Safely going online with a website - ONLINE SAFETY

ONLINE SAFETY Safely Going Online With a Website There is a dark side to cyberspace with companies who attempt to exploit your inexperience. Avoid some of the pit falls of setting up your e-commerce or personal site online. Establishing an online presence includes getting a few facts together before rushing headlong into a unfavorable situation. Companies will lure you in with freebies and super-low prices and then leave you struggling helplessly when you need assistance. There are a few tips everyone should follow before going online and with an e-commerce or personal site. Decide before hand what your objectives are. Ask yourself a few of these questions. Questions to ask yourself: Is my site going to be a long time investment or a short term investment? Investment can mean your time or your time and money. Do I need a secure hosting server? Examples: Selling products, password protected areas for sharing personal information, gathering personal information. What kind of experience do I have or need to maintain an online presence? Knowledge Examples: html, php, scripts, flash, FrontPage, just fill in the online forms. Is my domain name important to me? Do you want to keep it for the long term or this is not an important issue? Is customer service availability important to me? Do you want to receive customer service via email only, via phone only, or via both email and phone? Tips: If your website is a long term investment, make customer support a priority in your host providers credentials. Regardless of your needs at the time always look for a company with secure hosting service. If you do not know what html is, most likely you will need a site builder program. If a hosting company does not provide a demo of their site builder software, then walk away. You do not want to pay money out and find out that their program does not fit your needs. If you are in it for the long term your domain name should be very important to you. Make sure your domain name account is separate from your hosting account. Make sure you have control of your domain name via an admin panel. See domain name hostage article for more critical details. If you just want a free site for the time being. Then I suggest Tripod, but even at tripod you need to be aware of certain rules. When upgrading to a paid site, DO NOT use the free domain name offer, your free domain name is owned by their company not you and you will be in a domain name hostage situation. Buy your domain name from a domain registering company and have it forward to your free site. This way you do have control of your chosen domain name. DON'TS: Don't set up a long term e-commerce site on a free site... unless you read between the obligation and contract lines and they are acceptable to you. Don't accept free domain name offers... EVER!!! NEVER!! Don't assume it is really free! Don't buy a site builder without trying it out first. If the company offers a short term package, consider trying it out first, to make sure it meets your needs and expectations. Don't be fooled by the term free domain with website hosting. Again you are putting yourself in a domain name hostage situation. If it is too good to believe, don't get involved. Hard Luck Stories: I paid to have a custom site built for me and now I do not know how to take care of it. Work with companies that sell you products based on your needs and knowledge. I signed up for a free site with a free domain and now I want to move to another hosting service and I found out I don't own my domain name. Can't say this enough, Never accept Free domain name packages. I bought a site builder and found out that I can't use my preferred payment gateway. Always try out the demo. Make sure you have enough time to really try it out. If a demo is not offered, usually there is a reason. I bought a custom site, built in frames, only to find out that it is not search engine friendly. If your site is an e-commerce site, AVOID FAMES... see frames article. I bought website services and I can even get a response to my technical questions. Make sure your hosting provider or web designer offers both email and phone contacts. I needed a database to run my software and I found out I have to pay more money to my host provider. This is common acceptable practice, so make sure you read what is included in your hosting package. Or buy a package that includes msql. My site disappeared and I had to start over. Make sure your host provider creates backups... You still may loose some information between the backup scheduled times... but you will NOT have to start from scratch. Do you have a hard luck story? Let us know so that we can share it with others so they do not make the same mistakes. COUNTRY GRAPHICS NEWS Best wishes online... Kind regards, JP www.CountryGraphics.BIZ

Don't get framed into using frames!

Building or Having a Website Designed for you?  This is a must read article! WHAT ARE FRAMES?   Frame setting is combining several html pages in one browser window. The common frameset is a stationary html web page that stays put while you scroll through another html web page. Each frame is actually a separate web page. A frameset is a grouping of web pages with the same or different functions. Example: One frame for navigation buttons on the left side, one frame to display a banner across the top, and a collection of separate pages that the navigation buttons bring up into the main page frame. A well planned frameset can be appear to be an excellent online website choice. It looks great and the navigation button frame stays put when you scroll. Looks pretty, right? SO WHY DON'T I LIKE FRAMES? Frames in my opinion are for in-house company websites and for exclusive audiences. If you are taking the time, effort, and expense that it takes to be a member of the world wide web; you are most likely doing it to get some attention. If you want to get a message out, sell a product, or inform a wide viewing audience, then do not use frames. The biggest problem for frames is SEARCH ENGINE TROUBLES. Search engines and frames do not work well together. The search engines don't know what frame to include in their index. And my biggest gripe is that frames prevent search engines from finding other pages within a framed website. Search engines mostly index the home page and that is it. IRRITATING REASONS for not liking frames are numerous. Frames disable the URL addressing process, making book marking impossible. Book marking requires that your browser know what the URL address is, of the page you want to bookmark. A frameset usually displays at all times the URL of the initial state; which is in most cases is the index page of the website. The page you think you are book marking is actually hidden in the frameset. In simple terms...Julie wants to book mark your products. She saves your framed site to her favorites and when she comes back later to click on your book marked page, she finds herself back on your index page. Julie does not see the products she thought she had book marked, instead she sees your index page and now realized she has to search your site again for the products she thought she had book marked. Julie is not happy and will never book mark your site again. Equally Irritating You can not recommend a page via email. So Jackie decides to send an email message to Joanne with the recommendation to check out the products on a page in your framed website. Copying the URL address from the browser address field to send to Joanne creates the same results. Joanne is not happy and will dismiss your site as baffling. Most browsers cannot print framed pages correctly. Selecting File: Print will end up printing a single frame. Preview and select what fames you want printed will not be easy if the page you want to print is a scrolling frame. So now a viewer can't even print a copy of your products to show to Aunt Lucy,who does not own a computer. You have just lost sales, because your site is not user friendly. Still want your pretty looking framed website? Frames are not supported by all browsers, some browsers can't read frames. Oops you lost a few more customers. Most studies out there on the big wide web, tell us that most viewers prefer straight HTML websites, rather then framed html paged websites. You sell crafts in frames and Kathy sells the same crafts, but she uses html pages. Guess where most of your potential customers are going to go. Framed sites are commonly slow loading, because a frameset web page consists of several web pages in frames, it takes longer to load than a single html page. I do not stick around for slow loading pages, and most of the world does not stand still for your frames to load. There are a lot more sites just like yours in html format that load faster. OK OK OK I know I can go on and on about this subject. So don't take my word for it... check out what the rest of the world thinks. Put "Frames Pros and Cons" in your favorite search engine and read what others have to say. My questions to you are... DO YOU WANT TO GET NOTICED BY SEARCH ENGINES? DO YOU WANT TO SELL PRODUCTS ONLINE? DO YOU WANT TO BE VIEWED AS FRIENDLY? Then don't get framed into using frames! COUNTRY GRAPHICS NEWS Best wishes online... Kind regards, JP www.CountryGraphics.BIZ