Building a new website or re-desigin an existing website is a complicated endeavor. Often, we see the trees instead of the forest. By this, I mean we focus on individual aspects of a website, without regard to its whole. Here are some tips to keep you on track while building a website.
First, write down the goals of your website and how you plan on measuring them. This will keep you focused during the process. If you feel you are getting off track, ask yourself how your current tasks are supporting the goals. If they aren’t, stop and refocus. Having goals you can measure is important. If one of your goals is to increase the number of people coming to your site, how will you measure it? By measuring your goals, you will have a higher chance of delivering a website that accomplishes those goals.
Second, it doesn’t matter what you, your marketing department or the CEO think about the site. This can be a hard point to swallow, and an even harder point to get across to people in your organization. But, if you have ever spent 4 hours trying to come up with a color scheme, simply because certain people don’t like a particular color, you will understand. You need to find out what your visitors want in the site. What will make them happy, not what pleases everyone in your company. If you make a decision based on customer feedback and it meets disapproval, ask “Do you want a site that pleases our customers and or a site that pleases you?”.
Lastly, do competitive analysis to determine features your site needs. But look farther than your immediate competitors. Review large and established companies, like Amazon, Ebay and others for inspiration. Obviously, you don’t have the same resources as they do, but you can take inspiration from what they are doing and translate that into something important and relevant for your site.
About The Author
Rob Bolton works for 60AT6 (http://www.60at6.com) and is an active member in the barter network BizXchange (http://www.bizx.com/barter-network-system.html).
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Finding Programming Help on the Internet
Sometimes when you run into a programming problem you need a little help to get moving again. You can quickly find that help on the Internet (at a reasonable price).
Rentacoder.com is a really helpful website. It is similar to eLance.com, but it specializes more in programming and coding while eLance.com covers more general services such as writing, translation, legal, accounting, etc.
It is more difficult to register on Rentacoder than on eLance. Apparently, Rentacoder has been burned by credit card fraud so you must take additional steps to validate your card for payment. The sign up process consists of the usual completion of the sign up form, setting up your credit card as the payment method, scanning or faxing both sides of the card to Rentacoder, and then receiving a phone call from Rentacoder validating the card. This is handled quickly and efficiently.
One reason for using Rentacoder over eLance is the minimum project cost on eLance is $50.00 and Rentacoder does not have a minimum.
Let’s discuss how to use Rentacoder.
Once you have established an account on Rentacoder and validated your credit card, you are ready to post projects for coders to bid on. This is a simple process of completing the input form for the bid. You must state the specifications for the job in as much detail as possible so the coders who will enter bids can understand the job and enter the most accurate bid possible.
You then specify the computer operating system on which the program or script will run.
The deliverables are important so both parties understand exactly what is expected as the output for the project. Rentacoder has standard language for deliverables to help you with this part of the project creation as follows:
Deliverables:
All deliverables must be uploaded to Rent A Coder before the deadline(s) for this project...with no exceptions. If this contract makes it impossible for a competent person to do this, then do not start this project...but instead alert Rent A Coder of an un-arbitratable, illegal project.
1) Complete and fully-functional working program(s) in executable form as well as complete source code of all work done.
2) Deliverables must be in ready-to-run condition, as follows (depending on the nature of the deliverables): For web sites or other server-side deliverables intended to only ever exist in one place in the Buyer's environment--
3) All deliverables will be considered "work made for hire" under U.S. Copyright law. Buyer will receive exclusive and complete copyrights to all work purchased. (No GPL, GNU, 3rd party components, etc. unless all copyright ramifications are explained AND AGREED TO by the buyer on the site per the coder's Seller Legal Agreement).
When you have entered all the information, post the job and wait for the responses (bids). You will be surprised how quickly you will receive bids and how reasonable most of them will be.
Rentacoder is a great resource for any coding or programming project on which you need help. There are many capable programmers available through the Internet who can help you at a very competitive price. Don’t let a small coding project stop you when help is so easy to find at a reasonable price on Rentacoder.
Copyright 2006 John Howe, Inc.
About The Author
John V. W. Howe is an entrepreneur, author, inventor, patent holder, husband, father, and grandfather. He has been involved in entrepreneurial activities for over 40 years. He founded http://www.boomer-ezine.com and http://www.retirement-jobs-online.com to help Boomers (baby boomers) become entrepreneurs when they retire.
Rentacoder.com is a really helpful website. It is similar to eLance.com, but it specializes more in programming and coding while eLance.com covers more general services such as writing, translation, legal, accounting, etc.
It is more difficult to register on Rentacoder than on eLance. Apparently, Rentacoder has been burned by credit card fraud so you must take additional steps to validate your card for payment. The sign up process consists of the usual completion of the sign up form, setting up your credit card as the payment method, scanning or faxing both sides of the card to Rentacoder, and then receiving a phone call from Rentacoder validating the card. This is handled quickly and efficiently.
One reason for using Rentacoder over eLance is the minimum project cost on eLance is $50.00 and Rentacoder does not have a minimum.
Let’s discuss how to use Rentacoder.
Once you have established an account on Rentacoder and validated your credit card, you are ready to post projects for coders to bid on. This is a simple process of completing the input form for the bid. You must state the specifications for the job in as much detail as possible so the coders who will enter bids can understand the job and enter the most accurate bid possible.
You then specify the computer operating system on which the program or script will run.
The deliverables are important so both parties understand exactly what is expected as the output for the project. Rentacoder has standard language for deliverables to help you with this part of the project creation as follows:
Deliverables:
All deliverables must be uploaded to Rent A Coder before the deadline(s) for this project...with no exceptions. If this contract makes it impossible for a competent person to do this, then do not start this project...but instead alert Rent A Coder of an un-arbitratable, illegal project.
1) Complete and fully-functional working program(s) in executable form as well as complete source code of all work done.
2) Deliverables must be in ready-to-run condition, as follows (depending on the nature of the deliverables): For web sites or other server-side deliverables intended to only ever exist in one place in the Buyer's environment--
3) All deliverables will be considered "work made for hire" under U.S. Copyright law. Buyer will receive exclusive and complete copyrights to all work purchased. (No GPL, GNU, 3rd party components, etc. unless all copyright ramifications are explained AND AGREED TO by the buyer on the site per the coder's Seller Legal Agreement).
When you have entered all the information, post the job and wait for the responses (bids). You will be surprised how quickly you will receive bids and how reasonable most of them will be.
Rentacoder is a great resource for any coding or programming project on which you need help. There are many capable programmers available through the Internet who can help you at a very competitive price. Don’t let a small coding project stop you when help is so easy to find at a reasonable price on Rentacoder.
Copyright 2006 John Howe, Inc.
About The Author
John V. W. Howe is an entrepreneur, author, inventor, patent holder, husband, father, and grandfather. He has been involved in entrepreneurial activities for over 40 years. He founded http://www.boomer-ezine.com and http://www.retirement-jobs-online.com to help Boomers (baby boomers) become entrepreneurs when they retire.
Web Languages: PHP vs. ASP.NET
While the average web developer has a lot of options these days. It's really more of a bi-partisan system between ASP.NET and PHP, the rest being just independents. The battle rages between the supporters of the two languages, with no clear winner every coming out. While both can be used to complete the same project, it really depends on what you're looking for: price, speed, security, etc.
ASP.NET
If you program in ASP.NET you'll typically get too responses from the other side. Either you're rich (or your company is) or you're a Microsoft lover. While the name comes from Microsoft's old ASP technology, they made a huge leap with the .NET Framework, and the CLR allows you to use other languages for back end processing: typically Visual Basic.NET or C#.
ASP.NET's strength lies in object oriented features, and it's flexibility. Because of the CLR you can have C# programmers and VB.NET programmers working on the same project, or switch languages half way through and not have to rewrite all of your old classes. The .NET class library is organized into inheritable classes based around particular tasks, such as working with XML or image manipulation, so a lot of the more common tasks have been already handled for you.
Visual Studio .NET is a massive development IDE that (as long as your computer is fast enough) will shave tons of time of your coding. It has built in debugging along with IntelliSense, which allows for auto-completion of methods and variables so you don't have to memorize everything.
On the down side, ASP.NET is expensive. One it uses tons more resources on the web server so you'll require either better server or more servers in the farm. Windows 2003 and Visual Studio .NET are pretty tough on the pocket book as well. It's extremely rare for an ASP.NET app not to be running on IIS. And if you pay attention to any of the bug reports, you'll notice that Windows and IIS have had a bit of a history with vulnerabilities being exploited.
PHP
PHP works in combination of HTML to display dynamic elements on the page. PHP only parses code within its delimiters, such as . Anything outside its delimiters is sent directly to the output and not parsed by PHP.
PHP strength lies mostly in LAMP. The LAMP architecture has become popular in the Web industry as a way of deploying inexpensive, reliable, scalable, secure web applications. PHP is commonly used as the P in this bundle alongside Linux, Apache and MySQL. PHP can be used with a large number of relational database management systems, runs on all of the most popular web servers and is available for many different operating systems. This flexibility means that PHP has a wide installation base across the Internet; over 18 million Internet domains are currently hosted on servers with PHP installed.
With PHP 5 finally came exception handling and true OOP, but it still lack namespacing to prevent class naming collisions. PHP's type checking is very loose, potentially causing problems. Another drawback is that variables in PHP are not really considered to have a type. Finally, for some reason big corporations feel that if they're not paying for something, then it's not worth buying. If that's you're company's mentality, they just need to wake up and check out all the awesome free software that's out there.
So Which Is Better?
We'll I have my opinions and you may have yours as well. But in general, PHP is cheap, secure, fast, and reliable, while ASP.NET has quicker development time and is easier due to its class library system can probably be maintained more easily. Both are great languages, and it's up to you to make the decision.
About The Author
Kevin Jordan is a software engineer and the creator of Scratch Projects. A web site dedicated to teaching others to program through actual programming projects instead of just giving away code snippets.
http://www.scratchprojects.com
ASP.NET
If you program in ASP.NET you'll typically get too responses from the other side. Either you're rich (or your company is) or you're a Microsoft lover. While the name comes from Microsoft's old ASP technology, they made a huge leap with the .NET Framework, and the CLR allows you to use other languages for back end processing: typically Visual Basic.NET or C#.
ASP.NET's strength lies in object oriented features, and it's flexibility. Because of the CLR you can have C# programmers and VB.NET programmers working on the same project, or switch languages half way through and not have to rewrite all of your old classes. The .NET class library is organized into inheritable classes based around particular tasks, such as working with XML or image manipulation, so a lot of the more common tasks have been already handled for you.
Visual Studio .NET is a massive development IDE that (as long as your computer is fast enough) will shave tons of time of your coding. It has built in debugging along with IntelliSense, which allows for auto-completion of methods and variables so you don't have to memorize everything.
On the down side, ASP.NET is expensive. One it uses tons more resources on the web server so you'll require either better server or more servers in the farm. Windows 2003 and Visual Studio .NET are pretty tough on the pocket book as well. It's extremely rare for an ASP.NET app not to be running on IIS. And if you pay attention to any of the bug reports, you'll notice that Windows and IIS have had a bit of a history with vulnerabilities being exploited.
PHP
PHP works in combination of HTML to display dynamic elements on the page. PHP only parses code within its delimiters, such as . Anything outside its delimiters is sent directly to the output and not parsed by PHP.
PHP strength lies mostly in LAMP. The LAMP architecture has become popular in the Web industry as a way of deploying inexpensive, reliable, scalable, secure web applications. PHP is commonly used as the P in this bundle alongside Linux, Apache and MySQL. PHP can be used with a large number of relational database management systems, runs on all of the most popular web servers and is available for many different operating systems. This flexibility means that PHP has a wide installation base across the Internet; over 18 million Internet domains are currently hosted on servers with PHP installed.
With PHP 5 finally came exception handling and true OOP, but it still lack namespacing to prevent class naming collisions. PHP's type checking is very loose, potentially causing problems. Another drawback is that variables in PHP are not really considered to have a type. Finally, for some reason big corporations feel that if they're not paying for something, then it's not worth buying. If that's you're company's mentality, they just need to wake up and check out all the awesome free software that's out there.
So Which Is Better?
We'll I have my opinions and you may have yours as well. But in general, PHP is cheap, secure, fast, and reliable, while ASP.NET has quicker development time and is easier due to its class library system can probably be maintained more easily. Both are great languages, and it's up to you to make the decision.
About The Author
Kevin Jordan is a software engineer and the creator of Scratch Projects. A web site dedicated to teaching others to program through actual programming projects instead of just giving away code snippets.
http://www.scratchprojects.com
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
How To Choose A Good Web Host
Web Hosting Today 
Bandwidth is Cheap
Budget Hosting Services
Features You Might Require
Other Important Considerations
I used to believe in the concept using a using a hosting company that had been in the business for years but things have changed. Almost fifty percent of all hosting companies went out of business during the past year. If you were a customer of one of the ones that went out of business you already have your own horror story to tell. People lost files, websites were down for weeks, some businesses were left unable to get permission to transfer their own domains to other hosts and still others unable to renew lost their domains and websites completely. The bulk of these business failures were from the more established hosting companies that had built up good reputations over years. Large corporations purchased many of these companies. Services and support were cut or scaled back in order to maximize profit. Bandwidth is Cheap
Budget hosts almost always used to be slow and overloaded and many still are, but with bandwidth costs as low as they are today giant managed server farms located in data centers are now a very reasonable alternative, especially if you host multiple domains or require less support. Budget Hosting Services
I used to consider hosting costs to be the least important factor to consider when shopping for a host. But with connections, servers and domain names costing so much less now there are some real quality fairly low cost hosting options available today. Features You Might Require
Make sure you choose a hosting company offers the business related hosting services you need NOW, and those you WILL need in the future. At the least, I require redundant backbone connections and a backup power supply. Make sure they offer web based site management - instead of just FTP. Make sure they offer Java, statistical reporting, real audio, real video, mail list management, and a search engine. If you use Microsoft's Front Page, make sure they offer Front Page extensions. Other Important Considerations
Don't move your website from server to server. Most Internet businesses have no idea about the problems they will encounter when migrating from one hosting company to another. Each Host has their own file naming conventions and is setup to run various scripts differently. Each use a different version of the UNIX or Windows operating system and run on differing computer servers. Scripts and forms that worked flawlessly on one server might not work at all on another or the new host may not be able to support the technology you have grown to depend on. Each server migration requires more time and expertise as your business grows; that's why it's so important to match each website to your future needs.
Programming sites
For programming sites this content will keep your visitors (more than likely programmers) coming back to your site as a central resource of information.
Macromedia - XML Resource Feed Macromedia have made a publicly accessible XML feed available from the Designer & Developer Center for anyone who wishes to use it on their website. This is for the more technically minded website owner. There are some short introductions about how to use XML feeds with Cold Fusion and Macromedia Flash.
COST: FreeREVENUE BEARING: NO COUNTRY BIAS: InternationalLINKS: Home Page
Perl Jobs - Highly Recommended An excellent source of syndicated feeds announcing new Perl jobs available. The feeds are supplied either as a Javascript file (very simple for anyone to impliment) or, as you would expect from a Programming related site, as RSS files.
COST: FreeREVENUE BEARING: NO PREVIEW: Live DemoCOUNTRY BIAS: InternationalLINKS: Home Page
Lockergnomes Daily Tips - Highly Recommended Lockergnome has been around forever - I remember submitting my shareware to them back in the early nineties - ahh those were the days, when Compuserve was all the rage... Anyway - I digress (and reflect) - You can add their daily tips to your website with ease by using a few simple lines of HTML or if you are more experienced; XML or RSS feeds. What I liked about these tips was the lack of branding on them, allowing them to more seamlessly integrate into your website.
FREQUENCY: DailyCOST: FreeREVENUE BEARING: NO COUNTRY BIAS: InternationalLINKS: Home Page TopXML Add hundreds of XML code snippets and articles to your website with just a few lines of code. Ideal for programmers, general portals and technology based websites.
COST: FreeREVENUE BEARING: NO PREVIEW: Live DemoCOUNTRY BIAS: InternationalLINKS: Home Page
ZBox Linux Headline News An excellent news feed for your website. Choose from a highly configurable, easy to integrate newsfeed on all things Linux !
FREQUENCY: DailyCOST: FreeREVENUE BEARING: NO COUNTRY BIAS: InternationalLINKS: Home Page e3000 Headline News from Robelle If your site has anything to do with the HP e3000 then you may want to consider adding the latest headlines from this website - The headlines are for stories, technical tips, and pointers to interesting web pages, all focused on the HP e3000 and Robelle's Qedit and Suprtool products. There are also a number of interesting resources on syndicating headlines and an introduction to XML.
FREQUENCY: DailyCOST: FreeREVENUE BEARING: NO COUNTRY BIAS: InternationalLINKS: Home Page Linux.ie A site for everything Linux. Add the latest Liniux news headlines to your site using either a few lines of Javascript or for the technically minded you might like to scrape the RDF files.
COST: FreeREVENUE BEARING: NO COUNTRY BIAS: Not ApplicableLINKS: Home Page
BandwidthPlace.com Add a pop up speed test to your website and let your users measure their downstream connection speed. You can cobrand the popup window.
COST: FreeREVENUE BEARING: NO COUNTRY BIAS: USALINKS: Home Page
DevArticles - Highly Recommended Add the latest programming article titles published here to your website. Devarticles is an excellent source of articles for developers, with topics ranging from C# to Perl. If you ask real nicely the owner of the site may let you republish his articles in full as long as you maintain the resource test and links.
COST: FreeREVENUE BEARING: NO COUNTRY BIAS: InternationalLINKS: Home Page
321Webmaster.com This large webmaster resource site publishes an automatically updating feed that lists the top 10 resources on the 321Webmaster.com website.
COST: FreeREVENUE BEARING: NO COUNTRY BIAS: InternationalLINKS: Home Page
Sticky Downloads - Programming Utilities - Highly Recommended Powered by MyZips, a comprehensive shareware and freeware archive and by adding a few lines of code to your web page you will increase the stickiness of your site by displaying the top 5 programming utility downloads..
FREQUENCY: DailyCOST: FreeREVENUE BEARING: NO COUNTRY BIAS: InternationalLINKS: Home Page The Code Project - Highly Recommended The CodeProject is a developers dream. Each week, developers from all over the globe contribute source code, ideas and help each other with programming issues. Now you can increase the stickiness of your programming or shareware site by listing the very latest entries from this very popular library of valuable information on your web site
FREQUENCY: DailyCOST: FreeREVENUE BEARING: NO COUNTRY BIAS: InternationalLINKS: Home Page DocJS A Javascript Tip of The Day and an RSS channel. For a sample of the entire script, including the description variable, see the Freesticky Forum.
FREQUENCY: DailyCOST: FreeREVENUE BEARING: NO COUNTRY BIAS: InternationalLINKS: Home Page Planet Source Code What a terriffic site for programmers ! ASP, VB, C/C++, JS, Perl, SQL and Delphi - WOW - Heaps of user contributed source code and tips with powerful search engines to locate the source you need. You can embed an attractive scrolling ticker on your site that shows the latest contributions.
COST: FreeREVENUE BEARING: NO COUNTRY BIAS: InternationalLINKS: Home Page
Macromedia - XML Resource Feed Macromedia have made a publicly accessible XML feed available from the Designer & Developer Center for anyone who wishes to use it on their website. This is for the more technically minded website owner. There are some short introductions about how to use XML feeds with Cold Fusion and Macromedia Flash.
COST: FreeREVENUE BEARING: NO COUNTRY BIAS: InternationalLINKS: Home Page
Perl Jobs - Highly Recommended An excellent source of syndicated feeds announcing new Perl jobs available. The feeds are supplied either as a Javascript file (very simple for anyone to impliment) or, as you would expect from a Programming related site, as RSS files.
COST: FreeREVENUE BEARING: NO PREVIEW: Live DemoCOUNTRY BIAS: InternationalLINKS: Home Page
Lockergnomes Daily Tips - Highly Recommended Lockergnome has been around forever - I remember submitting my shareware to them back in the early nineties - ahh those were the days, when Compuserve was all the rage... Anyway - I digress (and reflect) - You can add their daily tips to your website with ease by using a few simple lines of HTML or if you are more experienced; XML or RSS feeds. What I liked about these tips was the lack of branding on them, allowing them to more seamlessly integrate into your website.
FREQUENCY: DailyCOST: FreeREVENUE BEARING: NO COUNTRY BIAS: InternationalLINKS: Home Page TopXML Add hundreds of XML code snippets and articles to your website with just a few lines of code. Ideal for programmers, general portals and technology based websites.
COST: FreeREVENUE BEARING: NO PREVIEW: Live DemoCOUNTRY BIAS: InternationalLINKS: Home Page
ZBox Linux Headline News An excellent news feed for your website. Choose from a highly configurable, easy to integrate newsfeed on all things Linux !
FREQUENCY: DailyCOST: FreeREVENUE BEARING: NO COUNTRY BIAS: InternationalLINKS: Home Page e3000 Headline News from Robelle If your site has anything to do with the HP e3000 then you may want to consider adding the latest headlines from this website - The headlines are for stories, technical tips, and pointers to interesting web pages, all focused on the HP e3000 and Robelle's Qedit and Suprtool products. There are also a number of interesting resources on syndicating headlines and an introduction to XML.
FREQUENCY: DailyCOST: FreeREVENUE BEARING: NO COUNTRY BIAS: InternationalLINKS: Home Page Linux.ie A site for everything Linux. Add the latest Liniux news headlines to your site using either a few lines of Javascript or for the technically minded you might like to scrape the RDF files.
COST: FreeREVENUE BEARING: NO COUNTRY BIAS: Not ApplicableLINKS: Home Page
BandwidthPlace.com Add a pop up speed test to your website and let your users measure their downstream connection speed. You can cobrand the popup window.
COST: FreeREVENUE BEARING: NO COUNTRY BIAS: USALINKS: Home Page
DevArticles - Highly Recommended Add the latest programming article titles published here to your website. Devarticles is an excellent source of articles for developers, with topics ranging from C# to Perl. If you ask real nicely the owner of the site may let you republish his articles in full as long as you maintain the resource test and links.
COST: FreeREVENUE BEARING: NO COUNTRY BIAS: InternationalLINKS: Home Page
321Webmaster.com This large webmaster resource site publishes an automatically updating feed that lists the top 10 resources on the 321Webmaster.com website.
COST: FreeREVENUE BEARING: NO COUNTRY BIAS: InternationalLINKS: Home Page
Sticky Downloads - Programming Utilities - Highly Recommended Powered by MyZips, a comprehensive shareware and freeware archive and by adding a few lines of code to your web page you will increase the stickiness of your site by displaying the top 5 programming utility downloads..
FREQUENCY: DailyCOST: FreeREVENUE BEARING: NO COUNTRY BIAS: InternationalLINKS: Home Page The Code Project - Highly Recommended The CodeProject is a developers dream. Each week, developers from all over the globe contribute source code, ideas and help each other with programming issues. Now you can increase the stickiness of your programming or shareware site by listing the very latest entries from this very popular library of valuable information on your web site
FREQUENCY: DailyCOST: FreeREVENUE BEARING: NO COUNTRY BIAS: InternationalLINKS: Home Page DocJS A Javascript Tip of The Day and an RSS channel. For a sample of the entire script, including the description variable, see the Freesticky Forum.
FREQUENCY: DailyCOST: FreeREVENUE BEARING: NO COUNTRY BIAS: InternationalLINKS: Home Page Planet Source Code What a terriffic site for programmers ! ASP, VB, C/C++, JS, Perl, SQL and Delphi - WOW - Heaps of user contributed source code and tips with powerful search engines to locate the source you need. You can embed an attractive scrolling ticker on your site that shows the latest contributions.
COST: FreeREVENUE BEARING: NO COUNTRY BIAS: InternationalLINKS: Home Page
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