Less than 75 Left…

October 14, 2006 | Leave a Comment

The Adsense Virtual Real Estate empire being sold by Adsense guru Joel Comm is coming off the market!

With less than 75 copies left and less than 24 hours before the self-imposed sales deadline, there’s no way the copies will last until the deadline — and they may be gone when you see this…
If you’ve been procrastinating or haven’t looked at it yet, you better go there now!

Highlights: 150 niche templates, in 5 different types; 400 private label articles; already optimized for Adsense; ebooks; software; 50 complete niche sites already created; and a lot more
If you’re already doing Adsense, just take a look at it –
the decision to buy the package is a “no-brainer!”

I got mine, even though I just planned to look — the deal was that good
Get Joel’s Comm’s Adsense VRE Kit NOW

Posted by Terry Stockdale | Filed Under Adsense, Affiliate Marketing, Monetizing Your Site, Web Hosting 

Powweb’s $5.77/month October 25% off Special

October 13, 2006 | Leave a Comment

Looking for web hosting?

Powweb’s One Plan offers 13+ GB traffic per day, 20 GB space, wizard to install software packages, 650 email accounts (webmail, POP3 and SMTP!), unlimited email forwarding, spam filters, 5 MySQL databases, Perl, PHP, FrontPage Extensions, daily backups, toll-free support and a lot more…
Regularly, it’s only $7.77 per month.

Right now, Powweb has an October 25% Off Special for New Subscribers

Get Your Package for Only $5.77 Per Month!

That’s right - only $69.24 per year for this great package!
Special expires October 31st. Get it Now!

This blog, like all my other sites, is hosted at Powweb.
Wish I’d gotten that price…

Posted by Terry Stockdale | Filed Under Apache Web Server, Blogs, CSS, HTML, PHP Scripting, Server Side Includes, Web Hosting 

XAMPP followup

October 7, 2006 | Leave a Comment

In a followup to my earlier post, my XAMPP installation on my notebook is working quite well, at least the Apache and PHP portions. I haven’t yet configured MySQL, but there’s a walk-through on setting it up.

You can get the XAMPP web server package — for free — from ApacheFriends.org. It provides the Apache Web Server, the MySQL database and the Perl and PHP scripting languages — all in one easy-to-install package.

While the package probably could be used for a real Internet-accessable web site, I find that I’m most interested in it as a development tool. This way, I can prepare my sites or pages and then just pull them up from the server on my own computer — no uploading necessary.

Posted by Terry Stockdale | Filed Under Apache Web Server, PHP Scripting, Web Hosting 

A Package With It All

October 4, 2006 | 1 Comment

I recently installed XAMPP on my notebook computer, which is my main web development platform. In the Linux world, the term LAMP or LAMPP means “Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl and PHP” — in other words, the main web server, database and scripting packages used in the web development world.

XAMPP, then is Apache, MySQL, Perl and PHP for “X” — multiple operating systems. XAMPP is a single downloadable package that installs all of these. Of course, you can configure them individually once they’re installed.
Previously, I had installed Apache and PHP on the notebook. But, after a hard drive failure with no image backup (that’s resolved now), I remembered reading about XAMPP.

The installation went very smoothly. The challenge was some of the customizations that I wanted to do, mainly not storing my “htdocs” folder in the place XAMPP had configured. It turned out to be easily solvable, once I realized what was happening (more on that later in another post).
The other thing that was non-obvious was that one of the relatively normal Apache modules was “commented out” by default in the httpd.conf file. Since I use the mod-rewrite.so module, I needed to delete the “#” sign from the beginning of the line

#LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

in httpd.conf, stop and start Apache — and all was well. I use this module and the httpd-vhosts.conf file to be able to handle multiple “hosts” in my installation — my own “shared web hosting.”

By the way, the earlier versions of XAMPP mentioned that it was set up insecurely by default and that it should not be used for servers on the Internet. Based on my quick look, they’ve added a bunch of optional security tests. I haven’t spotted the same warning, but be sure to check carefully before using it for real-world web serving. It makes a great way to test web pages before making them available to the public.

Posted by Terry Stockdale | Filed Under Apache Web Server, HTML, Web Hosting 

Should I Create a Web Site?

September 16, 2006 | Leave a Comment

Do I Need A Web Site? Should I create one?

Web sites have become a necessity for almost every kind of business. Companies, businesses, and individuals need a web presence to show that they are “up to date.”

Sometimes, the web sites are designed for e-commerce, the selling of goods via the web site. Other times, they’re designed to guide prospective purchasers into buying the seller’s goods off-line or to provide technical and customer support after purchase.

Individuals of almost all ages have created personal web sites with their respective purposes, be it for profit, or for entertainment.

However, before creating a web site, we have to consider a number of issues, such as purpose, design cost, site maintenance, use of the site, and a web hosting service.

Cost is often a very important issue. We must find an affordable web hosting service, not spending too much, nor being too frugal. A cheap host may damage your site’s credibility via poor service or poor uptime. On the other hand, and expensive host may provide the features you need, or they might be just high priced.

Search the web for comments on individual web hosting companies. When you do that, consider that negative postings are more likely than positive ones. After all, who is reading the review sites and newsgroups and posting? Mostly, the people who aren’t happy!

Also consider personal recommendations from others that have or manage siimilar sites. It’s easy to advertise services, while it’s much harder to actually deliver them.

Could hiring a design professional be affordable? Is it the best option? For simple web sites, we could always pick up the coding, or even use free or inexpensive WYSIWYG design programs such as NVU (www.nvu.org) or Microsoft FrontPage.

While many hosts provide a “web page builder” wizard, designing your site this way will likely make it appear non-professional and also make it very difficult to move to another host.

When it comes to more complex web sites, when you want it to do even a little more than just providing static information, hiring a designer may be the best way. Not only in terms of design, but security is also a key factor in assuring a quality web site.

If the web site also acts as an e-commerce portal for businesses or individuals, security of visitor/customer information will be a critical issue.

So, having considered the things to do before building a web site, do we actually NEED one?

If creating a web site will create or boost sales, then by all means, go ahead.

If your web site can be a positive reflection of your self, don’t be stopped by the efforts — you might find that you’ll like the creation process. Depending on your needs, a blog at a free blogging service may give you all you want or need.

Above all, design a good looking, functional site.

Not too cute. Not too stark. Just right…

Posted by Terry Stockdale | Filed Under HTML, Usability, Visitor Experience, Web Hosting 

Drawing on the Web

September 15, 2006 | Leave a Comment

Welcome to my new web design blog. I’ve decided to post web design topics here, rather than interleaving them into my regular computer tips blog at Terry’s Computer Tips blog

The topics here will all be web design focused, and I expect them to include at least the following subjects:

  • HTML
  • CSS
  • Apache Web Server
  • Server Side Includes
  • PHP Scripting
  • JavaScript
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
  • Getting Traffic
  • Inbound Links from other sites
  • Outbound Links to other sites
  • Text Editors
  • WYSIWYG Editors
  • Web Hosting
  • Monetizing Your Site
  • Google Adsense
  • Yahoo Publisher Network
  • Chitika eMiniMalls
  • Affiliate Marketing
  • Internet Marketing

Posted by Terry Stockdale | Filed Under Affiliate Marketing, Apache Web Server, CSS, HTML, Internet Marketing, JavaScript, Monetizing Your Site, PHP Scripting, SEO, Server Side Includes, Text Editors, Traffic & Linking, WYSIWYG Editors, Web Hosting 

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