Socialism us alive and well on the Internet and getting things for free is what it’s all about. From videos to software, music to movies the web has created a culture of creative freedom where people feel they are entitled to get content for free. Why fight it? Produce great content and give it away, let people enjoy your works and make your fortune by building a strong loyal fan base.

Be Proud of Your Website

A website is a reflection of you and your business, if you’re not proud of it you have a serious problem and it’s time to get it redesigned. You might not be able to afford the best sign in town or the fanciest location but building a great website is all about time, so make sure that you’ve built (or had built) a website that you can be proud to point people to.

Learn from the Best

I don’t care if you hate Apple or love them, you can own a million iPod’s or have no idea what an iPod is but if you’re going to be on the Internet, learn from them. Apple has more money in the bank than you do, accept it … they’re better at this game. Why are they so good? They design easy to navigate, easy to buy products that simply work.

Just Say No to 404’s

Of all the things that a website owner can avoid, it’s 404 errors (Page Not Found errors). In fact, if your website has a 404 error, fire your entire web team because they’re incompetent. I’m not kidding, fix your website by getting rid of dead weight. A 404 error is the equivalent of your CFO forgetting a decimal or your sale manager mis-handling the spouse of your biggest account, it shows sheer unadulterated incompetence.

Google Analytics

Some people don’t even know what Analytics is. Guess what, reading this has already made your website more successful because it’s made you aware that there are measurements you can use to judge your success. I once had a very successful friend tell me that without up to date statistics about a company you can’t make money because you’re only guessing. The same is true for website and Google Analytics delivers the most comprehensive summary of who is visiting you, what they look at, where they’re coming from and when they left that you’ll ever find on the web.

Start Your Own TV Station

Upload videos to your website, it should be quick and easy and even if they’re just simple slideshows or animations you’d be surprised how amazing the reaction will be! People let to connect and get past technology, they want to hear real people talk about solutions and video offers a great medium to help them.

Talk About Your Website

Step one, make sure your website is on every business card and letterhead in the office, put it on your company van, make a jingle out of it on the local radio stations and then move onto step two. Put it in your email signature, in your PDF documents and post it to every blog, forum and news website in the tri-state area that’ll let you talk about your great website.

Forget SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, it’s a scam and should be avoided. You know what will get you noticed in the search engines? Great content, amazing information and quality products. SEO is icing on the cake, but even if you can trick a million people to come to your website, they still won’t buy from you.

Use WordPress

Forget everything else that you’ve ever heard or read about websites and simply install WordPress to run your website. It takes the technical out of technology and makes updating a website a snap. I’m not going to pretend that it makes it fun but it makes it easy and all too often the real holdup in a company’s online marketing drive is too few IT resources so spread the love, WordPress makes it so easy to update your site that even the CEO will be doing.

Learn about the Internet

Something that truly surprises me about the Internet is how many people are trying to build businesses online without understanding the first thing about it. At the bare minimum, before you start buying into the hype ask yourself … if it’s so easy to make money on the web, how come people like me still have day jobs?

Add a Blog

Why would somebody come back to your website if you’ve never updated it? Adding a blog gives your staff somewhere to write about your cool toys, business products and awesome corporate structure. Let project managers become evangelists for your wares, help your helpdesk answer questions before the phone rings and engage the public in meaningful debates.

Put Out a Press Release

Thousands of journalists around the world are all looking for a fresh story or a new angle on an old story, whenever possible put out a press release to promote your business and bring in a crowd.

Fix Your Navigation

Now that you’re using something awesome like Google Analytics to see where people are going, start rearranging your website to meet their needs. Get rid of everything that distracts people from your business objectives, focus their attention on your areas of interest (sales & service) and move all the rest (about the company, history, blah blah blah) to the bottom of your website.

Google Web Master Tools

No list of website tips would be complete without mentioning Google’s amazing Web Master Tools. It’s not enough for Google to be the greatest search engine in the world, they have to go and make it super easy for people like us to use it too! Web Master Tools is just that, a comprehensive technical overview of your website showing you exactly what Google sees, how it indexes and what errors it’s discovered about your website. Think if it as a weekly punch to the ego, it’ll always knock the wind out of you but if you learn from it, you’ll be stronger.

Stop Thinking of the Web as a Technology

Far too often, too many companies leave their website to people with IT backgrounds and forget that it has nothing to do with technology. Load your website up and honestly ask yourself if it’s speaking to your customers or if it’s jammed with techno-trash. Remember, the web is a medium just like TV and radio.

Deep Link

Who’s going to bother linking to articles on your website if you don’t bother linking to them yourself? Take the time to link to articles on your website, if you’re talking about templates link to One night in Paris. If you’re discussing the finer points of PHP, link to your article about it! If it was good enough to write, it should be good enough to link to.

Learn One Thing About the Web Every Week

Look, the web is a really big thing and nobody will ever know everything, especially if it’s not your only job but every week you should try to learn a little something about it. Get out of your safety net, go to Google Blogs and type in a subject you know nothing about and start reading! Before you know it, you’ll be making movies, uploading to YouTube, added to Fanzine’s and blogging about botany! Trust me when I tell you the web is a really cool place but you can’t expect to make your website better if you don’t drown yourself in it.

Make it Work on All Devices

Why keep your website simple? So that it works on all the devices you can imagine! My hometown had a restaurant when I was a kid, the owners put in a wheelchair ramp and I remember asking my father why they did that, the owners could walk fine … he told me that they put it in because nobody else it town had one, so every Mothers’ day, elderly birthday dinner, wedding and Friday night it was packed with people who couldn’t get into other restaurants in town.

Let them Contact You

Add your email, phone number, mailing address and other contact details to every page. Don’t be shy, your website is there to market you. Afraid of SPAM? Don’t be, look my email address is info@thisismyurl.com. It’s published all over my website, on thousands of pages that get hundreds of thousands of visits … don’t fear SPAM, just know how to avoid it.

Update it Daily

A website isn’t a ‘fire and forget’ project, if there’s one thing that you take away from this posting take away the fact that a website is a full time investment, it’s like a separate franchise location of your business and it needs full time management by a marketing professional.

Remember, your website is the first place people come to look when they have a question and often the last place you think about updating.

OK, I gotta get back to work and finish a great new website for a jewelry store, a personal coach, a small restaurant and of course more work on the Great Chefs!

A while back, I mentioned that I went down to New Orleans to help a friend out on his website and since early April, I’ve been consumed with the Great Chefs website, it’s not completely finished yet and I’m sure there will be many changes over the coming months but I wanted to share the progress with you and explain some of the choices so that other restaurants and chefs could see how the Internet can be better utilized for their business.

Rich Search Engine Friendly Content

For those who are regular readers of my blog, you know that I’m a huge fan of content. In fact, I don’t believe there’s anything more important on a website and when it comes to making a website successful, content truly is king.

SEO Features

Search Engine Optimization isn’t about tricking Google, it’s about helping Google understand what’s on your website and that’s exactly what we do with Great Chefs. Take for example the recipe page, this page has been carefully designed to contain significant value for Google and other search engines without taking away from the value of the page for the reader. In fact, the page was designed to provide the reader with quality navigation before worrying what Google found.

This is the true strength of a website, serving the needs of the user, your customers while ensuring the information is easily read and understood by popular search engines. The Great Chefs website includes SEO tactics hidden from the general public but optimized for search engines including:

1. automated sitemap.xml creation and optimization which helps major search engines find deep pages it might otherwise miss;
2. automated notification services to major search engines of page updates, additions and changes to the structure of the website which ensures an accurate listing on engines;
3. creation and maintenance of META data tags for search engines including the powerful META description and META keyword tags for all pages;
4. optimized nofollow and noindex META data for duplicate content to avoid being penalized for content appearing in multiple areas;
5. W3C compliant xHTML 1.0 publishing structure;
6. canonical URL’s to indicate content which appears on Great Chefs website as original
7. enforced www. to ensure all pages are only indexed on the main (www.greatchefs.com) domain, not a secondary domain such as greatchefs.com.

In addition to these hidden tactics for optimizing the website, the pages also feature a wide variety of tactics clearly visible to users of the website.

1. rich pages with links to free giveaways, each containing descriptive titles and appropriate attributes (rel, title, href);
2. proper use of the HTML <title> tag to inform search engines that a webpage is about specific items. For example, Bermuda Wahoo and Lentils with Foie Gras as a title;
3. use of attractive website addresses such as http://www.greatchefs.com/bananas-foster-bread-pudding/ instead of http://www.greatchefs.com/?p=4507 to help visitors find content;
4. proper use of the <h1> and <h2> heading tags to ensure the webpage structure is clear to both visitors and search engine robots;
5. deep linking from products and free giveaways to similar content on the website, designed to help users locate items of interest;
6. inclusion of a comprehensive sitemap for visitors to locate content easily;
7. an easy to use search tool, providing easy access to all areas of the website

Promoted Content

Beyond simply deep linking content (the process of ensuring pages other than your homepage are linked to), I also wanted to highlight and feature the great programs Great Chefs Television has created over the years and add some distinct color to the pages. To accomplish this, I added a special highlighted content at the bottom of the pages. This area is automatically generated each time a page is cached (we’ll get the that in a moment) and randomly selects three products from the store, tests to see if there is a featured graphic and displays it along with a text description. This way, each webpage has a different collection of three great TV shows at the bottom, giving both users and search engines the ability to find distinctly different content.

Interlinked Content

One of the things which pleased me most about the way the Great Chefs website turned out is it’s ability to automatically link and re-link content from other areas of the website. For example, the free daily videos are linked from both the easily accessible free cooking videos page as well as each individual series.

This allows visitors to quickly locate videos which have been published from a given series (for example, Great Chefs Great Cities) to determine if they would like to buy the series similar to how the video game industry would let you download a free trial version.

Free Recipes

With over 700 amazing chefs in the Great Chefs family, the television program has thousands of award winning recipes and books to share with the world. Every day, the people at Great Chefs select three wonderful recipes from their archives and post them for free on the website.

To make sure you never miss a great free recipe, I’ve built in a number of tools:

Subscribing to Great Chefs

To help ensure people have access to all our great free recipes,  the website automatically published the latest recipe links to both Facebook and Twitter. If you’re familiar with RSS readers or have an email account, you can also receive free daily updates to the recipes via email subscription or RSS feeds hosted by Google.

Free Videos

What kind of television station would put up a website and not give away free, award winning cooking shows? Every day, Great Chefs posts two recipes from their hit TV show directly to YouTube where fans can subscribe to be kept up to date and watch the program in High Quality.

You can also receive notifications via Facebook and Twitter, email subscription or RSS feeds. In fact, if you really want to make the most of the Great Chefs Television free videos, you can even subscribe to the service on your iPhone or iPod via the iTunes store or the PodCast service!

Chef Biographies

With over 700 chefs appearing in 2,100 series episodes and hundreds of more specials the Great Chefs website is home to biographies on the vast majority of the chefs who have graced the television program. Of course no index is complete, so if you know any links or projects these Great Chefs are involved in, why not comment on their profiles!

Blog

Each area of the website, including the videos, recipes and biographies includes the ability for visitors to leave comments and links to related content. Soon, the website will also feature a daily blog for those interested in cooking shows and the industry as a whole.

DVD Store

Perhaps the most important part of the website is the store. While most people never reach the sales pages of the Great Chefs store, it’s critical that visitors are made aware of the fact it’s possible to purchase the product. Simply put, while you can watch the show for free online the purpose on the website is to sell DVD’s.

With that in mind, each free DVD (or recipe) page has been designed to offer links to the DVD from which it was created and the homepage of the website is set to promote the DVD’s upon each visit.

On the DVD pages themselves, navigation makes it easy to purchase the discs as either a complete set or individual items, with the focus being on ensuring customers are able to purchase online using Googles secure checkout system or via a toll free telephone number.

Each collection shows a 3D rendered collection of exactly what customers can expect to receive in their order, including an accurate depiction of the number of discs in the set. Since it is possible to also order each disc as an individual item, the recipes included on each disc are listed for visitors to choose from.

Google Integration

One of the major differences between the Great Chefs project and many other previous websites that I’ve worked on is the level of Google integration that I went with on this particular project. In addition to ensuring the Webmaster Tools was fully supported by the website, we’re also using:

1. Google Analytics to provide daily tracking of website traffic, page testing and optimization settings;
2. Google Feedburner to provide easy access to daily RSS and email subscriptions
3. Google AdWords with integration with Analytics to promote and market the website;
4. Google AdSense to sell advertising in the footer of most pages as well as on free content located throughout the website;
5. Google Checkout for online shopping cart integration and to offer a fast, safe and secure means to order online;
6. Google GMail to host the email for the Great Chefs web domain and finally;
7. YouTube to host the video files displayed on the website

Automation

Running a website is hard work, in fact it’s not just time consuming it’s also extremely technical and the great people at Great Chefs Television all have tons of work to do already without having to learn about Search Engine Optimization, Organic Marketing, keyword density and all the other things that make promoting a website successful. That’s why the vast majority of the website is completely automated.

Easy Updates

Knowing that the team at Great Chefs do amazing work on their television series, I wanted to ensure they had the ability to do the same on their website without having to make any of them learn extensive HTML programming. To do this, I used the powerful WordPress content management tool to build a robust solution capable of serving their needs while making it easy for them to update content.

Fast Pages

A website is useless if it’s not fast, that’s why the website makes the most of caching technology to rapidly build and store dynamically generated content. Instead of rebuilding the webpage each time a visitor comes to the site, the Great Chefs website rebuilds the pages only when needed.

Service Integration

When the staff of Great Chefs updates their website, it automatically generates Email and RSS updates for people who are subscribed, as well as informing Twitter and Facebook of the recent changes. Podcasts and Apple iTunes are automatically updated within minutes of fresh videos being posted to YouTube. This ensures that quality content is distributed to all areas of Great Chefs, without having to spend countless hours reproducing the same content in multiple sources.

The Future of Great Chefs

Over the next few months, there will be a lot of great new features added to the Great Chefs website, I hope you’ll join me in supporting the wonderful television series and as always I would love to hear your feedback and suggestions for improving the website!

Already acclaimed by the players and press ** – IGN, 9/10, Editor’s Choice Award: ?A thrilling action game loaded with cinematic flair?, ?Make it one of your next downloads.? – PocketGamer, 8/10, Silver Award: ?One of the best iPhone games of the year.? – SlideToPlay, 4/4 Must Have: ?Great gameplay, innovative controls, high replay value, fun!? You are King Argos, Spartan hero who?s unafraid of defying the gods themselves. Take up the maddest challenge in this colossal full-3D odyssey! Let this epic action game take you from the depths of the Underworld to the summit of Olympus: be prepared for hours of gaming and visual enjoyment.

Plunge into the heart of action:

• iPhone-specific controls: move your hero with the virtual analogue stick and unleash his power by performing touch screen combos.
• Total 360• experience: move and fight freely in 3D through the 8 levels and their majestic environments.
• Face legions of enemies and the most phenomenal mythical creatures: Cerberus, the Cyclops and other foes worthy of your strength!
• 5 weapons to upgrade and fabulous items to collect. Draw your faithful sword, axe, bow, or twin blades!

It’s your chance to write your own legend… if you can survive this mythic adventure.

For fans of action and hack ‘n slash games. Other recommended games: Brother In Arms, Wild West Guns.

What else is popular?

• Sally’s Spa – Games Cafe Inc.
• StoneLoops! of Jurassica – PlayCreek
• Flight Control – Firemint
• Family Guy – Fox Mobile Entertainment, Inc.
• F.A.S.T. — Fleet Air Superiority Training! – SGN
• The Moron Test – DistinctDev

This posting is a sponsored post, I try to keep them to a minimum but even us poor bloggers have to pay the bills.

The first thing that you have to know about building a great looking website is that it’s super easy, super cheap and takes almost no time at all. The basics are already stored on your computer, and those basics can be easily put together like a sandwich to build a great website quickly.

Defining your layout

Step one, let’s decide what your new website is going to look like. Surprisingly, most website designs can be boiled down to just a few basic layouts.

Of course there are plenty more than the few I’ve laid out here but for the purpose of our project, I want to keep this simple and selected the first option, a traditional website layout with a header, footer and two columns.

The HTML used to create this basic web page layout is:

<body>
<div id='page'>
<div id='header'>Page Header</div>
<div id='content'>Content</div>
<div id='sidebar'>Sidebar</div>
<div id='footer'>Page Footer</div>
</div>
</body>

Preview Page

To format the page properly we also need to add some basic CSS:

body {
margin: 0px;
padding: 0px;
text-align: center;
}
#page {
width: 800px;
margin-right: auto;
margin-left: auto;
text-align: left;
}
#header {
background-color: #CCCCCC;
clear: both;
height: 100px;
}
#footer {
background-color:#00FFFF;
clear: both;
height: 100px;
}

#sidebar {
background-color:#FFFFCC;
clear: left;
float: left;
width: 200px;
}

#content {
background-color:#ffffff;
clear: right;
float: right;
width: 600px;
}

Preview Page

As you will now see, the page content is placed in the appropriate areas for our website. For those of you who are clever with CSS, you can change to the second layout by changing the flipping the content and sidebar’s clear/float values. Technically, if you look at the HTML for this page, the sidebar appears to the right of the HTML but is formated with CSS to appear on the left, this is a Search Engine Optimization trick to move our content closer to the top of the page.

Designing the Web Page

The  Header

Now that we have a basic layout for our website, we need to add a little bit of flare, to do this we need some color and some texture. The best place to get it? Flickr or other online photo database. In this case, I’m going to use a macro focus pair of blue sneakers from Fey the Ferocious.

What I want to do is use the sneaker photo as both the header and the color scheme for the website, this is make fairly easy since the photo has such rich colors. Let’s get started with the header by adding a title as well as a menu in the code as such:

<div id='header'>
<div id='logo'><strong>Website Name</strong></div>
<div id='menu'>
<ul>
<li><a href="#">Item 1</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Item 2</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Item 3</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Item 4</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>

By adding this simple header structure, we’ve given the HTML everything it needs to build our header. The next step is to add some basic CSS to the file in order to format and structure the piece.

#page {
width: 800px;
margin-right: auto;
margin-left: auto;
text-align: left;
font-family: "Lucida Sans", Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif;
}
#header {
background-color: #CCCCCC;
clear: both;
}

#logo {
background-image: url(3031455100_f5450c9645_b.jpg);
padding-top: 50px;
padding-bottom: 50px;
padding-left: 50px;
background-position: -200px;
font-size: 24px;
color: #FFFFFF;
}

#menu ul {
margin: 0px;
padding: 0px;
list-style-type: none;
}
#menu li {
display: inline;
padding-right: 10px;
}
#menu a {
font-size: 12px;
color: #FFFFFF;
text-decoration: none;
}

Take care to note that I’ve altered the #header and #page format a little to account for the new items, including the fonts I would like to use.

Here’s what my new header will look like:

Preview Page

The Footer

Once the header is completed, I like to work on the footer next. I’m not entirely sure why I do it this way but I find the footer equally important as the header and sometimes it seems to be an after thought on web pages, so I like to address it while I’m still fresh.

The footer has to contain some basic elements such as copyright and links, to accomplish this here’s the HTML code that I’ll use:

<div id='footer'>

<div id='footermenu'>
<ul>
<li><a href="#">Item 1</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Item 2</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Item 3</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Item 4</a></li>
</ul>
</div>

<p>&copy; Copyright 2009, Website Name. All rights reserved.<br />
Header photography by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/renneville/3031455100/">Ferocious Feyrannosaur</a>, <a href="http://www.thisismyurl.com">website design by Christopher Ross.</a><br />
</p>
</div>

The CSS for the footer is equally simple:

#footer {
clear: both;
height: 100px;
font-size: 10px;
color: #666666;
margin-top: 5px;
padding-top: 5px;
border-top-width: 1px;
border-top-style: solid;
border-top-color: #000000;
}
#footermenu ul {
margin: 0px;
padding: 0px;
list-style-type: none;
}
#footermenu li {
display: inline;
padding-right: 10px;
}
#footer a {
color: #666666;
text-decoration: none;
}

Since a footer is the technical, ‘legal’ notes for a website, I make it slightly smaller and lighter as to not distract from the rest of the page. Make note of the changes to the original #footer code as well.

Preview Page

Formating the Sidebar

Before we get into formating the sidebar we need to make sure there is some space to the right of it so that the content doesn’t butt right up against the sidebar content. To do this, we need to add a padding area inside the sidebar along with our new content. To do this, I will add a margin to the boxes we add but first we have to change the basic HTML of the sidebar.

First, let’s add a new division element with the box class and add a level two heading for each, along with a paragraph of test (for now I’ll use Lorem Ipsum) along with the link.

<div id='sidebar'>
<div class="box">
<h2>Item 1</h2>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Praesent orci lectus, iaculis ut ullamcorper id, porttitor ut dui. <a href="#">Item 1</a></p>
</div>
<div class="box">
<h2>Item 2</h2>
<p>Sed eget placerat elit. Curabitur sit amet ullamcorper massa. Donec id viverra dui. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. <a href="#">Item 2</a></p>
</div>
<div class="box">
<h2>Item 3</h2>
<p>Suspendisse in quam ac magna condimentum fringilla sit amet sed orci. Fusce interdum ligula eget mauris imperdiet iaculis. Donec eu auctor turpis. Donec ullamcorper hendrerit urna quis malesuada. <a href="#">Item 3</a></p>
</div>
<div class="box">
<h2>Item 4</h2>
<p>Quisque blandit, ante eu tempus tempus, massa lectus dignissim ipsum, id interdum dolor mauris non mi. Ut in orci turpis, non tincidunt nunc. In placerat diam in sem cursus dictum. Morbi ac urna urna. Ut nulla tellus, gravida a iaculis ut, tempus et odio. <a href="#">Item 4</a></p>
</div>
</div>

Trust me, this looks a lot more complicated than it really is! Take a look …

Now we have to add some CSS to format this content:

#sidebar {
clear: left;
float: left;
width: 200px;
font-size: 10px;
color: #666666;
padding-bottom: 20px;
}
.box {
border-bottom-width: 5px;
border-bottom-style: solid;
border-bottom-color: #CCCCCC;
padding-right: 10px;
margin-right: 10px;
}
.box h2 {
color: #3B4A88;
font-weight: normal;
margin-top: 10px;
margin-bottom: 0px;
padding-top: 10px;
padding-bottom: 0px;
}
.box p {
padding-top: 0px;
padding-bottom: 10px;
margin-top: 0px;
margin-bottom: 10px;
}
.box a {
font-weight: bolder;
color: #3B4A88;
text-decoration: none;
}

Preview Page

The Content

Finally, to complete the webpage we have to add some content. Again, I’ll rely on Lorem Ipsum for the purpose of putting some quick content into the website, you can add your own text later.

Preview Page

There are not a lot of major changes to the content in this design, if it was a client project I’d add a sizable number of CSS modifications in order to format the pages but as a demo of how to quickly design a quality website I think it’s pretty good.

You can look at the website with CSS as well as a version with no CSS to give you an idea of the changes. You’re also welcome to download the source code and use this website template as a basis for your own website.

You might also want to check out a couple simple variations to this theme:

• Larger inline image
• Content to the left, Sidebar to the right

I’ve upgraded my Get Better Excerpt plugin this morning to include a cool new feature, now you can retrieve a complete sentence instead of a series of words for your WordPress excerpts.

To return a single sentence:

get_better_excerpt(’sentence=1′);

For two sentences:

get_better_excerpt(’sentence=2′);

Of course, you can also combine this with other options:

get_better_excerpt(’sentence=2&link=true’);

What is Web Hosting?

To understand what web hosting is, you need to understand that a website has a few key elements:

The Domain Name

This is the easily understood name that you share with people such as thisismyurl.com, thingsidoformoney.com, gamesgarrison.com etc. The domain name is the part of the website that we type into a web browser’s address bar to access the website. Generally a domain name costs between $7.95 and $15.95 per year, depending upon who you register with.

The Website

A website is the part of the process which visitors see, it’s generally a series of pages that make up a marketing or application package. Websites are scripted in a language called the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) and are stored as a series of files very similar to how you would store a collection of Word or spreadsheet files on your local computer. These files are simply placed in a directory on a hard drive, which is accessed by a special software application called a web browser.

Web Hosting

Now that we can appreciate a website is simply a series of specially formated documents, we can appreciate that we need to store those documents somewhere for everybody around the world to look at. In most small offices there is a shared directory which allows people from all departments to store files for others in the office to view. In larger companies, we make use of remote file sharing which allows users in one location to share files with users in countless other locations, this is what web hosting is all about.

Your website, which is a series of files and folders, is uploading to a hard drive connected to the Internet and shared for millions to access and see. The website uses a special piece of software called a Web Server to serve both static (HTML) and dynamic (PHP / ASP) pages to your visitors.

The key characteristics of a quality web host are:

• Connection Speed - How long will it take to load the website, this is a key factor as people will leave slow websites.
• CPU Speed – For websites using CMS tools such as WordPress, a fast processor will help load pages quicker, just like a faster computer will load Word documents quicker.
• Reliability – Sometimes referred to as “Site Up Time” this factor represents how often a website is offline for maintenance or because of hardware/software failures.
• Storage Capacity - How big can your website be? Most websites are only  five MB (Mega Bytes), or a couple floppy discs in size.
• Transfer Bandwidth – How many times can your website be transfered to customers in a given month? Remember, each page your website contains has a weight or file size. Each time that file (and all the graphics are transfered) it consumes part of your transfer allowance.

Web Hosting Costs

Now that we understand some of the basics of web hosting, let’s take a look at some of the pricing options available for customers:

GoDaddy Hosting

Economy – 10 GB Space, 300 GB Transfer – $4.84 per month
Deluxe –  150 GB Space, 1,500 GB Transfer – $6.79 per month
Unlimited – $14.95 per month

BlueHost Hosting

Unlimited – $6.95 per month

Bell Aliant

Standard – 1 GB Space, 192 GB transfer – $14.95 per month
Marketer – 3 GB Spage, 288 GB trasfter - $24.95 per month

The No More Frames plugin for WordPress is an awesome plugin that helps websites avoid spam and content theft by breaking the frame when other websites attempt to load content into a frame based web browser.

You can download the upgraded plugin here.

Before I design a website for somebody, especially if I’m sitting down with a restaurant to talk about design a website for a restaurant or hotel, there’s something pretty basic that I try to figure out about my potential partner (building a website is more like a partnership to me), do they have the slightest clue what people really buy? Most of the time, they simply don’t.Read More

Treat yourself to some relaxation and fast paced fun in Sally’s Spa and see why millions of players have made Sally?s Spa the best selling casual game for PC/Mac and now it?s available for your iPhone and iPod Touch!

Sally’s back and ready for a relaxing rush in luxury spa locations around the world. Refresh your customers with saunas, manicures, bath bombs, massages, hot stones and more. Enhance the experience of your clients with upgrades for your rapidly growing business.

Melt away the stress from a wide variety of customers and personalities including blushing brides, demanding fashionistas, calm couples, and many others! As you build your Spas, earn money to shop for over 65 items including employees to help your Spa business grow!

Sally’s Spa features all of the fun of Sally’s Salon, plus loads of new surprises! A wonderful escape for gamers of all ages, join Sally on her latest adventure today!

F E A T U R E S:
? Use your finger to touch and drag your customers to your Spa stations such as Saunas, Massage Tables, Mani-Pedi stations and serve them Tea to help them relax and refresh.

? Many fun spa services to play as Mini Games like Mud Masks, Hot Stones, Bath Bombs, Massages, Manicures & much more!

? It?s not just about massaging your customers, they need extra products like Body Butter and Calming Bath salts too! Maximize your product sales buy getting more soothing products for your shelf.

? Buy powerups to keep those clients happy! After all, how do you calm down a Fashionista? With a patience candle of course!

? As you travel from New York, Paris, Rome, Japan, Fiji and many more places you will meet many character personalities like Rock Stars, Heiresses, Male Models, Athletes and more!

? With 50 Levels and 10 beautiful locations around the world you get hours upon hours of fun!

Highly recommended for fans of time management games such as Sally?s Salon, Supermarket Mania, Diner Dash & Cake Mania.

At Games Cafe we worked hard to make Sally?s Spa the best game possible. We really hope that you enjoy this game and tell your friends and family! :)

What else is popular?

This posting is a sponsored post, I try to keep them to a minimum but even us poor bloggers have to pay the bills.

1. The Essential Role of Marketing in Working for Good | Intent.com – call it healing or spiritual or what you’d like but sometimes it’s good to read positive stories instead of bad news all the time.
2. Cigarette Makers: Major Marketing Changes
3. Internet Marketing or Search Engine Optimization
4. 10 Essential Features Of Internet Marketing Courses
5. Facebook & Marketing Your MLM – I hate MLM but I like this article, go figure.
6. Marketing your Music with Topspin – This is a cool look at how to use Topspin for bands
7. Maria’s Art Blog – I like this one a lot because it reminds us that marketing yourself on the Internet should be easy, Maria doesn’t complicate her website but it does exactly what she needs it to.
8. Why Twitter is a Great CPA Marketing Tool
9. Search Engine Positioning
10. Music Business: Starting and Marketing a Music Record Label – I’d always wanted to start a music label but alas, I have no talent
11. Digital Video Marketing
12. Quebec is proposing a marketing board for its timber – I’ll admit it’s a good article but it made the list because now I’m whistling classic Montey Python as well.
13. The Different Types Of Affiliate Marketing – this is why I love searching for random articles. This one actually taught me things I’d never considered
14. Search Engine Marketing
15. Barter for Cash
16. Guide To Effective Internet Marketing Courses
17. Effective Internet Marketing Video Training
18. Anyone Can Make Money Online With Internet Marketing
19. Real Easy SEO
20. How To Make Money With Network Marketing
21. How to Use the Power of Article Marketing – Article marketing is one of those areas of promotion that’s often overlooked but always a powerful tool
22. Multi Level Marketing – the problem with MLM is that it works, frankly I can’t stand it (smells fishy to me) but I do learn a lot from reading about it.
23. Website Marketing For New Webmasters
24. The Affiliate Marketing Formula That Works Best Right Now
25. The Price of Internet Marketing Products is Highly Exaggerated – an interesting look at the market.

These days every hotel needs to be keenly aware of how to market themselves online and the first rule is keywords. If you don’t know the first thing about keywords, don’t worry you’re not alone and that’s your key strength because very few people in the hospitality industry are taking the time to use effective keywords in their online marketing.

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Greg Badros has joined Facebook, he’s the crazy cat that build AdSense in the first place so this could spell some significant changes for the Facebook ad system. There’s a nice write-up on alternatives to the AdSense system as well as well as a good summary article on using AdSense.

Langham hotel in Honk Kong recently attempted to market their properties by distributing a video depicting the hotel as a sanctuary from the dirty, rude locals of the city. Posting viral videos on popular websites as YouTube can always backfire, and I think this is a perfect example of what not to do if you’d like to increase tourism in your city!

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Want to be a Peggle Master? Take your best shot! Shoot and clear all the orange pegs in the peg-busting phenomenon from the makers of the award-winning Bejeweled�! You?ll reach Extreme Fever as 10 outlandish Masters help you rise to Peggle greatness. Conquer 55 levels and wield 10 Magic Powers in Adventure mode? and the fun is just getting started! Put your skills to the ultimate test with 40 challenges as you rack up bonus points and score style shots you?ll smile about for weeks. Face off against friends and family in Duel mode. It?s an epic blend of luck and skill that msnbc.com calls one of the ?Top 5 most addictive video games of all time!? Game Features ?Master 55 levels and 40 Grand Master challenges ?Pick your level in Quick Play or Challenge mode with a flick of your finger ?All new Extreme Precision wheel ? fine-tune your aiming for masterful shots ?Cool new style shots (like Off the Wall, Double Long Shot, and Eye of the Pyramid) for racking up more bonus points ?New Trophy Room ? revel in your growing collection of trophies ?Save and replay your hottest shots ?Play friends and family in Duel Mode ?Fully optimized for the iPhone and iPod Touch ?Listen to your own music while you play! Coming soon – update that will add all the great Peggle music that you’ve been asking for! Also try Bookworm for iPhone/iPod touch – it could be the best version of Bookworm ever!

What else is popular?

This posting is a sponsored post, I try to keep them to a minimum but even us poor bloggers have to pay the bills.

Need help making your website super friendly? Why not drop me a line and find out about pricing for me to help? I’m a sucker for a great website and I’m always looking for new web design projects. You can check out some of my portfolio items here, or here or my new website all about building fast, cheap websites.

Remember the old saying Content is King? Well, nowhere is it more true than here on the Internet and in particular when it comes to a special kind on online marketing called Organic Marketing.

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