How to Get Rid of Pimples Fast

Pimples are a normal skin condition that affect many people. Pimples are an inflammation of the skin in which the sebaceous glands (oil glands) become infected with bacteria, swell up, and fill with pus.

Excess sebum secretion by the oil glands is the primary cause behind this problem. Pimples generally occur on the face, neck, back and shoulders. Though not a critical condition, pimples can make a person feel miserable due to their appearance.
There are a lot of lotions and medicines on the market to treat pimples but they can take time. Many natural methods are effective in treating pimples within a very short time period.

Here are the top 10 ways to get rid of pimples fast.

1. Ice

Ice can be used to quickly reduce the redness, swelling and inflammation of pimples. It helps in improving blood circulation to the affected area, and in tightening the skin pores and removing dirt and oil accumulated on the skin. You can use ice cubes or crushed ice, whichever is convenient.

Use this Ice Remedy to Remove Your Pimples

1. Wrap the ice in a piece of cloth and hold it on the affected skin area for a few seconds.
2. Wait a few minutes and repeat the process.

[Related: Top 3 Face Masks for Acne (Pimples)]

2. Lemon

Another quick way to get rid of pimples is the use of lemon juice, which is rich in vitamin C. Lemon juice helps pimples dry up faster. Be sure to use fresh lemon juice and not bottled juice, which has preservatives. There are a couple of ways to apply this remedy.

• Dip a clean cotton swab in fresh lemon juice and apply it to the pimples before going to bed.
• You can also mix one tablespoon of lemon juice with one teaspoon of cinnamon powder and put it on the pimples overnight. In the morning, wash the skin well with lukewarm water. However, this particular remedy is not suitable for those with sensitive skin.

3. Tea Tree Oil

Tea tree oil is excellent for treating acne and pimples. It has antibacterial properties that help fight the bacteria that cause these skin problems.
Plus, its soothing properties help reduce the redness and inflammation of pimples. It also helps dry out blackheads and whiteheads.

• Just dip a cotton ball in tea tree essential oil and dab it on the affected area. Rinse your face after 15 to 20 minutes.
• Another option is to mix a few drops of tea tree oil in 1 tablespoon of aloe vera gel. Apply it on your pimples and blemishes, leave it on for 20 minutes and then rinse it off.

Note: Steer clear of tea tree oil if you have sensitive skin.

4. Toothpaste

The toothpaste that you use every morning to clean your teeth also can be used to treat pimples quickly. It is most effective when used following the ice remedy. You must use white toothpaste; avoid using gel toothpaste.

1. Apply some white toothpaste over the affected skin area before going to bed.
2. In the morning, wash your face with water and you will see a significant improvement in the swelling.

If you wish, you can repeat the process in the daytime also. Just make sure the toothpaste remains on the pimples for at least half an hour.

5. Steam

Steaming is wonderful for your skin at any time, but particularly when you have pimples. The steam will open your pores and allow your skin to breathe. This helps get rid of oils, dirt and bacteria trapped in the pores that can cause infection or inflammation.

1. Fill a large container with hot water and allow the steam to come in contact with your face for a few minutes.
2. Rinse your face with lukewarm water and, after drying, apply an oil-free moisturizer.

6. Garlic

Garlic is an antiviral, antifungal, antiseptic and antioxidant agent that can help in the fast treatment of pimples. The sulfur in garlic also promotes quick healing of pimples.

1. Cut a fresh garlic clove into two pieces.
2. Rub the garlic on the pimples and leave it for five minutes before washing the skin with lukewarm water.
3. Repeat the treatment several times a day.

Eating one raw garlic clove daily can also help purify your blood. But do not to eat too much raw garlic as it can upset the stomach.

7. Baking Soda

Baking soda is another effective home remedy to get rid of pimples because it helps exfoliate the skin to remove excess oil, dirt and dead skin cells.

1. Make a thick paste by mixing one teaspoon of baking soda with some water or lemon juice.
2. Wash your skin well, leaving it slightly damp. Apply the paste on the affected areas and allow it to dry for a few minutes. Never keep baking soda on your skin for longer than a few minutes as it can cause dryness or irritation.
3. Wash your face with warm water.
4. Repeat the process twice a day for quick results.

8. Honey

Honey is a source of natural antibiotics that can speed up the healing process, as well as help prevent infections.

1. Dip a clean cotton swab in honey, put it directly on the affected area and leave it on for half an hour.
2. Wash the skin well with lukewarm water.
3. Do this a few times a day.

Another option is to mix honey and cinnamon together to make a paste and applying it over the pimples before going to bed. In the morning, there will be less inflammation or swelling. Wash the skin well with cold water.

9. Cucumber

Cucumber is a rich source of potassium and vitamins such as A, C and E. It also has a cooling and soothing effect on the skin.

1. Cut one or two fresh cucumbers into pieces and soak them in water for about an hour. The nutrients, such as vitamin A, potassium and chlorophyll will transfer to the water.
2. Strain the water and drink it, or use the water to wash your face.

You can also make a face mask by grinding one cucumber. Apply the mask on your face and allow it to dry for 15 minutes. Wash your skin with warm water. This will help clean dirt and bacteria from your pores.

10. Papaya

Papaya fruit has a number of properties that help in the treatment of pimples. It is a good source of the antioxidant vitamin A, and it has enzymes that help reduce inflammation and make your skin soft and smooth.

• Crush raw papaya pieces to extract its juice and apply it over the pimples. Leave it on for 10 to 15 minutes before rinsing it off.
• To make a exfoliating face mask, mash some papaya pieces and add a little honey. Apply this paste on your face and massage gently. Leave it on until it dries completely and then rinse it off.

20 Homemade Face Mask For Fair And Glowing Skin | Home Remedies For Getting Fair Skin Naturally At Home

Homemade face mask can be made by using basic integrants found around in the house. Homemade face masks are cheaper and have no side effects. There are many home made remedies for getting fair skin naturally at home,which can found easily around you with the help of which you can made face mask and still homemade face mask yield wonderful results. Following are some face masks that can be used for fair and glowing skin.

Almond face mask for fair and glowing skin
This homemade face mask of almonds can do wonders with the colour of your skin. Use daily for a fortnight and see the result yourself. Better than any skin care product in the market. I have tried it and you can see the result the very first day.
Ingredients:
• 3-4 Almonds
• Milk to soak the Almonds.
Preparation:
In the morning soak 3 or four almonds(according to the area on which to be applied may be used for other parts of the body as well) in the milk. At night mash these almonds in the milk you can use some more milk. Mash it to form very fine paste. Apply to the face. Leave for whole night. In the morning wash face with cold water. With this face mask your skin becomes lighter as well as glowing. This homemade remedy for getting fair and glowing skin also leaves your skin smooth and silky.
For dry skin, you can use daily. For oily skin use twice in the week.

Cucumber and lime juice face mask
Cucumber also has great skin lightning effect. It helps in healing the sunburn too. Combined with limejuice is best skin lightning face pack for oily skin
Ingredients:
• One tablespoon cucumber juice
• One teaspoon lime juice
• One teaspoon turmeric
• One teaspoon glycerine (for dry skin)
Preparation:
Mix all the ingredients and apply on your face can be applied under and around eyes also. Apply with the help of cotton balls. Leave it for 15 minutes. Wash with cold water .For best results use this face mask daily for a week. Best for oily skin. For dry skin add some glycerine .

Gram flour face pack for fair and glowing skin
Ingredients:
• One tablespoon Gram flour(Besan)
• One teaspoon lime juice
• One teaspoon turmeric
• Rose water for mixing
Preparation:
Mix all the ingredients and make a paste. Apply on your face . Leave it till dry. Wash with cold water . This homemade face mask can be used on all skin types. This home made remedy gives very good result for naturally fair and glowing skin. Also leaves the skin smooth and silky.

Banana face mask for glowing skin
Ingredients:
• Half a banana mashed
• One egg white
• One tablespoon curd
Preparation:
Mash the banana mix well the egg white and curd in it. Apply on face. Wash after fifteen minutes. Banana is best for glowing skin. It gives the effect of a parlour facial. Try it and you don’t have to go to parlour for a glow on your face.
Camomile tea face mask for fair skin
Ingredients:
•Camomile tea
•oatmeal powder 1tblsp
•Honey 2 tblsp
•Almond oil 2 drops
Preparation:
Make a mixtuer of chamomile tea and oatmeal in equal proportions (1/4 cup), 2 drops of almond oil and 2 tsp of honey. Use this face mask for getting fair and glowing skin naturally for 10-15 minutes.
Face mask for fair and glowing skin instantly
Ingredients:
•Honey 2 tblsp
•Lemon juice 2 tblsp
Preparation:
Mix both the integredients and apply on your face for about half an hour. Wash your face with water and find the home remedy for getting fair and glowing skin naturally at home instantly.
Cucumber and watermelon face mask for fair and glowing skin
Ingredients:
•Cucumber juice 2 tblsp
•Watermelon juice 2 tblsp
•Yogurt 1 tsp
•Milk Powder 1 tsp
Preparation:
Mix all the integredients and apply on your face for about fifteen minutes. watermelon helps in clearing the skin. It removes blemishes and act as toner. Cucumber juice is well known for its skin lightning effect. Yogurt softens and tightens the skin.Milk powder act as a binding agent as well as it helps in cleanising the skin and lightening the skin tone. This is a wonder full face mask for fair and glowing skin. You must try it and see its wonderful effects of this home remedy for getting fair and glowing skin naturally at home.
Bread crums face mask for fair and glowing skin
Ingredients:
•Bread crums
•Malai (milk cream)
Preparation:
Mix bread crums and malai and keep it for 2 minutes, so that bread creums gets soften. Apply this face mask for 15 minutes and get a fair and glowing skin. Buttermilk face mask for fair and glowing skin
Ingredients:
•Butter milk 1 cup
•Flower blossoms 3 tblsp
Preparation:
Add the flower blossoms in butter milk and heat it for 30 minutes on low heat. After that allow the mixture to cool down. Apply this face mask on face. It helps in cleansing the pores and also gives you fair and glowing skin.
Chiroinji(sunflower seeds face mask for fair and glowing skin
Ingredients:
•Chirongi seeds 3 tblsp
•Milk to soak
Preparation:
Soak the chirongi(sunflower seeds) in milk overnight. Grind it in the morning and mix a few strands of saffron in it. Apply this face mask daily. This face mask is excellent for making darker skin fairer. If used for a long time it makes very dark complexion light also.
Milk face mask for getting fair and glowing skin at home
Ingredients:
•Milk 3 tblsp
•Lemon Juice 1 tblsp
•Tumeric( a pinch off)
Preparation:
Make the paste of all the above ingredients. Apply on the face till and allow to dry. Wash with cold water. This home remedy is very effective for getting fair and glowing skin naturally at home.
Oatmeal face mask for getting fair and glowing skin at home
Ingredients:
•Oatmeal 2 tblsp
•Tomato juice 1 tblsp
•Yogurt 2 tblsp
Preparation:
Prepare the paste of oatmeal ,tomato juice and yogurt or curd. Apply on your face for 20 minutes. After that wash with cold water. It will scrubs away the dead skin and all the dirt from your face. This face pack will also help you to get fair skin.

for getting fair and glowing skin at home
Ingredients:
•Potato Juice
•Lemon juice
Preparation:
Mix both the juices in equal quantity. Apply on your body parts that are exposed to the sun . Wait till 15 minutes and wash with water. This home remedy for fair skin will lighten the colour of your sun tanned skin. Both ingredients have proven to be very good skin lightening agents.
Milk cream and Saffrons face mask for getting fair and glowing skin
Ingredients:
•Milk Cream 2tblsp
•Saffron
Preparation:
Mix Saffron in milk cream and leave it overnight. In the morning blend the milk cream with fingers and apply on the face. The above home remedy will lighten the skin tone and give a very healthy glow to your skin naturally. A few drops of lemon juice may also be added..
Dried orange peel and curd face mask for getting fair and glowing skin
Ingredients:
•Dried orange peel
•Curd or Yogurt 2 tbsp
Preparation:
Take some orange peels. Dry them in shadow and after that grind the orange peel to make powder. This dried orange peel has shown great results when used in a face pack. It gives a golden glow to the face. Mix dried orange peel in curd and make a paste. Apply on the face and leave for 20 minutes. After that wash the face with lukewarm water. This home remedy also help to make your skin fair and remove the blemishes and scars from your face.
Rice and milk face mask for getting fair and glowing skin
Ingredients:
•Rice soaked in milk and grinded 2 tblsp
•Milk 2tblsp
Preparation:
Soak rice in the milk for two hours. Grind it to make a granular paste. Apply this face scrub on face on alternate days. This face scrub will make your skin fair soft and glowing. You can also add some lemon juice in it.
Walnut powder and milk cream(malai) face mask for getting fair and glowing skin Ingredients:
•Walnut powder 2tblsp
•milk cream 1tblsp
•Honey 1tblsp
•Lemon juice 1tblsp
Preparation:
Mix all the ingredients to make a paste. Scrub your face with the face mask and leave it for 20 minutes. Scrub again and wash with lukewarm water. This face mask will scrub your face and remove all the dirt and dead cells from the skin. Also this home remedy makes your skin fair and glowing naturally at home.

Jasmine flower face mask for getting fair and glowing skin
Ingredients:
•Fresh Jasmine flower
•Curd or Yogurt 2 tbsp
•Sugar 1 tblsp
Preparation:
Crush the fresh Jasmine flowers and mix with curd and sugar. Apply for 15 minutes. Wonderful face pack for sensitive skin to get fair skin.

Honey and tomato face pack for instantly fair and glowing skin
Ingredients:

• 1 mashed tomato    
• 2 tbls honey      
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice

Preparation
Mix the mashed tomato with honey. Add a teaspoon of lemon juice and blend all the ingredients together. This face mask act as an excellent cleanser . Lemon juice and tomato will lighten your  skin tone and tomato will give you an extra radiance. Honey cleans the dirt from the skin and gives your face an instant glow.
Powder milk and almond oil face pack for instantly fair and glowing skin:                                   
Ingredients:

• 1 tblsp Powder milk            
• half tblsp of almond oil
• 1 tblsp lemon juice
• 1 tblsp honey

Preparation
This face mask is best suitable for dry skin. Mix all the ingredients together and apply on your skin. Wait for half and hour and wash with luke warm water. You will also get rid of tanned skin and get a fair and glwoing skin instantly.


All the above face mask for fair and glowing skin are very effective and used for years. Using 15 Home remedies for getting fair skin naturally at home is far more cost effective and also gives excellent results.

Hair fall treatment at home — 7 remedies that work!

Hair fall problem? Looking for a treatment that works without the side-effects of chemicals or medications? You should try these home remedies. According to hair experts, losing 50-100 strands of hair every day is fairly normal. It is only a cause of concern when you lose more than that. But you can stop hair fall in its tracks with these simple home remedies. Here’s how you can make them. Also read about the causes of hair loss. 

1. Coconut

This ingredient has several benefits for your hair. Not only does it promote hair growth, but also conditions it. It has essential fats, minerals and proteins which reduce hair breakage and is also rich in potassium and iron. You can use coconut oil or milk to prevent hair fall.

Steps:

• Warm a bit of coconut oil and massage it from your hair root to tip.
• Wash after one hour.
• Or, grate a coconut and squeeze out its milk by mixing in a little water.
• Apply it on the area where you notice thinning or balding.
• Let it stay overnight and wash off the next morning.

2. Onion juice

Onion is a rich source of sulphur which helps in hair growth by increasing collagen production. Using its juice on the scalp can help in controlling hair fall. Did you know these onion health benefits?

Steps:

• Chop one onion finely and squeeze out its juice.
• Apply the juice on your scalp and let it stay for 15 minutes.
• Now rinse with a mild shampoo and let your hair air dry.
• Use this twice a week to see results.

3. Garlic 

Like onion, garlic too has high sulphur content. This is the reason why it is used in traditional hair regrowth medicines. You’d be surprised to know these beauty benefits of garlic.

Steps:

• Crush a few cloves of garlic.
• Add coconut oil to it and boil the mixture for a few minutes.
• Let it cool down a bit and then massage it on your scalp.
• You can leave it on for 30 minutes and then wash your hair.
• Do this two times in a week.

4. Henna

It is mostly used as a natural hair colour or conditioner but henna has properties that can strengthen your hair from the root. If you combine it with other ingredients, it makes for a better hair pack. 

Steps:

• Take 250 ml of mustard oil in a tin can and add 60g of washed and dried henna leaves.
• Now boil the mixture the leaves burn and then filter the oil.
• Massage your scalp with it on a regular basis and store the rest in an airtight bottle.
• You can make another henna pack by mixing dry henna powder with curd.
• Apply it on scalp and hair and wash off after one hour. If you desire beautiful hair, try these other home-made henna hair packs.

5. Hibiscus

Also called shoe flower, hibiscus nourishes hair, prevents premature greying, treats dandruff and also controls hair fall.  

Steps:

• Crush a few flowers and mix sesame or coconut oil to make a paste.
• Apply on the scalp and hair and leave it on for a few hours.
• Rinse off with cold water using a mild shampoo.

Try these other hibiscus hair packs too.

6. Amla or Indian gooseberry

For people suffering from hair fall, amla or the Indian gooseberry is a blessing. It is packed with vitamin C and antioxidants that can reverse hair loss if it is in its initial stage. 

Steps:

• Use either amla juice or powder and mix it with lemon juice.
• Apply it on the scalp and leave it to dry.
• Rinse hair using lukewarm water. Here are some more hair packs with amla for hair fall.

7. Egg

Egg has several ingredients that can prevent or control hair fall. It is a rich source of sulphur and ahs phosphorous, selenium, iodine, zinc and protein. All these promote hair growth. 

Steps:

• Take the white of one egg and mix in a teaspoon of olive oil.
• Beat to give a paste-like consistency and apply to the entire scalp and hair.
• Keep it on for about 15 to 20 minutes and then rinse with cool water and a mild shampoo. Here are some easy tips to help avoid hair loss. 

8 Weeks to Six-Pack Abs: The Diet

Follow this 8-week diet to get six-pack abs for summer.

 

 

THE DIET PLAN OVERVIEW
Variety
Small diet changes can make a big difference. To keep your metabolism (and taste buds) humming, you’ll introduce a variety of new foods into your diet every two weeks. Each phase includes two new recipes. These healthy, easy meals will help you resist cravings and keep your diet on track.
Rock-Solid Protein
Protein will remain steady throughout the eight-week program to ensure you’re not sacrificing muscle.
Slow and Steady Calorie Reduction
You’ll reduce calories slightly each phase. But reducing your calorie intake doesn’t have to be painful. To ensure you’re still getting enough fuel for good workouts, you’ll maintain a moderate intake of healthy fats throughout all phases.
Serious Hydration
Aim to consume roughly 16 cups (1 gallon) of water over the course of the day. Consuming large amounts of water over a short period of time can make you feel physically full and interfere with your eating plan; be sure to spread out your water and write it down in a food diary so you can stay on top of your intake.

 

Introducing SharePoint Designer 2010

Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 is a Web and application design program used to build and customize SharePoint sites and applications. With SharePoint Designer 2010, you can create data-rich pages, build powerful workflow-enabled solutions, and design the look and feel of your site. The sites you create may range from small project management sites to dashboard-driven portal solutions for the enterprise.

SharePoint Designer 2010 delivers a unique site authoring experience by providing one place where you can create a site; customize the components that make up the site; design the logic of the site around a business process; and deploy the site as a packaged solution. You can do all this without writing a line of code.
In the following sections, you’ll learn about SharePoint Designer 2010 and how you can get started using it in your organization.

The Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 experience

SharePoint sites are quickly becoming more complex as they scale to the needs of businesses of all types and sizes. They have moved from being a repository of documents, task lists, and schedules to become highly dynamic, data-rich, business process-driven sites.
For the site designer, this means not only understanding the needs of the business, but understanding SharePoint and all of the parts that make up one of its sites. It’s especially important to understand the relationships between the many moving parts of the site and to be able to manage this in one place.
SharePoint Designer 2010 provides a single environment where you can work on your site, its lists and libraries, pages, data sources, workflows, permissions, and more. Not only can you see these key ingredients of your site in one place, but you can see the relationships between these objects.
The framework is there for you to start designing and building highly customized business solution sites. Start by connecting to data sources, both inside and outside of SharePoint. Present this information to users and let them submit information back, using a SharePoint site or an Office client application. Create highly customized workflows that automate business processes. Lastly, customize the look and feel of the site so that it matches the branding of your organization.
By providing one environment for these tasks, you spend more time designing, building, and customizing solutions and less time searching for and updating the various components of a site using different tools and methods.
The following sections explore the SharePoint Designer 2010 experience and user interface:

The Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 experience

• Opening SharePoint Designer 2010
  
• SharePoint Designer 2010 File tab
  
• The SharePoint Designer 2010 interface
  

Pillars of customization in SharePoint Designer 2010

• Connect to data inside and outside of SharePoint
  
• Create data-rich interfaces
  
• Manage business processes
  
• Design and brand
  
• Completing the business solution cycle in SharePoint
  

Opening SharePoint Designer 2010

SharePoint Designer 2010 is a client program that installs on your local computer. It is also tightly integrated with SharePoint. As such, it can be launched directly from your machine using the Windows Start menu and various places in SharePoint, such as the Site Actions menu as shown here.

There are a number of places where you can open SharePoint Designer 2010, for example, when customizing lists, views, workflows, and master pages. If you haven’t installed SharePoint Designer 2010 yet, the first time you launch it from SharePoint, you’re prompted to download and install it from the Web. The next time you open SharePoint Designer 2010, it opens immediately. It’s also available in the Windows Start menu. Learn more about the different ways you can open SharePoint Designer 2010 in the See Also section.
Note   SharePoint Designer 2010 and its individual features can be restricted or disabled using the SharePoint Designer Settings page. If you’re not able to perform the tasks described in this article, this may be the reason. Contact your administrator for details.
Note   SharePoint Designer 2010 is designed for SharePoint 2010 sites. It cannot be used to open or customize sites in earlier versions of SharePoint.
Top of Page

SharePoint Designer 2010 File tab

When you open SharePoint Designer 2010 from the Windows Start menu, the first thing you see is the File tab. You have the option to customize an existing site or create a new site on this screen.

To customize an existing site, you can browse to an existing site, customize your My Site, or select one of the recent sites you’ve opened in SharePoint Designer 2010.
To create a new site, you can use a blank template, choose from a list of templates, or choose from one of the featured templates. From here, just specify the server and a site name and create the site. Your site is created and then opens in SharePoint Designer 2010.
If you open SharePoint Designer 2010 from SharePoint, you won’t see this screen. Instead, you’ll see your site open in the SharePoint Designer 2010 interface.
Top of Page

The SharePoint Designer 2010 interface

SharePoint Designer 2010 provides one environment where you can create, customize, and deploy SharePoint sites and solutions. This is made possible by the user interface, which shows all of the components that make up your site and the relationships between those components.
When you first open your site, you see a summary of the site, including its title, description, current permissions, and subsites.

Three-part interface: Navigation, Summary, and Ribbon

There are three main areas of the SharePoint Designer 2010 interface that you work in to design and build sites:

1. Navigation pane is used to navigate the major parts, or components, of your site
   
2. Gallery and Summary pages to see lists of each component type and summaries of one particular component.
   
3. Ribbon to perform actions on the selected component.
   

The Navigation pane shows the components that make up your site–its lists, libraries, content types, data sources, workflows, and more. To edit one of the components, an Announcements list for example, you open Lists and Libraries, and this takes you to a gallery page showing all lists and libraries.
From there, you can open the Announcements list, and this takes you to a summary page for that list. On the summary page, you see its associated views, forms, workflows, and more. To edit one of the views, just open it directly from this page.
With the view open, you'll notice that the Ribbon changes to display the most common and contextually relevant editing tasks for editing views. If you’re familiar with the Ribbon in Microsoft Office applications, you know that it makes creating and editing tasks quick and easy. When you’re finished editing, use the Back button or the breadcrumb-style navigation at the top of the page to return to the summary of your site.
The SharePoint Designer 2010 interface makes it easy to identify the various components of a site, drill down and edit one of those components, and then return back to the main view of the site.

Opening the File tab

In addition to working on the various objects of your site in SharePoint Designer 2010, you may want to view and access larger site or application settings. This includes opening another site, adding pages, importing files, and changing SharePoint Designer 2010’s application settings. You perform these actions on the File tab, which is the first screen you see if you open SharePoint Designer 2010 from the Windows Start menu or a shortcut on your desktop.
Click the File tab in the upper left to go to this view. Click Back to return to the SharePoint Designer 2010 interface.
Top of Page

Pillars of customization in SharePoint Designer 2010

SharePoint Designer 2010 can be used to create and customize sites and solutions that contain application logic but don’t’ require writing code. You can use it to add and modify data sources, customize list and data views, build and deploy business workflows, design a corporate brand, and much more. But you really start to harness the power and capabilities of SharePoint Designer 2010 when you turn an out of the box site into a real business solution for your organization.
The following sections cover the four pillars of customization when designing and building solutions using SharePoint Designer 2010.

Connect to data inside and outside of SharePoint

With SharePoint Designer 2010, you can connect to numerous data sources and then integrate that data into your site and Office client applications. Your users, as a result, can see and interact with business data on your site and from within the programs you choose rather than having to connect to those data sources separately.

Directly from the Ribbon, you can connect to an external database, SOAP Service, REST Service, and more.
Connecting to data sources is a powerful feature of SharePoint Designer 2010 because there are so many supported options you can use to make data available to your users. With data connections, you can bring together lists and libraries, external databases and data sources, Web services, and more.
Here’s a preview of the data sources you can connect to using SharePoint Designer 2010.

Lists and libraries

Lists and libraries are a common data source you’ll use on your site. They’re unique compared to the other data sources in that they’re already part of SharePoint and use the same database as SharePoint. You don’t need to perform any additional steps to create a connection to these data sources – just add them using the Lists and Libraries gallery in SharePoint Designer 2010 or add them in the browser. Once you create a list or library, you can customize its associated columns, content types, and other schema attributes.

External business data

Note    This feature is not available in all implementations of SharePoint Technologies. For more information, contact your service administrator.
Business Connectivity Services (BCS) is a SharePoint-based framework that provides standardized interfaces to existing business data and processes. With BCS, you can connect external business data sources—SQL Server, SAP and Siebel, Web services, and custom applications—to SharePoint sites and Office applications.
In SharePoint Designer 2010, you connect to the external data by creating external content types. External content types represent the data in the external data source by storing the details of the connection, objects used in the business application, methods to create, read, update, or delete, and actions users can take on the objects themselves.
The external content type is stored in the Business Data Catalog. Once you create the external content type, you and others in your organization can easily create SharePoint lists, views, forms, workflows, and even Office client integration based on it. The external data becomes part of SharePoint like any other component, which allows you to create completely customized user interfaces to these external data sources.

External databases

Adding a database as a data source allows you to integrate data from another database to your site. You can connect to Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, and any database that supports the OLE DB or ODBC protocols. You just need to know the name of the server where the database is located, the data provider, and the type of authentication to use. Once you add and configure the database as a data source, you create views and forms that allow your users to read and write data back to the data source without ever leaving the SharePoint site.

XML Web services via SOAP

Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) is a protocol for exchanging XML-based messages, making it possible to connect to various data sources using an XML Web service. In SharePoint Designer 2010, you can use this to connect to a data source on another site in your organization or a site on the Internet regardless of its technology, programming language, or platform. You could use an XML Web service to display a currency converter, stock quote, calculator, or weather service on your site.

Server-side scripts via REST

Representational state transfer (REST) is an architectural style of networked software that takes advantage of the technologies and protocols of the Web, not just a method for building Web services. You can use this type to get data from a site by reading a designated server-side script that describes the content. Similar to SOAP, you could use this in SharePoint Designer 2010 to connect to a data source on another site to display, for example, a currency converter, stock quote, calculator, or weather service. This type of data connection is simpler than SOAP to implement but is restricted to HTTP.

XML source files

If your organization stores data in XML files, you can connect to these files as a data source in SharePoint Designer 2010. To connect to the XML files as a data source, you can create them directly in SharePoint Designer 2010, import them from a location on your computer or network, or connect to them on an external location.
Learn more about connecting to data sources in SharePoint Designer 2010 in the See Also section.
Top of Page

Create data-rich interfaces

Once you establish connections to the necessary data sources, you’re ready to create interactive, data-rich interfaces for your users to these data sources. With SharePoint Designer 2010, you can create powerful and dynamic user interfaces for data sources, and you can make them available in a number of places, including your SharePoint site and custom windows, panes, and fields in Office business applications.

The interfaces you create include custom views, forms, Web Parts, navigation, and custom Office client windows and task panes. This kind of flexibility allows you to create completely customized user experiences to your business data.
You might combine multiple data sources into a single view, create dashboards with related item views, design custom forms tailored to individual roles, and customize the available toolbars and Ribbon commands associated with the data.
Here are the many ways you can customize the user interface associated with your data using SharePoint Designer 2010.

Views

Views allow you to see data in different ways. Whether you’re looking at a list or library or an external data source, you can use views to show the information that is relevant to you and your users. In SharePoint Designer 2010, every view you create is a Data View that displays in XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation), and it leverages Microsoft ASP.NET technology. In a view, you can show and hide fields, sort, filter, calculate, apply conditional formatting, and more. There are several View Styles that you can choose from as well to quickly get started. Ultimately, you can create and customize any view to fit your data model, your users, and your business.

Forms

To collect information from users, you create forms. With highly customized Web-based forms, users can easily write data back to a data source. Similar to views, you can customize the appearance of fields based on the state of the data, user role, and more. Forms can be used to display data, edit data, and create data, and you can design forms using SharePoint Designer 2010’s built-in forms editor (for .aspx files) or Microsoft InfoPath (for .xsn files). Forms can be created and customized for specific data sources, such as a task list, and they can be used to collect user information in a workflow, as explained later.

Custom actions

Using the Custom Action builder in SharePoint Designer 2010, you can create custom actions, such as links, icons, and scripts to the SharePoint Ribbon, toolbar, and list item menus. Anytime you add new functionality to the site, you can make it easier for your users to discover it and use it by exposing that functionality in a SharePoint menu. You can also use custom actions to encourage users to perform certain tasks on a given object, such as starting a workflow on a list.

Web Parts

Web Parts are modular units of information—a self-contained data or feature—that is added to a SharePoint page. The views and forms described earlier are stored in Web Parts, but in addition to these, you can add Web Parts that perform a number of functions and ways to interact with data. Users can further customize Web Parts in the browser if you add them to a Web Part zone in SharePoint Designer 2010. Web Parts and Web Part Pages are a powerful and effective way to customize the Web interface for your users in SharePoint.

Client integration

For external data sources that use external content types, you can surface that information in client applications like Microsoft Outlook 2010 and SharePoint Workspaces. You can create an interface for users to read, write, and delete the external business data just as if it were part of the application. You do this with client forms, regions, and task panes. Your users, as a result, get to work with their business data on the sites and Office applications they know best and are already using.

Navigation

Navigation plays a key part in the interfaces you create for your users, and it’s an area that you manage throughout SharePoint, not just SharePoint Designer 2010. For example, you might customize navigation links within a Data View or form, a Web Part, a workflow, or at the site level, such as the top link bar or Quick Launch. You want to make sure that the site and all of its parts have a well-planned navigation model that your users can follow.
Learn more about creating data rich interfaces in SharePoint Designer 2010 in the See Also section.
Top of Page

Manage business processes

Every business process in an organization consists of a set of activities that are tied together based on a common business need. Workflows are designed around this model by providing rules-based workflows consisting of sets of conditions and actions. You organize and run a series of actions that correspond to a work process based on a sequence of conditions and actions.

You can create workflows using SharePoint Designer 2010 that manage the simplest to the most complex business processes in an organization. Workflows do this by automating both business application processes and human collaborative processes. Workflows for business application processes might update one data source when another data source changes; and workflows for human collaborative processes might send a document to an employee's manager for approval.
A SharePoint workflow introduces application logic to your business processes without requiring you to write code. This is made possible by the powerful yet intuitive workflow editor in SharePoint Designer 2010 that allows nested logic, substeps, and more. Alternatively, you can design and share workflows using Microsoft Visio with its flowchart templates that can be exported to SharePoint Designer 2010.

Following are the building blocks of a workflow in SharePoint Designer 2010.

Events

An event is what starts or initiates a workflow. A change to a data source—such as a new item created or an item changed—is one type of event. Another type of event is one activated by a user, a workflow participant. Workflows that start when a data source changes are typically part of an application focused workflow to automate a business process, such as copying files based on the state of data. Workflows that can be started by users are typically part of a human collaborative workflow, such as content approval. Workflows can be set up to recognize both types of events and can even be based on a combination of the two.

Conditions

Conditions determine when a workflow runs or performs an activity. Since workflows are associated with a data source, the condition specifies the change to the data source that must take place for the workflow to happen. Conditions typically start with the clause “If field equals value.” One condition can be used with multiple actions, and multiple conditions can be used with one action. Rules combine conditions with one or more actions: If all clauses in the condition are true, the associated action takes place.

Actions

Actions are the most basic units of work in a workflow. When you design a workflow, you identify the necessary sequence of actions, and then you assemble that sequence of actions in the Workflow Designer. You can set them up so that they occur one after the other (serial actions) or both at the same time (parallel actions). The workflow can contain any number of actions, performed by the workflow itself or the participants in the workflow. SharePoint Designer 2010 includes a rich set of ready-made, reusable actions. Using these actions, your workflows can, for example, send emails, check items in or out of lists, do calculations, and much more.
Of these actions, there is a special set of Task Actions, like the Start Approval Process and Start Feedback Process, that contain a separate workflow editor specifically designed for human task processes in an organization. With these actions, you can create and customize sophisticated workflows that can manage almost any business process.

Steps

Workflows are comprised of one or more steps and substeps. Steps allow you to group conditions and actions so that one set of rules can be evaluated and performed before a second set. Each step may contain any number of conditions and actions. Your workflow can be designed as a sequence of actions in a step or a substep. The rules in one step are processed to conclusion before going on to the next step, so you want to group in the same step any rules necessary to effect the specific action or actions that you want. Steps can also be used as a way to organize your workflow, especially if it has numerous actions and very few conditions.

Forms

Workflows often contain forms that allow you to collect information from workflow participants at predefined times in the workflow. They also allow participants to interact with the tasks associated with a workflow. In a workflow, you can design initiation forms to gather information from users when they start the workflow, association forms to associate the workflow with a list or content type, forms for custom tasks associated with the Tasks list. When designing forms, you can use the native ASP.NET-based forms (.aspx pages) in SharePoint Designer 2010 or custom forms (.xsn pages) designed with Microsoft InfoPath 2010. InfoPath offers much more in customization and branding for your workflow forms.

Variables

A variable is a data storage location or cache inside a workflow. Using variables, you can store different types of data in a workflow and at a later point, reference that data using workflow lookups. There are many types of variables you can use in a workflow. You can use, for example, variables generated by initiation form parameters and local variables, which hold data associated with the current workflow. In a local variable, you can use numerous variable data types, including Boolean, Date/Time, List Item ID, Number, and String. After you create a variable and set it to a value, you can reference that variable in a condition or action later in the workflow.
Top of Page

Design and brand

The final area of customization provided by SharePoint Designer 2010 is design and brand—that is, taking your corporate look and feel and applying it to your SharePoint site. You can incorporate a company logo, color scheme, headers and footers, supporting graphics, custom navigation, and more. As a result, every page on the site can be immediately recognized as being part of a larger corporate site. In SharePoint Designer 2010, you design and brand SharePoint sites using master pages, page layouts, and cascading style sheets.

Designing and branding a site is different from the other pillars of customization, where the focus is on creating custom business solutions. Branding is something you generally perform less often and at the top of a site collection—for example, an Intranet or Internet-facing portal. That custom brand is then inherited by the subsites created below it. The branding effort is also likely to be performed by a Web designer rather than a solution creator.
For these reasons, master pages, page layouts, and cascading style sheets are all disabled by default for all users except site collection administrators. This way, only those responsible for the site brand have access to these powerful, yet sensitive files. You can, of course, re-enable them for specific users.
As a site designer, here are the ways you can create a custom brand for your sites using SharePoint Designer 2010.

Master pages

Master pages are a feature of ASP.NET, and they’re included with SharePoint as a way to design the layout of your site in one place and reuse it as a template for other pages across the enterprise. Every time you view a page on a SharePoint site, you’re viewing two pages merged together – a master page and a content page. The master page defines the common layout and navigation (which typically make up the left, top, and bottom portions of the page). The content page supplies page-specific content. SharePoint Designer 2010 provides a rich set of page editing tools that you can use to customize your master pages and share them with others.

Page layouts

If you’re working with a publishing site, you also design the appearance and layout of the site using page layouts. Page layouts serve as templates for the publishing pages created by users in your organization. In addition to the master page, they provide granular control and structure for a publishing page, such as designating where a title, body text, and graphics can be placed on a page. Publishing pages use the publishing infrastructure in SharePoint, and they help you streamline browser-based content authoring and publishing without all the overhead typically associated with the process.

Cascading Style Sheets

Like most Web sites and Web applications, SharePoint uses cascading style sheets (CSS) to apply colors, graphics, and positioning to the various objects that make up the pages on a site. In many cases, there are multiple style sheets applied to a page. To customize these styles, you can modify them directly in the master page, page layout, or site page, or modify the styles directly in the CSS file attached to the page – both of which you can do using the powerful CSS editing tools in SharePoint Designer 2010. You can also customize your SharePoint themes using CSS files. By customizing CSS files, you alter the look, or “skin,” of a SharePoint site so that it has your corporate look.
Top of Page

Deploy custom SharePoint solutions

Everything up to this point has focused on how you can use SharePoint Designer 2010 to create real business solutions. You’ve seen that you can connect to and integrate with data both inside and outside of SharePoint, create powerful user interfaces to this data, manage business processes with workflows, and brand the site to match your corporate look and feel.
But now you need to do something with your solutions – such as deploying it to another server or across the enterprise, opening it in Visual Studio for additional customization, or saving it offline to take it on the road with you. You need a way to turn your solution into a package, and this is where the Save as Template option comes in.

The ability to save a solution as a template is a powerful feature of SharePoint. The template is saved as a Web Solution Package (a .wsp file) that contains the entire contents of your site, including data sources and structure, views and forms, workflows, and Web Parts.
Templates are granular too. You might be working on one specific part of the site, like a list, a view, or a workflow. You can save these as individual components as templates too, which presents a whole new way to collaborate on solution development.

Completing the business solution cycle in SharePoint

As you spend more time in SharePoint Designer 2010, you quickly realize that you can do much more than basic site customization. You can create real business solutions that contain data connections, data-rich user interfaces, custom workflows, and complete site branding. You can build it all on SharePoint, and you can follow an application development lifecycle that ends with a deployable solution.

"10" New Features with SharePoint Designer 2010

SharePoint designer is the tool for building powerful application on top of SharePoint. With SharePoint Designer no code is required to make rich solution on SharePoint Server. SharePoint designer 2010 has come a long way ahead from its predecessors like SharePoint Designer 2007 and Front Page 2003. Though the sad news is SharePoint Designer 2010 is not compatible with the applications build on SharePoint 2007.

Here are some new important features and capabilities of SharePoint Designer 2010 which will make it much power full tool to create no code solution on SharePoint Server 2010:

1. Since SharePoint designer is a very powerful tool some time this resulted in making the changes in the sites which were not desirable. Now we can restrict SharePoint designer, the way we want users should be using this. This can be done at the Web Application level or individual Site Collection level in SharePoint 2010. These settings provide the following capabilities:

• Disable the SharePoint designer completely at the Web Application level and at the Site Collection level.
• Disable the Site Admins to detach pages from Site Template.
• Stopping the Site Admins to modify and customize the Master Pages and Layout Pages.
• Disabling Site Admins to see the URL Structure of the SharePoint Site.

 To do these settings at the Web Application level go to:
        Central Admin -> Application Management --> Manage Web Application --> Select The Correct Web App --> General Settings --> SharePoint Designer Settings

 

 And for the Site Collection level go to

       Site Collection Site Settings -> SharePoint Designer Settings

2. Earlier while working with SharePoint apps we need to shuffle between the SharePoint UI and designer a lot as we can not create SharePoint content from SharePoint Designer. Now we can create SharePoint Content  like Sites, Sub sites, List, Columns, Web Pages directly from SharePoint Designer 2010.

3.  Also now we can create Site Columns and Content Types directly from designer and add it to the list. Content Types can directly be attached to a lists from SharePoint Designer 2010.

4. The security also can be configured directly from SharePoint Designer 2010. So now we can create groups, add the users and modify the user permissions directly.

5. Create XSLT View Web Parts. This is best of both the Data View Web Parts and the List View Web Parts. Earlier the DataView Web Parts placed from SPD can not be edited from the browser which is not the case any more.

6. One of the coolest feature is to Create Business Connectivity Services External Content Types directly from SharePoint designer. So no further tools are required to work with External Data. This will surly add lot of productivity to the SharePoint developers. We will be saved from a big Application definition file!!!

7. From the workflow perspective lot of improvements are there. We can now create the reusable workflows and the workflow at the site level. The reusable workflows are attached to a Content Type and are not hard bounded to a list. Site Workflow can be used at the site level. 
A Summary Page is available for any actions.

8.  We can now connect to Data Sources outside of SharePoint such as XML Files, Web Services, Server Side Scripts and Databases from SharePoint Designer 2010.

9. A new dash board page which shows important information and actions about the selected items. So when we open the site this is the page opens.

It shows plenty of useful information and also we can do lot many things from here which was earlier not possible and we have to go to SharePoint site for doing them.
10. New UI with Ribbon which aligns with other SharePoint 2010 and other Office Products. Helps to increase the productivity.

These feature are going to add lot of power to SPD 2010 and make it much easier tool to use and develop solution on SharePoint with less amount of time.

Five most important SharePoint 2010 interview questions

Question: -What is SharePoint?
Answer: - SharePoint 2010 is a platform where user can share Data, Collaborate and people can also take this platform and customized platform as per their requirements.

Question: - What are the two different products in SharePoint 2010?
Answer: - SharePoint 2010 has basically two different products namely SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010. SharePoint Foundation 2010 is basically a free version. SharePoint Server 2010 is basically a paid version.

Question: - How to create a simple Website in SharePoint 2010?
Answer: - In order to create a Website in SharePoint 2010, we need to use SharePoint 2010 Central Administration tool. As soon as you click on SharePoint 2010 Central Administration tool it will ask for credential do put your credential and you will directed to the SharePoint 2010 Central Administration screen. Now from the Application Management screen click on Manage web applications, as soon as you click on Manage web applications a new window will open, now from the top most left of the screen click on New menu, again a new window will pop-up of Create New Web Application which enables you to create new web application.

Question: - How to create Users and Allocates permissions to the Users?
Answer: -Permission management is a three steps process as follows. Step1: -Create Users. Step2: - Create Permissions. Step3: - Link the Users with the Permissions. In order to create a User�s and Allocate permissions Click on Site Actions located on the top link bar and then click on Site Permissions.Now, under the Edit tab, click on Grant Permissions. Later, In the Users/group field, enter the user's name, choose the permissions you wish the user to have under Give Permission, and then click on OK.

Question: - How tocreate or deploy Web parts in SharePoint 2010?
Answer: -Web part: - It is a reusable functionality, which can be inserted on the web pages and can be configured by the end users. In order to create a web part, go to Visual Studio and create a new project > select SharePoint tab > select Visual Web Part > select on which local web site you want to deploy the web part > click on Validate and Click finish. Now, in order to deploy the project just go to > Solution Explorer > select your project > Right click on it > just select deploy. Please see the below series of videos on SharePoint 2010.

How To Earn $100 Per Day With Google AdSense, And How Much Traffic You Need

Earning $100, $200 or even $300 per day with Google AdSense is not an impossible job.
Many bloggers and website owners are doing it, and you are not an exception. The only thing you need is better planning and execution, hard work, determination and passion for blogging about your topic or niche.
Before diving into the exact process, let’s know some terminology for better understanding of Google AdSense and how you can generate more revenue by selling your ad inventories on your blog.
What Is AdSense: It’s a monetization program by Google for online content from websites, mobile sites, and site search results with relevant and engaging ads.
CTR : Your ad Click-through Rate is the number of ad clicks divided by the number of individual ad impressions. Suppose you are showing 3 AdSense ads on every page, your 1 page view is equal to 3 ad impressions.
CTR = Clicks / Ad Impressions X 100
Suppose, you get 5 clicks out of 500 ad impressions, your CTR would be 1% (5/500X100).
CPC : Cost-Per-Click is the revenue you earn each time a visitor clicks on your ad. CPC is usually determined by the advertisers. In some competitive niches like finance, marketing, online products etc. advertisers may be willing to pay more per click than others.
CPM: CPM means “Cost Per 1000 Impressions.”
Sometimes advertisers opt for CPM ads instead of CPC and set their price for 1000 ad impressions. And they pay each time their ads appear on any website.

Let’s Make $100 Everyday With Google AdSense, Right?

For the convenience of calculation we assume that – You serve your AdSense ads on your blog or website, irrespective of showing your ads on your mobile site and added the site search results with AdSense.
Your CTR is 1% and your average CPC is $0.25. It’s quite achievable and lots of bloggers usually get it. We also assume that Page View = Ad Impression for easy calculation. You can manipulate the parameters on your own for desired results.

• To make $100 everyday you need 40,000 Page Views/day Or, 400 Clicks a day @ 1% CTR and $0.25 CPC. For 40,000 Page Views you have to produce 500 awesome articles or blog posts which attract at least 80 or more page views/article everyday.

• Apart from CPC, you will also earn from your CPM ad impressions. Irrespective of any niche, the average CPM earning is $1 to $1.5 per 1,000 impressions. You can make $40 to $60 per day easily from 40,000 page views.

• You can also sell your Ad space directly or via BuySellAds.com and generate $6,000 Per Month on an average from 40,000 page views. Check out how webmasters and bloggers are making $6,000 to $8,000 Per Month from BuySellAds with forty thousand page views per day. So your daily earning will be $200 (6000/30=200).

• A niche blog with high quality articles converts very well with affiliate marketing. You can easily earn $40 to $80/day from affiliate selling with correct implementation and execution.

Now your total earning per day is $100 + $40 + $200 +$40 = $380 from CPC, CPM, Direct Ad Sell, Affiliate Marketing for 40,000 page views per day. I’ve taken the lowest possible earnings from all the 4 sources.
$380 per day means $11,400 per month (380X30= 11,400) Or, $136,800 per year(11,400X12=136,800). Isn’t it a whooping amount to lead a lavish life?
Which is well above your desired earning of $100 per day from Google AdSense, right? 1000s of people are making money by writing articles, and you can also do it. The only thing I want to say is “Be Focused!”
P.S. The above results can be possible if you produce at least 200 to 250 great articles or blog posts per year for 2 years. So how much traffic you actually need to make $100 per day from Google AdSense – It’s way less than 40,000 Page Views Per Day!

MUST HAVE SharePoint Interview Questions

What is SharePoint?

Microsoft SharePoint is an extensible platform that provides a range of products that can help organizations with solution for a variety of business needs. Primarily, SharePoint was introduced as an Enterprise Content Management System but later on Web Publishing, Collaboration, Business Process Management (BPM) and Business Intelligence (BI) features were introduced through a variety of ways.

What are the Core features of SharePoint?

With every new version, new and exciting tools were added to SharePoint platform but core of the tools that makes SharePoint an outstanding platform for Content management, Business Process Management, Collaboration and Web Publishing are:

• SharePoint Sites facilitates to create websites.
• SharePoint Communities plays it’s role to collaborate with other peoples.
• Contents makes SharePoint a true CMS (Content Management System)
• Search Engine provides smart and efficient searching of enterprise contents.
• Insights brings information together from different data sources.
• Composition makes SharePoint an extensible platform and extends it’s capabilities by using different tools like SharePoint Designer etc.

Can you briefly explain SharePoint Version History?

Latest version of the product is SharePoint 2013 but if we look into version History, it will be as follows:

What’s new in SharePoint 2013?

New and exciting features are released with every version of SharePoint. SharePoint 2013 also bundled with lots of new features. Few of them are listed here:

• Improved Performance
• Cross-Site Publishing
• Design Manager for Publishing Sites
• Improved and better Search
• Changes in SharePoint Workflow Architecture
• Office Web Apps Server
• Improved Social Computing Features
• Optimized User Interface for Mobile Devices
• Shredded BLOBs for Storage
• New Features to BCS (Business Connectivity Services)
• and much more…

For details on new and updated features in SharePoint 2013, please follow here.

What specific features Improve Performance in SharePoint 2013? Kindly elaborate.

SharePoint 2013 introduces following features that improves performance significantly.

• Distributed Cache Service
• Minimal Download Strategy and
• Shredded Storage by introducing Shredded BLOBs.

What is a SharePoint Farm?

SharePoint Farm is a collection of one or more SharePoint server(s) working together in order to provide a set of
SharePoint Services. Servers in a SharePoint Farm normally share common resources and owns a single Central Configuration database.

Web Applications Vs Site Collections Vs Sites in SharePoint.

SharePoint Site basically is a website. SharePoint allows us to create websites of specific types like Personal site, a Team Site, a social media site, a blogs or a Wiki Site etc.
On the other hand, a Site Collection in SharePoint is a collection of SharePoint sites that share common features like Content types, Templates, Site columns, permissions, Web Parts etc.
A Web Application is a collection of Site Collections in SharePoint OR in order way a site collection resides in a
web application. Normally a SharePoint web application is corresponds to a website in IIS means when a SharePoint Web application is created, it creates a WebSite and an application Pool in IIS .
Above can be understood by following diagram:

What is the concept of Content Type in SharePoint?

SharePoint is about Contents, so Content Type is a reusable collection of settings and metadata to represents a certain type of content. For Instance, a Student Content Type may have set of metadata like Student Enrollment ID, Name, year of enrollment etc.
Content Type in SharePoint facilitates to organize contents in more meaningful way. It supports inheritance of properties, behaviors and appearances.

What is a Theme?

Themes are used to apply customization to a SharePoint Site and applying a lightweight branding by changing overall site layout, colors, fonts, background image etc. In SharePoint 2013, Microsoft has extensively improved  theming Engine. Now, Theme customization is available by creating Font Schemes and Color Palletes. Further, we can add custom themes to Theme Gallery.

What are Master Pages in SharePoint?

Master Pages in SharePoint serves the same purpose as that of ASP.NET Master Pages. Certain parts of a web page normally remains same like header, footer or navigation bar etc. So, We create Master Pages with these common parts in order to achive a consistent look and feel for a SharePoint Site.
Using Master pages provides lots of benefits including:

• Common Controls in one location only
• Writing less Code and Centralized Updating
• Better User Experience
• Flexibility
• Easier management of SharePoint Sites

Important Note:

• A SharePoint Farm can have one or more Web Application(s).
• A SharePoint Web Application can have one or more Site Collection(s).
• A SharePoint Site Collection can have one or more Site(s).
• A SharePoint Site can have one or more List(s).
• A SharePoint List can have one or more List Item(s).

 

Configure Active Directory (AD) Synchronization for SharePoint 2010

Step 1 – Prerequisites

Account needed for Syncing

We need an account set up for the AD profile synchronization. Let’s call it “Service-spADsync“, we need to configure a couple of things on this account in AD:

1. Add “Replicate Directory Changes” permission
   
   1. On the domain controller, click Start, click Administrative Tools, and then click Active Directory Users and Computers.
   2. In Active Directory Users and Computers, right-click the domain, and then click Delegate Control.
   3. On the first page of the Delegation of Control Wizard, click Next.
   4. In the Users or Groups page, click Add.
   5. Type the name of the synchronization account, and then click OK.
   6. Click Next.
   7. In the Tasks to Delegate page, select Create a custom task to delegate, and then click Next.
   8. On the Active Directory Object Type page, select This folder, existing objects in this folder, and creation of new objects in this folder, and then click Next.
   9. On the Permissions page, in the Permissions box, select Replicate Directory Changes, and then click Next.
   10. Click Finish.
2. Add account to “Pre-Windows 2000 Compatible Access” group
   
   1. On the domain controller, click Start, click Administrative Tools, and then click Active Directory Users and Computers.
   2. In Active Directory Users and Computers, expand the domain, expand Builtin, right-click Pre-Windows 2000 Compatible Access, and then click Properties.
   3. In the Properties dialog box, select the Members tab, and then click Add.
   4. Type the name of the synchronization account, and then click OK.
   5. Click OK.
3. Grant Replicate Directory Changes permission on the cn=configuration container
   
   1. On the domain controller, click Start, click Run, type adsiedit.msc, and then click OK.
   2. In ADSI Edit, if the Configuration node is not already present, select ADSI Edit, on the Action menu click Connect to, in the Connection Point area of the Connection Settings dialog box select Select a well known Naming Context, select Configuration from the drop-down list, and then click OK.
   3. Expand the Configuration node, right-click the CN=Configuration… node, and then click Properties.
   4. In the Properties dialog box, select the Security tab.
   5. In the Group or user names section, click Add.
   6. Type the name of the synchronization account, and then click OK.
   7. In the Group or user names section, select the synchronization account.
   8. In the Permissions section, select Replicating Directory Changes (select Replicate Directory Changes on Windows Server 2003), and then click OK.

Forefront Services

On the box that will be running the “User Profile Synchronization Service”
Go to Start > Administrative Tools > Services
Set both “Forefront Identity Manager Service” and “Forefront Identity Manager Synchronization Service” to run under your farm account and set them to automatically start and start both services

Step 2 – Delete any current User Profile Service Application (Optional)

I like to delete the current “User Profile Service Application” that gets created if you use the wizard to create your farm, I will be creating my own in the next step.
Under Central Administration > Application Management > Manage Service Applications
Select “User Profile Service Application” and then select Delete from the ribbon bar

Select “Delete data associated with the Service Application”
Press “OK”

Press “OK”

Step 3 – Create New User Profile Service Application

Under Central Administration > Application Management > Manage Service Applications
Select “User Profile Service Application” under the “New” button on the ribbon bar

If you do not have “User Profile Service” installed then you will have more options than the couple of options listed below. Just fill out all the appropriate information to create the application. Other options that will appear are things like creating the Profile DB and other options related to My Sites.

Name: AD Sync – User Profile Service Application
Create a new application pool called WSS_ADSYNC
Select the account to use for the application pool; I use my farm account which also runs all other service applications
Press “Create”

Press “OK”

Step 4 – Configure the Service

Under Central Administration > System Settings > Manage services on server
Press “Start” next to “User Profile Synchronization Service”

Select the “AD Sync – User Profile Service Application” that you just created
Enter the password for the service account you are using
Press “OK”

The service will be stuck at starting for several minutes; this process can take up to 20 minutes. Refresh the page to determine if the service has started yet. If the service does not start check the services on the local computer “Forefront Identity Manager Synchronization Service” and make sure it is not disabled.

After the “User Profile Synchronization Service” shows as being started, run an IISRESET on the server that is running the “User Profile Synchronization Service”

Start > Run > CMD (Make sure you see “Administrator:” in the title bar or you might get an access denied when trying to perform an IISRESET.
Type in “IISRESET”

Step 5 – Configure connections and import data from Active Directory

Under Central Administration > Application Management > Manage Service Applications
Select “AD Sync User Profile Service Application” and then select Manage from the ribbon bar or you can just click the name “AD Sync User Profile Service Application”
Click “Configure Synchronization Connections”

Click “Create New Connection”

I named the connection “AD Sync Connection”
The type is “Active Directory”
The Forest name is “PINTOLAKE”
The Authentication Provider Type is “Windows Authentication”
Enter the Service Account we created in Step 1 and the password
The port for AD is “389”

Select “Populate Containers”, this will popular your AD information in the window below

Select the containers you want to sync or press “select all”, for this particular install we are going to select all
Press “OK”

SharePoint will process your request

You should now see your connection listed. If you get an error try again, sometimes it times out while trying to make the connection to AD. Just try to configure a new connection again.

Step 6 -Synchronization Options (Optional)

There are a couple options you can go through before you start synchronization

1. Define connection filters – this is if you want to filter information from the AD sync

Under Central Administration > Application Management > Manage Service Applications
Select “AD Sync User Profile Service Application” and then select Manage from the ribbon bar or you can just click the name “AD Sync User Profile Service Application”
Click “Configure Synchronization Connections” then pull the drop down menu on your connection then select “Edit Connection Filters”

1. Map User Profile Properties – this option already has a bunch of preconfigured fields but you might need to change some of them or reconfigure existing ones

Under Central Administration > Application Management > Manage Service Applications
Select “AD Sync User Profile Service Application” and then select Manage from the ribbon bar or you can just click the name “AD Sync User Profile Service Application”
Click “Manage User Properties” under the “People” section

Step 7 -Start Profile Synchronization

Under Central Administration > Application Management > Manage Service Applications
Select “AD Sync User Profile Service Application” and then select Manage from the ribbon bar or you can just click the name “AD Sync User Profile Service Application”
Under “Synchronization” select “Start Profile Synchronization”

Select “Start full Synchronization”
Press “OK”

You should now see that the “Profile Synchronization Status” has changed to “Synchronizing” and the “Current Synchronization Stage” has changed to “Active Directory Import (xxx)”. Watch this for a while and make sure the (xxx) increases in value; this is the number of objects being imported from AD.
Start of Sync

During Syncing

By default the job will run every day at 1:00 AM, you can change this from:
Select “AD Sync User Profile Service Application” and then select Manage from the ribbon bar or you can just click the name “AD Sync User Profile Service Application”
Under “Synchronization” select “Configure Synchronization Timer Job”