All Amazing Articles

Part 1 - Introduction

Introduction

In this tutorial you will find out about the .htaccess file and the power it has to improve your website. Although .htaccess is only a file, it can change settings on the servers and allow you to do many different things, the most popular being able to have your own custom 404 error pages. .htaccess isn’t difficult to use and is really just made up of a few simple instructions in a text file.

Will My Host Support It?

This is probably the hardest question to give a simple answer to. Many hosts support .htaccess but don’t actually publicise it and many other hosts have the capability but do not allow their users to have a .htaccess file. As a general rule, if your server runs Unix or Linux, or any version of the Apache web server it will support .htaccess, although your host may not allow you to use it.

A good sign of whether your host allows .htaccess files is if they support password protection of folders. To do this they will need to offer .htaccess (although in a few cases they will offer password protection but not let you use .htaccess). The best thing to do if you are unsure is to either upload your own .htaccess file and see if it works or e-mail your web host and ask them.

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\\ tags: htaccess

Many Web pages today are poorly written. Syntactically incorrect HTML code may work in most browsers even if it does not follow HTML rules. Browsers employ heuristics to deal with these flawed Web pages; however, Web-enabled wireless devices (such as PDAs) cannot accommodate these hefty Web browsers. The next step in HTML’s evolution comes in the form of XHTML (eXtended Hypertext Markup Language), which is basically a combination of HTML and XML.

History

As with XML, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was the force behind XHTML’s development. When XML was introduced, a two-day workshop was held to discuss whether a new version of HTML in XML was needed. The answer was a resounding “Yes.”

The first W3C Recommendation to be published was XHTML 1.0, which reformulates HTML 4.0.1 in XML and combines the strengths of the two markup languages. The recommendation followed from earlier work on HTML 4.0.1, HTML 4.0, HTML 3.2, and HTML 2.0.

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\\ tags: Web Development, XHTML

As web developers know all too well, basic HTML (HyperText Markup Language) doesn’t provide any structure to Web pages, and the formatting is mixed with the content. To allow Web pages to be structured for automated processing (e.g. electronic commerce), the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) developed an enhancement to HTML. The result were two new languages; one was XSL (eXtensible Style Language), and the other was XML ( eXtensible Markup Language ), a system for defining, validating, and sharing document formats on the Web.

XML is best known to many bloggers and Netizens as RSS (Rich Site Summary/Really Simple Syndication), which is actually a lightweight XML format used to share headlines and blog feeds.

History

The W3C, an organization devoted to developing the Web and standardizing protocols, formed an XML Working Group chaired by Jon Bosak of Sun Microsystems in 1996. Several key industry players who were also included in the working group were Adobe, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Netscape, and Fuji Xerox.

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\\ tags: Web Development, XML

PHP, one of the Internet’s most popular development languages, has come a long way since its inception. We can now make use of nifty functions built into the language such as UCWords. This function in particular can save webmasters quite a bit of time in editing titles, descriptions, and editing user input.

UCWords in particular is an easy function to learn since it only accepts one argument: the string that you wish to manipulate. If done correctly, the function will then be able to capitalize the first letter of every word in a given string. Similar functions such as StrToUpper will actual capitalize each letter in the string, so be sure to make the distinction between the bunch.

UCWords is used quite a bit in sanitizing database input for first and last names. Since not every registrant on a website is going to take the time to properly capitalize their name, we use the UCWords function to ensure a sense of conformity. This is especially useful in email marketing, where addressing a registrant by their lowercased name is going to come off as unprofessional.

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\\ tags: PHP, Web Development

Almost anyone can build a website these days, but just building it will not guarantee your success online. Luckily, there are 5 steps you can follow that will make sure you build a website that can both create a free flow of highly targeted traffic and capitalize on it. At the end I will recommend a great tool to use for this whole process that can save you a lot of time and sweat!

Now, to the 5 steps: As planning is always an important key to success, so it’s no surprise that the first two steps go into the planning stage:

1. Create your Content Blueprint
The internet provides information, and that is also what your web side will provide. If you provide the right content, you can attract the right people. That’s why step one is to make sure you will have In Demand Content. You do that by researching the web for the most profitable search terms and key words related to the theme or topic of the website you are going to build. That will enable you to find your niche and build your site around it. In other words, by knowing what key words people are searching for in relation to your topic, you also know exactly what to write about in your theme based web site. Once you know that, you have your all important Content Blueprint.

2. Plan your Monetization
The next step is to make a diversified monetizing plan. You have to plan how you are going to capitalize on your web site, how it will generate revenue so it can bring you the income you wish for. There are basically 3 different ways to do that. You can easily combine all three if you wish. In the end it all depends on what fits you best.

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\\ tags: Income, Web Development

All web pages and websites on the Internet exist fundamentally as text files saved with the HTML extension. Web browsers read these text files, decided based on them (and based on HTML defaults) which formatting choices to use on a page, generate all content from the text file and link to all images, and ultimately display the page.

Of course it’s impossible to talk to a web browser in natural language: saying in plain language to “make the margins one inch on all sides” is easy to understand for a human layout editor, but impossible for a computer. Which is why–as we touched on in the first chapter–standard protocols for online systems were a necessary condition for the growth of the Internet. In order for two computers to talk to one another–and in order to ensure that they’re talking in the way that the user intends–it’s necessary to speak a common language, which is essentially what HTML and other internet protocols are.

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\\ tags: HTML, Web Development

Building a web page from the raw HTML file up can be deeply rewarding as an intellectual challenge, is certainly the most cost-effective solution, and gives you total control over the look and feel of your page. But it can also be extremely time-consuming–not only to build, but to maintain. If you want to radically revise your product information at some point, you’ll have to go back in and change lots of very specific HTML formatting in your raw text files–not the most effective option, certainly.

An alternative to text authoring is to invest in an actual HTML authoring tool like Dreamweaver or Frontpage. These have significant drawbacks, of course, not least of which are the very high price and the lack of total control over your website. But they do allow you to change your text through copying and pasting without changing the basic formatting or underlying HTML code for every single HTML file you use, and they simplify some of the more complex layout coding that you might choose to use to make your page look more stylish and unique.

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\\ tags: HTML, Tools, Web Builder, Web Development

So now you know what to look for in a coder–but a much greater problem for many people is the problem of where to find the perfect coder for your project. It isn’t simply a matter of posting an advertisement in a local classified section and waiting for responses–that might get you some potential candidates, but it removes one of your best tools for assessing the suitability of a coder: the portfolio.

One useful method is to post your project on freelancing programming sites, one of the most prominent of which is rentacoder.com. Rentacoder.com allows software buyers–such as yourself–to post details of your project on their directory of projects, along with some idea as to the rate you’re willing to offer. Coders can then bid on your project, giving you portfolio examples, any certifications they may have, and their ideal rate for the work. Once you’ve checked out what they can do, you can approve their bid, place your payment in escrow, and just wait for the coding work to be done. As soon as the coder sends you the work (and as soon as you approve it), the money is released to the coder, and you can both go on your ways–your coder with his cash and experience, and you with your functioning direct response website.

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\\ tags: Web Development, Web Site Coder

Don’t be afraid of additional charges. (Don’t be totally comfortable with them, either–see the next section.) As good as your basic site map and strategy are, they won’t always be able to stand up against the various problems that occur when translating a good idea into a reality. And when those problems occur, it’ll cost you and your coder both money and time in order to correct them.

Additional charges can crop up for any number of reasons, but always crop up from only one of two sources: you or your coder. You might realize at some point in the design process that there’s a better way to organize your basic site map, that there’s a certain angle for selling your product that you’d like to incorporate into your website, or that your original design ideas pale in comparison to what you’ve just come up with. Your coder, on the other hand, might build your site exactly to specifications, test it out, and find out that there’s a fundamental problem with your collective solution to the three basic design problems of direct response site design. The interface might not be wholly intuitive, for example, or your commerce system might not be integrating with the page properly in order to give customers a seamless ordering experience.

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\\ tags: Web Development

Promoting any website means promoting the website address. In traditional advertising, you can promote your business perfectly well by promoting its name, products, or business description–as long as you give customers an easy way to get in touch with you, of course. In online advertising, all of those attributes should be included within your website–leaving you only the method of contacting you, the link, to promote. A link is not only your digital “phone number”, but with a well-designed website, it’s an advertisement in and of itself.

Direct response website promotion still follows this basic rule, but varies it to some extent, pushing it more in the direction of traditional advertising. This is because with direct response marketing, you’re not ultimately selling your website to people (from which they can then order any products you have to offer), you’re selling the product itself. The website is only a means to an end. And if you simply market your link without any information about the product you’re selling, your customers aren’t necessarily going to be interested in your product once they get to your site–making the work that your site has to do much harder.

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\\ tags: Web Development