Posts tagged Web Development
What You Need To Know About The Difference Between Web Design And Web Development
Mar 5th
If you are hoping to use the Internet to promote your company, there are many terms that you may be encountering. It can be hard to tell what the difference between web design and web development are, for example, and how both are involved in the creation of your website. Understanding how both are used to create a seamless and effective website may be one of the most important things you can do to help promote your business.
There are many times that people will use the two terms when they are discussing the progress of their website. They may talk about design when they mean development. It will probably not hurt the overall site building process if you use design when you mean development but it is always good if you understand the difference so that you can speak about the process properly. It can also help you to outline where any issues or problems have occurred since the issues surrounding design can be very different than those surrounding development.
Web design has more to do with the way a site looks rather than how it works. All of the things that people look at from the style of type that is used to the color of the type itself is related to web design. As well, the placement of navigational buttons, the textures and colors of page backgrounds and even banners and logo positioning fall into this area of website creation.
You want to find a site design that your customers will want to look at. Often, customers may have problems looking at a website that is too busy and if you add too many things or put design elements in the wrong spot it can leave you with a website which looks cheap and amateurish. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing when it comes to the number of items on a web page. Experienced designers can help you pare down your page and make it look elegant and professional.
Web development has more to do with the code and programming that makes the site function. It may include items such as analytics programs that allow you to monitor the flow of traffic to your area. It may also include content management systems that give you control over the text elements of your website.
If you have elements such as a shopping cart, you also need to make sure that this feature will also work well. The last thing you want is for clients to be unable to accomplish the business they need to do using your website. You can see how important proper web development is to the success of your site in general.
Experience is important when it comes to selecting the company that will create your site. If you can, make sure that you have one where there is both a designer and a developer on staff. This means that sound design principals can be used in order to make a beautiful looking site and the development staff can programming things properly so that everything works as it should.
A good website can help you attract clients from around the world. By picking wisely you will be able to end up with something that helps you build your business quickly and profitably. Some of the best websites are often the most simple so having a clear vision of what you want your site to look at can make the process much more straightforward than you may think possible.
Vancouver Web Design is a full service design firm that have both the technical expertise and experience needed to provide the solutions to convert audiences into your customers. Toronto Web Design Company: Acro Media First Canadian Place, 100 King Street West, Suite 5700, Toronto, ON M5X 1C7(416) 915-3136 – (877) 763-8844
How To Find Developers For Your Web Site
Feb 13th
When it comes to the web site development, I don’t know a lot from a technical perspective. As a result, Ive always had to rely on others to do the work for me. This can be a challenging process as resources change and needs change as well.
When I was starting out with online marketing, a colleague mentioned that he didn’t fret too much about web development. He always seemed to have the resources he needed to get work done in a timely manner and it seemed like he was always working on his websites What I didn’t realize at the time was that he had an unlimited source of qualified developers at his disposal for around ten bucks an hour.
The first place to start is with a clear understanding of what you want to accomplish. This took me a long time to understand but it comes in handy for finding the right resources at the right price. If you start with only a vague notion of what you are trying to achieve, your results will be less than ideal and costs can spiral out of control. The best bet is to create an excel spreadsheet listing each task to be completed and specifically what it will look like when its done.
After you’ve gotten a clear picture of what you want to achieve and its well documented, the next step is to find the resources that can make your vision into a reality. This is very easy to do with sites like eLance.com or GetAFreelancer.com. I have used both sites to find the resources that can get the job done. Your best bet is to submit your project for competitive bids. Include your requirements documentation that you created in step one and add any additional details such as time line and expense that you are willing to dedicate to the project.
With a large number of bids to chose from you may be asking yourself how can you make sure you select the right vendor. I have a simple method you can use that isn’t right one hundred percent of the time but does work rather well. Throw out the most expensive and the least expensive bid. After doing so, look for the vendor who has done the most projects and has the highest feedback rating. Finally, look at their samples and make sure you like what they’ve done for other clients. When you find a company you’re happy with, award them the bid and your project can start.
After submitting a number of projects and having more work done in this fashion, you will find a short list of providers that have really come through for you. Ive develop relationships with development firms that have done a good job, giving them more and more business. Once you reach that point, you can ask them to include a proposal on any bid you submit or work with them directly.
Finding qualified developers who can help you achieve your web site goals becomes easy through a bidding process. Working with vendors in this way can be challenging at times but the more you work with them, the more specific your instructions, and the better the results. One tip is to pay by the milestone reached. This ensures that your objectives are being met and vendors are only being paid when they perform.
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Cheap Web Hosting – Ups and Downs
Feb 1st
The first thing you should understand about affordable web hosting is the way it works. Many people believe that they have to get the most expensive type of hosting available and purchase all the extras needed to make a spectacular site. However, what these sites won’t tell you is that most of the features you get, you won’t use in the beginning anyways. The only time this applies is when people are uploading sites through FTP clients. Otherwise, all you need is affordable web hosting to get you started.
On the upside, most affordable web hosting packages are complete. They have a reasonable amount of space and bandwidth for blog sites to be hosted or even small forums to be managed. The PHP support along with other support for databases like MySQL should be enough for several different types of sites to be set up with ease.
Plus you don’t have to worry about losing all your information on the site. When you come across a good affordable web hosting plan, the back office control panels will help you along the way. Even if you’re new to this, they have FAQ and Help sections that can navigate you in case there are any questions you might have down the road. Add in FTP access for uploading files, and you could actually have your site ready in a flash.
Speed and security is also much better than the free hosts with good affordable hosts always up-to-date with the latest web applications and having a good uptime along with decent speeds even when high activity is going on. Speed differences are easily noticeable when compared to free hosting providers.
On the downside, affordable web hosting packages arent suitable for people that want to set up multimedia sites that have streaming capabilities because high amounts of traffic will suffer from major slowdowns. This is where dedicated web hosting gets the upper hand here boasting faster speeds since other sites do not share the same server.
Then of course you have to think about possible virus attacks when you’re sharing servers. Even though most people don’t think about it, you need to make sure you back everything up in case someone else hasn’t properly built their site for protection. This way you can avoid future issues.
Obviously you need to think about privacy as well. Most of the affordable web hosting companies you come across do not allow custom name servers to be made. If you want to overcome this obstacle, we suggest paying a small fee to enjoy WHOIS domain privacy. In the end though, dedicated servers provide much better privacy protection.
Even though there are some minor drawbacks to affordable web hosting, they don’t really tarnish the abilities of taking this route. If you want to seriously start a website and bring in traffic, it’s the best place to begin. Not only because of the cost, but there is no reason you should be paying for things you won’t be using from the get go. Whatever your situation may be, we recommend looking over both areas anyways. This way you can compare the two and know what you’re getting after you start out with affordable web hosting.
Go to webmaster Nicholas Halmond’s website to find detailed reviews, promotional offers, and an indepth comparison chart. On the top rated and most affordable web hosting services and michigan dedicated server web hosting companies.
Some Extra Benefits of SEO
Nov 30th
There are many times in business that a client just looks at the bottom line in the area of the level of performance they’re receiving when they invest in Search Engine Optimization.
They look at they keywords, they see what they are paying for, but what they do not see are the many other factors that are affecting the outcome of their site.
As a site becomes more optimized, it is being turned into a well devised navigational pattern. This pattern is precisely what the search engine spiders look for. Keep in mind that if your site is easy to index, you’ll get a better ranking in the search engine results.
W3C validation is always going to be important, and as such any website should want to reach it. One thing that it won’t help with however, is the rankings. Yahoo does not care about the validation so long as it has good content. This is what will keep your page at the top.
Properly naming page titles and file names is also quite important, and it helps the spider out immensely during the indexing. Google doesn’t place much value on meta tags, at least not like it used to, but they’re still a huge part of the picture. That being the case, don’t exclude them.
After the site has coded properly, the game then goes up to the next level. Search Engine Marketing is used to drive traffic to the site through various means. Press releases, articles, blogs, RSS/XML feeds, Directory Submissions and User Groups all can bring targeted traffic to a site.
Here is where the collateral benefits of Search Engine Marketing begin to appear. Let’s say that you have been doing a series of press releases where once a week, you talk about a new color of widget. In each press release you also list the other colors of widgets that you have for sale. Even after only the first release gets sent, you’ve already created a valuable In-Bound Link to your site for your Red Widget, but since you included the other colors of the widgets as well, they all pick up IBL’s as well.
There is yet another demonstration of this which is keywords and phrases that you didn’t actually target. When your site talks about different ways to use widgets, as well as their colors, then there are many different phrases being used on your site that you can now be ranked on.
So you’ve now seen a bit of what your website can do when it is properly optimized. Done properly, each page will have a rank, and that rank will drive more traffic to your website.
One other thing that you should concern yourself with is geo targeting. This isn’t something that has been implemented everywhere yet, but it scans your pages for addresses, and if you are a brick and mortar business, then having your address indexed by it’s geographical location is very important.
As you are searching Google to find your page rankings, make sure you try the other keywords that you might have. It could very well surprise you to see exactly how many times your page comes up on an obscure keyword.
As the founder and actual CEO, Ricardo d’Argence has been in the field for more than twenty years. Alojate.com is now one of the biggest web hosting providers in Mexico, offering a range of solutions for all business needs. Dedicated servers, SEO, factura electronica, web hosting & registro de dominios.
The Benefits Of Using PHP To Build Your New Website?
Nov 23rd
With everyone working on the internet nowadays, it pays to have a top quality, fully interactive website where customers can come and look at your products, but them, review them and more. You can do this with most website design programs, but one of the best to use is PHP. When you look for PHP web development there are numerous companies that can help you, but you can also teach yourself.
If you start out with web design you will usually use HTML. This is the basic to start with and is easiest to understand in terms of the code. When you are ready to move on to the next level, the PHP is ideal. It will give you more to work with and can offer a lot more for your clients too.
It is also a lot faster and you can study it in your own time. It is best to choose a few PHP programs and tutorials to go through because you will find that you like some better than others or there might be some items that one does not have but that the other one shows in detail.
It all depends on the type of website you want to build as to how detailed you need the PHP tutorial to be. You can use the PHP scripts for many different things and build the best kinds of interactive websites. You can choose if you want to use flash with this or if you want to add any other elements in the coding.
When you have gone through as many PHP tutorials and guides as possible, you will need to practice a lot as well, so that you can get the hang of everything.
However, those two things combined still do not add up to the power your site with have if you gave your time to learning all you can learn about the awesomeness of PHP web development – so if you want to get there, know that you have a long road ahead.
The writer of this article is part of an organisation that offers training courses on ASP.NET in London and throughout the UK.
PHP, The New Standard In Web Development
Nov 18th
Although there are a number of tools available to create dynamically generated web pages, PHP Web Development is very widely used. It is a reverse acronym that stands for Hypertext Preprocessor and was originally developed in the mid-1990’s by a programmer named Rasmus Lerdorf.
Ever since its official launch in’98 after being re-developed and tweaked for a number of years, it has undergone many different changes. PHP is a scripting language that uses embedded HTML. One of the reasons that it is so widely used could be due to the fact that is very compatible with a number of servers, unlike other computer programming languages.
When Rasmus Lerdorf created the PHP in the’90’s, it was not as good as it is today. PHP has had many improvements and is now one of the top used applications for its purpose.
Its crude beginnings opened the door to an advanced program that can do multiple tasks. Since its creation, it has undergone many graphics and commands improvements and currently has five versions. Type of application used for web development can be used in almost all operating systems, and can be used on most servers. This software is usually free and can be found on the internet.
The last version of PHP concentrates on the security of the web pages. They will address the issues of the last version. Version 6. 0 will also have the added convenience of supporting Unicode.
One of the favored languages that help with applications or for web page design is the popular PHP web development. This software not only creates dynamic applications, with each version there is something added to enhance the performance.
Author is a developer and trainer with TrainingCompany.Com, an independent computer training company offering PHP training courses in London and throughout the UK.
7 Reasons Why You Need to Start an E-Commerce Website
Oct 13th
As internet access continues to grow around the world and new technologies continue to improve, the amount of money that is spent by consumers online is constantly increasing. In the early days of e-commerce many buyers were hesitant to give our credit card information online, but it is a part of everyday life now for many of us. This gives everyone and every small business an incredible opportunity to do business online.
In this article we’ll look at the benefits of running an e-commerce website and we’ll list seven of the leading reasons that you should consider starting your own e-commerce site.
1. Very Low Costs and Expenses
Business ownership has traditionally always brought along a large amount of expenses and, as a result, risk. There will be significant and constant costs to run a business, especially startup costs. If you go out of business you will be out a lot of money, and you’ll likely be left with considerable debt.
Quite the opposite, with e-commerce you could possibly start an online store with less than $100 and you could be in business the same day. That’s not to say that it is easy to have a successful e-commerce business, but the risks are astronomically lower because you’ll need to invest so much less.
2. No Need for Employees
Just one of the issues that comes along with running a traditional business is managing the employees. This is really a full-time job in itself. Aside from the time aspect, employees also present one of the largest costs and risks for business owners.
With an e-commerce business you will need no employees to get started. Depending on what you are selling and to what extent the business grows, you may eventually hire some employees for order fulfillment and financial record keeping, but it is entirely possible to run a profitable e-commerce business on your own if that is how you would choose to do it.
3. 24/7
Most traditional stores have certain hours that they are closed. Of course there are some stores that are open 24 hours a day, but there is also added costs to keep a store open that long.
With an e-commerce site you will be “open” for business around the clock. Online stores can makes sales in the middle of the night while you are sleeping, and there is no need for customers to shop during certain hours.
4. Low Barriers for Entering the Market
Traditional brick and mortar stores have vary large barriers that prevent the average person from being able to start this type of business. Most notably are the need for startup and operating costs. If you are able to manage to get started, some significant barriers to success will also exist.
Starting an e-commerce business presents very low barriers to entrance. You’ll need very little money to get started, and you may not even need your own products to sell. You will face some competition in e-commerce, but you will not need to be able to compete with the major players in order to be profitable.
5. Market to the World
As a traditional store owner, in order for customers to buy your products they will have to be close enough to your location to come to the physical store. Obviously, this limits your market to those who live or work within driving distance, or those who are traveling through the area.
E-commece businesses bring the distinct advantage that you can market to people all over the world with no need to stick to just a small local market. This is a huge advantage that exponentially increases potential sales. Especially if you are selling electronic products that don’t need to be shipped, sales can easily be made anywhere regardless of your location or that of the buyer.
6. Just Take a Small Piece of the Pie
For traditional brick and mortar stores, there is always a need to stay ahead of the competition in order to remain profitable and in business. If you can’t be one of the leaders in your industry, you probably cannot survive as a business.
However, with an e-commerce business your costs of operation are so low that you do not need to produce as much revenue in order to turn a profit. While you may not dominate a market, only taking a small portion of the business in a specific market of industry can still leave you witha profitable business. Rather than controlling the market you can just take a small piece of the pie.
7. Flexible Hours
Owning and running a traditional store will require long hours, and you’ll typically have to be working just about whenever the store is open.
Running an e-commerce business no doubt requires real work, but your schedule will be much more flexible as opposed to running a traditional store. Most of the work that you will need to do can be done around your schedule, during the hours that you choose to work.
About the Author:
Steven Snell is a web designer from New Jersey. He maintains CartFrenzy, a gallery of the best e-commerce websites.
SEO Tips, How to Improve Search Engine Optimization
Jul 26th
Since a sites ranking is one of the biggest factor in driving free traffic to your content sites or blogs, optimizing a site to get maximum search engine exposure is an increasingly important factor in any marketing effort.
Search engine optimization, or “SEO” is the method of applying technical and non technical techniques to a site to insure that the site appears on the list of search engine results when someone is looking for something that is featured on your site.
After doing some research online and being given some fantastic tip from other webmasters I know, I was able to greatly improve my sites SEO and I’ve distilled these tips into some basics that are essential to any content site that is looking for more traffic from the search engines.
Many sites just starting up would have to focus more than I do on getting incoming links, which is how Google ranks sites (more inbound links = more authority).
Remember that you shouldn’t go overboard with SEO motivated site changes. If you start creating dummy pages with incoming links with the idea of boosting your sites exposure for a certain keyword, you will end up with a lower page rank once Google realizes what you’re doing.
With these caveats in mind, here are some SEO tips to consider:
Get both inbound and outbound links. While Google ranks your sites importance on the number of inbound links coming from other sites, it gives much more weight to in links from authority sites.
Use headlines and title tags with the keywords up front. As you consider search engine optimization for your site, you should think about the most important keywords that people will use when searching for your site in Google.
Search engines seem to put more value on a keyword that used earlier in the page title. One drawback of using keyword filled headlines is that you aren’t able to be nearly as creative as those tabloid newspapers can be.
The web address for your articles or blog post should always include keywords. It is also important that each story’s URL contain the keywords used in your headline and the category for the article.
Page descriptions should be removed if they are not unique. If you use the first sentence of the article on the page or simply use the same meta-description on each page, it’s not going to be as relevant as the description that Google can extract from your site. Therefore, if your description is identical on every page you are much better of removing it and letting Google generate it on its own.
Highlight your top content on every page. One feature that is common on major news sites is a list of “Most Popular Stories” or “Most Emailed Stories.” Having that list in a prominent place on your site, on all pages, would bring more traffic (and inbound links) to your site’s best content, and serve as an entree into the site for people who just came to read one post.
Many visitors will leave the site after reading just one post, but if you make it simple for them to locate your best work then they might just stick around and read more or subscribe to your blog feed if they find your content compelling enough.
Limit the use of title tags and categories and use just the one that is most important. You should highlight only the important categories and put the others on a different page. Using too many tags will create a bunch of links that aren’t really useful. The best practice is to use tags for just the most important keywords.
Create a Google News sitemap and optimize any images. Google recommends that publishers submit special “sitemaps” to help the search engine easily index the sites pages. Sitemaps are dynamic XML files that you submit to Google and are used by their spider to index your content.
About the Author:
As the founder and actual CEO, Ricardo d’Argence has been in the field for almost twenty years. Alojate.com is now one of the best web hosting providers in Mexico, offering a range of solutions for all business needs. Dedicated servers, Search Engine Optimization, factura electronica, web hosting & domain registration.
Developing Database-Driven Web Sites In Dreamweaver CS4
Jul 19th
Part of the Adobe Creative Suite, Dreamweaver is one of the most widely used web development packages around. It has gained its popularity by appealing to users with a wide variety of profiles. Its user-friendly interface appeals to inexperienced users with little knowledge of the technologies that underpin web pages. At the same time, it allows experienced web developers to interact with code in a variety of useful ways.
Adobe Dreamweaver enables developers to create dynamic web sites whose content is derived from a data source. Such sites feature server-side pages, written in a scripting language such as PHP, ASP or ASP.Net, which need to be executed on the server. It is therefore necessary to specify a testing server as part of the site setup when defining such sites within Dreamweaver.
Active Server Pages (ASP) is one of the easiest such languages to configure. Now referred to as classic ASP to distinguish it from ASP.Net, the current incarnation of Active Server Pages, ASP was first released in the late nineties and revolutionised the way in which web sites were developed. ASP is designed to run on Windows 2000 server and on Windows XP Professional. It is part of Internet Information Services (IIS), an optional Windows component. Once installed, IIS converts your PC into a web server running a default website located in a folder called “wwwroot” which can be accessed with the web address “localhost/”.
Once IIS is installed on your computer, Dreamweaver is ready to start creating dynamic web sites. The features available in Dreamweaver for generating the necessary server-side content are to be found in three panels: Databases, Bindings and Server Behaviors. The Databases panel is used to create connections to data sources. In the case of ASP, the most frequent solutions are Microsoft Access and the more powerful Microsoft SQL Server. Once a connection to the database is in place, the Bindings panel is used to retrieve data into a recordset. The dialogue box which Dreamweaver uses for creating recordsets automatically generates fragments of SQL as the user interacts with the relevant data objects. However, some familiarity with SQL (structured query language) is necessary to be able to retrieve precisely the data required for a given recordset.
Dreamweaver’s Server Behaviours panel contains a wide variety of pre-built scripts which can be used to add dynamic content to web pages. For example, the Insert Record server behaviour can be used to create a form which adds new records to a database table via a web page or it can be used to create an enquiries page which adds each enquiry to an enquires table and then takes the visitor to a thank you page.
About the Author:
The The writer of this article is a trainer and developer with Macresource Computer Solutions, a UK IT training company offering Adobe Dreamweaver training courses in London and throughout the UK.
The Key Methods Of Calculating Your Blog’s Keyword Density
Jul 1st
If you repeat your keywords with each other word on every line, then your site will probably be rejected as an artificial site or spam site. Because keyword density is a percentage of the total word count on the page, multiply the above by 100, that is 0.
The keyword density on that page is derived by simply dividing the total number of keywords, by the total number of words that appear on your web page. Suppose you have 100 words on your webpage (not including HMTL code used for writing the web page), and you use a certain keyword for five times in the content. Keyword density is an indicator of the number of times the selected keyword appears in the web page.
Remember, that this rule applies to each page on your site. It also applies to not just to one keyword but also a set of keywords that relates to a different product or service. Keyword density is always expressed as a percentage of the total word content on a given web page. So here it is 5 divided by 100 =. The keyword density should always be between 3% and 5%.
But mind you, keywords shouldnt be overly used, [but|however|nevertheless|nonetheless] should be just sufficient enough to appear at important places. 05. 05 x 100 = 5% The accepted standard for a keyword density is between 3% and 5%, to get recognized by the search engines and you should never exceed it.
Calculating Keyword Density:
Select the Find function on the Edit menu and go to the Tools menu and pick Word Count.
Now go to the Edit menu and click Select All.Go to the Replace tab and type in the keyword you want to find. Write down the total number of words in the page.
When you complete the replace function, the system will provide a count of the words you replaced.Replace that word with the same word, so you dont change the text.
Copy and paste the content from an individual web page into a word-processing software program like Word or Word Perfect. That gives the number of times you have used the keyword in that page.
Utilizing the all word count for the page and the complete number of keywords you can now calculate the keyword density.
About the Author:
Is your blog or website properly optimized for the proper search engine’s visibility and performance? learn more about Search Engine Optimization now
