Web Development Articles

Last Thursday afternoon I was working on a garage door and regrettably loosened the torsion spring too much. This spring is what relieves or neutralizes the weight of the garage door so the openers can work without burning out and so you don’t have to be Arnold Schwarzenegger to open it.

I released the door from the opener and it began closing way too quickly. As I rushed over to try and slow it’s decent, I grabbed the handle with my left hand and was trying to grab anything with my right hand. Unfortunately, the only thing that got grabbed was my pinky finger ? two knuckles up. The 1000 lb. door came crashing down so hard it broke the glass in one of its sections.

When the dust cleared and the glass had stopped clinking- I looked over to see my finger clamped firmly and squashed flatly between two sections of the heavy wooden door. I had no one around, no other neighbors were home, and I was trapped, in lots of pain, and unable to get free or lift the door (what would you do?). I tried pulling my cell phone out of my pocket but inside the garage there was no signal.

A Closer look at Using a Template Site. Is it Professional Choice?
 by: Anthony Jewell

So you need your site online and looking good, though your budget isn’t the biggest? Well, this is what alot of new sites and companies face each and every day. You are looking for an alternate route to get your site online but don’t want to break your bank account. Oh, there you go. You didn’t think I would see you looking at one of those templates sites online. Go ahead browse around, I’ll wait…. Ok, back with me now. Great. Now you may be thinking to yourself “these sites looking pretty good” and “the cost of them is great”, but(yes there is a but). Is buying a template from one of these sites professional? Well lets take a look.

The Internet is the fastest growing source of mail order sales. The explosive growth in the goods and services sold online has in the past taken many online sellers by surprise: demand has outpaced supply, depleting inventories and disappointing customers. This can lead to serious problems with the FTC.

The FTC has issues directives spelling out the ground rules for making promises about shipments, notifying consumers about unexpected delays, and refunding consumers’ money. Enforced by the FTC, the Mail or Telephone Order Rule applies to orders placed by phone, fax or the Internet.

Complying With The Rule

By law, you must have a reasonable basis for stating that a product can be shipped within a certain time. If your advertising doesn’t clearly and prominently state the shipment period, you must have a reasonable basis for believing that you can ship within 30 days.

If you can’t ship within the promised time (or within 30 days if you made no promise), you must notify the customer of the delay, provide a revised shipment date and explain their right to cancel and get a full and prompt refund.

Advantages of an Online Site Builder
 by: Halstatt Pires

There are numerous choices when it comes to building web sites. One of the first choices you will have to make is whether to use an online or offline site builder.

Site Builders

Site builders can be divided into two categories, online and offline. An online site builder creates a web site with web forms over the Internet. With an online site builder, there is no need to install any special software. You only need an Internet browser.

An offline site builder is a program that you install on a computer from a disc or a download. This type of site builder requires that a site is first built on the computer with the software, then uploaded, often with a separate piece of software.

Location, Location, Location

A good online site builder has several advantages over an offline site builder. For starters, and online site builder is always there regardless of where you are accessing the Internet. You can easily work with it from home, the office or on the road. With an offline builder, you need to be on the Internet, have the builder software installed and usually have a separate FTP program installed. From this perspective, an online site builder is clearly the better choice.

Conventional Wisdom states you should use Sub-Directories to organize your web Pages. Unfortunately the Page Indexing Tools Penalize your Page Rankings when you Do this, Many of the Page Ranking Algorithms in use today deem that pages closed to your Root are of a Higher Value then pages that are further away from your root. If you have 2 Web Pages with the Exact same content (web1.html and web2.html) http://yourdomain.com/web1.html and http://yourdomain.com/articles/training/web2.html

All things being equal Web1 will have a higher ranking then Web2.html because Web1.html it is in the Root Directory.

As a Web Designer or a Home Based Business owner wearing a Web Designer Hat it seems you have 2 Choices, do what seems right and in many ways best and use a Pretty Directory Structure and Loose Ranking points or Throw out the Directory Structure and Gain Ranking Points. Many People Choose the Directory structure either because they don’t know about the page Ranking Algorithms or they feel a strong need to be organized and are willing to sacrifice ranking points.

How To Set Up the Backend of Your Web Hosting Business
 by: Eric Holmlund

What is a backend?

I’m sure many business people and “scholars” have much better definitions of this than me, but I like to think of it as the guts of the business that make things run behind the scenes. When I think of a backend as it pertains to web hosting, I consider the following elements:

• Billing system
• Order processing
• Support system
• Accounting and recordkeeping

Billing system

As you contemplate your billing system, the first piece of information you should look at is what types of payments are you going to accept. Hopefully, you’ve already outlined this in your business plan. Will you take Paypal, or will you accept credit cards through your own merchant account, or will you accept checks and money orders by mail? Accepting payments by mail significantly complicates your business, so I would suggest not accepting payments by mail, or if you do—only accept annual term payments.

For Automated Sites PHP and MySQL are A Perfect Match
 by: Halstatt Pires

You’ve decided to automate your web site. Now what? Here are some ideas to help you choose how to automate your site.

A bit of programming is going to be necessary if you want to automate a site. There are many types of programs that can be used to automate a web site including JavaScript, PHP, Perl, ASP, Java and more. So, which do you use? For many, it is a personal choice.

I prefer PHP for programming. PHP is a particularly useful programming language because it allows for advanced programming and is easy to integrate with web pages. Another plus of PHP is that the language interfaces very well with MySQL, a popular type of online database.

Yet another plus of PHP is that it is Open Source Code. The actual code that is PHP is available to the public for free, while the source code for products such as ASP are not. Because PHP is open source, there is a large community of PHP programmers that help each other with code. This means PHP programmers can rely on each other by using reusable pieces of code called functions and classes rather than constantly reinventing the wheel. This can dramatically cut down on production time.

Have you ever been to site with so much ad clutter that you wanted to just leave? Odds are you have, and odds are even better that you did in fact leave! Always refer back to the KISS philosphy. Keep It Simple Stupid!

1. Make sure you keep your add density down. Too many adds in comparison with your content makes a site look flimsy, and un-attractive.

2. Make sure your ads, if any (!) are as relevant as possible, without being too competitive.

3. Don’t try to do too much fancy coding. Either you will screw it up (coding can be hard work!), or it will not be good for SEOs, or even more imporantly, it will just be ugly!

4. Use a decent color scheme. Greys and whites with just one prominent color look nice. When in doubt, keep it simple!

5. Don’t force your customer into buying, give them alternatives, and reviews. If they think your product is so good that you’ll offer alternatives, then they will have more confidence.

Once you have a website you then need to think about hosting your site. There are many hosting companies offering different fees, therefore it can be quite difficult in finding the best deal.

There are many avenues to explore to find this best deal. I would advise asking the company who designed the website, if they know of any hosting companies which they could recommend.

Alternatively you can search the internet using a search engine like Google.

If you have a large number of websites which you need hosting for it is worth considering a reseller account. This is where you pay, normally a yearly fee, and are allowed an unlimited number of websites on the same server.

I myself have a large number of websites and use http://www.fasthosts.co.uk for my hosting. They charge £500 annually and this works out to be a lot cheaper than having individual hosting accounts for each of my websites.

There are other companies out there offering a similar service to fasthosts, however this is a company I was recommended to use, and I have had no problems with them as yet.

Web Design Firm: Professionals or Trouble?
 by: Anthony Jewell

Remember one thing that stays true. A Web Design Firm is only as good as their last design. My name is Anthony and I will be your guide today(saying this is a professional but fun voice). Ok, lets get down to business. A web design is there for one thing, remember this. That is to make money. Like most businesses they are offering a service to you in return for payment. Yes they do want you to be satisfied with the work they do, but do they want more? Do they want to show off their best skills and amaze people every time they go to your website? Allot of Web Design Firms will only do this if the right dollar amount comes along. So you have to be careful that the reason they want to deal with you is not all about the $$$ for them.

Well then, you may ask. How do I know if I have a good Design Firm on my Hands? From my own personal experience here are some key things to watch for.