Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Rules of Web Design Explained

By Computer Geek


The number one rule of any website design is to make sure that it performs optimally under all conditions. It is a huge mistake to assume the belief that visitors need to be entertained with fancy flash works which usually requires long loading time, when the truth is exactly the opposite.

Here's what you need for good web design

1) Leave out splash pages if you want to have a higher performing web page.

Splash pages are popular with most sites today but many of them have a lot of images and graphics that can slow down your computer. These lavish images and graphics don't really have a purpose. They're just fancy additions. What you want to keep in mind is how to keep your visitors on the site and having to many or "loud" graphics can send them away.

2) Keep banners to a minimum

Many site owners use banners on their page for commissions but many also have a lot of banners that just make your site look tacky. Too many ads and banners will just send your visitor's off to your competitors site. Replace your banner ads with affiliate links to money producing products that will not show as ads and bring you more of a profit.

3) Make it easy to navigate

The navigation should be made very simple that even a young child can manage to find their way around. Avoid the use of flash menus or multi-tiered menus because generally they are not a good idea as far as easy navigation is concerned. If you make it difficult for them, they will leave your site. A site map will help them find what they want and should be factored in to the website design right from the start.

4) Make it easy for your visitor to know where they are

It's easy to get lost on a site that includes many pages and making sure this doesn't happen will keep your visitors looking. To make sure they don't get lost, include clear titles on every page and add a different color to hyperlinks that have already been visited. This will keep your visitors happy and not straying to your competitors site.

5) Use less audio

Don't irritate your visitors by adding too much audio or repeating it continuously. This will only make them leave. Music can amplify a visitor's experience but you want to make sure you use your audio adequately. To do this, don't repeat the music or audio and give your visitor's control by allowing them to change the volume or to turn it off. Doing this will give your repeat visitors.

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Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Cheap Web Hosting Offers Internet Entry Opportunities

By Jeff Glasser


There is something to be said about cheap web hosting, especially for business just getting started with an internet venture as well as for those wanting their own personal space online. For those that do not want or need all the bells and whistles on their web site, cheap web hosting may be the perfect way to get their business posted along the information highway, allowing them to build their business and profit margin while they become accessible to internet users.

Depending on the size of the business, many companies have found cheap web hosting to be the ideal way to stay within their budget while they dive into the internet pool. There are some offers that allow a business or an individual to have a quality internet site for about $50 a year, without the need to allow third-party ads to appear on their site. To help pay the low cost of cheap web hosting, companies can add their own advertisers.

Caution should be exercised when considering cheap web hosting and that is the sustainability of the site host. Many companies have quality and dependable equipment, but some of them use questionable equipment, making the sites they host unavailable during peak times of usage. They are not doing their customers any favors if the company offering cheap web hosting cannot keep their sites up and running. Keeping your business available on line is based on choosing the host carefully and their reputation.

Look For Hosts' Available Options

It is important to consider the types of services that are included in the package when choosing a web hosting company, even though many companies offer cheap web hosting. While the number of email addresses available may be important to some businesses, the ability to use specific scripts will be important to many others. The amount of available bandwidth, which can range from one to a few thousand gigabytes, will help determine the amount of information that can be exchanged with the cheap web hosting site.

As a business grows, they can improve their web site by signing up with a company that offers affordable web hosting, often offering sites that can hold and exchange more information at a price they can afford. How a business owner gets their information to the cheap web hosting site may be limited to file transfer protocol, but many of the affordable sites offer more options, enabling the company to maintain their site through more than one method.

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Best Choice of ASP Windows Hosting

By Jay Newman


if your dynamic websites was created using the ASP.NET language you will require ASP web hosting. ASP web hosting should ideally be based on the Microsoft Windows Server operating system (Windows 2003 Server) which ASP.NET was designed to run on.

Most ASP web hosting providers will provide you with a control panel to fully manage your ASP web hosting, running on Windows servers. Popular Windows based control panels at the moment are Parallels Plesk control panel and Helm which both allow you to manage all aspects of your ASP.NET based web applications.

Both Plesk and Helm allow you with access to the installed version of Microsoft SQL Server, ensuring full integration between your ASP.NET applications and MS-SQL. You will be able to create and delete your remotely hosted databases, create users, set passwords and define permissions and security settings.

Like standard web hosting your host will provide you with FTP access to your ASP Web Hosting account to allow you to upload your web data. Popular software such as the Microsoft Visual Web Developer have a built FTP in upload function, whereby you enter your FTP settings and upload.

Every web hosting account allows access via FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to allow files to be uploaded to their web space. Its also possible to upload files using the Control Panel's built in File Manager, which has an "Explorer" like interface allowing your browse, drag and drop files from your desktop to server.

"Classic" ASP and ASP.NET should really only run on Microsoft Windows Server operating systems. Some hosts do offer "ASP Hosting" running on Linux servers, using using the Sun Chilisoft ASP Environment. If you have developed your scripts in a Microsoft environment you may find it more reliable and less frustrating to host them on Microsoft servers as there are a few subtle differences between Linux and Windows hosts (such as file and case sensitivity).

ASP hosting was originally a "niche market" with relatively few specialists, but has increased in popularity, partly due to ready developed packages and greater awareness and competition . Backwards compatibility was maintained by Microsoft, so older asp applications should work on servers running the newer scripting environment.

You should only choose a Windows based ASP web hosting package if your scripts or applications required ASP and ASP.NET. If your web site only needs static html pages, or perhaps open source scripting technologies such as PHP, Perl or Python then a standard Linux shared hosting package should suffice.

Your choice of Windows Web Hosting because is not down to your choice of home operating system! If all your web site is mainly built of static html pages, then you would be wasting your money on an ASP Web Hosting package.

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