If you are a beginner web designer, most probably you have had faced the difficulty to having some dynamic contents on your site, Just think about a small Guest book, some form to be submitted directly from your site, some dynamic results based on user’s previous action……. All impossible with simple html! Although Java scripts can do some of your dynamic works, like automatic form submission by email etc, but this is just client side (all work done on the computer have your page loaded, means you can’t save something to server), another option remains for you is to use the 3rd party ready-made services that enables you to install the dynamic contents on your site, with there half page annoying ads! Or you have to pay them a leg or an arm to remove their text and banners! So if you are serious about your web, its time to think about a tool that can store data on your web server, retrieve and process data directly on server and display just the final results (in simple html) on your visitor’s PC. It’s certainly you are thinking about the Server-Side programming language. Now the major question arise which technology to use? Every one wants to get maximum returns with minimum efforts. And if their is the same case with you, PHP is the most recommended solution. Let see, PHP: Php Hypertext Processor (a recursive acronym) currently most widely-used open source server-side programming language. PHP with the shortest learning curve, if you are already familiar with C / Java, you can start developing in PHP in just next 30 minutes! Its highly compatible runs on any 32 bit or better platform (UNIX / Linux / Windows) without changing a bit in your codes, *1 currently 16,946,328 Domains on 1,348,793 IPs (Servers) are using PHP! *2 Another statistics is that it is supported by more then 98% web servers! Php has remarkable Database support, PHP with MYSQL is really an awesome combination. PHPLIB is a set of libraries with most commonly required routines. If you are inspired of Object Oriented Paradigm, PHP has it for you, OOP support in PHP is sufficient enough for most web programming related tasks, plus their is nothing to worry for the programmers don’t like to use OOP. The most major future of PHP that encourages web hosts to provide support for PHP on their servers is that its really very lite. For many simple tasks PHP running on P-133 with just 32 Mb RAM ran circles around ASP code on an NT machine having P500 with 600 Mb RAM! For more information, www.php.net can be the best start.
*1 Stats for August 2004 from www.PHP.net *2 Missing the actual resource!
An RSS news feed can be used to communicate with your
target audience. It is an ideal means of notifying people of new
content on your website without the need for them to keep on
visiting your site. You can send newsletters to your readership
without having to use email and risk being accused of spamming.
You will be comfortable in the knowledge that people who request
your feed are actually interested in it because they have
actively subscribed to it. This article will explain just how to
create your own RSS news feed.
There are a couple of ways to create an RSS file, you can use an
editor designed for the purpose or you can create a file using a
simple text editor. The latter will require you to learn some
XML whilst the former will do the hard part for you. First off I
will describe an RSS file, there are several versions and I will
be showing you version 2.0, the latest RSS version.
An RSS file looks just like an HTML file except it has different
tags and the files end in .rss or .xml rather than .html. The
file is made up of header information and item information, the
item information contains the actual news items.
The first section of the file contains the header information.
This states that the file is XML and which version, the encoding
used and the version of RSS that you are using. This part of the
file is mandatory. Next up is the channel tag, this encloses the
whole of the rest of the file. This is followed by a title,
description and link which explain the what the feed is about
and what website it is associated with. The final part of the
header is the optional image information. If you use this the
software that is used to parse or read your file can display a
small picture such as a logo.
The body of the file is made up of the news items. Each news
item is enclosed in the item tag and comprises of a title, a
description and a published date. The date needs to be in the
format shown in the example below.
In this article we discuss the release of several
new widgets, but which is the best widget.
You can have as many items in the feed as you like but many
webmasters just show the 10 most recent items to keep the
bandwidth usage down and also so not to overwhelm the end user
with too many items.
Finally the file is ended with the closing channel tag and a
closing RSS tag.
I have covered the basic tags to create an RSS file, there are
other tags that can be used and these are explained in the RSS 2.0
specification.
Once you have created your file you will need to verify it is
ok, to do this upload the file to your server and then go to
this validator to
validate the file. Your file is now ready. Now anyone can
subscribe to your feed just by pointing their RSS reader to
your RSS file.
That is the basics covered. I will be covering other areas in
future articles as there is far too much information to fit into
a single article.
XHTML or the Extensible Hypertext Markup Language is an extension to HTML made by the w3c. XHTML is a cleaner, neater, generally faster version of HTML. Here are some things you cannot do with XHTML: Dreamweaver, Frontpage, etc. GOODBYE!!! Never use them agian, they are cheap, they are not coding, you are NOT a webmaster just becuase you can make a frontpage website. Also remember these simple things: Tags must close in the order that they open:
Hello
is not valid where as
Hello
is. All tags must close, including line breaks (now ), horizontal rules (now ), and images (now ) The alt is NEEDED. Most imporantly a doctype is needed and a character encoding is recommended. There are three types of doctypes: Transitional: Most used, most friendly, doctype.
Frames -For using frames, duh
And Strict, the mean, scrict XHTML
The most common character encoding is as follows,
A full list of character encodings can be found at www.w3c.org. Also in XHTML tables for layout are a big no-no. Yet most of the time the validator lets you slide with them anyway. Use CSS for layout if you want true XHTML.
With the US economic outlook getting bleaker by the day, more and more folks are beginning to look to the internet as a way to earn extra money.
And why shouldn’t they? The hours are great and I’ve never had such an agreeable boss!
But the key to online success is much more than millions of dollars in venture capital funding - history proves that. No, the quickest road to a big fat online paycheck is your *product*.
Let me put it as simply as I know how - if there aren’t buyers for your product on the web, you won’t sell very many products. Makes sense, right?
Here’s a quick and easy way to determine the approximate size of *any* market online.
First, get yourself a copy of GoodKeywords (from http://goodkeywords.com). This free software is my crystal ball into the world of desirable online products. It queries a number of popular search engines and in many cases it will tell me exactly what I should be selling online.
—————————————————————– ————— A similar free tool is available to clients of the pay-per-click search engine Goto. Visit them at http://goto.com —————————————————————– —————
The best way to illustrate this process is to use an example:
For instance, I’m a musician so I’ll pick a general term such as ‘keyboard’. GoodKeywords tells me how many times that word was searched in the past 30 days AND different phrases that contain that word.
Something that catches my eye in the results is the phrase ‘casio keyboard’
I know Casio is a brand name, so I’ll refine my search for phrases that contain the word ‘Casio’. These results tell me *specific* products from Casio that surfers are looking for.
Now all I need to do is find an affiliate (or commissioned-reseller) program that pays me to sell Casio products. Once I sign up with the merchant, I’ll be able to create separate pages to sell the individual products. AND I’ll make a commission for each product I sell.
—————————————————————– ————— Finding online merchants with affiliate programs is easy. Just visit http://refer-it.com or http://associateprograms.com. These sites list hundreds of affiliate merchants who will pay you to sell their products. —————————————————————– —————
Now for the hard part - bringing traffic to your individual product pages.
Typically, I rely on search engines to bring traffic to this kind of site. More specifically, I tend to lean toward pay-per-click search engines (like Goto.com and FindWhat.com).
—————————————————————– ————— Visit http://payperclicksearchengines.com for a complete list of ‘PPC’ search engines. —————————————————————– —————
Pay-per-click search engines let you bid on your position for your search terms…essentially buying your visitors one at a time. In most cases a top position for a certain product costs no more than .01 or .02 per click - and you pay *only* if someone clicks through to your site.
This can add up quickly for certain phrases BUT the advantages far outweigh the very small cost.
When you use pay per click advertising your link is displayed ONLY to the web surfers who are looking for information on your product.
This kind of ‘targeted’ advertising can be very profitable since you’re approaching a visitor who has asked (by searching) to see your website!
One final note: Even the most expertly constructed web page won’t make a sale to every visitor. Studies show that many folks research online, then buy offline - especially with big-ticket items.
But your chances of making a sale are much higher if you present your sales message to a truly targeted audience, rather than ‘any old Joe’ on the web.
The next concern for you, after designing and developing web pages, is to get your web site hosted on the Internet. But with so many web hosting companies offering various types of web hosting packages - shared web hosting, dedicated web hosting, managed web hosting, which type of hosting should you choose?
As a general rule, it is a good idea to go for shared web hosting if you are a small business owner and cost is your major concern. But before you make your hosting decision, let us first understand what is shared web hosting service and what are the advantages and disadvantages of shared web hosting.
What is shared web hosting?
Shared web hosting service is a convenient and economic way of hosting web sites if you do not require extremely high performance and high bandwidth. As its name suggests, in shared web hosting service, the web server that hosting the web pages are shared by many other websites. The number of websites on a shared hosting server can go up to thousands at times. Due to one large and high performance web server is shared by hosting many different websites on it, web hosting companies providing shared web hosting service could offer them at an economic rates.
Even with so many websites hosted on a web server, you can be rest assured that the web hosting providers will not compromise on any kind of security and performance issues on the shared hosting servers. Moreover, shared hosting web servers are operated, monitored and maintained around the clock by IT professionals to ensure minimum server downtimes.
Technically speaking, shared hosting servers are run on Unix or other multi-user operating system and each website hosted on the web server is given a separate account in the operating system. Typically, websites hosted on shared servers are given a shared IP addresses and allocated a fix amount of web resources.
Let’s examine the advantages and disadvantages of shared web hosting before you consider shared web hosting service:
Advantages of Shared Web Hosting Service
Economical: As many websites are hosted on a single web server, web hosting providers are able to offer low cost shared web hosting services. In general, you can expect to pay $5-10 per month for shared web hosting services. Today, due to stiff competition in the web hosting industry, you can even discover many web hosting companies offering huge web space and bandwidth (as high as 1000 MB disk space and 40 GB bandwith).
Convenience: Shared hosting web servers are managed and maintained by professionals who are highly skilled with specialized knowledge of the field. As a result, you can concentrate on your web business and let these professionals worry about the maintenance and uptimes of the web server.
Customization: Even though web resources are shared, web masters can manage their website using control panel or similar tools provided by the web hosting company. They are free to upload files, remove web pages, add database, check web statistic and etc. Also they are allowed to create domain name specific e-mails accounts.
Efficiency: Today, shared web hosting service comes with web space and bandwidth that are more than sufficient for small business websites. However, you can always add more resources should you overrun the web space or bandwidth usage.
Disadvantages of Shared Web Hosting Service
Slower Responses: Given that a physical web server is shared, websites in the shared web hosting have to accept slower server response time if compare to dedicate server hosting.
Reliability Issues: In most cases, web hosting providers may take care of the security and performance of the shared server. However, it may happen that some of websites hosted on the shared server run a malicious program or script or over-utilize the resources, can bring down the web server. Your website would have to suffer downtimes and inaccessibility as a result.
Sharing Issues: Moreover, you just need one “bad” website in your shared web server to get your website banned altogether by ISP or search engine due to shared IP address (Note: you can always pay extra to get a dedicated IP address to avoid this problem).
Security Issues: Shared web hosting is more risky and opens up potential security issues as other web masters having an account on the same web server could hacked to your sensitive data.
Before you decide to ink a deal on shared web hosting, be sure to consider all the pros and cons of shared web hosting services above. After all, selecting a right web hosting services may be one of the most critical business decisions for your online business.
Both search engines and customers love fresh, updated information. Nothing promotes a business online better than staying in touch with prospects. The more interactive the continued contact, the better the relationship that is built with a potential client. But there’s no need to groan at the thought of having to work hard at adding new content to your web site, it’s not as complicated as you might think.
For more information about how to get interactive with your customers, take a look at our guide “Building Online Relationships” available here: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_4.html
The business principle of continued contact and online relationship building has given rise to the popularity of online business blogs, forums and feedback opportunities. Interactive online communication define the web site owners as experts in the eyes of visitors, and serve as a promotional vehicle for other products and services that the business seeks to sell. Continued, interactive contact can bring many benefits, such as:
You’ll find out what type of content visitors want to see at your web site. This will attract your visitors to revisit and read the content.
You’ll find out how to improve existing products or services. This will attract new customers to buy from your business.
You’ll find out which products or services your customers would like to see you sell in the future. This will increase your back end product sales.
You’ll find out how to improve your customer service. This will cut down on customer complaints and how to better resolve problems.
You’ll find out how to improve your sales letters or adverts. This will increase your sales, traffic or subscribers.
You’ll find out how to design your web site to fit your visitors’ needs and wants. This will increase the time your visitors spend on your web site.
You’ll find out what kind of non-related products or services your customers would buy. This will help your business easily move into a different market.
You’ll find out how to better price your products. This will help you sell your products or services at a price that will pull the most orders.
You’ll find out the interests of your potential customers. This will inform you where to market and promote your products.
Getting Started So where do you start? Do you need a blog, a forum, or a feedback form? All have different uses and your selection will depend on the needs of your particular business and your limitation with regard to time and/or budget. Below are some of the options and some ideas for adding interactive and fresh content to your web site.
For more information about how to establish and maintain online relationships with your viewers and customers, get a copy of our guide “Building Online Relationships” available here: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_4.html
Weblogs or Blogs A blog is basically a series of posts that appear by the date posted like an online journal. Setup is minimal and the interface is easy to learn- if you can use a word processing package, you can write a blog! Services like Moveable Type and Blogger make it incredibly easy for anyone to publish on the web.
Blogs can be integrated seamlessly into your site so that they have the same look and feel. You can use a blog to publish an events calendar or comment on developments and news from your industry. A blog can be strictly professional, announcing special offers or new product info or it can be casual and create a “personality” for your company.
What can a blog do for your business? Think about what your customers want to know.
To add interactivity, several blog programs come with a “comment” ability built in. This allows general users to create an account and post their comments to your blog. This is something to be careful of as you can get negative comments along with the positive.
Forums While online forums are popular and the perfect method of relationship building, starting a forum and maintaining one can be challenging, especially in the beginning when members can be few and far between. The challenge for most new forum owners is to get beyond the initial start up phase and move onto a phase where the forum members themselves promote the forum simply by posting.
Forums have become a common feature in many websites. With good free scripts available, and paid scripts being relatively cheap, it seems that every new website has its own forum(s).
But is it wise to add forums to your website?
On the pro side, large, active forums generate content for your website. They add a “sticky” element as most people come back, at least to monitor developments on their threads. Some forum software allows members to opt to receive an email whenever someone replies to their thread. Most people use it and that automated email sends them right back to the forum and therefore, your web site.
However, forums can take a long time to pick up and an empty forum can actually drive new visitors away. You need to constantly monitor your forums to make sure that they are clean of spam, troll posts, and just keep everything in order. In addition, forums are database-type applications that generate web pages on the fly. Every time a user views a page, it’s being created from scratch. As the forums become more active, this can take a heavy load on the web server’s resources and ultimately increase your hosting costs.
A forum is an incredible tool for building content and a community but it’s not a task to be undertaken lightly; it requires a lot of time and energy and some technical knowledge (or a tech budget!)
If your industry has a need, or your product has a loyal following, a forum is a great tool to build content while drawing like-minded individuals together. A forum is great for market research, technical support, building a fan base, trading ideas and knowledge, and many, many other benefits. Try to get a base of people from similar business or industry experts to post at your forum. It’s exposure for them and helps to build a solid foundation for your information.
If you decide to start a forum, be sure to use one that is search-friendly, such as www.InvisionBoard.com or www.phpbb.com, and set aside a good chunk of time to promote it and administer it.
For more information about how to establish and maintain online relationships with your viewers and customers, get a copy of our guide “Building Online Relationships” available here: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_4.html
Feedback Unsolicited feedback is a powerful and convincing tool! Let your customers tell other customers why they love you. It’s much more compelling than your own claims. Unfortunately, customers normally need to be asked for their opinion. You can ask for feedback on any area of your business, your web site, your ordering process, your levels of customer service, your delivery service, etc.
The easiest way is to simply set up a form to allow customers to submit their feedback. Keep it fairly brief and allow a space for comments. You can then use the information provided to improve your customer experience, and with permission, publish the ones you choose.
Often other web site owners that are also customers of users of your web site can be enticed to write a review or testimonial for your site in return for a link back to theirs. This helps them with link popularity but it helps your site as well it shows a real person wrote that review.
Ask The Expert This is a great way of not only interacting with potential customers but also establishing your business as an expert in its field. Using a simple question form or forum software, users submit questions and someone at your company answers them. The Q&A are both published on the site for users to read once they are answered in a “knowledge database” or “FAQ” section. This is less time-intensive than a full-blown forum but a great way to keep a finger on the pulse of what customers want to know while still adding content on a regular basis.
Summary If you are interested in building loyalty and interest in your company as well as repeat business and you want to get increased traffic from the editorial or free listings in search engines, you have to offer more than just sales information to your users. If you create a plan for content that offers value and interest to your customers, you can have a site that is built to sell AND drive repeat business.
For more information about how to establish and maintain online relationships with your viewers and customers, download a copy of our guide “Building Online Relationships” available here: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_4.html
In this article I will give advice and tips of where to find a low cost website design company and also about the best ways of producing a cool website.
How many people or companies are advertising their services for web design?
The answer is a great deal. They surely can not all be asking for huge sums of money to build and design quality websites. There must be some who offer cheap, affordable websites.
If you think about a company or person who is just starting out, they have not got a very large portfolio of previous work and clients to show, and in this situation are likely in these early days to offer you a competitive rate. Once they become more established they will then no doubt increase their prices.
To find these companies which are just starting out, I would advise looking on auction websites like ebay, looking in Yellow Pages, looking in newspapers such as a paper we have here in the Midlands called bargain pages. Looking on the internet on search engines and asking family and friends is also other avenues to explore.
Once you have found a company you need to think about the content for your website, the colours and also about graphics. Do you want it have flash design? These are all things to think about.
You then need to think about hosting, who will host your website? It may be worth asking the web designer if they can recommend a host.
Then once you have had your site built you need to promote it. Building up a regular and constant stream of backward links is very important as this will result in your website obtaining a higher page rank and more visitors.
If you’re shopping around for an affordable web hosting plan, knowing what services you want and what you should pay for them can help you pick out hidden costs that could launch your cheap hosting plan into an expense you just can’t afford. Here are a few things to be on the watch for when you’re shopping for the best low-cost web hosting plan for your personal or business web site.
A La Carte Pricing
Don’t be pulled in by impossibly low prices. While the explosion of reseller web hosting has dropped web hosting costs to bargain basement prices, you should still expect to pay for quality, dependable, professional web hosting services. A la carte prices can make a web hosting plan seem like an incredibly good deal, but be sure to know exactly what you need and what you’ll be paying for it. When you add in setup fees, upgrade fees and additional monthly fees for things like scripting support, a mySQL database and php support, you can end up paying far more for your affordable plan than if you’d opted to pay a few dollars more for a more inclusive plan.
Read the Fine Print
Read through every little entry in the comparison chart to see what you’re being charged for, and what fees you might incur if you go over your monthly limits. If something isn’t clear, or isn’t listed, email the company to ask what they charge for particular services and if there’s a setup fee. It will tell you more than just how much the services cost - it will tell you how well they respond to support and help requests.
Unlimited May Not Be Unlimited
Don’t put your reading glasses away yet. If a plan promises ‘unlimited traffic’, read the fine print to see how they define ‘unlimited’. Many web hosting providers use ‘typical usage patterns’ to define what unlimited means. If your web site becomes popular enough to exceed what’s normal for other web sites of your size, you could end up getting charged extra for bandwidth even if it says ‘unlimited’.
E-Commerce Ready Sites for Cheap Prices
Check to see what’s actually included in that cheap e-commerce ready site. Does it include access to their secure server, or will you have to purchase your own license? Is there a good deal on bill-collecting services and credit card access, or will you have to arrange your own? Be sure you know what you’re getting for your money so you can plan your web hosting expenses wisely.
There are a lot of legitimately good web hosting deals to be had, but just like any other purchase, it pays to do your homework to make sure that you get the most affordable, most professional and best web hosting deal you can find.
To view our recommended web hosts, visit,
Recommended Web Hosting Companies.
Carrie Reeder is the owner of eZerk, an informational website, with articles
and the latest news about various topics.
With New Year’s here, we all will be making a bunch of resolutions. None of which we will end up keep through the month of January, much less the entire year. But delete4good.com has a New Year’s resolution for you that you would be wise to keep.
This year you should make a New Year’s resolution to protect your privacy. And delete4good.com wants to show you how to make it happen. And we want you to keep this resolution this year and from now on.
I am astonished at the statistics concerning identity theft. The 2005 numbers aren’t in yet but, in 2004 over 9.9 million Americans had their identity stolen. And if history repeats itself, well over 10 million will have their identity stolen in 2005.
Yet, only a small number of us do anything to protect our most valuable asset-our identity.
According to Forrester Research, 27% of the small scale companies do not even bother to use an anti-spyware software. Webroot’s State of Spyware 2Q 2005, revealed that 33% of corporate PCs were infected with spyware. And, nearly 80% of home PCs are infected with spyware.
The first thing that you need to do is buy a high quality spyware and adware detection and removal program. Delete4good.com recommends two great products.
Then, the best way that you can stick to this New Year’s resolution is make it part of your budget. That is of course assuming that you have a budget. Either way, just sock away $10 a month to put towards protecting your privacy.
At the end of the year you will have $120 committed to protecting your identity. That’s a great start. Assuming that you purchase one of the programs that delete4good.com has recommended, you will have plenty of money left over. Each year you can upgrade your spyware/adware detection and removal software plus purchase other items to help protect your identity. Those items can include a locking mailbox to protect thieves from stealing your mail or a good paper shredder to destroy all of personal information.
Two other items that everyone should have is a good fireproof locking box or safe and a locking filing cabinet. They are cheaper than you think.
More and more people are beginning to realize the importance of being proactive when it comes to thiner privacy. A great way for you to do something about protecting your privacy right now is to make it a New Year’s resolution. And delete4good.com would like to see you stick to your resolution.
By setting aside just a few dollars a month you can ensure that your most important asset, your identity, is protected in 2006 and from now on.
Proper pricing of items to be listed for sale on eBay is one of the most important aspects of generating interest in one’s auction listing.
If the price is too high, interest will be low, and the possibility of a sale decreases.
If the price is too low, the seller generates enormous traffic, yet the final bid might be too low to satisfy the seller’s need for a profit.
The following are steps that will aid in that process.
Step 1: How Much Was this Item Originally Worth
First of all, one must find out how much the item was when it was bought. This helps the seller set realistic goals as to how much he will expect to profit from that item.
The seller must remember that the going price for that item nowadays will be different from its original price. And depending on the demand for that item, he may get a price that is better, or worse than the original price.
The seller must also come to an acceptance of the fact that the buying power of today’s $1 is different from that of ten years ago.
Step 2: Do a Little Research
Sellers should research on the current price of similar items. This gives them a good standard as to how much they should price their wares. Searching eBay for successful auctions of similar wares is the best way to do this.
Step 2: How Much Has the Item Depreciated?
The seller must check the item for damages and other irregularities from a mint conditioned item of the same kind. He must then deduct a reasonable amount from his asking price. Wear and tear tends to bring down the price of an item considerably. It is wise to make sure the items are repaired, or spruced up before being auctioned.
Step 3: Start It a Little Lower than Usual
It is wise to start an auction a step or two (or even three) lower than a sellers intended price. This generates interest in the item. It may be hard to believe, but auctions that start lower than its intended price actually have a better chance at overshooting that intended price.
Professional opinions are available if the seller is in doubt of the value of his or her item. Third party appraisal companies help in this regard. A list of such is available at the Authentication & Grading link under Protection and Authentication on eBay.
