WebMastersLoom

Do you place back-issues of your Newsletter on your website?

There are two good reasons why you should:

(1) It shows potential subscribers that you’re serious about your Newsletter

(2) Newsletters are rich in keywords, so it’s a very good idea to turn back-issues of your Newsletter into HTML documents and then submit them to the major Search Engines

Here’s a little trick that will help you format your Newsletter as an HTML document:

Copy the text of your Newsletter into a text editor such as NOTEPAD.

Then copy the text from NOTEPAD into Microsoft Word. You’ll notice that in your Word document, each line ends with a Paragraph Mark.

Now go to EDIT | REPLACE.

Place your cursor in the first field, where it says ‘Look For’.

Now click on ‘More’ and then on ‘Special’ and select the first item in the list (’Paragraph Mark’). The symbol for a paragraph mark will now appear in the first field (a hat followed by a ‘p’).

Now place your cursor in the field below, where it says ‘Replace With’ and type . Then click on ‘Replace All’.

You’ll find that every single paragraph mark in your Word document has been replaced with .

Now copy the entire Word document into a new NOTEPAD document and save it, using the file extension .html (Note: NOTEPAD doesn’t offer you the option to save as an HTML document, but don’t worry; just type .html after the name you gave the file, and it will be saved as an HTML document).

Close that html document and then open it again and you’ll find that your Newsletter is perfectly formatted, with the exact same line breaks that you had in the email version of your Newsletter.

Using this technique it takes me about 45 seconds to turn a back-issue of my Newsletter into an HTML document!

(c) 2000, by Michael Southon

I ask myself that question about once a month. My website looks fine to me, but what are other people seeing? And what are the Search Engines seeing? Here’s a checklist of 10 ways to optimize your website for peak performance:

1. Browser Compatibility

The first thing is to look at your website through other people’s browsers. I do this regularly and I’ve sometimes been shocked at what I saw!

ANYBROWSER http://www.anybrowser.com

2. Broken Links

About 5% of all links on the Internet are broken. A site that contains broken links gives a bad impression to visitors and is a frequent cause of lost sales. Also, the major Search Engines and Directories will not list your page if it contains any broken links or missing images.

Here are some free link validators:

LINK SCAN http://www.elsop.com/linkscan/quickcheck.html

NET MECHANIC http://www.netmechanic.com/maintain.htm

WEBSITE GARAGE DEADLINK CHECK http://websitegarage.netscape.com/O=wsg/tuneup_plus/index.html

3. Web Safe Colors

Are the colors on your web site displaying properly on other people’s browsers? You may have a beautiful shade of lilac on your index page but it could look very strange on someone else’s computer.

There are only 216 colors that you can safely use on the Web. These colors display solid and consistent on any computer monitor or web browser that is able to display at least 8-bit color.

The Web Safe Palette contains six groups of colors with 36 colors per group. These 216 web safe colors can have any combination of the following RGB (Red Green Blue) values: 0, 51, 102, 153, 204, 255 (each RGB value must be divisible by 51).

Here’s a good palette of web safe colors:

WEB-SOURCE SAFE COLORS http://www.web-source.net/216_color_chart.htm

4. ALT Tags

ALT Tags allow you to give an alternative to people who have the ‘view images’ function turned off in their browser. Let’s say the navigation system on your website is a series of buttons that link to other pages on your site. If you don’t have ALT Tags, people who have the ‘view images’ function turned off will be unable to navigate through your site - in place of your button they will just see an empty space.

But an ALT Tag allows you to tell those people what that button does. For example, if the button is a link to your ‘Site Map’ you could insert the following ALT Tag:

ALT Tags also allow you to raise your keyword density. For every image that is not hyperlinked you could insert your main keywords. For example:

5. Meta Tags

Meta Tags are so important they deserve a whole article on their own. The most important Meta Tags are the Title Tag, the Keywords Tag and the Description Tag.

The Title Tag should be no more than 64 characters (longer than that and it will be cut off in some Search Engines).

The Keyword Tag should contain about 5 to 10 keywords that appear on your page. Never include words that do not appear on that page - in some Search Engines your website will be penalized for this. Do not repeat the same keyword - this is called ‘keyword stuffing’ and is also frowned upon by the Search Engines.

Separate your keywords with spaces (not commas). This allows the Search Engines to combine your keywords into phrases, for people who do ‘phrase searching’.

The Description Tag should be no more than 200 characters. Include as many of your keywords as you can. Remember also that your Description Tag must be enticing - it must make people want to visit your site.

Here are some programs that will generate your Meta Tags for you:

WEBSITE GARAGE http://websitegarage.netscape.com/turbocharge/metatag/

META MEDIC http://www.northernwebs.com/set/setsimjr.html

MULTI-META-MAKER http://www.multimeta.com/tools/multimetamaker.html

6. Load Time

A slow-loading index page is one of the main reasons for lost sales. The generally accepted maximum time for a page to load is around 15 seconds. Here is a free service that tells you how long your web page takes to load:

NETMECHANIC http://www.netmechanic.com/cobrands/FutureQuest/load_check.htm

Your pages should be no more than about 30Kb in size. To calculate the size of your web page, highlight the HTML document and then click on ‘File’ and ‘Properties’ and note down the file size. Then do the same for any graphics you have on that page. Then add those figures together to get your page size.

If your page is less than 30Kb and takes more than 15 seconds to load, the problem is most likely with your web host. The solution is to change web host. Here are 2 services that will check the speed of your web host’s server and compare it with other web hosts:

HOST COMPARE http://www.hostcompare.com/testtools.htm

CNET WEBSERVICES http://webservices.cnet.com/ping/

7. GIF (or JPEG) Cruncher

Shrinking the size of your images is one of the best ways to get a faster-loading web page. You can usually reduce a GIF or JPEG image by 40% to 50% without losing any significant definition or sharpness.

SPINWAVE http://www.spinwave.com/crunchers.html

8. HTML Optimizer

Another way to make your page load faster is to compress (or optimize) your HTML code. An HTML Optimizer removes all blank spaces in your HTML code and also removes certain unnecessary tags.

On average, an HTML optimizer will reduce the size of your page by 15% to 20%. That percentage may not seem much, but the saving in load time is much higher, as your visitor’s browser will parse your page much more efficiently.

A word of caution: in most HTML Optimizers you will find an ‘Options’ menu that tells the program to ignore certain parts of your code. Make sure your Optimizer does not compress embedded script tags - if they get compressed, the script will usually not work.

ADVANCED HTML OPTIMIZER http://www.pcbit.com/htmlopt/

9. WIDTH, HEIGHT and BORDER Tags

The WIDTH, HEIGHT and BORDER attributes are essential for each image that you have on your website. When you hyperlink an image, always make sure that the BORDER attribute is set to zero (BORDER=0). If you don’t do this, your hyperlinked image will have an ugly blue border around it.

The WIDTH and HEIGHT attributes allow your page to load faster, as the browser knows in advance how much space the image requires. To find out the width and height of any image, just double click on the image file. This will automatically open ‘Microsoft Photo Editor’ - your image will appear, with the width and height of your image (in pixels) displayed on the tool bar.

10. HTML Validator

Always check the validity of your HTML. Some Search Engines give lower rankings to pages that have poor quality HTML (such as incorrect nesting of elements).

Here are some free online validators:

HTML HELP http://www.htmlhelp.org/tools/validator/

BOBBY http://www.cast.org/bobby/

WATSON http://watson.addy.com/

(c) 2000 by Michael Southon

As a webmaster you already know how important it is that your web pages download fast. In a nutshell, if your pages are slow, then you’re losing visitors. And if you’re losing visitors, you’re losing money.

To speed up your download times, most web design experts will suggest that you optimize your GIFs and JPGs so that they download faster. They’ll suggest that you make your images smaller or remove them altogether. Or they’ll simply suggest that you put less stuff on your pages.

All of these methods work. The problem, however, is that they all involve doing things that you don’t want to do. You don’t want to squeeze any more quality and color out of your images. The same goes for your content - you put it there because you want it there. Basically, there’s only so far you can go with these approaches before you really start to ruin your page.

Fortunately, there’s one way to get your pages opening faster without having to compromise your images or your content. This is a simple and effective method, but one that is rarely discussed by the web design experts.

To understand this approach, it’s important to recognize the difference between “perceived” download time and “actual” download time. The perceived download time is the time it takes to have enough stuff displayed on your page for the visitor to be able to start studying your content. The actual download time is the time it takes for the entire page and all its contents to be fully downloaded.

The perceived download time is the one that really counts. Why? Because once your visitor has something before his/her eyes to read or look at, then there is much less risk that he/she will click away because your page is taking too long to load.

So how do you improve your perceived download time?

Simple, you break the content of your page down into two or more tables.

You see, web browsers will not start displaying the contents of a table until it has compiled the entire table to the end. Once a table is compiled it will display, and the browser will start compiling the next table.

That means that if you place the entire contents of your page inside one big table, the browser will have to compile the entire contents of your page before anything will be displayed. The result: your visitor spends all that time staring at a blank screen.

However, by putting some of the content towards the top of the page into a table of its own, the rest of the page can be downloading farther down, while your visitor is busy studying the stuff that’s already displayed.

I’ve used this method to great effect on my own website. I went from an actual download time of up to 20 seconds (staring at a white screen) down to a perceived download time of rarely more than 3 seconds (often as low as 1 second)!

The ironic thing is, my page is now bigger (in terms of Kilobytes) than it was before I made the change. That’s because 2 tables take more HTML than one.

But boy has that extra bit of HTML paid off!

Make a test page now and try it out. Your hit counter will thank you for it!

Introduction

Creating your web site can be a tricky process. Choosing the best web design company for your site is extremely important. Unless you run a web-based business, you probably do not have web design experience within your company. Building your web site will take time and a little homework!

To create a web site for your business, follow these 4 simple steps:

1. Establish your goals
2. Determine your budget
3. Pick a web design company
4. Pick a web hosting company

Establish Your Goals

Before you begin looking for company to help you design and build your web site, take the time to understand the goals of your web site. This will be extremely important to help set expectations with the web design company you choose.

In order to set your web site goals, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Why do you want a web site?
2. Are you selling something?
3. Do you have a catalog of products that changes on a regular basis?
4. Who is your target market?
5. Do you already have a brand?
6. What is your industry?
7. Who are your competitors?
8. Do they already have web sites? If so, what do they look like?
9. If you’re selling something, will you accept credit cards over the internet?
10. How soon do you want your web site?
11. What happens if you never create a web site for your business?

Take the time to answer each of the above questions and if you have time, write the answers down on a sheet of paper. These are the same questions most web design companies will ask you before they begin to create your site. If you have these questions answered up front, you will have some criteria for choosing the right web design company. For example, if you are a real estate agent, and want to publish listings on your web site, you should seek a web design company that knows about the real estate business and has created web pages for other real estate agents.

Determine Your Budget

How much do you want to spend on your web site. Web sites can cost you anywhere from $100 to $100,000 depending upon what you want it to do. Know your spending constraints before you begin negotiating with design companies. Whatever you do, do not tell a web design company what your budget is!! Always get pricing based on your needs, not you budget.

Pick a Web Design Company

Your choice of a web design company is a very important step. Take your time to investigate all of your options. Here are some important items to consider.

Design vs. Build

Depending upon the scope of your web site, you may need to choose two different companies. Building a web site is a highly technical process. Designing a web site is a highly creative process. Many advertising firms specialize in web site design which does not necessarily require any web development skills whatsoever. The process of creating a web site is similar to the process of building a new home. Before you ask a construction company to start building, you first seek out an architect who creates a blueprint of your house taking into account what you want (number of stories, square footage, etc.). Creating a detailed blueprint before construction begins can help you accurately estimate the final price. Without the blueprint, you may end up paying a lot of money for a house that does not fit your needs. Creating a web site is exactly the same except most web site “builders” also claim to be “designers”. The good news is that you can look at other sites a web design company has created (like looking at other homes that a home builder has made). Make sure you ask the web design company what their process is for designing a web site vs. building a web site. They should understand the difference between these two concepts. If they don’t, they’re probably builder that think they can also architect.

Evaluate Experience

Has the web design company created web sites similar to yours? Do they have relevant industry experience? As with any services company, choosing someone that has relevant experience. If you want to sell products through your web site and accept credit card payments, does the web design company you are considering have experience doing just that?

Review the Portfolio

A well established web design company will have a solid portfolio of web sites that they have created for other clients. Ask for links to other site the design company has created and review each one. Do you like what you see? Do the sites have a style that appeals to you? In addition to reviewing web sites, ask for customer references. Contact their clients and ask them about their experience with the web design company. Were they happy with the results? Did they get what they paid for? How much did they pay? Would they recommend them? How long did it take? What didn’t they like about the company? How responsive was the company when they had questions?

Compare Prices

Pricing for creating a web site can vary. Typically, web design companies will charge one of three ways:

1. Time and materials: price is variable based on the actual number of hours spent working on your site. For example, a web design company may charge you $75 per hour. If it takes 100 hours to create your web site, your price would end up being $7,500.
2. Fixed Price: some design companies will charge you a fixed fee based on a fixed set of requirements. If you outline your requirements very carefully, many web design companies will quote you a single price.
3. Component Pricing: some design companies will charge “by the page”. By creating a price based on the number of pages, you can control the cost by designing a specific number of pages. Buyer beware: some design companies will charge by the page but will have “special pricing” for components such as custom graphics, animated images, and the like.

The most important step in pricing is to make sure the potential design company outline all of the prices associated with the work and puts it all in writing. Never enter into a deal unless all of the costs are well understood up front. Also make sure that you understand what “done” means. Try and structure the payments such that a significant portion of the fees (20%) are not due until you “accept” the final web site. Include the agreed-upon dates in your contract and provisions for what will happen if these dates are not met.

Solicit bids from multiple web design companies and compare both the pricing models and the prices themselves.

There are thousands of web designers across the country and they should all fight feverously for your business! Be picky! If a web design company dismisses any of your questions regarding their design process, pricing, or client references, take your business elsewhere!

About The Author Andy Quick is co-founder of Findmyhosting.com (http://www.findmyhosting.com), a free web hosting directory offering businesses and consumers a hassle free way to find the right hosting plan for their needs. Feel free to contact Andy at andy@findmyhosting.com in case you have any questions or comments regarding this article.

An autoresponder is useful for, well, responding to people who send you inquiries through email. They are actually more than just merely useful - they are an essential tool in any webmaster’s toolbox. Used properly, they can enhance your visitors experience and virtually guarantee that they will come back time after time. Used improperly, they annoy people and push them away from ever coming back.

What distinguishes proper from improper use? People should receive messages when they would normally expect to receive messages. Here are some examples:

• Proper: I expect to get a thank you message after signing a guestbook. I should only receive one message.
  Improper: adding my email to your mailing list because I sign your guestbook.

• Proper: I also expect to get a message if I use a form on a website to send a message to the webmaster. This verifies to me that it is indeed more than likely to get to the intended person.
  Improper: again, adding my email address to your mailing list.

• Proper: If I sign up for your newsletter I expect a thank you email and, of course, the newsletter.
  Improper: Adding my email to anything other than the mailing list which I asked to be added to. Also, sending anything other than the newsletter is generally improper although an occasional status email is acceptable. Never send separate advertisements unless it is clearly spelled out on the newsletter signup page.

• Proper: Following your written privacy policy to the letter in regards to how the email address (and other information) is to be used, and to summarize that information on the page where it is asked for. You should also have a link to the privacy policy on every single page of your web site.
  Improper: Not having a written privacy policy and asking for information. Not explaining how the information is to be used on the page where it is asked for. Not following your written policies.

• Proper: Including autoresponder links on your website to deliver articles and information to an email box.
  Improper: Using these links to add email addresses to your mailing list.

• Proper: If you make articles available for reprint, it is always a good idea to include autoresponder links to make it easy for publishers to get those articles in a suitable format.
  Improper: Using these autoresponder links to add people to your mailing list.

• Proper: Allow visitors to sign up for an email course using an autoresponder.
  Improper: Adding email addresses obtained in this manner to your mailing list.

• Proper: Follow up for an order or other communication. For example, a “did you receive your order okay?” message a few days after the order was taken is excellent customer service.
  Improper: Sending more than an acknowledgement and follow up message. The person ordered something, he did not ask to be on your mailing, advertisement or nag list.

I am sure you see a major common thread in all of this - don’t add people to your mailing list unless (a) you tell them you are doing to, (b) you give them the chance to say “no”, and (c) they explicitly give their permission. NEVER assume your visitor wants to be added to your mailing list - make him explicitly ask by filling out a form, checking a box (off by default) or some other similar means.

Autoresponders have some excellent uses:

• As an acknowledgement or thank you for something.
• As a way to get something delivered in email form (reprint publishers love this method of obtaining articles).
• As a way to deliver a series of something (like an email course) to someone.

One use of autoresponders that drives me crazy (and ensures that I will never return to that site) is common with contests. Let say I sign up to try and win a million dollars. I try and of course I don’t win. Now I get these silly reminder messages for the rest of time, telling me in all manners that I’ve won, or almost won, or could win, or might win … I usually hit delete a few times, then quickly unsubscribe.

All right, so now you know how to use and not to use autoresponders. So where do you get them? They are available all over the internet. If your site is hosted on a paid host (such as Addr.com), you may find that they offer unlimited autoresponders. If so, take advantage of them. These are generally single-message autoresponders.

GetResponse.com has an excellent autoresponder service. They offer a limited function free version, and one of the most functional paid versions that exist. Their prices are reasonable and the autoresponders always seem to work perfectly.

AWeber.Com has another excellent autoresponder service. Of course, any good guestbook package has the ability to send a customizable message to the signer. Good forms packages also include this ability.

Now, what do you put into an autoresponder messages? Whatever you said or implied you would, plus some ticklers to try and get your visitors to come back to your site.

Thus, if you send back a thank you message for signing a guestbook, you can also include a short list of some of the other features available on your website. Perhaps a small article or even a link to a “free gift” for signing the guestbook.

Remember, don’t make the two mistakes of autoresponders. First, do not waste your opportunity. You are sending a person a message which he asked for or expects, so be sure to include more than just “thanks for signing my gustbook”. At least put the URL of your site, and include a paragraph about it.

Second, do not abuse your opportunity, as that will just get the message deleted. I’ve found it is generally NOT a good idea to put blatant advertisements in these messages, especially for pay-to-surf, MLM or affiliates. Why not? I believe these things are best left to your website or to a newsletter or ezine specifically tailored for them. A major exception is in a newsletter itself, as, like magazines and newspapers, advertisements are expected in order to cover the costs of the publication.

In summary, autoresponders are an excellent tool which all webmasters would be wise to use to their advantage. Just be sure to use them properly.

Link Building Services

If you are a Webmaster, you must know various aspects and strategies of effective link building by heart. And once you know them, you can avail link building services by various webmasters to promote your website.

Link building is certainly one of the most important aspects of Search Engine Optimization. For success on the Internet, building links is, in fact, a must for you. After all, the search engines give you a page rank on the basis of your link popularity. And the page rank determines a number of visitors on your site. Thus the incessant need of link popularity cannot be neglected in this competitive cyber world. Read on further to know more about link building.

First things first, the basics of Internet business says, you have to step ahead your competitors by building high page rank for your site(s). In fact, each website on the net is struggling hard to make a niche place among the top ten ranks of major search engines. So, availing link building services would definitely prove a wise decision from you. For, it will effectively help you gain great links for your website.

But before beginning your link building campaign, you must understand that you need to build good links capable of surging your page rank only. Now an obvious question pops up here— what are the good links? The answer is too simple. The links that are capable of providing you the targeted traffic on your website are good links for you. Linking with all kinds of websites is not going to benefit you at all. In fact, the junk links can deteriorate your link page rank further.

Link building is a time consuming process. Yes, to build links, you have to spend a lot of your precious time in the search of the right links and then sending link requests to the websites. Many a times the replies take more than expected time as well. So, you have to keep patience till you make some really good links for your website. To lighten your burden, you can go for online link building services as well.

These services can readily help you find the right kind of links for you. Finding the right links may be a daunting task for you. But the experts providing link popularity services are well adept to locate the targeted links for your website. These services are provided by website promotion companies. They take the full charge of promoting your website, once you hire their services. The affair can get a bit costlier at times. Though, the results justify the hefty expenditure.

The link building services provide you all the types of links whether internal, out going or reciprocal. The service providers first analyze your website and then develop a plan to build links for the site. The website is studied thoroughly in terms of its content and the existing links. The useless links are removed from your website. For, the service is aimed to provide you the highest number of links with great quality.

You can purchase a package of links for a month as well. You can buy a package of 25 inbound links, 100 inbound links or even 250 inbound links, as per your requirement.

The package of inbound links is much more expensive than the package of out going links. Reciprocal linking service is also a good one as it lifts up your search engine ranking instantly.

Apart from providing quality links, the link building services can also provide you the reports and updates of your websites. No link is added to your website without reporting prior information to you. Thus, it is absolutely safe for you to avail the link building services to top the search engine rankings.

A .htaccess file is a file that works on Apache and other NCSA-compliant webservers. The name is actually a bit of a misnomer due to the fact that hyper-text access is only a small function of what it’s capabilities are.

The .htaccess file affects the directory it is located in and all directories below it on the directory tree unless there is a .htaccess file contained within a directory, in which case it will take priority for that directory and all directories located below it in tree. Thus if a .htaccess file is contained within the root directory it will affect all directories on the webserver.

The basics are as follows. The .htaccess file is an ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange), these files are most easily generated through notepad or anything that can type in simple text format. One of the most common questions about .htaccess files are what to name them, unfortunately they can have no name, and the extension (although uncommon) really is 8 characters long.

Creating the file is somewhat tricky because programs like Windows Operating System will not allow you to have a file wih no name and only an extension. In order to get around this what you must do is name the file whatever you would like and after it has been uploaded to the server rename it to .htaccess. At this point however the file will become invisible to browsers and ftp clients (although it can still be navigated to and the contents of it viewed), this is due to the fact that any file with a period at the beginning of it’s name is considered a hidden file.

When uploading the .htaccess file it is very important to make sure that you upload it as ASCII and not as binary. Also when it has been uploaded there are a few precautions you take to prevent it from being read by a browser, one is to CHMOD it’s permissions to 644 (or RW-R–R–). The other’s will be covered later on in more detail. Due to the nature of the information stored in the .htaccess file it is usually of the utmost importance to keep it secure.

When creating a .htaccess file for the first time there is one quick note to keep in mind, this is that most commands are typically meant to be placed on one line, so if you are using a text editor which has the word wrap feature it may be in your best interest to turn it off as this can input syntax that Apache does not understand and will cause your scripts to fail. Also note that .htaccess files will not work on a NT or Windows platform, there are various other methods of accomplishing the tasks that .htaccess provides, but none that are bundled together in such a nice little package.

.htaccess files are not globally accepted. Due to the fact that they can be used for security that can become very serious security holes. Due to this some webhosting companies have either limited the use of .htaccess or removed it all together. Before you take the time to create a .htaccess file or series of them you should always know what you can and cannot do.

Custom Error Pages / Request Pages

There are various client requests and error pages that can happen when someone is navigating a website. A brief list of them is as follows;

200 - Okay
201 - Created
202 - Accepted
203 - Non-Authorative Information
204 - No Content
205 - Reset Content
206 - Partial Content
400 - Bad Request
401 - Authorization Required
402 - Payment Required
403 - Forbidden
404 - Not Found
405 - Method Not Allowed
406 - Not Acceptable
407 - Proxy Authentication Required
408 - Request Timed Out
409 - Conflicting Request
410 - Gone
411 - Content Length Required
412 - Precondition Failed
413 - Request Entity Too Long
414 - Request URI Too Long
415 - Unsupported Media Type

On this list I have included some good and some bad things that custom pages could be set up for in a .htaccess file. For instance if you set up a customer page for the 200 request everytime someone successfully typed in a URL or accessed your website and it was successfully bringing up a page then it would refresh to the page you specified in the .htaccess file, as soon as it was successfully brought up it would then redirect back to the page specified in the .htaccess file, and so on infinitely. This would be an example of a bad way to use this feature. However, if you were to set it up for error 404 then when someone typed in an incorrect url or a link to a page has become outdated then someone could be redirected to a nice professional looking page which could also be useful and provide links back to your mainpage or to a help section within your website.

The coding used to within a .htaccess file to redirect upon the completion of a request or error is as follows (and only goes on a single line);

ErrorDocument code /directory/filename.ext

For instance this could look like;

ErrorDocument 404 /errors/404.html

This would redirect anyone who got a 404 error on my website to a folder called errors and then to a file named 404.html.

You also have the ability to add html to the .htaccess file for these, for instance you could add;

ErrorDocument 404 ” The page you are requesting is not here, please use your back button to return.

Notice that there are quotation marks before the html code but not at the end of it. This is as it should be for the Apache to read it correctly. Also make sure that it is all on one line so turn off your wordwrap when inputting it.

Password Protecting Folders

In order to password protect any directory you will require two files, .htaccess file and a .htpasswd file. The naming convention is identical to the .htaccess file.

Within the .htpasswd you will need to put in the username and password (although the password must be encrypted) you would like to use, for instance, if we use the username of username and the password of password it would look like this.

username:66yGQHg8KA7jw

In order to encrypt a password you can go to http://www.earthlink.net/cgi-bin/pwgenerator.pl or do a search on google for password encryptor.

For security purposes it is recommended that you do not place your .htpasswd file in a directory that is not web accessible, rather try and place it above your root www directory. And also make sure that you upload the .htpasswd file as ASCII instead of binary.

Now you must add the code to the .htaccess file which will be located within the directory you would like to password protect;

AuthUserFile /home/users/web/b2278/ph.dprouse/.htpasswd
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName EnterPassword
AuthType Basic

require user username

The AuthUserFile line deals with the absolute location (not the web location) of the .htpasswd file, there is no set standard for this so always make sure you double check with your webhost provider.

The AuthName line is arbitrary, it can say whatever you would like to put in there within reason (no spaces).

The AuthType is basic because we are using a HTTP login.

The final line is require user and then the customer’s username, this is setup as though each user has their own seperate directory they can have access to, if you have multiple users that would like to access the same directory you change the last line to read;

require valid-user

Enabling SSI Through .htaccess

Many webhosts do not allow SSI access, this is due to the fact that there are many SSI hacks out there and it is a large vulnerbality. There is a way to allow it, although you should always contact your host and make sure that this is permitted as it can be a breach of your terms of service.

The following lines must be added to your .htaccess file;

AddType text/x-server-parsed-html htm html

The AddType line adds a MIME type to the text category and the extension is .shtml. This allows them to be seen on the server, even though most hosts do allow this it is always better to add it to the code to make sure.

The AddHandler line makes sure that all .shtml files are server-parsed for server side commands.

If you do not feel like renaming all of your .html files to .shtml you can add this line between the first and second lines above;

AddHandler server-parsed .html

This line is not overly recommended as it will cause the server to parse every file with the .html file extension. This adds extra load time to every page you have as well as extra server strain, if you are worried about load time it is always better to only use the .shtml files.

If you are planning on using the .shtml extension and would like to use SSI on your index page you must add another line of code into your .htaccess file;

DirectoryIndex index.shtml index.html

This line of code will allow your index file to be index.shtml and if it does not find one it will automatically check for a index.html.

Blocking Users By IP Address

If you were to need to block someone or a group of people from accessing your website it would be as simple as adding the following lines of code to your .htaccess file;

order allow,deny
deny from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
deny from xxx.xxx.xxx
allow from all

The first line sets the order of steps, the first step is to allow, then to deny.

The second line is the first line of denials, there can be as many as you require. This line will prevent anyone from IP address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx from entering this directory (or website).

The third line will block everyone from an IP range, anyone at xxx.xxx.xxx.??? will be blocked, such as xxx.xxx.xxx.1, xxx.xxx.xxx.2 … xxx.xxx.xxx.255.

The last line will allow everyone else to enter, however, if you chose to prevent everyone you could set this line to read;

deny from all

You may also allow or deny by domain name, such as;

deny from .purehost.com

This will prevent all users from this domain to be blocked, it also includes all sub-domains (such as username.purehost.com).

Changing Your Default Directory

If you have a problem setting your homepage to index.html you may want to look into using this piece of code in you .htaccess file;

DirectoryIndex filename.ext

What this will make happen is when someone accesses your website they will be directed to the filename listed instead of the typical index.html file. You can also setup priorities on this too, if you were to list multiple files it would check for the first one and if unable to find it, it would then move on to the second one and so forth.

For example;

DirectoryIndex danny.html index.pl home.php index.html

This would first check for the daniscool.html file and if unable to find it check for the index.pl file and if unable to locate it check for the home.php file and if unable to find it check for the index.html file. Once it has exhausted all of these then it would display a 404 error (hopefully you have already set up a custom one using your .htaccess file).

.htaccess Redirects

Although redirects can be coded through many different means, such as http-equiv, javascript, or any type of dynamic scripting it is typically more efficient to do it through a .htaccess file. The reason being that the coding for all your redirects can be done through a single file instead of having to add code to multiple files. This can save time, which ultimately can mean the difference between someone coming to your site and finding broken links or not seeing updated information.

htaccess uses redirect to look for any request for a specific page (or a non-specific location, though this can cause infinite loops) and if it finds that request, it forwards it to a new page you have specified:

Redirect /folder1/file1.html http://site.com/folder2/file2.html

Notice there are three separate yet required parts to this line of code. The first part is the Redirect command, this informs the browser that when a specific file or folder is accessed the browser is going to be redirected to a new location. The second part is the address of the file or folder you want to redirect from relative to your root directory. The third and final step is to indicate the file or folder that you want to redirect to, this should be indicated by the complete path to it.

As with most .htaccess commands all three sections of this are seperated by a single space but located on one line. This command will often be used if there are massive changes to a website, for instance you have created an entire new site, which is located in a separate folder. You would use the redirect command and specify the old folder and then specify the new folder.

Hiding Your .htaccess

Because your .htaccess file can often contain information that is very pertinent to your website or information that can be potentially a security risk it is always better to limit access to it as much as possible. If you have set incorrect permissions or if your server is not as secure as it could be, a browser has the potential to view an htaccess file through a standard web interface and thus compromise your site/server. This, of course, would be a bad thing. However, it is possible to prevent an htaccess file from being viewed in this manner:

order allow,deny
deny from all

The first line specifies that the file named .htaccess is having this rule applied to it. You could use this for other purposes as well if you get creative enough. If you use this in your htaccess file, a person trying to see that file would get returned (under most server configurations) a 403 error code. You can also set permissions for your htaccess file via CHMOD, which would also prevent this from happening, as an added measure of security: 644 or RW-R–R–.

Adding MIME Types

IF you are using a file extension that is not set on the servers, which can be a common occurrence with MP3 or even SWF files, you can specify what type of file it is by adding this line of code to your .htaccess file;

AddType application/x-shockwave-flash swf

AddType is specifying that you are adding a MIME type. The application string is the actual parameter of the MIME you are adding, and the final little bit is the default extension for the MIME type you just added, in our example this is swf for ShockWave File.

If you need to find the application string of the file you are adding most of them are located at filext.com. Also, if you want to have a file who’s extension is specified on the server to open with something and you would rather have that downloaded (for instance .xml) you can specify the application string as;

application/octet-stream

Preventing Hot Linking

Hot linking refers to someone outside of your website using the path to one of the images on your website. This is considered very rude for two major reasons; the first is that you may have spent many hours working on a particular image and do not want it used by someone else, and the second is that everytime someone accesses that other person’s page it uses your bandwidth. If the site were to have many visitors it could end up that your website actually goes down to bandwidth over usage.

Using .htaccess, you can disallow hot linking on your server, so those attempting to link to an image or CSS file on your site, for example, is either blocked (failed request, such as a broken image) or served a different content (for example a different picture) .

Here’s how to disable hot linking of certain file types on your site, the case below takes into account images, JavaScript (js) and CSS (css) files on your site. Simply add the below code to your .htaccess file, and upload the file either to your root directory, or a particular subdirectory to localize the effect to just one section of your site;

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?domain.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpg|js|css)$ - [F]

Be sure to replace “domain.com” with your own. The above code creates a failed request when hot linking of the specified file types occurs. In the case of images, a broken image is shown instead.

You can set up your .htaccess file to actually serve up different content when hot linking occurs. This is more commonly done with images, such as serving up an alternate image in place of the hot linked one. The code for this is;

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?domain.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpg)$ http://www.domain.com/alternatepicture.gif [R,L]

There are a lot of web hosting companies around the web that offer many hosting plans. Before you choose one you should consider a few things before purchasing. A few things that you should consider are how reliable the company is, how much space are they giving, and do they have the features that I need.

Reliability should be the main focus when looking for a web host. The host that you’re considering should have a guarantee uptime of ninety-nine percent. If your host is not reliable then you’re losing traffic to your web site that you have worked so hard on obtaining. One way of finding out if the host is reliable is by going to a search engine and searching for reviews for that host. If people are giving positive reviews about this hosts uptime then is probably a reliable host, but the only true way will be to test for yourself after you find these reviews.

Another thing that points out when talking about web hosting is disk space. How do I know how much disk space I will need? For the basic user a web site is less than 7mb. If your not a heavy user or not going to have a lot of files stored on your host you will not need a lot of space. For people that are doing big sites and incorporating video, audio and large graphics in their site would need a lot more space than other webmasters. There is no need to pay more for space that you’re not going to use. If you need more space check and see if the host offers a upgrade plan for if your site was to grow larger than expected.

How much bandwidth should I look for? If your just starting out, not getting a lot of traffic the basic bandwidth should work for you, however if your using video, audio, and larger graphics you may require more bandwidth. I would recommend that you start with the basic bandwidth and upgrade as need.

Also when looking for your web host check to see if they offer the features that you need. Some features that you may want to consider is do I need to use sever side scripting such as PHP, JSP, ASP or any other scripting language that you program in or would like to use with your web site. Cpanel is a feature that I find very useful when working with web hosting servers. Cpanel offers a user interface to applications on the server, such as setting up FTP, email, etc.

The answer is YES, thanks to TrafficCleaner.com!

In this article I will shortly describe my own experience about how I now generate income through the normally useless and inevitable percentage of poor traffic getting on my website. This is new and amazing and was just not possible before!

I run a small web shop selling perfumes and other popular beauty products. My daily average visitors are between 1’000 and 1’500, so I get around 50K unique visitors every month. The site generates approx. 15’000 $ revenues a month. I really enjoy this business. However, the net income still does not allow me to give up my regular job without second thoughts.

I am not really an internet freak, but doing this business now since 2001, I’ve developed my skills enough to start managing and seeing through the relevant issues. Therefore, I’ve signed up with a traffic analyzing company to check and understand how and from where my traffic comes from. The results surprised me: an entire 30% of my traffic (!) is coming from countries from which I’ve never ever received one single order (India, China, Pakistan, etc.) … and I do not think this will drastically change any time soon.

This is a serious issue, as it means that about 20K visitors a month my web shop receives, are statistically a waste.

As I could not get this “waste” feeling out of my mind, I was timelessly thinking about how I could possibly turn this useless traffic into something a bit more positive. Searching through the web I finally found an application which sounded very smart and easy indeed: manage the traffic I want to allow on my web shop while blocking, forwarding and selling the traffic I do not need somewhere else and even saving server resources and costs while doing so!

As it seemed so easy, I signed up for TrafficCleaner.com, a remote IP filtering service which is FREE and allows me with just a few clicks to manage the quality of the traffic I want to get on my web shop. It was really as easy as 1, 2 and 3 to sign up, install and select the countries I wanted to allow or to filter.

In the meantime, I created a simple web page with Google Adsense and Kanoodle advertisements and I now simply send the unwanted filtered traffic to that URL.

The results were surprising: during the first week I sent over 4’000 visitors to that page and through Adsense and Kanoodle I received an average of 0.12 $ per click. About 10% of the visitors clicked on one of the advertisements links and that only generated an extra income of about 200 $ in the first month since using the application.

But there is even more. After starting to use the IP filtering service, my bandwidth needs dropped 35%, and my server really got faster. My site has a better connect time and therefore provides a better and faster service to my potential customers.

So this is my conclusion: I do believe and recommend that anyone who is doing business through the internet should seriously consider using TrafficCleaner.com application to save costs, enhance resources and make some extra profit!

Do you understand the numbers that your web site generates? Do you know how many sales your site actually generates? Do you know how you can apply that knowledge to your business and cause it to grow?

I will answer all of the above, and also discuss how to use statistics to enhance your web business through the use of sales, traffic flow, uniques, hits, click-through rates, and many other important business factors. Part 1 focuses on sales and traffic, while part 2 is all about where your traffic is coming from (and how to get more of it!). Part 2 will be discussed in the next issue of our newsletter - so be sure to stay tuned!

Sales

The most obvious statistic for many businesses is sales.

Here are 2 of the most pertinent questions every business needs the answers to:

• How many sales do you make per day/month/year?
• How much profit do you make per sale?

Not hard figures to find, but how many sales actually came from your Internet business? Often it is easy to gather this figure simply by looking directly at either online sales, or by asking your customers (”How did you find us?”). But sometimes the Internet is just one part of a very complicated sales process. You may make all your sales in person, but how many of your clients go home and research your products/services using information found on your web site?

These are the questions you need to find answers to in order to estimate how many sales were completed due to your Internet presence but not necessarily completed online. If you make sales online, the answers are easy. If you sell real estate or other “in person” products or services, then you have to ask your customers individually. Either way, it will come down to a concrete number that can provide insight into how you can grow your business.

Profits

From the number of sales made per month, you can easily figure out your gross sales amount. Then you have to take your expenses per sale into account and figure out your profits. Only cost of sale expenses should be deducted and NOT one-time expenses such as overhead. On the Internet, this would normally be the cost per click of pay-per-click campaigns (such as Google AdWords or Yahoo Marketing Solutions), or the CPM (cost per thousand) for banner ads, and of course, your direct costs for the item or service being sold. Once you have these figures in hand, you can then calculate your profit per sale.

Traffic

So now that we know how many sales we make per month, and how much profit we’re actually making off of those sales, let us take a look at how many potential customers walk through our virtual store. There are many different statistics for web site traffic: page views, hits, daily uniques, monthly uniques, etc… Which one should you be using? From my own experience, I recommend using daily uniques.

Daily uniques measures how many unique visitors come to your site in a single day. By that we mean that no single user is counted twice in the same day even if they visit the store several times within a twenty-four hour period. Thus, if someone comes to your site four times on Monday, and six times on Tuesday, he/she would only count as two daily uniques.

Page Views measures how many times your page is viewed (usually including reloads). Page views are also counted for each page. Thus, if someone comes to your site four times on Monday and views eight pages each time, and six times on Tuesday (viewing two pages each time), you would measure (4 x + (6 x 2), or 44 page views.

These statistics are usually available through your server’s statistics program. Alternatively, you could also use one of a myriad of other statistics programs available on the Internet. For most of our clients we set up www.hitbox.com on their sites. With our daily uniques per month figure in-hand, we suddenly have some very powerful numbers to work with.

Conversions

Conversion is the measure of how many people who visited your site were subsequently converted into clients of some sort. Measuring how many uniques turn into buying customers is one method of conversion, but you could also measure how many visitors your site gets vs. how many visitors sign up to your newsletter, or how many of them go to a specific page, or how many send you an email, etc… These are all measures of conversions, and simply use the ratio of sales (or sign ups, emails, etc…) to visitors (or uniques).

Let us assume our site has the following statistics:

• Sales: 100/month
• Gross: $250/sale
• Average Profit: $150/sale
• Daily uniques: 12 000/month

In the above example, we have 100 sales per month, and 12000 daily uniques per month, thus our conversion ratio is 1:120 or 0.83%. Not such a bad ratio, especially for items that cost $250 each. Most markets would want a ratio of 1% or 2%, but of course each industry is different.

Analysis

Using our imaginary numbers (profit of $150/sale, gross $250/sale) we can then figure out how healthy the online business really is. At 100 sales a month, we are grossing $25 000 per month, and profiting $15 000 per month. At this point in our analysis, we can now see that there are three ways in which to improve the site:

1. Increase profit margin
2. Increase conversions
3. Increase traffic

1. Increasing profit margins involves lowering costs or raising prices, both of which fall out of the context of this article.

2. Increasing conversions involves optimizing the usability of your web site; usability is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use. For more information on usability and how it can help your Internet business, go to www.useit.com.

3. Increasing traffic involves improving your link network, your PPC campaign, or your search engine optimization. We will look at the latter in detail in Part Two of this article (exclusively available by signing up to our FREE Monthly Newsletter at www.RedCarpetWeb.com). Part Two will also discuss referrers, search engine keyphrases, search engine positions, and how to use these statistics to increase your sales. Don’t miss out! Sign up for the Newsletter today and learn how you can make the most of all your web statistics and improve your Internet business.