Welcome to makedonikajournal.org

Communication Key to a Better Work Environment Everyone knows the story of A Christmas Carole. On Christmas Eve, poor Bob Cratchit, who is working late again, spends his day working up the courage to ask his boss, Mr. Scrooge, if he can have Christmas Day off from work to spend with his family. When he finally does get up the nerve to ask, Mr. Scrooge lets forth a tirade over lazy people using Christmas as an excuse to have a day a off from work. This fictional story unfortunately rings true for a lot of people who have to work up the courage to ask for things from their employers. An employee who has to feel about their employer the way Bob Cratchit felt about Mr. Scrooge is not a very happy and productive employee. To get the most of out of your workers, you have to create a much more hospitable working environment. To create a better working environment, keeping the lines of communication open is absolutely crucial. How does communication work in your office? Do you get the impression that everyone is walking around on eggshells around you? While this kind of fear from your employees may be good for your ego in some senses, it is really bad for your business. When your employees don’t feel like they can talk to you, you will lose control over what is going on with your business. You may be the boss, but your employees are the ones who are actually on the front lines. To know what is really going on out there, you need your employees to communicate honestly with you. If they feel that you are unapproachable, they will hide problems and concerns from you, and you won’t be able to act to fix them. You can’t expect to run your business with half of the information about what is actually going on, and so your business will suffer for your “mean boss” routine. There are still other problems with creating an office environment in which your employees feel like you are unapproachable. In general, there will be a dark cloud over the office when you are around. The stress will keep employee morale low, and employees with low morale are employees with low productivity. Besides, who wants to work hard for someone they cannot approach or who doesn’t show they any respect? Shutting down those lines of communication will definitely affect your bottom line as employees “phone it in” because they don’t feel invested in making your business a success. If you want a better working environment, you have to improve the lines of communication. If there has been a communication breakdown in the past, take the time to address it with your staff. If you staff is small, talk to them each one on one, letting them know that your door is always open and that you want more regular communication with them. If you have a larger staff, schedule a meeting to address the issue. Weekly office meetings are a great way to keep communication channels open and swap ideas in the office environment. If weekly meetings are not feasible, find some way of touching base with your staff on a regular basis, either through weekly emails or a weekly newsletter. Also, you should encourage your staff to communicate with each other. Sharing information among the staff is a great way to generate fresh ideas and fresh approaches to problems. If your office is suffering from a communication problem, make nipping it in the bud a priority. The pay off will be more productive workers and a whole lot less stress. Who knew work could actually be a pleasant place to be?

You Can Find Free Deals and Discounts at Slick Deals Where can you go when you want to find the best deals on the net? Where can you turn to when you need quality advice before making a major purchase? How can you make sure that you never pay too much for something again? This is where slickdeals.net comes in. Slick Deals is a great website for finding what you are looking for, and making sure that you never pay too much again. Tips and Hints for Searching on Slick Deals Slick Deals is home to an advanced search engine that allows you to compare the prices of different items, both small and big ticket, and compare prices. This website allows you to make sure that you can always find the lowest price and never overpay again. Here are some hints and tips for searching for the best deals on Slick Deals. First, if at all possible, make sure that you have the SKU number on the item you are searching for on hand. Using the SKU number allows you to search for the right item at all times. The SKU number will vary in length and number-letter combination, depending on the kind of object or item you are shopping for. Avoid using parentheses when you are searching for something. Avoid using negation modifiers that will potentially exclude items from your search. You should also avoid hyphens in your search. This will tend to filter out more potential search hits, rather than pull up more potential choices. For the Latest Deals on Slick Deals, Check the Front Page When you are looking for the latest deals on Slick Deals, you will want to make sure that you check the front page. The default front page is also home to the newest deals. By defaults, you will only see deal titles when you first log onto the Slick Deals website. All of the deals on this front page are color-coded. You will find that ongoing deals are displayed in a bold blue tone. Expired deals are displayed in a gray color. To find out more about these front-page deals, simply click on the title. Then the deal will expand and you will be able to read more about the deal. Once you have read all the information you want, simply click on the title once again to close the window. To find out more about deals of the whole day, click on the day bar. When you click on the day bar, all the deals of the day will expand so you can read the details. Simply click the day bar once more to close the deals. How to Share Deals with Friends The Slick Deals website makes it easy for you to share deals with other interested parties. If you would like to share a deal that you find on Slick Deals, simply choose one of the following three methods. You can share a great deal with a friend by selecting the 'Tell a Friend' button that is available for each deal. Clicking on this link allows you to send a friend an email, informing them about the deal on Slick Deals. Another easy way to contact a friend or potentially interested friend is to send them an instant message using AOL Instant Messenger. Simply select the 'AIM' button for this option. Another easy way to send a copy of the deal to a friend is to send them a permalink using another form of communications. You can also leave your own opinion or review of the deal by selecting the Comments link. Slick Deals relies on user-driven content to establish a vibrant and informative website geared directly for consumers.

Web Hosting - Why Backups Are Essential One thing most web site owners have little time for is... anything! Anything other than focusing on their site content and the business or service it supports and the information it provides, that is. That means that administration often suffers, as it frequently must. There's only so much time in the day. But the one thing that you should never let slide are backups. They are like insurance. You rarely need it (you hope), but when you do you need it very badly. Performing regular backups - and testing them - doesn't have to be a nightmare. A little bit of forethought and effort and they can be automated to a high degree. And, they should be tested from time to time. Even when a backup appears to have gone without a hitch, the only way to know whether it's of any value is to attempt to restore the information. If it can't be restored, the backup is worthless. Even when the web hosting company provides the service, there is still some planning involved for the site owner. Hosting companies often rely on one or both of two methods. They backup everything (called a full backup), then backup anything which has changed since the last full backup (called an incremental backup). Of special interest are any configuration files that have been tailored. If you've modified the default installation of a software package, you want to be able to recapture or reproduce those changes without starting from scratch. Network configuration files, modifications to basic HTML files, CSS style sheets and others fall into the same category. If you have XML files, databases, spreadsheets or other files that carry product or subscriber information - about items purchased, for example, or people who signed up for a newsletter - those should get special attention, too. That's the lifeblood of your business or service. Lose them and you must start over. That can break your site permanently. It should go without saying that all HTML and related web site files that comprise visible pages should be backed up regularly. It isn't necessary to record every trivial change, but you can tailor backup software to exclude files or folders. Usually they're so small it isn't worth the trouble. But in some cases those small changes can add up in scenarios where there are many thousands of them. Here again, the backups are worthless if they can't be used. Even if the hosting company charges for doing so, it's worthwhile to test once or twice a year at least to ensure the data can be restored. That's especially true of database backups, which often involve special software and routines. Database files have a special structure and the information is related in certain ways that require backups be done differently. Developing a backup strategy can be straightforward. Start simply and review your plan from time to time, modifying it as your site changes and grows. But don't neglect the subject entirely. The day will come when a hard drive fails, or you get hacked or attacked by a virus, or you accidentally delete something important. When that day comes, the few minutes or hours you spent developing and executing a backup plan will have saved you days or weeks of effort.