All Articles New/Popular or recently updated Articles and Tutorials Targeted Web Site Traffic- All website traffic isn't equal. More Traffic=More Sales?- Will increasing your website traffic get you more sales? Website Research For Small Business Websites-How to conduct basic keyword research for your business website The Geography of Web Hosting-Is the physical local of you website important to your search results? How to Plan your website- If your just starting with your website start it with a plan What is The Robots.txt file and How to use it, create it and check it for errors Google Analytics- Using Google Analytics to monitor your website performance. Handling Repetitive Content - How to handle content that need including on several pages without having to manually add it to each page Adding Repetitive Content Using PHP-How to add Repetitive Content Using PHP- the basics of a cms system Using FrontPage webbot for Page Includes- How to include web pages inside other web pages for repetitive content using FrontPage. Apache .htaccess File Help For Non Techies - What is the apache .htaccess file, how and why it is used Google Sitemaps and Webmaster Tools- Google proved some very useful webmaster tools as part of Google sitemaps and you don't need to submit a sitemap to use them. Yahoo sitemaps- What are Yahoo sitemaps? How to create, upload and authenticate them Websites For Service Professionals and Consultants - Mini Course aimed at consultants and service professionals looking to promote their business on the Internet using a website. Joomla Overview -What is Joomla? What are the requirements for using it and how is it used? Paying for Traffic- Should you pay for your traffic? There are many instances were paying for it is really to best option and sometimes the only one. Creating a Contact Us Page - Every website needs to provide contact details. So How do you create a Contact Us Page. Links to a 4 part how to series on creating and implementing a contact form. Article Writing and the Resource Box- Quick guide to Article Writing and the Article Resource Box Are Ready Made Website Templates for You?- Ready or pre-made website templates may not be the ideal choice for the beginner. Discover the possible problems before you commit yourself Building Affiliate Websites - The two main types of affiliate website and how to build them Starting a Business website - Starting a website requires that you understand the various aspects of building a website and how part of the process can be done A travel Site- Do you have a holiday villa or property that you would like to rent? or just passionate about a destination? Thought about your own travel site. The Long Tail -What it means to your site and pages and how it affects your Keywords and Search rankings Is Your Website Letting You Down?-What is the main purpose of you web site? How will you be found? If you don't know the answers then your website is probably not working for you. Websites and Email- Websites and Email. What email capabilities do you get with your site and how do you use it. Website Content Management Systems- An Overview of Website Content Management systems. What they are and why they are useful and who should use them. Add Video To Your Website Using Microsoft FrontPage- Short Tutorial How to Add Multi-Media to Your website- More and more websites are using Multi-media. Here we look at how you can add Video and sound to your website.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
All Articles
How to Password Protect Web Pages/Website
How to Password Protect Web Pages/Website Some parts of your web site may be private. So how do you restrict access to those web pages? The answer is to password protect those pages. Anyone who wants access is then required to enter a valid username and password in order to view them. However you don't need to be providing a membership website in order to require access restrictions on some web pages. You may have a family website for family members only, or a download area that you want to restrict access to. Password Protection Methods There are two main ways password protect is achieved Using JavaScript Scripting This type of password protection doesn't require anything special on the server but does require that the the browser support and enable JavaScript. Generally the way these pages work is to send the user to a opening page that requires the username/password to be entered. If they enter it correctly they are then re-directed to the correct page. They can be very simple scripts with the username and password embedded in the page but only viewable in source mode to more complex ones where the password/username is encrypted and hence more secure. You can also get scripts that support multiple users. Here is an example of a script in action. The username is steve and the password in password. Click to reset the example is Here is the script that checks for the username and password I've highlighted the username and password in yellow: <script language="javascript"> For increased security you should implement it as an external script. Here is the script and form page (opens in new window). Just view the source and copy the contents, and edit as needed. There are many other scripts available here. Although they are very simple to implement they are not really that secure as once the visitor has visited the real page he can book mark it and return without going through the login page. There are commercial scripts available like htmlock which are designed for protecting multiple files and overcome the above problems by encrypting the web pages. These also introduce their own difficulties, as the files are encrypted and can only be edited by decrypting them. PHP and ASP Scripts These are similar to the JavaScript examples but instead the scripts are run on the server and hence require that the server supports that script. Each page that requires protection needs to be edited to include the script. Here is a free php script if you want to investigate further. Server based Password Protection This is by far the best and most secure option. However it does require that your host supports it. Your Hosting provider will provide control through a control panel where you can configure the protected directories and username/passwords. The problem with this approach is that it requires manual setup and is only really used in a semi-static environment. Meaning there aren't many users and they don't change often. It is often used to provide access for newsletter readers (and similar) to private parts of a site. The trick to keeping it secure being to change the password regularly and notify the members by email of the password change. For a more complex membership type system, were the visitor can create and edit his own username and password, you need a fully fledged membership site system. These are normally written in php, perl or asp and usually require database (MYSQL, SQL or access) support. You should ensure that your host supports the necessary components before you purchase a membership system.
Membership websites either paid of free (requiring registration) typically require a password to be entered in order to view certain web pages.
<!--
/*Change the usename,password and the page to redirect the user to to suit your own site*/
function login(form)
{
if (form.user.value=="steve" && form.password.value=="password")
{
location="encrypt1.htm"
}
else {
alert("Invalid username or Password")
}
}
//-->
</script>
How to Plan your Website
How to Plan your Website Do you know why you want a website and what that website is going to do for you/your business? The first stage in building your site is deciding What do you want the Website to Do? This may seem a pretty obvious question but it is often a question that most website owners never seem to ask themselves. It is also probably the main reason why many website owners are unhappy with their website performance. So before you begin make sure you ask yourself these questions. Website Research For business Websites it is important to target the right keywords. You need to to be aware of what search terms searchers will use to find the service/product that your site offers. Building it Yourself or Outsourcing Once you have a general idea of what you want from your website you can then move on to the second stage of deciding who will be doing what. As with any project you can either: Do it Yourself or Have someone do it for you or a mixture of the two. Generally speaking outsourcing will mainly be considered by business website owners but is an option regardless of website type- business or personal. Outsourcing doesn't necessary just mean getting someone to do some work for you. It can, and often does, mean buying a package/service that does the work. This is very common and even very experienced webmasters do this. As an example if you want a to establish a newsletter and your host doesn't provide one or the one it provides is inadequate you can either write one your self or use an existing autoresponder service. Your level of expertise and how much time you are willing to commit will determine to a great extent how much you will outsource. Generally the more technically capable you are and the more time you can devote then the more you can do yourself. Website Types In general there are three site types:
How to Register a Domain Name
How to Register a Domain Name The domain registrar I used was www.1and1.co.uk who also host this website. The procedure shown consists of approximately 9 basic steps all carried out using the Web browser: The following show the process of registering a domain name The screens that you will see when doing this may not be the same but the process will be very similar. In this example only the name was registered. If you are an existing customer there is no need to register and you use your user name and password to logon and order the new domain name. Otherwise you must register by providing your name, address and credit card details. You may be asked to choose a user name and password at any stage between or you may be provided with one by the registrar. You are usually notified by email of the name and password. You will use this to logon and manage your domain name later on. Make sure you keep a copy of any emails. Managing Your Domain Name If you now connect to your Website you will probably see something similar to that displayed in figure 1 below. This is what is known as domain parking. Because you haven't told your registrar what to do with you domain name he has given you a temporary Website with a default Under Construction notice. Most Domain Name registrars provide this facility as part of the registration fee. If they didn't then when you attempted to connect to the Website you would get a browser error message saying domain not found which tends to imply that it doesn't exist when you know that it does. You are now in position to manage the domain .Most Domain Name registrars will provide a facility that allows you to do this via the Web called a control panel. Related Articles and Resources:
Make Your Own Web Page Tutorial-Using and Learning HTML
Make Your Own Web Page Tutorial-Using and Learning HTML Learning how to make your own web page using HTML isn't strictly necessary in order to make your own website. There are many tools (web page editors) which make leaning HTML unnecessary for making a web page. However you will find that a basic knowledge of HTML makes it much easier to insert scripts like Google Adsense and website counters etc correctly into your web pages. What Is A Web Page? Web Pages are simply text pages with special formatting Tags which describe how the text appears i.e. is it bold, which font etc. This formatting is called HTML- Hypertext Mark-up Language. Although knowledge of HTML is not required in order to make web pages you will find that learning a bit of basic HTML very worthwhile. Furthermore there are many good free HTML editors available allowing you to make your own web pages for free. Make Your own Web Page - An Introduction to Here you are going to familiarise yourselves with HTML and at the same time make a Web page. The tool we will use to make your first Web page is a simple text editor called Notepad, which is available for free on all versions of windows. I recommend you follow these exercises on your own computer. Make Your own Web Page Exercise 1 Open Notepad and type the following: Make Your own Web pages-for free Save the file as my-first-web-page.txt in a directory on Close Notepad and then open the File my-first-web-page.txt in notepad. Notepad should display my-first-web-page.txt as shown in Figure 1 below: What you have created is a simple text file meant to be Make Your own Web Page Exercise 2 Now open the file my-first-web-page.txt in notepad and change it <HTML> Make Your own Web pages-for free </HTML> Then save the file as my-first-web-page.txt.Open the file again using notepad. Notepad should display my-first-web-page.txt as shown in Figure 2 below: Notepad doesn't know that <HTML> is actually a formatting tag and not meant to be displayed, so it displays it as normal text. Now save the file this time as my-first-web-page.htm and then open it again. This time it should open with Internet Explorer. Internet explorer should display my-first-web-page.htm as shown in Figure 3 below: The file extension .htm or .txt defines what application is used to open the file .txt files are opened by Notepad and .htm or .HTML extensions are opened by Internet Explorer. Lets examine this is in a little more detail.
HTML
your computer (e.g. C:\webs\BYO directory).
Figure 1. text page displayed by notepad
read by a text editor or word processor and it is displayed correctly.
to the following:
Figure 2. An HTML page as displayed by notepad
Figure
3. An HTML page as displayed by Internet Explorer
Notice that the <HTML> tags are missing as the browser knows what to do with them and uses them to structure and format the text but doesn't display them.
Make Your own Web Page - Part 3
Make Your own Web Page - Part 3 We are now going to make links to another document and also a link to a place in the same document. Exercise 4 Make a new page called page2.htm with the following text. <HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>Making your own Pages -Page 2</TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY> <h1>This is Page 2</h1> </BODY> </HTML> Then modify the index.htm page so that it contains the following: ( tip: use cut and paste ). <HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>Home page of Making your own Website-for free </TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY> <h1>Welcome to the Home page of Making your own Website-for free .</h1> <p><a name="Introduction">Introduction</a></p> <p>This is the first section of the page. The heading introduction is an anchor and is linked to later in the document.</p> <h4>This is a link to a new document called <a href="page2.htm">making a free web page</a></h4> <p>This is text contained in a paragraph and should be enclosed in paragraph tags. You can insert any text you want here</p> <p> </p> <p>This is a new paragraph.</p> <p>This is a link to the beginning of the page useful for quick navigation through a long page <a href="#Introduction">Introduction</a> .This type of link is used if the page covers more than one screen.</p> <p> </p> </BODY> </HTML> Open the file index.htm with Internet explorer the result should be as shown in Figure 7: This is all we need to cover in this series on HTML. You can find an updated version in Starting Html. In reality you only need a very basic understanding of HTML in order to create Web pages because the editing tool (see web page editors) takes care of the HTML coding. Creating a Web page today is like creating a document using a word processor and most of the word processors today are capable of creating HTML or converting text documents into HTML documents. However, in spite of this it is well worth the effort if you can manually edit an HTML Web page. The best way to learn is to fully understand what we have done here and then get yourself an HTML book for a reference. Web Page Names and Extensions Web Page Titles For our home page we have used the page name index.htm. You may have seen others called index.html or home.htm. So what is the significance of these names and how do you name web pages? This is covered in web page names and the home Page Extensions .htm and .html You will notice that we are using index.htm and not index.html. This is simply convention if your ISP tells you to use index.html then all of your pages should have a .html extension. If you can choose and usually you can then I prefer the .htm extension (its shorter). <-----Make your own web Page- part2 <-----Make your own web Page part1 Useful links for learning more HTML:
Figure 7: index page with a link shown in blue
Make your own Web pages -2
Make your own Web pages -2 Exercise 3 Type the following into notepad and save as index.htm. <HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>Make Your own Web pages-for free </TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY> <h1>Welcome to the Home page of -Make Your own Web pages-for free .</h1> <h2>My second Headline </h2> </BODY> </HTML> The above is the basic HTML skeleton structure. HTML documents actually consist of two parts the Header and the body. The Header part contains information that is not displayed by the browser such as script, Meta Tags and Cascading Style sheets. The body part contains the actual document contents. HTML consists of a series of tags which are enclosed in Triangular brackets (< >).These tags are in pairs and are case-insensitive; that is, it doesn't matter whether you type them in upper or lower case. Using upper case makes the tags easier to pick out in a document, but you can do whatever you like. The tags are used by the browser for formatting the page but they are not displayed. Tags typically occur in begin-end pairs. These pairs are in the form <tag> .... .. </tag> Where the <tag> indicates the beginning of a tag-pair, and the </tag> indicates the end. (The dots indicate an arbitrary amount of content between the tags. The opening tags can also contain attributes which modify the tag e.g. <body bgcolor="white"> The first and last tags in a document should always be the HTML tags. These are the tags that tell a Web browser where the HTML in your document begins and ends. The absolute most basic of all possible Web pages is: <HTML> </HTML> That's it. If you were to load such a page into a Web browser, it wouldn't do anything except give you a blank screen, but it is a valid Web page. Next come the header tags <HEAD> and </HEAD>. The header tags contain all of the document's header information like the document title and so on. They are not displayed by the browser. Between the title tags <TITLE> and </TITLE> you should have the title of your document in this case --Make Your own Web pages-for free. This will appear at the top of the browser's title bar, and also appears in the history list of the browser and any bookmarks. If you don't type anything between the title tags or don't include the title tags at all then the browser will typically use the actual file name for the title which can be confusing. Finally the body tags <BODY> and </BODY>, between which Spaces You can place as many spaces as you want between words as HTML ignores additional spaces. Therefore if your type in: the extra spaces are removed it appears in a browser as the extra spaces are removed If you want extra spaces you need to use the code to denote a non breaking space. Therefore to create 3 extra spaces you enter it three times as here: Three extra spaces Headings The heading structures are most commonly used to divide sections of text. There are six levels of heading (from H1 to H6) and by default browsers will display the six heading levels in the same font, with the point size decreasing as the importance of the heading decreases. The HTML for Heading tags look like this: <H1>Text for Heading 1</H1> They are displayed by the browser as: Paragraphs A page is composed of a number of sections separated by headings, each of which is composed of one or more paragraphs. Each paragraph is composed of words, and each word of letters. The beginning of a paragraph is marked by <P>, and the end by </P>. When a browser comes across a <p> tag it starts a new line and adds some vertical white space between the last line and the new line. Links Links allow the reader to jump from one section of a document to another section of the document or to a new document altogether. This is shown in Figure 5 below: In order to link you require two things: The start of the link is called the hotspot and it shows up in the browser as underlined and in normally in blue until it has been clicked. It is designated in HTML by use of the anchor tag <A>. Unlike simple tags the anchor tag has extra attributes which specify the name of the tag (so that it can be linked to) and the destination web page or page section. The form is as shown in Figure 6:
you find everything that gets displayed in the browser window. So if you open index.htm using internet explorer. Internet explorer should display index.htm as shown in Figure 4:
Figure 4. index.htm as displayed by Internet Explorer
Figure 5 linking in an HTML
Make your own Web pages
Learning how to make your own web page using HTML isn't strictly necessary in order to make your own website. There are many tools (web page editors) which make leaning HTML unnecessary for making a web page. However you will find that a basic knowledge of HTML makes it much easier to insert scripts like Google Adsense and website counters etc correctly into your web pages. What Is A Web Page? Web Pages are simply text pages with special formatting Tags which describe how the text appears i.e. is it bold, which font etc. This formatting is called HTML- Hypertext Mark-up Language. Although knowledge of HTML is not required in order to make web pages you will find that learning a bit of basic HTML very worthwhile. Furthermore there are many good free HTML editors available allowing you to make your own web pages for free. Make Your own Web Page - An Introduction to Here you are going to familiarise yourselves with HTML and at the same time make a Web page. The tool we will use to make your first Web page is a simple text editor called Notepad, which is available for free on all versions of windows. I recommend you follow these exercises on your own computer. Make Your own Web Page Exercise 1 Open Notepad and type the following: Make Your own Web pages-for free Save the file as my-first-web-page.txt in a directory on Close Notepad and then open the File my-first-web-page.txt in notepad. Notepad should display my-first-web-page.txt as shown in Figure 1 below: What you have created is a simple text file meant to be Make Your own Web Page Exercise 2 Now open the file my-first-web-page.txt in notepad and change it <HTML> Make Your own Web pages-for free </HTML> Then save the file as my-first-web-page.txt.Open the file again using notepad. Notepad should display my-first-web-page.txt as shown in Figure 2 below: Notepad doesn't know that <HTML> is actually a formatting tag and not meant to be displayed, so it displays it as normal text. Now save the file this time as my-first-web-page.htm and then open it again. This time it should open with Internet Explorer. Internet explorer should display my-first-web-page.htm as shown in Figure 3 below: The file extension .htm or .txt defines what application is used to open the file .txt files are opened by Notepad and .htm or .HTML extensions are opened by Internet Explorer. Lets examine this is in a little more detail. Make Your Own Web Page Tutorial-Using and Learning HTML
HTML
your computer (e.g. C:\webs\BYO directory).
Figure 1. text page displayed by notepad
read by a text editor or word processor and it is displayed correctly.
to the following:
Figure 2. An HTML page as displayed by notepad
Figure
3. An HTML page as displayed by Internet Explorer
Notice that the <HTML> tags are missing as the browser knows what to do with them and uses them to structure and format the text but doesn't display them.
Making a Website With Site Build_it It's Easier Than you Think
Making a Website With Site Build-it Are you struggling with the technical aspects of website building or simply just want to build a website with the minimum of fuss? The traditional web hosting provider has a very technical approach to website building. As a potential website builder you purchase a hosting package that has PHP, MySQL, access to .htaccess etc. You then, using your web design tools (DreamWeaver, FrontPage), build your website. This, I must admit ,was my initial approach ,and to a certain extent it still is. This approach does mean that you need to attain a reasonable amount of technical know how to succeed, and that is indeed the subject of this website. An Alternative Approach It was while I was looking for hosting packages that I came across the Sitebuild-it website. What I found different about Sitebuild-it was it had no mention of PHP, JavaScript, MySQL databases etc. None of the usual technical blurb about Gigabytes, Gigabits, Linux and MS hosting. Instead it focused simply on building a website, or more accurately, building a website business. You Don't Need to be a Mechanic Do you need to learn how to be a car mechanic before you can drive a car ? .. No!.. Then why do you need to be a web expert to build a website? It is possible to make a Website using Site build-it with the bare minimum knowledge of HTML, and no knowledge of Linux, PHP, Giga... All you really need to be able to do is to be able to cut and paste between two windows. Site build-it ensures that your Web pages are correctly optimised, takes care of the search engine submission ,search engine monitoring etc leaving you free to concentrate purely on creating the Website content. Is Site Build-it for Everyone? Absolutely not! If you are interested in the technical details of making websites, or if you simple want to make a small family or personal website (less than 10 pages) then you are probably much better doing it all yourself. However if you are more interested in building a website with the minimum technical knowledge then you can try Site Build-it for Free! and see for yourself how easy it really is. Still have Questions? Do you have a question about site-build-it? Will it work for you? Why not ask them either through the contact form or on the phone. Why not read through my site build-it tutorials (below) and learn how easy it is to get your website up and running and getting traffic. Make a Website with site build-it Tutorials
It's Easier Than you Think!
Mini Websites
Mini Websites Mini Websites are typically small (1-5 page websites). The main use of mini websites is for affiliate marketing, where small sales sites (mini-sites) are specially created to sell/promote a particular product or service. Why Mini Websites? Most webmasters rely on search engines to deliver them free traffic and hence customers. In the early days of the web the main source of revenue for webmasters came from affiliate programs and banner advertising. Search engines, in particular Google, favour content heavy websites. Therefore in order to get reasonable amounts of web traffic webmasters would create large content based websites (see affiliate masters ebook). This website building model is still practised today and is the one I and many others use. However; heavy content websites (100+ pages) take time to build. If you have a product that has a short sales life its impractical to build a 100 page website just to promote it. Hence the birth of the mini site, which is a website constructed around either selling or promoting a single product, service or event. Mini WebSite Problems and Solutions The problem with these type of sites is that, because they don't have much content, they don't usually rank very well in the search engines. Therefore they cannot rely on free search engine traffic and need to be promoted by other methods - the main ones being: Uses and Design The main use of mini web sites is for selling/promoting a single product , service or even event like a rock concert. They are also used for customer/product support and feedback. They consist of a home page + optional pages Optional pages are typically: If you are new to the mini website idea then you may want to see the High performance affiliate marketing and/or the cracking the niche code ebook for more information on using mini-websites for affiliate and product promotion. Mini Web Site Examples Here is a screenshot of a website selling the the mini-sites-profits ebook. Notice the 4 links (red circle). This mini site is basically 4 pages home plus testimonials, contact and members. Making Your Mini Websites In the How to Make a Website Using Templates Video Tutorial Series I cover how to take a small website template and make your own mini website using it.
Multiple Domain Hosting For Reduced Website Hosting Costs
Multiple Domain Hosting For Reduced Website Hosting Costs If you are the owner of several websites then hosting multiple domains on a single hosting account is an excellent way of achieving low cost hosting without having to sacrifice quality. What many don't realise is that generally you don't purchase a website, you purchase a hosting account. In some cases this can only be used to host a single domain and hence a single website. In others the account can be used to host multiple domains and hence multiple websites. Benefits of Hosting Multiple Domains Because domains are much cheaper than website hosting accounts, choosing an account that offers multiple domain hosting is a far cheaper way of hosting multiple websites at low cost, than purchasing a hosting account for each website. As an example the hosting provider 1and1 provider (link below)offer a simple hosting package for approx £70 per year and uk domains for approx £2.00 per year. If I have four websites then to host using: a) separate accounts cost= £70 *4 + 4*2= £288 per year b) A single account and multiple domains cost = £70 + £2.0 *4=£78 per year. The saving is £210 per year. This must be offset by the fact that each of the domains traffic is usually counted together against the single hosting account and if your websites are popular then you may exceed bandwidth and or disk space limits. In addition you may find that the log files that are provided don't allow you to differentiate between the domains as all the traffic is counted against a single domain. The Hosting account also has a single password and hence once logged in you can administer each domain. Therefore each domain should belong to you. Hosting Providers that Support Multiple Domains Because of the popularity of mini websites and website reselling there are many hosting companies that specialize in providing multiple domain hosting and offer substantial discounts depending on the number of domains you intend to host. Hosting Multiple domains on a single account has the potential to significantly reduce your hosting costs, but as is the case for choosing any hosting provider you should be aware of what other website services you require, and choose your hosting provider accordingly. Don't just go for the cheapest or the one that provides the most services! Here is a short list of the ones I have found while searching the Internet. If you do this search yourself you should also try "hosting reseller" as many sell multiple domains as a reseller service. UK USA Who Needs This Type of Hosting? Anyone who requires multiple websites with their own distinct domain name should consider this type of hosting account. If you only intend to host a single domain/website then you shouldn't discard the idea as in many cases they are no more expensive than single domain hosting solutions. This type of solution is often used by affiliate marketers who create a website for each product/service that they promote. How it Works If you are to implement it then you need to understand how it works. A website is basically a collection of files stored in a folder ( website layout). This website to folder relationship is the key to understanding how multiple domain hosting works. Subdomains as an Alternative Rather than get another domain name it is possible instead to use a subdomain of the the existing domain name in which case you don't even need to purchase a separate domain name. However this will only work if the websites are related. Take a look a subdomains to see how they work and when they are used. Related articles and Resources: