Getting Cheap Domain Registration

With the phenomenal growth of the Internet, information access and other communication has been made a simple thing. How information stored in the online world? They are interlinked to form a huge web thus World Wide Web. The way we access this information is by giving particular location or address to our software or in simpler terms, transport. The last part of this address is the domain that has been assigned to that particular section of information or web site.

So what exactly is a domain? A name that is entered into a computer (e.g. as part of a Web site or other URL, or an e-mail address) and then looked up in the global Domain Name System, which informs the computer of the IP address (The exact coded location of the information on the net) with that name.

Every domain name ends in a top-level domain (TLD) name, which is always either one of a small list of generic names three or more characters, (com, net and org) or a two characters territory code (ca) based on ISO-3166 (there are few exceptions and new codes are integrated case by case). We need to understand that although the I CAN or Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has the overall management of all the domains. Governments of each country manage all of the domains in each.

Why is it important? Without a domain like dot com, dot net and dot info it is impossible to own web sites and e-mail accounts. People need to purchase and reserve their domain names before they are taken. For example, if you wanted a site who’s address was world.com then you would have to register and reserve that address before some one else took it. When you are reserving the address, remember that you are only reserving the first part. That is world. The last few letters like com net and info are owned by every one as they are assigned by the I CAN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers).

Now that you understand domains, let us look at on how to own one? Earlier, domains were expensive. They still are from some sites. However if you buy wisely, then you can save some big bucks.

First decide if you need a hosting package with your site. If you do so, buying everything together might be a good deal. Look for a good web host provider with all the features you want at a good price. I recommend squarebrothers.com. They are cheep and affordable. They offer a nice package of 25 mb of space and domain for $15 per year.

Now if you just want a domain and want to point it at a free web space provider like fsphost.com and c topcities.com, then you can choose adimeadozen.com or active-domains.com. They offer good rates and reliable features.

Web Hosting – What are You Really Looking For? Points to Consider Before Taking the Plunge!

So. You have a burning desire to get your views ‘out there’, or you want to harness the power of the ‘net to generate some income or grow your existing business, or any of the other myriad reasons that send people to their favourite search engine looking for somewhere to host their site.

A quick search throws up more web hosting offers than you can shake a stick at: some free; some sort of free; some paid. Some on single servers; some on clustered networks; some using VPS (virtual private server); some offering dedicated servers. There is a wide variety of combinations of features – disk space, bandwidth, databases, software and script support, site management, email provision etc etc.

How do you know what is best for you?

It is often what you are not told about a hosting plan that is more important than the headline details. We first need to consider what we should be looking for and why.

Don’t be seduced by massive amounts of disk space

In most cases disk space is not an issue. The very least you are likely find will be about 50Mb (but you’d have to look hard for that!) and even this is more than enough for, say, a blog site. Your text data takes up an extraordinarily small amount of space.

These are the factors that determine how much disk space you are likely to need:

- hosting a lot of images or videos

- using a script like a CMS (Content Management System), a gallery, forum or gaming script

- hosting an FTP site: a repository for files, often quite large, for your visitors to download

Just because a host is offering you gigabytes of storage doesn’t make it a good deal. You probably won’t need it but, if you are in the market for an FTP site then look for one that specialises in file storage. They usually offer vast amounts of disk space but not much else and you can use a regular hosting account that links to those files for download.

Beware the bandwidth trap

Bandwidth is the amount of traffic your site is allowed to have per month before your host either starts charging you some stupid amount money for going over your allowance or, worse, suspends your account until the following month.

Working out how much you need is remarkably tricky so the more you can get the better. A small personal site intended for a small audience like, for example, a photo gallery aimed at just your friends and relations, is not going to use a great deal of bandwidth – providing you size your images for the web and keep your videos to short clips. The FTP example mentioned above will gobble it up.

So consider these main questions when looking at the bandwidth offered:

- how many visitors am I likely to get?

- how much data would a typical visitor access?

- is my bandwidth usage likely to increase with time?

Wot? No databases?

Most scripts of any substance need a database to run on. Check the database provision of any host you are considering very carefully: no host is going to say they don’t support them so it’s the absence from the feature list that should alert you. Even then it may not be clear. I came across a web host just the other day that listed PHPmyAdmin among its features (PHPmA is a tool for managing MySQL databases) but did not mention databases. I queried the database provision with the host who told me they didn’t support them! Not much use for PHPmyAdmin then.

One database is often enough because most scripts can share databases by means of prefixing table names to identify the ones they use uniquely. However, some scripts insist on having their own. It is also easier to manage, backup, restore and troubleshoot separate databases.

Unless you are 100% certain that you are never going to need a database then steer clear of any plan that does not include at least one, no matter how good the rest of the plan looks!

But I want to be brilliantsite.com not brilliantsite.hostname.tld!

Most free hosts offer, as a baseline, a subdomain of their own domain on which your website will reside. These days though, most people want to host their own domain(s). Even if you are just starting out and are content to use brilliansite.hostname.tld there will come a time when you want to have your own unique identity.

Make sure the hosting provider supports the addition of your own domain to your account – preferably more than one since once you have the domain-buying bug you’ll probably never get rid of it!

I’ve signed up and now I find that my host doesn’t support ASP (or whatever)!

This is why it’s good to have an idea of what you want to do with your site before getting your hosting account.

Let’s say you want to run a forum. Research the forum software you want to use: find one you like, maybe by looking at other sites, and check out the forum’s home website for details of its requirements before you make a decision. The one you want may not run on a Windows server, or it may need ASP and hate PHP scripting.

If at all possible, choose a host that offers what you need for your planned site, don’t chose a host and then make compromises to fit with their server configuration.

Help! My website’s hit the No.1 spot in Google’s ranking and I don’t have enough of anything anymore!

You should be so lucky:) But if you are planning to promote, syndicate, advertise your website or increase traffic to it by any other means then you need to plan for the future. Make sure that your free or nearly free hosting plan is upgradeable. This could be to a formal paid plan or by selective add-ons to disk space, bandwidth, extra databases etc.

There is nothing worse than having to migrate an established site to another host with the consequent downtime and inevitable conflict between the facilities offered by your old and new hosts. Not to mention the potential degradation of your Google ranking!

OK, so I have a hosting plan. Now what?

Well you shouldn’t have one yet unless you can answer the following questions!

- What support does the host offer?

Often with free hosting plans there is no technical or other support at all. Those that do offer support usually do it solely through a ticketing system which may be integrated into their website or accessible from your site’s control panel, if it has one. Most free hosting providers are not interested in investing in you once you have signed up. They have your account which is probably displaying their ads to generate income for them – and that is the extent of their interest.

If possible, look for a provider which gives you both technical support through your control panel and personal support through their website.

- What price am I really paying for my free plan?

Displaying your host’s ads, if they are relatively discreet, can be a small price to pay for free hosting but too high a price if you are left entirely to your own devices once your account is set up or if the ads detract from your site’s feel and impact. It is not always easy to see how intrusive the ads will be before you sign up. Try to find out and, if you can’t, look elsewhere: chances are the ads will be huge!

Some free hosting plans rely on visitors to their own sites to generate income and simply use your site to encourage your visitors to go there by the addition of a small ‘powered by’ logo in the footer. For a small fee even this can often be removed for you.

- How do I access my website’s files?

There are generally two ways of getting your files onto the server and manging them once there: an FTP client on your own computer and a control interface using your browser which generally includes a file manager.

A control panel is essential for managing your account. It is the means by which you can add and manage databases, domains, various site specific settings and email accounts among other things. If you are not offered one, don’t touch the plan! It will mean that you are at the mercy of your provider for making the smallest of changes to your setup.

What about email?

Most hosting providers offer some sort of POP account access as well as a web interface to your email accounts. Like disk space, the huge numbers here are probably not terribly important.

There are two main setups:

- POP email accounts created and maintained through your control panel

This is where you specify the actual email accounts to be used with your account, such as admin@mydomain.com and fred@mydomain.com. These accounts are accessible individually with a POP client like Outlook Express, Outlook or Eudora. A limit is usually put on the number of accounts you can have.

- Catch-all email accounts

This is generally what you get when the plan features lists say ‘unlimited’ email accounts. It means that messages sent to anything@mydomain.com all go to the same mailbox. The advantage is that you don’t have to manage separate mailboxes for each address. The disadvantage is that is impractical if you have more than one user. The solution to this is to use GoogleApps. You set up a GoogleApps account; ‘reroute’ your email to Google; and setup separate accounts for your users which can then be accessed through the Gmail interface or by POP to your users’ client software.

So the only thing to watch out for is the restricted number of email addresses available under setup 1. Sometimes only a single address is available with others being added for a charge.

So there you are….

That covers the fundamentals. There are many other considerations, mainly concerned with what functions the host server(s) have switched on or off but these can become a little technical and are certainly not going to be covered in any features list.

If you know there is something you absolutely must have, such as cron jobs, clean URLs or lock tables (see? I told you it was technical:) ) then ASK! If you can’t ask or don’t get an answer, then look somewhere else.

Happy Host Hunting!

Why is Vps Better Than Shared Hosting?

If you’re planning to start an on-line enterprise, or if you’ve already got one, you’ll know that there are many different web hosting plans out there – each with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. The least expensive is very popular shared hosting with hundreds of web sites all sharing a single, very large hard drive. However this type of Hosting is not always well suited for all sites, especially for high traffic sites, because it is not always possible to isolate each website from other sites that share the server. The really big sites employ dedicated servers. One company. One server.

In between these two options is virtual private server, or VPS. VPS is less expensive (much less) than a dedicated or private server, and offers more freedom and many more options to a growing on-line business than shared hosting. With a Virtual Private Server, each web hosting account receives their own operating system. Users can configure these components without affecting other users on the same physical machine because they are working within their own virtual server. Moreover a VPS hosting environment can be smoothly scaled to even more powerful physical hosts as demand increases. In the long run, hosting on a VPS can significantly reduce the total cost of ownership.

VPS isn’t suitable for every site owner. Some people wish to host a low-to-moderate traffic website and are happy with the level of control offered by a web hosting control panel like cPanel or Plesk. These individuals will prefer Shared Hosting for its perceived simplicity and ease of use: they generally do not have linux system administration experience and they are not interested in picking up any. Other have outgrown their shared hosting account or aren’t happy with site performance (30-second download times) then it’s definitely time to move up to a VPS account. A good web hosting company will help you migrate from your shared account to a VPS account without any breakdowns or hassles.
Do I Need VPS? If you plan to expand, offering more products and services, then consider a VPS plan even as a start-up. The difference in price between a good shared hosting plan and a good VPS plan is negligible in the whole bang-buck equation.

These are the main advantages:

PERFORMANCE
Shared server accounts are always dependent on the performance and good behavior of neighboring accounts. If one account violates their terms of service and sends out a mass-mailing of spam, this will load the server and negatively impact the performance of all accounts on that server.
VPS have guaranteed resources. One customer can not run away with a large share of the resources. You service will run reliably and predictably. If you have a bad VPS neighbor, they will tend to impact only their own account, as each account appears like a separate server to the Internet. They will not be able to grab your memory when you need it, get your server blacklisted, etc.

HIGH CUSTOMIZABILITY
Virtual Private Servers are very feature rich. They are functionally equivalent to a dedicated server. Some applications require that certain ports and/or protocols be opened or closed in the firewall. With Shared hosting, custom firewall configurations are not advisable for security reasons. Under the VPS, custom firewall configurations are feasible because of the partitioning between customers.
With a VPS, you can close ports using the IPTables feature.
You have your own IP Address.
You have Root Access.
Freedom to reboot your VPS at any time.
You can customize services such as web, mail, database, panels, domains
and much more…
The only limitation is you are not able to install your own kernel. This is due to the nature of how a VPS work.

SECURITY
Shared hosting is inherently difficult to secure completely. If an account on a shared server is broken into, the criminal may cause damage to the entire server, causing extended outages. If a spammer causes the server to get blacklisted with Spam organizations, this may impact other accounts that produce legitimate mailings until the server is whitelisted again.
VPS accounts are insulated from each other, minimizing the risk of unauthorized access from hackers as well as other customers. The isolation of your account also minimizes the risk of being impacted by a DoS attack that was intended for someone else.

SCALABILITY
Virtual private servers are inherently scalable – whether you need a minimal allocation to run a simple e-mail server or virtual private network end-point or a webserver with enough resources to support extensive database applications and heavy traffic, there is always a VPS hosting plan to meet your needs. Moreover you can anytime easily downgrade or upgrade your service with very little or no downtime!

UNLIMITED WEBSITES
Another advantage to VPS is the ability to manage numerous web sites. You won’t run into problems with hardware sharing even if you run a dozen different sites. Your access to server assets is assured through the use of server-side software such as Apache Virtual Hosts and similar VPS packages. VPS hosting plans are a bit pricier than shared hosting. But with more and more sites coming on-line (approximately 6,000 a day!) VPS offers better value for your server dollars when you can host as many sites as you want. When considering VPS plans, amortize the monthly costs over the number of sites you anticipate creating. You’ll quickly see that VPS monthly costs are consistently lower than shared hosting on a per site basis.

 

There may be a little downside to VPS for some people. VPS = more responsibility. That means you are responsible for many of the software installations, site maintenance, site security and many of the other responsibilities that come with on-line business ownership. If you don’t know much about server side administration, VPS may be a bit more than you want to take on yourself. This is something to farm out to an expert if you’re not familiar with maintaining a VPS, but you still need the power and control of VPS.
The solution  – get a managed vps, the hosting provider will take care of those things for you and you can pay full attention to your websites content.

 

Ways Of Becoming A Successful Web Host Reseller

Here some points dealt with to help you identify the ways of becoming a successful web host reseller. You need to consider these tips when dealing with both the web hosts and with clients.

Choose an appropriate program

Linux has more of open source software programs compared to Windows. Thus choosing Linux will work out cheaper. Though it is common for most of the programs like flash, PHP and PERL to run on both Windows and Linux, there are a few which will run only on one of them. Windows is mandatory for a site that uses MS Access or ASP.

The correct choice of control panels

Control panels are varied from the simple ones to advanced and complex ones. As a web host reseller you would need a control panel to handle the hosting accounts. While making a selection of the hosting automation software there are numerous control panels with superior features.

Choose the correct host

When you decide to resell web hosting services make sure that you choose your host with diligence. The factors that need to be taken into account are the control panel and the operating system, the online reviews of the customers, the server uptime determination, the time span between help sought for and the help actually provided especially during emergencies.

The experience of the web host is a must as most of the web hosting companies do not last for long. You should ensure whether the web hosting company can provide you with plans that can come of use during highly demanding situations and the flexibility of their policies in tense conditions. You should also check the price that you are being quoted.

Make your own business plans

You need to identify the amount of space and bandwidth that you are ready to resell keeping in mind that there could be changes according to the packages that you provide your customers with. You need to be aware of the ongoing market price so that you maintain the correct pricing. Keep in mind the added privileges provided by the web hosting company and fix your rates accordingly.

Set up a business site

You can either make a site with an open pattern or hire a site developer or develop the site using your own skills. The information provided in your site should be authentic and relevant to the needs of the customers.

Build an e-commerce site

You should have the facility of online payment for customers for which you would need a trade account, an SSL permit and an access to expense.

Set up a helpdesk

Your customers should not suffer due to any negligence on your part. Set up a customer helpdesk to respond to the queries.

Systematic billing procedure

With the help of the automated billing systems you can easily register billing as well as make payments to your customers. Various billing software licenses are available on annual or monthly basis. While choosing your billing software you must check for its compatibility with the server.

Promotion of your website

You must ensure that your website is duly enlisted with all the search engines and also propagate it through friends, family, peers and colleagues. Your signature in the mails should contain a link to your website and also use newsletters, incoming links and unique offers as a way of promotion.

Welcome email

You must send a welcome email to all your customers once they set up their accounts. The welcome emails should contain the name server names, a user name, a temporary password, a forward link to the control panel as well as to the helpdesk and the confirmed plan details

Search Engine Submission Tools Attract Traffic Like Bees to Honey!

Search engine submission tools make it easy for webmasters to submit their website URLs to search engines. Most webmasters would have one or two of these search engine submission tools in their arsenal for website promotion. Without them, search engine submission does not reach its full potential as a traffic generation technique. This article would explain why search engine submission is critical to a website’s success and why search engine submission tools are must-have tools in every webmaster’s toolkit.

What is search engine submission? Webmasters since the start of the internet age saw the importance of search engines as a free source of traffic. Having your website listed, ie indexed in major search engines is like listing your home in the street directory so that people may find you. People only hear of the big names such as Google, Yahoo and MSN, but they do not know that even these big search engines are actually networks of smaller search engines, in the tune of thousands of them.

Though approximately 80% of search engine traffic comes from the 3 major search engines, the smaller search engines still account for a sizeable 20%. Do not belittle how much traffic they can bring to your website. Therefore, it is important to submit to these smaller search engines. Unfortunately, manual submission without the aid of search engine submission tools can be taxing in time and energies. Most webmasters would rather work on building content and more websites than to do data-entry.

As I have mentioned, submitting to thousands of search engines manually is tedious. Time is of essence to successful webmasters. People have resorted to free search engine submission tools or online services. Sad to say, a lot of these free services or tools are buggy and your submission is either incomplete or under wrong categories. In both cases, your submissions are rejected – a complete waste of time and effort. It can be costly to submit to each major search engine such as Yahoo, for inclusion. There are online paid search engine submission services but tread carefully as many of them don’t deliver decent submission results. Those which do provide excellent search engine submission services can be pretty costly for a new webmaster.

There is another alternative for search engine submission that is, using search engine submission tools such as search engine submission software. These tools are capable of either submitting semi-automatically or automatically to a preloaded list of search engines. Submission is systematic and saves a great deal of time. These search engine submission tools are relatively cheap when we measure it in terms of the time savings you get, freeing you to focus on building your business or engaging in other website promotion activities. Such tools normally carries a one-time price tag so most newbie webmasters can also afford them. Read more at my blog about several affordable search engine submission tools that you can use to drive instant traffic.

This article may be freely reprinted or distributed in its entirety in any ezine, newsletter, blog or website. The author’s name, bio and website links must remain intact and be included with every reproduction.

Free Google Tools For Webmasters

One of the greatest sources of free tools for webmasters is found on the Google website. While some webmasters are unaware that these terrific tools even exist, others do know about them but fail to take advantage of the services they provide. This is a big mistake, since either ignorance or inaction will put you in a worse position than those webmasters who do use these free resources. Utilizing the free Google tools and utilities is simple. First, you must register as a user, an easy process that gives instant access to all the tools. Every webmaster should also immediately sign up for an Adwords account even if you don’t have any immediate plans to place these ads. Some of the best Google tools do require that you have an Adwords account to utilize them, so register anyway.

Whatever your internet business, it is critical that you understand how to do keyword research. Effective marketing requires close attention to this basic aspect of online business, but fortunately Google offers a free service to assist you. Their free keyword suggestion tool will assist your research greatly. You can locate this tool by using “Google keyword suggestion” as your search term in the Google text box, and then following the link in the first of the search results. Using this tool can reduce struggling with your business.

The next very powerful tool is their site analytics software. You need an Adwords account for this one, but it is an amazing tool that tracks visitors to your site. This tool allows you see a wealth of data about how they found you and whether they are converting to customers and/or leads on your site. Similar software costs hundreds of dollars and is not nearly as user friendly and powerful. Using this software is an absolute must for any serious webmaster.

Finally is their suite of appropriately named webmaster tools. It is a collection of tools which allows you to find many types of information such as how many pages you have in their index, problems with your pages and more importantly a detailed list of the Internet pages that link to you. A list like this is the core of understanding why you may or may not rank for search terms that interest you. This is, in my opinion, the most valuable tool Google could have created. It is also a fairly recent addition to their offerings. Simply said, it rocks!

Tips When Finding A Domain Name

If you have arrived at the stage where you have a business that you would like to present online, then you will need to build a website and take care of domain name registration. The domain name that you choose will be your unique website address and you will use it in your advertising and marketing to attract visitors to your site. Right now, because there are so many people starting internet businesses, it can be challenging to find the right domain for your site.

There are many domain registration companies that provide name registration services for domain names. The registrars all have access to and search through a centralized database that contains all of the records of current domain names.

This database includes basic information about who registered the domain, or hostname, and when the registration will expire. When registering a domain, the minimum period of time is one year, yet most registrars allow the domain to be registered for up to ten years.

Most people will choose a domain name that reflects the theme of their website that they plan to build. Their domain web hosting also uses that website address. Others prefer to register a domain that includes all or part of their name, making it very personal.

Choosing a domain or hostname, is an important part of starting a web-based business. The name you choose for your domain it is the main thing that people need to remember so that they can find your website and it is what you will be promoting through your advertising and marketing efforts.

In essence, the domain name for a website becomes the “brand” that is most visible through marketing strategies. As anyone who has been around marketing can attest to, branding is a very important and fundamental element in building a name and reputation for any kind of business entity. This is why it can be a challenge to find the perfect name for your site, and why there is so much competition to register names that are descriptive, short and memorable.

Once you have found a good hostname that is available and you have had it registered, be sure to keep your contact information current with the registrar that you used and make a note of the date that your registration will expire. If you have been able to secure a good name, then be careful not to let it expire.

If you don’t renew it because you didn’t receive the renewal email notice from the registrar, then someone else could easily come along and register your domain. When that happens, all of the marketing and advertising you have done will no longer benefit you and your website, but will go to the new owner of the domain.

After the domain name has been registered, the next thing you will need, if you don’t have it already, is a domain web hosting package that will provide the server space where your site files will reside. Your new domain needs to be forwarded to the web servers of your hosting provider, then in short order your site will be live and ready to receive visitors.

Top Web Hosting for All Type of Sites

One of the main discussion topics among webmasters and social sites (forums, blogs, chat, etc.) is hosting. It is widely argued that monthly bandwidth as well as disk space allowance catch most user’s attention because they seem like such big numbers for such a small monthly fee, and in some cases if it sounds too good to be true then, it probably is.

The most important step is to slowly read all the features offered, fee disclosures, support availability, upgrade options as well as special restrictions. It is an understatement to say webmasters should know about hosting, but the truth is that most of us start knowing virtually zero about all the tasks and concepts needed to master to be successful in our online ventures.

Since the web is a fairly new concept and it is continuously evolving, webmasters need to adapt to these changes and be constantly updated as well as synchronized with online communities, and this is exactly where the most valuable feedback form can be found. The reason message boards and blogs pull so much attention to them is the the features they offer are viral in nature, so webmasters can take full advantage of these tools to discuss the ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ of these services.

As most people know, the best service is always the one which provides the best support and turn around times, so it is important to research companies which fit this description, a secondary requirement is for the hosting company to provide several upgrade plans which can be adjusted according to the web site and webmaster’s needs.

Another extremely important feature which needs to be taken in consideration seriously is SEO hosting. Besides hosting, search engine optimization is always in the tip of every webmaster’s tongue. Proper search engine optimization can bring considerable traffic to a web site and increase the webmaster’s earning potential, but very little is known about SEO hosting.

When we say SEO hosting we do not imply that the hosting provider should have a ‘organic optimization services’ but to provide optional tools which can be used to create link authority among web sites. Webmasters know that links can be divided as: one-way, reciprocal or two-way, three-way, etc. The average webmaster will always have more than 2 domain names and sites associated with them but they are located in the same machine with the same IP address and one C block. SEO hosting should provide the option of having different IPs for each web site with additional C block locations, which will often help a webmaster’s link campaign.

Summarizing, the most important features which need to be found in a hosting provider are: top-notch support, SEO features, upgradeable packages and pricing.

Your First Website – Part 1

While being able to create a web page is fine and dandy, one page on its own can get lonely. What you really want to do is create an entire web site, complete with splash pages, navigation bars, lots of useful pages, a bit where people can chat with each other, a section that makes coffee for visitors…Okay, maybe not that last bit, but you get the idea.

The thing is, making a whole web site is a little more involved than simply linking together a few pages with a similar theme. The more pages you create, the more links you’ll have to check, the more graphics you’ll have to use, the more organized you need to be. The keyword here is planning.

Back to the Drawing Board

Some of the high end web authoring packages recognizes what a minefield site management and organization can be, so they include tools that allow you to design create the structure of your site before you begin making pages. We don’t have that luxury, so we’re going to use another tried-and-tested piece of software instead – our heads.

All that these site management packages do is create a directory structure on disk for all the files that will go into your site, let you define a front or index page and then allow you to add supplementary pages.

You can create your own directory structure in Windows Explorer. It’s a good idea to create a directory called ‘websites’ in ‘My Documents’ folder first, then make a new directory inside that named after your site. This folder will be the root of your site – the directory that contains all the files and subfolders your site requires. Next, add a subfolder to the root called ‘images’. As your site-building becomes more advanced, you may want to add folders, specifically for other kinds of media, like Shockwave and sound files or even for pages branching off from the main page. For now, any additional pages we make will be placed as root.

Go with the Flow

Once you’ve set up a directory structure, you can begin to design the ‘flow’ of the site. Decide what you want to put in your site, and which areas deserve a page of their own. To make it easy to refer to them later we’ll call these ‘content’ pages. You can even decide what the filenames of each page will be at this stage – it’ll make it much easier to build navigation later. The other page you’ll need to think about is your ‘index’ or front page. This will be the first page users will see on entering your site and it is always saved with the filename index.html or index.htm.

Creating Site Templates

The easiest way to approach template making is to go ahead and make a standard page with the design you intend to use throughout your site. Complete the page as much as possible, including navigation links – that’s why it pays to plan these out in advance.

9 Free Webmaster Tools You Can Fall In Love With

Webmasters and developers don’t need a whole lot of money to spend on tools in order to work efficiently and be productive. Here is a list of free tools that help me run my everyday webmaster chores.

Notepad++

Dreamweaver and such designing tools might have become very advanced in the recent years but I am still far from satisfied with them. I prefer to do the coding with a simple text editor and be in total control of the code and not end up with unnecessarily long code. Recently I discoverd Notepad++ which has the few bells and whistles that are desired by hard core programmers such as code highlighting, Regular Expression Search/Replace support, capability to extend functionality with plugins and nice depository of contributed ones. Worth your attention.

Filezilla

If you are like me and don’t use WYSIWYG editors to do your HTML/CSS designs then you are probably need or are already using a standalone FTP client to upload/download files to and from your server. Filezilla is a free tool that I have been using for some time and has not failed me. New version 3 has lots of new features, if you are FTPing stuff often maybe you should check it out.

Xampp

XAMPP is an apache server distribution that integrates php, mysql, phpmyadmin and a bunch of other great open source projects into an easy installation. It can be used on production servers to host one’s sites but I mostly use it locally to code and test my html/css/php projects. Its easier to develop locally because there is no need to upload files on servers everytime, and only upload when your project is complete. It can be installed on Windows/Linux and lots of other platforms and if you are serious about developing you should get it installed in your computer and start playing with it.

Google Analytics

Google analytics is a free website statistics package that anyone can easily integrate into their website in a few minutes. Analytics once installed on your website it gathers data and presents you with reports about which sites your visitors come from, what country they live in, how long they stayed on your site, which pages were more popular and a whole lot of reports that you will likely not need another statistics package for you site. Those statistics are vital to the progress of any site in order to understand a site’s audience and find things that might need to be improved. You can create as many analytics accounts as you like (unlimited number of sites) as long as your total pageviews don’t exceed the monthly allowance of 5 million.

Firefox

Mozilla Firefox is not only a great browser to surf with. Firefox was build with extensibility in mind and has given developers a way to extent its functionality with add-ons. Add-ons can enhance the capabilities of Firefox and enhance the browsing experience. There is a whole lot of add-ons in the Mozilla repository that can help you with task such as bookmarking, searching, social interaction, developing, news reading, downloading to name just a few categories. Some of the following favorite tools of mine are actually Mozilla Add-ons. Its definetelly worth your attention.

SeoQuake

Seoquake is a Mozilla add-on that was created with the SEO professionals in mind. It will help you gather important statistics about a website or web page with the touch of a button. Such statistics include PageRank, indexed pages, google backlinks, Cached date etc. One can also extend it/configure it to gather other important statistics from online services not already included in it.

Firebug

Firebug is yet another Mozilla Add-on; a webmaster tool that can help you understand and debug your javascripts. It has so many bells and whistles that I am thinking of devoting a whole article on it. I will just mention the features that I use myself; Inspecting and editing HTML and CSS on the fly, debugging and running javascript on the fly, monitor network activity but there are many others. Here is a video tutorial I recently found that will help you get started with firebug debugging

Gimp

Gimp is an open source image manipulation package that can help you with photo retouching, image composition, format conversion and animations among other things. Its not likely to replace adobe photoshop any time soon but its a free alternative that has found many followers and through its plugin architecture promises to built the only image manipulation tool you will ever need. Some of its features are presented in a way of a presentation but nothing can convince you better than to actually install it and try it on your own.

Drupal

Drupal is a content management system much like wordpress but a lot more extensible. Wordpress is a good CMS (content management system) for simple sites and even though it has many plugins to extend its capabilities I would not recommend building anything other than a blog with it. Drupal on the other hand was built in such a way to be extensible. A programmer digging in its code will appreciate its flexibility, code quality, and modular design and simplicity for writing a new module. Drupal is was build from the ground up a tool for building community sites, and as a result it has many features to support such sites but it is also capable for supporting standard websites. Its learning curve is quite steep but it pays off in the end. Worth more than a look from you.

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