Tryangled Solutions web designing tips tricks

You can use scripts within your pages to spice them up. However, although you will probably be tempted to use all the fancy techniques to create special effects, try not to go overboard. With each script or effect you add to your web page, it will take that much longer for your page to load.

Select your scripts carefully. Most browsers now support JavaScript, so using this type of script will probably be your best choice. Keep in mind, JavaScript and Java are two totally different languages and are not in any way connected.

If you must use Java on your site, use it sparingly. Java can be slow and has a tendency to crash browsers. It can also add a lot of time to your web page’s load time.
Scripts to Avoid When Designing a Professional Site

Pop up boxes asking for your visitor’s name

Disabling the browsers back button

Continuous alert messages

Scrolling messages in the status bar

Large scrolling text

Fancy cursors

Cursor trailers

Automatic transfers on mouseovers

Mouseover sounds

This list represents only a small portion of the types of scripts you should avoid. These scripts are not only very irritating, but they’re a big waste of your visitors’ time. If you want your visitors to return, use scripts that will compliment your web site.

1. Update Any Scripts and Plugins - Look at WordPress, Joomla and any other scripts or services you have installed and see if it is time to give them an upgrade. You should be doing this more often than every spring but now is a good time to check and make sure.

2. Do Your E-mail Addresses Work? - I recently got an e-mail from a friend who told me, “Sorry I didn’t get back to you I just figured out I had major problems with my e-mail account”. Send yourself a dummy message to make sure you don’t fall into the same boat.

3. Clean up Your Sidebars - This ‘bit of advice would be mainly for blogs. I have seen some people become really addicted to having sidebar widgets and gadgets. If you have more than five per sidebar, might be time to ditch some or at least make them look pretty again.

4. Review your Terms of Service - Make sure your terms of service and acceptable use policy are up to date and include everything you wish to include there. You may have made some changes to your web site and business since the last time you reviewed it so check it out now to make sure all your bases are still covered.

5. Check and Update your Sitemaps - If you have a Google Webmaster Tools account, it might be a good time to login and check to make sure Google didn’t find any errors, which would keep them from indexing certain parts of your web site.

6. Is Your Contact Information Correct? - Check out your contact page and make sure that the numbers, e-mail addresses and postal addresses listed there are up to date and show the correct information.

7. Renew Your Domains - When does your domain name run out of date? Might need to check and also be sure that you have all your hosting bills paid up too. This also makes for a good time to upgrade your hosting account to one with a few more perks.

8. Test Your Web Site Links - Are all your web site links working? Check your error logs in your various stats packages to see where people are finding 404s and try to fix all the broken links or non-existent pages you can find.

9. How Out of Date is Your “About Us” Section? - Checking out my own about us page on one of my other web sites I see I pretty much haven’t updated it since the launch of the site. Always good to keep this up to date because well, this is how people lean more about you and what you do.

10. Spellcheck Your Web Site Content - How many grammar errors can you find on your web site? If you don’t want to read through everything you have posted - you might try just going through a few of the most popular ones and making sure they are correct. Bad spelling really peeves some people, so best not to get on anybody’s bad side.

Every hosting account has a certain allotment of disk space. The disk space is used to hold all the files which make up your web site – HTML files, graphics, scripts, and multi-media content. Usually the more expensive the hosting package the more disk space and the more bandwidth you receive.

A basic web site with just a few pages requires less than 1 MB of disk space. As you add more content and include things like downloadable files, pictures, music, and video you will require more disk space. Email also takes up disk space. If you have an account with a small disk allotment you may find that unsolicited SPAM may be eating away at your disk allotment. It’s always a good idea to go through your inbox from time to time to delete unnecessary emails.

What will happen if you use too much disk space? Each web host has their own policy about this but it’s safe to say that you will be charged for the extra space. Often this penalty is much higher than regular rates for disk space so it’s important to keep an eye on how much space you are using and if you are approaching the limit, either purchase more space or delete some files.

How can you tell how much space you are using? Most hosting packages have a control panel for making adjustments to almost every aspect of your account. These control panels usually tell you how much disk space is being used and may also rate it against your allotment so you can see at a glance if you are approaching your limit. If your hosting account does not have this feature you can judge the amount of space by downloading your entire site to a folder on your personal computer in order to check how much space it takes.

As a rough guide, consider that an average web page (3 graphics and 2 screen lengths of text) takes about 20 kb (to be generous). At this rate, a hosting package with 10 MB can have about 500 pages. Since most small sites are less than 50 pages 10 MB should be plenty to get started. But what about databases? They are usually calculated separately from your disk allotment but check with your web host to see what their policy is.

If you place music or video files on your website your need for disk space (and bandwidth) starts to take off. A typical 3 minute MP3 file takes about 2.5 to 3 MB of disk space. A short video (very poor quality) can take 1 MB. A good rule of thumb for those wishing to host multimedia is to estimate the total size of the files and get an account with double that space. This will allow for future expansion. Always check with your web host, though, before placing sound or video files on your website. Some have policies against this type of content because it places a strain on the bandwidth allotment – a serious consideration with a shared hosting package.

Shopping carts are scripts that can be installed in your hosting account. They can automate the whole eCommerce experience by organizing your products into categories, creating pages that describe categories as well as individual items, allow you to keep track of returning clients, suggest other items for the customer to buy before they check out, and allow them rate the products they have bought.

Shopping carts can provide a more satisfying shopping experience while providing a structure for your online business.  Many hosting packages include free shopping cart scripts such as Miva, Agora, osCommerce, and Zen. When choosing an eCommerce package, make sure it supports your preferred method of payment gateway. For example, if you already have a merchant account with your local bank, use that as your starting point for choosing a shopping cart which supports that particular payment method.

Just about anybody can create a presence on the Internet. Building a web site can be as simple as using a word processor, but once you have the site you need a way to publish it on the World Wide Web. This is where web-hosting companies come in.

A web host rents you disk space and provides all the services necessary for others to see your web site on the Internet.  Barring technical problems, a web host operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week so that anybody in the world can access your web site at any time.

There are literally thousands of web hosts to choose from so choosing an appropriate host can be a difficult task. The prices range from free to hundreds of dollars a year. Hosting companies can offer a multitude of services that can be confusing to a newcomer. This series of articles will help you to sort out all the information available and give you the confidence to make the proper decision about choosing a web host.
Free or Paid?

There are plenty of hosting companies that provide free hosting, so why bother paying for it?  The old adage ‘You get what you pay for’ is just as valid in the electronic age as it was 100 years ago. In web hosting, when you pay nothing you sometimes end up with nothing.

Most free web hosts offer limited services. Even though they are not charging you to host your website, they still need to make money. They often do this by placing advertising on your site. You probably won’t have any control over what kind of ads show up – it’s a matter of take it or leave it.

In addition, free hosts may restrict the content you place on your site. You may not be allowed to sell things or have certain content such as videos or music. Finally, your web site could simply disappear overnight. New companies that offer free hosting pop up almost everyday, but they also vanish with astonishing regularity. When your hosting company vanishes, your web site goes with it.

If you are serious about having a web site you need to use a reliable web host. Prices range considerably – some companies offer rates as low as $2 a month while others charge $60 or more. Be careful, though. High rates don’t always translate as high service. Some of the lower priced hosts offer reliable, stable environments that allow your website to be accessed day in day out for years.

Generally speaking the more you pay the more you get. Higher rates should bring you more storage space, more bandwidth to handle Internet traffic, and more services such as databases, email accounts, mass mailers, and the ability to add custom scripts. Higher rates can also mean better technical service if you have problems with your website.
What is a Web Server?

Whichever hosting company you choose, it helps to understand some of the technical details about their service. Every host has dedicated computers called servers which connect to the Internet and ’serve’ pages when they are requested.  That is, whenever anyone wants to see a certain web page by clicking on a link the request is sent to the particular server where that web page is stored. The server responds by sending HTML data across the Internet. A web server must have fast connections to be able to serve pages quickly. For the greatest speed and reliability try to find a host that has multiple high-speed connections as well as reliable back up power supplies in case of power outages

Not too long ago, 2Checkout added Paypal Express Checkout to their checkout process “by popular demand“. The essence of this blog post is to examine the impact of this on the web hosting industry.

Online payment systems are very popular with web hosting [and domain name registration] companies. Paying online speeds-up the order process for getting a new web hosting account and leading the pack of online wallets is Paypal. Aside Visa and Mastercard credit/debit cards, online wallets like Paypal have become increasingly popular online. What makes Paypal even better is that it can function as a 3rd-party credit card payment processor. Paypal has thus been enabling several Small-Office-Home-Office [SOHO] businesses worldwide to accept payment online.

That said, Paypal is not available in every country and available in some countries on a “Send money only” basis. This makes accepting payment online via Paypal very difficult for online merchants in such countries where Paypal is not fully functional or not available at all. The fact that 2Checkout now includes Paypal as a checkout option empowers millions of online merchants [web hosts included] to accept payment from Paypal’s over 130 million users. Several leading global brands have increasingly been adding Paypal as payment option on their respective websites, in recent times.

According to 2Checkout’s blog post on this issue:

This will allow customers to pay for products and services with the funds in their PayPal account, even if the supplier does not have their own PayPal account and only uses 2Checkout.

The PayPal payment option will be available for all non-recurring orders in the following currencies:

* Australian Dollar (AUD)
* Canadian Dollar (CAD)
* Euro (EUR)
* British Pound (GBP)
* Japanese Yen (JPY)
* U.S. Dollar (USD)

2Checkout is much easier to join and use though they would verify your information if they have any reason to suspect you/your business.

In case you’re a web host helping your clients with e-commerce solutions, the e-commerces scripts under Fantastico (if you’re using CPanel) have modules that allow merchants to accept payment via 2Checkout. CubeCart, OSCommerce and Zen Cart are all available for installation via Fantastico and there are several other equally good e-commerce shopping scripts out there that integrate well with 2Checkout.

Do you run a web hosting business? How do you accept payments online? Has the addition of Paypal to 2Checkout’s checkout process had an positive/negative impact on your web hosting business or online store? Share your thoughts here and now.