I just got an email announcing Adobe’s new “hosted services” At first I was thinking, “Lovely, Adobe is hopping on the hosting bandwagon. What’s next, Adobe ready made websites reminiscent of GoDaddy’s Website Tonight feature?” But alas, I was wrong..

This is not hosting for your websites, but instead it is web hosted features for you to add to your design arsenal along with your local Adobe Products. There are two new feature/services that work seamlessly with Dreamweaver to allow you to offer your web design clients complete control over their content, and give you, the developer, a tool that can save you hours of time testing your websites in different browsers.

Adobe Incontext Editing (click on Online Services) is probably one of the most revolutional things to come out of Adobe in ages. We all know that Adobe is great at what they do, but they have been doing the same thing for so long that we kind of forget that Adobe is still there, trying to continue to revolutionize the way we, as developers, view the web.

InContext Editing is Adobe’s response to the boom of CMS users. Web designers are heeling to the needs of their client’s control issues, and most are utilizing basic CMS (Content Management Systems) to build a creative and unique website while still allowing the client the ability to easily add content and change the basic appearance. My assumption is that with this boom of CMS, less people are using Dreamweaver and more are using freeware text editors.

Dreamweaver is an amazing tool for starting a website from scratch, but if you do not know a little bit of coding and a lot about standards, if you just let Dreamweaver code your website for you in WYSIWYG mode, you will end up with a tangled knot of code and content. Dreamweaver does what is function, but not what is “right” and most of the times, it’s great of getting started, but then you have to head in and clean up what they did. Thus the turn to CMS (like wordpress). CMS already have a coding base, there is already a main structure which you can build upon and change, and the massive amounts of free templates out there, if a web designer wants to create a quick basic website, all they need is a skeleton template and they are more than halfway there! But enough about CMS, I am not here to tell you all about what a CMS can do for you.

I am here to talk about Adobe’s respone to the CMS craze. InContext Editor allows web designers to design a website from scratch using Dreamweaver, but it also allows the client to edit their websites from their own browsers similar to that of WordPress. The developer can design a website and give it editable “Hot Spots” These “hot spot” will work similar to that of the FCK editor that we are all familiar with, or TinyMCE. When a developer is done designing their website, they create the editable regions and then add the website to thier InContext account. Now, it is important for me to mention that although the preview is free, there will likely be a monthly charge of $10-$20 to use this service. I am not entirely sure how I feel about this, I would rather pay a one time fee and get some sort of “plugin” for Dreamweaver, but that is where they are not.

InContext will allow the web developer to invite users and grant them access to different web pages and sites. You, as a developer, can control the permissions of each user in order to limit the type of editing each person can do. Users can upload pictures using the build in “behind the scenes” FTP connection that you would have set up when you added your site. They can also change fonts and other styles that you define when coding the website. You can strictly limit the extent of which the CSS style sheets can be edited, or you can leave them completely open for the user to do what they will with it.

InContext’s user interface is extremely easy to use, and very “newbie friendly” There is very little training, if any, that will need to be done in order to show your “users” how to use this feature. Its very self explanatory, which I believe it needed to be in order to compete with the likes of WordPress and Blogger.

The other new feature that was announced in the email was the “Browser Lab” Now, I was a lot more excited about this before I found out that you had to pay for this service, but none the less, it is really cool. Browser Lab is what is sounds like. It’s quick and easy UI makes for a smooth experience, unlike the browser checker over at browsershots.org. I have used Browser Shots since I started web designing, and I honestly do not think that I will ever pay for this feature, but I am sure that accessability and smoothness will appeal to some and it could be worth spending the money to have access to this at all time. The onion skinning of the various shots along with the ability to organize the shots side by side or full screen view make this feature a little bit more appealing than the free Browser Shots.

I am going to continue to play with these features since I now have a free trial account, and i will definitely report back with any findings and my overall experience.

Have you used any of Adobe’s Online Products? What do you think of them? Anything you could do with out or couldn’t live without? I want to know!

If you are into design, then you absolutely know the importance of text and typefaces in design. If you are into web design, you know the important of plain text in web pages for search engine’s to index. The dilemma – you can only use fonts that are available on everyone’s computers (system fonts) when you design a web site or you have to use a graphic of the text with the font of your choice. Obviously you generally have to make a sacrifice somewhere  – give up the font or give up the indexable text.

Now, one of the things that people will say is to use “alt” tags in your images, this puts indexable text into your image. This works for search engines, but from what we know about how google specifically indexes a website, there is a different “weight” put on the different elements in your website. For instance, lines of text with a head tag (<h1> or <h2>) will be considered important text on the web pages. “Alt” text is not as high up there in the ranks, so although alt tags can be useful, they arent ideal to replace text.

So that still leaves the web designer in a place where they have to compromise one for the other. SEO or DESIGN?

Well, not any more!!!!

There have been huge movements in the direction of making many fonts available for use on the internet, and this is a wonderful thing. About a month ago I discovered and wrote about Cufon (you can read it here). It was a new technology that I had not really wrapped my head around, but seemed like it was going to be an amazing tool. This tool, however is very complex and seems to take a lot of knowledge and has a pretty big learning curve. I have yet to delve into this program, and as soon as I do, I will post here about it. I would love to know, if you have used it, how you like it.

But now there is an even newer movement towards fonts on the world wide web. Typekit is a web application that will likely be subscription based, that will basically open up a world of fonts that you can use on your web pages. This is extremely exciting to us web designers because now there is absolutely no need to compromise, you can have your text and eat it too!

The movement towards web wide fonts is not just flowing through typekit – it has been something web designers and developers have been pushing for. W3C has been working on a movement towards a standard for using fonts in websites, unfortunately like with all large changes in web coding, this will be very sketchy at first and unlikely to be a great option until all browsers are confirmed to be compatible with this new coding. The use of @fontface is available but again, sketchy at best and unlikely to yield as good results as typekit will. This new CSS3 rule also has the type foundries up in arms about the possibility that their fonts will be available on the web with clearly written file paths to each font used on the page. Much like when you view the source code of a website and you can see the file path to the external javascript and css files, you will be able to see the location of the font files. Clearly you can see why this is not ideal for those who create and sell their fonts and the foundries have taken steps to prevent this by stating in their user lisences that the font is not to be used on the web (which means even though you can you shouldn’t)

So back to TypeKit.

TypeKit plans on creating a subscription based product where TypeKit will own some type of resellers license for a preset list of fonts that will be within their font library. When you sign up, you will pay a yearly fee and have access to various numbers of fonts. They are unsure of how the pricing structure will work still, but in my mind, the best option would be to set price break levels. So people can sign up to have 5 standard fonts, 5 premium fonts, 10 standard, 10 premium fonts and so on. Where the standard and premium are defined by their price level at the basic licensing value. This is just what i think would be best, this is not specifically what they are going to do.

One of the best things about TypeKit is, it is going to make this usable for everyone. Adding a font to your website will end up being as simple as copying and pasting code from their website into your website, or as complex as coding your own calls to the TypeKit servers. TypeKit will encrypt the fonts and pass it through a tool that will decode the fonts and display them on the web. They hope that this will help to entice the type foundries to offer web licensing specifically through their company because of the added layer of security that you would not typically have with a font hosted on your own server using the @fontface code.

I hope that whomever it is that comes up with the end all be all of fonts on the web script, it happens soon. It is my biggest hurdle to jump when trying to design for the web, and having most of these fonts available on the web would be an amazingly awesome step in the right direction.

KEEP GOING ON TYPEKIT!

So here is probably the single hardest step in designing a really eye catching and memorable website. Conceptualizing it. Before you start coding, you have to have an idea of what you want your website to look like, where you want the navigation to be, and the overall layout. The average designer working on a basic website will consider this an easy step. There are rules that you can follow to make a website that is very easy to use for the visitor. There is something called F shaped viewing. There was a study done that tracks where viewers immediately look at a website, and how they scan it. The majority of people in this study viewed a website in the same way. Have a look at this image to get a real idea of what an F shaped viewing looks like:

As you can see, no matter the layout of the website, people generally view the top left, center, and right first. On e-commerce sites, the shopping cart is generally in the top right, and page links are across the top, and the categories are on the left side. This is very standard and people are used to it.

This is great knowledge to arm yourself with, however you can not let this stifle you in creativity. Giving yourself guidlines for a good user experience is not a good excuse to have a bland website. I have seen amazingly wonderful websites that have the exact layout that I mentioned, and I have seen horrible websites with that same layout. If you take oscommerce for example, the layout of the stock install is exactly what it should be. (you can see it here). However, here you can see another website using oscommerce and the basic layout but this site has a much better impact using design, graphics, and images. (you can see it here or here).

So, now that you have looked at some examples of what good design can do to a rather bland layout, you will have to figure out how you will make your website stand out. It is all going to be different based on what you are selling, offering, and writing about. That clean look of the ono tea website might not work for you, or that very grunge look of the assault t-shirt line could be over doing it as well. This is where the designers work comes in. You have to feel out what you want the website’s design to portray and start working.

For instance, I am working on designing my graphic design company’s website. The conceptualization part was the hardest for me. My husband and I sat down and tried to figure out what we wanted to portray. With a graphics company, you can go one of two ways, really simplistic with putting a lot of emphasis on typography and the work in your portfolio, or graphic heavy with a lot of emphasis on the website’s design as a part of my portfolio.

We sat and came up with a bunch of concepts which range from simple to color heavy, and finally settled on a concept. We are combining photography with illustration in a nice clean looking design that still has a lot of graphical content. We are working on designing a horizontal layout where instead of scrolling top to bottom, you scroll left to right. Using a jquery plugin to create an animated scrolling experience ads a little more uniqueness to the design and overall layout. With a portfolio website, you can really take a lot of liberties, mainly because you are showing off your “chops”. You are not really concerned with making sure that the person finds the product that they are looking for, and you have a lot less pages to deal with. However, even with the liberties taken with a portfolio website, I will still be working with the same basic layout of navigation at the top, content in the center, and some lists on the left side to work as internal page links, similar to categories.

The moral of the story is, stick with what people know, and people will have a happier user experience, but do not let it stifle your creativity. Push the envelope a little.

Here are some sites that I feel have done an exceptional job and creating an easy to use website, with a very unique design that is unforgetable.

Sequence Branding

B.N. Weiss

We Bleed Design

So, building a website takes a lot of technical knowledge and skill. When you talk about coding with someone who’s technical experience goes as far as attaching an image to an email, they look at you like you are a super genious when it comes to websites – whether you are or not. The thing is though, that when people are surfing the web and looking at websites, they hardly ever think about all of the coding and customization work that went on in the back end. They are looking and the design of the website.. So really, someone could argue that an eye catching design is more important than customized code and fancy little gadgets that serve no real purpose to the usability to the website.

All too often I seen websites that have a thousand little cheeky gadgets on them that serve no purpose, and it really shows the lack of skill on the designer. One item that I see everywhere is the “carousel” Its ugly and hardly ever works right. You can see an example here (link). As you can see, it can be “cool” but not every website should have it and it really needs some good quality images in there.

So yea, that brings me back to DESIGN! Designing a website starts with a concept, and that is where I am now with one of my projects. I am designing my web/graphic design’s company website and I would like to take you through the process, step by step.. Right now, there is not much to talk about aside from ideas..

This is how all websites should start!

With a pen and paper and some brainstorming. So many people skip this step, but it is the single most important step in creating a successful website. Most people grab a template, add their logo and change a few things and they consider themselves done. This approach is ok if you need a quick website and you don’t care about being unique. For instance, if you are selling electronics, you do not need to be unique, you just need to have a professional look that is easy to navigate. The goal of a website like that should be to exude professionalism because we all know there are loads of electronics scams out there.

However, if you are selling a unique product, or are offering a unique service, then you absolutely should create a unique and memorable design. For instance, all too often I see people who are selling crafts online. These people, decide to design their own website, but they skip the creativity that they put into their crafts and just try to get it done… WHY? How come people feel that ANY web presence is ok.. Thats not true! If you really do value your business, you should showcase your business online with the professionalism that you would within your store. You wouldn’t have a store with monopoly money, a few milk crates and a piece of plywood for a table, why would you build your web store with the same concept? Whatevers free and get the cheapest possible if you HAVE to pay for something. Kind of not smart.

The thing with the digital age is, people will look you up online whether they plan on walking into your storefront or purchase online. If someone decides that they want to go to the local “widget store” but they do not know where it is, what do they do? They go online and do a search for “Widgets in my town” and up pops a handful of sites. From there they will click on the links to check you out. Now, if you have a nice looking website, even if you arent selling anything from there, it is more likely that someone will swing by your store first if it is within a few miles of the others. The same goes for people buying online. If they search for “widgets” to purchase online, they take out the location, you are now competing with the biggest of big companies. So the big box widget maker is going to pop up first, they always do. Now, if you want an online presence that will also make you some money, you will HAVE to compete with the big box widget store.

How do you compete with the big box guys online?

Well, there are two main things that people are looking for online. There are a few bullet points that people would be willing to sacrifice to get the other. The first is price. People now are always looking for the best price online, but this brings us into the second thing people look for. Professionalism. If your website looks like it was slung together by a highschooler in their bedroom, the user might sacrifice a lower price for the security of knowing that they are working with a good company that takes themselves seriously and will take care of them.

So how do you show that you are as trustworthy as the big guys?

Well, there are a few things, but MOST of them have to do with the design of your website. You want to have a website that shows professionalism. A template can do that for you, but a unique design is ideal. Why do people equate design with professionalism? Well, because they figure companies who have a nice looking website took the time to research their design and pay a designer to build it. That then turns into the customer feeling the seller takes their business seriously and will provide what they need to. People just do not feel comfortable putting their credit info into a website that looks like it might not be a legitimate company. The other way to show your customers that you are legitimate is to post a customer service phone number, an address, and other information about your actual facility – even if it is out of your house (you can talk about the warehouse your good come from). Adding things like SSL and a Better Business Bureau seal of approval. No matter what you have added, your desing will be the first thing people look for, and studies show that people make up their mind about buying on a website within the first 30 seconds of viewing. In 30 seconds people are not going to look for contact info or read your content about how great you are.. they are going to look at your website as a whole.. the design.

The Client/Vendor relationship… maybe this will make it to some of “those” customers.

Want to take your entire website and make it a fixed with and have it centered in the middle of everyone’s screen? Well, you should. The great thing about having a fixed width and centered site is that it will look exactly the same on everyone’s computer monitor. It’s a great thing, because fluid websites that take up the entire width of a screen can look great on your monitor, and then you go look at it on a lower resolution monitor, and all of a suddent you have to scroll sideways to see all of it.

So this is going to be one of the EASIEST things that I will teach you, and it will change the look of your website GREATLY. This works on ALL TYPES of websites. Blogs, oscommerce, basic HTML. It does not matter.

do this..
AT THE VERY BEGINING of your HTML code, after the <body> tag, add this:

<div id="centerContent">

YOUR WEBSITE CONTENT WILL ALL

BE BETWEEN THESE TWO THINGS.

EVERY SINGLE BIT OF IT – EXCEPT

OF COARSE THE STUFF IN THE HEAD

TAGS

</div>

then in somewhere between the <head></head> tags, add this:

<style>
#centerContent{
width: 900; margin: auto;
border: 1px solid #999999;
text-align:center;
}
</style>

then on the <body> tag change it to this

<body text-align="center">

Thanks to the boring lives of obnoxious internet stalkers and their friends, this post has comments closed. 1 year to stalk a post is way too much time. Please, get a life

I recently wrote a tutorial on how to use FileZilla. The reason I wrote that tutorial first was because MOST people have FIleZilla, and the reason why is because it is free. However, if you have an Apple computer, you will be so much better off and you will save yourself so many headaches if you download and install Fetch FTP from HERE.
The reason I suggest Fetch is because it is plain and simple. Thats it. If you just look at the FileZilla tutorial, you will see how long and drawn out it is. When you read through this, if you haven’t already installed Fetch,  you will want to.

Step 1 – connect:

When you click on the Fetch icon after installing it, it will automatically bring you to the connection window. It looks like this:

The graphic is pretty self explanatory, however I will go into detail a little bit more for you “nuts and bolts” type of people.

HOSTNAME: This will be the domain name in which you will be FTPing your content to. So if you have a hosting account with hostmonster, and you have a domain name with hostmonster called mydomain.com then your hostname will be mydomain.com. If you are just an additional user to someone else’s domain, you will just use their domain name that they gave you.

USERNAME/PASSWORD: If you own the hosting account, then this usually is created for you by your host when you actually create the account. It is easy enough to find it if you don’t know where it is. You will just go to your control panel and look for a link that says FTP Accounts and click on there. There you will see a list of all of the accounts for your domain name and you can also add new ones. If you are just a secondary user to someone else’s website, they will supply the username and password for you.

INITIAL FOLDER: This is the folder that you want to land on when you connect. If you don’t have a website at the domain name yet, then you will simple put ” public_html ” which is just the main directory for your website. If you know that you are going to be uploading images to a folder that already exists. For instance, you created a sub folder called “cats” in a folder called “pets” You will put /pets/cats/ as the directory that you would like to land on. If you are a secondary user for this account, and you are given your own folder to use to store content, you will enter your folder’s name like this /yourfoldername/

PORT: This is usually something that you do not have to concern yourself with. When connecting there rarely is an instance where an FTP program will not connect if you leave your port blank. However, when you create new users for FTP login, it gives them a port number, so you can always enter the port number but if you do not know it, you can also leave it blank.

TRY TO CONNECT _ TIMES: You should connect on the first try, otherwise you will set this to a nmber of times to continue to attempt to your host if it does not connect on the first try. I always leave this blank as well, as I know I will connect on the first try.

SHORT CUTS: You can see two little graphics next to the hostname option. They allow you to create short cuts so that every time you connect, you do not have to put in the same information over and over. You can set it to just remember the info and leave the password blank, or to remember the password as well.

Step Two – inside the domain:

Once you are inside, you will see a bunch of folders and files. Make sure that you are in the ” public_html ” folder. Any content stored outside of that folder will not be viewable to the public. If you can see the ” public_html ” folder in the list of folders, double click on it to open it and be in that folder. If you are a secondary FTP user, you will likely only be able to access certain folders and this will never be an issue for you.

The great thing about Fetch FTP, like I mentioned eariler, is that it is super duper easy. When you look at the tool bar, it is likely that you will know what to do right off the bat. But just in case, I created another little graphic for you here:

Many of those items in the top navigation bar are extremely self explanitory, so I will only explain the more complicated ones.

GET: Getting a file is very simple. If there is a file on the remote server that you can see in the file list inside of fetch that you would like to download to your computer, you simply click on the file name and click the get button. This will automatically download the file. SIMPLE

PUT: Putting a file is also simple. This is used if you have files on your computer that you want to upload to the website. When you click on put you will see a normal file browser. You will simple browse to the file you would like to put and click OK in the browser. When it is complete you will be able to see the file name in the list of files inside of the folder that you are currently in. If you want to put a file in a different folder, simple double click to open that folder, you use the back button to get to a previous directory and double click to open that folder and then click put. When you put a file on the server, you have to already be in the folder that you want the file to be in.

INFO: Is a very valuable tool for web devlopers. By clicking on a file and the clicking on info, you will see a bunch of valuable information. In there you will see the file path, size, the permissions set, and the date modified. Here you can also rename the file if you would like.

And thats it. You officially know everything you have to about using Fetch FTP for getting a website or content onto a server. Now again, compare these instructions with THESE and tell me this wasn’t super easy!

Just another note. If you want to move files from one folder to another, it is as simple as dragging and dropping. The great thing about this is it works just like your file browser on your computer, so everyone who uses a computer should be VERY comfortable with it!

Feel insanely overwhelmed with the infinite amount of web hosts there are out there? Well, I can help you choose the right one.

Now, I can say right off the bat, sign up with HOSTMONSTER and you will have no worries ever.. But then again, you don’t know me, so why trust me?

So I can going to give you some criteria to look at, some links to look at reviews, and then you can decide whether or not you want to sign up with hostmonster.

When you are searching for a web host, you want to get the most for your money, but you also don’t want to choose one that is going to scam you with promises of low prices.

Let me just tell you a quick story before we move on.

I needed to get a web host for my husband’s photography website. At the time, we JUST wanted a website to host pictures on. We weren’t planning on having an entire e-commerce setup like we have now, but we just wanted a basic web host that is cheap and easy. I had already hosted 1 website on hostmonster, but they offered a LOT of extras that I did not feel that we needed for this website. So I did some searching and found GLOBAT. I will tell you right now RUN from GLOBAT. We signed up for the $3.00 per month hosting which $2.00 cheaper than hostmonster, and hostmonster requires you to pay up front for a certain number of months, where as GLOBAT let you pay monthly. I thought it was a perfect fit. BOY was a wrong. When we signed up, apparently the fine print said that they had the right to upgrade my account at any time, and they sure did exercise that right! We went from $3.00 a month to $75 a month in 2 months! Unfortunately i was not on top of my bank statements at the time and we did not catch it until 4 months later! That’s an extra $72 a month for 4 months for a total of $288 We fought them but unfortunately their customer service is based out of India and they did not speak english well (nothing against people from India, but customer service in my opinion should be based in the country from with the company originates to make communication easier). We never recovered that money.

So back on track. The few things that you absolutely should find out about your host

• 24 Hour PHONE customer support. Internet support tickets are slow and frustrating, and if you are anything like me, you do your website building late into the night. Also, even if you do a lot of your website building during the day, your website is available all of the time, and things can happen at any moment. 24 hour phone support is just a nice security blanket.
• Server side scripting* abilities like PHP and Perl
• Multiple mySql databases*
• Bandwidth*
• Storage Space
• e-mail account support (so you can have an email like yourname@yourdomain.com)
• A control panel (I prefer a control panel called cPanel)  with access to an online File Manager*
• Free shared SSL Certificate *
• Control of your own php.in i file
• access to your .htaccess file
• option to change your “register globals” off

Now, I am SURE that a lot of these things sound greatly complicated and way over what you think you might need, but TRUST me, you will want these things.

Things like email and unlitmited space are obvious and I am sure that you understand what they are.. Space to put ALL of your stuff on the server, and emails so that you can have your own domain emails.

Bandwidth: is the movement of data from your website to your viewer’s browsers. Every time someone looks at your website, they are downloading all of the content onto their browser. Even a simple website will have a lot of information to be downloaded. When you start out, your bandwidth will be low because you will have few visitors. That is ok, but the whole idea of having a website is to get visitors. Why limit yourself from the begining. Its best to start with a company that will allow you to grow with them.

Server Side Scripting: is something that is very complicated, but you need it. If you plan on having an e-store, a forum, or a blog, you will need server side scripting. PHP especially, is used to simplify websites. It is used in one way like a template. Instead of having 10 separate pages all with the same information on them, you use server side includes and instead of creating a new page, you just change the inner content. Take this blog. You notice that the top header, right sidebars, and the footer are always the same and the inside content changes based on what you click. It is a server side include that takes care of that. PHP and Perl is also used to talk to your mySql database. If you want ANY type of content management, blogging, or e-commerce shopping cart, you will NEED this.

mySql Database: is two things. mySql is just a database management system, much like wordpress or blogger is your blog’s management system. mySql holds your databases. A database is used to store information that will be called upon through your PHP scripting. All blogging and shopping cart software use mySql databases. For instance, all of your posts don’t have their own web page, instead the content is stored in a database and when a user clicks on a link, that link is written in php and it calls for the post to be displayed from your database. In shopping carts, it is the same idea but with product information. mySql is something that I am still learning. I understand the inner workings of it, but there is a language all of it’s own to create specific tables and functions in your databases. If you want ANY type of content management, blogging, or e-commerce shopping cart, you will NEED this.

SSL Certificate: is something that is not offerd by every host, but it is very useful if you have an e-commerce website. An SSL Certificate will encrypt infomation that customers put into your website. So if your customer is logging into their account on your website, that log in information should be funneled through an encrypted tunnel so that people can not intercept it and steal it. This is different, however from a secure payment gateway though. You can read a detailed description of this on THIS post.

php.ini file: is a file that all of your scripts like wordpress or shopping carts will use. It tells the php how to act. It is not something that you will nessecarily HAVE to mess with, however there are addons and plugins that sometimes require access to changing this file. Some hosts will not allow you to touch it. This is where you would change the configuration for register globals

register globals: is a function inside of your php.ini file that regulates the variables in your php coding. All you need to know is that you SHOULD have register globals OFF by default as it is the standard now for php scripting. You should ask your host if they require register globals to be on or off, or if you can control it. You don’t really need to know what you are talking about, just make SURE the answe is. “We prefer register globals OFF but you have access to your php.ini file” Anything other than that, you should find a new host.

.htaccess file: is similar to the php.ini file but instead it controls the html in the website. More specifically, it controls who can access your html (or web site). There are maliscious people out there. My website once got hacked the first 2 days it was live, so don’t think you are safe because you are small. Being able to control your .htaccess file is very important. You might notice in your logs that some IP address is spending too much time in an area of your site people normally wouldnt (like a contact page, or other form type page) you can do the WHOIS search and make sure its not google or some other search engine. If it looks malicious, you can block them using your .htaccess file. HOWEVER, with hostmonster, you don’t NEED to access your .htaccess file. They make it even easier. They allow you to go into your control panel and just go to security and type in the IP address in the field where it asks you who you want to block. VERY awesome, VERY easy. But you do wan to control that area of your website – most definitely.

You also want to make sure that your host does not try to talk you into other “services” that they will say that you need, but it is just a ploy to get you to sign up and pay more. I was working with a client who was hosted with GoDaddy. GoDaddy has been involved in some sketchy endeavours like stealing domain names and such. Anyways, the guy had signed up not knowing a lot about websites, so he purchased a “website tonight” account where you have to pay EXTRA to use their website builder. This is just a little ridiculous since other hosts will give you their website builder for free. But that was not the scam. They told the person that he really NEEDED what they call “domain privacy.” Domain privacy is something that you have to pay an additional $8 for and what they do is when someone looks up your domain name HERE, instead of giving your actual information, it gives the host’s information. Now, this is a REALLY bad idea for businesses because as a business, you want to be as transparent as possible. You want people to know that the website/domain is owned by the same company that is displayed on that website. For bloggers, its a personal choice, personally I am ok that people can find me email address if they search my domain name. You can see my WHOIS search here for webdesignforidiots.net. I am pround that I am the owner of this site. You can also verify there that my website is infact hosted by HOSTMONSTER.

So if you end up on another blog who is touting a hosting account, check up on them. They might just be trying to sell you an account for a profit. Use that link and look up their domain. See if they are really practicing what they preach!
I will always suggest that before you settle on a hosting account, call the customer service and ask questions. When I first signed up with HOSTMONSTER, I felt SOO lucky. I had no idea how to get my website from my computer to the internet. All i knew was I had to buy a host and somehow link my computer to the server and upload it. So after I signed up I called. HOSTMONSTER actually has REAL computer geeks working on their customer service team!! They are people who understand websites and hosting, and they talk to you like they are really trying to help you, and not just flipping through an answer book! Its a great thing!! So i called them and had no clue. The guy walked me through step by step and even went above and beyong and taught me how to use DREAMWEAVER. I have not seen any other host’s customer service will will help you with scripting and software issues – its not technically their job.

HOSTMONSTER also has a great option called SIMPLE SCRIPTS. Simple Scripts has saved me MANY MANY hours of frustration and heachaches. Simple Scripts is a neat little option in your control panel. When you click on it, you are brough to a list of scripts. OSCOMMERCE, ZEN CART, WORDPRESS, BLOGGER, FORUMS….. and then some. All of those things you can install with LITERALLY one click. So you want a wordpress blog? Go to simple scripts, click on it click install and you’re DONE. It creates the database and your first username and password for you and you are ready to roll. Same with oscommerce. One click and the website and database is all set for you. Even go to the installation support forums for those things? Poor people kill themselves trying to install it?? Not you. Just one click and you are ready to roll.

There is SOO much more that I can tell you about HOSMTONSTER, but i am getting long winding.

SO what I will tell you is to go and see what other people are saying, MANY will agree with me that hostmonster is a GREAT host.

HOSTMONSTER makes it to the TOP 10 EVERY time!

Web Hosting Geeks

Top Ten Web Hosting

Host Critique

I am not familiar with some of the others on the top 10 like “just host” and “blue host” All i can say is from my experience with Hostmonster.

IF YOU SIGN UP FOR HOSTMONSTER THROUGH THE LINKS IN MY POST (not the top ten links) HOSTMONSTER WIILL BE GIVING $65 TOWARDS A NEEDY PUPPY!!!!!

Read his story here:

Cappy Peg Leg

Things you REALLY need to stay away from when designing your blog/website.
Read this page to seee the things you WANT to stay away from, and to find out if your web page sucks!

Do NOT put white text on a black background. It is IMPOSSIBLE to read and readers will run as soon as they see it. Use grey on black instead

Just cause its a cool gadget does not mean your blog/website needs it. There are so many plugins and addons and snippets of codes for any type of website. Unless it ads functionality that your visitors will appreciate, fight the urge to add it.

Do NOT add music to your website. These days, everyone already has their own music on their computers. If they way to play it they will. Also, studies have shown that most adults surf the web while at work, do you really want to get a reader in trouble by blasting your latest favorite.

Don’t kill your readers with ads. I know you would like to make some extra money off of them, but the real value in your blog is it’s readers. If there are no readers, there’s no blog. So keep them to a minimum and strategically place them to be non-invasive

Clearly label your navigation. There is such a thing called MYSTERY MEAT NAVIGATION. Does your website have it?

Animated gifs are for 1990, and they should stay there! Blinking things and animations over your cursor are NOT cool and do NOT add quality to your site content. (see example here )

Do not try to stuff too much content on your main page. Instead, link to the content from a single, well defined button. This will free up space for some more important things

Do not leave the default page titles on there. When you look at your tabs in your browser, you see a custom name that I created. You can do this too! Its very easy – it’s called the TITLE tag and it is in your head section of your web page

If you want a COMPLETE checklist of “Does My Website Suck?” GO HERE

I do not mean to hurt anyone’s feelings, but you have a website to get people to look at it. Make sure those people ENJOY their experience so they come back again and again.

Want some honest feedback and critique,

POST YOUR WEBSITE HERE

I will be honest and give useful answers, but do not post if you are sensitive. I will be blunt, and I am known for being blunt in giving feedback, but never mean.

So you decided that you want to start COMPLETELY from scratch and build your website/blog without the help of ANYONE.

GOOD FOR YOU!

But i bet you have no idea where to start.

The easiest, most newbie way, is to start by using one large TABLE to hold your main content.

A table is an element of a website that allows you to organize your data into rows and columns. Much like you do when you are creating a microsoft word document that has a table.

This will be one of the easiest things you learn, but probably one of those things that you use EVERYWHERE. If i can teach this concept to my husband in a few hours, surely you guys can get it.

So let’s start explaining how a table works.

You are always going to start your table with this:
<table>
and end it with this
</table>
So just using those two pieces, you have a table with NO rows and NO columns, so you can not start putting info in there yet. You need to have ATLEAST one row and one column in a table.
A row for a table is defined by this:
<tr> – simple right? tr means
Table Row.

You close off, or end that row with this:
</tr>
Are you getting the gist now?? You always start with the tag, and end it with the tag PLUS ‘/’

Now, your <tr></tr> needs to have one more thing inside of it which is <td></td>

I don’t know if this is the CORRECT definition of <td>, but it helped me to remember it as
Table Data.
This is the tag that will hold ALL of the content for the row that it is contained in.

So for a recap

If you take all of those steps and combine them together you get the following:
<table>
<tr><td></td></tr>
</table>

This give you a table that looks like this: (see that TINY little box beneath this?

The reason it is so small is because we did not give it is SIZE.

To make a table that is a good size for a website, you can use a percentage that will move and stretch with different size monitor, or a fixed width that will stay consistent no matter what the size of the monitor is. This is always a dilemma with designers. You have to choose which is better for your design. If your design will only look good with a certain size website, use fixed. This blog is a FIXED width.

So you add your width in the <table> element like this:
<table width="25%">
You can also use “880px” for a fixed width.

Here are some other common attributes you can add to the
element to change it’s look:

attribute	example
align	“left” “center” “right” – Specifies the alignment of a table according to surrounding text
bgcolor	“#000000″ – Specifies the background color for a table. Get web color codes here
border	“2pixels” - Specifies the width of the borders around a table
cellpadding	“5pixels” – Specifies the space between the cell wall and the cell content
cellspacing	“10pixels” – Specifies the space between cells

guess what, this is a table using the follwing attributes, <table bgcolor="c1c1c1" cellspacing="2"> < bgcolor>
THIS DOES NOT USE A TABLE BORDER ATTRIBUTE

There was no width set to that above table because there was content in it to stretch it out. If you do not set a width, it will make it as big as it can to fit the content that you put in the <td>

SO here’s a little tip:
Table borders never really look good. They are two lines that go around the table and usually most people want one solid color line.

<table border="2px"><tr><td>THIS IS A TABLE WITH THE TABLE BORDER ATTRIBUTE</td></tr></table>

<table bgcolor="#000000" cellpadding="2px"><tr><td bgcolor="#ffffff">THIS IS USING CELLSPACING AND BGCOLOR</td></tr></table>

As you can see, i kept the basic table layout, but i added cell spacing which puts a space around ALL of the cells (or <td> tags). Then you add a background color to the entire table, and a different background color to the table cells, or <td> tags

if your tables seem broken, or are not showing/working. Always check the following.
You closed out ALL of yor tags. You can simply just count the number of open tags and closed tags and they should be equal.
Make sure that always but the closing </td> before the </tr>
Make sure that you are not missing any ‘>’ or ‘<‘

The next tutorial will be more advanced tables using column spans and row spans and such.