Hosting support can possibly best be compared to insurance. Most of the time you won’t need it but when you do, it will be critical. Many people are sold on the benefits of cheap and free web hosting solutions only to find themselves up the creek without a paddle when things go wrong. Good hosting support is probably the biggest deciding factor when it comes to differentiating between a good and bad hosting provider. If you are relying on your website as a major marketing tool, you cannot afford to be without 24/7 support from your hosting provider. Your website is being accessed by customers 24 hours a day from around the globe. If your site goes down and there is no support from your hosting provider after hours, you could be losing out on valuable business. Let’s take a more detailed look at why 24-hour support is essential.

What Downtime Means for Your Business

It could just be for an hour a day but in terms of anyone’s business, that is far too long. For the period of time that your website is not accessible, you simply don’t exist on the Internet. You may know that it’s just a temporary downtime but your customers don’t know this. If they search for your company and your site brings up an error then they could assume that you are no longer in business. Think of how many unique users visit your site in a month, and how many of those potentially search your site in an hour. That’s how much potential business you could be losing out on if your site is down.

Your Website Is Your Biggest 24/7 Business Marketing Tool

Many businesses are operating on a global scale. This means that when you have shut your doors for the day, your website is still working for you. Think of how often you go home and browse the Web in the evening. You may be looking for a holiday package, investigating new gadgets for your favorite hobby, or shopping online for books, videos or gifts. Any of these businesses featuring the products that you are looking for will need to be up and running if they are to be picked up on the search engines. The same applies to your business website. You cannot afford downtime as it can cost you valuable business.

Customers Have a Wide Range of Choice

Perhaps one of the most important reasons to have 24-hour support is that you want to retain your customers. If they try search for your website and come up with an error, they will simply take that at face value and move on to the next supplier. Seldom will they try contact you by some other means or think that your website may be temporarily down. Customers have such a broad range of choice on the Internet. Unless you give them a compelling reason to buy from you, there is no reason for them to exhibit loyalty to your business.

Why You Need Server Support When Your Website Goes Down

When your website goes down, it is really only your server host that will be able to tell you what the problem is. If you have shared hosting, it could be that one of the other websites on that server is using all the bandwidth. Or it could be that there is a more serious problem with the server. If there is 24-hour support, they will be able to investigate and address the issue immediately. This means that your website’s downtime is minimized. Hosting providers generally have diagnostics that they can run to identify and isolate the problem. But if your hosting provider’s support desk only operates during office hours, you could have a website that is down for 12 hours or more and that could be disastrous for your business.

What’s the Difference Between 24-Hour Support and 9-to-5 Support?

Most often, hosting providers that have 24-hour support will charge a little more for their services but in the long run, it can be worth every cent. If you have a dedicated server, you will want that extra service guarantee. Most often, you will have an e-commerce site or user interface where your customers can log in. And that needs to be operating 24-7. The only way you can ensure that happens is to have a hosting package where you know you have 24-hour support. It can make the world of difference to your business.

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If you sometimes feel as if your Web designer is speaking to you in a foreign, even alien, language, you need a way of cutting through the Web design jargon. You can find some great dictionaries online, but for starters, here are over 40 of the most common terms you are likely to encounter.

ACROBAT: Acrobat is used as a synonym for PDF file, but actually it is the program family you need to create and read PDF files. Adobe sells Acrobat Standard and Pro, which are creation tools, and freely distributes Acrobat Reader, which is a viewer (with some annotation tools in the latest versions).

APPLET: A program written in the Java programming language that can be included in an HTML page, and can contain flashy effects or useful programming.

ASP: Active Server Pages. A specification that enables Web pages to be dynamically created, or to access information from databases. The default language for writing ASP pages is VBScript, but other languages are also used.

BANDWIDTH: The amount of data sent over a connection in a specified amount of time is measured in bits per second (bps), kilobits per second (Kbps) or megabits per second (Mbps).

BTL/ATL /TTL: BTL (Below The Line) advertising means print media like brochures. ATL (Above The Line) advertising refers to such expensive media as TV and radio. TTL (Through The Line) is a combination of the two.

CGI: Common Gateway Interface. This server-side program allows data to be passed between Web applications.

COLD FUSION: This specification enables Web pages to be dynamically created, or to access information from a database. The default language for writing Cold Fusion pages is CFML (Cold Fusion Markup Language), and the page extension is .cfm.

CONTENT: The graphics and copy (text) that make up your Web site.

CSS: Acronym for Cascading Style Sheets, an external document that controls variables like color and fonts on your Web site.

DHTML: Dynamic HTML. A combination of HTML, CSS and JavaScript is used to create small effects, animations and dynamic menus on Web sites.

DNS: Domain Name Service translates domain names back and forth with IP numbers using a DNS server.

DOMAIN NAME: The address of your Web site (e.g. coza-web.co.za or google.com).

DPI/PPI: Dots Per Inch and Pixels Per Inch determine whether an image has high, medium or low resolution. Images for Web publication should have 72 ppi, those to be printed on deskjet printers should have 150 ppi and pictures to be professionally printed should have 300 ppi.

FLASH: 2D animation created in Flash can have an .swf extension for Web sites or an .exe extension for digital presentations. You need Flash Player installed on your computer to see SWF files.

FRAMES: Two or more HTML pages combined within a single browser screen lets you have scrolling regions on different sections of the Web page.

FTP: File Transfer Protocol for downloading or uploading files from or to computers with an appropriate FTP program or Internet browser.

HOST: The physical computer where files that make up your Web site are located, and whose contents can be accessed via TCP/IP.

HTML: Hyper Text Markup Language. The language for creating Web pages.

IP ADDRESS: Internet Protocol Address. Every device connected to the Internet has a unique IP address.

JAVA: A programming language by Sun Microsystems for writing Java applets.

JAVASCRIPT: This scripting language can be embedded in HTML pages or accessed by them as an external document (file type =.js) to create effects, validate forms, etc.

JPEG: Joint Photographic Experts Group. A compressed image file.

KERNING: Horizontal spacing between letter pairs.

LEADING: Vertical spacing between the baselines under text in a paragraph or list.

META DATA/TAG: Part of the backend, thus not visible to the viewer, of an HTML page providing descriptions and keywords for optimizing search engines.

MYSQL: An open source relational database management system that uses SQL (Structured Query Language).

ORGANIC SEO: The optimizing of search engines by obtaining one-way links from other Web sites without actively submitting your site.

PERL: Practical Extracting and Reporting Language.

PIXEL: The smallest component, or single grid point, of a raster image.

PHP: An open source programming language that enables Web pages to be created dynamically, or access information from a database. It is widely used in conjunction with MySQL.

PLUG-IN: A small application, like Adobe Flash Player, that is installed and used as an added feature by your Web browser.

ROLL OVERS: Graphics that move or change when your mouse passes over them.

SERP: Search Engine Results Page.

TAG: Often called Markup tags or HTML tags, these are used to define parts of Web pages so that they display correctly for the site visitor.

URL: Uniform Resource Locator, the address of a Web page or file.

W3C: World Wide Web Consortium is a group of companies that set international standards for HTML and the Web.

WYSIWYG: What You See Is What You Get.

XHTML: Once planned as a successor to HTML 4.0, it is a hybrid of HTML and XML.

XML: Extensible Markup Language allows you to create custom tags.

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Normally, if you want to have professional designers custom build your site, you must be prepared to dish out at least a few hundred dollars. All this can change if you know where to find the best deals, the best designs for the lowest price. Here’s a rough guide:

First, you must understand that it is a rip off to get companies to design websites for you. Have you ever seen those advertisements in newspaper classified ad sections that offer a 5-page website at $500? These companies are established companies with physical locations, therefore they have to increase the amount they charge to pay off some overheads: office rent, designer’s wages, advertising costs and so on.

Therefore, it would be wise to find freelance designers who work from home. These people are often working from home so they do not have a high operation cost like that of a company. On the other hand, they will be able to design images with quality similar to those of designers from big companies, so it’s a “no-brainer” choice.

However, choose freelancers with care. The best way to do this would be to go to elance.com. There, you can post the abstract of your project and get thousands of freelancers to bid on your project, so you will surely get the best deal. On top of that, you will be able to choose the designers based on their experience, past transactions and ratings, so your value for money is secured.

Another route you can take is to design your website yourself. Think about it, if you only need 5 simple pages to present some simple information, why waste hundreds of dollars for it? Just spend a little time to sit down and do it yourself. You’ll be able to design your own sites even if you do not know a single line of HTML code with the help of WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) programs such as Microsoft Frontpage, Macromedia Dreamweaver and so on.

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Flash-based sites have been a craze since the past few years, and as Macromedia compiles more and more great features into Flash, we can only predict there will be more and more flash sites around the Internet. However, Flash based sites have been disputed to be bloated and unnecessary. Where exactly do we draw the line? Here’s a simple breakdown.

The good:

Interactivity

Flash’s Actionscript opens up a vast field of possibilities. Programmers and designers have used Flash to create interactve features ranging from very lively feedback forms to attractive Flash-based games. This whole new level of interactivity will always leave visitors coming back for more.

A standardized site

With Flash, you do not have to worry about cross-browser compatibility. No more woes over how a certain css code displays differently in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera. When you position your site elements in Flash, they will always appear as they are as long as the user has Flash Player installed.

Better expression through animation

In Flash, one can make use of its animating features to convey a message in a much more efficient and effective way. Flash is a lightweight option for animation because it is vector based (and hence smaller file sizes) as opposed to real “movie files” that are raster based and hence much larger in size.

The bad and the ugly:

The Flash player

People have to download the Flash player in advance before they can view Flash movies, so by using Flash your visitor range will decrease considerably because not everyone will be willing to download the Flash player just to view your site. You’ll also have to put in additional work in redirecting the user to the Flash download page if he or she doesn’t have the player installed.

Site optimization

If your content was presented in Flash, most search engines wouldn’t be able to index your content. Hence, you will not be able to rank well in search engines and there will be less traffic heading to your site.

Loading time

Users have to wait longer than usual to load Flash content compared to regular text and images, and some visitors might just lose their patience and click the Back button. The longer your Flash takes to load, the more you risk losing visitors.

The best way to go is to use Flash only when you absolutely need the interactivity and motion that comes with it. Otherwise, use a mixture of Flash and HTML or use pure text if your site is purely to present simple textual and graphical information.

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Many people out there think that web design is really hard. After all, there are thousands of programs out there to create web pages and millions of people going to expensive colleges every year just to learn all about web sites! However, things are not nearly as hard as you would think.

Before you start working on the pretty part of the site, you need to work on your site’s content. After all, people are going to want to visit your page for more than just pretty pictures! Grab a sheet of paper and make a list of the main areas that you think others will want to visit. “About me”, “home”, and “links” are usually good pages to get your started.

The next step is organizing your web page. If similar things are on your list they can go on the same page. For example, a webring banner and your links can go on the same page. Try not to have too many pages on your web site as people do not like to sift through 20 different pages for information. Keep it simple.

Once you have all your information narrowed down to a few nice pages, it’s time to design your layout. The three keys are visibility, ease of use, and compatibility. If you have those three things down, your site will be great.

Visibility means that your page is easy to read. Choose two contrasting complimentary colors for your pages. It is important to make sure the colors are very different in shades to make it easy to read. Usually light text on a dark background or dark text on a light background works the best. Also avoid using background images as it makes reading difficult.

People like it when a web page is easy to navigate so ease of use is important. All the important pain pages should be listed on a nice, clear menu that is featured in the same place on every single page. If you have any subpages linked off your main pages, a site map link added to the footer of each page is also a good idea.

The final thing to think about is compatibility. Your web page should be able to work on any browser and not require any sort of special software to run. This means that silverlight and flash are both poor choices for the web site as they don’t work on every browser and every operating system and can cause lag or even crashing when they do work. W3C compliant code is a good idea to have to make sure your site will work well.

As you can see, web design is not as scary as it sounds. With a little planning and care taken towards visibility, ease of use, and compatibility your web site will be just fine. Do not be afraid to try to go out there and make your site yourself, there is plenty of help out there if you get “stuck”. Have fun with your web page, the world is waiting to hear from you!

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