’s to be fixed asap. Just plop a blank index.html file in your directory. You can also fix this by adding this piece of code to the root .htaccess file.

Options All -Indexes

3. Edit The config.php file correctly

Go through each line in wp-config.php, not only the first block for database configuration. Make sure to complete every line for maximum security.

Use WordPress secret key generation tool to generate random keys. These keys are used to insure better encryption of information stored in WordPress user’s cookies.

Also modify the WordPress table prefix to something other than wp_. Adding random characters and numbers to the end of wp, such as wp101gt_ obfuscates it enough but still allows you to recognize the tables as those belong to WordPress.

4. Don’t use the default username (admin)

Hackers know the default username for wordpress is admin, so they now only need the password. In wordpress you can’t remove the admin profile or change the username, you have to go into the database and change the field.

5. Backup your database regulary

If you do get hacked and your website is destroyed, your backup will save you. These are a must since you don’t know what things could go wrong.

6. Prevent Brute Force Attacks

Bruteforce is considered the most effective, and most likely has the easiest solution, this plugin: Login Lockdown. It blocks visitors for 1 hour (default) if they enter the password wrong 3 times in 5 minutes. All these values are changeable in the plugins options panel.

SEO

Without SEO what would most blogs be? Nothing. With good seo your post’s are ranked high in search engines for more people to read, thus increasing your traffic.

1. SEO Title Tag

SEO Title Tag – This is a great plugin, some people prefer the All-In-One Seo Page, but I’ve had great success with this one in particular. Title tags are probably one of the most important pieces for SEO, that people can often overlook. I always make sure that I include the name of the site along with the title of the post/article/page.

2. FeedBurner Plugin

FeedBurner Plugin – FeedBurner is a fantastic service, if you don’t already have an account, you will need to set one up. FeedBurner is a service that takes your RSS feed and syndicates, tracks, standardizes your feed so that it can be easily picked up by many other sites/services. The company was purchased by Google in 2005, and since that acquisition it seems that it has helped with my Google rankings, although that could just be a coincidence. The best part of WordPress is that everything is RSS-able, you can RSS everything, by category, by date, etc. I have seen instances where I post something, an article to StamfordCTGuide and within about 2 hrs its in Google and getting decent traffic. By using the feedburner plugin, it gives you a direct route to Googl

3. Google Sitemaps

Google Sitemaps – This particular Google Sitemaps plugin is a great tool for generating an XML Sitemap of your site, which you then feed to Google via their Webmaster Tools. The sitemap will inform google of which pages are necessary to be crawled throughout your site. If you would like to learn more about Google Sitemaps, Google it!

4. Site Permalinks

Permalinks – I setup permalinks within my wordpress install as “/category/postname.html” . I have been setting up installs of wordpress in this fashion for about 3 years and have always had great luck with SEO. Some people choose to add in a date, but I prefer to use category and postname, it seems to work best. You can find Permalinks by going to Settings > Permalinks in WordPress.

5. All In One SEO Pack

All In One SEO Pack – This is a well known plugin that does wonders, it has a variety of options. Also very easy to setup, this is a must have on all of my wordpress sites.

6. Keep the Blog Posts Long

Keep your post word count to be of 400+ words and more as it increases the quality factor of article so the search engines will think it has more quality content even if you sidetrack off the subject of the post. More words higher ranking. The wordcount of this post is about 2500+.

7. Redirection

Though wordpresss itself offers enough 301 redirect if you edit the pages, but many times you may like to redirect more then 1 page to other page using search engine friendly 301 redirect, in that case you can use Redirection plugin which easily redirects old urls to new urls. Redirection Plugin

8. Alt Tags On Images

If your post contains a lot of images without alt tags then search engines do not know what they are and if they even relate to the post itself. By giving each image an alt tag you are improving the SEO of the page. Thus increasing your ranking in search engines.

Other

Other ways to improve your wordpress blog.

1. Show Number Of Search Results

Showing how much results the search term finds is useful for the visitor and easy to implement.

Open your search template file, search.php. In it, search for the following:

Search Results

Now replace this with:

Search Result for post_count; _e(''); _e(''); echo $key; _e(''); _e(' — '); echo $count . ' '; _e('articles'); wp_reset_query(); ?>

Done!

2. Exclude Certain Categories from Being Searched

You may not want all of your categories to appear in your search results. For example, if you’ve set up a sidebar asides category, you may not want those short snippets tangling up with your results.

Put this at the end of your functions.php file:


function SearchFilter($query) {
if ($query->is_search) { 
$query->set('cat','8,15'); 
}
return $query; 
}
add_filter('pre_get_posts','SearchFilter');
?>

Replace 8,15 with the category ID’s.

3. 20 Wordpress Tricks to Improve Your Blog

This post here over at designm.ag says it all!

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Essential Checklist’s For Successful Website Launches

John Owen — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 17:37:59 +0000

The Ultimate Website Launch Checklist

This list provides a quick sheet to check everything about your website from capitalisation to correct database indexing. This doesn’t go as indepth as the other’s but it sure has got a lot of options to check. There is also a translation into French and a PDF avaliable for download.

15 Essential Checks Before Launching Your Website

Smashing Magazine goes more indepth with the checklist, it describes why each check is needed and what you can do about it. Below is a quote from the site.

Your website is designed, the CMS works, content has been added and the client is happy. It’s time to take the website live. Or is it? When launching a website, you can often forget a number of things in your eagerness to make it live, so it’s useful to have a checklist to look through as you make your final touches and before you announce your website to the world.

Things to Do Before You Launch Your Website

This checklist is essentially a SEO checklist for your website launch. If you’re planning on getting organic traffic this is a must read. Here is a description from the site:

Buying a website for personal or business use. Then this article is for you. I have collated a check list that will hopefully keep you on the straight and narrow, throughout your site construction phase, prior to launching your website to major search engines for indexing.

What To Check Before You Launch A Website #1: Static Sites

This checklist is mainly based on visitors and how you can improve their experiance on your website. A snippet from the website:

For most of you designing great websites, diving deep into creative ideas is what web design is all about. Sure you may want your sites to be popular, maybe mentioned on established online galleries but it’s the creative process that I guess you would be most interested in.

13 Steps to a Successful Website Launch

This checklist gives some good information on the launching date, handeling the client’s demands & informing your team of the launch.

We all have been there, the client pushes for a launch date that is about 3 days before everyone had planned on. It is now Friday at 3:00pm and you are being pulled in all directions trying to get everything ready for the big launch. You keep asking yourself, “Did I forget anything?” “What else do I need to do?” Hopefully you pulled through and made the launch a successful one without anyone knowing otherwise, but for those who were not as lucky I hope this list can save you some headaches on your next big launch.

10 Steps To Ensure A Successful Website Launch

This PDF guide isn’t neccasaily a checklist but it does give some good information for websites.

Five Critical Steps for a Successful Web Site Launch

These steps go through what you should do with your design team to create a successfull website, not the website itself. Great for a web design company.

These five steps will help your web site launch go as smoothly as possible from a technical standpoint. Success in this case is defined as the site operating without errors, crashes or other anomalies related to the process of bringing it online in a production environment. I’ll assume that you have thoroughly tested the new site while it was in development.

What Makes For A Successful Website?

This is a checklist either but a list of what to do before you even design your website, this should help and guide you to creating a successful website.

Wouldn’t you like to know the main ingredients for creating a successful website? What are the basics that make a website successful? A website that will stand out and be noticed by your visitors. One that will keep those visitors returning to your site, again and again. A successful website that generates high levels of sales and enquiries?

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed this post, we would love it if you followed us on Twitter or suscribe to our RSS feed using the button’s in the sidebar. Thanks for reading!

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21 Great Websites for Design Inspiration

Danny — Sat, 30 May 2009 17:58:47 +0000

Designing good looking websites can be tough, and finding new inspiration can be even tougher. When you are drawing a blank, it’s always a good idea to look at other peoples work. Not to copy it, but pick up new ideas and design tips. In this article I have provided a list of innovative websites to help with your design inspiration.

(Click each image to view their website)

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Twitter Marketing

Danny — Thu, 28 May 2009 00:15:08 +0000

As of now Twitter has around 6 million active users and is growing at an alarming rate. It is a social networking tool used by people for “Micro Blogging”.

Each user can post a short, 140 character blog about anything they want. Also users can “follow” fellow tweeters, allowing them to see regular updates of what they are doing and when.

To me, tweeting about whatever seemed like utter nonsense. To see what all the fuss was about, I signed up. At first I felt the same way, but looking from a business’s perspective I found that twittering could be extremely useful because:

It allows you to communicate with your market and make connections with customers & potential customers. A good way of achieving this is to set up a twitter account for the CEO of your company. You can post personal messages and messages relating to the business, letting the customer get to know you personally. This may fill customers with greater confidence and trust in you.

You can post recent updates such as specials/deals. No matter what your business does you can use Twitter to announce recent news and events to a large target audience. The advantage of using Twitter for this kind of marketing is that its fast, effective and free!

You can easily promote blog articles, videos and online goods. It’s really easy to post links to websites on Twitter. A good idea is to post quality links to relevant articles relating to your business. For example you can write a decent article promoting your products and provide a link on twitter.

To do the above you will need to sign up to Twitter and get a following. This requires promoting your Twitter account. The most popular way of doing this is by having a link to your Twitter account on your website reading, “Follow us on Twitter”. Another way of promoting your Twitter is simply by following other people; you would be surprised how many people may follow you back!

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