Gluten free grains

Can oats really be gluten free?

The only thing that can prove a product is 100% gluten free is a certification from the Gluten Free Certification Organization (GFCO).  A nonprofit body that often teams up with the FDA, they are only concerned with pointing out the gluten free items for the benefit of individuals who suffer from Celiac disease. Despite their food proof recommendations, they still advice people to seek out their physicians to ascertain that they can actually consume a food items safely.

Groats to the rescue!

Nicknamed great oats or oat berries, groats are usually sold by health food stores both offline as well as online. These round oats only have trace amounts of gluten and sometimes none at all. However, you will need to read the label to ensure that the amount of gluten in the groats that you are purchasing is within acceptable limits.  

The levels of gluten will usually be given in parts per million and 20 ppm is considered safe for most gluten intolerant people. However, choosing groats with 10 ppm gluten or lees is recommended for people who suffer from serious allergies.

Groats are usually sold in whole grain form and in order to use them in baking, you will need to grind the. A food processor may not be right for the job but a portable flour mill will be perfect. The term “groats” refers to the round shape of unprocessed oats. You can purchase millet, oat or wheat groats.

Are groats really gluten free?

 Yes, they are, the non processed version of oats served up without any contamination rarely have more than trace amounts of gluten. The precise reason for the low levels of gluten in these grains is unknown; however, researches have presumed that flattening and processing along with additives may be responsible for the increased amount of gluten in processed oats.

In fact a lot of people who suffer from gluten and wheat intolerance symptoms do not show sensitivity to  unprocessed, fresh oats which are served up without the inclusion of preservatives etc. However, before you rush to the nearest store to buy groats, it is imperative to understand that the reaction to gluten consumption can vary from one person to another.

For example, many gluten intolerant people can get away with occasional oat indulgences whether the grain is gluten free or not. Then, there are others who might suffer a grave reaction to even the smallest amounts of gluten.

So, the best approach would be to talk this over with your physician. In fact, try out groats only when you have a few free days in hand, so there are no personal or professional ramifications of your gluten allergy.

Gluten Free Flour Offers Respite to People who Suffer from Celiac Disease

Celiac disease is an autoimmune disorder than finds it roots in gluten intolerance. Although gluten, a protein is not normally a harmful substance, it can wreak havoc on the health of people who are afflicted by Celiac disease. The aftereffects of gluten consumptions are so grave that it is imperative for gluten intolerant individual who also suffer from Celiac disease to stay away from all grains that contain the protein composite.

How gluten free flour can help?

Because many commonly used grains like wheat, rye, oats and barley contain gluten, a person who is allergic to the substance has to eliminate all food items made from these grains from his/her diet. Unfortunately, the task can be exacting as every second commercially available food products including baked goods contain some amount of gluten

The only way to completely avoid gluten is to cook at home with gluten free flour. If you suffer from gluten intolerance buying bread, cakes, muffins etc from your local super market is out of the question. In fact, you should categorically avoid all products that contain semolina, durum, faro, spelt, einkorn flour.

Substitutes for regular flour

There is no reason to be disheartened just because you cannot gorge out on those delicious cakes, cookies and bread. You can easily bake some in your very own kitchen through the use of gluten free flour and enjoy the delicacy without fearing gluten and wheat intolerance symptoms

Made from potato, seeds, rice, roots like tapioca etc, gluten free flour is healthier that regular wheat flour. Gluten free flour is sold by most grocery stores and you can use them just the way you would use regular flour.

The taste difference

While there is a slight difference in the taste of wheat and gluten free flours; when used in lieu of regular flour in baked goods, the gluten free option tastes just as good.

 A lot of people attribute the cardboard like taste of their bread to gluten free flour; au contraire, the only thing that can result in hard, tasteless bread is the lack of baking skills. Once you are adept at handling your bake ware and the oven, you will be able to cook up a storm of your favorite delicacies with gluten free flour.

Designing for your target market

Designing for your target market

What is a website if not another medium for client communication? So, like all other form of interaction, you will need to ensure that your website suits your target audience. Careful consideration of what your targeted market segment, expects, needs, likes and dislikes should form the foundation of your web designing efforts. So, if you are on the verge of launching a new site or are in the process of tweaking an existing website, here are some tips that will help you to impress your audience.

Understand the market strata you are catering to!

Demographics: Start with a demographic profile of your target segment; this should help you to choose various designing elements like the colors, navigation system, images, graphics and more. For instance, if you are catering to children in the age group of 5 to 15, a riot of vibrant colors in the background will without a doubt appeal to their senses.

On the other hand, sober hues will be more appropriate for older visitors. Similarly, if your site is meant for sports fanatics, images that bring to life the excitement of indulging in a specific sporting pursuit will definitely yield positive results.

Beliefs and view: Also try and understand the behavior, likes, dislikes and beliefs of you clients along with their opinion about your products and niche. For example, if you are developing a site for gym goers, you might want to include tools and information that will help them to make and stick to their fitness goals.

Existing information: When working on site content, consider what your clients already know; if they are experts in your niche, they will be slighted by your attempts to teach them the basics. On the contrary, if you are catering to novices, using overtly technical lingo will lower the attention span f your readers.

Understand your requirements

Once you have your finger on the pulse of your target market, it is time to consider what you are trying to accomplish with your website.  

·         Is your website meant for selling goods/services?

·         Are you merely offering information through your site?

·         What kind of information would you like to offer?

·         What action will you like your visitors to perform

·         How are you trying to influence your audience, through text or images?

Answering these questions will help you to understand the fundamental purpose of your site and the way in which information has to be offered to meet the goal. For instance, if you are selling a product or even if your site is a mouth piece for your company, it is imperative to highlight the benefits that the user can derive from the product/service or information.

So, if you are selling cameras, don’t just talk about the product features; instead tell your audience, how they will be able to capture memorable moments with the gadget. Similarly, if your site is meant to offer information about your company, you need to mention how your venture will help your clients.

Analyzing the requirement of your client and your business will help you to design a site with a clear and specific focus. Such a site is more likely to meet the expectations of your visitors and fulfill its commercial purpose.

Web hosting

The basics of web hosting:  What you need to know?

The hosting company and plan you choose can without a doubt impact the success of your website. A less than reliable service will not only be a huge waste of money but also it will mar the reputation of your site.

So, while cost should be a constraint when picking a web host, it would be a colossal mistake to base your choice solely on pricing. If you are finding it daunting to wade through the offerings of all the hosting providers out there, here is a look at some of the basics of web hosting that will help you to make an informed decision.

So, what does a web host do?

Web hosts offer virtual space for setting up your website. Just like a brick and mortar business needs office space to work out of, your website needs a specific address and a location in the cyber world, which is your url and server space.

 Web hosting providers maintain and run servers which are plugged into an internet connection. For a price, they offer access to these servers and their resources to website owners. While it is possible to host a site from your home computer, this can only be done if you have a high speed internet connection.

Also, you will need a dedicated computer for the job which cannot be switched off. Needless to say, regular desktops are simply not up to the task.

The plans offered by web hosting providers

Web hosts offer a myriad of plans with varied pricing that meet the specific requirements of different customers. In order to understand the suitability of a plan, it is imperative to understand the level functionality that is offered with the option.

Shared or virtual hosting: This is by far the simplest and least expensive hosting plan available, so it is particularly well suited for small businesses and start ups. In shared hosting, several websites are placed on a single powerful server.

Dedicated hosting: As the name suggests, a server is dedicated to a single site in this type of hosting. In other words, the buyer is essentially leasing the server from the hosting company; however, the added functionality comes with a higher price tag.

Virtual dedicated hosting: A blend of virtual and dedicated hosting, in these plans, a buyer is offered a partition of the server for his/her use. So while a website may not have access to all the resources of the server with this plan, it sure is next best thing.

Collocated hosting: This option is the ultimate in flexibility and involves buying and setting up a server on the premises of the web host.

Buying web hosting plans

Most first time website owners find it harrowing to make sense of the innumerable options offered by the staggering number of web hosting service providers. If you find yourself baffled by the sheer number of choices, here are the top 5 criteria that you need to consider when buying a hosting package.

The right plan: The first thing to do would be to choose between shared and dedicated hosting.  Now, it’s crucial to understand that unless you intend to run a complex and dynamic site, you should be able to get by with a virtual hosting plan. In fact, 95% of the businesses use shared hosting, so it’s a very popular choice.

The disk space: If you go with a shared plan, it is imperative to anticipate the amount of disk space that you are going to need. Always buy more than your maximum requirement at the moment and inquire about how much it will cost to rent more.

Bandwidth: The next factor to consider is the amount of bandwidth that you will need. There is a very simple formula to asses this requirement; simply multiply the average number of visitors per month by average page size and the average number of pages downloaded by each user. Once again, it makes sense to err on the side of caution here by choosing a plan that offers 2 or 3 times more bandwidth than your maximum anticipated requirement.

The operating system: Although the operating system that the site runs on will be of little consequence to people who intend to run a static site, if you ever want to include server side activity, it would be prudent to consider this factor. Your choices include Microsoft Windows, LINUX (Unix), other UNIX systems and Free BSD Apple Serve.

 Finally consider the pricing of the plan; a small website can easily be hosted for no more than $10 a month. In fact, a lot of hosting providers may slash the rate to $6 to $8 if you buy an annual pack from them.

Remember that the key to choosing the right hosting plan lies in gauging your requirements accurately. The package you choose should not only be cost effective but also offer all the support and features you will need to keep your website up and running.

Social media marketing 2

10 Quick Tips to improve SEO

While search engine optimization yields the most poignant results when incorporated into a site from the ground up, it can also increase the ranking and popularity of an existing site. The implementation of most SEO techniques calls for a significant investment of time. However, if you are interested in a quick boost, here are 10 quick tips to improve the search engine optimization of your website.

Change those titles:  What you need is a pertinent title that will entice your readers; the title of your page is possibly the most important SEO element, so it is crucial to ensure that it matches the content of your page and sis no longer than 10 words.

Choose the right keywords: Keywords can make or break the chance of your site, so choose prudently. Realistically, keywords that work the best are two or four phrases which net goers are likely to use when searching for information on your niche. With Google’s Panda and Penguin updates out, you will also need to keep a close eye on the keyword density. Remember to always write for your audience and not for the search engine bots, and you should be fine.

Go detailed with your meta tags: Meta tags are responsible for drawing visitors to your site, so ensure that you offer them an overview of the content on the page. If you omit the meta descriptions tag, the search engine will just pick a random part of the page which may not do justice to the information that your content offers.

Header tags:  Choosing the right header tags (from h1 to h6) can add to the weight of your content. Ideally, you should have one h1 tag on the page followed by two h2 tags, three h3 tags and so on. The headlines will lend aesthetic appeal to your page and will also appeal to search engine spiders.

Fresh content: Search engines are particularly partial to sites that regularly offer fresh content. In fact, adding a few new and informative articles to your site every week or ten days can make a huge difference to your ranking.

Regular navigation structure: While you can let your creative spirit sore when designing your website, when it comes to the navigation structure it is best to stick to the standard form. This will not only help your visitors to better utilize the sites resources but also a consistent navigation structure will sit well with the Search engines. A web page should never have more than 9 links with the least important ones pushed to the bottom of the page.

Alt tags for images: Search engine bots cannot read images, so the only way to get all those neat pictures indexed is through the use of alt tags. These alt texts do more than just assist the search bots; they also provide the sole reference that the reader has about the images in case the picture fails to load. So, use sensible and descriptive tags like “ This is an image of Martha Stewart Cooking Pasta”

A bit of page sculpting can go a long way: Page sculpting entails the sensible use of “nofollow” to prevent the page rank from taking a hit when linking off the website. Through page sculpting, you can legally and effectively guide the search engine crawlers to the most relevant and prominent parts of your site by using no follow on links to unimportant pages like privacy policy, contract etc.

Back linking your way to the top rank:  A large number of links can without a doubt work in favor of your site but if you enlist the help of link farms, you will be penalized by the Big G faster than you thought possible. So, paying for links and exchanging links with irrelevant sites should be a strict no-no in your SEO books.

Your website has to perform well: Page loading time has also been incorporated in Google’s search algorithm as one of the criteria that will have a bearing on the SERPs rank of a site. So go for lean web designing and do away with bulky graphics and images that slow your site down.