For anyone who is interested in a great FREE graphics program, check out GIMP. I have recommended it to a few of my clients and they love it!
To download the program and to read more about it and its features, visit the GIMP website.
I have been criticized by other developers who love Flash technology because I have said that Flash is not very search engine friendly. Well, here we are hearing it straight from the horse’s mouth. Adobe’s very own have said there “has always been a bit of a tradeoff” when using Flash. “You get all the great graphics and experiences but you lose some search capability.”
Well, now Adobe is helping to change all of that. This, to me as a developer, is fantastic news! Adobe just announced that they are teaming up with Google and Yahoo to make Flash and other RIA (Rich Internet Applications) more searchable.
Even though I do applaud this move, I do want to point out still as a web user, that Flash can be over done. My advice is to use it sparingly and not to go wild with it. Remember, not everyone is a flash fan. I come across many people on a daily basis who say to me, “I hate those flash banners, they are so annoying and slow.” So…just keep the end user in mind when you are working on your website and adding flash.
As far as Adobe’s news though….that’s good news for developers and seo professionals alike.
What is CMS?
CMS has been getting a lot of buzz lately. It’s been around for a long time, but just recently became a trend setting web tool.
CMS means Content Management System. A content management system allows you to manage the content on your website without having to get your web design company involved. A CMS website offers you the ability to manage your own content at any time of the day, any day of the week.
In the early days of the web, you would pay a website company to put a website together for you. Then, every time you needed to add a paragraph to a page, or a couple of new images to your galleries, you would have to pay the website company to do this for you.
Now, with a CMS package, you can do your own updates all on your own. Without the help of your web company.
Custom Programmed CMS or Open Source CMS?
There are many different Open Source CMS software programs out there. Open source means the source code is open for developers and is free to use. These types of open source software products makes it very cost effective for you to own your own CMS, as they are normally less expensive than a custom programmed CMS website. At netmouser, we can handle the development of any of the open source programs, as well as our own custom programmed CMS packages.
How do I know what Content Management System is best for my website?
I normally consult with my customers or potential clients and find out what it is they do. How they want their website to function. What types of features they want. What we need to to do to make their website search engine friendly and to insure it operates at the optimal levels. All of these items come into play when you are searching for the best CMS package.
What are Custom Programmed CMS Packages?
Our CMS packages are custom php programmed with a mysql database. We have two packages to fit your budget. Our basic CMS Package allows you to have a custom designed website with up to 10 pages. All of which you control the content and images through your CMS Web Admin panel.
Our Advanced CMS package gives you the ability to have an unlimited amount of pages, all with the capabilities of managing your own copy and images through your web administration panel. The unlimited package is perfect for the website owner who knows they want to continually add new pages and links to their site with new information or services.
For the month of July, we are offering a 5% discount on our Custom Basic CMS and a 10% discount off our Custom Advanced CMS package. (Open Source CMS packages are excluded from the discount.)
Contact us with any inquiries and to set up your own website content management system.
This is a little bit of Web 101. For those of you who know it, great! If not, read on and find out how to change your domain name servers (or DNS).
One of the first things you do before you set up a website is buy a domain name. This domain name serves as the address to your website when you are ready to launch your site. Sounds simple, huh? Well, it is. But before you can launch your domain name to the world, there are steps you need to take in your domain control panel to connect it to your hosting site (which is where your website is.)
Wherever you bought your domain name will be the place you need to go, to log in to your domain name control panel. There, you will need to look for an option called ‘Name Servers’ or ‘DNS’. Once you find this option, you will need to update your name servers to your web hosting company’s name server url. An example of a name server url is ns1.<yourhostingcompany>.com or ns2. <yourhostingcompany>.com. (Your website hosting company will provide you with this information.) Once you submit your new name servers, it will take anywhere from 24 to 72 hours to propagate through the internet. Once this step is completed, all you have to do is enter your domain name into the URL field of your browser and check if your website comes up. If it does, you have successfully changed over your name servers to your new website hosting space.
For those of you who want to read up more about DNS and get a more in depth look at the overall picture of DNS and how it plays into the Internet, here’s an article I found on the ‘How Stuff Works‘ website.
Can I have more than one domain name for my website?
Most of my customers don’t realize that you CAN have multiple domain names pointing to one primary domain name. For example: If you own www.yourdomain.com as your primary website that houses all of your content, you could also own www.yourdomain-lasvegas.com as another domain name that points back to your main website. So, owning several domain names is never a bad thing. The most important thing to keep in mind though, is how you redirect the user to the primary domain. That is the key to search engine friendliness.
Domain Alias or a 301 Redirect?
In your hosting control panel, there is a place for you to set up a domain alias. NEVER USE A DOMAIN ALIAS. This is considered spamming the search engines because the domain name DUPLICATES the content on your primary domain and in turn, masks the domain name under the secondary domain. This is a very bad thing to do and you will get dropped in rankings very quickly by Google, Yahoo and other search engines. They feel you are trying to trick the engine when you use a domain alias. Why? Because what they see when they crawl an aliased domain is a website domain that has exactly the same content as the primary domain. So, if you have say…10 domain names all aliased to one domain name…the search engine sees 11 websites all with the same content. Hence, they think you are spamming them with duplicate content to trick the engine into giving you higher rankings.
So…what to do when you have multiple domain names?
Use a 301 Redirect. A 301 redirect tells the search engines that you have moved this domain permanently to a new domain name that you will specify. 301 redirects are search engine friendly redirects. Never use a 302 Redirect. 302 redirects are temporary redirects and are normally used by spammers.
So how do I set up a 301 redirect?
Considering, the domain name you are redirecting has never been hosted on any web server, buy a cheap hosting plan at netmouser.net domains and hosting (or any other hosting provider of your choice) for the domain you want to redirect. Then, you will need to upload a file called a .htaccess into the root of the html folder. This file will ‘direct’ the search engine crawler that you have permanently moved the domain name to a specific domain name.
How to create and setup a .htaccess file:
1. Check your current website ftp to make sure you don’t already have a .htaccess file already. (If you do not know how to do this, check your ftp program for instructions. I know in WS_FTP Pro, you can type -la into your file mask textbox and this will display if a .htaccess file exists.) If file exists, open it and go to #3 below. If not, go to #2 below.
2. Open Notepad or other text editor.
3. Copy and Paste this line into the Notepad file: (change the yourdomain.com to the your primary domain.)
redirect 301 / http://www.yourdomain.com/
4. Now save the file a .htaccess - make sure Notepad doesn’t add a .txt extension at the end.
5. Upload the .htaccess file to your website html root folder.
Now, anytime that domain is typed in by a website visitor it will permanently forward to your primary website. This is now considered a search engine friendly redirect.