Posted by Average Joe on February 7, 2009 under Hosting | 
If you are planning to do more then host one or two basic pages for your site, you will almost indefinitely need the function’s of a database. Almost every script that is available for content management or e-commerce needs a database to operate, and often is not a requirement of a script that can be bypassed.
The most common database that is available with most hosting packages is MySQL. This is almost a standard and will provide everything you generally need to operate most scripts. When installing scripts from Fantastico databases, are automatically generated and saves a little time, otherwise if you are manually installing a script you need to create a new database, username and password and then apply that user to the database.
Another good tool that it is worth checking for in your web hosting is the tool PhpMyAdmin. What this allows you to do is to browse the data in the database tables, modify this data and do a number of other things that you may not be able to do without direct access to the tables.
Whether it is MySQL or another form of database, remember that it is something that you will almost certainly need at some point in the life of your website. Having it in your currant package will make it much easier then trying to find another package later on and probably will be less expensive then if you need to add it on down the track.
Posted by Average Joe on February 4, 2009 under Uncategorized |
When you are setting up your email account’s there is a temptation to just create one account and use that for everything. However this can be a problem later on as your business grows. Not something that cannot be solved with some effort, but it is just easier to start from a good starting point.
- You will probably want to set up a personal account for emails that need to go directly to you. This is a good idea, because you can use this on your business card, and it helps to make it consistent for people wanting to email you and not the company. Having a single generic email address, on all your cards can cause more damage then good especially if people want to contact you only and don’t know if it is going to go to you or not.
- Create a generic Sales account (sales@yourdomain.com) This is the address you would use on your website, for generic inquiry’s. As with most email address included on website, they inevitably lead to receiving plenty of spam mail. By using on generic account on the website it saves all the address of your staff getting the rubbish coming in.
- Other email accounts such as accounts@yourdomain.com, support@yourdomain.com, etc are things that you will need to decide if you really need or not. I would personally consider setting them up, as in the future when you have these different area’s within the business you will find that you need the generic accounts for the majority of email, but still the individual employee’s will have personal accounts as well.
The downfall in using a single address for example yourname@yourdomain.com is that later on it is often harder then you think to change people’s ways in sending email’s to the correct people especially if they change from your account, to a generic account and then to an another employees account. Often they will just go with the easiest option and continue sending them to you.
Posted by Average Joe on under Advertising |
The internet unfortunately is not the same as many other forms of media getting your website viewed, is not really just a case of build it and they will come. I mean over a period of time you will get the odd visitor or two, but it will hardly be the thing of massive proportions that will make you a lot of money. However there are many different ways that you can advertise your website depending upon your audience and your budget, to get people visiting your site.
ADWORDS – A service setup by Google, Adwords is one of the primary sources for the ads that power their Adsense network. With Adwords, you can advertise within their search results, as well as with their content partners. You have the choice. Additionally you get to set your daily budget, and the most you would like to pay for someone clicking on your advertisement. Placement of ads is defined by the higher the bid the higher up the ad results for that keyword.
FACEBOOK – For users of Facebook it is hard to miss the 2 or 3 ads that show down the left hand side of the page. This is something that you can choose to advertise your site on as well. The ad system on Facebook allows you to highly target your market, more so because of the demographic information that Facebook already stores about it’s users. Setting your budget is similar to other program’s where you can set a daily budget as well as the amount per click that you would like to pay.
AFFILIATE PROGRAMS – If you sell a product and would like to build your sales base, then an affiliate program may work for you. This sort of program can be setup through a third party or if you have the correct system on your own site. The results for this type of program will depend entirely upon the level of commitment that you put into it though. If you set up the program and ignore it then you will gain little results, but if you set it up build your affiliates group and help them to promote your business then you can have great success through a team of people helping you.
No matter what the type of business you are a running if you are running it on the internet then there is a good chance that you should be advertising to get people to your site. How you advertise is up to you, but without marketing no one will know your site is there.
Posted by Average Joe on February 3, 2009 under Hosting |
While for the most part Fantastico, is a great tool that people can use to install a great range of scripts, however while the range is great it does not include all the scripts you may want to use.
There are many variations or more advanced scripts, that you may like to use, which just are not available as part of Fantastico. This page is a little combined between showing you what else is available and just where to get it. Some of these are free and some may have a fee, however i have attempted to split them up where possible.
FREE SCRIPT OPTIONS
VirtueMart: A free e-commerce add on for Joomla and Mambo, that can also be downloaded in a single package with Joomla, or could be installed as an add-on to a Joomla install through Fantastico. There are a few download packages so be sure to check and get the right one for your Joomla install or the complete package.
Main Page | Download Page | Support Page
PAID FOR SCRIPT OPTIONS
Posted by Average Joe on under Links |
Finding your way around some topics, can take a little more then just reading one or even two different sites. Sometimes it can take consistent reading over a period of time to really find out what is really going on and what is changing. Because really that is the internet a constantly changing and altering way to communicate.
Problogger -This site offers a great deal of in depth posts, about what else but blogging, really in a short time it has become one of my more common reads.
TheVanBlog – Giving a good perspective on building a website on good design and seo principles.
Advertise Space – A blog about advertising, with some good relevant posts about advertising and the internet.
Posted by Average Joe on February 2, 2009 under Social Media |
Social networking is becoming one of the biggest attractions on the internet and there is probably a good reason why. Especially from a marketing point of view social networking, is very much a growing phenomena.
Where you are probably more familiar with networking in the respect that you have friends and business associates that you connect with on a daily basis, within your community or area that you work and live. Social networking on the internet can amplify the real potential of connecting with not just friends and business associates on a local level but on a global level.
But knowing about social networking on the internet and knowing where the best places are for it to happen are two different things. Below you will find a number of sites that really enable social networking on the internet.
Status or Short Message Sites
- http://www.twitter.com – A site that lets you connect with many different people, from around the world and send short status updates not more then 140 characters. Links are allowed and url shortening services are your best bet to Maximize your message. Also great for updating friends about new blog posts.
- http://www.plurk.com – Similar to twitter, in the limit to characters, however Plurk will also show you your updates and your friends and associates updates in a time line fashion. Additionally Plurk uses a karma meter, which has a range of things that are defined as good or bad and rewards or deducts depending on your actions
Community sites
- http://www.facebook.com - Facebook is a personal networking site primarily designed for you to form networks with your friends and family. The site includes a status update option which works similar to plurk and twitter, however you can also share more details about yourself, photo’s video and much more between yourself and other users. To some extent Facebook is also getting taken on by businesses in some ways, however the primary design here is not entirely business friendly.
- http://www.linkedin.com – Similar in the style of site to Facebook, LinkedIn is the business equivalent. This is the website that you can choose to connect more so with your work colleges then your friends (although they may be one and the same). As expected many of the game type or not business relevant features are dropped. There are also a range of additional features that you can gain through payment, and truly some of them may be worth it depending on what you hope to gain.
Blogging
- http://www.blogger.com – About the easiest way to get started with a blog, if you have a Google account already even easier. The process is pretty easy log-in with Google account, choose name of blog and address, choose template for blog and you are away. Blogger is a very easy option for posting your blog to the world, it is a limited option, but especially if you are just starting it will get you started.
- http://www.wordpress.com – Wordpress, is one of the most popular blogging platform’s, in fact this website itself is build on Wordpress. At wordpress.com, you are able to create your own blog with many of the same features as if you were hosting wordpress on your own site. While some of the features do differ slightly, it is a powerful option to get started with.
Forum’s
To some extent forums offer some of the same features that are included in most of the other types of site’s the primary difference is that there are many more forum’s on different subjects and offering different information, that esentially each one is a little bit different to the other. In some respects, they are alike, but in many respect’s most forums differ. A few that i personally am a member at which may be useful to visitor’s here are.
Social Bookmarking and Linking
- http://www.digg.com – You can add a link here, and based on the number of people that also share the same link determines the popularity of the link moving it up or down the ranking.
- http://www.delicious.com – A site where you can store all your bookmarks and have the ability to access them from any computer. Also acts kind of like dig dependent on the popularity of a bookmark moves the link up or down the rankings.
- http://www.stumbleupon.com – This takes the idea of sharing something like a link and extends it to anything pictures video’s, ect. Whatever is popular gets moved up. There is also an option to randomly visit something randomly or stumble upon it as the name actually suggests.
This is a good start to your social networking and interactions, over time i will be adding more sites to the list as i come across them and find if they are a useful tool or not.