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Server Side HTML

What the Heck is Server Side HTML?
By Robert Plank

If you're stuck in the dark ages and are still editing the pages of your web site by hand, there's an easy way to change the look of your web site on a moment's notice, by editing only one file.

I know, there are all kinds of brand new blogging scripts, forums, CMSes, and other stuff to make your site easy to update. But on the other hand there are just as many desktop-based programs that churn out thousands of static HTML files for you to put on your server.

What do you do when you have to change these files later? Edit them by hand, one at a time? I don't think so.

You can save a lot of time down the road using Server Side Includes (SSI).

The point of using Server Side HTML is so you can include other pages on your regular HTML pages, things like a list of links you regularly update OR a header and footer.

Try it out. Take one of those static HTML pages on your site and rename it to something like "filename.shtml" instead of "filename.html." All we've done is changed the "html" at the end to "shtml."

Now, take the part of that site you want to appear on every page (the header graphic, link sidebar, etc.), copy and paste that part and save it into a file named "header.shtml." REMOVE that text from your filename.shtml file.

Now, in the filename.shtml file, place this at the top:

[!--#include virtual="/header.shtml"--]

(IMPORTANT: Replace the brackets [ and ] above with the greater-than and less-than "HTML" brackets... hold shift and press the "comma" and "period" keys on your keyboard.)

Upload filename.shtml and header.shtml to your server and load header.shtml. If everything went well, the page should look exactly as it did before. The only difference is: you only need that one "include virtual" line to show the top of the page, AND to change that top HTML later on all you have to do is edit header.shtml.

If you had this sort of code on 20,000 pages of your web site all you'd have to do was edit that ONE header.shtml file, and your entire site would change as soon as you uploaded that header.shtml file.

Not bad, huh?

Now do the same thing with the bottom of your web site, only save the new file as footer.shtml and at the bottom of filename.shtml place this:

[!--#include virtual="/header.shtml"--]

Again, not that exact code... replace the hard-brackets with HTML brackets.

But wait, your fancy page generator software will only save the files as .HTM or .HTML, and specifically links to certain files. You can't just go in and edit everything to link to .SHTML files.

Htaccess to the rescue.

Place this in a new text file:

AddHandler server-parsed .shtml .html .htm

Save that as "htaccess.txt", upload to your web server, and rename that htaccess.txt file you just uploaded to ".htaccess", WITH the dot in front. Now try renaming filename.shtml to filename.html. Guess what, your server side includes now work on .html and .htm files too.

Hopefully your page generator software allows you to edit the template and place these server-side include tags in there. (If not, look into a program called BKReplaceEm.) Don't worry, the pages will look funny and broken on your hard drive but once they are sitting on your web server everything will turn out ok.

If you find yourself doing a bunch of repetitive HTML editing it might be time to look into Server Side Includes to make instant changes.

You know what else, you can use a similar bit of HTACCESS code to make PHP scripts act as HTML files. That, plus 35 more "Why Didn't I Think of Those" secrets are revealed in my upcoming ebook: http://www.affiliatebattleplan.com

Labels: Hosting, Web Devolopment

50 Web Design Tips – that increase your sales!

by Mario Sanchez

Tips to brand your website

1. Include your logo in all pages. Position it at the top left or each page.

2. Complement your logo with a tagline or catchy sentence that summarizes your business purpose. For example "Always low prices" is the tagline for Wal-Mart.

3. Create a favicon. A favicon is that small graphic that appears next to the URL in the address bar.

4. Have a consistent look and feel in all your pages. Use a color scheme and layout that are clearly recognized across your site.

5. Have an About Us section that includes all relevant information about you and your business.

6. Include a copyright statement at the bottom of each page.

Tips on website navigation

7. Design your pages to load in less than 10 seconds (50Kb maximum size, including pictures).

8. Group your navigational options in relevant categories.

9. Use common names for your menu options: Home, About Us, Contact Us, Help, Products. Avoid "clever" or "trendy" alternatives.

10. If your site uses Flash, provide also an HTML version for users who prefer a less fancy, faster site.

11. Provide simple text navigation links at the bottom of long pages, so users don’t need to scroll back up.

12. Link your logo to your homepage, except in the homepage itself. Put a link to your homepage on all your internal pages.

13. Display a "breadcrumb trail"; it is basically the path from the homepage to the page where you are. A breadcrumb trail looks like this: Home > Section > Sub-Section > Page, and it greatly facilitates navigation.

14. If your site is too big, provide Search capabilities. Include a search box in the upper right corner of your homepage, and a link to a Search page from your interior pages.

15. Set your search box to search your site, not to search the web.

16. Create a custom error page that displays a simple site map with links to the main sections of your site. That way, you will not lose visitors that have followed a bad link to your site or who have misspelled your URL.

Tips on Layout and Content Presentation

17. Save the top of your page for your most important content. Remember: good content must flow to the top.

18. Lay out your page with tables, and set the width in percentage terms instead of a fixed number of pixels. That way, your page will always fit the screen, without the need to scroll horizontally.

19. Optimize your page to be viewed best at 800x600 (the most popular resolution at the time of this writing).

20. Use high contrast for the body of your page: black text on white background, or white text on black background work best.

21. Don’t use too many different fonts in one page. Also, avoid using small serif fonts (like Times Roman): they are difficult to read from a computer screen. Verdana is the most web-friendly font, since it is wide, clean and easy to read.

22. Avoid long blocks of text. Use tools that facilitate scanability, like bullets, subtitles, highlighted keywords, hyperlinks, etc.

23. Avoid amateurish features like: numeric page counters, wholesale use of exclamation points, all caps, center justified blocks of text, excessive animated gifs, busy backgrounds, etc.

24. Don’t use pop-up windows. They distract your visitors and are immediately dismissed as ads.

25. Test your site so that it looks good in different browsers and resolutions.

Tips on Writing for the Web

26. Write in layman’s terms so that everybody can understand your content, unless you’re running a technical site for technical people.

27. Reading from a screen is painful: use 50% less words than you would use on print.

28. If a page is too long, break it into several pages and link to them.

29. Don’t use font sizes smaller than 10pt. for the body of your page. Specify your fonts in percentage terms instead of pixels, to let users set their own size preferences using their browser’s text view options.

30. Use a spell checker. Spelling mistakes are embarrassing and hurt credibility.

Tips to Know Your Customers

31. Ask for feedback: include a feedback form in your Contact Us page.

32. Publish an ezine and include a subscription form in your homepage. Give your customers valuable information and encourage them to contact you.

33. Include polls and other tools to gather market intelligence.

Tips on Linking

34. Make your links descriptive. They should indicate what the user will be linking to, as opposed to just saying "click here".

35. Don’t underline anything that is not a link.

36. Underline your links and use a consistent color for them across your site (preferably blue).

37. Use a different color for visited links, so that your visitors know where they’ve been (preferably purple or a more subdued tone of the unvisited links color).

38. When linking to a non-HTML file, such as Excel, Word or Acrobat, make it evident, by including a small icon next to the link.

39. Don’t link to "under construction" pages.

40. Make sure that your links work and that you don’t have broken links. There are free online tools that can help you with this.

41. If you use graphic links, don’t forget to use the ALT attribute. The ALT attribute should describe what are you linking to.

Tips on how to use graphics

42. Optimize your graphics. Use only .gif and .jpg formats. Make your image files as small as possible while maintaining acceptable quality. Use a free online graphics optimization tool.

43. Use thumbnails (miniature versions of a picture) and make them clickable to the actual size picture.

44. Avoid graphics that look like ads. People ignore them.

45. Use the ALT attribute on pictures, even the image is not a link. It helps users with disabilities and people who have turned off graphics.

Tips to optimize your site for the search engines:

46. Create short, descriptive page titles, to entice search engine users to click on your links.

47. Create a site map containing all your pages, and link to it directly from your homepage. Search engine robots will follow the link to your site map and will most likely add all your pages to the index.

48. Decide what the two or three main keywords are for each page (the words you believe search engine users will type to find your page) and repeat them often in your page title, description meta tag and page body.

49. Create a Links page and call it Resources. In it, place links to those sites that have agreed to place a reciprocal link to your page. The more inbound links you have from quality sites with a topic related to your site, the better your site will rank with the search engines.

50. Use more text than graphics, and minimize the use of Flash and JavaScript. Search engines heavily favor text and will crawl and index your site faster.

Labels: Internet Marketing, Web Devolopment

How to create a favicon

Matt's how-to on creating a favicon:

1. Download png2ico, which is a small, free utility for Windows, Linux, et cetera that works quite well. Extract it to c:/.

2. Create an image you’d like to use at a decent size (at least 32x32 pixels) in your favorite image editor. I like Photoshop so here’s what I did there:

a). Ctrl + N to start a new document. Choose 32x32 pixels for the size. Cram whatever you want to use in there.

b) Do a Save for Web (Ctrl + Alt + Shift + S) and save it as a PNG with the filename icon-32.png to the same folder as the program you just downloaded (to keep things simple). If you want to keep the size down I would recommend taking it down to 16 colors. Don’t forget transparency if you need it.

c) Now go back and resize the image you’re working on to 16x16 pixels (Tools ? Image Size)

d) Save this image as a PNG with the filename icon-16.png in the same directory as the above.

3.Now it gets a little tricky, open up the command line. Try Start ? Programs ? Accessories ? Command Prompt.

4. Navigate to the folder where the png2ico.exe file is, if you followed the directions above you can use the command cd \png2ico.

5. Now you just have to enter a command to roll those two PNG files you made into one nice ICO file. Here you go: png2ico.exe favicon.ico --colors 16 icon-32.png icon-16.png . You may be able to use command line completion (pressing a letter or two and then tab) to fill some of that in for you. You could potentially embed 64x64 and 128x128 pixel sizes into the icon file by just specifying additional PNGs of that size, but for a web favicon that really isn’t needed. Just remember this if you ever want to make a nice application icon. For an application icon you’d probably want to use a PNG-24 with full alpha transparency, which this tool supports as well.

6. Now there should be an favicon.ico file in that same folder which you should upload to the root of your site and then link to it with something like < link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/ico" href="/favicon.ico" >

7. Have a drink.

Labels: Web Devolopment

Why Pay Big Bucks for PDF Software: Consider Your Options

By Merle MCPromotionsPress.com

If you've ever downloaded a document or purchased an ebook online, odds are it was created in something called "Portable Document Format" (PDF). PDF was initially created by Adobe and is the standard for online documents, as they can be viewed on a variety of platforms and computers.

To read PDF documents, a computer must have "Adobe Acrobat Reader" installed, which comes at no charge. If you don't already have it on your system, you can download it here: http://adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

Now if you want to create a PDF document, you could go out and spend a few hundred dollars on Adobe Acrobat Software. But there are other, lower cost (even free) options. If you plan on creating reports or ebooks, or any other document to add to your website, you'll want to take a look at what's available in the PDF creation department.

1) http://PDFMoto.com : A Web publishing system that converts documents you create in any Windows application into PDF. They offer several different versions, so pricing varies, but they do offer a free version that is limited to 50 documents.

2) http://PDF995.com : Free software that allows you to create PDF documents as easily as hitting the "print" key from within any application. The free version has an advertising splash page that comes up everytime you run the program but you can purchase "keys" for $9.95 each to remove them if they bother you.

3) http://Sanface.com/txt2pdf.html : Txt2PDF Shareware that is actually a Perl 5 program that converts your old text docs to PDF format. Runs on any platform that supports Perl. The personal edition is only $39.00.

4) http://www.oakworth.demon.co.uk/gymnast.htm : Gymnast is a text to PDF creator for Windows. This downloadable software is actually freeware. Very powerful and easy to use and it's loaded with features. Just open the software, select the document and convert it.

5) http://tinyurl.com/la4j : CutePDF Printer is totally free. This software has no annoying ads or banners. Choose print from within any application to create a PDF instantly.

6) http://Win2PDF.com : This software creates PDF files from any Windows NT, Win 2000 or XP application. Price ranges from $35.00 to $69.00, depending on which version you wish to purchase. Installs as a print driver so all you do is click print from any software app you're using and you're done.

As you can see, you have plenty to choose from when it comes to software packages, but what if you just have an occasional need to create PDF's? There are some websites that will allow you to create documents right online at their sites.

Here are a few to get you started:

1) Adobe:
Look in the left hand column for the button that says "create PDF online." You can create up to five documents free; after that you'll need to pay $9.99 a month or $99.00 per year for unlimited usage.

2) Create Your Own PDF:
Just paste your text into the box and hit the button. Presto, you're done.

3) GoBlc:
Free online conversion service that allows you to upload any document. They do the PDF conversion and email you back with the file.

One of the biggest problems with PDF documents, especially when it comes to ebooks, is that they're not easily modified for use by affiliates /associates. Many .exe ebooks allow you to download them and easily customize them with your own affiliate links. When it comes to viral marketing, rebranding ability is of the utmost importance. This gives others the incentive to freely give away your ebook if they can insert their own affiliate links. This was a problem with PDF, but not anymore.

1) Viral PDF:
With this software, you can easily rebrand your PDF ebooks. It's actually a set of two Windows files. Once you create your material you can give it to your affiliates along with a small software application that allows them to rebrand the links in the ebook with their own. Only $67.00.

2) Custom PDF Maker:
A script that allows your visitors to enter their links into a webpage, press a button and the PDF is created with their links in it. Only $19.95.

3) PDF Link Changer:
Software that searches through a PDF file, displays all url's and email links and allows you to easily change them. If you create marketing materials for your affiliates, this one's for you. Purchase without resale rights for only $19.00.

No matter how you choose to create your own PDF's -- with software, on the fly online, or rebrandable -- by taking the time to check out these resources, you'll save yourself a lot of time and money. Remember, when it comes to PDF creation, Adobe's not the only game in town.

About The Author
Merle operates EzineAdAuction.com "Where some of the Best Deals in Ezine Advertising are Made". Buy & Sell Ezine Ads in a live auction setting! Publishers sell off your excess inventory and Buyers pick up some Fantastic bargains. Free E-book on how to write "glowing" ezine ads..... Download Now.

Labels: Personal Computers, Web Devolopment

Do You Need a Content Management System?
By Merle WebSiteTrafficPlan.com

If HTML isn't your thing and you're planning a website with lots of content, you might want to consider using a "Content Management System," also known as CMS. With CMS, content is stored in a database away from the site's templates, which makes it impossible to destroy the design structure of the site when editing.

CMS systems allow anyone to edit his or her website, regardless of technical skill level. Pages can be added or changed easily without knowing any intricate coding. Many websites that use CMS resemble a portal design. This type of system also works well if multiple people or departments will be making updates to the website.

Most CMS systems must be installed on your web server and require that PHP and usually MySQL also to be installed. Once you decide that CMS is for you, you'll need to decide on which software you'll want to use. Many content management systems are "open source," which means there is no charge to use them and most come with complete documentation for setup and use. Most all of them also offer support forums if you run into problems when installing or you need to ask a specific question.

Let's take a look at some of the more popular CMS options available:

1) CMSimple:
Small open source program that's less then 50KB. It's frëe to use but contains a link back to CMSimple's website. If you're willing to pay $40.00 to register the software, you can remove it.

This program is written in php and runs on Linux and Windows32. It does not need a database as the entire site is stored in one simple html file.

2) Typo3:
Frëe again and open sourced software that comes with a list of default plug ins such as calendars, forums, guestbooks, polls and more. This software is not for the faint of heart, as there are many customization features along with a big learning curve.

3) Rodin:
Requiring PHP & MySQL, on your server this open source software consists of 9 small files weighing in at under 12KB. Very simple to get up and running. If you want more functionality, there are extra add-ons that can be downloaded as needed.

4) WEbApp:
Frëe software written in Perl and runs on a Unix server. WebApp creates a "portal type" set of pages that includes forums, polls, news and others. This system does not require SQL on your web server, but does require Perl 5. One drawback is the limited number of themes that are supplied.

5) ASPBite:
A frëe ASP CMS system with many expandable modules. You'll first need to download and install what's called the "base station" as everything else is built on top of that. Add-ons include; polls, feedback forums, FAQ and more. There are more extensive "Pro" modules such as shopping carts and classified ads and others that are available for a fee. ASPBite is easy to use and comes highly rated.

6) PHP-Nuke:
This software runs on Linux and Windows servers and does require SQL be installed. Very popular and packed with features including; themes manager, banner ad systems, polls, forums, search engines and others. You'll find a lot of web support and add-ons for this popular CMS system. Price $10.00.

7) CityDesk:
Unlike the others, CityDesk is downloadable Windows-based software you install on your PC. A very simple layout that allows you to add articles easily. You won't need any special software installed on your web server to use it. Two versions are available: one frëe, which allows up to 50 files on any one website or the Professional version, which will set you back $299.00. You'll find City Desk as simple to use as any word processor program.

8) Metadot:
This open source portal software is Perl based and allows many user-based customizations. Metadot runs on Linux, Apache and requires MySQL. This system would be a great choice for anyone planning a "community site." It comes standard with calendar, polls, end-user personal websites and more. Totally frëe.

9) DotWidget CMS:
CMS software made very easy. Features include a built-in WYSIWYG text editor, multiple users and access levels, customizable templates and more. Your web server must have PHP and mySQL installed. You can easily install DotWidget and begin building your site's structure and adding content. No client-side software is required and all editing is done through your browser. Only $49.00.

As you can see there are many content management systems to choose from, most of which won't cost you a dime. Before deciding on which one is right for you, you'll need to know what software is installed on your host's server and you'll also want to read over the support forums at each site to get an idea of any known problems or issues with each particular system.

A great site for reviewing and rating all types of CMS software is CMSMatrix.org. You can check boxes of the software packages you wish to compare and you'll be shown a side-by-side comparison of each along with a full description.

If you're planning a community site or any type of website that will require constant editing and additions, a content management system might be just what you've been looking for.

About The Author
Merle of WebSiteTrafficPlan.com offers a F-r-e-e ebook and an e-course that will teach you how to promote and market your website. Grab your copy today at WebSiteTrafficPlan.com.

Labels: Hosting, Web Devolopment

For programmers - Free Dev Tools

There are 3 good free ressources that are great.

1) Webmatrix, a free ASP.NET development tools available for download at : http://www.asp.net/webmatrix/

2) Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition is a lightweight, easy-to-use and easy-to-learn development tool focused exclusively on Web development. It's from Microsoft and it's free.
http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/express/vwd/

3) What about a free HTML Editor such as Frontpage or Dreamweaver ? Not yet as powerful but very good. It's also free, (open source) download NVU at http://www.nvu.com. There is a Windows and a Linux version. Everybody should be happy.

Labels: Internet, Web Devolopment

Programming Resources

Labels: Web Devolopment

Design Your Site for Traffic in 2005

By Elizabeth McGee

What better way to start the new year than with more traffic to your web site. Web traffic is a critical part of your internet business and it is imperative that you design it to bring you the most amount of traffic possible.

Designing your site for traffic includes offering good content, easy navigation and a logical flow. Additionally you must also build your site to draw traffic from the search engines because if you can obtain high search engine ranking, you can enjoy free traffic.

It's important to note, however that good ranking won't do you much good without a well designed site and a well designed site can't bring you visitors if no one knows it's there. Both high ranking and good design need to work together.

How do we pull all this together? Let's take a look.

-A Word About Design-

A huge mistake I see many website owners make is that they get caught up in making their site cute. They love the little animations, buttons and dramatic backgrounds. What they fail to consider is that these things are worthless if you don't offer good content, easy navigation and a logical flow.

First of all don't try to be everything to everyone. Design your site around a theme, preferably a niche theme. Don't confuse your readers with links all over the page. Design a logical flow. Lead your viewers to where you would like them to go. Leave plenty of white space and keep your pages organized. Clearly state at the top of your pages what you are about and what you would like your viewers to do.

Secondly, I don't recommend pop-ups. I find that the majority of internet users find them annoying. The demand for pop-up blockers is a good indication that viewers don't want to see them.

Thirdly, offer good content. Provide information on your site that will help viewers solve a problem. Offer information that they might not get elsewhere. Write reviews regarding your products. Write newsletters and articles and most importantly offer something of value for free. Give your viewers a reason to come back. It will also build trust in you.

-Traffic Builders-

Good search engine ranking can bring lots of visitors to your site. It often takes a few months to rank well but the payoff is lots of qualified traffic. While it's not practical to depend solely on search engines for traffic it can complement your other advertising campaigns nicely. Aiming for high search engine placement is always a plus.

Keep these in mind when developing your site for the search engines:

- Domain Names

Choose a domain name that has your site keywords in it. For example, if you're a site about pet care, try to include the words "pet care" or words related to pet care in your domain name if you can.

- Keywords

Keywords require research and there are several tools to help you out in this area. These are my favorites:

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

I suggest focusing on only one keyword or keyword phrase per page of your website. This may not seem like a lot but if your site has 20 pages you can focus on 20 keywords. Each page should be considered a landing page for your site. If you have proper navigation on your pages, it will easily allow viewers to see everything you have to offer.

Include your keyword or keyword phrase at the top of your page as well as in at least one header phrase. Also work the keywords into the body of your text as often as you can without sounding redundant.

Your keywords should be in the Title tag as well as in your page description tag. Many search engines no longer look at the keyword tags, but I recommend using them and including the plural forms as well.

- Alt Tags

Search engines don't index images, therefore any text on your site that is presented in image format won't get indexed. To solve this problem, you can enter the image description in the ALT tag. To be sure that the search engines recognize all the content on your site, fill in your ALT tags with your keywords. This will boost your keyword frequency and help your site achieve better ranking.

- Linking

Search engines will rate your site by who is linking to your site, so it's important to establish quality, related links. This can be accomplished in a few ways. One way is to establish reciprocal links with other like sites. When exchanging links be sure to include your keywords in your site title.

Review the page you are exchanging links with. Be sure it is a site that you find easy to navigate and informative. I also recommend that the site's index page have a Google PR rating of at least one. This ensures that the site is not being penalized by Google. If it is a penalized site then you could be penalized as well for linking to it.

- Include a 'tell a friend' and 'bookmark' script on your site.

This gives viewers an easy way to bookmark you and most of all return to your site.

- Include a Site Map

Site Maps let visitors know what information you have, how it's organized, where it is located with respect to other information, and how to get to that information with the least amount of clicks possible.

Site maps also provide spider food for search engine robots. This can increase your chances of becoming indexed because a site map allows the search engines to easily visit every page of your site.

A site map works best if you include a link to your site map in the navigation of every page on your site.

Finally, don't let your site become stale. I have found that my search engine rankings improve when I periodically add new pages to my site and keep the content new and fresh. Follow these tips and 2005 may be
your year for traffic.

About The Author

Elizabeth McGee has spent 20 years in the service and support industry. She has moved her expertise to the world wide web helping businesses find trusted tools, enhance customer service, build confidence and increase sales. You can visit Elizabeth's sites at: HomeNotion.com Pro-Marketing-Online.com

Labels: Internet Marketing, Web Devolopment

The 5 Biggest Mistakes Almost All Web Designers Make

And Why These Mistakes Could Cost You a Fortune!
By Jason Mangrum, CEO - ImmWebDesign.com
Editorial Note: There will be no SiteProNews issue on Monday, January 17th.

Huge Mistake #1: Creating a Website with Flash -- Did you know in a recent study, top internet marketers discovered that having a website created with Flash, actually decreased the response from prospects and customers by as much as 370 percent?

Here's why: Your prospects and customers are most likely visiting your website using all types of different computers, connection speeds and internet configuration settings...

What may look great to one visitor may not even appear for another! You could very easily have shelled out hundreds or even thousands of dollars to have a website created using the Flash technology, only to find out that some of your visitors will never see it! (Not to mention the loading times can cause your visitor to close your site, never to return again.)

Huge Mistake #2: The "Internet Catalog" Approach -- You see this everywhere. Good, honest and hardworking businessmen and women get online to sell their products or services, and have a site created for them that contains a link to just about everything they offer on one page. Their thinking goes along the lines of, "...well, I don't want to leave anyone out. If they come to my site, I want to make sure I have what they're looking for..." -- This way of thinking could not be further from the truth.

Here's why: There's an ancient rule that goes back to the very beginning of direct-marketing on the internet, taught by the richest, most legendary and well-respected internet marketers of all time...

"When you give your prospects too many choices, they become confused and aren't sure what to do next. Confused people never buy anything."

Huge Mistake #3: Optimizing Your Sales Site for the Search Engines -- You'll see this taught in nearly every "internet marketing" course, manual or eBook out there... "You must optimize every page of your website for the search engines!" -- In fact, this false teaching is accepted as 'gospel truth' so often that most web designers will offer to do this for you at no, or little extra cost...

What they don't understand is that certain words and phrases must be either re-worded (to make it "keyword rich") or taken out completely, just to be looked upon highly by the mighty search engines -- and this could kill your sales, literally overnight.

Here's why: When you or a hired web designer optimize your sales page (i.e. any web page designed to sell your products and services) to get a higher listing in the search engines, you're going to have to sacrifice the pulling-power of your sales copy (i.e. written sales material) just to get those higher listings. Sure, this can bring you more traffÃ¯c -- but what good is all the traffÃ¯c in the world, if your visitors arrive at your website and aren't compelled enough to read why they should order your product?

For years, it has been taught that you should always try to find a "balance" of SEO (Search-Engine-Optimization) mixed with promotional copy designed to sell your products and services...

Wrong Again! -- The truth is that you should never optimize your sales page for the Search Engines. Instead, you should create tiny "entry pages" for each keyword related to your product or service, (highly optimized for the Search Engines) and have them link to your main sales site! (We can show you exactly how to do this quickly and easily and get *massive* targeted traffÃ¯c from the Search Engines - without ever *touching* your sales site!)

Huge Mistake #4: Having a "Graphics-Based" Website -- Sure, graphics can certainly help us to visualize a particular situation or circumstance, product or service... But did you know that having a graphically-driven website can actually distract your visitor away from your sales message?

After all, your sales message (or "web copy") is The #-1 most important factor in a website that makes monÃ«y. If your visitors are paying more attention to your "professional graphics" than your sales message... you've just lost another sale.

Here's why: You've got approximately seven seconds from the time your visitor arrives at your site, to the time they decide whether to buy your product, get more information or leave. If you've got a graphically-intensive website, your website will most likely still be loading past your seven-second time limit.

That's a "customer-killer" in and of itself - however, the real reason lies within the fact that the bigger, brighter and more beautiful your graphics are, the more they will distract your visitor from your sales message. And if your visitor is distracted even for one second, it could mean the difference between getting a sale, and losing a customer.

Huge Mistake #5: Designing a Website with Zero Marketing Experience -- Most web designers have no idea how to make monÃ«y on the internet, with anything other than their design services. It's not their fault - they simply have no or very little marketing and sales experience. After all, they're just website designers...

However, having your website designed by someone with Zero internet marketing experience is like buying a street-car without an engine... it won't go anywhere, and it'll just waste your time and monÃ«y!

About The Author
For more information on how to have your website designed (or re-designed) by a well-known expert in the field of direct-response internet marketing, go to: ImmWebDesign.com.

Labels: Web Devolopment

Web Developers Must Use It: .htaccess

A lot of sites everyday, and in most of them wont use this important tool.

.htaccess is a simple and powerfull tool that can be used to redirect error pages, deny users by ip, password protection and more...
Here is a simple example code:

code:

DirectoryIndex index.php



ErrorDocument 404 http://site.com/erro.php?id=404

ErrorDocument 502 http://site.com/erro.php?id=502

ErrorDocument 503 http://site.com/erro.php?id=503

ErrorDocument 501 http://site.com/erro.php?id=501

.htaccess is the file extension. It is not file.htaccess or something.htaccess, it is simply named .htaccess
Remember always to upload the file as ASCII.

Directory Index is the file that ll be called when you open a a folder page. You can put only one like

code:
DirectoryIndex index.php

or more like

code:
DirectoryIndex index.php index.html index.shtml

For me the more important tool is Error Pages.
To use it, just put:

code:
ErrorDocument ERROR PAGE

The PAGE is the document error default page.
The error is the number of the possible error:
Here the possibles Errors:

code:

Successful Client Requests

200 OK

201 Created

202 Accepted

203 Non-Authorative Information

204 No Content

205 Reset Content

206 Partial Content

Client Request Redirected

300 Multiple Choices

301 Moved Permanently

302 Moved Temporarily

303 See Other

304 Not Modified

305 Use Proxy

Client Request Errors

400 Bad Request

401 Authorization Required

402 Payment Required (not used yet)

403 Forbidden

404 Not Found

405 Method Not Allowed

406 Not Acceptable (encoding)

407 Proxy Authentication Required   

408 Request Timed Out

409 Conflicting Request

410 Gone

411 Content Length Required

412 Precondition Failed

413 Request Entity Too Long

414 Request URI Too Long

415 Unsupported Media Type

Server Errors

500 Internal Server Error

501 Not Implemented

502 Bad Gateway   

503 Service Unavailable   

504 Gateway Timeout   

505 HTTP Version Not Supported

You can only upload a .htaccess for your server in root www folder that error pages ll be up and all.
EX: You set up a error page 404 for site.com/404.htm
When someone try to open any file or folder that is under www.site.com/ will be redirected to www.site.com/404.htm
Like www.site.com/ada/ada/da
Like www.site.com/adadadada.php

I hope this helps all.

Its a simple tutuorial, just for those that dont know it.

More help open:
http://www.freewebmasterhelp.com/tutorials/htaccess/
http://www.javascriptkit.com/howto/htaccess.shtml

__________________
Help to be Helped!

Labels: Web Devolopment

Creating Accessible Websites.

An accessible website is one that allows people with visual, aural, or physical disabilities full access to the information and services available in the same way as able-bodied people.

Is It Worth The Effort?

In the United States around 53 million people have some form of disability with two-thirds of those having a severe disability. About 1 in 10 men are fully or partially colour blind.

You probably already spend much time and effort ensuring your website displays perfectly in a broad range of browsers, you probably spend time ensuring your colour scheme and images look great in a range of display resolutions and how many hours do you put in ensuringyour website is indexed by all the major search engines?

So with all this effort, why do so many web designers ignore the needs of those who may have difficulty using a mouse or may suffer from one of the many visual disorders? The answer is that building an accessible website is considered to be difficult, time-consuming and simply not worth the effort. This is not true, creating an accessible website is relatively easy and will allow a greater number of peopleaccess to your website.

Simple Ways To Improve Your Website Accessibility

These are some simple steps you can implement today to improve the accessibility of your website.

Colour And Contrast

Many people need extreme contrast between the text and background colour in order to be able to read your text. If your text is dark blue, avoid using a light blue background colour.

Using colour to convey information or request an action from the user should also be avoided, for example telling someone to 'clÃ¯ck the red button to continue' is not much help to a person who cannot distinguish red colours. It seems obvious, but it's overlooked on manythousands of websites.

Font Sizes

Font sizes should be relative rather than absolute. Absolute font sizes, those measured in points or pixels should be avoided as they prevent the visitor from resizing text. If someone cannot read your page they are simply going to leave.

Relative font sizes allow your visitors to display the text on your website in a size that suits them best. These font sizes can be specified as a percentage, for example the base font for a web pagemay be 100%, headers could be 120% and so on.

Images

All images on your website should be accompanied with additional text information describing what the image contains. You do this with the alt attribute of the img tag. For example...

<img src="button1.gif" alt="ClÃ¯ck
to proceed to shopping cart">

You should avoid the use of transparent images spacer images for formatting. You can achieve the same layout precision by using cascading style sheets (CSS). Do a quick search for 'style sheets' for a wealth of information and tutorials.

Using Tables For Layout

Almost all websites use tables to a layout a page. Tables are easy to understand and achieve the desired layout quickly and easily. However, you should avoid them as a layout tool as much as possible.

Tables can cause the size of your pages to increase dramatically slowing download times, they often require the use of transparent images to achieve the proper layout and they make it extremely difficult for screen readers to convey the information on a page correctly to their users. Screen readers are programs which read out the information on a webpage to someone who cannot see that information for themselves.

Rather than using tables to format your pages you should start using CSS-based layouts. CSS offers you greater precision when laying out your pages, decreases the amount of HTML required for formatting and makes it much easier for screen readers to interpret your pagescorrectly.

Access Keys

Access keys are basically keyboard shortcuts that are primarily designed to help those people who have difficulty using a mouse.

You can assign an access key to several HTML elements, however the first one you should consider is the anchor element. Here's an example:

<a href="home.html" accesskey="h">Homepage</a>

<a href="about.html" accesskey="a">About
Us</a>

<a href="search.html" accesskey="s">Search
Page</a>

Then when a Windows user visits your website they can access the home page by pressing ALT + h, the about page by pressing ALT + a and the search page by pressing ALT + s. This simple feature can dramatically improve the usability of your website for people withlimited mobility.

Provide A Text Only Version

A text-only version of your website can help users with visual disabilities. However, unless your content is stored in a database, creating a text only version doubles your workload and makes it more difficult to update your content.

This is where the Betsie parser is useful. Betsie, developed for the BBC website is a PERL script which produces a simplified text only version of a web page that allows text-to-speech converters and screen readers to correctly read out the contents of the page. Betsie also allows those with visual impairments to read computer screens easier.Find out more about Betsie.

In Summary

Of course, there are many more enhancements you can make to your website to ensure it is truly accessible, but implementing these simple steps will start you on your way in no time. An accessible website with good navigation, less html and a consistent, logical structure will not only benefit those with a visual, aural, or physical disabilility but will also help your content to be more easily indexed by search engines.

About The Author

Bethany Antonio is the web designer for UKSprite Search, a British based search engine which offers an alternative to pay-per-click.

Labels: Web Devolopment

Previous Posts

Server Side HTML

50 Web Design Tips – that increase your sales!

How to create a favicon

Why Pay Big Bucks for PDF Software: Consider Your Options

For programmers - Free Dev Tools

Programming Resources

Design Your Site for Traffic in 2005

The 5 Biggest Mistakes Almost All Web Designers Make

Web Developers Must Use It: .htaccess

Creating Accessible Websites.