Tuesday, December 22, 2009

    Link-Building Policy for Bing

    It’s easy for everyone to get caught up in obsessing about how to optimise your site & build links for Google, when trying to market through search. That’s certainly a wise thing to do, considering Google totally dominates the search market. But, there are still other search engines that some people are using, so it is wise to make sure your site is performing to the best of its ability in those too!

    Obviously the other two engines are Yahoo and Bing and whilst Yahoo is seemingly declining fast, Bing is actually gaining a market share. Furthermore, if the deal between Microsoft and Yahoo goes through, Bing search will be talking over Yahoo anyway. With the muscle of Microsoft behind Bing, you can be sure the search engine won’t be prepared to play second fiddle to Google for long!

    However, unlike Google, we don’t hear much about what Bing wants out of a site for decent rankings, but Rick DeJarnette of Bing Webmaster Center has shared some dos and don’ts of link-building for Bing. Not surprisingly, a lot of his advice for complying with Bing’s policies, does not differ too much from the advice that Google would give you. It is however, still always nice to hear what they think, just to clear up any possible confusion.

    Like Google, Bing places great emphasis on quality links to determine its rankings. “Just don’t make the mistake of believing it will result in instant gratification. Successful link building efforts require a long-term commitment, not an overnight or turnkey solution,” says DeJarnette. “You need to continually invest in link building efforts with creativity and time.”

    What You Should Do!

    DeJarnette shared some tips for getting more quality links. The following are Bing’s tips for effective link building (paraphrased):
    1. Develop your site as a business brand and brand it consistently
    2. Find relevant industry experts, product reviewers, bloggers, and media folk, and make sure they’re aware of your site/content
    3. Publish concise, informative press releases online
    4. Publish expert articles to online article directories
    5. Participate in relevant conversations on blogs/forums, referring back to your site’s content when applicable
    6. Use social networks to connect to industry influencers (make sure you have links to your site in your profiles)
    7. Create an email newsletter with notifications of new content
    8. Launch a blog/forum on your site
    9. Participate in relevant industry associations and especially in their online forums
    10. Strive to become a trusted expert voice for your industry, while promoting your site

    What You Should Not Do!

    DeJarnette shared a list of things that you should avoid in your link building efforts, if it is a good Bing ranking that you are after. Here is what Bing says will get your site reviewed more closely by staff:
    1. The number of inbound links suddenly increases by orders of magnitude in a short period of time
    2. Many inbound links coming from irrelevant blog comments and/or from unrelated sites
    3. Using hidden links in your pages
    4. Receiving inbound links from paid link farms, link exchanges, or known “bad neighborhoods” on the Web
    5. Linking out to known web spam sites

    “When probable manipulation is detected, a spam rank factor is applied to a site, depending upon the type and severity of the infraction,” says DeJarnette. “If the spam rating is high, a site can be penalised with a lowered rank. If the violations are egregious, a site can be temporarily or even permanently purged from the index.”

    Most of the stuff DeJarnette shared is nothing any experienced search marketer is not already aware of, but it can be quite helpful when a search engine itself lays out what to do and not to do, to help webmasters get better rankings.

    in reference to:

    "Link-Building Policy for Bing"
    - http://www.freshwebz.co.uk/blog/ (view on Google Sidewiki)

    Google Sidewiki entry by SEO Expert

    Banners have been a major part of the World Wide Web world since its early days. Copywriters burn the midnight oil looking for new designs that will grab the visitor’s attention and compel him to click on their banner. This article discusses some of the most successful banner designs.

    Teasing your curiosity

    “Do Not Click Here”. How many of you have seen this slogan in a banner? What did you do when you first saw it? If you are like most people, when you first saw it, you clicked on it. What makes this simple sentence so powerful that it compels the visitor to click on it? The answer is curiosity !!!

    Copywriters and web designers are always looking for ways to arouse the website visitor’s curiosity. As banner designers their goal is to attract the visitor to the banner, usually completely ignoring the other elements on the web page that are more important to the website owner. However, because the “Do Not Click Here” slogan tells us nothing about what is on the next page, it arouses the visitor’s curiosity and makes it almost impossible not to click on this banner to see what’s behind it.

    Simple integrated design

    When Larry Page and Sergey Brin first introduced their product, “Google”, to potential investors, they mentioned Adwords as a backup option in case they didn’t make any money. We all know how lucky they were that they eventually needed to use that backup plan. What made these “boring” ads such a great success?

    Unlike other ads, Adwords neither arouse the visitor’s curiosity nor disturb the main flow of the web page. In fact, the opposite is true. Adwords are meant to look like part of the search results giving the user the feeling that those ads are there because he asked for them. No one has any doubt that this simple design helps Google to promote both their search engine and the Adwords advertising program.

    Take part in the action

    Banner designers wisely used interactive technologies like Flash to develop type of banners that invite the user to take part in the action. Drawing the user into the action can be accomplished in many creative ways. Some web designers use popular old games elements as part of the scene. You all know the famous game pacman. One of the banners that I like the most is the one where the user is allowed to let pacman “eat” few dollar signs. At the successful completion of this mission, a nice slogan is revealed asking him to open a saving account that will earn money with a fixed interest rate. The idea behind those interactive banners is simple: Let the user take part in the action and then at the right moment when his mind is less resistant, show him the sales message. Those interactive banners proved to be very efficient. Their biggest disadvantage is that most webmasters will not allow that kind of banner because it distracts too much from the web page content.

    Back to Black and White

    Website designers are always seeking to be different with their design ideas. One banner fashion trend that can be found lately is Black and White banners. Although research shows that blue and yellow are the most efficient color to use in a banner, Black and White banners have been seen a lot lately. It’s probably something that will eventually vanish, but the idea behind it is to be different and to make the user wonder what’s up and hopefully click on the banner to find out.

    Get Out of the box

    Have you heard about the mrfdesign.we.bs If not, check out this website before continuing to read this article. This website has proven that creative thinking not only can bring you money but also create a whole new trend. Right after the milliondollarhomepage.com got the internet community’s attention, many designers used this idea to deign a banner on which they sell a 10x10 pixel area. Like the original concept, this banner design had its impact. Advertisers are investing money on these ad spaces while at the same time visitors are curious enough time after time looking at those unorganized pixel banners to click on them.

    What about the next trends

    What the

    in reference to: The White House (view on Google Sidewiki)

    eCommerce Website Design

    250 Free Business Cards

    eCommerce websites have their own unique character that is designed to lead the visitor to one simple task – make an online purchase. A web designer needs to consider a variety of online selling principles while designing an eCommerce website. In this article we will try to take a look at some of the major design aspects that you must have in an eCommerce website.

    Many of you are probably already asking why eCommerce website design is different from any other website design. They all need to be attractive, well organized and use the right colors that fits the website spirit and so on. Your instincts are good. However a close look at some successful eCommerce websites will reveal the conceptual differences that are typical in a successful eCommerce website.

    An eCommerce website needs to follow certain selling principles:

    1. Give the user a pleasant experience during his online shopping.
    2. Make certain you provide sufficient information on who owns the website and why they should be trusted.
    3. The website must be easy to use. If it isn’t, the visitor will go to your competitor.


    Those principles are not new. We all know those basics from our day to day experiences in the mall, shopping center and every other market place that is waiting for us to open up our wallets. The big challenge for a web designer is how to translate those conventional marketing techniques to the virtual world of the internet. I’m sure you’ve all noticed that in most supermarkets the bread stand is placed at the far end of the building, yet you can smell the fresh bread at the entrance (sometimes they even use a special air duct to carry the smells). That has been done deliberately. Marketers use our sense of smell to draw us through the store where we are exposed to all sorts of tempting goodies as we go to get our loaf of bread.

    How do you draw an imaginarily path in a web page? A path designed to lead the visitor to do what you want him to do…make an online purchase. Unlike the supermarket our website has no smell. In a website the distance from one point to the other is pretty much the same, so the exit is always right there. In a website you can try to order the “shelf” in the way you think will best expose the visitor to many of your products, but there is always a chance that he will find a short cut to another page that can also be the way off your site.

    As can be see, although putting your products on the web is much easier then renting space and opening a supermarket. However, selling your products on the web can be difficult.

    A good eCommerce website design will lead the visitor to the right page in one click or two at the most. Sometime web designers will use techniques that would never be considered for non-eCommerce websites. Everyone has seen at least one sales letter website. On these web pages the only link is to the order form. Sales letters are not the most typical eCommerce website because they usually sell only one product. That allows the web designer the ability to exaggerate the one click principle and make it an advantage. All the facts about the product have been presented to the user is a smart way while every few lines he has the option to click on the order form. If he is not yet convinced he will have the option to continue to read more facts and testimonials about the products. Believe it or not, those sales letter websites are actually selling.

    “What about online shops?” Online shops have to deal with more then one product. Of course, the greater number of products increases the complexity of the website. Sophisticated eCommerce websites use a variety of personalization technologies in an effort to determine the best selection of products to offer to the visitor. Personalization technologies are a major part of advanced eCommerce websites. However this topic is beyond the scope of this article. The cleverness of an eCommerce website’s personalization technology has a major influence on its design. The first to use such technology was Amazon.com who decided

    in reference to: The White House (view on Google Sidewiki)

    Appearance, Usability and Search Engine Visibility in Web Design

    Appearance, Usability and Search Engine Visibility in Web Design
    by Christopher Heng, thesitewizard.com

    I was recently asked by a visitor to thesitewizard.com to take a look at her company's website, designed by a university student. I will not give the URL for that site, partly to protect the innocent, and partly because by the time you read this, it'll probably have been modified.

    The site was heavy in its use of graphics with images adorning most parts of the page layout, to provide curved borders (to replace the sharp corners in enclosing boxes), different background images for different parts of the page, etc. It had a top navigation bar, driven entirely using JavaScript. The navigation bar mimicked the sort of menu bar you find in computer programs - there is a horizontal menu bar with different items listed. When you move your mouse over one of those items, the menu will automatically expand vertically. As you move the mouse cursor down the pop-up menu, the item beneath the pointer is highlighted. Click it, and you will be delivered to another page on the site.

    In general, that site is typical of the kind of sites produced by newcomers to web design. It scores well in terms of prettiness and gadgetry (although only under one browser, it doesn't work well under other browsers), but fares dismally in terms of usability and search engine readiness. In fact, the reason my visitor wrote to me was because the website suffered a significant drop in the number of visitors after it was redesigned in its current form.

    This article uses that site as a starting point for discussing some of the issues that a web designer needs to consider when creating a website that must exist and compete in the real world (as opposed to a site that is created merely to fulfill the course requirements of a school or university).
    1. Appearance is Not the Most Important Issue

    Over the years that I have dealt with newcomers to web design, it is my observation that they tend to focus excessively (and sometimes almost exclusively) on the appearance of a website. The site I mentioned earlier is a case in point: the designer tried hard to make the site look beautiful (and, if I may add, succeeded too - the site does indeed look pretty). However, as hard as it may be to believe (if you are a newcomer), appearance isn't the most important thing to look at when you are planning and creating your site.

    Don't get me wrong here. I'm not saying that appearance is of no importance. Far from it. However, in this article, my intention is to address the excessive importance newcomers place on beauty. In fact, if you belong to the other extreme, discounting the value of the appearance of a website altogether, you might want to read my discussion of Two Common Web Design Myths at http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/myths.shtml

    Having said that, your site can still survive (or even thrive) if it is a plain-looking site like Google. This is not necessarily the case if you overlook the other important issues in web design.
    2. Usability is Important for You to Achieve Your Purpose

    All sites are created for a particular purpose. Some were created so that their owners can sell something. Others are information resources (like thesitewizard.com). Still others are designed to showcase their owner's talents (such as sites displaying the owner's resumes and portfolios).

    The usability of your site is important to help you achieve that purpose. The basic question that you need to address when dealing with usability is: can your visitors easily access the information they need so that they can do the stuff that you want them to do? There are quite a number of things involved in this question.

    1.
    Information Availability

    Is the information that your visitors need to make informed decisions available on your site? For example, before they can buy a product, they will want to know more about that product. A brief one-line summary about your product's features may work for your main page, but you will probably find that you get more buyers if you can p

    in reference to: The White House (view on Google Sidewiki)

    Appearance, Usability and Search Engine Visibility in Web Design

    Appearance, Usability and Search Engine Visibility in Web Design
    by Christopher Heng, thesitewizard.com

    I was recently asked by a visitor to thesitewizard.com to take a look at her company's website, designed by a university student. I will not give the URL for that site, partly to protect the innocent, and partly because by the time you read this, it'll probably have been modified.

    The site was heavy in its use of graphics with images adorning most parts of the page layout, to provide curved borders (to replace the sharp corners in enclosing boxes), different background images for different parts of the page, etc. It had a top navigation bar, driven entirely using JavaScript. The navigation bar mimicked the sort of menu bar you find in computer programs - there is a horizontal menu bar with different items listed. When you move your mouse over one of those items, the menu will automatically expand vertically. As you move the mouse cursor down the pop-up menu, the item beneath the pointer is highlighted. Click it, and you will be delivered to another page on the site.

    In general, that site is typical of the kind of sites produced by newcomers to web design. It scores well in terms of prettiness and gadgetry (although only under one browser, it doesn't work well under other browsers), but fares dismally in terms of usability and search engine readiness. In fact, the reason my visitor wrote to me was because the website suffered a significant drop in the number of visitors after it was redesigned in its current form.

    This article uses that site as a starting point for discussing some of the issues that a web designer needs to consider when creating a website that must exist and compete in the real world (as opposed to a site that is created merely to fulfill the course requirements of a school or university).
    1. Appearance is Not the Most Important Issue

    Over the years that I have dealt with newcomers to web design, it is my observation that they tend to focus excessively (and sometimes almost exclusively) on the appearance of a website. The site I mentioned earlier is a case in point: the designer tried hard to make the site look beautiful (and, if I may add, succeeded too - the site does indeed look pretty). However, as hard as it may be to believe (if you are a newcomer), appearance isn't the most important thing to look at when you are planning and creating your site.

    Don't get me wrong here. I'm not saying that appearance is of no importance. Far from it. However, in this article, my intention is to address the excessive importance newcomers place on beauty. In fact, if you belong to the other extreme, discounting the value of the appearance of a website altogether, you might want to read my discussion of Two Common Web Design Myths at http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/myths.shtml

    Having said that, your site can still survive (or even thrive) if it is a plain-looking site like Google. This is not necessarily the case if you overlook the other important issues in web design.
    2. Usability is Important for You to Achieve Your Purpose

    All sites are created for a particular purpose. Some were created so that their owners can sell something. Others are information resources (like thesitewizard.com). Still others are designed to showcase their owner's talents (such as sites displaying the owner's resumes and portfolios).

    The usability of your site is important to help you achieve that purpose. The basic question that you need to address when dealing with usability is: can your visitors easily access the information they need so that they can do the stuff that you want them to do? There are quite a number of things involved in this question.

    1.
    Information Availability

    Is the information that your visitors need to make informed decisions available on your site? For example, before they can buy a product, they will want to know more about that product. A brief one-line summary about your product's features may work for your main page, but you will probably find that you get more buyers if you can p

    in reference to: The White House (view on Google Sidewiki)

    Is Your Website Design Driving Away Your Customers? Some Basic Usability Tips for Commercial Websites

    Following my article on Appearance, Usability and Search Engine Friendliness in Web Design where I discussed the importance of looking at the usability and search engine visibility of a website, I have received countless messages from visitors to thesitewizard.com asking me to review their website. While I do not have time to answer such requests individually, I decided that an article outlining some glaring usability flaws that I have found in a number of websites in general would be helpful. This article thus deals with the myths and fallacies commonly believed when designing a website to sell a product or a service.
    Make It Easy for Visitor to Check Your Price List

    Some websites try to hide the price list for their products. Some of these sites only display the price of the item after you hit the "Buy" or "Order" button, or worse, only after you have created an account on their site. Others have a price list, but bury the link to the price list somewhere deep in their site in a place not easily accessible from the main page or the products page.

    I'm not exactly sure what the reason behind this is. Possibly, they think that if the customer does not see the price until they click the "Buy" or "Order" button, they will be more likely to buy the item. This reasoning is fallacious.

    There are many types of visitors arriving at your site. Let's take the case of the window shopper. If they see something noteworthy on your site, they may make a note of the price so that they can return later if they want the item at some point in the future. If the price of the item cannot be easily found on your site, do you seriously think that they will thoroughly search the site just to find that elusive price tag? Or do you suppose that such a visitor will click the "Buy" button, just so that they can find the price tag at the end of the process somewhere? Or will they go through the bother of creating an account, revealing their personal particulars, just to find the price of an item?

    Like the serious shopper, if they cannot find the price, they will simply go to another site. Remember: this is not a brick and mortar store we're talking about, where you need to take time and put in effort to travel to another store. On the Internet, your competitor is only a click away. And the search engines are more than happy to yield thousands of other sites selling the same type of goods or services as you. I realise that there are some brick and mortar stores (usually small concerns) who think that if they don't put a price tag, the customer has to find out the price from a sales person, who will then have the opportunity to persuade him/her to buy that item. Whether or not that is a good idea for a brick and mortar store (and I can think offhand of some types of customers that you will lose even there), it is a bad idea for a web store.

    No matter how you look at it, every customer and potential customer will need to know the price of a product. Even the corporate customer buying for his/her company works to a budget. Making it difficult for your visitor to find the price list is a quick way to drive a potential customer away. As has been observed by many usability experts - the average Internet user has the attention span of a flea. If they can't find what they want within the first few seconds of glancing at your page, they will leave. And your competitors will be more than happy to attend to them in your place.
    Provide Descriptions and Pictures for Your Products

    I realise that the new web designer is beset with contradictory advice about how best to design their site. One set of such conflicting advice is the requirement to be brief and to-the-point so that you can catch that Internet visitor who will only give your web page a few seconds glance before deciding whether to stay or go elsewhere. Contradicting that is the requirement that you describe your products in depth and place pictures of your product, or screenshots if yours is a software product.

    The best way to resolve this, I think, is to take a leaf from Amazon.com's book. For ev

    in reference to: The White House (view on Google Sidewiki)

    Seven Easy Ways to Annoy Visitors to Your Website: A Satire

    1.

    Place some (or all of) your content in a small frame and force your visitors to read the content through that window. Don't worry about what constitutes "small" here, since most of the time, even if you create a big frame, it'll be considered too small by most visitors. This trick has a high annoyance value since your visitors have to view the information through that small little box and scroll continuously to see the text while the rest of the browser window is filled with information they don't really want to read at the moment. With this strategy, visitors cannot resize or maximize the window to make their reading more efficient or pleasurable. This method will allow you to frustrate those hapless souls and, as a bonus, make them leave your site.
    2.

    Disable the right click menu of the browser. Nevermind that people need the right click menu for many purposes, and that they can access the same functions through the main menu bar even after you've disabled it. After all, if your aim is to annoy, you might as well make their visit to your site as unpleasant as possible.
    3.

    Play background music when they arrive at your page. If that's not enough of an annoyance, make sure you loop the music so that the visitors are plagued by it continuously while they are on your page. If you're feeling particularly sadistic, place automatically-playing music on many (or even all) pages of your site. You don't have to worry about choosing a horrible tune - choose your favourite piece if you like. Since one man's meat is another man's poison, any sort of music tends to annoy most visitors.
    4.

    Make every link on your site opens in a new window when your visitor clicks on it. That is, put a target="_blank" to every link. This will annoy visitors since every time they click on a link in your site, a new window or tab will open. Another benefit of this technique is that it makes your site look amateurish.
    5.

    Force your visitors to navigate your website using Flash. That is, place all your content in a Flash file - text, pictures, links, etc - even if Flash is not ideal for such content (a straight HTML page is best for those types of content). Make sure that visitors who don't have the Flash plugin enabled or installed cannot see anything or do much on your website. This effectively drives away all mobile users, a group of users that is growing in size, as well as cripple your visitors who have come to expect certain facilities to always be available in their browsers (such as the BACK key and the ability to bookmark specific pages) when they visit websites. Now they will be forced to work through the more limited Flash plugin of their browser with whatever subset of features you deign to provide. In fact, exclusively using Flash for your site content might even help you to drop to the bottom of search engine listings too, thereby reducing the number of visitors to your site. After all, if you don't have visitors, you don't have to think of new ways to annoy them.
    6.

    Load your site with pop-up windows that open when your visitor reaches your page as well as when they leave the page. In fact, if you want to annoy them even further, open a pop-up window when they click on links on your site.
    7.

    Reduce the navigational usability of your website. Don't put site maps or navigation bars with shortcut links to pages that your visitors will usually want to go such as the "Download" page if you're a software author. If you can annoy your visitors by forcing them to read whole pages of your text before they can find a link to move on to do what they really want to do, so much the better.

    in reference to: The White House (view on Google Sidewiki)

    Wednesday, November 18, 2009

    How to Use Different CSS Style Sheets For Different Browsers (and How to Hide CSS Code from Older Browsers)

    In an ideal world, you only need one set of CSS style sheets for your website, and those styles will work with every browser currently being used. This, as every webmaster soon finds out when he/she uses CSS, is a pipe dream. The modern browsers all have uneven levels of implementation of the CSS standards. As though this isn't bad enough, their implementations are often buggy - and they don't share the same bugs! And when you have solved that tricky bit, you find that your site has certain visitors (often your best customers) who, for various reasons, are using older browsers that have only rudimentary support for CSS.

    What most (if not all) CSS-using webmasters want is a way to specify that a certain style sheet is to be used by such and such a browser and not others, as well as to hide other style sheets from older browsers.

    The Good and Bad News
    The bad news is that there is no standard documented method to include or exclude style sheets from being used by every browser still being used on the Internet.

    All is not lost however. The good news is that there are a number of tricks, workarounds and even non-standard but documented methods available that you can use to have your style sheet included by some browsers and not others. The workarounds often rely on known bugs in certain versions of specific browsers.

    On the other hand, even with these workarounds and tricks, you will probably find that there are certain browsers that you want to code for but do not have any reliable means to detect and work around. However, at least with the help of the tips listed here, you should be able to design a CSS-based website that works with the most commonly used browsers

    Preliminary Tips for Coding
    Before you start coding your site using CSS for specific browsers, here are some tips that hopefully will make your life easier.

    Design From Scratch
    Most webmasters who have had to convert their existing website to CSS say that they find it easier to design their site from scratch in CSS than to try to find a way to reproduce their old layout in CSS.

    Another reason for designing from scratch is that CSS allows you to do many things not possible using the old tables paradigm. Rethinking your entire design allows you to take advantage of the new possibilities.

    Code to Follow the CSS Standards First
    Many of the web designers hanging out in webmaster forums have found that it is far easier to develop their CSS code for a highly standards-compliant browser like Firefox first, and then only later add the workarounds to make their code work on IE, than to code for IE and then try to make it work for Opera, Konqueror, Safari and Firefox.

    It is also logical to write for a more standards-compliant browser first: sooner or later, Microsoft is bound to issue a newer version of IE that will have the existing CSS bugs fixed. When they do so, all you have to do is to remove the workarounds which you created and you're done. If you write your main style sheet with styles that are coded in a non-standard way to deal with IE bugs first, you will wind up having to rewrite everything when Microsoft fixes the bugs.

    This is not to say that Firefox does not have its own share of CSS bugs. As such, my personal recommendation is to code with the two (supposedly) most standards-compliant browsers first, ie, Firefox and Opera, while at the same time periodically making sure that your CSS code validates with the W3 Consortium's free style sheet validator. You can add the workarounds for IE later.

    (If you are not sure what validation means, or how you can get it done, check out my article on HTML and CSS Validation: Should You Validate Your Web Page? at http://www.thesitewizard.com/webdesign/htmlvalidation.shtml

    Use External Style Sheets and Take Advantage of the "Cascading" Aspect of Cascading Style Sheets
    One way to handle the bugs and omissions existing in different browsers is to put all your standards-compliant CSS code in a separate (external) style sheet file that is loaded by every browser.

    Then, when you find th

    in reference to: Google (view on Google Sidewiki)

    10 Strategies To Make Your E-Commerce Website A Success

    E commerce websites have come of age. As customers realize the ease and benefits of online shopping, the popularity of e-commerce websites have soared like anything else. However, with the increase in the number of Ecommerce websites vying for attention, it has become important for them to devise strategies to be better than the competition and attract more traffic. Here are some new trends and techniques that can help your Ecommerce processes.

    Focus on User Experiences

    Often we concentrate so much on improving the usability of the website that we completely forget about the user experience. The way users feel on the website goes a long way in influencing their purchase options as well as their general perception of the website. Therefore, try to connect with the visitors on intimate level and then build up your branding through strategic marketing techniques.

    Provide Customized Messages to Specific Audience Segments

    The chances of sales increases when the audience is more targeted. When you segment your audiences, you know about their general common preferences and likes. This will also give you an idea about what segments are useful and most profitable. In turn, you can customize your sales message and make sure they receive more relevant and personalized information and offers.

    Create Compelling Content

    Content is the only source of direct communication with your website audiences. Therefore, make it as compelling as you can . The main objective of your product page should be sales conversions. Include product images and videos along with content that convinces them to hit the 'Buy' button.

    Eliminate Unnecessary Page Elements

    A majority of Ecommerce websites carry a bulk of undue weight because of unnecessary page elements like blinking banners, rotating graphics and annoying flash-animations. Attention grabbing works best on subtle levels. Also make sure the information you provide on the website is short and crisp.

    Include Videos on the Website

    Videos are an emerging source of product promotion with more and more website embedding videos on their websites to promote their businesses. You can upload videos that provide demonstrations of your products and show how they work, exhibit their different features and show how users can benefit from their use. Moreover, video inclusion has certain search engine benefits as well.

    Involve your Website Audiences

    The three main elements of a successful website are - Content, Communication and Commerce. You need to involve your audiences and make them feel that they are a part of the website. Include a form on audience interaction on your website. Provide them with an option to review the products and participate in forum discussions etc.

    Provide Free Shipping Options

    A little known secret of the e commerce industry is that shoppers often shy away from buying a product because of the additional shipping costs that are involved. Thus if you decide to waive of the shipping costs, you'll have more sales. If its not a profitable option individually, provide free shipping options for bulk orders.

    Optimize Products for Local Searches

    While it is great to business on a global scale and cater to international customers, you can get huge visitor traffic with localized search engine marketing. Promote the products on your website on domestic search engines. You can also customize your product descriptions, tutorials, public relations and ad campaigns to suit the tastes of the local markets.

    in reference to: Google (view on Google Sidewiki)

    How To Enhance The Usability Of Your Homepage Design

    The homepage of your website is the face of your online presence. It is what makes the first impression on online audiences about your company and business. When people type in the URL of your website, they reach your homepage. The homepage, should therefore present a brief introduction about the website and lure visitors to browse further within. The homepage is perhaps the most important page of the website and thus you need to take adequate measures to enhance its usability. Here are some tips to ensure the same.

    Include a Crisp and Catchy Tagline

    Draft a tagline for your website homepage that informs about the company and business in a simple sentence. When visitors enter the homepage, they should know what the website and the company is all about just by reading the tagline. In fact, by drafting a catchy tagline you can catch the attention of your visitors and make sure they don't forget you.

    Draft a Meaningful Title Tag

    The title tag of your homepage should have your company name followed by a very brief description of the website. Avoid using words like 'Welcome' or 'The' that just populate the space and do no value addition. Instead, try to include your relevant keywords and phrases in the title tags.

    Cluster All Corporate Information

    Website visitors generally don't bother reading about the company. However, there are times when they decide to do business with you only after they are convinced about the company. In such scenarios it is important to have good corporate information on the website. Create an About Us page on your website that is dedicated towards informing visitors all about your company and business and provide a link to it from the homepage.

    Focus on Key Tasks of the Website

    The homepage of your website should act as a guide for visitors and help them find a browsing route. It should provide a clear starting point to do what they want to do i.e. there should be clear links to the main areas of the website where visitors might be interested in going.

    Include a Search Box

    The search box is indispensable for any website. Internet users are an impatient lot and they love anything that cuts short the action steps. Search boxes enable visitors to search for the exact information that they need by just entering a query instead of browsing through categories to fins what they need. Make sure your search box is at least 25 characters wide so that it accommodates multiple queries.

    Offer Snapshots of Inlying Content

    The homepage of the website is where you can showcase things and lure visitors to further explore the website. A good idea is to place snapshots or post the topics of important content within your website. Whether it is a recent article or a report that you have on a certain web page, offer a preview on the homepage.

    Use Meaningful Design Elements

    The homepage of a website is important and should welcome visitors. However, that doesn't mean you can load the page with useless design elements and flash animations that offer no value but only increase the file sizes.

    Kabir Bedi is the senior web consultant at LeXolution IT Services, a reputed offshore web development company that provides an extensive range of web design services and web Development services. He has completed several international web design projects for international clients.

    in reference to: Google (view on Google Sidewiki)

    Tuesday, November 17, 2009

    Here's a different way to generate forms using PHP, and to take care of all the required field validation too. It might help someone:

    array(
    "type"=>"select",
    // attributes are an associative array
    "attributes"=>array(
    "mr"=>"Mr.",
    "ms"=>"Ms.",
    "miss"=>"Miss.",
    "mrs"=>"Mrs.",
    ),
    ),
    "first_name"=>array(
    "type"=>"text",
    "size"=>40,
    "required"=>true,
    "onclick"=>"alert('test');",
    "style"=>"border:2px solid #CCCCCC; padding:4px; font-size:15px;",
    ),
    "last_name"=>array(
    "type"=>"text",
    "size"=>70,
    "required"=>true,
    ),
    );

    $errors=array();

    if($_REQUEST['save']){
    // do sql here...
    $sql = "INSERT INTO foo SET insert_date=NOW()";
    foreach($elements as $element_name => $el){
    if($el['required']&&!$_REQUEST[$element_name]){
    $errors[]="Required field missing: $element_name";
    }else{
    $sql .= ", `$element_name` = '".addslashes($_REQUEST[$element_name])."'";
    }
    }
    if(!$errors){
    // call sql:
    // $res = query($sql,$db);
    // $member_id= mysql_insert_id($db);
    // redirect after post back
    header("Location: example.php?member_id=$member_id");
    exit;
    }
    }

    global $elements;
    function fb($elem){
    global $elements;
    $el = $elements[$elem];
    if(!$el['name'])$el['name']=$elem;
    if(!$el['value']&&$_REQUEST[$el['name']])$el['value']=$_REQUEST[$el['name']];
    switch($el['type']){
    case "textarea":
    ?>
    $val){ if($key=="value")continue; ?> ="" >

    $val){ ?> ="" >

    $val){ if($key=="attributes")continue; ?> ="" >
    - select -
    $val) {
    ?>
    selected >














    Salutation:

    First Name:

    Last Name:





    First name and last name are required fields. Try clicking save without filling them in.









    View cod

    in reference to: required field validator in php - Google Search (view on Google Sidewiki)

    Friday, September 11, 2009

    Online Coin-Op Game
    Play Online Computer Game
    Online Kids And Teens: Gam
    College and University
    Art Voices
    Online Board Games
    Online Art History
    Online Music
    Online Writing
    Television
    News and Media
    Yard, Deck, and Table Games
    Hand-Eye Coordination
    Paper and Pencil
    Online Developers and Publi
    Online Women in Gaming
    Online Computer Science
    Online Fonts
    Online Human-Computer Inter
    Online Speech Technology
    Online Data Communications
    Food and Related Products
    Graphic Design
    Online Libraries
    Online Weblogs
    Online Directories
    Online Book Shopping
    Chats and Forums
    Web Rings
    Birds And Blooms
    Social Sciences
    Methods and Techniques
    Research Groups and CentersOnline Bibliography
    Open Access Resources
    Knowledge Management
    Ask an Expert
    Online Questions and Answe
    Trains and Railroads
    Newspapers
    Internet Broadcasts
    Museums and Archives
    Colleges and Universities
    Online Headline Links
    People and Society
    School Time
    Teen Life
    Health Care
    Your Family
    Sports and Hobbies
    Apartment Living
    Do-It-Yourself
    Online Home Business
    Personal Organization
    Online Rural Living
    Online Domestic Services
    Online Personal Finance
    Online Healthcare Industry
    Online Support Groups
    Environmental Health
    printed project
    Spread Artculture
    Watercolor Artist
    Famous Magazine
    Focus: Fine Art Photography
    Nature's Best Photography
    Team Handball
    Autographs
    Basketball
    Video Games: Sports
    Water Sports
    Lifestyle Choices
    Language and Linguistics
    Consumer Goods and Services
    Antiques and Collectibles
    Beauty Products
    Office Products
    Online Shopping
    Home and Garden
    Earth Sciences
    Online Software
    Online Employment
    Birds And Blooms
    Dogs Today
    Feline Wellness
    Modern Dog
    Traditional House Plans
    Print Design Annual
    India Art Collector
    Design Issues
    Gallery Guide
    Google Home
    Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual
    Online Play-By-Mail
    Online Gambling
    Online Web Hosting
    Play Online Video Games
    Global Exec Women
    Women's Health
    Science and Nature
    Online Jewelry
    This Old House
    Modern Painters
    sandiya

    Saturday, January 10, 2009

    Website

    A web site is a collection of Web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that is

    hosted on one or more web servers, usually accessible via the Internet.

    A Web page is a document, typically written in (X)HTML, that is almost always

    accessible via HTTP, a protocol that transfers information from the Web server to

    display in the user's Web browser.

    All publicly accessible websites are seen collectively as constituting the "World Wide

    Web".

    The pages of a website can usually be accessed from a common root URL called the

    homepage, and usually reside on the same physical server. The URLs of the pages

    organize them into a hierarchy, although the hyperlinks between them control how the

    reader perceives the overall structure and how the traffic flows between the different

    parts of the site.

    Some websites require a subscription to access some or all of their content. Examples

    of subscription sites include many business sites, parts of many news sites, academic

    journal sites, gaming sites, message boards, Web-based e-mail, services, social

    networking websites, and sites providing real-time stock market data. Because they

    require authentication to view the content they are technically an Intranet site.
    History

    The World Wide Web was created in 1990 by CERN engineer, Tim Berners-Lee.[1] On

    30 April 1993, CERN announced that the World Wide Web would be free to anyone.[2]

    Before the introduction of HTML and HTTP other protocols such as file transfer protocol

    and the gopher protocol were used to retrieve individual files from a server. These

    protocols offer a simple directory structure which the user navigates and chooses files

    to download. Documents were most often presented as plain text files without

    formatting or were encoded in word processor formats.

    Overview

    Organized by function a website may be

    * a personal website
    * a commercial website
    * a government website
    * a non-profit organization website

    It could be the work of an individual, a business or other organization, and is typically

    dedicated to some particular topic or purpose. Any website can contain a hyperlink to

    any other website, so the distinction between individual sites, as perceived by the

    user, may sometimes be blurred.

    Websites are written in, or dynamically converted to, HTML (Hyper Text Markup

    Language) and are accessed using a software interface classified as an user agent.

    Web pages can be viewed or otherwise accessed from a range of computer-based and

    Internet-enabled devices of various sizes, including desktop computers, laptops, PDAs

    and cell phones.

    A website is hosted on a computer system known as a web server, also called an HTTP

    server, and these terms can also refer to the software that runs on these systems and

    that retrieves and delivers the Web pages in response to requests from the website

    users. Apache is the most commonly used Web server software (according to Netcraft

    statistics) and Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) is also commonly used.

    Website styles

    Static Website

    A Static Website is one that has web pages stored on the server in the same form as

    the user will view them. It is primarily coded in HTML (Hyper-text Markup Language).

    A static website is also called a Classic website, a 5-page website or a Brochure

    website because it simply presents pre-defined information to the user. It may include

    information about a company and its products and services via text, photos, Flash

    animation, audio/video and interactive menus and navigation.

    This type of website usually displays the same information to all visitors, thus the

    information is static. Similar to handing out a printed brochure to customers or clients,

    a static website will generally provide consistent, standard information for an extended

    period of time. Although the website owner may make updates periodically, it is a

    manual process to edit the text, photos and other content and may require basic

    website design skills and software.

    In summary, visitors are not able to control what information they receive via a static

    website, and must instead settle for whatever content the website owner has decided

    to offer at that time.

    They are edited using four broad categories of software:

    * Text editors, such as Notepad or TextEdit, where the HTML is manipulated directly

    within the editor program
    * WYSIWYG offline editors, such as Microsoft FrontPage and Adobe Dreamweaver

    (previously Macromedia Dreamweaver), where the site is edited using a GUI interface

    and the underlying HTML is generated automatically by the editor software
    * WYSIWYG Online editors, where the any media rich online presentation like

    websites, widgets, intro, blogs etc. are created on a flash based platform.
    * Template-based editors, such as Rapidweaver and iWeb, which allow users to

    quickly create and upload websites to a web server without having to know anything

    about HTML, as they just pick a suitable template from a palette and add pictures and

    text to it in a DTP-like fashion without ever having to see any HTML code.

    Web Management India
    Web Solution Tools.
    Mrf Web Design
    Mrf Web Development
    Mrf Web Development

    World Wide Web

    The World Wide Web (commonly shortened to the Web) is a system of interlinked

    hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view

    Web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigate

    between them using hyperlinks. Using concepts from earlier hypertext systems, the

    World Wide Web was begun in 1989 by English scientist Tim Berners-Lee, working at

    the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. In

    1990, he proposed building a "web of nodes" storing "hypertext pages" viewed by

    "browsers" on a network,[1] and released that web in 1992. Connected by the existing

    Internet, other websites were created, around the world, adding international

    standards for domain names & the HTML language. Since then, Berners-Lee has played

    an active role in guiding the development of Web standards (such as the markup

    languages in which Web pages are composed), and in recent years has advocated his

    vision of a Semantic Web.

    The World Wide Web enabled the spread of information over the Internet through an

    easy-to-use and flexible format. It thus played an important role in popularising use of

    the Internet, [2] to the extent that the World Wide Web has become a synonym for

    Internet, with the two being conflated in popular use. [3]

    How it works

    Viewing a Web page on the World Wide Web normally begins either by typing the URL

    of the page into a Web browser, or by following a hyperlink to that page or resource.

    The Web browser then initiates a series of communication messages, behind the

    scenes, in order to fetch and display it.

    First, the server-name portion of the URL is resolved into an IP address using the

    global, distributed Internet database known as the domain name system, or DNS. This

    IP address is necessary to contact and send data packets to the Web server.

    The browser then requests the resource by sending an HTTP request to the Web server

    at that particular address. In the case of a typical Web page, the HTML text of the

    page is requested first and parsed immediately by the Web browser, which will then

    make additional requests for images and any other files that form a part of the page.

    Statistics measuring a website's popularity are usually based on the number of 'page

    views' or associated server 'hits', or file requests, which take place.

    Having received the required files from the Web server, the browser then renders the

    page onto the screen as specified by its HTML, CSS, and other Web languages. Any

    images and other resources are incorporated to produce the on-screen Web page that

    the user sees.

    Most Web pages will themselves contain hyperlinks to other related pages and perhaps

    to downloads, source documents, definitions and other Web resources. Such a

    collection of useful, related resources, interconnected via hypertext links, is what was

    dubbed a "web" of information. Making it available on the Internet created what Tim

    Berners-Lee first called the WorldWideWeb (a term written in CamelCase, subsequently

    discarded) in November 1990.[1]

    Berners-Lee has said that the most important feature of the World Wide Web is "Error

    404", which tells the user that a file does not exist. Without this feature, he said, the

    web would have ground to a halt long ago.

    Berners-Lee has also expressed regret over the format of the URL. Currently it is

    divided into two parts - the route to the server which is divided by dots, and the file

    path separated by slashes. The server route starts with the least significant element

    and ends with the most significant, then the file path reverses this, moving from high

    to low. Berners-Lee would have liked to see this rationalised. So an address which is

    currently (e.g.) "http://www.mrfweb.we.bs /document/pictures/illustration.jpg" would

    become http:/uk/co/examplesite/documents/pictures/illustration.jpg. In this format the

    server no longer has any special place in the address, which is simply one coherent

    hierarchical path.

    History

    History of the World Wide Web

    This NeXT Computer used by Sir Tim Berners-Lee at CERN became the first Web server.

    The underlying ideas of the Web can be traced as far back as 1980, when, at CERN in

    Switzerland, Sir Tim Berners-Lee built ENQUIRE (a reference to Enquire Within Upon

    Everything, a book he recalled from his youth). While it was rather different from the

    system in use today, it contained many of the same core ideas (and even some of the

    ideas of Berners-Lee's next project after the World Wide Web, the Semantic Web).

    In March 1989, Berners-Lee wrote a proposal[4] which referenced ENQUIRE and

    described a more elaborate information management system. With help from Robert

    Cailliau, he published a more formal proposal (on November 12, 1990) to build a

    "Hypertext project" called "WorldWideWeb" (one word, also "W3")[1] as a "web of

    nodes" with "hypertext documents" to store data. That data would be viewed in

    "hypertext pages" (webpages) by various "browsers" (line-mode or full-screen) on the

    computer network, using an "access protocol" connecting the "Internet and DECnet

    protocol worlds".[1]

    The proposal had been modeled after EBT's (Electronic Book Technology, a spin-off

    from the Institute for Research in Information and Scholarship at Brown University)

    Dynatext SGML reader that CERN had licensed. The Dynatext system, although

    technically advanced (a key player in the extension of SGML ISO 8879:1986 to

    Hypermedia within HyTime), was considered too expensive and with an inappropriate

    licensing policy for general HEP (High Energy Physics) community use: a fee for each

    document and each time a document was charged.

    A NeXT Computer was used by Berners-Lee as the world's first Web server and also to

    write the first Web browser, WorldWideWeb, in 1990. By Christmas 1990, Berners-Lee

    had built all the tools necessary for a working Web:[5] the first Web browser (which

    was a Web editor as well), the first Web server, and the first Web pages[6] which

    described the project itself.

    On August 6, 1991, he posted a short summary of the World Wide Web project on the

    alt.hypertext newsgroup.[7] This date also marked the debut of the Web as a publicly

    available service on the Internet.

    The first server outside Europe was set up at SLAC in December 1991 [8].

    The crucial underlying concept of hypertext originated with older projects from the

    1960s, such as the Hypertext Editing System (HES) at Brown University--- among

    others Ted Nelson and Andries van Dam--- Ted Nelson's Project Xanadu and Douglas

    Engelbart's oN-Line System (NLS). Both Nelson and Engelbart were in turn inspired by

    Vannevar Bush's microfilm-based "memex," which was described in the 1945 essay "As

    We May Think".

    Berners-Lee's breakthrough was to marry hypertext to the Internet. In his book

    Weaving The Web, he explains that he had repeatedly suggested that a marriage

    between the two technologies was possible to members of both technical communities,

    but when no one took up his invitation, he finally tackled the project himself. In the

    process, he developed a system of globally unique identifiers for resources on the Web

    and elsewhere: the Uniform Resource Identifier.

    The World Wide Web had a number of differences from other hypertext systems that

    were then available. The Web required only unidirectional links rather than bidirectional

    ones. This made it possible for someone to link to another resource without action by

    the owner of that resource. It also significantly reduced the difficulty of implementing

    Web servers and browsers (in comparison to earlier systems), but in turn presented the

    chronic problem of link rot. Unlike predecessors such as HyperCard, the World Wide

    Web was non-proprietary, making it possible to develop servers and clients

    independently and to add extensions without licensing restrictions.

    On April 30, 1993, CERN announced[9] that the World Wide Web would be free to

    anyone, with no fees due. Coming two months after the announcement that the Gopher

    protocol was no longer free to use, this produced a rapid shift away from Gopher and

    towards the Web. An early popular Web browser was ViolaWWW, which was based

    upon HyperCard.

    Scholars generally agree, however, that the turning point for the World Wide Web

    began with the introduction[10] of the Mosaic Web browser[11] in 1993, a graphical

    browser developed by a team at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at

    the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (NCSA-UIUC), led by Marc Andreessen.

    Funding for Mosaic came from the High-Performance Computing and Communications

    Initiative, a funding program initiated by the High Performance Computing and

    Communication Act of 1991, one of several computing developments initiated by

    Senator Al Gore.[12] Prior to the release of Mosaic, graphics were not commonly mixed

    with text in Web pages, and its popularity was less than older protocols in use over the

    Internet, such as Gopher and Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS). Mosaic's graphical

    user interface allowed the Web to become, by far, the most popular Internet protocol.

    The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was founded by Tim Berners-Lee after he left

    the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in October, 1994. It was

    founded at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Laboratory for Computer Science

    (MIT/LCS) with support from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

    (DARPA)—which had pioneered the Internet—and the European Commission.

    Standards
    Web standards

    Many formal standards and other technical specifications define the operation of

    different aspects of the World Wide Web, the Internet, and computer information

    exchange. Many of the documents are the work of the World Wide Web Consortium

    (W3C), headed by Berners-Lee, but some are produced by the Internet Engineering

    Task Force (IETF) and other organizations.

    Usually, when Web standards are discussed, the following publications are seen as

    foundational:

    * Recommendations for markup languages, especially HTML and XHTML, from the

    W3C. These define the structure and interpretation of hypertext documents.
    * Recommendations for stylesheets, especially CSS, from the W3C.
    * Standards for ECMAScript (usually in the form of JavaScript), from Ecma

    International.
    * Recommendations for the Document Object Model, from W3C.

    Additional publications provide definitions of other essential technologies for the World

    Wide Web, including, but not limited to, the following:

    * Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), which is a universal system for referencing

    resources on the Internet, such as hypertext documents and images. URIs, often called

    URLs, are defined by the IETF's RFC 3986 / STD 66: Uniform Resource Identifier (URI):

    Generic Syntax, as well as its predecessors and numerous URI scheme-defining RFCs;
    * HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP), especially as defined by RFC 2616: http://1.1

    and RFC 2617: HTTP Authentication, which specify how the browser and server

    authenticate each other.

    Privacy

    Computer users, who save time and money, and who gain conveniences and

    entertainment, may or may not have surrendered the right to privacy in exchange for

    using a number of technologies including the Web.[13] Worldwide, more than a half

    billion people have used a social network service,[14] and of Americans who grew up

    with the Web, half created an online profile[15] and are part of a generational shift

    that could be changing norms.[16][17] Among services paid for by advertising, Yahoo!

    could collect the most data about users of commercial websites, about 2,500 bits of

    information per month about each typical user of its site and its affiliated advertising

    network sites. Yahoo! was followed by MySpace with about half that potential and then

    by AOL-TimeWarner, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and eBay.[18]

    Privacy representatives from 60 countries have resolved to ask for laws to complement

    industry self-regulation, for education for children and other minors who use the Web,

    and for default protections for users of social networks.[19] They also believe data

    protection for personally identifiable information benefits business more than the sale

    of that information.[19] Users can opt-in to features in browsers from companies such

    as Apple, Google, Microsoft (beta) and Mozilla (beta) to clear their personal histories

    locally and block some cookies and advertising networks[20] but they are still tracked

    in websites' server logs.[citation needed] Berners-Lee and colleagues see hope in

    accountability and appropriate use achieved by extending the Web's architecture to

    policy awareness, perhaps with audit logging, reasoners and appliances.[21]

    Security

    The Web has become criminals' preferred pathway for spreading malware. Cybercrime

    carried out on the Web can include identity theft, fraud, espionage and intelligence

    gathering.[22] Web-based vulnerabilities now outnumber traditional computer security

    concerns,[23] and as measured by Google, about one in ten Web pages may contain

    malicious code.[24] Most Web-based attacks take place on legitimate websites, and

    most, as measured by Sophos, are hosted in the United States, China and Russia.[25]

    The most common of all malware threats is SQL injection attacks against websites.[26]

    Through HTML and URIs the Web was vulnerable to attacks like cross-site scripting

    (XSS) that came with the introduction of JavaScript[27] and were exacerbated to some

    degree by Web 2.0 and Ajax web design that favors the use of scripts.[28] Today by

    one estimate, 70% of all websites are open to XSS attacks on their users.[29]

    Proposed solutions vary to extremes. Large security vendors like McAfee already design

    governance and compliance suites to meet post-9/11 regulations,[30] and some, like

    Finjan have recommended active real-time inspection of code and all content regardless

    of its source.[22] Some have argued that for enterprise to see security as a business

    opportunity rather than a cost center,[31] "ubiquitous, always-on digital rights

    management" enforced in the infrastructure by a handful of organizations must replace

    the hundreds of companies that today secure data and networks.[32] Jonathan Zittrain

    has said users sharing responsibility for computing safety is far preferable to locking

    down the Internet.[33]

    Web accessibility

    Many countries regulate web accessibility as a requirement for web sites.

    Java

    A significant advance in Web technology was Sun Microsystems' Java platform. It

    enables Web pages to embed small programs (called applets) directly into the view.

    These applets run on the end-user's computer, providing a richer user interface than

    simple Web pages. Java client-side applets never gained the popularity that Sun had

    hoped for a variety of reasons, including lack of integration with other content (applets

    were confined to small boxes within the rendered page) and the fact that many

    computers at the time were supplied to end users without a suitably installed Java

    Virtual Machine, and so required a download by the user before applets would appear.

    Adobe Flash now performs many of the functions that were originally envisioned for

    Java applets, including the playing of video content, animation, and some rich GUI

    features. Java itself has become more widely used as a platform and language for

    server-side and other programming.

    JavaScript

    JavaScript, on the other hand, is a scripting language that was initially developed for

    use within Web pages. The standardized version is ECMAScript. While its name is

    similar to Java, JavaScript was developed by Netscape and has very little to do with

    Java, although the syntax of both languages is derived from the C programming

    language. In conjunction with a Web page's Document Object Model (DOM), JavaScript

    has become a much more powerful technology than its creators originally

    envisioned.[citation needed] The manipulation of a page's DOM after the page is

    delivered to the client has been called Dynamic HTML (DHTML), to emphasize a shift

    away from static HTML displays.

    In simple cases, all the optional information and actions available on a

    JavaScript-enhanced Web page will have been downloaded when the page was first

    delivered. Ajax ("Asynchronous JavaScript and XML") is a group of interrelated web

    development techniques used for creating interactive web applications that provide a

    method whereby parts within a Web page may be updated, using new information

    obtained over the network at a later time in response to user actions. This allows the

    page to be more responsive, interactive and interesting, without the user having to

    wait for whole-page reloads. Ajax is seen as an important aspect of what is being

    called Web 2.0. Examples of Ajax techniques currently in use can be seen in Gmail,

    Google Maps, and other dynamic Web applications.

    Publishing Web pages

    Web page production is available to individuals outside the mass media. In order to

    publish a Web page, one does not have to go through a publisher or other media

    institution, and potential readers could be found in all corners of the globe.

    Many different kinds of information are available on the Web, and for those who wish

    to know other societies, cultures, and peoples, it has become easier.

    The increased opportunity to publish materials is observable in the countless personal

    and social networking pages, as well as sites by families, small shops, etc., facilitated

    by the emergence of free Web hosting services.

    Statistics

    According to a 2001 study, there were massively more than 550 billion documents on

    the Web, mostly in the invisible Web, or deep Web.[34] A 2002 survey of 2,024 million

    Web pages[35] determined that by far the most Web content was in English: 56.4%;

    next were pages in German (7.7%), French (5.6%), and Japanese (4.9%). A more

    recent study, which used Web searches in 75 different languages to sample the Web,

    determined that there were over 11.5 billion Web pages in the publicly indexable Web

    as of the end of January 2005.[36] As of June 2008, the indexable web contains at

    least 63 billion pages.[37] On July 25, 2008, Google software engineers Jesse Alpert

    and Nissan Hajaj announced that Google Search had discovered one trillion unique

    URLs.[38]

    Over 100.1 million websites operated as of March 2008.[39] Of these 74% were

    commercial or other sites operating in the .com generic top-level domain.[39]

    Speed issues

    Frustration over congestion issues in the Internet infrastructure and the high latency

    that results in slow browsing has led to an alternative, pejorative name for the World

    Wide Web: the World Wide Wait.[citation needed] Speeding up the Internet is an

    ongoing discussion over the use of peering and QoS technologies. Other solutions to

    reduce the World Wide Wait can be found on W3C.

    Standard guidelines for ideal Web response times are:[40]

    * 0.1 second (one tenth of a second). Ideal response time. The user doesn't sense

    any interruption.
    * 1 second. Highest acceptable response time. Download times above 1 second

    interrupt the user experience.
    * 10 seconds. Unacceptable response time. The user experience is interrupted and

    the user is likely to leave the site or system.

    These numbers are useful for planning server capacity.

    Caching

    If a user revisits a Web page after only a short interval, the page data may not need to

    be re-obtained from the source Web server. Almost all Web browsers cache

    recently-obtained data, usually on the local hard drive. HTTP requests sent by a

    browser will usually only ask for data that has changed since the last download. If the

    locally-cached data are still current, it will be reused.

    Caching helps reduce the amount of Web traffic on the Internet. The decision about

    expiration is made independently for each downloaded file, whether image, stylesheet,

    JavaScript, HTML, or whatever other content the site may provide. Thus even on sites

    with highly dynamic content, many of the basic resources only need to be refreshed

    occasionally. Web site designers find it worthwhile to collate resources such as CSS

    data and JavaScript into a few site-wide files so that they can be cached efficiently.

    This helps reduce page download times and lowers demands on the Web server.

    There are other components of the Internet that can cache Web content. Corporate and

    academic firewalls often cache Web resources requested by one user for the benefit of

    all. (See also Caching proxy server.) Some search engines, such as Google or Yahoo!,

    also store cached content from websites.

    Apart from the facilities built into Web servers that can determine when files have

    been updated and so need to be re-sent, designers of dynamically-generated Web

    pages can control the HTTP headers sent back to requesting users, so that transient or

    sensitive pages are not cached. Internet banking and news sites frequently use this

    facility.

    Data requested with an HTTP 'GET' is likely to be cached if other conditions are met;

    data obtained in response to a 'POST' is assumed to depend on the data that was

    POSTed and so is not cached.

    Link rot and Web archival

    Main article: Link rot

    Over time, many Web resources pointed to by hyperlinks disappear, relocate, or are

    replaced with different content. This phenomenon is referred to in some circles as "link

    rot" and the hyperlinks affected by it are often called "dead links".

    The ephemeral nature of the Web has prompted many efforts to archive Web sites. The

    Internet Archive is one of the most well-known efforts; it has been active since 1996.

    Academic conferences

    The major academic event covering the Web is the World Wide Web Conference,

    promoted by IW3C2.

    WWW prefix in Web addresses

    The letters "www" are commonly found at the beginning of Web addresses because of

    the long-standing practice of naming Internet hosts (servers) according to the services

    they provide. So for example, the host name for a Web server is often "www"; for an

    FTP server, "ftp"; and for a USENET news server, "news" or "nntp" (after the news

    protocol NNTP). These host names appear as DNS subdomain names, as in

    "www.mrfweb.we.bs".

    This use of such prefixes is not required by any technical standard; indeed, the first

    Web server was at "nxoc01.cern.ch",[41] and even today many Web sites exist without

    a "www" prefix. The "www" prefix has no meaning in the way the main Web site is

    shown. The "www" prefix is simply one choice for a Web site's host name.

    However, some website addresses require the www. prefix, and if typed without one,

    won't work; there are also some which must be typed without the prefix. Sites that do

    not have Host Headers properly setup are the cause of this. Some hosting companies

    do not setup a www or @ A record in the web server configuration and/or at the DNS

    server level.

    Some Web browsers will automatically try adding "www." to the beginning, and

    possibly ".com" to the end, of typed URLs if no host is found without them. All major

    web browsers will also prefix "http://www.mrfweb.we.bs/" and append ".com" to the

    address bar contents if the Control and Enter keys are pressed simultaneously. For

    example, entering "example" in the address bar and then pressing either Enter or

    Control+Enter will usually resolve to "http://www.mrfweb.we.bs", depending on the

    exact browser version and its settings.
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    Web server

    1. HTTP: every web server program operates by accepting HTTP requests from the

    client, and providing an HTTP response to the client. The HTTP response usually

    consists of an HTML document, but can also be a raw file, an image, or some other

    type of document (defined by MIME-types). If some error is found in client request or

    while trying to serve it, a web server has to send an error response which may include

    some custom HTML or text messages to better explain the problem to end users.
    2. Logging: usually web servers have also the capability of logging some detailed

    information, about client requests and server responses, to log files; this allows the

    webmaster to collect statistics by running log analyzers on these files.

    In practice many web servers implement the following features also:

    1. Authentication, optional authorization request (request of user name and

    password) before allowing access to some or all kind of resources.
    2. Handling of static content (file content recorded in server's filesystem(s)) and

    dynamic content by supporting one or more related interfaces (SSI, CGI, SCGI, FastCGI,

    JSP, PHP, ASP, ASP.NET, Server API such as NSAPI, ISAPI, etc.).
    3. HTTPS support (by SSL or TLS) to allow secure (encrypted) connections to the

    server on the standard port 443 instead of usual port 80.
    4. Content compression (i.e. by gzip encoding) to reduce the size of the responses

    (to lower bandwidth usage, etc.).
    5. Virtual hosting to serve many web sites using one IP address.
    6. Large file support to be able to serve files whose size is greater than 2 GB on 32

    bit OS.
    7. Bandwidth throttling to limit the speed of responses in order to not saturate the

    network and to be able to serve more clients.

    Origin of returned content

    The origin of the content sent by server is called:

    * static if it comes from an existing file lying on a filesystem;
    * dynamic if it is dynamically generated by some other program or script or

    application programming interface (API) called by the web server.

    Serving static content is usually much faster (from 2 to 100 times) than serving

    dynamic content, especially if the latter involves data pulled from a database.

    Path translation

    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.

    Consider the following URL as it would be requested by a client:

    http://www.mrfweb.we.bs/index.html

    The client's web browser will translate it into a connection to www.example.com with

    the following HTTP 1.1 request:

    GET /path/file.html HTTP/1.1
    Host: www.mrfweb.we.bs

    The web server on www.mrfweb.we.bs will append the given path to the path of its

    root directory. On Unix machines, this is commonly /var/www. The result is the local

    file system resource:

    /var/www/path/file.html

    The web server will then read the file, if it exists, and send a response to the client's

    web browser. The response will describe the content of the file and contain the file

    itself. ..........

    Load limits

    A web server (program) has defined load limits, because it can handle only a limited

    number of concurrent client connections (usually between 2 and 60,000, by default

    between 500 and 1,000) per IP address (and TCP port) and it can serve only a certain

    maximum number of requests per second depending on:

    * its own settings;
    * the HTTP request type;
    * content origin (static or dynamic);
    * the fact that the served content is or is not cached;
    * the hardware and software limits of the OS where it is working.

    When a web server is near to or over its limits, it becomes overloaded and thus

    unresponsive.

    Overload causes
    A daily graph of a web server's load, indicating a spike in the load early in the day.

    At any time web servers can be overloaded because of:

    * Too much legitimate web traffic (i.e. thousands or even millions of clients hitting

    the web site in a short interval of time. e.g. Slashdot effect);
    * DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks;
    * Computer worms that sometimes cause abnormal traffic because of millions of

    infected computers (not coordinated among them);
    * XSS viruses can cause high traffic because of millions of infected browsers and/or

    web servers;
    * Internet web robots traffic not filtered/limited on large web sites with very few

    resources (bandwidth, etc.);
    * Internet (network) slowdowns, so that client requests are served more slowly and

    the number of connections increases so much that server limits are reached;
    * Web servers (computers) partial unavailability, this can happen because of

    required or urgent maintenance or upgrade, HW or SW failures, back-end (i.e. DB)

    failures, etc.; in these cases the remaining web servers get too much traffic and

    become overloaded.

    Overload symptoms

    The symptoms of an overloaded web server are:

    * requests are served with (possibly long) delays (from 1 second to a few hundred

    seconds);
    * 500, 502, 503, 504 HTTP errors are returned to clients (sometimes also unrelated

    404 error or even 408 error may be returned);
    * TCP connections are refused or reset (interrupted) before any content is sent to

    clients;
    * in very rare cases, only partial contents are sent (but this behavior may well be

    considered a bug, even if it usually depends on unavailable system resources).

    Anti-overload techniques

    To partially overcome above load limits and to prevent overload, most popular web

    sites use common techniques like:

    * managing network traffic, by using:
    o Firewalls to block unwanted traffic coming from bad IP sources or having bad

    patterns;
    o HTTP traffic managers to drop, redirect or rewrite requests having bad HTTP

    patterns;
    o Bandwidth management and traffic shaping, in order to smooth down peaks in

    network usage;
    * deploying web cache techniques;
    * using different domain names to serve different (static and dynamic) content by

    separate Web servers, i.e.:
    o

    http://images.mrfweb.we.bs/
    o

    http://www.mrfweb.we.bs/

    * using different domain names and/or computers to separate big files from small

    and medium sized files; the idea is to be able to fully cache small and medium sized

    files and to efficiently serve big or huge (over 10 - 1000 MB) files by using different

    settings;
    * using many Web servers (programs) per computer, each one bound to its own

    network card and IP address;
    * using many Web servers (computers) that are grouped together so that they act or

    are seen as one big Web server, see also: Load balancer;
    * adding more hardware resources (i.e. RAM, disks) to each computer;
    * tuning OS parameters for hardware capabilities and usage;
    * using more efficient computer programs for web servers, etc.;
    * using other workarounds, especially if dynamic content is involved.

    Historical notes
    The world's first web server.

    In 1989 Tim Berners-Lee proposed to his employer CERN (European Organization for

    Nuclear Research) a new project, which had the goal of easing the exchange of

    information between scientists by using a hypertext system. As a result of the

    implementation of this project, in 1990 Berners-Lee wrote two programs:

    * a browser called WorldWideWeb;
    * the world's first web server, later known as CERN HTTPd, which ran on NeXTSTEP.

    Between 1991 and 1994 the simplicity and effectiveness of early technologies used to

    surf and exchange data through the World Wide Web helped to port them to many

    different operating systems and spread their use among lots of different social groups

    of people, first in scientific organizations, then in universities and finally in industry.

    In 1994 Tim Berners-Lee decided to constitute the World Wide Web Consortium to

    regulate the further development of the many technologies involved (HTTP, HTML, etc.)

    through a standardization process.

    The following years are recent history which has seen an exponential growth of the

    number of web sites and servers.

    Market structure

    Given below is a list of top Web server software vendors published in a Netcraft survey

    in September 2008.
    Vendor Product Web Sites Hosted Percent
    Apache Apache 91,068,713 50.24%
    Microsoft IIS 62,364,634 34.4%
    Google GWS 10,072,687 5.56%
    lighttpd lighttpd 3,095,928 1.71%
    nginx nginx 2,562,554 1.41%
    Oversee Oversee 1,938,953 1.07%
    Others - 10,174,366 5.61%
    Total - 181,277,835 100.00%


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