Tag Archives: Look

What to Look for in Web Hosting

Posted on October 7, 2010 by arra| Leave a comment

     Websites are no longer a luxury for businesses they are an absolute necessity. People browse for businesses on-line for anything from restaurants to plumbers, to grocery stores. Every business these days needs a website to inform people about their business. Web sites will give potential customers the information that they need to give you money. Your business web site will tell potential customers about your business, services you offer, how to contact your, and can give your business a more personal face which is always nice for customers. 

     When you make the decision to create your own website, there are a couple of things you need to consider. You need to consider who is going to create your website, an employee, an outside company, your neighbors kid? Obviously you want to pick someone who knows what they are doing and will be able to support you and update your web site months from now with new information. Private contractors and companies will do a basic web site pretty cheap if you don’t want any of the bells and whistles. The other big question you need to ask yourself is, where am I going to store my web site. Most people don’t think about the fact that they need to store their web site but you do. Your web site has to be stored on a server somewhere that is accessible from the Internet and has all of the proper security features in place.

     There are tons of different web hosting companies out there that will create you a domain name (www.yourbusiness.com) and store your website for a very low fee. If you happen to out grow your web hosting company is can be a pain to move your web site to another hosting company so make sure you plan ahead early to avoid unnecessary costs. There are a few things you want to look for when picking your web hosting company.

Storage Space is the first thing you want to look at when you are selecting a web hosting company. Storage space is the amount of room that the company gives you to store your web site. When looking at storage space you want to have at least 10 Gigs or 10000 Mbs (these are the same amount). By having this much storage space you can build a basic web site and have plenty of room to grow with your web site. If you later want to include downloads, or image galleries you are going to need this extra space for storage.

Monthly Traffic is the amount in size that people viewing your web site are allowed to download. Whenever your web site is viewed everything is downloaded to the users computer and the amount they download is part of your Monthly Traffic. This number comes into play when you begin to get a lot of traffic to your web site. As your traffic increases most web hosting companies will require you to upgrade to an account with a higher Monthly Traffic number. A good number to monthly traffic is anywhere from 200Gb to 300Gb for your basic site and obviously that number only increases as you receive more traffic.

Databases are being used more and more in the web design business as companies are getting more high tech and want their information to be database driven. This may not be something you want to do right now but should you ever need it you want to make sure you have it ahead of time. Databases for most hosting companies is a very small fee ahead of time to have it setup.

Service Uptime Guarantee is the percentage of time that the web hosting company guarantees that they will be up and running. You don’t want to choose any provider that has less than a 99.9% uptime. This means that your site is guaranteed to be up 99.9% of the time.

Backups are very important when it comes to web sites and your hosting company should feel the same way. You want to make sure that your hosting company are doing daily backups of all of your web site data. You also want to make sure that they are running UPS backup (uninterrupted power supply) and diesel generators. Hosting companies that have these in place are ahead of the game because your data is safely stored and even in the event of prolonged power outages at the hosting company your can still function on the backup generators.

Easy Upgrading is another important feature you want in a web hosting company. Should you plan ahead effectively and you still out grow the current plan you have with your web hosting company you want to make sure you can easily upgrade without any hassle or lose of data. If you choose a web hosting company that makes it easy to upgrade you will save yourself a lot of headaches down the road.

     Web hosting is a very inexpensive option to get your business on the Internet if you choose the right web hosting company. Just remember to plan ahead for future expansion of your web site and you will reap the benefits of cheap on-line advertising with your new web site.

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What to Look For in a Web Hosting Company

Posted on October 6, 2010 by arra| Leave a comment

Websites are no longer a luxury for businesses they are an absolute necessity. People browse for businesses on-line for anything from restaurants to plumbers, to grocery stores. Every business these days needs a website to inform people about their business. Web sites will give potential customers the information that they need to give you money. Your business web site will tell potential customers about your business, services you offer, how to contact your, and can give your business a more personal face which is always nice for customers.

When you make the decision to create your own website, there are a couple of things you need to consider. You need to consider who is going to create your website, an employee, an outside company, your neighbors kid? Obviously you want to pick someone who knows what they are doing and will be able to support you and update your web site months from now with new information. Private contractors and companies will do a basic web site pretty cheap if you don’t want any of the bells and whistles. The other big question you need to ask yourself is, where am I going to store my web site. Most people don’t think about the fact that they need to store their web site but you do. Your web site has to be stored on a server somewhere that is accessible from the Internet and has all of the proper security features in place.

There are tons of different web hosting companies out there that will create you a domain name (www.yourbusiness.com) and store your website for a very low fee. If you happen to out grow your web hosting company is can be a pain to move your web site to another hosting company so make sure you plan ahead early to avoid unnecessary costs. There are a few things you want to look for when picking your web hosting company.

Storage Space is the first thing you want to look at when you are selecting a web hosting company. Storage space is the amount of room that the company gives you to store your web site. When looking at storage space you want to have at least 10 Gigs or 10000 Mbs (these are the same amount). By having this much storage space you can build a basic web site and have plenty of room to grow with your web site. If you later want to include downloads, or image galleries you are going to need this extra space for storage.

Monthly Traffic is the amount in size that people viewing your web site are allowed to download. Whenever your web site is viewed everything is downloaded to the users computer and the amount they download is part of your Monthly Traffic. This number comes into play when you begin to get a lot of traffic to your web site. As your traffic increases most web hosting companies will require you to upgrade to an account with a higher Monthly Traffic number. A good number to monthly traffic is anywhere from 200Gb to 300Gb for your basic site and obviously that number only increases as you receive more traffic.

Databases are being used more and more in the web design business as companies are getting more high tech and want their information to be database driven. This may not be something you want to do right now but should you ever need it you want to make sure you have it ahead of time. Databases for most hosting companies is a very small fee ahead of time to have it setup.

Service Uptime Guarantee is the percentage of time that the web hosting company guarantees that they will be up and running. You don’t want to choose any provider that has less than a 99.9% uptime. This means that your site is guaranteed to be up 99.9% of the time.

Backups are very important when it comes to web sites and your hosting company should feel the same way. You want to make sure that your hosting company are doing daily backups of all of your web site data. You also want to make sure that they are running UPS backup (uninterrupted power supply) and diesel generators. Hosting companies that have these in place are ahead of the game because your data is safely stored and even in the event of prolonged power outages at the hosting company your can still function on the backup generators.

Easy Upgrading is another important feature you want in a web hosting company. Should you plan ahead effectively and you still out grow the current plan you have with your web hosting company you want to make sure you can easily upgrade without any hassle or lose of data. If you choose a web hosting company that makes it easy to upgrade you will save yourself a lot of headaches down the road.

Web hosting is a very inexpensive option to get your business on the Internet if you choose the right web hosting company. Just remember to plan ahead for future expansion of your web site and you will reap the benefits of cheap on-line advertising with your new web site.

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10 Things to Look Out for in a Web Designer

Posted on August 14, 2010 by arra| Leave a comment

If you want to get your website designed but lack the necessary tech expertise and are seeking professionals who could do the job for you, here is a checklist that you should follow. Cause if you are shelling out a quality

sum, you might as well get its worth back!

Following are some clues that will point to a successfully completed design

project:
Website Designer without a Website

If the probable web designer or the company that you seek to hire doesnt

have a website to stake claim, then run for your life by all means. There is

absolutely no excuse for not having an online presence for any advertising

and marketing company. And if they havent cared about themselves, there

is bleak possibility that they will for you.
Coming Soon

If all or most of the samples on a web designers site say Coming Soon or Page

not found take it as screaming sign that says, save yourself! All these

tags mean but one thing, that theyre probably a company that doesnt

finish projects or drag it on till eternity.
Same Samples

there might be many sample works pasted on their website. But look closer to

see if they theyre all for the same campaign or company and one youve

never heard of. This is clue enough to tell you that the samples are done

for design school, not real world business.
Typos, Broken Links and Stale Info

Look out for work samples that have typos, broken links and outdated information.

And if you see any dont haste in leaving. If theyve done it

before, they can obviously do it again.
No Key Questions

While interviewing a designer, see if they ask the three key questions:

”

What does the client do?

”

What does the client want done?

”

What is the project deadline?

And if they dont ask these, just ask them to leave!
No Communication

If you have trouble getting the design company on the phone, or there is no

response to your emails in a timely and efficient manner, it is cue enough

for their future performance. This is just a foreshadowing of whats

to come when the real work begins.
No Price Quote

If they dont have a price quote or printing estimate in writing, there

are chances that its all a fraudulent proceeding. Verbal estimates are

amateur, indicating that that designer is as well.
Too good to be true

If the price sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. Youll

either never get the final project completed, or youll get what you

pay for. Get several quotes to see what the ballpark figures should be, especially

so if you are new in the game. And dont rely on internet companies as

many are in foreign countries, thus making communication impossible.
Contract

If there is no contract signage in the picture, then there is reason to caution.

Do you know what the payment terms are, who owns the copyright, are there

royalties or usage limits, and so on. Dont hire any contractor without

some agreement in writing.
No Money Upfront

If you arent asked for money up front, run back! Think of it as a retainer,

and typically, an assurance that your job is taken as a serious priority. If

youve gotten to this point with your research, a deposit of 30 or 50%

shouldnt scare you.

With this 10 point checklist to take cue from, chances of you zeroing in on

the wrong designer are well& zeroed out!

After being in the web design and development industry in India for quite

some time, Michael Henderson is a known name. Presently, he works with the

WWW standards as an acting consultant and advises the clientele about hiring

offshore web services. He also advises the web development team to built web

pages that comply with the W3C standards.

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Look Who’S Linking To Your Blog

Posted on August 11, 2010 by arra| Leave a comment

When reading about search engine optimization, page rank and getting more traffic to your blog, you may have come across the term backlinks. Backlinks also known as inbound links and incoming links are links from other websites to your site.

Having backlinks is vital to your blog, as it helps increase its popularity. There are many means available to check your incoming links.

One method of checking for incoming links is to use link popularity services such as linkpopularity.com and marketleap.com.

Keep in mind that unlike Yahoo and MSN, Google does not always display all your backlinks.

Technorati-

Another method for finding what blogs are linking to you is to check Technorati. To check your links on Technorati use the following method http://www.technorati.com/search/ yourblogtitle.com.

Technorati states that they attempt to index full content from blogs. If they cannot find a full content, they index the HTML on the front page. Any content that can’t be found in either of these places does not get indexed currently. So if a blog’s RSS feed is not set to “full”, then it is possible that not all backlinks will show in Technorati.

Google Blogsearch-

blogsearch.google.com is another place to check for new incoming links to your blog. Google blog search allows you to search via a specific timeframe, such as blogs linking in within the last hour, 12 hours, one week or months. Google Blogsearch allows you to subscribe to the results via RSS feed so you’ll be updated whenever a new site links to your blog.

Ask.com Blog Search-

Ask.com unique algorithm combines Ask.com search and Bloglines subscription data. Searches can be conducted by “posts”, “feeds” or “news”. Advanced search features are available. http://www.ask.com/?tool=bls

Icerocket Blog Search-

icerocket.com is a blog search engine like Google Blog Search. Icerocket Blog Search lets you track links from other blogs to your posts. To check your links at Icerocket type this query into the search field link: yourblogtitle.com.

Backlinkwatch-

backlinkwatch.com provides an all-in-one service to check your backlinks. The service reports backlinks along with their PR, anchor text and if it’s a nofollow or follow backlink.

PopUri-

popuri.us is an online tool which checks the link popularity of any site based on its ranking.

Google offers Google Webmaster Tools which also shows the number of incoming links for your website and Blog Pulse Search reports daily incoming links to your blog as well.

Check your incoming links through these various methods to get a wider scope of just who is linking to your blog.

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How You Can Nostalgic Look Back at 90s Web Design?

Posted on August 4, 2010 by arra| Leave a comment

A nostalgic look back at 90s web design, and a warning to anyone whose website is an accidental anachronism. 
Remember the days when every PC was beige, every website had a little Netscape icon on the homepage, Geocities and Tripod hosted just about every single personal homepage, and “Google” was just a funny-sounding word? 
The mid-late 1990s were the playful childhood of the worldwide web, a time of great expectations for the future and pretty low standards for the present. Those were the days when doing a web search meant poring through several pages of listings rather than glancing at the first three results–but at least relatively few of those websites were unabashedly profit-driven. 
Hallmarks of 1990s Web Design 
Of course, when someone says that a website looks like it came from 1996, it’s no compliment. You start to imagine loud background images, and little “email me” mailboxes with letters going in and out in an endless loop. Amateurish, silly, unprofessional, conceited, and unusable are all adjectives that pretty well describe how most websites were made just ten years ago. 
Why were websites so bad back then? 
Knowledge. Few people knew how to build a good website back then, before authorities like Jakob Nielsen starting evangelizing their studies of web user behavior. 
Difficulty. In those days, there weren’t abundant software and templates that could produce a visually pleasing, easy-to-use website in 10 minutes. Instead, you either hand-coded your site in Notepad or used FrontPage. 
Giddiness. When a new toy came out, whether it was JavaScript, Java, Frames, animated Gifs, or Flash, it was simply crammed into an already overstuffed toy box of a website, regardless of whether it served any purpose. 
Browsing through the Internet Archive’s Way Back Machine, it’s hard not to feel a twinge of nostalgia for a simpler time when we were all beginners at this. Still, one of the best reasons for looking at 90s website design is to avoid repeating history’s web design mistakes. This would be a useful exercise for the tragic number of today’s personal homepages and even small business websites that are accidentally retro. 
Splash Pages 
Sometime around 1998, websites all over the internet discovered Flash, the software that allowed for easy animation of images on a website. Suddenly you could no longer visit half the pages on the web without sitting through at least thirty seconds of a logo revolving, glinting, sliding, or bouncing across the screen. 
Flash “splash pages,” as these opening animations were called, became the internet’s version of vacation pictures. Everyone loved to display Flash on their site, and everyone hated to have to sit through someone else’s Flash presentation. 
Of all the thousands of splash pages made in the 1990s and the few still made today, hardly any ever communicated any useful information or provided any entertainment. They were monuments to the egos of the websites’ owners. Still, today, when so many business website owners are working so hard to wring every last bit of effectiveness out of their sites, it’s almost charming to think of a business owner actually putting ego well ahead of the profit to have been derived from all the visitors who hit the “back” button rather than sit through an animated logo. 
Text Troubles 
“Welcome to…” Every single website homepage in 1996 had to have the word “welcome” somewhere, often in the largest headline. After all, isn’t saying “welcome” more vital than saying what the web page is all about in the first place? 
Background images. Remember all those people who had their kids’ pictures tiled in the background of every page? Remember how much fun it was trying to guess what the words were in the sections where the font color and the color of the image were the same? 
Dark background, light text. My favorite was orange font on purple background, though the ubiquitous yellow white text on blue, green or red was nice, too. Of course, anyone who will make their text harder to read with a silly gimmick is just paying you the courtesy of letting you know they couldn’t possibly have written anything worth reading. 
Entire paragraphs of text centered. After all, haven’t millennia of flush-left margins just made our eyes lazy? 
“This Site Is Best Viewed in Netscape 4.666, 1,000×3300 resolutions.” It was always so cute when site owners actually imagined anyone but their mothers would care enough to change their browser set up to look at some random person’s website. 
All-image no-text publishing. Some of the worst websites would actually do the world the service of putting all their text in image format so that no search engine would ever find them. What sacrifice! 
Hyperactive Pages 
TV-envy was a common psychological malady in 1990s web design. Since streaming video and even flash were still in their infancy, web designers settled for simply making the elements on their pages move like Mexican jumping beans. 
Animated Gifs 
In 1996, just before the dawn of Flash, animated gifs were in full swing, dancing, sliding, and scrolling their way across the retinas of web surfers trying to read the text on the page. 
Scrolling Text 
Just in case you were having a too easy time tuning out all the dancing graphics on the page, an ambitious mid-1990s web designer had a simple but powerful trick for giving you a headache: scrolling text. Through the magic of JavaScript, website owners could achieve the perfect combination of too fast to read comfortably and too slow to read quickly. 

<a rel=”nofollow” onclick=”javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/outgoing/article_exit_link’);” href=”http://www.instant-squeeze-page-mastery.com”>www.instant-squeeze-page-mastery.com</a>
<a rel=”nofollow” onclick=”javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/outgoing/article_exit_link’);” href=”http://www.automatic-content.com”>www.automatic-content.com</a>

http://www.instant-squeeze-page-mastery.com
http://www.automatic-content.com

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Worth of Educated Choice While Opting for a Web Host Provider

Posted on August 3, 2010 by arra| Leave a comment

The selection of the best web hosting provider, having infinite number of suppliers and work harder. Who will decide on one of the providers should have adequate knowledge of the requirements. There are several points that should take care and finding a web host. First, the customer should list below all the requirements and then find the hosting provider below. Finally, if a supplier will be selected by the user, after a proper research, but it is obvious that the selected providers have certainly some extraordinary quality compared to other operators. It is well known that due to strong competition in which all suppliers is very elegant presentation of himself, it is very difficult for customers to choose one of them for their business. The only line to the left, is to help customers with “knowledge” as knowledge only those customers are in a position to decide, what to consider in order during the decision-making. It is important to acquire the customer knowledge, but the point is, how and where to acquire knowledge. The knowledge of the service sector plays an important role as knowledge of the technologies underlying the service, the knowledge about the people behind the service, knowledge of customer service, knowledge of the extent of Quality provided the hosting available and many other things, lists the . The first step taken by the majority of clients to create a line budget for the hosting, but to professionals who know the value of hosting will be placed, is not the money factor on the top, but reliable in the middle, where some important factor in its overall list aos. Rather, it was considered important even before the knowledge of the factors to acquire. Now you can look at an example, if a budget that allocated less than $ 100 then he / she ignore terms like dedicated servers collocation, etc. But more than the budget they have the opportunity to learn. There are many sources of knowledge acquisition is the main source for all to read the article, more articles like showing a complete picture, more value, it means more knowledge. Another advantage of this medium is that it is the cheapest means of acquiring knowledge. The theme, once elected, is to be read on the budget on. Inclusion in the budget not only money but also time. If the argument that their needs and the sources of opinion are correct. A crucial point, the customer must keep in mind that he / she should always go for the right information to choose a good hosting provider. Customers should also consider the answers to certain questions, as he / she knows the meaning of five nines, aos, and their business needs. Client does not want the PHP technology on its Web site? The customer is preferably a dynamic and fast over a trusted site to give default simple search friendly site? If the customer visits each of the then all suppliers will do their best to sell their huge plane, the functions that are not required to contain. Let’s look aos another example, a factor that the hosting provider Urchin of statistics is expensive, but will in fact have to pay providers a license fee, which is best used for the transfer to the customer, to the shoulder aos. To operate a good business or a part of the free stats open source solutions are more than enough. Hosting providers make these additions to it more attractive package. We need to evaluate the basic functionality and would ultimately for the add-ons which can amount to supplement the core. Let’s go further and aos look at other sources. Another reliable source, that customers can directly with hosting providers and provides them with an honest opinion about the features that speak your business needs. Thus the conclusion that after reading the article and always in contact with 8 or 9-providers can a good level of knowledge and can tell you that he / she can now act with intelligence, and the choice of hosting for him her. In general, what happens to owners of small village of stupid mistakes, such compromises with the sources at low cost and ignore the rest of things. There are many providers who are willing to offer their services at very reasonable prices, but their services are worthless and unreliable, like, whenever they are needed to disappear. A good supplier is providing more appropriate support whenever needed and charges the customers under support provided. Last but not least, the source with which the user both with advisors in the network, or you can talk to people who can be consulted in advance to be hosted. This is a lengthy process, but knowledge of the customer gains from this source are really noticeable. When a user negotiates a better deal, and if he / she gets solved all their problems or, aos, if the economy grows, it is then that a host is required to take really good to aos success story.

Stop searcing for web hosting company best? Find our own, offers and discounts from the top web hosts like Hostgator and Bluehost

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What to Look Out for in a Singapore Web Hosting Provider

Posted on July 30, 2010 by arra| Leave a comment

What are some of the things you should look for when choosing a web hosting provider in Singapore? There are many web hosting providers in Singapore, some are large reputable web hosting company, while others are setup by one man show. Choosing the wrong web hosting company can result in serious damage to your company email communication , reputation and loss of profit, when badly managed servers goes down.

Reliability and speed of access

Not only the web host be reliable and fast, it should guarantee its uptime (the time when it is functional). Look for a minimum of 99.5% uptime guarantee. The host should provide some sort of refund (eg prorated refund or discount) if it falls below that figure. Without that guarantee, the web hosting company will have little incentive to ensure that its servers are running all the time.

Support Level and Team Strength

When you host your company email and web site services with a budget hosting company running on one man show, there will be times the owner is sick or away due to un-forecast issues, disaster start to happen when no one is monitoring the server; your email goes down, your customer cannot reach you; your email bounce; customers starting to doubt your company reliability; you lose the customer. You tried to contact the owner, but to no avail. There you are, left hanging with nobody to turn to fanatically. Such scenario have happened many times! (many customers who switched to us is partly due to such problem they faced with their previous web host) . Always check with your prospective web hosting provider on the team strength and support you will be getting when signing up for their services. Sometimes you want to save a few dollars, ask yourself how much your company reputation is worth compared to the money you can save.

Age of the Web Hosting Company in Business

While we always encourage more entrepreneurs in Singapore to setup their own businesses. A new startup some times may not have the level of experience and funding to provide top notch hosting and network infrastructure that your company can heavily depend on. A company with more than 10 years of experience is likely able to meet the expectation of support and reliability than a newly setup company with less than 2 years of experience. Find out the year your prospective hosting company begin their business.

Network and Hosting Server Infrastructure

The most simple server setup for hosting business is simply getting a single server, host it in a datacentre, install Cpanel (control panel) and starts to offer hosting. Now this is far from a highly reliable network setup. Many hosting company owner fail to troubleshoot problems when it arises within the server due to software or hardware problem. Learn the types of server hosting environment your hosting provider is offering. Generally, a clustered network of servers give you more assurance than a single server environment which can goes down anytime due to software or hardware problem.

Who are the customers of your web hosting provider?

Always find out from your prospective hosting provider who is actually using their services. With customer list of MNCs and SMEs, it offers more assurance that big corporate names who use their services are provided with proper and reliable service, you can ensure the same level of service is likely to happen to your company when you sign up with them.

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