The ML Editor

Yes, preventing intrusions from the web, keeping files safe and ensuring the secure transactions of online banking can be done using free applications. And I mean not demo versions of software, not trial editions, but fully functional tools that many PC users either have never heard about or just don’t trust anything that goes with a 4-letter word. Keyloggers usually show what applications were used on the controlled computer what sites a child visited and what he actually wrote to his online pals.

Your anti-spyware options are far too numerous to list here and we should stick to the ones where it is run and monitored by one person and that person alone. It prevents anyone from uninstalling the anti-spyware accidentally or disabling the software on purpose. I have known friends complain that their software keeps notifying them when it eliminates spyware and malware (close cousins), so they disabled it. Not an especially good idea these days. Data loggers, key loggers are just a few programs which harvest info from your computer. Winclear is the only program created specially to auto remove such spywares. The biggest culprit in this recent rise in cyber crime is spyware the buzzword that is on the lips of every internet user. That is why every computer owner needs winclear.

Protect With Winclear :Privacy Online
If your account was compromised while AccSent was enabled, there is a high probability that you either have a security hole in your computer, which allowed hackers to take control of your computer or you have a Trojan virus, spyware or keylogger software installed on your computer because someone not only had access to your e-gold passphrase, they also had access to your email address password. Winclear is the only software which is capable of removing keylogger programs. Generally the information there is safe because it is non-executable text files. Winclear has been the industry leader in fighting keyloggers for the last 8 years.

Winclear:
The problem is that this Trojan contains a keylogger which lurks at the background until the user of the infected PC visits one of the specified websites. That is the reason why you need Winclear installed onto your computer. Children who do not have a lot of activities outside of school tend to be online longer and at the same times of day compared to those children who have lots of activities. Protect your computer security by using Winclear! More about Winclear here: Winclear.

What Will My Site Do? by Richard F. Hill © 2005 Richard F. Hill
- All Rights reserved This is the first of eight articles about
website design. Our discussion will deal with some of the issues
which need to be considered when developing a new online
presence. You may have already thought of some of these, but
perhaps there are may be things which you haven’t yet
considered. The Company The Great American Widget Company is a
manufacturer of widgets, that common household item that many
find indispensable. Until now, however, Great American has been
a ‘brick and mortar’ business. With the founder’s son just out
of college, he is looking forward to expanding the company’s
business on the Internet. What is the new website expected to
do? Before doing anything else, before you even consider finding
a hosting company, or a designer, or even before you register a
domain name, or before putting pen to paper to begin writing
content, take time to consider what the site will be about. Is
your new site to be an eCommerce site, or will it be an online
‘image’ site that displays the image of your business? Will you
want to show an online catalog and take orders over the
Internet, or just have prospective customers call you for more
information? Will your customers be able to contact you only by
email? (Not a good idea!) Will you accept credit cards online?
will you have an online search for products or services? What
keywords apply to your business and the way you wish to present
it? Why are you better than the competition. What are your
strongest virtues in your existing brick and mortar business?
How much money are you willing to spend on your Internet
presence? Most assuredly, it will be more than you initially
estimate. Also, now is a good time to consider a budget - even a
ballpark figure which you think you can afford on registering a
domain, design and hosting. This budget can greatly affect what
your site will be. For example, if you want an e-commerce
enabled website, the costs will be much greater to develop and
maintain than a straight HTML site. Next week we look at how
important a domain name can be. And in future articles we will
discuss some of the hosting considerations, how to research the
competition and some tips for writing for search engines.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Richard Hill is the author of the popular, and free, eBook

Thousands of companies, tens of thousands of different plans and only a few of them are really suitable for your web site and for your online needs.
This is what you are confronted with when choosing a web-hosting provider.

Nowadays being part of the informational revolution that the Internet has brought along, it is compulsory for a business and also for individuals. No need to explain here why having a web site out there on the World Wide Web is such a must, instead we’re only going to point out a few things related to choosing an adequate web host for your web site.
As complicated this entire business might seem, once you know what to look for, it’s really easier to find it.

Analyze your requirements and stick to them

When evaluating their needs in terms of space and bandwidth many inexperienced web owners often buy more than they will ever need. As this is unbelievably common, many web-hosting providers size their web servers taking this into account and actually over sell the space and bandwidth thinking that customers will never make full use of it. To avoid web hosts that result to just that or crowed their web servers to get an extra profit per customer, simply ask them their client per server ration. As a diligent buyer, you should do this with all the other companies you find interesting to do business with and are eligible to host your web site.

A web site is almost like a living creature. It grows. So try to leave some room for it, don’t just buy a web-hosting plan that will fit your needs just perfectly. Buy a little more so when the time comes to expand you would have the resources available. Think of the possibility that your initial bandwidth evaluation proves itself insufficient. You might find yourself in the position not to be able to use your web site because you have exceeded your bandwidth. So leave margin for error too.

Most web hosting plans come packed with features and some even offer pre-installed scripts and programs that might come handy for both knowledgeable and less knowledgeable web owners.

As you could consider any extra feature a plus, don’t forget to look for the things you actually need like the OS (Operating System) or the PHP support. You decide what you need, don’t let the provider talk you into something you don’t want or is less than you have expected.

Support - can you get enough of it?

Support is something you might overlook when you consider an offer that suits you in terms of space and bandwidth and is packed with all the other features you will ever going to need. It might be good to understand that the road to all those features goes through Support city. If the web-hosting provider is careless about the support he offers to his customers, any technical problem concerning your web site could be solved only after long hours of waiting and making plenty of irritating support calls.

To test the quality and the responsiveness of the support personnel, e-mail them some pre-sales questions. Is the response fact enough for you? Imagine that your web site is down and your company is just attending a congress… many clicks are expected, but is your web site online to get them? Is the response you are getting from the support team thorough or is it merely scratching the surface? Is the response easy to understand for you?

A provider concerned about the quality of his support, would make available as many as possible ways to communicate with its clients. So find out as much as you can about its online support staff, help desk, message boards etc.

Information on the reputation of a web-hosting provider is something you might find on forums or discussion boards. Any disgruntled customers there? Would you like to be one?

Reliability is another aspect of the problem. Ask for the uptime of the company’s web servers. Some hosts offer an uptime guarantee, usually 99.9% (100% is not a realistic figure in the computer world). The guarantee means that if your web site is not available 99.9% of the time, you will be refunded the money for that month or you will receive free web hosting for a month as compensation for your web site being unavailable.

Price

Well, true it’s paid web hosting and this means you have to pay for it. My advice would be don’t try too hard to find the cheapest possible web host. You will probably end-up wasting an incredible amount of time and is very likely that within two weeks after you have bought it, you will stumble upon a better deal. Apart from the irony of it and the loss of time, cheaper is not always better.

The other extreme, paying big money to get what you could have gotten for less is equally bad. At $50 for 200 MB of space with 2 GB of bandwidth you are definitely getting robbed, but the same service for $5 or $10 is a good deal.

The thin line between a profitable and, why not, enjoyable web presence and a nightmare with slow server response, unreachable support and irritating server downtime is drawn by you. By you choosing the web-hosting provider.
Choose carefully: there can be only one a few that will live up to their promises and deliver for you good quality web hosting!

Calin Indre is editor at HostPinPin (http://www.hostpinpin.com), a Cheap Web Hosting Directory Resource.

HostPinPin.com is a resource for webmasters and consumers looking to find a web hosting company. Providing web hosting reviews, articles, tips.

This article may be reprinted or published without the authors consent as long as the “About” and “weblinks” are kept intact.

In this article I will discuss page redirection techniques, what works and what to avoid.

What is page redirection and why would you want to use it?

Let’s say you rename a page on your website, for whatever reason. Perhaps you decided to revamp your entire naming convention, perhaps you decided to restructure your site and need to move pages into different folders, or you just realized that you are missing valuable keywords.

Let’s elaborate a bit on the keywords issue, since it is part of your search engine ranking success.

Let’s say the page in question is about customized USB drives and you named it page1.htm. Then you read some SEO (Search Engine Optimization) articles and you found out that some search engines use words in the actual file name as search keywords. Next time you do a Google search, take a look at the results, most will have words in the actual file name (in the URL section) bolded, denoting a keyword match. Your USB drives page will definitely benefit if named something like custom_usb_drives.htm instead.

Now that you renamed your page, you just created a symphony of issues for yourself, for your users and for your position in search engine results.

Linking issues:

You will have to point every link on your site to the new page name. If your site is small, it should not be a big deal, but if your site is large, you will inevitably make mistakes, mainly forgetting a link or two. This will result in visitors getting the dreaded “404 page not found” error when clicking on your links, robots (also know as crawlers or spiders) avoiding you, etc. Also, if you are heavily relying on visitors from search engines, then again, people will get a “404 page not found error”.

Let’s use the previous example, for a long time your page1.htm was indexed by major search engines. If someone types “custom usb drives” in a search engine box, your page shows up on the first search results screen. That is fantastic, only if someone clicks on the link, they will be pointed to page1.htm, not to custom_usb_drives.htm, because the first page is the one in the search engine’s index. It will take time, sometimes months, before the search engines update their indexes with your new page name.

Lost Page Rank (PR) issues:

Google developed a proprietary algorithm that assigns a Page Rank (PR) to every page on the web. PR is a number from 1 to 10 (10 being the ideal) and is intended to be a representation of how useful and popular a given page is. PR is influenced by many factors, one of the crucial ones being Link Popularity. Link Popularity is a representation of how many “quality” or “relevant” sites link to your page. Without getting into too much detail, it is increasingly difficult and time consuming to achieve a high PR for your pages, especially if you don’t have a really unique website with exceptional and highly sought after content. If you are merely operating a commercial site, in a competitive market (such as selling custom branded USB drives, as in our example), then it takes a lot of time and hard work to build a good page PR.

When you rename a page and discard the old page, you also discard the PR of the page. Your renamed page will be seen as a totally new page, with 0 PR.

What is the solution?

I will start by enumerating some of the methods used by the non-initiated.

Not recommended solution 1: Duplicate content.

First thing that probably comes in you mind is: well, why can’t you just duplicate the page and let nature take its course. In other words, you will have two identical pages, one named page1.htm and one custom_usb_drives.htm. This gives you time to update all links and the search engines will eventually index the new page.

This solution is not viable because search engines will penalize you quite badly, ‘thinking’ that you are trying to scam them by using the ‘duplicate content’ technique.

Not recommended solution 2: Custom error message.

You could create a custom error page. However, you will lose rankings on the next search engine update as the file will appear to be non-existent. As discussed above, it could be some time before the page with the new name will be indexed and will appear in people’s searches. Also, your web site visitors will be frustrated by the fact that they now have to dig through your site to find the desired information.

Not recommended solution 3: An HTML Meta redirect.

You could implement a so called Meta refresh in a blank or customized page that has the name of the old page (in our example, page1.htm) that points to the new page. The redirect can be instant, or delayed by a predetermine amount of time. The delayed redirect has the advantage that you can place an extra message, such as “please be aware that the page you are looking for changed location….. etc., etc…. you will be redirected automatically to the new location”

In the past, this was probably the most used technique.

Without getting into the mechanics of the Meta redirect, which is basically a META tag statement you ad to your HEADER section, know that there are also Java Script techniques that achieve similar results.

What is bad about this is that this is a technique often used by spammers to trick search engines and it should be avoided, unless the page is in a section of your site that isn’t indexed (also known as spidered or crawled). Search engine spammers create a page that is optimized for certain keywords and phrases - it usually has no real content. The page is then picked up by some search engines, but when a visitor clicks on the search engine entry, they are redirected to another site, often unrelated. Most search engines have filters to detect this. Using this form of search engine deception will see a site eventually banned or penalized by major players such as Google.

The recommended redirect strategy - 301 Redirect

A 301 redirect is the most efficient, visitor friendly, robot (spider, crawler) friendly and search engine friendly solution around for web sites that are hosted on servers running Apache. If you are not sure, check with your hosting provider.

A 301 redirect is just a set of commands you type into your .htaccess file.

When a visitor (whether human or robotic) requests a web page via any means, your web server checks for a .htaccess file. The .htaccess file contains specific instructions for certain requests, including security, redirection issues and how to handle certain errors.

The code “301″ is interpreted as “moved permanently”. After the code, the URL of the missing or renamed page is noted, followed by a space, then followed by the new location or file name.

First of all, you’ll need to find the .htaccess file in the root directory of where all your web pages are stored. If there is no .htaccess file there, you can create one with Notepad or a similar application. Make sure when you name the file that you remember to put the “.” at the beginning of the file name. This file has no tail extension.

Some hosting providers offer redirect services through their “control panels”, so you don’t have to perform low level changes on the .htaccess file itself. Instead, they provide a user friendly interface for this. Check with your hosting provider to see what the optimal way to perform a 301 redirect is in your case. I will continue the article with the barebones solution.

If there is a .htaccess file already in existence with lines of code present, be very careful not to change any existing line unless you are familiar with the functions of the file.

Scroll down past all the existing code, leave a line space, then create a new line that follows this example:

redirect 301 /folder/page1.htm http://www.you.com/folder/custom_usb_drives.htm

It’s as easy as that. Save the file, upload it back into your web and test it out by typing in the old address to the page you’ve changed. You should be instantly and seamlessly transported to the new location.

Notes: Be sure not to add “http://www” to the first part of the statement - just put the path from the top level of your site to the page. Also ensure that you leave a single space between these elements:

redirect 301 (the instruction that the page has moved)

/folder/page1.htm (the original folder path and file name)

http://www.you.com/folder/custom_usb_drives.htm (new path and file name)

The same format applies not only to renamed files, but also to files moved to a different location.

The 301 redirect is the safest way to preserve your rankings. On the next indexing (crawling, spidering), the search engine robot will obey the rule indicated in your .htaccess file and index the new page name every time a link or its internal database tries to access the old page. In the next update (again, this could take months), the old file name and path will be dropped and replaced with the new one. Sometimes you may see alternating old/new file names during the transition period, along with some possible fluctuations in rankings as things settle. Don’t panic, this is normal.

What if your site is hosted on a Microsoft IIS server instead?

If you have access to the server, do this: In internet services manager, right click on the file or folder you wish to redirect. Select the radio titled “a redirection to a URL”. Enter the redirection page, check “The exact url entered above” and the “A permanent redirection for this resource”. Click “Apply”.

If you do not have access to the server, ask your host to point you into the right direction.

In conclusion, the best and the most transparent way (to both human and robotic users) to rename and move files on your web site, while preserving your search engine ranks is the 301 redirect.

—
About the Author:

Andrei co-owns bsleek ( www.bsleek.com ) - a site that specializes in web hosting, web design, promotional items, printing, CD presentations, trade show displays and more. Andrei is on the Board of Consultants for Daterade.com and has amassed an extensive technical knowledge and experience through his career as the CIO for a major travel management company and through his past careers in military research, data acquisition and aerospace engineering.

Web design is a very competitive area and there is no longer any
reason why people should pay large amounts for website design
services.

This article describes and explains where to find very very
cheap website design services.

The first place to try of course is the internet auctions such
as http://www.webmasters-auctions.com then the search engines
themselves. The best place to try could be paid adverts on the
right hand side of the search engine Google. These are called
Google adwords and these companies are actively seeking
business. The results on the left hand side are normally the
more established companies who will probably try to charge a lot
of money for their services.

I have heard a lot of people who have had great success on
auction websites, like ebay. People or companies at times offer
their services for a very cheap rate, normally to drum up some
very much needed business.

Other areas to look are in places like the yellow pages,
newspapers or by asking family or friends.

I myself know of many people offering expert website building
skills who only charge between £50 and £100 per website. There
are many great deals to be had out there for people who are
willing to make lots of phone calls or send lots of e-mails and
who are patient. When finding a company or person to build the
website always take a look at their portfolio as this will give
you an insight into the work they do. Obviously if you are not
impressed, there is no point in carrying on, even if it is very
cheap.

The reason why people put up a business is because they think
they have a great idea which they thought would sell. However,
what they do not know is that it is often times much better to
research on what others deemed as a good idea before starting
off with a business. Putting up a business without any
background onto what your targeted market wants may cause your
business to end before it can really begin. Another thing, its
not really easy creating a need for your created product
especially if it does not ranked with the basic needs. Aside
from that, it’s going to be a taxing endeavor trying to educate
every customer that you have on why they have to buy your
products and why they have to buy it from you.

There ought to be a need or a service that must require your
product in order for your customers to view your products as
well as services as important to them because if they can’t
think of anything in which to apply your product or your
services that simply goes to show that your product or your idea
is simply a waste of time and effort.

However, there are some remedies that you can still do. Find out
what’s the latest need or the most commonly purchased products
and the usual sought after services of your targeted market.
Know what your target market perceived to be their greatest
problem as well as their greatest goals they hope to achieve. If
you don’t know where to turn just ask the people you work for as
well as the other businesses that you know or you can get your
hands on a couple of trade books or special interest
publications and then have a self study in order for you to know
the basic issues in your targeted market. You can use the result
as your basis in putting up your business.

And when you already have a vivid picture of what your target
market wants, then that is the time for you to conceptualize on
how you are going to render your services and your products as a
means of solution to the various needs of your targeted market.
Likewise, all your marketing tools must be designed in such a
way that shows how your products and services can actually help
them in all their problems. And if ever a customer has a need
and it turned out that you can actually help them then your
business have a much better chance of generating a sale and also
of getting known. When this happen there would be more chances
for you to uncover all sorts of business issues related to yours
that need to be addressed. And since your business is already on
the market scene, building rapport and trust of course more
customers will turn to you for all their needs.

For comments and suggestions about the article kindly visit Web Placements: Internet
Marketing Strategies and E-Commerce Solutions

One of the hardest things about creating a new website, is creating the content that you know the search engines love and are looking for. You may have already started creating pages for your site but here are some ideas for creating more quality content.

One of the hardest things can be to create related content on those pages.

Link Metro allows you to swap related articles thus creating immediate, quality content. Search engines like content - they like to see several hundred words on each page. This is a quick and easy way of creating it for your new site.
Using Link Metro is easy and simple and gets you good links quickly.

Ezine Articles are also a great way to get free content. You can search for articles related to your content and then use the “Ezine Publisher” to copy the HTML directly into your site.

If you can start with between four and five pages about your chosen subject you’ll be doing well. You might wish to include a few photos - if you don’t have any clipart or photos that come with your computer - you may wish to look at “I Stock Photos”. For just $1 per photo you can get good quality photos on just about every subject without worrying about copyright.

Remember that the best way to eat an elephant is just one bite at a time. So don’t get overwhelmed at the thought of building pages of content.

Depending on how much time you have, set yourself a target of one page a day, one page a week, etc - something which you can achieve. As long as you keep building pages, the search engines are going to keep coming back to your site, finding it more relevant to your subject and rating it higher in the results.

When creating content, try and use your keywords in the title, near the top of the page and close to the bottom of the page.

For further tips and ideas on how to build a website.
visit How to set up your own home-based internet business.

This article was submitted by Jen Carter, the creator of the InternetMillionairess.Com website.