Category Archives: Web Design

Web Design

01.18.13
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Creating an Successful Ecommerce


In an ecommerce business, having a website is an important aspect; having a website with the right features is another, more important one. This is because your website is the means through which you do your ecommerce business. An ordinary website and a feature-rich website is often the difference between succeeding and failing at ecommerce. Once you have your Ecommerce site completed, you can focus on marketing your products and making sales – increasing your chances of a good profit margin. Moving on, here is a guide to help you when you begin creating your own Ecommerce site.

  1. Hire someone who will be dedicated solely to web management, if the nature and size of the business supports it.
  2. Hire temporary employees to help set up the business and bring them back periodically to make changes to the site, expand online capabilities or launch new ventures.
  3. Outsource the development, design and hosting of the website and rely on an outside organization to keep it up to date and to manage growth.
  4. Use an “e-commerce in a box” product to set up an e-commerce site. These products typically charge a monthly fee (around $25) and provide an online store with virtual shopping carts (locations where shoppers electronically place the items they want to buy). They also include online catalogs, customized product pages; tools that help merchants list their products and services on online auction and shopping sites, secure online payment options, discount coupons for customers, and technical support.

The web has immense power to transform a business. With that said, sometimes a product just doesn’t seem to lend itself to online sales–at least at first glance. Businesses like amusement parks, bowling alleys and utility companies either require the customer to be on-site or offer a product that is largely intangible. But even for those types of businesses, customers have come to expect an online presence. A company can sell tickets or offer discounts through its website, show images and videos of its facilities, set up online games that relate to and increase demand for its offerings, or enable customers to make payments over the internet.

01.18.13
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Build Successful Business Website


Your potential customers are online, so let them find you via online search. Nowadays online presence through a website is must for any sized business, whether it is for branding or selling products or services. Your business card is incomplete if it does not have your website address. Before experiencing market, customers search online, and if you are available with details regarding your experience and other product information, it enhances your credibility.

To set up a website, you need the following three things:

  1. Choose a domain name
  2. Sign up for website hosting
  3. Create your website using wordpress

Setting up the above three things shouldn’t take more then around 10 minutes, but only if you use the right tools. A domain name is also unique to you so people can see your website on the internet. A domain name is your unique address that can be used on the internet.

It is what you see after the “www.” in your browser and it’s what comes after the @ symbol in your email. For example tom@make-a-web-site.com, where http://www.make-a-web-site.com is the domain name. If you already have a domain name you can use that too.

Domain Tips
Your domain is important. Coming up with the name shouldn’t be hard. It should either be a cool catchy name or a description of what the site is about.
For example, facebook.com is cool and catchy and has nothing to do about social network. On the other hand creditcards.com explains exactly what the website is about.

  • Make it simple
  • Register a .com domain name were possible.
  • Keep it short.
  • Register is for more than 2 years

Where to Get Your Domain Name?
Before we register a domain name you need to learn about website hosting.

Website hosting is where you put your website (the files), that allows you to show your website to other people on the internet. Everyone around the world can view it once that has been done uploaded. Hosting service provides you with the web-space necessary to support your content. It serves as a skeleton for your site.

To make website accessible to the world you have to host it on a server in a warehouse somewhere so that people from different parts of the world can come and visit your site. This is the only cost you have to pay when you create a website.

It is preferred to register your website for longer duration like about 2 years the reason is because search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing rank websites higher in the search engines the longer they are registered.

If you are selling something online like a product or service then potentially you are going to make more money.

To build a website one can use WordPress. WordPress is the best platform to build your website on. It accounts for about 25% of all new websites in the world and is currently the most popular CMS (Content management system) in use on the Internet.

It allows you build a website without having to write any website code or know any website design. It is ideal for people who know nothing about website design.
Plus wordpress comes free of cost.

WordPress is web based and operates on the internet so it will work on any computer and any browser and even more modern devices like Smart phones, Iphones, Ipads.
To edit your worpdress website all you have to do is add new pages with a name and add pictures and video if you like. WordPress will automatically create the sites design with the menu bar and all the links.

Before you can create a website you have to make sure you find an appropriate domain name and a reliable web hosting service. You have to be very careful when deciding what services to choose, as this can play a big role on the overall performance of your website.

01.18.13
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WEBSITE TEMPLATES


A web template is a tool used to separate content from presentation in web design, and for mass-production of web documents. It is a basic component of a web template system.

Web templates can be used to set up any type of website. In its simplest sense, a web template operates similarly to a form letter for use in setting up a website.

Content from a database, and “presentation specifications” in a web template, are combined through the template engine to mass-produce web documents.

Web templates can be used by any individual or organization to set up their website. Once a template is purchased or downloaded, the user will replace all generic information included in the web template with his/her own personal, organizational or product information. Templates can be used to:

  • Display personal information or daily activities as in a blog.
  • Sell products on-line.
  • Display information about a company or organization.
  • Display a gallery of photos.
  • Place music files such as MP3 files on-line for play through a web browser.
  • Place videos on-line for public viewing.
  • To set up a private login area on-line.

A common goal among experienced web developers is to develop and deploy applications that are flexible and easily maintainable. An important consideration in reaching this goal is the separation of business logic from presentation logic. Developers use web template systems to maintain this separation.

One major rationale behind “effective separation” is the need for maximum flexibility in the code and resources dedicated to the presentation logic. Client demands, changing customer preferences and desire to present a “fresh face” for pre-existing content often result in the need to dramatically modify the public appearance of web content while disrupting the underlying infrastructure as little as possible.

A web template system is composed of [citation needed] :

  • A Template engine: the primary processing element of the system;
  • Content resource: any of various kinds of input data streams, such as from a relational database, XML files, LDAP directory, and other kinds of local or networked data;
  • Template resource: web templates specified according to a Template language;

The template and content resources are processed and combined by the template engine to mass-produce web documents.

Various agencies and organizations use web template systems for mass-production of content when slower production alternatives prove unfeasible.

There are many public software and commercial packages promoted as being web templates and template engines, but there are a high diversity of disperse kinds of solutions. To select and group them in a systematic way, the first step is to characterize them as template systems.

Web templates can be used to set up any type of website. In its simplest sense, a web template operates similarly to a form letter for use in setting up a website.

01.18.13
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Well Known CRM Programs


CRM, or customer relationship management, can be defined simply as a strategy that focuses on how you interact with your customers. But there’s much more to it than that. And to put your CRM strategy into action, you’ll need software tools that track the responses and actions of customers, employees and others involved in your business relationships.

In this article we will go through some popular CRM software programs:

  1.  Vtiger Hosting: This is an open source and free software solution for customer relationship management. It is a highly versatile program that can be personalized to meet the specific needs of an organization through the several configuration options provided in the program. Its capabilities include inventory management, sales force automation, marketing automation, customer service, and much more.
  2. Sugar CRM Hosting: This open source program assists your organization to track all customer contacts and concentrate on the market segments that yield maximum profit, thus increasing sales. It will also assist in automating marketing campaigns and increasing customer support to generate useful reports.
  3. CiviCRM Hosting: This freeware integrates into Drupal and Joomla directly. It is designed especially for non-government, advocacy, and non-profit organizations. It is packed with resources that can be used by organizations to keep a track of all connections made by them with their constituents.

CRM hosting is vital for all businesses that wish to concentrate on the most lucrative market sectors, and are keen on knowing more about their customers. It is the most preferred choice amongst large communities, and webmasters that maintain portals as well as user groups.

Sure thing, the demand isn’t as high as what you see in shared hosting, VPS, and even managed hosting segments, but you can get bulk orders from just couple of big clients.

As a host, if you’ve never thought about offering CRM hosting to your customers, then you’re definitely missing out on something really big. There is a massive customer-base in the market that is looking out for CRM hosting, and e-mail hosting at the moment, and you can easily grab plenty of new customers by including CRM hosting in your portfolio too.

You may even want to consider niche segments in the hosting market such as file hosting, VM hosting, and Green hosting to make your presence felt. If you try your luck with shared hosting, or by simply reselling hosting space, then the chances are high that you’d never make it big in this competitive market!

01.18.13
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Strong Reasons Favoring the Use of Content Management Systems (CMS)


Content management system is a maintenance tool for non-technical administrators. It facilitates content creation, content control, editing, and many essential web maintenance functions and also used to maintain a large, dynamic collection of Web pages. There are many reasons to use content management system.

Nowadays many CMS software is online or web based which can be used by multiple users. That means many users can use this system and update anything and also you can access it from anywhere at any time. You just need an internet connection and your laptop to use such system. There are many systems that are available on the market. Easy content management system is simple to use and easily understand by the people and also you can work well with these systems.

Without a CMS in place, updating the website can be such a dreadful task that it perpetually gets pushed to the backburner. However, the company website is a very powerful tool, and it deserves greater attention and focus. Visitors expect (and demand) updated and relevant content. Plus, your business will benefit by having updated product information, updated news releases, and so forth. Don’t allow your website to become a stale billboard – turn it into a thriving community with relevant content for your visitors.

You can easily update the content of your website without having knowledge of HTML. Changes to websites need to be made quickly, but many designers cannot do the work on time as they are busy with some other works also. But with CMS you can do everything by yourself like updating or adding a new content to your website, fix tiny errors etc. Also you do not need to be waiting for your designer or programmer to doing such small things. So you can save your time and money also.

The CMS will give your website room to grow. You can easily add new pages, discussion forums and threads and features like newsletters or RSS feeds as you need them. Using a CMS gives you the ability to draft content and save it to upload at a later date. In other words, one employee may draft content related to his field of expertise and another employee may edit and proof read his article before deciding to publish it.

01.18.13
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Ruby on Rails (RoR) Web Hosting


This was first created by David Heinemeier Hansson and was released in 2003. Rails are a development tool which provides a framework, a structure for the codes. Ruby on Rails (RoR) adapts Ruby so that it can be used for rapid development, or, in other words, getting things done and created very quickly. Furthermore, while Ruby is a general purpose programming language, Ruby on Rails is designed to be a web programming language. This makes web-specific tasks much easier. Ruby on Rails hosting can expand the capabilities of your website. Every programming language has its advantages, and Ruby on Rails is no exception. By utilizing a variety of programming languages, you can get more unique things done on your website in the most efficient way.

Ruby on Rails is very popular and widely used among the developers of websites because of its grace and straightforwardness of the language. This works on the principle CoC (Convention over Configuration), in which the programmers need to write new codes only in the areas where the application differs from the standard code. Ruby on Rails is on demand because it is much faster than the other languages and framework. This is due to the CoC and also the object-oriented structure of Ruby language. The Ruby on Rails also work on DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) concept which makes building websites fun and less time-consuming. Like many other frameworks, Ruby on Rails works on Model-View-Controller pattern. This pattern will separate the web application into three sections – ‘model’ is responsible for all the interactions with database, ‘controller’ handles all the web server interactions and ‘view’ shows the HTML codes that will be displayed in the browser. With all these features, building a website or a web application in Ruby on Rails is nearly effortless and takes minimum codes to complete a website than in other frameworks.

Performance monitoring is one of the most amazing features of Rails. RoR is loaded with start-ups, which makes things easier for the programmer. The programmer can check his application progress from time to time because of this feature. Scout and New Relic are some of the superior applications. RoR is now well known for providing consistent, unswerving and dependable web hosting to its programmers.

01.18.13
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CUSTOM WEB DESIGN


Web design is a broad term covering many different skills and disciplines that are used in the production and maintenance of websites. The different areas of web design include; web graphic design, interface design, authoring; including standardized code and proprietary software, user experience design and search engine optimization. Often many individuals will work in teams covering different aspects of the design process, although some designers will cover them all. The term web design is normally used to describe the design process relating to the front-end (client side) design of a website including writing mark up, but this is a grey area as this is also covered by web development. Web designers are expected to have an awareness of usability and if their role involves creating mark up then they are also expected to be up to date with web accessibility guidelines.

Custom website designs are especially for shrewd entrepreneurs who can scale-out the value of a strong and catchy online presence.

The website building companies have an efficient web development by which you can make your own website. They develop customized website designs for their clients to make their own websites. They have different and effective content management for website depending upon their clients business. They build Imaginative Custom Websites and creative competence of their experienced professionals. They can assure you to live up to your expectations by the virtue of cutting-edge tools and software that they use to come up with extraordinary websites, coupled with the loads of experience and creative input from their seasoned designers and developers.

Customized web sites are suitable for most people and can start from just one simple page with an email link, building up to a more complex web site in terms of content and design. As the site has been built to your specification, you can have as much or as little input into the design as you wish. Unlimited number of pages, can include text, photographs, music, PDF documents, guest books, polls, contact forms, password protected log in areas, hit counter, website visitor statistics, and more. The site will be professionally designed to your criteria. You can simply suggest how you would like the site to look and work or you can specify down to the very last details.

Web technologies and design tools, such as Flash are used to create professional and interactive websites to wow and impress the target audience. The various website building companies strongly believe in giving their clients the freedom to customize their websites in their own style but will provide them with design ideas to suit the task in hand. If you are a small business but don’t have your own corporate identity they can come up with ideas such as your own logo.

Customized Website Has :

  • User friendly Control Panel or Content Manager.
  • Boost up your corporate image.
  • Render comprehensive business integration.
  • Allow desirable involvement of net user.
  • Flexible professional services depending on your requirements.

To develop custom web design for the client, various companies have initial document which helps us understand their customer’s expectation of the professional web site design so they develop a questionnaire to know the customers needs and expectations.

01.18.13
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WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT


Website development is a broad term for the work involved in developing a web site for the World Wide Web or a private network. This can include web design, web content development, client liaison, client-side/server-side scripting, web server and network security configuration, and e-commerce development. However, among web professionals, “website development” usually refers to the main non-design aspects of building web sites: writing markup and coding. Website development can range from developing the simplest static single page of plain text to the most complex web-based internet applications, electronic businesses, or social network services.

People who develop websites are called web developers. For larger organizations and businesses, web development teams can consist of hundreds of people. Web development may be a collaborative effort between departments rather than the domain of a designated department.

Web Development can be split into many areas and a typical and basic web development hierarchy might consist of:

Client Side Coding

  1. Flash Adobe Flash Player is a ubiquitous browser plug-in ready for RIAs. Flex 2 is also deployed to the Flash Player.
  2. JavaScript is a ubiquitous client side platform for creating and delivering rich Web applications that can also run across a wide variety of devices.
  3. JQuery Cross-browser JavaScript library designed to simplify and speed up the client-side scripting of HTML.
  4. Microsoft Silverlight Microsoft’s browser plug-in that enables animation, vector graphics and high-definition video playback, programmed using XAML and .NET programming languages.
  5. HTML5 and CSS3 Latest HTML proposed standard combined with the latest proposed standard for CSS natively supports much of the client-side functionality provided by other frameworks such as Flash.

Server Side Coding

  • ASP (Microsoft proprietary)
  • CSP, Server-Side ANSI C
  • ColdFusion
  • CGI
  • Groovy (programming language) Grails (framework)
  • Java, e.g. Java EE or WebObjects
  • Lotus Domino
  • Perl, e.g. Catalyst, Dancer (all open sources)
  • PHP (open source)
  • Python, e.g. Django (web framework) (open source)
  • Real Studio Web Edition
  • Ruby, e.g. Ruby on Rails (open source)
  • Smalltalk e.g. Seaside, AIDA/Web
  • SSJS Server-Side JavaScript, e.g. Aptana Jaxer, Mozilla Rhino
  • WebDNA (WSC proprietary)
  • Websphere (IBM proprietary)
  • .NET and .NET MVC Frameworks (Microsoft proprietary)

Web engineering is multidisciplinary and encompasses contributions from diverse areas: systems analysis and design, software engineering, hypermedia/hypertext engineering, requirements engineering, human-computer interaction, user interface, information engineering, etc. Web engineering is neither a clone, nor a subset of software engineering, although both involve programming and software development. While web engineering uses software engineering principles, web development encompasses new approaches, methodologies, tools, techniques, and guidelines to meet the unique requirements for web-based applications.
Client Side + Server Side

  • Google Web Toolkit provides tools to create and maintain complex JavaScript front-end applications in Java.
  • Opa is a high-level language in which both the client and the server parts are implemented. The compiler then decides which parts run on the client and which parts run on the server. The developer can tune those decisions with simple directives.
  • Tersus is a platform for the development of rich web applications by visually defining user interface, client side behavior and server side processing.
  • However languages like Ruby and Python are often paired with database servers other than MySQL. For instance some developers prefer a LAPR (Linux/Apache/PostgreSQL/Ruby on Rails) setup for development.

Website development takes into account many security considerations, such as data entry error checking through forms, filtering output, and encryption.  Malicious practices such as SQL injection can be executed by users with ill intent yet with only primitive knowledge of web development as a whole. Scripts can be exploited to grant unauthorized access to malicious users trying to collect information such as email addresses, passwords and protected content like credit card numbers.

01.17.13
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WEB DESIGNING


Web design is a broad term covering many different skills and disciplines that are used in the production and maintenance of websites. The different areas of web design include; web graphic design, interface design, authoring; including standardized code and proprietary software, user experience design and search engine optimization. The term web design is normally used to describe the design process relating to the front-end  design of a website including writing mark up, but this is a grey area as this is also covered by web development. Web designers are expected to have an awareness of usability and if their role involves creating mark up then they are also expected to be up to date with web accessibility guidelines.

Web designers use a variety of different tools depending on what part of the production process they are involved in. These tools are updated over time by newer standards and software but the principles behind them remain the same. Web graphic designers use vector and raster graphics packages for creating web formatted imagery or design prototypes. Technologies used for creating websites include standardized mark up which could be hand coded or generated by WYSIWYG editing software. There is also proprietary software based on plug-ins that bypasses the client’s browsers version, these are often WYSIWYG but with the option of using the software’s scripting language. Search engine optimization tools may be used to check search engine ranking and suggest improvements.

Web pages should be well laid out to improve navigation for the user. Also for navigation purposes, the sites page layout should also remain consistent on different pages. When constructing sites, it’s important to consider page width as this is vital for aligning objects and in layout design. The most popular websites generally have a width close to 1024 pixels. Most pages are also centre aligned, to make objects look more aesthetically pleasing on larger screens.

When creating a site it is good practice to conform to standards. This includes errors in code, better layout for code as well as making sure your IDs and classes are identified properly. This is usually done via a description specifying what the element is doing. Not conforming to standards may not make a website unusable or error prone, standards can relate to the correct layout of pages for readability as well making sure coded elements are closed appropriately.

There are two primary jobs involved in creating a website: the web design and web developer, who often work closely together on a website. The web designers are responsible for the visual aspect, which includes the layout, coloring and typography of a web page. A web designer will also have a working knowledge of using a variety of languages such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and Flash to create a site, although the extent of their knowledge will differ from one web designer to another. Particularly in smaller organizations one person will need the necessary skills for designing and programming the full web page, whilst larger organizations may have a web designer responsible for the visual aspect alone.

01.17.13
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WEB SERVERS


Web server can refer to either the hardware (the computer) or the software (the computer application) that helps to deliver web content that can be accessed through the Internet.

The most common use of web servers is to host websites, but there are other uses such as gaming, data storage or running enterprise applications.

The primary function of a web server is to deliver web pages on the request to clients using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). This means delivery of HTML documents and any additional content that may be included by a document, such as images, style sheets and scripts.

A user agent, commonly a web browser or web crawler, initiates communication by making a request for a specific resource using HTTP and the server responds with the content of that resource or an error message if it is unable to do so. The resource is typically a real file on the server’s secondary memory.

While the primary function is to serve content, a full implementation of HTTP also includes ways of receiving content from clients. This feature is used for submitting web forms, including uploading of files.

Many generic web servers also support server-side scripting using Active Server Pages (ASP), PHP, or other scripting languages. This means that the behavior of the web server can be scripted in separate files, while the actual server software remains unchanged. Usually, this function is used to create HTML documents dynamically as opposed to returning static documents. The former is primarily used for retrieving and/or modifying information from databases. The latter is typically much faster and more easily cached.

Apart from serving the World Wide Web, They can also found embedded in devices such as printers, routers, webcams and serving only a local network. The web server may then be used as a part of a system for monitoring and/or administering the device in question. This usually means that no additional software has to be installed on the client computer; since only a web browser is required (which now is included with most operating systems).
Web servers are able to map the path component of a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) into:

  • A local file system resource (for static requests)
  • An internal or external program name (for dynamic requests)

For a static request the URL path specified by the client is relative to the web server’s root directory.

The web server then reads the file, if it exists and sends a response to the client’s Web browser. The response will describe the content of the file and contain the file itself or an error message will return saying that the file does not exist or is unavailable.

Web server has 2 modes Kernel mode and User mode i.e.  A web server can be either implemented into the OS kernel, or in user space.

Features of web servers

  • Virtual hosting to serve many Web sites using one IP address
  • Large file support to be able to serve files whose size is greater than 2 GB on 32 bit OS
  • Bandwidth throttling to limit the speed of responses in order to not saturate the network and to be able to serve more clients
  • Server-side scripting to generate dynamic Web pages, still keeping web server and website implementations separate from each other