Business Website Checklist

Do you know what it takes to start a business website?

Checklist

1. Planning
2. Research
3. Structuring your site
4. Choosing a domain name
5. Choosing a hosting provider
6. Choosing a web designer
7. Adding content
8. Promotion
9. Maintenance

Planning

Planning will help you set your goals. Try also to spot the pitfalls and the opportunities for your business idea.

Research

Do some research to find out the feasibility of your project. You could also learn from others experiences, ask general questions in forums, talk with people, etc.

Website Structure

Start thinking about the structure of your website. What sections and features will be required and how content will be grouped and managed.

Choose your Domain Name

A domain name will be required for branding your business website. It will also help you to build credibility. You will be using it for marketing and promotion. Your company name should be your first choice, but if it's unavailable, try something related to your activity. Keep your domain name short, pronounceable and easy to communicate.

Choose a Web Designer

If you are serious about starting a business website, you will have to find a web designer. I'm assuming you don't have enough experience in web design. Concentrate your efforts defining required features and providing the roots of your site structure. Define your target market, and the services and products that will be available to them. This information will help your chosen web designer to make decisions about the appropriate backend for your project, your web hosting requirements, colors, graphics and fonts to use on your design.

Choose a Web Hosting Company

With the help of your web designer, you can find a good hosting company for your website. He will be able to guide you about your minimum requirements, based on the features he will need to implement your design. Remember that support and reliability is very important.

Adding Content

Once you have your site up, you will need to start adding content. If you have provided some initial content to your web designer, you can skip this step. A CMS can be very useful when it comes to add, edit, remove and organize content.

Promotion

You will need to drive visitors to your site. You can submit your site to the most important directories and search engines like Yahoo, MSN, Google and DMOZ, fees for including your site can apply. Also you might need a budget, to buy advertising for branding purposes and to drive targeted visitors to your site.

Maintenance

It's very important to have your information up to date, so you will have to dedicate some time or assign a person or a group to maintain your website.

http://capmex.biz/web-design/business-website-checklist

Managing content

Useful information for anyone interested into publishing and maintaining large amounts of information.

Separate content from presentation

Make sure your website is designed using separation of content from presentation techniques. Using the latest widely spread standards based techniques you can be sure your site will accomplish this.

Identify your content units

Are you planning to publish articles, reviews, listings, forum posts, blog posts, etc? Identifying what you are going to publish it will help you choose the best managing system for your content.

A dynamic website

A dynamic website is needed to manage large amounts of data.

Basically a dynamic website loads content from a database and merges this with a presentation layer commonly known as "theme" or "template". It also provides interfaces to create, modify and organize content.

An static website falls short when it comes to content management.

Structure your site

Use categories and subcategories to create your site's structure. This will help you to organize your site's content in a logical manner.

A CMS

Finally you will need to choose the best Content Management System for your site. Each one has different features.

For example when I started this site it was an static website, a modified version of wordpress was used to output static pages from a database. Then I tested mambo on another site and considered using it but it didn't cover all my requirements. Finally I found drupal and its code cleanness, security and flexibility make me chose it.

http://capmex.biz/web-design/web-design-articles/managing-content

Removing HTML Hacks

Many html hacks that web designers have used to make pages look the same accross different browser versions, will need to be updated soon to remove them. The reason behind this is that Microsoft will be rolling out the new version of Internet Explorer (IE7) this year.

Internet Explorer 7

The new version of this popular browser (IE7) will be able to correctly interpret the code used on many popular html hacks, and will cause the pages relying on them to appear broken. This browser will support standards that previous versions failed to implement, and that were overly exploited on html hacks.

Star HTML

The most serious hacks that you need to remove or repair are the ones who exploit a bug on previous IE versions, called star html: * html

You'll also need to pay attention to hacks who exploit the missing implementation of child selectors, like: div * p

In the upcoming version the bug has been fixed and child selectors have been implemented.

Are we ready?

Many business sites, in the recent years were coded using all kind of html hacks because, they have become very popular among web designers.

In order to be ready, a lot of business website owners, whose sites depend heavily on hacks to display correctly, will need to dedicate resources or hire someone to fix their sites.

http://capmex.biz/web-design/web-design-articles/removing-html-hacks

Basic Web Design Software

Some basic web design software is needed to start creating websites. Do you know what you need to start designing a web page?

HTML Editor

While you can create and edit a web page using only a simple text editor, you will find that a full html editor is more appropriate. An html editor includes features and tools to aid you in your design efforts.

CSS Editor

Some html editors include the ability to create and edit css files. If your html editor doesn't include one, you can find a complete css editor program.

Image Editor

If you plan to add images to your web page you'll need a good image editor. Before placing an image on your website several actions need to be performed on an image to fit the overall design. The most common actions are resizing, crop, quality, effects, optimization, etc.

http://capmex.biz/web-design/web-design-software

Display Your Photos in a Cool Flash Photo Gallery

What would a web site be without pictures? Plain and very boring! Many people need online photo albums to display pictures of their family and friends. Besides that a photo gallery can also be used to display visual projects completed for your business. For example if your business deals with photography, interior design, architecture, or landscaping an online photo gallery is essential. If you are a graphic designer you can also showcase your graphic design portfolio inside of a online photo gallery.

So why a flash photo gallery? Don't get me wrong, static photo galleries are OK. A flash photo gallery makes your images come alive. You can also fit more images in a smaller amount of space on your web page. Also thre is no need for your visitors to wait around for a page of big picture files to load. Nobody likes to wait for large images to load. They'd just as soon leave! With a flash photo gallery you give your site visitors the control to choose which enlarged view images they would like to see. All of Hoover's flash photo galleries basically work the same. Initially your site visitors see a thumbnail (smaller view) of your picture. If they want to see the enlarged (bigger) view of the picture they can click on the picture thumbnail and the picture will quickly load for them. Believe me your site visitors will thank you for thinking of them!

Hoover's photo galleries are very customizable. You can customize your photo galleries color, the number of pictures in the gallery, the title, music and much more. Presently there are 27 photo galleries to choose from. With so many galleries surely there is one to fit your web site! Some of the themes include personal photo galleries, wedding photo galleries, baby photo galleries, family photo galleries and teen photo galleries. It is not necessary to have the Macromedia Flash program or any flash knowledge. Hoover's photo gallery require minimal work and you can have your photo gallery set up in about 10 minutes. All of Hoover's galleries come with basic instructions on setting up the photo gallery.

http://www.hooverwebdesign.com/flashphotogallery.html

Microsoft Reader Today s Ebook Solution

In this day and age we are busier than ever. Once, free time was something we all had plenty of. Now, free time is hard to find. Our lives have become hectic, fast paced, and for most people spare time means overtime.

The internet has helped us get some of our time back with shopping online. We can save tons of time by searching for what we want or need by checking out stores online for specials and stock.

I don't like to always have to pay for shipping. So, if a store is close by, instead of driving from store to store, I find out which stores have what I want in stock, compare prices and away I go.

Another great way to save time is with audio ebooks. You can listen to them whenever you want. In the car, on your MP3 player or on your ipod. You can listen when you walk, jog, or workout. Even on your CD player, or on your computer.

Microsoft Reader is a good way to read or listen to your ebooks. If reading is your thing, then this is a great system. Just download the free software on to your computer and start shopping. If you already have ebooks, you can transfer them as well. To do this you will also need to download MSReaderSetupUSA.exe.

Once you do this, the set up will be installed into Microsoft Word. To load your ebook into Microsoft Reader all you need to do is to open your book in Word format, click file, then click read. From there follow the simple instructions and you are done.

Just one thing. If you listen instead of read, the audio is clear, but rather robotic sounding. For audio, Media Player or audio devices are much better.

For a quick link to the Microsoft Reader download, and for some great ebooks go to www.audioebookemporium.com

The following information covers everything you need to know about Microsoft Reader. Including features and other display options. Try it out. I think you'll like it. If you have any questions contact us at www.audioebookemporium.com. We will be happy to help you out.

Now it's time to tell you about some of the amazing features of Microsoft Reader. Some, you may know or have heard of, others may blow you away. Just in case, hold onto your socks, you just may lose them.

The first thing is the Clear Type Technology. This technology makes the words appear on screen just as they would on a real book. It also has a Navigation System that remembers where you left off. How cool is that?

There is a Personalizing System that includes font sizing, drawing, personalized notes, and highlighting. Finally, the Text-to-Speech. I touched on this earlier, but I didn't mention the Speech ad-in feature.

If you need more specifics, here they are. Microsoft Reader ebooks are made to be read on Microsoft Reader software only. You can read Microsoft Reader ebooks on Windows desktop and laptop PCs, Pocket PCs, and Tablet PCs.

The most frequently asked question is: Why should I use the Microsoft Reader ebook format instead of another format? The answer, Microsoft Reader is one of the most book-like ebook formats, and Microsoft Reader ebooks offer a versatile ebook solution, because they can be read on both your Windows computer and Pocket PC.

http://www.hooverwebdesign.com/articles/microsoft-reader.html

Adobe Reader New Improved, and Better than Ever

By now, everybody and their dog has heard of Adobe reader. The purpose of this article is to tell you about the newest version of Abobe Reader and some of the updated features.

First of all, Adobe Reader is a software system that allows you to read ebooks loaded onto the Adobe Reader format. We all know that. It's free software and lets you view and print Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files on all major computer platforms, as well as fills in and submits Adobe PDF forms online.

A lot of us have the 6.0 version, but 7.0 is now available. You can download the newest version of Adobe Reader quickly and easily by going to www.audioebookemporium.com. and clicking on the Abobe Reader download.

Some of the cool Features of Adobe Reader are the Portable Document Format (PDF). Adobe PDF files are compact and can be shared, viewed, navigated, and printed exactly as intended by anyone. Adobe PDF is a universal file format that preserves all the fonts, formatting, graphics, and color of any source document, regardless of the application and platform used to create it.

Adobe PDF files can be published and distributed anywhere: in print, attached to e-mail, on corporate servers, posted on Web sites, or on CD-ROM. Adobe PDF titles are printable (unless printing is disabled by the publisher).

One more thing. If you are too tired and don't feel like reading, that's okay. With the 7.0 version, it will read to you. All you have to do is, open your PDF file. Click view, then click Read out Loud. Select This Page Only, or Read to End of Document. That's it. Could it be any easier?

Note: Any books you download, usually have a copyright and can't be changed or altered in anyway. If ebooks allow changes, you will need PDF software to make changes. Be sure to check for any copyright restrictions.

Even though Adobe Reader is well known, here is some information you'll need to know.

Adobe Reader ebooks can only be read with Adobe Reader software. You can read Adobe Reader on Windows PC, Macintosh, and Palm PDAs

Not all Adobe Reader ebooks are printable. Printing capability is up to each publisher and some choose to disable printing. In my experiences, printing has not been a problem, but I can't guarantee it won't be in all cases.

You can read the Adobe Reader titles from audioebookemporium.com on your Palm PDAs, but not on Pocket PCs

Again, Adobe Reader eBook format is a very good System because; it can be read on any computer, including Windows, Macs, and Linux. Adobe Reader eBooks are best for reading on your computer. They offer a book-like layout that's great on-screen. Definitely better than any other format out there.

I hope this article has been somewhat informative. If you don't have the newest version, what are you waiting for? After all, it's FREE, it's new, and it's waiting for you.