My 2¢ Worth

his Tuesday is my birthday. I'm going to turn 20.

l right — I admit I'm really older than that. I do feel 20 in my mind though. My body, on the other hand, tells me I'm about 85. My actual age is somewhere in between.

his type of conflicting information can also happen between you and your Web site. Are you telling potential customers that you're a professional while your Web site tells them you're not?

eeping our sites professional looking is sometimes a daunting task, however, it must be done if you wish to turn potential customers into buyers.

ust a few guidelines for you. Don't use every one of the 256 colors available to you on your Web site. Choose one or two primary colors and a couple secondary colors and stick to them. While we're on the subject of colors, warm colors shouldn't be used with cool colors because of the conflicting hues. Also, bright colors make the eyes work harder to focus — keep your brights to a minimum!

on't use animations unless absolutely necessary and DO NOT hide your contact information. You will not gain anybody's trust by hiding your address and a telephone number.

astly (and this is a pet peeve of mine), don't hide your prices! Make your prices readily available. Don't wait until after you ask for me for my credit card information to tell me how much it costs. You don't make a sale that way. I won't even get to the page that asks for my credit card information. I'm outta there! I don't buy anything from anybody unless I know the price up front.

Feature Article

14 Steps To A Trustworthy Website

by: Maria Marsala coachmaria.com

Have you ever visited a web site and been attacked by screaming pop-up ads, gotten lost in a clutter of banner ads, had things flash and go boom? And have you ever visited a site that was informative, easy to navigate and generally pleasant to peruse?

Which site gained your trust? Which site would you revisit? The more user-friendly building tools you use on your site, the more trust will be developed with your viewers. With this in mind, here are expert tips for making your online store trustworthy...

Purchase an appropriate domain name

Paying for your own domain name builds trust and is professional looking. Your own domain name will be - free of all advertisements (except products you sell or recommend). You want to sell your visitors on the content of your site - not the products of other advertisers.

Use domain name email addresses

When searching for a host for your site, look for packages that include POP3 accounts (preferred) and alias accounts (second in line). This will enable you to send email from your site (you@yourbusiness.com) which looks much more professional than you@freeemailaccount.com It is easier to trust someone who has evidently made an investment in their business.

Include contact information

Provide phone numbers, hours of operation (including time zone), a business mailing address and an email address. PO Boxes are not considered addresses. Many companies won't deliver to PO Boxes, and many visitors won't purchase from you if you use one. Work from home? Add a suite or building number to your home/apartment. Or use a mail forwarding service for a real address.

Add contact links

Place at least one way for your visitors to contact you on each page and place your Webmaster's contact information on at least the bottom of the front page. This way your visitors can request information from you, and if there is a problem with your site, they can write to the Webmaster. Even if you and the Webmaster are the same person, place the Webmaster's email address on the site.

Keep your content updated

To be current, the content of your site must be no more than 6 months old. The pages must include an up-to-date "Last Updated _________". Even if you don't change the site information (because it is completely correct and updated) do keep the date updated.

Include a personal touch

Provide an "About Me/Us" page. Provide the names of the owner, president, executives, and staff on the contact page. Include individual and group pictures, small biographies if relevant, and email addresses where they can be quickly contacted. Don't make it look as though your site's owners want to be anonymous, which obviously generates suspicions.

Avoid enter pages and splash screens

Do you have an "Enter page" or splash screen on the front of your site? If so, delete it now! You will lose visitors who want information quickly because they'll go to a rival site instead. Worse than an enter page is an enter page that forces someone to download a program such as Flash. If you want to use the option of Flash pages, fancy pointers etc., give visitors the option of viewing them. Don't force them to download any programs.

Cater to everyone

Include tags with your images to assist those with sight disabilities and the hundreds of thousands of people all over the world who use library-based text-only computer software and Web browsers.

Make it quick

Ensure that a majority of your pages load in less then 20 seconds with a 56K modem. Most visitors will not have the patience to stick around much longer than that and will simply move on. A site that loads quickly and is neatly designed, will show that you are a professional company. It will also boost confidence in your potential buyers/

Request recommendations

Ask your clients for testimonials and permission to use their whole name on your Web site. If they don't feel comfortable doing so, find others who will.

Link it

Make sure that links within your site work. Ask your Web designer to design an interesting "error" page that will allow your visitors to get back on track if a page they bookmarked no longer exists. Make sure that links to sites outside your website work. Download a links checker and use it monthly. Sometimes you'll find that you've linked within your site to a page you've moved or removed. Other times you'll find that pages outside your site have disappeared or are changed.

Spell it right

If you want your site to be as professional as it could be, put each page though a spell checker or hire an excellent proofreader. Don't underestimate the value of a properly spelled site

Provide guarantees

If you have a money back guarantee on your service or product, say so. If you don't, say so. Do guarantees include or exclude returning the shipping or handling fees? How about a privacy policy for your newsletter emailing list or code of ethics? Clearly place any type of guarantee on your site.

Secure purchases

When you purchase from the best sites, the site owner will provide you with the most secure purchase program available. This includes a secure server, secure gateway, and information that informs you that your purchase is as secure as is currently possible. When you are taken to another website to make your purchase, notice if the new site mentions that it's been secured. If it doesn't say so, go find the product on a site that does.

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Maria Marsala is an internationally known coach, author, and speaker. A former Wall Street trader and manager, she is the author of the ebook Thinking of Starting a Business... Let's Talk About What's Next. Subscribe to her free ezine "Helping You and Your Business Grow" at
www.coachmaria.com/ebook/download.html

Change an Image Daily

Here is a nice little script that will automatically change an image that is displayed on your webpage based on the day of the week. This is a great script for displaying a "special of the day", or just to give your page a fresh look each day. This is limited only by your imagination.

Be sure that you edit the names of the images inside of the following script, to match the names of the files you uploaded to your server - or vise versa.

<script language="javascript1.1"> today = new Date(); day = today.getDay(); arday = new Array("Sunday.jpg", "Monday.jpg", "Tuesday.jpg", "Wednesday.jpg", "Thursday.jpg", "Friday.jpg", "Saturday.jpg"); document.write("<img src='" + arday[day] + "'>"); </script>

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Insert this script on your webpage in the location that you would like the images to appear. Yep. It's that easy!

* Get these syndicated tip feeds for your web site, free. *

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Second Article

Languages On The Internet

by: Manish Sharma

The capabilities of the Internet have been enhanced and extended by using programming languages with HTML. These languages have been responsible for the dynamic and interactive nature of the Net. New languages and language extensions are being developed to increase the usability of the Internet. Here I will look at some of the important languages that have shape the Internet over the years.

CGI

The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) has been around for a long time. It allows the web server software to communicate with other programs running on the server. These external programs are called CGI scripts or CGI program and are usually written in Perl or 'C'. CGI programs are generally used to process information submitted via a form on a web page by a visitor. For example, you might search for the word 'cars' on a web site. The server receives your request, passes it to the CGI program. The program then looks up a database and responds with the appropriate result formatted in HTML code.

JavaScript/Jscript

JavaScript is a programming language, which runs on the browser. It was developed by the same folks who gave us Netscape and was first implemented in version 2 of the browser. Jscript is Microsoft's implementation of JavaScript for the Internet Explorer. By the by, JavaScript is not related to Java; this is just a clever marketing ploy by Netscape Communications. It was initially called Livescript but when Sun Microsystems released Java and it got a lot of popularity, Netscape renamed their scripting language.

JavaScript runs on the browser (client) and does not require any server software. Thus, it is a client-side scripting language. Since all execution takes place on the browser, JavaScript is responsible for most of the interactivity on a web page. Image change or text color change on mouse over, creating mouse trails are all possible through JavaScript. The language has also been widely used for basic form validation. This seems logical, as it is better to validate a form on the client side than to make several trips to the server. JavaScript is commonly embedded inside the HTML page and is thus visible to the visitor.

Java

Developed by Sun Microsystems, Java is a very powerful, object-oriented language. A lot many platform dependency issues have been ironed out with the advent of Java. Thus, Java programs for, say, Unix can be made to run on Windows or the Mac system with little or no effort. Much development is taking place on the Java front with new arrivals like Java Beans, Extended Java Beans, and Java applications for various databases and XML. Using the Java Server one can also develop dynamic Java Server Pages (JSP). Java can be most commonly seen on the Internet in the form of applets embedded in an HTML page. Applets are small Java programs that run on a Java compatible browser.

VBScript

VBScript is a client-based language that runs only on the Internet Explorer (and quite naturally, has been developed by Microsoft). Though, the browser market share of Internet Explorer has steadily risen and overtaken that of Netscape, it is still too early to use VBScript as a client side language for your pages on the Internet. I would prefer to use JavaScript as it runs on both Netscape and the Internet Explorer. However, when developing Active Server Pages (discussed below) it is easier to code in VBScript.

ASP

Active Server Pages is a technology promoted by Microsoft. The ASP utilizes some special tags, which can be embedded in the HTML code, to generate dynamic web pages. ASP scripts run on the server, typically, the IIS on Windows NT. ASP pages carry the .asp extension that differentiates them from plain HTML pages and instructs the web server to pass the pages through the ASP interpreter. You can use VBScript, JavaScript/Jscript or a combination of the two to write ASP pages. The great advantage in using ASP is the ease of maintenance of the web site. However, the downslide is that you become too dependent on Microsoft technologies.

PHP

Open source, great development environment - PHP is a cult. This has been the answer of open source programmers to ASP from Microsoft. PHP not only carries all the goodness of ASP but also is more secure and handles databases more easily. It is a known fact that PHP on Apache Web server runs faster than ASP. PHP code is embedded inside the HTML page and can link to databases to generate dynamic HTML content.

XML

The eXtensible Markup Language is a web page developing language that enables programmers to create customized tags. These customized tags can provide the much-needed functionality not available with HTML. XML documents can be accessed using JSP, PHP etc.

There are many other languages on the Internet such as Python, VRML (Virtual Reality modeling Language), awk etc., which I have not discussed here. You can search for them on your favorite search engine.

**************

Manish Sharma has been involved in web development since 1996, when the web was still in its infancy in India. With a strong programming background and professional experience in Sales and Marketing, Manish has successfully developed and promoted sites in multiple industries. He single-handedly runs FontMagic and WebDevelopersNotes. He is also a key member of SimplyGraphix, a web development and graphic design company based in India.

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Download of the Week

OuttaSight v3.2 OuttaSight is a desktop utility that allows users to hide application windows in a variety of convenient ways. The program can also be used to hide windows that aren't used often so they don't clutter the desktop or taskbar. You can also lock OuttaSight to prevent intruders from trying to see your desktop while you're away. Download OuttaSight

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