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Some of the things people do with websites boggle my mind. There seems to be this initiation period almost everyone goes through when making a website the first few times, and I've yet to meet anyone who really didn't go through it.

This phase of new webmasters mirrors growing up in some frightening ways. Looking back, it's so obvious you should have taken the advice of those who had gone before you, but for some reason at the time you just wouldn't hear it. You were right, you knew you were right, and nobody was going to tell you otherwise.

Well, if you're that new webmaster, reading this article probably won't change your mind. It certainly wouldn't have changed mine back in 1995, because I knew what a webpage should look like; every good web page had 15 animated gifs, all different colors. A good page had background music playing in a midi file, and you couldn't even turn it off. It had lots of javascript and three versions of a guestbook, and forums galore!

What this article will do is expose you to some of the dead ends you can get into with web design, so when you do wake up from that "kid in the candy store" phase you'll wake up wiser.A website should be packed with content first, functional second, compatible third, search engine friendly fourth and beautiful fifth.

Great content is an unmatched promotion machine
Everything is secondary to quality content. For your website to be a success, it needs to deliver something people want. Get your content lined up first, and lots of it. Without it, you'll be fighting a constant uphill battle. With great content, the rest will fall into place much more easily.

Good navigation is paramount
Websites that have poor navigation annoy and confuse visitors, causing them to leave frustrated, and unlikely to return. This doesn't bode well for gaining repeat visitors. If you're just learning web design, learn to write code that validates. If you've already learned html,learn to write code that validates. Functionality is key: viewers don't want to go digging for links. A website with less than 25 pages can usually list them all in a single navigation menu. For a website with lots of pages, separate them into descriptive categories, and build a hierarchal menu. Place the navigation menu in the same place on every page. Avoid drop down JavaScript menu systems. Nobody wants to open 8 drop down menus to figure out which one contains what they're trying to find. Being reliant on JavaScript to display something as necessary as a navigation menu is a very poor choice. Utilize a sitemap page with categorized links to every (finished) public page on your website. This will ensure that users have a backup for finding things, and more importantly a search engine that deep crawls your site will find every page.

Cross Browser Compatibility
Compatibility is important on different levels for different websites. Personal websites aren't really counted along these rules, because there is no necessity involved with a personal site. With that said, any other website should display properly on all major browsers (IE, Firefox, Netscape, Opera, AOL, etc). Any website should (at least) be compatible with the major screen resolutions, currently 800x600 and 1024x768. Corporate websites, product sales sites, and ecommerce sites should validate with W3C standards, because not doing so will often incur cross-browser compatibility problems, ending in potential customers being lost. It's good to note there are some quirks in the way different operating systems display things as well, so Firefox on a Macintosh at 1024x768 may not show up identical to the same page with Firefox on a PC at 1024x768. When you code to W3C standards, you can avoid nearly all this uncertainty, and if you're learning to code, there's no reason not to learn the standards. They'll save lots of headaches in the future.

Search engine friendly means free targeted traffic
A search engine being able to properly navigate your website, find all the pages in two jumps or less, and determine what links lead where with what text is essential to good rankings. Most search engine spiders will navigate a website only a few links 'deep'. In other words, the spider will follow a link from the index page to the games page and from the games page to the RPG page. If there are more links on the RPG page to even more pages in the site, the spider might not dig that deep, so some pages could end up not getting indexed. A sitemap never hurts, and if you have links that go more than two deep, it's highly recommended you use one to make sure a search engine finds every page in your website.

Be consistent in design
Since that's all out of the way, now it's time to make sure your site looks nice. This means a consistent design flow on all pages. Most of the time, 3 or 4 colors that compliment each other well will do very nicely. Switching colors for each section is not normally recommended, though some websites pull it off nicely. Switching layouts between pages on a website is one of the bigger mistakes new web designers make.

If you aren't good with design, there are literally thousands of professional scale templates available around the web, many for under $20. This can be a great investment, considering a good custom design can easily cost upwards of several hundred dollars.

Some other pitfalls and tips to avoid them
Hit Counters are wholly unnecessary, tacky, and unless you're getting millions of hits, embarrassing. Don't use them.

Clipart type graphics and animated gifs you get from free graphics type websites should be avoided. It's almost impossible to find clipart that works well together, and even then most of it is second rate at best. No graphics are better than bad graphics.

The white paper test is an excellent way to determine whether a design "works". Look at your webpage with the design applied. Now look at the same page on a blank white background with no graphics or styling applied - only basic html structure tags. For example, look at it with the h1 tag, but not with a font applied to the h1 tag. If it doesn't look considerably better than the white sheet version, something is very wrong. If you build your layout separately with CSS all you need to do is temporarily disable the link to your style sheet.

Text is meant to be read, so use a decent sized font. (I avoid fonts smaller than 14px - 16px, except in the case of footnotes). Avoid using Times New Roman. It doesn't display well on the web (and it's the default font.. go figure). A few fonts that do display well are the more rounded styles. Personally I prefer Verdana, but Garamond, and Century Gothic also look good.

Avoid graphic heavy layouts. A webpage shouldn't exceed 60K, except where the purpose of the page is to display photographs or multimedia, such as a picture gallery or flash cartoon. Ideally a page should be less than 30K. A large portion of web users are still on dialup, and most will wait 10 or 15 seconds tops for a page to completely download.

Don't mess with the normal options a user has available. Disabling right-click, fancy scripting to make the status bar not show where a link leads, and other tricks annoy visitors. If you're worried about people downloading or stealing images you make, you have two choices: 1) watermark them with your name (or web address), 2) don't post them to the web.

If you're building a content based website with a regular update schedule, get at least one month worth of new content, or eight good sized updates finished before you go live with your website. Do this over what would be a regular update schedule. You'll get a feel for whether or not this is something you've can keep doing over a long period. Additionally, it'll give you a decent buffer. On regularly updated sites, I try to have several articles written ahead of time (in queue). That way if I get too busy to produce something new one week, updates continue uninterrupted.

Additional help with web design
For additional help with web design, to receive the latest tips on design issues, or to get specific questions answered and find additional resources and tools for design, join our subscribers area. The forums are also an excellent place to find help with specific questions related to web development. If we can't answer it, we will definitely be able to send you to someone that can.

Interested in real web development techniques? Do you want to learn how to evaluate an idea, target a niche, build content, target traffic, and get thousands of visitors to your website each day? This primer will take you through the steps necessary to develop a profitable and solid website.

With so many web hosting companies available, it becomes extremely difficult for a new customer to choose the best among them. It is essential that a customer before finalizing a deal with any web hosting company goes through such reviews so that they later don’t have to repent. The most popular web hosting company is the FatCow. It is for very obvious reasons that you kept this web hosting firm as your top priority. But before you come to any conclusion, read this review so that you do not commit any mistake.

FatCow is known for its exceptional customer service and guarantee till satisfaction. Although a few customers went unsatisfied but small failures does not harm the reputation of this company. FatCow offers top class features for all of its customers, support and the pricing are good and it’s a company you can rely on. FatCow is poles apart from other web hosting companies. This company puts its plans, features and services in such a way that it looks entirely different from others. The way this web hosting company designs and builds up a site might not be possible for the other web hosting companies to produce in a similar way.

Bad web hosting is more prevalent online when compared to good web hosting. You’ll find thousands of people who are unsatisfied with their web host. It is important to leave web hosting companies which does not provide satisfactory services and choose the best. The following tips and suggestions will save you from bad web hosting companies.

1. Before tying up with any web hosting company you must go through the reviews of the customers who earlier used the services of that company. This will provide you an idea about the services being offered by that web hosting company.
2. Always give importance to the quality and not the amount you are paying. There are many webs hosting which offer their services at very low rate but the quality produced is also cheap. Therefore go for a company which offers quality services even if the price is higher than the usual.
3. Do research a lot and learn about the basic things that will help you in maintaining your website yourself. This will give you power and confidence because no web hosting company will be able to fool you.

Starting a traditional business takes a lot of time, effort, and overhead, but an online business may be an easier route to go. Take a look at the following list of benefits to starting your own online business.
Open 24-7
An online business never closes. This means your business can be pulling in money at all hours of the night or any day of the year. You never have to worry about turning customers away when you aren’t physically able to help them, and your customers can buy when it’s most convenient for them.

Gain Customers Worldwide
The Worldwide Web is just that: worldwide! Your online business allows people living in distant countries the opportunity to buy your goods and services, all from the comfort of their own homes. A traditional business rarely holds customers beyond its geographic boundaries, but an online business crosses these boundaries easily.

Create Your Own Image
Your Web site’s image isn’t limited by rental cost or the outward appearance of a physical space in the same way that a traditional business is. If you spend the time and effort to make a professional looking Web site, your customers will view you in whatever way you choose. No matter how big or small your business is in reality, your Web site can project an image of confident professionalism.

Great Customer Service
Your Web site can provide all of the details your customers need to implement and use your goods or services. You can create a Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) page to address any common questions your customers may have. As a business owner, you don’t have to spend a lot of time talking to people directly—if they have a specific question that can’t be answered by your FAQ, they will send and email and you can quickly respond.

Low Promotional Costs
Local print ads in magazines or newspapers are costly and sometimes difficult to acquire. Online ads are much, much cheaper and there is an unlimited amount of advertising space. Once your business booms, it’s easy to determine the sites and blogs that best target your audience.

Compare Domain Name Providers
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MyDomain hosting plans are designed to ‘rock your website’ and there’s a plan to suit everyone from personal users or hobbyists to businesses large and small. They also offer VPS hosting plans to suit large businesses who want more powerful (but obviously more expensive) services.

MyDomain plans are available for both Linux and Windows, and the plans for the two platforms have almost identical features. Their range is wide enough to suit almost everybody. The Starter plan is the cheapest option and gives more than enough features for personal websites or small businesses with only one domain name. It includes up to 100 email boxes and a basic website builder. The Deluxe plan hosts up to 50 domain names and gives you more disk space, email accounts and bandwidth, and would suit most business users. If your online presence is growing, you might want to choose the Business plan, with unlimited domains and emails and with even more bandwidth and storage space. Both Deluxe and Business give you unlimited access to the SiteBuilder software. All the plans are extremely affordable and offer great value.

All MyDomain shared hosting plans come with all the applications you want to create and customize your website and give it the features your visitors want and expect to see on a professional website. Along with the SiteBuilder, you can add applications such as WordPress for blogging, Calendar, b2evolution, Drupal, Joomla, PHPMyChat, support tickets, classifieds, and many more. Email anti-virus software, spam filters, and autoresponders are standard with all shared plans.

The VPS plans for Linux and Windows let you manage up to an unlimited number of domains in a single account. All VPS plans have free set up and a huge variety of add-ons that let you fully customize your websites.

MyDomains shared and VPS hosting plans all give your websites a kick-start by including free Google Adwords credits to start driving visitors to your website as soon as it is launched.

MyDomains has no set up fees for its shared or VPS plans, and they don’t require a 12 or 24 month commitment (but you’ll save money if you do commit). Their full 30-day money-back guarantee lets you to try out MyDomains risk-free. Click on the banner above for more information.

Hosting Bandwidth

Bandwidth Explained
Most hosting companies offer a variety of bandwidth options in their plans. So exactly what is bandwidth as it relates to web hosting? Put simply, bandwidth is the amount of traffic that is allowed to occur between your web site and the rest of the internet. The amount of bandwidth a hosting company can provide is determined by their network connections, both internal to their data center and external to the public internet.

Network Connectivity
The internet, in the most simplest of terms, is a group of millions of computers connected by networks. These connections within the internet can be large or small depending upon the cabling and equipment that is used at a particular internet location. It is the size of each network connection that determines how much bandwidth is available. For example, if you use a DSL connection to connect to the internet, you have 1.54 Mega bits (Mb) of bandwidth. Bandwidth therefore is measured in bits (a single 0 or 1). Bits are grouped in bytes which form words, text, and other information that is transferred between your computer and the internet.

If you have a DSL connection to the internet, you have dedicated bandwidth between your computer and your internet provider. But your internet provider may have thousands of DSL connections to their location. All of these connection aggregate at your internet provider who then has their own dedicated connection to the internet (or multiple connections) which is much larger than your single connection. They must have enough bandwidth to serve your computing needs as well as all of their other customers. So while you have a 1.54Mb connection to your internet provider, your internet provider may have a 255Mb connection to the internet so it can accommodate your needs and up to 166 other users (255/1.54).

Traffic

A very simple analogy to use to understand bandwidth and traffic is to think of highways and cars. Bandwidth is the number of lanes on the highway and traffic is the number of cars on the highway. If you are the only car on a highway, you can travel very quickly. If you are stuck in the middle of rush hour, you may travel very slowly since all of the lanes are being used up.

Traffic is simply the number of bits that are transferred on network connections. It is easiest to understand traffic using examples. One Gigabyte is 2 to the 30th power (1,073,741,824) bytes. One gigabyte is equal to 1,024 megabytes. To put this in perspective, it takes one byte to store one character. Imagine 100 file cabinets in a building, each of these cabinets holds 1000 folders. Each folder has 100 papers. Each paper contains 100 characters - A GB is all the characters in the building. An MP3 song is about 4MB, the same song in wav format is about 40MB, a full length movie can be 800MB to 1000MB (1000MB = 1GB).

If you were to transfer this MP3 song from a web site to your computer, you would create 4MB of traffic between the web site you are downloading from and your computer. Depending upon the network connection between the web site and the internet, the transfer may occur very quickly, or it could take time if other people are also downloading files at the same time. If, for example, the web site you download from has a 10MB connection to the internet, and you are the only person accessing that web site to download your MP3, your 4MB file will be the only traffic on that web site. However, if three people are all downloading that same MP at the same time, 12MB (3 x 4MB) of traffic has been created. Because in this example, the host only has 10MB of bandwidth, someone will have to wait. The network equipment at the hosting company will cycle through each person downloading the file and transfer a small portion at a time so each person's file transfer can take place, but the transfer for everyone downloading the file will be slower. If 100 people all came to the site and downloaded the MP3 at the same time, the transfers would be extremely slow. If the host wanted to decrease the time it took to download files simultaneously, it could increase the bandwidth of their internet connection (at a cost due to upgrading equipment).
Hosting Bandwidth

In the example above, we discussed traffic in terms of downloading an MP3 file. However, each time you visit a web site, you are creating traffic, because in order to view that web page on your computer, the web page is first downloaded to your computer (between the web site and you) which is then displayed using your browser software (Internet Explorer, Netscape, etc.) . The page itself is simply a file that creates traffic just like the MP3 file in the example above (however, a web page is usually much smaller than a music file).

A web page may be very small or large depending upon the amount of text and the number and quality of images integrated within the web page. For example, the home page for CNN.com is about 200KB (200 Kilobytes = 200,000 bytes = 1,600,000 bits). This is typically large for a web page. In comparison, Yahoo's home page is about 70KB.

Alias
A name that points to another name. Aliases are used to make the original name easier to remember or to protect the site's identity.

Aliased Nameservers
An aliased nameserver is a nameserver that has been labeled as yours (the reseller's) despite the fact it actually belongs to your Web hosting provider. This ensures that domains located on your server are listed . Also see NAMESERVER below.

Apache
One of the world's most popular Web server programs, Apache was built by a group of open-source programmers and is often used because of its outstanding performance, strong security features and the fact that it is free.

ASP
Active Server Pages. ASP is Microsoft's server-side scripting technology. An Active Server Page has an .asp extension and it mixes HTML and scripting code that can be written in VBScript or JScript. ASP is distributed with Microsoft's IIS web server, so most host using IIS will also offer ASP for dynamic web programming. ASP.NET is the next version of ASP. Other popular server-side scripting languages are Perl, PHP, ColdFusion, TCL, Python, and JSP.

Audio Streaming
The process of providing audio content on a web site. This takes up a large amount of bandwidth, especially if you get a lot of visitors at your site. Some hosts do not allow audio or video streaming because of this.

Auto Responder
An automated program that acknowledges receipt of an e-mail message, and then sends back a previously prepared email to the sender, letting them know it was received. Once you configure your autoresponder, it sends e-mail with no further action required on your part, making your web site interactive around the clock. Most hosting companies let you set this up through their control panel.

Availability (Uptime)
Refers to the amount of time within a 24 hour period a system is active or available for servicing requests. For example, if a hosting company says it is available 99.9% of the time, they are claiming that your web site will up all the time except for about 8 seconds each day. Over the course of a year, in this example, the hosting company is claiming that your site will only be unavailable (couldn't surf to it) for 48 hours.

Backbone
Main high-speed network connection composing the Internet. Backbones are operated by major telecommunications companies like Sprint, MCI, or AT&T. In general, the better the backbone of the hosting company, the better the availability of the web sites that run on their computers. Internet backbone maps are here.

Backups
Web hosts back up data on their servers. Many host packages offer backups every 24 hours. This is supposed to prevent the loss of data should something happen to the server. . If you think you may need to restore old data in case of a disaster, it may make sense to choose a hosting company that performs regular backups.

Bandwidth
The amount of data that can be transmitted at a given moment to a server. The higher your bandwidth, the larger amount of traffic your site can handle at one time.

CGI (Common Gateway Interface)
A CGI is a program that translates data from a web server and then displays that data on a web page or in an email. CGI involves the transfer of data between a server and a CGI program (called a script). This allows HTML pages to interact with other programming applications. These scripts make web pages interactive. Page counters, forms, guest books, random text/images and other features can be driven by CGI scripts. Some servers have pre-installed/pre-defined CGI scripts, meaning that the scripts are already installed on the server for you to use on your site. Some servers permit user-defined or custom CGI scripts, which means the site owner creates his/her own CGI script and runs this custom made script on the web site. Not all servers allow user-defined (custom) scripts for security reasons. Almost all hosting companies offer CGI today. If you think you will need forms on your web site, CGI could be a key requirement.

Chat Server / Software
Some hosting companies allow you to develop a chat room or other type of chat service for your visitors. Be sure to check with the web host company about the details of the chat services offeed. Some servers permit you to configure the service, and others pre-configure everything for you while others do not allow chat rooms at all.

ColdFusion
ColdFusion is an easy to use server-side scripting language developed by Allaire. It comes with ColdFusion Studio, a visual IDE. Other popular server-side scripting languages are ASP. Perl, PHP, TCL, Python, and JSP.

Co-location (colo)
This hosting option gives webmasters complete control over their server. You are responsible for providing the physical hardware and network administration; the hosting company will provide you with the rack space and Internet connection.

Control Panel
An online package of tools permitting easy site management and editing. Almost all hosting companies provide this option today. It is a very important feature to have. Most control panels will let you upload files, add email accounts, change contact information, set up shopping carts or databases, view usage statistics, etc.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
A style-sheet determines how the HTML document is displayed by the browser. The current version of CSS is version 2 (CSS2).

Database Support
If your web site will leverage a database to store information, database support by the hosting company will be required. After you have developed your web site, you will know which database will be required. Some commonly used database programs are SQL Server, MySQL, Access, Oracle, and FoxPro. Databases can be difficult to configure properly. Before you sign up with a web host, first inquire if the host can support your database needs.

Data Transfer
This is the amount of data that is transferred from an account as visitors view the pages of the web site. If you have a web site with lots of video, audio, and images that gets many visitors per day, you would have to make sure that you choose a host that will allow large amounts of data to be transferred. If you choose a host that only allows 200 MB of data transfer per month, and your site transferred 500 MB per month, then the host may stop half of your visitors from viewing your site and you could lose potential customers. Your best bet is to try to find a host that offers unlimited data transfer or at least a Gig of transfer. A gig is more than enough for most web sites. As a general rule, 500 MB of data transfer is equivalent to 20,000 page views.

Dedicated Server
A type of Hosting account in which the web hosting company provides you with an entire hosting setup including your own server hardware that only you can use. This usually means a much faster loading time for your site because the entire computer is "dedicated" to running the server software. This is different from most other hosting accounts in which your web site will share space on a server with many other web sites, called a virtual server. A dedicated server makes sense for web sites that require higher availability and higher data transfer rates.

Disk Space
This indicates the amount of disk space that will be available to you on the hosts server to hold your web site files. Normally because HTML files are small, a web site (unless it has extensive graphics or database functionality) will be small, as low as 1 or 2 MB in most cases. When you do a search on FindMyHosting.com and select disk space as a factor in the search you are indicating a minimum level that you want a plan to offer.

Use windows explorer to check the total MB of your site while it is still on your development machine. Then perhaps double your sites current size so that you have room to grow. When you check the total MB of your site don't forget to include the total MB of your graphics files.

A good rule of thumb is to assume approx. 50 KB per page (1 MB = 1000 KB, 1 GB = 1000 MB). 50 KB per page is on the high side so it's a conservative estimate for the average size of a web page.

Domain Parking
Many hosting companies give you the option to 'park' your domain name without actually having your web site up and running. This is a nice option if you want to acquire a domain name for your web site well ahead of having the web site itself designed and constructed.

Domain Name
The unique name that identifies an Internet site. Domain Names always have 2 or more parts, separated by dots. The part on the left is the most specific, and the part on the right is the most general (FindMyHosting.com). Technically, the domain name is a name that identifies an IP address. To most of us, it simply means www.yourname.com. Because the Internet is based on IP addresses, not domain names, web servers depend on a Domain Name System (DNS) to translate domain names into IP addresses. Simply stated, domain names allow people to find your web site by name rather than by its numerical (IP) address.

Domain Name Registration
Often a hosting company will offer to register your domain name at the time you sign up for a hosting plan. This normally incurs an additional charge but may be cheaper and more convenient than using a separate domain name registration service. We recommend that you go ahead and register your domain name as soon as possible, especially if you think it will take some time to develop the site itself. Click here for a list of domain name registration companies.

Domain Name System (DNS)
A model for tracking other machines (that contain web sites) and their numeric IP addresses. Translates domain names. When a computer is referred to by name, a domain name server puts that name into the numeric IP address assigned to that computer. So when you buy a domain, say www.yourname.com, it does not become accessible until it gets assigned an IP address from a hosting company. Once the IP address is assigned, a cross-reference record (DNS record) is created that points your domain name to the numeric IP address.

Email POP Account
POP (Post Office Protocol) is an actual e-mail account on your web host's e-mail server. Think of each POP account as a unique email address (john@yoursite.com, contact@yoursite.com, etc.) Before you choose a specific hosting plan, you should know exactly how many email accounts are required to meet your specific needs.

Frontpage (Microsoft)
Front Page is an HTML editor made by Microsoft. It is commonly used to create web sites

Frontpage Extensions
Frontpage extensions can be thought of as "mini programs" that allow features of a web site created with MS Front Page to operate smoothly. It is possible to use MS Front Page to create a web site and host that site on a server that doesn't offer FP extensions, however some of the powerful features of the program cannot be used in these web sites. See Microsoft's Front Page site for more information. After you design your web site, you will know whether Frontpage extensions will be a requirement.

File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
A way of transferring files (uploading and downloading) across the Internet. Most web sites are uploaded to the Internet by means of an FTP program. This is how the web site you create on your computer at home is transferred (uploaded) to the Internet. Some software, such as Microsoft Front Page, does not require use of an FTP program but the use of most any other HTML editor requites the use of and FTP Program. There is a free FTP program called WS_FTP and you can download it at download.com. There are many Internet sites that have established publicly accessible repositories of material that can be obtained using FTP, by logging in using the account name anonymous, thus these sites are called anonymous FTP servers.

Host Country
Specifies which country the hosting company resides. The internet is a very complex web of server computers connected through telecommunications devices. In general, it is best to host your web site in a location closest to the users that access it. For example, if you plan to deploy a web site that will attract mostly German visitors, it may makes sense to choose a hosting company located in Germany.

Host Platform
This is the platform of the hosting providers servers. Hosting companies will typically having a hosting platform based upon Windows 2000 (Win2K), Windows NT or Linux. If you have a basic web site that does not make use of server side applications such as a database then you do not need to worry which platform is used.

IIS
Microsoft Internet Information Server. Microsoft's Web server that comes built-in with Windows NT Server 4 and Windows 2000 server.

IMAP
Internet Message Access Protocol. A method allowing a client email program to access remote messages stored on a mail server. The protocol includes operations for creating, deleting, and renaming mailboxes, checking for new messages, message parsing, searching, and setting and clearing flags.

Javascript
A scripting language which enables web designers to add dynamic, interactive elements to a web site.

Java Servlets
A servlet is an application or a script that is written in Java and executed on a server, as opposed to on a client. It is analogous to CGI, although servlets are more than simply CGI scripts written in Java.

Mailing List Software
A mailing list is a discussion group based on the e-mail system. You may want to set one up - they're very useful promotional tools. Even if you don't want to host a discussion group, you can use a mailing-list program to distribute a newsletter. Many companies have mailing-list software available for their clients to use -- if so, ask whether there's an additional cost, how many mailing lists you are allowed to have, and how many members per list.

Managed hosting
A dedicated server that is accompanied by a full suite of technical support, maintenance and monitoring services. This differs from dedicated Web hosting, where customers are provided with their own servers but are still responsible for virtually all administrative and maintenance duties.

Name server
A server responsible for translating domain names and IP addresses.

Perl (Practical Extraction and Report Language)
Perl is an interpreted language optimized for scanning arbitrary text files, extracting information from those text files, and printing reports based on that information. It's also a good language for many system management tasks.

PHP
PHP is another scripting language. Like ASP, it's commands are embedded within the HTML of a web page. The commands are executed on the web server, making it browser independent. The web browser only sees the resulting HTML output of the PHP code.

Post Office Protocol (POP)
This is a method of retrieving e-mail from an e-mail server. Most e-mail applications (sometimes called an e-mail client) use the POP protocol, although some can use the newer IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol). There are two versions of POP. The first, called POP2, became a standard in the mid-80's and requires SMTP to send messages. The newer version, POP3, can be used with or without SMTP. The newest and most widely used version of POP email is POP3 email. You will see the term POP3 in most of the web hosting plans available today.

Reseller Plans
Many hosting providers allow you to be a reseller of hosting space earning a commission off of each sale. If you intend to be a provider of hosting services, you should investigate this option as you decide where to host your web site. Many hosting companies offer discounts (in addition to revenue opportunities) to companies that wish to remarket their web hosting services.

Setup Fee
Some hosting companies charge a one time setup fee to set up your hosting account. It is worth to also take this into account when looking at the monthly fee. If you select the 'No Setup Fee' checkbox in the search then any plans that involve a setup fee will not be found.

Server
A computer, or software package, that provides a specific kind of service to client software running on other computers. The term can refer to a particular piece of software, such as a WWW or HTTP server, or to the machine on which the software is running. A single server machine could have several different server software packages running on it, thus providing many different servers to clients on the network. More specifically, a server is a computer that manages and shares network resources.

Shared hosting
The most basic of Web hosting types. With shared hosting, numerous Web sites are shared on one server. While an economic solution, they typically cannot handle large amounts of storage or traffic.

Shell Account
Something experienced computer users often request. Permits you to edit your files online in real-time, rather than making changes to your site offline and then uploading the changes. Unless you intend to manage the web server your site runs on, a shell account should not be needed.

Shopping cart
A program designed to handle the e-commerce section of a Web site. Shopping cart software lets users browse for and purchase products online.

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)
The main protocol used to send electronic mail on the Internet. Most Internet email is sent and received using SMTP. SMTP consists of a set of rules for how a program sending mail and a program receiving mail should interact.

Server Side Includes (SSI)
Commands that can be included in web pages that are processed by the web server when a user requests a file. The command takes the form . A common use for SSI commands is to insert a universal menu into all of the pages of the web site so that the menu only has to be changed once and inserted with SSI instead of changing the menu on every page.

Secure Socket Layer (SSL)
A protocol designed by Netscape Communications to enable encrypted, authenticated communications across the Internet. It is used mostly (but not exclusively) in communications between web browsers and web servers. URL's that begin with "https" indicate that an SSL connection will be used. SSL provides 3 important things: Privacy, Authentication, and Message Integrity. In an SSL connection each side of the connection must have a Security Certificate, which each side's software sends to the other. Each side then encrypts what it sends using information from both its own and the other side's Certificate, ensuring that only the intended recipient can decrypt it, and that the other side can be sure the data came from the place it claims to have come from, and that the message has not been tampered with.

Statistics
Many hosting companies run software on their web servers that collect usage information about your web site and compile it in a user-friendly, easy-to-read format for you to analyze trends about your web site. Having access to statistics is critical if you need to know how many visitors are coming to your site, which web pages receive the most attention, and how much time people actually spend browsing your site.

Subdomain
Typically known as a "domain within a domain", subdomains are individual Web addresses built upon a pre-existing domain name. As a reseller, you will have the option of assigning subdomains to clients if they do not choose to have a domain name.

Tape back-up
A popular and inexpensive way to back up Web sites. Contents of a site are periodically stored that looks similar to a cassette. Some cassettes can store several gigabytes.

Unix
A computer operating system designed to be used by many people at the same time (it is multi-user) and has TCP/IP built-in. It is the most common operating system for servers on the Internet.

Unique IP Address
In many hosting plans, you share an IP address and you will be able to view your site through your domain name only. Obtaining a unique IP address (see IP Address) provides a one-to-one relationship between your domain name and an IP address.

Video Streaming
The process of providing video data or content via a web page.

Virtual Server
A web server which shares its resources with multiple users. It's another way of saying that multiple web sites share the resources of one server. If you do not need your own web server (i.e. your own server class computer), you will use a virtual server to host your web site.

Clustered hosting is a type of web hosting that spreads the load of hosting across multiple physical machines ("nodes"), increasing availability and decreasing the chances of one service (for example FTP, or email) affecting another - for example web or database (e.g. MySQL). Many large websites run on clustered hosting solutions, for example, large discussion forums will tend to run using multiple front-end webservers with multiple back-end database servers.

Typically, most hosting infrastructures are based on the paradigm of using a single physical machine to host multiple hosted services, including web, database, email, FTP and others. A single physical machine is not only a single point of failure, but also has finite capacity for traffic, that in practice can be troublesome for a busy website or for a website that is experiencing transient bursts in traffic.

By clustering services across multiple hardware machines, and using load balancing you can eliminate single points of failure increasing availability of your website and other web services beyond that of ordinary single server hosting. A single server can require periodic reboots for software upgrades and the like, whereas in a clustered platform you can stagger the restarts such that the service is still available whilst still upgrading all necessary machines in the cluster.

Clustered hosting is similar to cloud hosting, in that the resources of many machines are available for a website to utilize on demand, making scalability a large advantage to a clustered hosting solution.

The scope of hosting services varies widely. The most basic is web page and small-scale file hosting, where files can be uploaded via File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or a Web interface. The files are usually delivered to the Web "as is" or with little processing. Many Internet service providers (ISPs) offer this service free to their subscribers. People can also obtain Web page hosting from other, alternative service providers. Personal web site hosting is typically free, advertisement-sponsored, or cheap. Business web site hosting often has a higher expense.

Single page hosting is generally sufficient only for personal web pages. A complex site calls for a more comprehensive package that provides database support and application development platforms (e.g. PHP, Java, Ruby on Rails, ColdFusion, and ASP.NET). These facilities allow the customers to write or install scripts for applications like forums and content management. For e-commerce, SSL is also highly recommended.

The host may also provide an interface or control panel for managing the Web server and installing scripts as well as other services like e-mail. Some hosts specialize in certain software or services (e.g. e-commerce). They are commonly used by larger companies to outsource network infrastructure to a hosting company.
[edit] Hosting reliability and uptime
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Multiple racks of servers.

Hosting uptime refers to the percentage of time the host is accessible via the internet. Many providers state that they aim for at least 99.9% uptime (roughly equivalent to 45 minutes of downtime a month, or less), but there may be server restarts and planned (or unplanned) maintenance in any hosting environment, which may or may not be considered part of the official uptime promise.

Many providers tie uptime and accessibility into their own service level agreement (SLA). SLAs sometimes include refunds or reduced costs if performance goals are not met.

Web hosting is often provided as part of a general Internet access plan; there are many free and paid providers offering these services.

A customer needs to evaluate the requirements of the application to choose what kind of hosting to use. Such considerations include database server software, scripting software, and operating system. Most hosting providers provide Linux-based web hosting which offers a wide range of different software. A typical configuration for a Linux server is the LAMP platform: Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP/Perl/Python. The webhosting client may want to have other services, such as email for their business domain, databases or multi-media services for streaming media. A customer may also choose Windows as the hosting platform. The customer still can choose from PHP, Perl, and Python but may also use ASP .Net or Classic ASP.

Web hosting packages often include a Web Content Management System, so the end-user doesn't have to worry about the more technical aspects. These Web Content Management systems are great for the average user, but for those who want more control over their website design, this feature may not be adequate. You can always use any content management system on your servers and modify them at your will. A few good examples include wordpress, Joomla, Drupal and mediawiki.

One may also search the Internet to find active webhosting message boards and forums that may provide feedback on what type of webhosting company may suit his/her needs.

The right to use a domain name is delegated by domain name registrars which are accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the organization charged with overseeing the name and number systems of the Internet. In addition to ICANN, each top-level domain (TLD) is maintained and serviced technically by an administrative organization, operating a registry. A registry is responsible for maintaining the database of names registered within the TLD it administers. The registry receives registration information from each domain name registrar authorized to assign names in the corresponding TLD and publishes the information using a special service, the whois protocol.

Registries and registrars usually charge an annual fee for the service of delegating a domain name to a user and providing a default set of name servers. Often this transaction is termed a sale or lease of the domain name, and the registrant may sometimes be called an "owner", but no such legal relationship is actually associated with the transaction, only the exclusive right to use the domain name. More correctly, authorized users are known as "registrants" or as "domain holders".

ICANN publishes a complete list of TLD registries and domain name registrars in the world. One can obtain information about the registrant of a domain name by looking in the WHOIS database held by many domain registries.

For most of the more than 240 country code top-level domains (ccTLDs), the domain registries hold the authoritative WHOIS (Registrant, name servers, expiration dates, etc.). For instance, DENIC, Germany NIC, holds the authoritative WHOIS to a .DE domain name. Since about 2001, most gTLD registries (.ORG, .BIZ, .INFO) have adopted this so-called "thick" registry approach, i.e. keeping the authoritative WHOIS in the central registries instead of the registrars.

For COM and NET domain names, a "thin" registry is used: the domain registry (e.g. VeriSign) holds a basic WHOIS (registrar and name servers, etc.). One can find the detailed WHOIS (registrant, name servers, expiry dates, etc.) at the registrars.

Some domain name registries, often called network information centers (NIC), also function as registrars to end-users. The major generic top-level domain registries, such as for the COM, NET, ORG, INFO domains and others, use a registry-registrar model consisting of hundreds of domain name registrars (see lists at ICANN or VeriSign). In this method of management, the registry only manages the domain name database and the relationship with the registrars. The registrants (users of a domain name) are customers of the registrar, in some cases through additional layers of resellers.

Today's websites are more complex than ever before. Many contain a wealth of information visitors can use to answer their questions and learn what they need to know before contacting a company or making a purchase online.

But with all the information and features packed into many of today's websites, it can also be more difficult for site visitors to first of all determine whether or not a website will contain the information they need and then find it on the website. Installing a site search box can provide several advantages to help your site visitors - and also benefit your marketing function in the process.

Site Search Satisfies the Customer's "I Want It Now" Attitude

Installing an internal site search box can help visitors find what they need more quickly. With web users still looking to find what they need as fast as possible, confusing navigation and cluttered design are more likely than ever to prompt an "on-to-the-next-site" response.

Internal site search is undoubtedly the quickest way for someone to find what they're looking for on a large and complex site. An internal site search helps visitors get around navigational structures that may be confusing to them. This is especially important for sites that are constantly adding new content. As the site continues to grow, many users will find the site search function to be a valuable tool in helping them find what they need.

Site Search Makes a Website More Customer Centric

Installing an internal site search also means you can transform your website from a static "one size fits all" style to a more "customer-centric" approach. More and more, websites need to simultaneously cater to different types of website users - knowledge seekers, prospects, buyers and long-term customers. Internal site search helps you do this, as it helps those seeking knowledge find and assess your resources more easily.

Site Search Appeals to the "Searcher" Type of Site Visitor

Different people prefer different types of navigation tools. For example, if someone uses a search engine like Google to arrive at your website, they are more likely to prefer the same search method for finding information within your website. It's not uncommon for site visitors to look immediately for the site search box when they arrive at a website.

Site Search Arms Marketers With Data

Marketers can benefit tremendously from installing an internal site search function. With the right analytic tool, internal site search can provide a wealth of information about who visits your site and how they navigate around it.

Site search data can provide insight into customer desires, intent, and behavior. While a customer might tell a different story if asked for feedback in a focus group or online survey, for example, site search data can reveal exactly which pages they looked for and found, which searches intrigued them to continue reading as well as those that prompted them to leave the site. This will contribute to the conversation when analyzing conversion rate performance across content and site sections.

Site Search Provides Insight into Personas and Usability Issues

Site search can provide usability data without the expense of setting up testing facilities. When the usage data and click path from real users is saved and available for viewing and analysis anytime, a marketer can see where searchers encountered difficulty. Looking at this data across multiple users can give clues to areas of the site that require updating and expansion, for example.

Adding typical searched on phrases to flesh out descriptions of the various personas using your site can also help enrich the entire web team's understanding of the types of people using the site. This information will be particularly helpful to any copywriters who are preparing content for selling pages and product descriptions, etc.

Site Search Brings Ideas for New Products

Users' searches can even inspire new product offerings. If you see that many visitors are searching your site for a particular type of product or service that you don't yet provide, it may be time to consider developing an offering to serve that underserved need. Especially if your site is already bringing traffic for those particular searches, your company may do well to act on this informal market research.

Site Search Reveals New Keywords

You may end up finding new keywords you weren't aware of, allowing you the chance to tweak your content so more users will find the information they need on your site. Perhaps some of your pages that you feel are relevant to a specific topic are missing a few of the terms people are actually searching on. In that case, you'll have the option to add them as appropriate and further refine your content, making it even more targeted to your users.

In addition, those keywords can be added to your search marketing campaigns, perhaps offering a chance to reach a wider audience on the Internet than originally anticipated. In order for your company to remain competitive online, you need to be open to the new ways people are finding and disseminating information. Site search is an exciting utility for websites looking to evolve their websites according to user demands.
Source :SiteProNews

Developing a website is no simple task. And there are a slew of considerations that you need to study and employ in visit to attain trusty your scheme proximity is a success. However, in addition to that, there are also whatever key things that you need to attain trusty that you don't-do in visit to ensure the same.

Here are whatever ordinary elements that you should best avoid in your website design:

Excessive Multimedia Content

One of the latest trends to have impact the concern wide scheme is the ingest of rich & mutual transmission content. Plaintive book noesis has embellish a thing of the past as recent scheme pages sport audio and video noesis now however, if not implemented carefully, they crapper help to do more alteration than good. Excessive ingest of transmission noesis module not exclusive prolong the load time of the scheme pages but also attain it difficult for your visitors to access information. They strength favour text-content that they crapper pronto read than inactivity for the video to intend buffered. Therefore, ingest transmission noesis very responsibly!
Be Careful with PDFs

PDFs are no uncertainty a great way to earmark your visitors to verify home whatever content. However, even with faster cables and line connections, it crapper verify a daylong time to download PDF files and visitors haw not be that patient. Moreover, there are chances that they don't have the right Acrobat Reader version. Therefore be careful patch using PDFs. Provide them exclusive when they are absolutely necessary and warn your visitors that the download impact module verify time so they are meliorate prepared for the same.

Use Original Photographs

Images on your website is what adds the visual appeal to the design and this is what grouping notice. And if you have utilised have photographs, the ones that are free and crapper be utilised by anyone anywhere on the web, visitors module meet know that you are not serious enough. Using have picturing on your playing website is like hosting your website on blogger.com. Therefore, be professional and ingest exclusive original and premium calibre images.

Cracking Code

Often designers are tempted to ingest any design code that works and skip the labor of developing a more complex code ornament that haw be required by the website. But stop right there. Cranky codes haw work for the website but they run to attain it look amateurish and unprofessional. And its as beatific as having no scheme proximity at every because potential clients would never contact you anyways!

No Updates and New Features

Website design is not a one-time process. You cannot meet design a website, locate it on the internet and place back and relax. If you want to have a coercive scheme presence, then designing a website is exclusive the start of the journey. You need to feed your website with new noesis on regular basis in visit to banish stagnation. Moreover search engines need firm noesis that they crapper finger otherwise your website module pushed down the charts of search results.

The mobile web is a fascinating space that is still in its infancy. If the current capabilities of mobile devices are a sign of things to come, I can only imagine what will be possible five years from now.

Here are 10 reasons I think that anyone with an online presence should establish a mobile presence separate from your website:

1. Google has a separate index for mobile content.

Not only do they have a separate index for mobile content, but also it is fairly empty. The other day I performed a search for an Imax theater in Santa Barbara, and it told me that the best option was a theater in San Diego. Really? I jumped on Imax.com and found a theater located just 19 miles away.

I never thought I would miss directory style websites, but in this particular example, a mobile directory for all theaters in the US would have been able to give Google Mobile the correct solution to serve up.

2. Your regular website is not going to cut it.

There is a fundamental design difference between a regular website and a mobile website.

On a mobile phone, there is a very limited amount of screen space. If you have ever had to side scroll to view something on a website, you realize how much of an inconvenience it is. This is magnified on a mobile device. Even with the ability to turn the device lengthwise, the resolution is still extremely small.

There are numerous mobile phone emulators that can show you what your website will look like on a mobile device, and I can guarantee it is probably a terrible experience for a mobile device user.

3. 1/5 of Americans access the mobile web each day.

This percentage is increasing every year. If you’re not representing yourself on the mobile web, your competition surely will take up the opportunity.

4. Mobile web will overtake the desktop within 5 years.

Not only will the mobile web inevitably overtake the desktop, but also usage and adoption is growing at a much faster rate than the desktop did.

In the future, the vast majority of visitors to your website will be on a mobile device.

5. $1.6 billion purchased from mobile devices in 2009.

This is likely the most exciting and sought after information about the mobile web. If millions of people are using the mobile web, but they are not buying anything, most commercial websites would not bother establishing a mobile presence.

As you can see, purchasing from mobile devices is already in the billions.

Studies show that buyers do not have as much confidence in purchasing from a mobile device as they do from their PCs, but both comfort levels and the amount being spent is increasing.

Users went through the same hesitation when the Internet was just becoming popular, and now most people do not hesitate when buying something online from their PC.

You can rest assure that the same thing will happen with the mobile web.

6. 93% of U.S. adults own a cell phone.

Not all cell phones have Internet access capabilities, but that is currently the trend. Smart phones are not the only ones with access to the web. Standard phones are coming out with Qwerty keywords and website browsers seemingly every single month.

It is safe to say that in the near future, all phones will have some form of online access, whether it is being used or not.

7. 5% of the top 500 online retailers have a mobile website/iPhone app.

I was rather surprised by how low this number is. But then again, this means great things for the rest of us who are not in the top 500 online retailers.

I am willing to bet that one of the biggest reasons that you’re not ranking as high as you would like is because your competitors are doing a better job than you are in some shape or form.

Which means that if you’re reading this, chances are fairly high that you are already a step ahead of your competition.

8. Mobile advertising spending will surpass $6.5 billion in 2012.

Ad spend is a great indicator for the current status of an industry. If someone is willing to spend their hard earned money putting their products in front of users on the mobile web, you can assume there is a pretty good reason for it.

Furthermore, if they continue to spend more year after year, that indicates that the previous years investment paid off. And that is exactly how mobile advertising is trending across the board.

9. Users average 13 hours online per week, up from 7 in 2002.

As online usage increases regardless of the device used, accessibility is going to be the next lever to increase online usage.

A desktop or laptop used to be the only way to access the Internet, but now with Internet enabled mobile phones the Internet has truly become mobile. It is now simply a matter of service availability from your mobile phone network provider such as AT&T and Verizon.

10. There are an estimated 2 billion cell phones worldwide.

Not only are there a lot of cell phones worldwide, but they seem to outlast their owners and are passed down to another owner. There are great recycling and refurbishing programs that use old cell phones as emergency dialers or resell them at discounted rates.

As you can see, the mobile web is clearly trending up and has a lot of room to grow. If the mobile web were a stock, now would be the time to buy. It is the closest thing to a sure bet as you can get.
source: searchengineland.com

Many webmasters will be happy to know that Google has announced its support for using the rel=”canonical” link element across different domains.

This is important news because when the canonical tag (as it’s become known) was introduced by all three search engines during our SMX West Conference this past February, they only supported its use inside a single domain. You could use the tag, for example, to indicate that yourdomain.com/page1.html was the canonical version of yourdomain.com/page2.html, and avoid duplicate content issues by doing so. Now, if you have a legitimate reason to have similar content on separate domains, Google will recognize your use of the rel=”canonical” link element.

Google has updated its webmaster help page to indicate how it supports the tag:

Can rel=”canonical” be used to suggest a canonical url on a completely different domain?

There are situations where it’s not easily possible to set up redirects. This could be the case when you need to migrate to a new domain name using a web server that cannot create server-side redirects. In this case, you can use the rel=”canonical” link element to specify the exact URL of the domain preferred for indexing. While the rel=”canonical” link element is seen as a hint and not an absolute directive, we do try to follow it where possible.

Google also has some additional Q&A posted on the blog announcement, so be sure to read that if you need more information.

Yahoo and Bing have not (yet?) announced cross-domain support for the rel=”canonical” link element.

How to make Domain of website SEO Friendly.?

In the present Internet era where billions of website are being surfed every day it is not enough merely to own a website or creating a website with good look but it is very important to make it reachable to the targeted visitors and provide them with all the essential elements to convert them into potential customers.

Here get some simple steps to make your site a SEO friendly site:

1. Make it Simple
Try to make your site as simple as you can. Make use of white spaces on your site so that it visually also pleases visitors. Use appropriate font color with contrasting backgrounds. Less is more. It will help to make important elements more eye catching.

2. Avoid JavaScript
Try to avoid excessive use of JavaScript or any other scripting language on your web page. Search Engine robots as per their algorithm do not read JavaScript codes and use of these codes increases the load time of websites which annoys the user. As a result of which you may lose your potential customer.

3. Avoid use of Frames and Flash
Try to avoid excessive use of frames and flash as they increase load time of the websites.

4. Organize site
Organize sites in a manner so that every page is easily navigated from all the pages of the site. Navigation to the pages should be simple and clear. The Anchor text should be relevant to the link contained underneath.

5. Avoid Excessive use of Images
Avoid use of unnecessary images on the website as they increase the load time of the website and make the website bulky. Do not overuse graphics on the web page.

6. Minimize Site loading time
Site should be quick to load so that it can easily and quickly reach your potential visitors. Minimize the loading time on your site as much as you can.

7. Check Availability of Server
The web server on which your website is hosted should be 24 X 7 up as search engine robots can crawl your website anytime. And unavailability of your site on being visited can lose you your potential visitor and thus you may lose your business.

8. Keep Navigation at the left
Create a Navigation tap and place the navigation links on that section. Keep the navigation links to the vital pages of your website on the left of the web page as search engine robots generally start crawling your website from the top left corner of the website and also it is very much convenient for the web users.

9. Relevant content
Don’t forget that visitors are coming to your website to take some information. And for providing the required information to the visitors, search engines crawls your website. The ultimate main purpose is to provide information to the visitors. So keep your website more informative and post content on the website that is relevant to the site.

10. Manage Site map
Manage a site map containing the links of all the pages of the website on a single page so that a visitor can easily get to the page he wants to with the help of sitemap.

11. Avoid Scrolling
Horizontal Scrolling!!!! Users use to hate horizontal scrolling on a web page. It must go now. Vertical Scrolling is OK if it is very much necessary to keep it. But try to make your content or the information on your webpage very concise and snappy. Users should have good feel when they come to your site.

These are just general aspects that one should consider while designing a website or optimizing a website.

Search Engine Optimizing Companies that provides various web promotion services brings in concern many technical aspects of making a website SEO friendly as they are somewhat aware of what search engines are looking for in a website.