Archive for the ‘Webcrowd News’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

The Importance Of Reliable Web Hosting

Sunday, March 8th, 2009

There are many ways that consumers form an opinion about a business or product, and key among them is reliability. Is the customer service honest and reliable? Can you trust the product? Is the quality equal to any guarantees or promises made at the time of purchase? All of these questions have to do with reliability, and when you choose a web hosting service you must consider reliability as well.

As the owner of a website it is crucial to include issues such as “downtime”, customer support, and website speed and security when choosing your hosting provider. This is because such factors will greatly affect how your own visitors measure your reliability.

For example, if your web hosting service makes many allowances for downtime in order to perform services, maintenance of technical issues your customers or visitors may not reach the website. If a consumer has to deal with even a single occurrence of an “unavailable” notice at your site, it is likely that they won’t return.

Additionally, if you choose to sign up with a shared server it is important to understand that an “over sold” server might allow for one or two other sites to gobble up available bandwidth and slow down all of the other sites to the point of making them unreliable for both the site owner and their customers.

Really investigating a wide range of potential providers is the surest way to find a reliable web hosting provider. So, how do you determine the best providers as well as the most reliable for your needs?

Consider the following points before making your decision:

Are there low limits on transfer? This is the amount of information that can be downloaded by visitors each month. You really want an unlimited amount of transfer if possible because exceeding set limits generally comes with additional fees.

Guarantee of 99% uptime, or greater. There is no need for a modern server to be down more than one percent of the business day (or night) and it is too risky to work with any other arrangement.

Does the site provide lots of space? If you are in business you are going to require space for additional information, pages or applications and limits in space mean limits in potential.

Will there be dedicated customer support for you as the owner as well as full time support for those who visit your site? The better web hosting providers offer round the clock support for all visitors and customers, and this is a value added service that should not be overlooked.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Hosting, Webcrowd News, Website Development | No Comments »

Apple releases Safari 4 Public Beta

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009

by Peter Smith

Apple released a beta version of their Safari 4 web browser for Mac OS X and Windows today. What’s new? Well Apple has a huge list of 150 features (not all of them new) online, but the biggies are a claimed speed increase in running Javascript (the Apple website claims “Safari 4 executes JavaScript up to 6 times faster than Internet Explorer 8 and up to 4 times faster than Firefox 3.1.”) and some eye-catching interface additions.

The biggest of these is the new “Top Sites” page; a panorama of “previews” of the sites you visit most frequently. This feels a lot like the “Most Visited” page in Google Chrome, but it’s flashier and has more functionality. For one thing, you can “Pin” Top Sites so they’ll always be there. Also, if one of your Top Sites has been updated since your last visit, the top right corner of its preview will be folded down to reveal a star. This lets you quickly scan favorite sites and identify new content. Clicking a preview takes you to the site, and the bookmarks toolbar has a new “Show Top Sites” icon to take you back. (Tip: You can also access Top Site via the “url” topsites:// — you can use this to set a Top Sites bookmark or set your homepage to the Top Sites page.)

The second big change is the location of tabs for tabbed browsing. The tabs now appear at the very top of the browser window (again, similar to Google Chrome). The ‘close tab’ icon is on the far left, and a ‘handle’ icon is on the far right of each tab. By grabbing this handle you can rearrange tabs or tear them off into a separate window. Conversely you can take the single tab of a freestanding window and drag it into the tabs of another window to merge the two. You could do all this with Safari 3 but the operation of merging a single window with a tabbed window was clunkier. You actually had to open a 2nd tab in the single window to get the tab interface to show. On the other hand in Safari 3 you could grab any part of a tab to manipulate it, while in 4 you have to zero in on the handle. Not a big deal but it takes some getting used to.

Another downside of the new tabs is that a page’s title appears only in the tab. If you have a lot of tabs open you won’t be able to read the entire title unless you hover your mouse cursor over the tab for a few seconds (this is also a limitation in Chrome).

Viewing your bookmarks or history has gotten an update as well. This information is now displayed using the “Cover Flow” system that we first saw in iTunes and now is used in the OS X Finder for all kinds of files. The jury is still out on how much value this adds; to me, flipping through your bookmarks feels slower then scanning a textual list.

Under Windows you can hide the menu bar to give Safari a very small UI footprint. Again, (Dare I say it?) similar to Google’s Chrome. But where this is an option in Safari, in Chrome there is no way to turn on a menu bar if you prefer that ease of access.

The Mac version of Safari 4 Beta requires Mac OS 10.5.6 with all current security updates. Keep in mind that installing the beta will clobber Safari 3. The Mac installation package (both Windows and Mac versions can be downloaded from the Apple website) includes an uninstaller application that will remove Safari 4 and revert you back to version 3 (I tested this and it worked as advertised). The Windows installation seems to be less fussy, though on one XP machine the Top Site functionality wasn’t there. I don’t mean it didn’t work; the option simply didn’t seem to exist (on a second XP machine all was well). The problem XP installation was running under VMWare Fusion on a MacBook Pro, so that may have had something to do with it; we couldn’t duplicate this “missing feature” phenomenon.

I’m traditionally a Firefox person, but after running Safari 4 for most of the day today, I’m going to stick with it for a while. It feels very snappy, and it has handled every site I’ve thrown at it so far (and although it’s a beta, I haven’t had any crashes yet). I can’t totally discard Firefox though; I rely on too many extensions for my day-to-day work. I’d also like to see more interface options in Safari. For instance in Firefox there is a “New pages should be opened in a new tab” setting and I can’t find a similar option in Safari, and so I have to use some kind of modifier key in order to keep all my web pages in one neatly tabbed window. I can adjust (or just use a mouse instead of a trackpad) but it’s curious the kinds of little things that end up meaning a lot.

Bottom line, Safari 4 Public Beta is well worth a look; there are a lot more new smaller features and improvements beyond the few I’ve covered here. Whether or not you end up sticking with it will probably depend a lot on whether you can get by without your favorite Firefox extensions. Both Safari and Chrome need to tackle this problem. If you don’t use Extensions, then the choice between Safari and Chrome (under Windows for now, but Chrome should be coming to OS X in the near future) will be an interesting one.

safari_4.jpeg

Source: http://www.itworld.com/software/63216/apple-releases-safari-4-public-beta

Tags: ,
Posted in Browsers, Webcrowd News, Website Development | 1 Comment »

Choosing Domain Names for Your Business

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009

Let’s say that you’re creating a website for Barb’s Specialty Pet Products. Should the domain name be barbsspecialtypetproducts.com?

Perhaps — but don’t stop there. Having the right domain name, or domain names, can bring more traffic to your site.

Why more than one domain name?

One domain is all you need to set up a website. But with more domains directing to your site, you can have these additional benefits:

- Bring site visitors who type variations of your domain name

- Acquire traffic that might otherwise go to your competition

- Harness the marketing power of keyword domains

Your primary domain name

If it’s feasible, use your business or brand name in your primary domain. People will remember it and associate it with your business. Also consider the following factors when choosing your primary domain.

Domain name extensions

Should your primary domain end with .com, .net, or .biz, or with a country-specific extension such as .ca or .co.uk?

If your website is aimed at people in a specific country, having a country-specific domain can help:

- Site visitors will recognize right away that the business has a presence in the country of the extension. They may therefore be more comfortable buying from you.

- Some country-specific search results include sites with the relevant country-specific domain extension even if the site isn’t hosted in that country.

On the other hand, if you’re targeting an international audience, a country-specific domain could work against you. People from outside the country of the extension may be less inclined to buy if the business looks foreign to them.

If you want to attract both people within your country and those in other countries, have both. Each domain could direct to the same site, with each audience seeing the domain intended for them. For country-specific search results, the primary domain should be the country-specific one.

Chances are that the .com domain you want is already taken. If you use the .net or .biz version, you risk having potential site visitors go to your .com competition instead. Be sure to use the full domain name on all promotional material to reduce this risk.

Domain name length

A short domain is easier to remember, it has less risk of being mistyped, and it’ll fit easily on your business cards and correspondence.

Conversely, if a short name doesn’t represent your business, it’s more difficult for people to remember. The short names you like may already be taken anyway.

If your business name is up to three easy-to-spell words, it’ll probably work as a domain name. For a longer business name, the initials or just one or two words may be easier than remembering a combination of words.

Secondary domain names

Secondary domains directing to your site are for online use:

- For people who type your primary domain name incorrectly

- For people who search for your products or services online

Typing and spelling variations

How many ways can people spell and type your business name?

barbsspecialtypetproducts.com

barbs-specialty-pet-products.com

barbspecialtypetproducts.com

barbsspecialitypetproducts.com

barbsspecialitypetproducts.com

barbspecialtyproducts.com

barbspecialtyproduct.com

Hyphens aren’t recommended for your primary domain. When people tell others about your site, they’re likely to omit the hyphens. They may also forget to type them.

For secondary domains, hyphens make long domains easier to read. Each word stands out when people see your domain. However, domains such as buy-keyword-product-now.com make some people view hyphenated domains, especially those with more than one hyphen, as spam-like.

Having the words in domains separated may help some search engines recognize keywords. With Google, though, hyphens don’t make any difference.

Consider all of these variations for secondary domain names:

- With and without hyphens

- Different ways of spelling some words

- Singular and plural versions of nouns

- Extensions with .com and .net as well as a country-specific extension if relevant

What people search for

If you want to find the website for Time magazine, you might do a search for it, or you might try typing in time.com. If you do the latter, you’ll find yourself at the Time site.

This type of search behavior extends to generic words too. Searching for dog collars? Try dogcollar.com, for example, and you’ll be redirected to dogidcollar.com. Do you want life insurance? Lifeinsurance.com redirects to nmfn.com (and so does northwesternmutualfinancialnetwork.com).

While having keyword domain names may not draw a lot of site visitors, using them is a technique to consider.

How to use more than one domain

Set up your website with your primary domain, and use that domain on your correspondence and with your customers.

Point secondary domains to your site using URL forwarding (also called domain forwarding, domain redirect, or URL redirect). To have the secondary domain appear in the browser, use domain masking. You can set up these features when you log in to your account with your domain registrar (if your registrar offers these services).

With domains that are simply variations of your primary domain, you can expect additional traffic just from having set up these domains. With domains that contain keywords, you can get more from them by using them to list your site in online directories. When these domains appear in search results, searchers will see the keywords.

The next step

Once you decide on the available domains that you want, register them immediately. They might not be available tomorrow.

If you don’t already have a business name, you’ll find it easier to market your business online if you choose a primary domain and a business name together. If your first choice for a business name doesn’t work well with any available domains, consider a business name that you can easily market with an available domain. Once you’ve registered that domain name and your business name, register secondary domains and put them to use.

Is it worth registering multiple domains for one site? That depends on your site, but any variations that you don’t register will be available for competitors to register and use. If a domain is valuable to a competitor, it’s valuable to you.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Domain Names, Webcrowd News, Website Development | 2 Comments »

What You Must Know About Choosing Your E-commerce Hosting

Tuesday, February 17th, 2009

Before you decide to venture off on your e-commerce hosting adventure, there are a few things you need to know about choosing a web hosting company. Even before that, you must investigate whether or not e-commerce is the best choice for your business. Once you have made that determination, then you set about finding the best company to fit your particular needs. There are a lot of different hosting firms because there are a lot of different approaches to hosting. It’s that simple.

Your web host is essentially a service provider that rents you space on their system(s). Some will also offer website building services and other things, but whoever takes care of building your e-commerce site, your hosting company is the one that will implement it on a server that connects to the Internet. 

Thus, one of the first things to find out when you are considering prospective hosts for your firm is that the company provides near total uptime (well over 99%). If your website is inaccessible to visitors because the server is down and being repaired, then you are losing money.

Features and costs

If you really have the intention to open an e-commerce site you should bear in mind the type of features that are common to most hosting services, and compare them. There are many companies that offer “one size fits all” e-commerce and shopping cart services, often for low or no cost, in its hosting plans. For smaller companies these basic options may be enough. On the other hand, there are many hosting firms that offer more comprehensive, customizable services for both hosting and e-commerce. These services can be quite good, but the price can be quite high.

If you have adequate technical expertise, or someone in your company does, then you may be able to manage with a “Chinese menu” arrangement for choosing hosting and e-commerce services. This way you can save money by building the site yourself, as well as performing maintenance and troubleshooting. You must keep in mind that whatever technical abilities you lack, you will have to pay for, to someone. If you are already hosting your site with an e-commerce-oriented company, it will most likely be them. Minimizing these costs is important.

Follow the money

Finally, you absolutely must know how you are going to transact business (process purchases) before setting up your e-commerce site. If you do not already have a merchant account for processing credit cards, you should look into getting one. If you are too small or too new to get an account on the best terms, you will have to settle for paying higher rates and fees while you grow your company. You can always renegotiate your merchant account when your fortunes improve.

Fortunately, there are also alternatives for when your fortunes diminish, or you just want to start out slow and “test the waters.” You can use PayPal, a financial “third party,” for customer purchases, though it will cost you somewhat more. There are other third-party processors, as well, with a variety of entry-level accounts that will at least allow you to take major credit and debit cards, even checks. 

However, third-party processors will always cost you more. The advantage to you, of course, is being able to take credit cards at all, since without that capacity you really have very little hope of success in today’s “plastic-oriented” sales environments. People want to use credit and debit cards, not cash or checks, period.

As always in business the parameters you need to look for, when choosing the best e-commerce hosting company, are good management, reliable equipment and speedy, professional customer service. If it is one thing more than any other that you should focus on, all other parameters being equal, then go with the firm that has the most expert (and available!) customer service staff. You will be dealing with them more than you now think, that’s for sure.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in ECommerce, Hosting, Webcrowd News, Website Development | No Comments »

Important Tips for Web Hosting

Sunday, February 15th, 2009

After the registration of domain name selection of web host is another rational step a user need to consider. Though, finding an ideal host is a daunting task. One can find several companies offering web-hosting services to the clients. While locating keyword web hosting in the search engines one will find more than 100 million outputs!

One cannot deny the fact, for a successful online presence a dependable web hosting is must. Online presence and accessibility of a web site is must. If not, one should remain ready to loose clients and prospects. For an instance, if one compare this with a traditional business.

CATEGORIES OF WEB HOSTING:

One should select a web hosting deal according to his/her site. One cannot fulfill his/her requirements from same hosting deal for a personal web site, web site meant for email newsletter subscription and archives, e-commerce site or web forum. Web hosting can be divided into four prime categories: 

1. Virtual (shared) hosting,

2. Dedicated server, 

3. Collocation server and 

4. Reseller hosting. 

Two most applicable hosting are virtual (shared) hosting and dedicated server.

What is Virtual (shared) hosting? It is a condition in which several web sites share one server. It is a low cost hosting because price is divided between several users. One can locate a standard virtual hosting at a rate of $100 a year.

In a Dedicated server hosting company lease the whole web server from a particular web hosting company. The site of web server is the web hosting company. One can opt dedicated server as a suitable option who does not wish to share a server with other web masters. One can find a dedicated server in two forms managed and un-managed. If one talk about managed server, company will take care of all the setups of user’s server. However, in unmanaged server user needs to take care of all these by him/her self. The benefit of this sort of hosting is that one can fully lodge web hosting as per his/her requirements. Moreover, for a site with ample amount of visitors a dedicated server is the only rational choice. Due to higher cost, starting from $100 per month, those companies that know the worth of Internet business generally use it.

One can say that Collocation server is quite identical to dedicated server. Disparity lies in the fact that company doesn’t take the web server on lease. Their own web server is placed in the web hosting company. In addition to it, company has material access to their web server, which is not available while talking about a dedicated server.

If one mention about Reseller hosting it is aimed to those companies only wishes to begin their own web hosting business.

ASPECTS, WHICH ONE NEEDS TO CONSIDER:

There are many factors which a user needs to consider to prevent any future miss happens:

Web space:

Requirement of Web space vary from site to site. Off course, if user requirement is only a web site containing basic information about him/her and his/her work excluding the use of web applications, then space of 50 MB is quite sufficient. However, a complex e-commerce site along with numerous products in one’s database demands a capacity of 1 GB.

Bandwidth:

The term Bandwidth refers to data transferred from user’s web site and that comprise of graphic details, images, banners and files for download. One should have accurate knowledge of Content before going for an amount of bandwidth. When one talks about the majority of sites, bandwidth of 10 GB a month is quite sufficient, though for few other sites like sites related to desktop wallpapers can frequently consumes even hundreds of GB a month.

Up time or visibility:

It symbolizes time articulated in percents displaying the period a site remained online. One should not be cheerful because someone assured him/her to provide say for 98% up time because it is not going to fulfill his/her requirement. One should get at least 99.7% uptime. Believe it or not, it definitely matters. 

Email accounts:

Email accounts are an integrated and crucial part of web hosting package. It is quite interesting to know for how much will one get only a so called catch –all forwarding which means that all emails sent to somewhere@mydomain.com will arrive to one’s email address or one can set-up email accounts for several users? Also the thing is for how much? Is it intended for 5, 10, 100 or limitless email accounts? In addition to it, there is no harm to verify whether user get a so-called POP3 email address (“real” email address), web mail or rather both? If one has a POP3 email address then he/she can check his/her emails via favorite email client and web mail facilitate the user to inquire his/her emails at any place demanding just a computer and Internet connection.

Form of Server, tools and control panel:

When one mention the two generally utilized hosting then the name of Unix-based or Windows platform comes first. It matters for the result program languages, databases and scripts that one can apply. When one talks about Unix-based platform, general selection is relayed to PHP language along with MySQL, however, when it comes to Windows platform ASP or ASP.NET language will be along with SQL Server. One should enquire that is database is available with package or not, if yes, then how many? Nowadays, contemporary web site must be database-driven.

Too, one should have full knowledge related to tools coming along with web hosting package, if there is only applications for web statistics, file manager and things it is not an concern issue. 

Technical support:

A crucial aspect while selecting a web hosting particularly for a user without having adequate technical skills is technical support. A proper technical support does not take a responsive time more then a day. This is not liable only to selection of web hosting company, but, crucial to any of the company selling products and services, Software Company can be one of the examples.

The coordination of few of the companies is so well thought-out that it takes only 1 hour to give response to user’s queries! Through their source of contact one can predict about the future response. Do the concern company has only email support or also have phone support? Does they provide a toll-free number? Do they offer the facility of trouble-ticket system? Working time is another crucial aspect. What is their strategy of providing technical support is it during working hours only i.e. 9 to 17 or does they provide the facility of 24×7 technical support? An ideal way to detect their professionalism one can create a list of fake queries, drop a line to them and hang around to know their reply time. 

Testimonials:

Several web hosting and software companies have this smart way to increase their customer strength. Testimonials section contains the approval of satisfied customers, attracting more people to their service. This section is not completely reliable. Several hosting companies offer their clients to analyze their portfolio, instead of doing that one should contact webmasters who are taking the service of concern host and register their opinions. One can take help of several sites for further information regarding best web hosting deals and suggestions.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Hosting, Webcrowd News, Website Development | No Comments »

How to Create a Bad Website and Frustrate Your Visitors

Sunday, February 15th, 2009

By Jason OConnor (c) 2009 

If you’re a sadistic kind of webmaster or website owner and have a burning desire to royally frustrate and anger your site visitors each and every time they visit your site, these three lists are just for you. If you want to have a terrible website that looks bad, works horribly and breaks fundamental marketing rules, read on.

First let me explain why there are three lists. One way to look at any website is to break it up into three equally important segments; design, technical and marketing. In other words, every site on the Web contains these three components. 

They all have a design or look and feel (design), they all have to be on a server and coded properly to be live on the Internet (technical) and they all have ways in which they attract visitors and make sales (marketing).

Let’s look at the top ten ways in which you can annoy your website visitors and basically fail miserably at the whole website endeavor in each of the three segments. The following is a líst, broken up into the three categories, defining exactly what NOT to do.

Top 10 Web Design Mistakes:

1. Not using Web conventions, instead use crazy and wacky formats that no one’s ever seen and no one can understand.

2. Writing trite, predictable, boring or copied content only and not updating your site.

3. Creating totally different and unique navigation for every page so that your visitors need to waste time re-learning your navigation every time they go to a new page. Also creating totally different look & feels for every page so that your visitors don’t know if they’re on the same site or clicked away.

4. Using confusing, obfuscated and mysterious labels for all your links and buttons so that no one ever has any idea where they’re going if they click. The more confusing, the better.

5. Making it impossible to search the site. Offering no search box, no site map and basically no possible way to find anything on your website.

6. Including content that only talks about you. Not mentioning anything about your visitors or how you can help them, just talk about you and your history and all your achievements. Including a big picture of you and your office building right on the home page.

7. Including only poorly-written copy with lots of grammar mistakes, and ubiquitous, curious and horrendous spelling and punctuation mistakes throughout your site. 

8. Not including any text. Making every page on your site one big picture. So for instance, on your home page have one giant picture of you and your office building and have no text so search engines can’t see your site at all.

9. Using buttons for your navigation only, or use complicated JavaScript drop down menus that complicate your site’s navigation. Either way, if you do this and include no text links, the search engines won’t be able to spider (navigate and record) your website.

10. Making your site as difficult to read as possible. Use teeny, tiny fonts that are hard to read against some funky-colored background. For instance, use blue fonts on a black background.

Top 10 Technical Mistakes:

1. Making your website take forever to load in people’s browsers. The longer the better.

2. Making it so that your site looks completely different on everybody’s computer. So for Macs your site looks one way, and for PCs it looks another way. Or having it look totally different in Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox.

3. Making it so that any functionality on the site is confusing to figure out and works improperly and inconsistently every time it’s used.

4. Including lots of broken links and missing images throughout.

5. Setting it up so that it regularly crashes. For example, if more than three people are visiting the site at the same time, the home page becomes inaccessible.

6. Has no form validation. Allowing visitors to enter any thing under the sun into your website forms. Maybe some smart hacker-types will enter executable code that corrupts or takes over your server.

7. Making all your site visitors have to download and install lots of plug-ins to view your site properly. If they don’t, too bad.

8. Telling people that they have to view your site in a specific browser and browser version only.

9. Making it so that there are tons of pop-ups, moving newsletter sign-up boxes, running videos, animations and Flash movies that take forever to download before you can view the site.

10. Using lots of frames.

Top Ten E-Marketing Mistakes:

1. Making your website completely bounce-friendly. In other words, make it ‘un-sticky’ so that when people arrive on one of your pages, they leave immediately.

2. Including no calls to action so that your site doesn’t ever ask your website visitors to do a thing. Making it so that every page is a dead end that leaves your visitors scratching their heads and then clicking away.

3. Does absolutely nothing to build your brand.

4. Has no terms or policies page.

5. Evoke no emotions. Making your site flat, boring, gray, dull and forgettable.

6. Making sure there is no way for anyone who visits your site to sign up for anything or give you their contact info or email address. Certainly don’t use your site to build any kind of email líst.

7. Converting absolutely no one who visits your site into a paying customer. Ever.

8. Including no phone number, email and absolutely no other way to contact you. Hide behind your website.

9. Not using any kind of an analytics program like Google Analytics or Web Trends and not measuring or even looking at your website activity.

10. Making it so that search engine can’t read your site and make it so that people can’t really read your site either.

Follow these three lists perfectly and you’ll be well on your way to having a bad and useless website and frustrating and angering everyone who visits. 

About The Author

Jason OConnor owns and operates Oak Web Works, LLC, www.jasonoconnor.com and writes a periodic, free web design and marketing newsletter www.thenetgazette.net .

Tags: , ,
Posted in Branding, Webcrowd News, Website Development | No Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »