This article is for new Webmasters, who are not techies with long experience. Its objective is to save you time in understanding things the techies know so viscerally that they don’t even know you need to know these things. If you are technically sophisticated you should save time and stop reading here. If you have just decided that you want to host your own web site, but you don’t have strong technical skills, keep reading.

There are many things you can do online without needing this information. For example, you can create a blog for free. WordPress.com, Blogger, and many others provide these services. These may serve your purposes very well. Their disadvantage is that some of them do not allow you to advertise, and they provide only minimal control of the look and feel of your site. If you are not interested in making money from your web site, this may be fine. They certainly represent a good place to start to develop Webmaster skills, but your site will tend to look like tens of thousands of other sites.

If you want to build a professional looking web presence, or you want to advertise, or you want to provide special functionality on your blog, here is what you need to know. This article is not an endorsement for any specific product. I mention several products in this article, but only for context.

1. Skills. You will need to know some basic HTML (Hyper-Text Markup Language). But you can pick this up as you go along. Within every control panel of a site there is a toggle switch, which allows you to view the item you plan to show to the public in either WYSIWYG (”what you see is what you get”) or HTML format. Don’t worry about this too much, because when you don’t know an HTML command, you can always find it quickly with a search engine. An example is keeping your paragraphs together, rather than having unexpected line spacing. WordPress® takes every carriage return as a new paragraph, so if you want to put something on the next line without paragraph spacing, you must put the “br” command right where you want the carriage return in your existing paragraph on the HTML (hidden) side of your item.

Typing skills are a big plus. If you don’t have these, find a free typing program online. You can learn in a week. It helps to understand what FTP (file transfer protocol) is. Sometimes you do need to do things at the directory level on your hosted server. I use a program called FileZilla2 for this, but there are many other choices.

2. Hosting Service (Your Universe). Someone will have to operate the computers on which your web site appears. It is possible to do this in your home or business, but no one still reading this does anymore. There are many excellent services, and some of them provide basic functionality for under $10 per month. If you become a roaring success, you will have to pay more, but you won’t mind. Typically, you can put all the material you want on their system for no additional charge, but you will pay for the bandwidth you use. You will have to be pretty popular before you overcome the basic price.

3. Domain. You will need to create a Domain, which is the address your site uses. This will be you web address, and amounts to your URL (uniform resource locator). Your Host can do get this for you. You cannot have a findable web site without a domain. Each domain contains only one type of software, but you can create free sub-domains that operate like domains. Each one of these creates a separate database to contain the information of your site. Fortunately, the database is something that is normally provided by your hosting service.

4. One-Click Install. Good Hosts provide One-Click Install for the various web site options. You can create one type of web software into each domain or sub-domain. I have about 30 sites, and I am using both WordPress – (for blogging) and Joomla -(for basic web site functionality). You can also get programs that are purpose built for photo galleries, calendars, project planning, “wiki” style sites, or whatever you like. The ones I use are “open source,” meaning they are “free” and simply installed with no financial outlay to your hosting service. The advantage of these systems is that they have been battle tested very broadly, so most of the kinks are worked out of them. Why do programmers around the world contribute their time and money to developing these free environments? Read on.

5. The Control Panel. Every professional site, and some of the free ones, has a control panel where you can operate and adjust the appearance of your site to the general public. If you think of the Wizard of Oz, this is what the wizard does behind the green curtain. You must learn how to get to your control panel as a first priority, and this differs by the program you are using. By the time you get to this point you will already have found the control panel for your web host. I use Dream Host, which has excellent live chat functionality for support. I often get the help I need there when I don’t understand something.

6. Your Galaxy. Think of the software you just installed on your host as the galaxy within which your site operates. It is the macro-environment within which your site operates. Most of these systems have basic functionality already, so you can just begin to build your site, but you would do well to understand a few more things about your site before you do that.

7. Forums. Techies rarely provide true documentation (instructions) these days. Get over it! This is partially because they are so focused on building the next new thing, and partially because the environment is changing so fast that it is impossible to create a static set of instructions. Most decent software providers do have a Forum, where you can go for help. You register on their site for free, and then you are permitted to ask questions, or find questions previously answered through word search. If the software you are planning to use has no Forum, be very worried. Keep track of your user IDs and passwords!

8. Plug-ins, Widgets, Components and Modules. The reason techies around the world contribute to the “open source” environments is that they build smaller pieces of software that function with your galaxy, and they hope to charge you for that functionality. Each category has many choices (i.e. a calendar or clock for your site), and many of them are rated. There are free ones and commercial ones. If you see an unrated free one, chances are some aspiring software genius has created something, and he is hoping you will help him test it. The rated free ones often work perfectly well, and many good ratings can give you confidence in your selection. The commercial ones normally are endorsed in the sense that people have paid good money to use them.

9. Templates. The template is a “plug-in” which controls the look and feel of your site. Before you go too far in building your site, you should examine the choices of template in your galaxy, and install it. You may be able to do this later, but you take the chance of running into functionality problems.

10. Search Engines and Site Maps. It is no longer the case that you can just put your site up, and expect the search engines to find it. They are overwhelmed. You are therefore advised to go to each of the major search engines, register in their Webmaster program, and follow their instructions to have your site found. Search engines require “Site Maps” today, so their system can examine your site for content. This is an entirely different topic beyond the scope of this article.

Skip Conover is an International Executive, Author, and Artist. His art is in collections in more than 20 countries. His first New York opening was in 2005. He turned his long time interest in Jungian Archetype into the Archetype in Action™ Organization, and he developed its web site at archetypeinaction.org

There are thousands of web designers and web design companies out there ready to design your website. How can you choose the right one – someone who will understand your business and make sure your site is visible to search engines and your potential customers? Here’s a quick guide to help with the process.

What to Look For in a Web Designer

First of all, take a look at the designer’s own website. Is their information up to date? Browse the site and its pages to make sure the site is functional, and appears to be updated regularly.

Don’t forget to take a look at the portfolio to see what they’ve done recently. See if the sites they’ve created look like something you would want designed for yourself. If you’re looking for an e-commerce site with a shopping cart and thousands of products, check whether the firm has any experience in this area.

You should look for a web designer who knows how to help you get found in search engines. Check for the following:

• Do the websites they’ve created follow search engine optimization (SEO) best practices? You can do this quickly by looking at the Website Visibility Report for each website.

• Is the web design company’s own website ranking well in search results? If they show up on the first page of results for a search like “web design [the firm's city],” they probably know what they’re doing when it comes to SEO. You can also check the PageRank of the firm’s home page.

Tell Your Web Designer What You Need

Knowing exactly what you need for your site is the most important part of scoping out the project. If you don’t know what you want from the beginning of your engagement with a web designer, you can both get confused and frustrated – and the project is almost guaranteed to run over time and possibly over budget.

A lot of elements go into any website. Your web designer needs to know everything you want to include in yours so he can accurately scope and price your project.

What’s the main goal of your site?

Start off simple. Let the designer know what the main goal of your site is. What message are you trying to convey, and what is the purpose of your site? Think about what you want visitors to do when they come to your site. A few examples:

• Sign up for an email list
• Download a file
• Participate in a discussion on an article, message board or social network
• Click on ads
• Purchase a product or service

What kind of site do you need?

There are plenty of different kinds of sites out there: e-commerce sites for selling products; portfolio sites for photographers and artists; informational sites with articles or blog posts…and many more.

Web designers specialize in all kinds of different sites. Some designers stick to specific kinds of sites, so find one who’s good at the kind of site you need. Make sure you describe your requirements to any potential web designer you talk to.

Is your website going to sell something?

If so, there are quite a few details that you need to think about. You could have a huge e-commerce site with hundreds of products, or you could offer one special service and sell just one thing. E-commerce sites often have hundreds of pages – if not thousands – with product images and descriptions on each one. You need to tell your prospective web designer what kinds of details you’ll want on each page.

Do you want customers to be able to leave ratings or reviews for products? Do you want them to leave testimonials for your service? Reviews can boost your site’s position in search results, so it’s worth thinking about.

You need to let the designer know if you will be adding content to your site’s pages on an ongoing basis, or if that job will be up to him. Keep in mind that designers charge by the hour for tedious tasks such as adding hundreds of products to a site. You can save a lot of money by doing all this yourself, if you’re on a budget and willing to learn how.

Payment is a critical component of e-commerce. How will the payments be handled? Are you going to use PayPal, or some other kind of software? Integration of different scripts may take more time and cost more money. Discuss with your designer what’s right for your budget, and even more important, what will work best for your visitors. You want to make it easy for them to give you money, don’t you?

What about multimedia?

If you want to include any kind of audio, video, or interactive content on your website, you need to explain very clearly what it’s for and what it should do. Think about what the experience should be like for your website visitors. Remember that creating any kind of interactive experience will take more time and cost more money.

How social will your site be?

Social elements such as message boards, contact forms, guest books, order forms, blogs, or live chat can make your site more interesting and attractive to visitors. They also need to be explained fully to your web designer. Think about how you want these things to look. A web designer can give your blog or message board a custom design – which will cost more – or create them from pre-designed templates, which will be cheaper. Take a look at a few different blogs, message boards and other social elements of other websites, to get an idea of what you want for yours.

What about updates?

Guaranteed: At some point you will want to change some of the content on your site. You may need to update your phone number, change some text, or add new products or articles. Will you want to make simple changes yourself, or are you prepared to have your web designer make changes, and charge you for his time? Your answers will help your web designer determine whether you’ll need a simple content management system (CMS) that you can use yourself, or whether he should use a system that’s intended for a web design pro.

If you follow these guidelines, you will be well on your way to getting the website of your dreams.

Need to pick an SEO agency, too? Check out our related article, Choose the Right SEO Company.

This article was originally published by AboutUs.org.

Article by Alan Rosinski of AnimatedWebServices.com.(Visit) Alan owns Animated Web Services, a custom web design service. He also specializes in local SEO for small businesses using Google Places.

A car accessory is something you add to your car to make it look better and stylish. Many people want a cool car accessory to compliment their car and make it look great. A car accessory can help you to personalize your car. Whatever your reason may be for purchasing a car accessory, you’ll definitely enjoy doing it.

With a plethora of accessory options available at dealerships, choosing the right add on can get confusing. Do keep in mind that car dealerships make a killing on their high-priced accessory fittings alone. We recommend buying most of your add on from the after-market. However, quality (of product and installation) is very crucial to some accessories, especially the electronic variety.

Do you own a car? then you must agree that driving a car is more than just starting it, hitting the gear and cruising down the high way. It’s all about image, personality and power. The power that says I’m in Charge and i know that you know I am.

We offer a wide variety of mufflers and other electronic gadgets at reasonable prices. What makes us so unique is that we have strong relationships with many of the top manufactures of electronics throughout the world. Improve your image, re-create your automobile and walk tall and proud when you’re in the hood. Let CarID give your machine what it takes to survive in the 21st century and in a brand new decade.

Visit us today and we’ll give you an experience you’ll never forget. We’ll equip your car with the latest in automobile technology and provide you with the most efficient gadgets any vehicle needs to cruise in this decade and beyond.

By Eric Raymond

My first look at Python was an accident, and I didn’t much like what I saw at the time. It was early 1997, and Mark Lutz’s book Programming Python from O’Reilly & Associates had recently come out. O’Reilly books occasionally land on my doorstep, selected from among the new releases by some mysterious benefactor inside the organization using a random process I’ve given up trying to understand.

One of them was Programming Python. I found this somewhat interesting, as I collect computer languages. I know over two dozen general-purpose languages, write compilers and interpreters for fun, and have designed any number of special-purpose languages and markup formalisms myself. My most recently completed project, as I write this, is a special-purpose language called SNG for manipulating PNG (Portable Network Graphics) images. Interested readers can surf to the SNG home page at http://www.catb.org/~esr/sng/. I have also written implementations of several odd general-purpose languages on my Retrocomputing Museum page, http://www.catb.org/retro/.

I had already heard just enough about Python to know that it is what is nowadays called a “scripting language”, an interpretive language with its own built-in memory management and good facilities for calling and cooperating with other programs. So I dived into Programming Python with one question uppermost in my mind: what has this got that Perl does not?

Read full article

By: Ivana Katz

It was Friday night and I was enjoying a quiet dinner at home, when suddenly CRACK! – part of my tooth broke off!!!!! “Damn” I thought, “Now what?”

I immediately went online to see if I could find a dentist that is open on Saturday morning. So I searched and searched. The good news was there were plenty of dentists in my area … the bad news was that I couldn’t find whether they were open on Saturdays. After looking through various websites for about an hour, I narrowed it down to three dentists, who were open on the weekend. But in the end there was no competition as only one of the dentists had a professional looking website!

Don’t get me wrong the website wasn’t flash, but it was clean, easy to navigate and most of all, provided me with the information I was looking for. I phoned the next morning, made an appointment and even got to see a dentist that day!

After that experience, it really hit home … what difference a professional looking website makes! I am sure most of the dentists in my area are great at what they do, but none of their websites portrayed that. As a result they lost a customer who will spend hundreds, possibly even thousands of dollars on their services.

So if you have a website and are hoping it will bring you lots of visitors who will turn into paying customers, it is EXTREMELY, let me say that again EXTREMELY IMPORTANT that your website:

1. Is Visitor Friendly

What this means is that your customers must be able to find what they are looking for easily and quickly. And that means a great navigational system. Most websites either display their navigation bar on the left or at the top. And since most people are used to this type of navigation, it’s best to stick with it. It also helps to include your navigation bar at the bottom of each page to save your visitors from having to scroll back to the top.

2. Focuses on your customer’s needs

Rather than trying to “sell your business”, let your prospects know how your product/service is going to benefit them. Emphasize the benefits and solve problems. Make this the focus of everything you write on every page of your site. Don’t try to sell visitors your products or service, help them.

3. There are no spelling mistakes

Ensure there are no spelling or grammatical errors. Check that all links are working and graphics display correctly.

4. Proves credibility

Include testimonials from your current customers to show your potential clients that you are trustworthy, reliable and that you offer great service and/or products. Make sure the testimonials are real and if possible provide contact details of the person who supplied you with the testimonial. If you don’t have any right now, get them! Simply email your customers and ask for their feedback on your business and service. Most happy customers will gladly provide this.

You could also include before and after photos. Show the problem picture and beside it show the picture of resolution, with an explanation of your product’s benefits.

5. Contact details

Place contact details in as many places as possible. Make it easy for your customers to contact you. Create a special “Contact Us” page, include your details in “About Us” page and also at the bottom of each page. Information to include: business name, physical address, mailing address, telephone, fax, email, emergency number, website address and most importantly, don’t forget to include your business hours.

6. Offers a Money Back Guarantee

The longer the guarantee, the more effective it will be. It could be 30 days, 60 days, 1 year or lifetime. Remember you are trying to take the risk out of doing business with you.

7. Provides information that people are looking for

If you don’t provide it, someone else will. Content is still the king. You should include as much information as possible – not only detailed descriptions and prices of your products and services, but also free resources, articles, reports, ebooks relating to your industry, service and products. You can easily source free information on the internet. This will ensure that customers will keep coming back to your website, even if it is just to get information. The more they visit, the more you will stick in their mind as an expert and the next time they are ready to order your products/services, you will be their first choice.

If your website features any of the following, your website definitely needs an EXTREME MAKEOVER or at least a face lift.

1. Flash intros, revolving globes, bevelled line separators, animated mail boxes

2. Loads of pop up or pop under boxes

3. Autoplay music. Allow your customer to play music only if they choose.

4. Hit counters of the free variety, which say “you are 27th visitor”

5. Date and time stamps, unless your website is updated daily or weekly

6. Busy backgrounds.

Ask yourself – does my website portray the professional image I want my customers to see? Have I provided all the information that my customers may want or need to know? If you answered no to either of these, call your website designer today or you could lose thousands of dollars as your customers head to your competitor’s door.

Copyright (c) 2009 Ivana Katz

Article Source: http://contentsgeek.com

Ivana Katz of Websites 4 Small Business makes it easy for you to get your business on the internet. If you’re looking for a professional and affordable website designer, visit www.web4business.com.au and download a free website plan.

Gone are the days when the professionals most sought after were Doctors and Lawyers. With the explosion of the internet and related technologies, more and more people require Techies & Geeks to help resolve their different IT needs more than ever before.

Are you an IT pro?

Now is YOUR time to SHINE…

Apple has been leading the pack in consumer music players with their iPod music player. The name has now become the defacto standard in which all other MP3 players are judged. Shopping for your new iPod or apple computer is now a breeze thanks to Ebates. You can find great deals and rebates on the latest technology introduced by Apple computers.

Ebates is all about saving money and getting Cash Back whenever you shop online. When you become a member and shop online, you can save literally thousands of dollars every year on the things you’re already buying. You’ll earn up to 25% Cash Back on your purchases. You will get Cash Back at Apple & up to 25% at more than 800 popular stores.

As the use of the internet is used more and more to share data, firms need to make sure that they are using methods in which to protect sensitive information from falling into the wrong hands. Data Security has become a hot topic as recent losses of information by large banks, and even the government has everyone on edge as their personal information may be exposed leading to identity theft. But when companies are sharing files and information with their vendors and contractors sometimes the confidentiality contracts are not enough. Through solutions offered through Pinion they allow you to secure your data and place restrictions on who can access your information

In a move to expand their services for their advertisers Google will be expanding to the radio airwaves. This is an interesting move in that radio is going through some major changes in order to compete with satellite. With the move to High Definition radio, this may be an avenue that will appeal to some advertisers and give them more avenues to selectively target their audience. The uptake of HD radio remains to be seen if consumers will trade in their radios to the new more expensive models.

This year we are looking to upgrade our Mitsubishi 42 inch TV to either a plasma or LCD High definition TV. We have considered the  samsung 56 inch LCD which provides 1080 P technology which is the best pciture you can get on the market. Some of our friends have told us about the beenfits of plasma and the ability to get a better picture. One of the main things that you hear with plasma is that if their is a static image on the screen for a certain length of time that you might have that burned on your screen. Although this is a possibility I am not too concerned as the newer plasmas have information that is no longer a concern.

With LCD you get truer black according the specs and a higher resolution. Also, the LCD does better with high frame graphics and fast moving scenes such as those that you get with the newer gaming systems like the Xbox and the PS3. So we turned to a site online called krillion.com that has placed alot of that information as well as lists of local dealers that we could purchase from. This has helped to narrow down our search and not have to rely on the high school kids in the big box stores. So hopefully this Christmas we will be watching our favorite in true HDTV.