Images not Shown in Internet Explorer

Sometimes, the photos, images, pictures or graphics do not show or display in a website in Internet Explorer (“IE”) browser or an email in MS Outlook Express. Instead, where the pictures ought to be, there is a Red X or a placeholder.

Several factors could have caused this problem of images not being displayed in IE. In this Help guide, we'll look at these reasons and the solutions to show images in IE. Some of the possible causes may only be resolved by the webmaster. If you are an owner of a Blog or a webmaster, these tips might be useful to note when you are uploading images onto your Blog or webpage.

1. Image type not supported by IE

When you see a red X or placeholder, right-click on it to view the “Properties” of the image. Look at the image “Type” and “Address (URL”). IE supports images with .art, .avi, .bmp, .emf, .gif, .jpeg, .jpg, .mov, .mpeg, .mpg, .png, .wmf, and .xbm extensions. As a webmaster, if you have to put images on your website, try to stick to the usual image formats or have alternative images in these formats.

2. “Show Pictures” option in IE not selected

If you are using IE 7, under Tools -> Internet Options -> Advanced tab, there is an option called “Show pictures” under the “Multimedia” heading. Select this option and press OK to save the change. In other IE versions, the option may fall under a different heading.

3. Scripts disabled in IE

Webmasters may use Active scripts, Scriptlets, Java applet, ActiveX control, or cookies to display the images on their sites. If the security setting in IE browser is set to “High”, these features may be blocked. To enable them, go to Tools -> Internet Options -> Security tab. View the “Internet” zone and under “Security level for this zone” change it to “Medium” or “Medium-high”. You can also reset the zone to “Default” level. Likewise, under Tools -> Internet Options -> Privacy tab where you define the cookie settings, you may set it to “Default” level. Click OK to save.

4. Scripts disabled by Firewall

Other than IE, the configurations in your Firewall program (Norton Personal Firewall, Zonealarm, McAfee, BitDefender, etc.) may have disabled some of these scripts. View the help file of the program you are using and follow their instructions to enable some of these scripts. For this reason, webmasters should avoid using too many scripts for the main contents of the sites. Consider adding text using 5. Web bugs

Be careful when you are configuring the above settings. The web pages you view or emails you receive may sometimes contain hidden web bugs. These are usually small little graphics 1px by 1px that track user statistics like location, usage, pages visited, or whether an email has been read. This is even used in organizations and companies to find out how many times a message is forwarded or read by the staff. They do not pose major threats, but there are those who do not like this infringement of privacy. Take a stand and configure your security and privacy settings accordingly.

6. Images blocked in Outlook Express

We touch briefly on the problem of images not displayed in Outlook Express email program. When you are in Outlook Express, go to Tools -> Options -> Security and you'll see a “Download Images” configuration. If you want to view images in your email, do not tick the “Block images and other external content in HTML e-mail” option. Click OK and save the change. You should now be able to view images in Outlook and not see the red X symbol.

7. Images not sent in Outlook Express

Also, if you are sending email with images, you could have disabled these images in the configuration. Those receiving your email will only see the red X or placeholders rather than the images. The solution to this is to go to your Outlook Express Tools -> Options -> Send tab. The “Mail Sending Format” should be “HTML” and not “Plain Text”. Click the “HTML Settings” button and check the box next to “Send pictures with messages.” Click OK to save.

8. Character Set not recognized by IE

This sounds rather technical. In layman terms, the browser interprets the code page or encoding of the web page. If your IE browser does not recognize this character set, or if a file in your browser software is corrupted or missing, the images may not be displayed when viewing the web page. For instance, the web page may be in a foreign language. If so, see that this language has been added to the browser settings. In IE, go to Tools -> Internet Options -> General. Under “Appearance” there is a “Languages” button. (In other versions of IE, the Language option may be under a different heading.) Add the languages that you would use to read the web page and click OK to save. If you are still unable to view the page, it is possible that a file or registry key is corrupted or missing. To resolve this, you may follow the Microsoft Help guide on your desktop to restore or repair your Windows software.

9. Image Server is down

Since free blogging platforms including Blogger.com have limits on the amount of storage space taken up by the Blog photos, images and graphics, it is worth considering hosting these images on an external server and linking to them from your Blog. We wrote about using free hosts like Google Page Creator and Google Groups. These too have limits on space and bandwidth. There is a comprehensive list of free Image Hosts and File Hosting Services in our article on Manage Blogger Image Storage Space which may provide a bigger storage space. All servers, even Blogger.com, can have downtimes. When these image hosts are busy, undergoing maintenance, temporarily suspended, offline, or when the download bandwidth has been exceeded, the images linked to the Blog will not be displayed. The problem could be temporary, and should you need to see these images on a particular Blog, revisit the Blog an hour or so later.

10. Image links are broken or dead

Since the images are hosted on another platform and linked, there could be instances when the webmasters typed a wrong URL, placed the " at the wrong places or omitted the closing image tags. The image HTML code and attributes are discussed in Hyperlinks and Image Links. The image links could be broken or dead when webmasters delete the images from the server or switch image servers without updating the image links. It is also possible that the image is not hotlinked. By this we mean that when the image is stored on the image server, the link given is not a direct link to the image, but a page containing the image and other contents. Hotlinking takes up bandwidth and some image servers do not provide that service. If such URL is used in the image HTML code, the image will not show.

11. Cache not cleared

The Browser cache stores web page content of the sites you have visited on your hard disk. These are the Temporary Internet Files which supposedly speed up the page download when you revisit a site since some of the contents are already stored. However, these files can comprise cookies and JavaScripts too. Make it a habit to clear the cache regularly to remove these files. In IE, go to Tools -> Internet Options -> General and under “Browsing history” click “Delete” button. Delete all the Files and offline content. These are temporary files that can be removed. If you are unable to view images, sometimes deleting these Temporary Internet Files may solve the problem.

How to make your Blog Private and Unsearchable

Many people write blogs to share their thoughts with everybody and anybody. However, you may also use your Blog as an online diary, penning very personal and private thoughts. Like all diaries, you can either allow a select few persons to view the Blog or allow no one but yourself the right to view it. Also, you may not want it to be indexed by search engines, so that people searching for it on the net will not find it in the search results.

This article lets you know how to create private Blogs. If your intentions are the exact opposite, and you want to publicize your Blog to the whole world, follow our other guides to submit your Blog to Blog Directories, Google, Yahoo and Feed Directories.

First the caveat. These guidelines will only show you how to make your Blogger blog as private as you can get. As we shall explain, there is no guarantee that search engine spiders will never find your Blog because any site that is available on the net will be crawled by search engines. What we can do is to minimize that possibility.

Note that these steps are to be taken BEFORE you create the blog. If you already have an existing Blog, it has in all likelihood been indexed. These tips will at best prevent future contents from being seen.

Title and Blog URL

Do not want people to associate that Blog to you? When you create a new Blog, select a Blog URL and Title carefully; choose words that have no bearing or relation to you or what you do. After the Blog is created, DO NOT post. Post only after you have completed the following steps.

Permission

We start with the most crucial and essential step. Blogger has made it easy for you to create private Blogs. When you are logged in, go to Settings -> Permissions. You can restrict your Blog Readers to only people you choose or only the blog authors.

People who enter the Blog URL into their browsers can still see the Blog Title but will be prompted to enter their Google account particulars and password. If they are not given the rights to view the Blog, a message will be shown: “It doesn't look like you have been invited to read this blog. If you think this is a mistake, you might want to contact the blog author and request an invitation.”

While the contents cannot be seen, people do know that this Blog URL with that Blog Title exist and it is a private blog. As we had mentioned, if you don't want anybody to know this Blog is yours, it is important to have a Blog URL and Title that are not obviously connected to you.

Listing on Blogger.com

These are the further steps to take, just to be sure. Under Settings -> Basic, you can see a “Add your Blog to our listings?” option. Choose “No”. Click “Save Settings” at the bottom. This will do three things –

i) Your Blog will not appear when people search Blogger.com.

ii) This Blog will not be shown in the Blog List on your Profle page.

iii) The Blogger homepage showcases a list of recently updated blogs but this Blog will not be shown.

Ping Setting

Go to Settings -> Publishing and under the “Send Ping” option, choose “No”. Save the Setting. Whenever a Blog is updated, Google will notify some of the tracking services of the updates. If your Blog is private, there is no reason why these services ought to know of your Blog updates.

Site Feed

Your Blog contents can be read through your Site's Atom and RSS Feeds. People can catch up on news and articles by subscribing to these Feeds and viewing the material using their Feed readers. If you do not want your contents to be read or syndicated, go to Settings -> Site Feed and to the question “Allow Blog Feed?” select “None” and click “Save Settings”.

Profile

We thought we should cover this for completeness. In the top right corner of your Dashboard, you can go to the “Edit Profile” page. Under “Show my blogs”, if you see a blog that you do not want people to know about, remove it from the listing. People who view your Profile will not know about the Blog. You can also choose not to share information about your Profile by not ticking the box next to “Share my profile”.

External Links

The steps outlined above are within your control but this one is not. It is also the reason why we said we can only minimize but not eliminate the possibility that people know of your Blog. Anybody can link to your Blog URL since it is a valid URL. If your friends happen to know about your Blog and write a post mentioning your Blog or linking to your Blog, there will be an external link to your Blog. Whatever they write about it will be public knowledge. Hence, to have an online diary that only you know about, remember that a secret shared by two persons is no longer a secret.

Traffic Exchange

After doing up nice websites with interesting contents, the webmasters' dilemma is usually one of attracting visitors to their sites. Having more visitors is gratifying; it is a reward that website owners deserve for putting time and effort into their sites.

Traffic exchange networks were designed to promote visitor traffic to websites or blogs. The idea is simple – members of the network surf each other's sites. Upon setting up an account with a traffic exchange program, you will be entitled to earn 'credits' by manually surfing other members' sites. Depending on the program, you may have anything between 0.5 to 1.0 credit for every site you visit. There is a timer at the top or bottom frame of the page to compel you to remain at the site for a period of time. This can range between 10 to 30 seconds. You are then required to click one of the images to correspond with the given image in order to proceed to the next random site. This is to prevent autosurfing hacks that may cheat the system.

With the 'credits' you earn, you can assign them to your blogs. For every visitor you get to your blog, 1 credit will be deducted until all your 'credits' are spent. In a nutshell, the more blogs you visit, the more visitors you get to your blogs.

Alas, no program is perfect. While the concept of traffic exchange sounds good, there are the negative aspects that you should consider as well. I'll summarize the good and bad points of traffic exchange.

Pros of traffic exchange

1. The programs are free, that is if you are not buying the 'credits' but earning them.

2. For some programs, you can specify the category of blogs you would like to view or the sort of visitors you would like to have. The traffic is therefore targeted.

3. While viewing other member blogs, you may come across a couple of interesting ones that you can re-visit or learn from.

4. Since the programs work well only if they have a wide network of members, the administrators often conduct mini contests and games to interest the members. You may find some fun in these communities.

Cons of traffic exchange

1. The biggest negative point is that such traffic exchanges run counter to many advertising programs, especially those that pay you based on impressions you get to your site. A notable one is Google AdSense. If your site's traffic is mainly through traffic exchanges, be prepared to receive reminders like this from the Google administrator:-

“It has come to our attention that invalid clicks or impressions have been generated on the Google ads on your site(s) through users of third-party programs paid or provided with other incentives to visit your site. Such programs may include, but are not limited to auto-surf, pay-to-surf, pay-to-read, or pay-to-click sites.”

2. A number of the sites that register with traffic exchanges are new sites and are not worth the time reading. Many of the established ones that have a good following of readers do not need such traffic exchange programs to boost their traffic.

3. After surfing for a while, you would also find yourself looking at the same sites over and over again, simply because only a fraction of the members are active users. It may be boring in that sense.

4. While I make it a point to read some sites, I believe that many people don't. They may be doing their homework or watching television, and mindlessly clicking the image after every 30 seconds or so. You may be getting more visitors but these are not the people who appreciate your blog contents.

Blog Traffic Exchange sites

If you want to have a go at it, here are the ones I think you can consider.

Blogmad

This has a 1:1 ratio, which means that for every site you visit, someone will visit yours. The surf timer is 25 seconds and the site layout, ideas, and image icons (with the two big eyes) are pretty nice.

Blog Explosion

The surf ratio is 2:1, i.e. for every two blogs you visit, one person will visit yours. The saving grace is that they have about close to 50,000 blogs registered, although I have an inkling that only a small percentage of these are active. They do run contests like Battle of the Blogs which add to the fun of using their service.

Blog Soldiers

Another 2:1 ratio traffic exchange. Nothing fanciful about the site, and the administrators should do more work to build up their membership base.

Blog Advance

Their surf ratio of 1:1 sounds attractive, and like a few other programs, they throw in free bonus points when you log in or surf. What I didn't like was their lack of response. I raised a technical problem concerning adding a site and despite 2 messages, they have not replied. Such a contradiction to their statement that “at Blog Advance your voice doesn't fall on deaf ears.” Also, I received error messages on a few occasions despite having clicked the correct surfbar images and was unable to proceed to subsequent blogs. I guess there are unresolved bugs in the coding of their program. (Update: This service is no longer available and link is therefore removed.)

EasyHits4U

This is another 1:1 traffic exchange site that seems to have more commercial sites registered with them than blogs. It has a 30-second timer giving viewers a lot of time to view the blogs. The thing that stands out is that they pay you cash for active surfing ($0.50 for 1000 sites viewed)

TrafficG

This is not blog specific, and you will see a number of non-blog websites. The ratio of 1:1 is good, and the longer surf time of 30 seconds means that you might get more quality traffic, people who browse your blog contents.


Linkreferral

I happened to come across this site last week. Essentially, when you register your blog with them, other members can review your site, give a rating and post comments. The more sites you visit or review, the higher your blog rank will be, and the more likely that your blog will be seen by others. Unlike the other programs, you will expect visitors to go through what you write in order to review your blog.

SEO Tools

After you have submitted your website's data to all the search engines and directories, you should be able to find your site somewhere on the internet. If you do a keyword search on your website's topic, you may find many other listings in the search results ahead of yours. These are the sites which have better page ranks and are optimized for the search engines. You can optimize your blog or website too.

To attract business, many SEO sites have put up some of their SEO tools for free. Commercial sites which are serious in wanting to climb up the search ranking will pay the SEO consultants for more value-added services. If you are like us, blogging out of fun and passion, it might be better to use only the free services for a start.

Suggested SEO Tools

Many of the SEO webmaster sites have similar free tools and services. You can try any of them, though the one that we like is iWebTool. In fact, they have a link exchange program which you may want to check out. Among the SEO Tools, the ones I find useful in all these sites are.

a. Backlink Checker – A list of sites that have linked to your blog or website. PageRank is largely determined by the number and quality of links to your site. Monitor this and you can probably guess what your PageRank ought to be.

b. Broken Link Checker – A look at which of the links in your site are pointing to incorrect or non-existent URLs. Having too many outdated and broken links on your web page may irritate not only the readers but the search spiders. Do this housekeeping once in a while to remove the bad links.

c. Google PageRank Checker – The Google PageRank of your site. You can also download Mozilla Firefox with Google Toolbar to view the Google PageRanks of all the sites that you visit.

d. Google PageRank Prediction – A future Google PageRank prediction. If you are dying to know, these sites can give you a fair estimate of your future PageRank.

e. HTML Optimizer – A clean up of your HTML source code. Be careful when you apply the suggested changes though. Always good to backup the template before making any modification.

f. Index Checker – Number of pages of your website that are indexed by search engines. If pages are missing from the index, try submitting your sitemap again.

g. Keyword Density Checker – The keyword distribution in your webpage. This will by and large influence the sort of Ads that AdSense will place on your site.

h. Keyword Suggestor – Suggested popular keywords for your website. Bear in mind these keywords when writing or editing your posts.

i. Meta-tags Generator – Configuration of website's meta-tags. Tailor a suitable description and set of keywords to be inserted into the template.

j. Reciprocal Link Checker – A check to see if the partners in your blogrolls or link exchange are linking to you.

k. Spider Simulator – The page contents as seen by a search engine spider. Some may give you a breakdown of the commonly used keywords in your site.

l. Traffic Graphs – A comparison of your site's and other competitor sites' traffic history graphs in Alexa.

m. Website Speed Test – Speed of website page load. If you find the pageload time a little long, take some measures to have a Faster Web Page Load Time.

Basic Tools

Should you want to have a quick look at what some of the SEO tools are about, we have created a few basic search tools over here at our Tips for New Bloggers site.