WebDev Masters

New website owners and existing website owners alike consistently make a very common, yet extremely costly mistake. They find a web designer first and then an SEO second. Unfortunately, these entrepreneurs do not realize that literally every single thing that goes into building a new website will impact your SEO campaign. They commonly funnel thousands of dollars into a brand new website, only to find out that there are a lot of areas that must be rebuilt in order to have an optimum SEO campaign.

I will identify 6 major areas of concern, in hopes that even a small percentage of these website owners will come across this document at the right time, which is BEFORE they begin to develop their website.

1) Domain name registration & hosting. Make sure that when you register your website’s address that you register it for at least 5 years. Sites that register their site for a short amount of time send up a red flag at Google, who end up thinking that site site has been registered short-term in the hopes of helping another website, that is owned by the same person/company, to rank well by linking to it. When choosing your domain name, do not choose a URL that is riddled with hyphens between all your keywords. It is more important that you target this to your visitors than to the search engines.

2) Creating static URL’s. This is one of the most overlooked yet important things that you can do to ensure that your SEO campaign is a success. By eliminating dynamic parameters within your website’s URLs, you are ensuring that search engine bots will have no problems indexing all of your pages. Creating static URL’s can be accomplished by using the mod rewrite command in the .htaccess file in the root folder of your server. Here is an example of a dynamic URL (which you want to avoid), and a static URL (which you want):

Dynamic: http://www.yoursite.com/listings.php?ref=22

Static: http://www.yoursite.com/listings/22.html

Make sure that any potential programmer or designer that you hire understands that this will be a full requirement of the job.

3) Editing the head tag. There are three areas in the head tag that you will want to be able to either edit yourself or have your SEO edit. They are the page title, the description meta tag and the keywords meta tag. Having control over these for each of your top level pages (all the pages linked to from your home page), will be critical to your websites success in the search engines. You definitely do not want these to be the same on every page (they must be unique and reflect the nature of the content on the given page). For other pages that will be created in high volumes, you will want to make sure that there is a variable string (your web designer/programmer will understand what this is) in place for each of the three areas in question, so that they will automatically be filled with content that is the right length and reflects the content on the given page.

Again, make sure that your designer/programmer understands that this is a requirement of the job.

4) Clean, simple code. Ideally you want to define all aesthetic properties that different types of text on your site are going to have in a separate CSS file. This means that you want to avoid using as many tags as possible, especially font, size and color tags. You also want to avoid creating PHP scripts that are either two long, and contain a lot of unnecessary steps, or ones that rely heavily on javascript. It is best to avoid using javascript as much as possible.

Remember, the most important thing your site can be doing is making it easy for search engine bots to easy scroll through the code of your website and follow all the links that it finds. When there is unnecessary code and script on your site, it makes it a lot harder for them, thus hurting your SEO campaign.

Make sure that whoever is helping you build your site understands that there job is to output the cleanest, simplest code possible. If you have any questions about this or don’t understand it, it is best to talk to an SEO expert about it, to ensure that it is done properly.

5) Ensuring that visible written content is editable. The writing within the body of your site is one of the most important areas for you or your Optimizer to help your site increase it’s rankings. Ensuring that either of you can edit it at your own convenience is extremely critical to the entire SEO campaign. This because from time to time search engine algorithms will change, and that might mean that a strategy that was implemented in the past might not suffice, so you must be able to change it to keep up with the most up to date SEO techniques.

6) Site structure. Considering the nature of PHP, your site will most likely (and should) be created by a series of includes that puts all of the pieces of a given page together. You want to ensure that the layout and placement of graphics and navigational links within these includes is strategically correct. Remember, you don’t want to have to pay someone to go back and redo this, so it is critical to get it right the first time.

If you are unfamiliar with a lot of the information that I presented in this article, it is probably in your best interest to at the very least, consult with an SEO or SEO company during the entire design process. A good SEO will be very comfortable working with you and your design team to ensure that the end product will be one that will last you a long time, and will go a long way in helping your site generate revenue online.

Website hosting is one elaborate process that encapsulates lots of details, some not known properly to even website owners in big numbers. With varying needs for different website owners companies offering website hosting services have come up with different kinds of plans. These hosting plans have been created to suit every kind of preferences. The website hosting is done on various platforms, one of which is ASP.NET. As a fully defined programming interface, ASP.NET offers a world of advantages to you, including the ease with which you can apply your technical skills if using a client server. This is a great advantage as website owners using platforms like C++, Java or Visual Basic can synchronize their existing components with ASP.NET web pages. That’s one of the reasons why ASP.NET consulting is at an all-time high in the market today.

ASP.NET carries a host of features, which are beneficial for website developers when it comes to saving precious time through a very user friendly interface. However, this doesn’t mean that people without experience in Microsoft programming will find it easy to work in ASP.NET. It’s therefore safer if you take the services of a .NET consulting company as they can do a better job than your in-house programmers. Another advantage of hiring a consulting house is that you won’t have to shell out extra money in acquiring the license that you will have to buy for its functionality.

When hiring an ASP.NET consulting company there are a few things that you need to keep in mind so you remain in a profitable position. ASP.NET is a highly multi supporting programming platform. The reason it is patronized by a growing number of website developers is because it is compatible with several programming languages. With this kind of benefit at your disposal you should try and make the most of it, which includes deploying professionals for the task instead of keeping in-house staff and blowing a small fortune on the license as well. Moreover, a consulting company engaged in this field aggressively will garner greater success than you can hope to achieve by yourself.

Gone are the days of expensive web hosting. There was a time, just a few years ago, when hosting was not as cheap as it is now. Lets see why.

Hosting is all about storage on a hard disk (which resides on the web server) and bandwidth for your data. Till a few years ago, hard disk storage was not as large as it is now. Now-a-days hard disk drives come in a typical 400 GB to 500 GB capacity ranges. Even the smallest ones for home computer usage come in over 100 GB sizes. Compare that with a 40 GB hard drive just a few years ago.

A few of these 400 GB to 500 GB range hard disk drives in a typical Linux powered web server with 4 Intel Xeon Central Processing Units gives more than enough processing power and storage capacity to host hundreds of websites on one server, all of them running happily.

Throw in open source (free) Apache + PHP + MySQL combination and you have a recipe for hosting a real working dynamic website at very low costs. What was once a premium combination is now very standard and very cheap and very affordable. It is not uncommon to find hosting plans as cheap as just 99 cents per month, which come complete with all features including PHP and MySQL and enough storage + bandwidth.

There is, thus, no reason for anyone who wants to host anything from a personal homepage or a home business / small business wanting a dynamic website for their online business, to go only for simple HTML websites. No. That is long gone.

Shared web hosting has become very affordable for every kind of use and application. As storage and processing technology advances, hosting will be available with even better capacities and more powerful features. It makes complete sense to use the power of PHP and MySQL when it is well within everyone’s reach.

ASP.NET is one of the most superior and dynamic web applications which has been developed by software giant Microsoft. This application framework is a favorite among programmers in developing web applications and services and dynamic website. What makes ASP.NET so special is its n-Tier architecture. In any application development, the most important feature is the architecture. The performance of the application and its scalability along with future development issues of the application are decided by the architecture to a greater extent. An ASP .NET consulting company will tell you more about the advantages of multiple layers n-Tier architecture.

It is the n-Tier architecture which breaks the solution process into different projects as per the business requirements. It is easy to work with and also reduces complexity nature of a business. Hire the service of a .NET consulting company who understands you complex business requirements. There are three layers in an n-Tier application viz., the presentation tier, the business tier, and lastly the data tier. One layer has to interact with the layer immediate below and each layer performs designated functions. The presentation tier displays user interface to the end user or the programmer. This layer or tier is used by programmers for designing purpose. In ASP.NET it includes server controls, ASPX pages, and user controls.

The business layer acts as mediator through which the data from presentation layer is transferred. The architecture in ASP.NET includes the use of OleDb objects or SqlClient for retrieving, updating and deleting data from Access databases or SQL Server and the retrieved data is passed on to the presentation layer in a DataSet or DataReader object. The data layer after getting the data from the business layer sends the data to the database or vice versa. This data layer is sub divided into BLL (business logic layer) and DAL (data access layer). In ASP.NET it uses OleDb or SqlClient for retrieving data and sending it to BLL.

Thus the n-Tier architecture in ASP.NET backs a uniformed approach in application designing. So consult an ASP.NET consulting company for an end product, which is robust and dynamic.

ASP.NET is one of the most superior and dynamic web applications which has been developed by software giant Microsoft. This application framework is a favorite among programmers in developing web applications and services and dynamic website. What makes ASP.NET so special is its n-Tier architecture. In any application development, the most important feature is the architecture. The performance of the application and its scalability along with future development issues of the application are decided by the architecture to a greater extent. An ASP .NET consulting company will tell you more about the advantages of multiple layers n-Tier architecture.

It is the n-Tier architecture which breaks the solution process into different projects as per the business requirements. It is easy to work with and also reduces complexity nature of a business. Hire the service of a .NET consulting company who understands you complex business requirements. There are three layers in an n-Tier application viz., the presentation tier, the business tier, and lastly the data tier. One layer has to interact with the layer immediate below and each layer performs designated functions. The presentation tier displays user interface to the end user or the programmer. This layer or tier is used by programmers for designing purpose. In ASP.NET it includes server controls, ASPX pages, and user controls.

The business layer acts as mediator through which the data from presentation layer is transferred. The architecture in ASP.NET includes the use of OleDb objects or SqlClient for retrieving, updating and deleting data from Access databases or SQL Server and the retrieved data is passed on to the presentation layer in a DataSet or DataReader object. The data layer after getting the data from the business layer sends the data to the database or vice versa. This data layer is sub divided into BLL (business logic layer) and DAL (data access layer). In ASP.NET it uses OleDb or SqlClient for retrieving data and sending it to BLL.

Thus the n-Tier architecture in ASP.NET backs a uniformed approach in application designing. So consult an ASP.NET consulting company for an end product, which is robust and dynamic.

ASP.NET is one of the most superior and dynamic web applications which has been developed by software giant Microsoft. This application framework is a favorite among programmers in developing web applications and services and dynamic website. What makes ASP.NET so special is its n-Tier architecture. In any application development, the most important feature is the architecture. The performance of the application and its scalability along with future development issues of the application are decided by the architecture to a greater extent. An ASP .NET consulting company will tell you more about the advantages of multiple layers n-Tier architecture.

It is the n-Tier architecture which breaks the solution process into different projects as per the business requirements. It is easy to work with and also reduces complexity nature of a business. Hire the service of a .NET consulting company who understands you complex business requirements. There are three layers in an n-Tier application viz., the presentation tier, the business tier, and lastly the data tier. One layer has to interact with the layer immediate below and each layer performs designated functions. The presentation tier displays user interface to the end user or the programmer. This layer or tier is used by programmers for designing purpose. In ASP.NET it includes server controls, ASPX pages, and user controls.

The business layer acts as mediator through which the data from presentation layer is transferred. The architecture in ASP.NET includes the use of OleDb objects or SqlClient for retrieving, updating and deleting data from Access databases or SQL Server and the retrieved data is passed on to the presentation layer in a DataSet or DataReader object. The data layer after getting the data from the business layer sends the data to the database or vice versa. This data layer is sub divided into BLL (business logic layer) and DAL (data access layer). In ASP.NET it uses OleDb or SqlClient for retrieving data and sending it to BLL.

Thus the n-Tier architecture in ASP.NET backs a uniformed approach in application designing. So consult an ASP.NET consulting company for an end product, which is robust and dynamic.

Sometimes it’s useful to enable visitors to your site to upload content, for example, photos, which can then be displayed on the site.

Folders on a website, for example, an images folder will typically have permissions of 755, which means that normal visitors to the site will be unable to upload content into the folder. They will receive an error message if they try to do so.

In order to allow a file upload, one solution is to temporarily change the permissions on the folder to 777 before the upload is made, and then to change them back to 755 after the upload has been made.

The following PHP script shows how you can do this using PHP’s ftp_site command. This script only changes the permissions one way (to 777), it doesn’t change them back. You would need to extend the script or write another one to do this. The line that reads $mod = ‘0777′; // permissions to be set is the one that determines what the permissions are going to be set to.

Note: Please note that for display purposes, I have used square brackets ‘[' instead of angle brackets for tag names. In order to use the script you will need to change the square brackets back to angle brackets.

[?php

// Set up variables
$host = 'www.xyz.com'; // host (website) that contains the folder you want to change
$user = 'username'; // username to log onto the host
$password = 'password'; // password to log onto the host
$folder = 'public_html/test/'; // folder name to change
$mod = '0777'; // permissions to be set

// connect to FTP site
$conn = ftp_connect("$host");
if (!$conn)
{
echo 'Error: Could not connect to ftp server';
exit;
}

// log in to FTP site
@ $result = ftp_login($conn, $user, $password);
if (!$result)
{
echo "Error: Could not log on as $user";
ftp_quit($conn);
exit;
}

// try to change the permissions on the directory
if (ftp_site($conn, 'CHMOD '.$mod.' '.$folder)) {
echo "Successfully changed permissions";
}
else {
echo "There was a problem changing the permissions";
ftp_quit($conn);
exit;
}

// close the connection
ftp_close($conn);

?]

The script is fairly straight forward. You initially set up a few variables for the host name and stuff like that, you then connect to the FTP site, log on to the site, change the permissions of the folder, and then finally log off.

The path to the folder (assigned to $folder) will be something like ‘public_html/…/’. Check with your ISP if you’re not sure what this is.

For websites driven by database, the programming language is the key to optimum performance. And ASP.NET is one programming language which is tried, tested, and trusted by programmers when it comes to providing optimum solution. It is a dynamic programming language which is being increasingly used ever since its introduction in 2002. Website development has never been the same with ASP.NET. With its popularity rising, there has also a growth in the number of companies offering asp net consulting. Developed by Microsoft, this language is the first choice for many companies in developing web applications.

Innovative and intuitive web pages can be developed using this innovative technology. A .NET consulting company provides you dynamic, high performing, and good looking website with the help of this programming language. Apart from developing dynamic web applications, ASP.NET can be used in creating mobile games applications, ecommerce shopping carts, custom software applications, web solutions and online product development. So the range of its usability is wide and varied. Another advantage of this programming language is that it also supports other languages such Visual Basic, C#, and JavaScript.

ASP.NET is also used in creating enhanced security applications. Its area of usage is even more expanded as it offers HTML functionalities as well as source code. Getting the source code on server also becomes an easy task for programmers using this language. This is exactly the reasons why programmers all over the world have started relying on this highly versatile language which is supported by new tools and technologies.

Many organizations also look toward the services of an ASP.NET consulting company as they want their websites and web application to fully functional and user friendly. Websites have begun to play an important role in the effective running of business for any organization. This is why many business setups want to have dynamic pages for their sites. Programmers using ASP.NET can also create complicated and big applications by writing fewer codes. It also enables them to develop a well-designed server-side multi-feature programming model. So consult a company offering ASP.NET programming for developing better web and other applications.

If you want to build a user-management system – or work on someone else’s – you should know a few basics about how passwords are encrypted or hashed. In other words, how are they made safe for storage?

What is a Hash?

Before a password is stored, it is typically converted into a “hash.” This isn’t technically a form of encryption, because it is a one way process. Once a password has been hashed… there’s no going back.

For example, if I hash the phrase “Bananas,” I might get back this garbled mess of characters – “1ee31b77d0697c36914b99d1428f7f32.”

The reason we do this is so that someone who views the database – a hacker or maybe a dishonest systems adminstrator – can’t figure out your password. He or she will see the hash and have no idea what the password is.

The script that checks your password when you log in knows how the hash was created – so it can recreate that hash if you give it the same password. The hash it creates based on your input can then be checked against the one in the database to see if you entered the real password.

Ok, How Do We Create a Hash?

There are two major functions for creating hashes in php – md5() and crypt().

md5 is the simpler function, so we’ll start there. You simply call the function like so…

md5(“Password String”);

This returns the encrypted hash. If you called md5(“Bananas”), you would always get “1ee31b77d0697c36914b99d1428f7f32″ back as a result. You would then store that phrase in the database to check the password in the future.

Crypt is a bit more complicated. With md5, you always get the same result. With crypt, you can use different encryption keys or “salts” to get different results. You can encrypt something with crypt like this…

crypt(“Password String”);

or

crypt(“Password String”, “Salt”);

If you do not provide a salt or encryption key, them PHP creates one for you. This changes the way the word is hashed. So if you called crypt(“Bananas”) twice, you would get two different results. Here’s some extra reading on how to use crypt to hash and encrypt a password in PHP.

So Which is Better?

That’s debateable. In most cases, crypt uses the same hashing algorithm that md5 does. Neither is necessarily “stronger” than the other.

The one advantage that crypt does has is that it can a different encryption key or salt each time. The same password can have a different hash if it is created with a different salt.

Therefore it is near impossible to create a dictionary of known hashes. With md5, this can be done easily – because each password phrase has only one possible hash value.

A dictionary like this would make a hacking attempt much easier than if the computer had to physically hash and check each possible phrase. Here’s some more reading on the difference between md5 and crypt.

Good luck hashing, and remember – the best way to learn php is to try new things. So go practice.

Wikipedia says; “a dashboard is an executive information system user interface that (similar to an automobile’s dashboard) is designed to be easy to read. For example, a product might obtain information from the local operating system in a computer, from one or more applications that may be running, and from one or more remote sites on the Web and present it as though it all came from the same source.”

As stated above, main purpose of a dashboard is to present related data to user. A digital dashboard should present most meaningful data in one or two pages so that user can see every information he wants without doing so much navigation. Asp.Net technology which offers a powerful platform for web based solutions can be used for this functionality.

Another definition comes for Widget; “In computer programming, a widget (or control) is an element of a graphical user interface (GUI) that displays an information arrangement changeable by the user, such as a window or a text box. The defining characteristic of a widget is to provide a single interaction point for the direct manipulation of a given kind of data. In other words, widgets are basic visual building blocks which, combined in an application, hold all the data processed by the application and the available interactions on this data.”

Combining extensibility of a widget with a digital dashboard and Asp.net can provide better solution than tradational static dashboards. User can add widgets dynamically, edit them or rearrange them. User can add new dashboards, put new or existing widgets to his asp.net dashboard to have best relational information system.

Another benefit of this solution is dynamism. Adding widgets dynamically into an Asp.Net dashboard, show different values can create an analysis system instead of just presenting related data.

As a result, today’s presenting related data and monitoring requirements can be resolved easily with dynamic – widget based – asp.net dashboard. Unlike static dashboards dynamic – widget based – asp.net dashboard can provide beter user experience, freedom to both developers and users. If you are a developer who uses Asp.Net and want to add digital dashboards, choosing dynamic Asp.net dashboard model with a free data visualization software bundle will increase your productivity and decrease your maintenance costs.