Moving a website can be downright frustrating and stressful. This article will help you to move you site without your visitors ever noticing the switch. Read on to avoid costly mistakes.

This is the first series of 10 parts.

1) Find a new Host

2) Find a your Registrar Info

3) Back Up All Data

4) Set up New Host

5) test

6) Configure Email

7) Switch Hosts

Cancel Previous Host

9) Check Scripts

10) Check Links

Find a New Host

1) Find a new Web Host - make certain they have a good control panel such as cPanel

What to look for:

• The right operating system (Unix, Windows, Linux). Check with your previous host to find out what they used
• Great technical support 24/7 and hopefully with phone support
• Email capabilities - should allow at least 20
• Data Transfer Limits - try and make a good estimate of the transfer required, but most sites don’t require more that 2GB’s of data transfer/month
• Hosting Space - get a good estimate of space required and leave room for overhead
• CPU Usage Limits - Make certain you don’t go over this, because it can be very expensive
• Database Progreams - make sure your new host support your dbase program such as MySQL or SQL
• Scripting Capability - make sure your new host support your previous hosts scripting abilities such as CGI, SSI, PHP ASP etc.
• Performance - try and find a host that has fast servers and a great Internet backbone connection
• Control Panel - choose a host with a good control panel such as cPanel

Next installment: Find Registrar Info

Active-server-pages (ASP) and Hyper-text-pre-processor (PHP) are the two standards for web application development and more importantly when it comes to interacting heavily with databases and create database-driven websites. Throughout my 6+ years of developing websites and databases for the web, I’ve primarily worked with PHP. Php is an open-source programming language derived from many other languages. Asp on the other hand, is Microsoft’s way of interacting with SQL databases; PHP interacts with a similar database system called mySQL (my-sequel). By writing this article only knowing php, my comments about ASP are from a business standpoint rather than a technical standpoint (since I wouldn’t know that). First let’s recognize how each php and asp are used and what their target markets are:

Php - Php is open-source software, thus making it free to run.

* The simplicity - The code itself is lightweight, a beginning developer who wants to learn PHP does not have to look too far into the source code to understand.
* Well documented - When I began developing over 6 years ago, PHP became a viable option for me to be able to learn PHP, because many sites like Pixel2life and W3schools that offered stellar tutorials. From what I’ve seen there is support for ASP, just not as much. This is one of the reasons I chose PHP over ASP.
* Easy, but still strong - Php code itself is often a very natural feeling for a programmer; it is a very well thought out language. While at the same time, this simplicity associated with PHP does not degrade the code’s strength like some newbies may believe.
* Larger applications support, just less security need - Php is just as secure as Asp from a code-level. The difference is for private data like social security numbers, asp is a more feasible option.

Now if you feel I’m trying to push everything over the php way here goes to Asp…

Asp - which stands for Active-server-pages is created and widely distributed to large businesses and corporations. Asp is often used primarily on Windows-based servers, not unix. The reason Asp is not used as much in small and medium sized businesses is because whether you want to admit it or not; Windows has created the idea in many individual’s minds that it’s the only reason out. Therefore, many large corporations do not want to test their water’s with other options, but would rather spend numerous amount of money on a Windows Server Operating System which usually requires a lot more assistance after initial setup. The reason Windows servers need more support is because hackers like to hack stuff that would affect a larger proportion of computer users; unfortunately that’s where Windows lacks.

* Large applications - Asp is good for gigantic database projects that essentially offer more levels of protection for privacy of databases. For examples, Social security numbers are just one thing that need to be secure. While Php is just as secure, Asp offers more levels of protection.
* No strict budgets - Corporations like government agencies typically don’t have a very strict budget and are able to do what they please without financial strains. They typically will not go open-source, because it is almost like a foreign language to them (no pun intended).

Choosing the correct path to go for web development typically controls whether you go with a Linux Distro. like Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian or a Windows Distribution like Windows Server 2003. The operating system you choose will dictate the technology you use. If you take anything from this article, learn that Php is typically keen for small to medium business who are on a slim or zero budget that need to make anything dynamic you can think of. Asp on the otherhand, is a pristine solution for private data that would need extra layers of protection that are in someways stronger than some Php security. Enjoy and good luck!

Some of the goals that can be achieved by launching a website include the following:

1. Far Cheaper and Much More Flexible Than Print Advertising
The Internet is extremely different from print advertising in that space is cheap, your advertisement is accessible for a longer period of time, the content can be changed without having to ask someone to do it for you (if you use a content management system) and you can potentially reach a wider audience.

This is not to say that you should not use other forms of advertising at all You can use it to entice people to visit your website and find out about your company and potentially open two-way communication between the potential customer and a sales person.

2. Market Expansion
The Internet has allowed businesses to break through the geographical barriers and become accessible, virtually, from any country in the world by a potential customer that has Internet access.

3. Diversify Revenue Streams
A website is not just a medium for representation of your company, it is a form of media from which everybody can acquire information. You can use this media to sell advertising space to other businesses.

A recent trend has risen where businesses feature their very own directory of complimentary services, where the visitor can search for information on a business that will enhance the use of your service. The business sells complimentary businesses a listing in their directory.

A good example is a catering company featuring a directory with businesses such as event co-coordinators, electronic equipment rental companies, etc.

4. 24 7 365
No more turning customers away when its time to close shop, putting up a note saying closed for public holiday , or leaving an irritating message on your answering service specifying your trading hours tell them to visit your website for information they are looking for.

5. Offer Convenience
It is far more convenient for a person to research a product on the Internet than it is to get in a car, drive somewhere and look for or ask someone for information on a product. Also, a potential customer won t have to judge a call centre agent to determine whether he/she has their best interests in mind, or just wants to make a sale.

The potential customer can visit your website whenever they like in their own privacy and comfort, without the stresses and distractions that exist in the real world .
Your website is a self-service medium for example, instead of having to wait in a long cue to pay your TV License, you can now do it electronically through the TV License website.

6. Add Value and Satisfaction
By offering convenience, a point of reference and that touch of individualized customer service, you ultimately add value to your offering and your customers experience a higher level of satisfaction.

Your website can add value in other ways too, by featuring tips, advice and general interest content you can entertain your customers. This will also help them remember you better.

7. Standardize Sales Performance
By looking at which approached / pitches have worked in the past and those which have not, you can produce the ultimate pitch and use it with your website, so that you use it on every customer. No more training of sales people and waiting for them to get a feel for your line of trade.

8. Improve credibility
A website gives you the opportunity to tell potential customers what you are about and why you deserve their trust and confidence. In fact, many people use the internet for pre-purchase research so that they can determine for themselves whether a particular supplier or brand is worthy of their patronage, and won t take them for a ride.
The Internet also allows for Viral Marketing where your website visitors spread positive word-of-mouth about your business - your customers do your marketing!

9. Promote your Brick n Mortar Presence
Getting lost trying to find a place can be frustrating for a potential customer. You can publish what they call a dummy map on your website, which shows directions and landmarks graphically, and the potential customer can print it out when looking for your Brick n Mortar premises.

You might advertise a promotion on your website encouraging the visitor to visit your Brick n Mortar premises (e.g.. At a branch near you! ).
Also, if you recently moved to a new location, you will have to wait for the next ‘phone directory to come out before people figure out where you currently are. Because a website is flexible you can change the content as you like you can change you contact details instantly and lower the risk of losing customers when moving to a new location.

10. Growth Opportunity
A website serves as a great place to refer potential investors to, to show them what your company is about, what it has achieved and what it can achieve in future.

11. Two-Way Communicative Marketing
Customers can quickly and easily give feedback on your product and/or marketing approach.

12. Cheap Market Research
You can use features on your website such as visitor polls, online surveys and your website statistics to find out what your customers like more and how they feel about certain aspects of your business to determine how you can improve your product and the way you do business.

Website statistics show you how much traffic your website receives, how the visitor got to your website and where, geographically, the visitor is from

With today’s advanced technology, it has never been any easier for anyone to self-publish their own ebook. What’s more, you can create and market your own ebook (electronic book) for an unbelievably low price. Once you purchase an ebook compiler and create your ebook, you’ll automatically have an entire stock of inventory on hand continuously. In addition, when you begin selling your ebook, you’ll pocket nearly 100% of your profits for each sale.

As you probably know, the Internet is all about information and automation. Internet users want information and they want it right now. That’s why ebooks are considered to be the “perfect” online product. They provide Internet users with the information they desire and can be instantly downloaded.

The key to writing a successful ebook is to write for your potential customer. In other words, you must provide your potential customers with the information they desire. I know, you’re probably thinking, “how on earth do I know what my potential customers want?” Well, there are a number of ways you can learn exactly what they want. For example, visit some online discussion groups in the area of your expertise. Go through all of the posts and read all of the questions. If you see the same questions posted on several groups, then this should give you a good idea as to what your potential customers want. Visit forums, message boards, and newsgroups — subscribe to email discussion lists — visit Amazon.com to see the top selling books and see if you can develop your ebook accordingly.

Once you’ve determined the focus of your ebook, your next step will be to break your subject down into about 10 - 12 different areas. Each area will represent a chapter. For example, if your ebook is focusing on dog grooming, your chapters might look something like this:

Introduction to Dog Grooming
Dog Anatomy
Medical & Skin Problems
Bathing & Brushing techniques
Proper use and care of Equipment
Clipper & Scissoring techniques
Specific Breed Trims
Mixed Breed Trims
Safe Handling and Restraints
Rare Breed Recognition

Once you have created your chapter titles, you can begin writing each individual chapter. When you begin writing, keep in mind, reading on a computer screen is much more difficult than reading from paper. It not only causes eyestrain, but it is also a much slower read. With this in mind, keep your writing to the point and avoid any filler information that really isn’t necessary. Provide your readers with all of the information required for each chapter, but keep it as simple as possible.

As the Internet gets older and more flooded with sites, it is more important than ever to have a professional-looking web site if you want customers to take your business seriously.

This should be common sense by now, yet it is appalling at how many wretched designs for business sites exist out there.

eCommerce sites

If you have not focused on having a professional looking site while running an eCommerce store, you should be ashamed of yourself. When your entire business exists online, you cannot afford to turn off potential customers by presenting a tacky, poorly designed site.

For one thing, it can automatically extinguish any credibility you hope to build in a matter of seconds. How can you expect a customer to trust you enough to purchase something from you if they think that you don’t even take yourself seriously enough to have a decent looking site.

Now aesthetics are obviously left to opinion, but it is pretty easy to tell if effort was put into any given design.

Sites for Brick and Mortar Businesses

Perhaps you don’t see this of as much as an issue if you don’t run an online business, but for any brick and mortar store, your website is one of your most important advertisements. And guess what…the credibility factor comes right back into play.

Maybe your customers aren’t buying from you online, but that doesn’t mean they won’t look you up. If your site doesn’t convey the element of professionalism, they just might go to your competitors who do take the time to provide a professional-looking site.

Other factors to consider

Things like typos can also deteriorate your reputation as a credible business. Customers will think that if you don’t even care enough to fix errors like this, why would you care about them? Typos happen. God knows I’m just as guilty as anyone, but try to maintain some kind of quality control. It gets especially bad when they are excessive. Read over your text.

Cheesy animated gifs, popup ads and music that starts when the site is loaded are huge turn-offs for visitors. Keep these things in mind when building your site. Minimizing customer annoyance is crucial to keeping them around.

Who’s going to design it?

Perhaps you’re not too experienced in web design. Who can blame you? You’ve probably had enough on your plate. If you don’t have a designer on staff (which I would recommend), there are more freelance designers out there than ever before.

Can you afford to hire a freelance designer? They’re not always cheap, but my guess is if you look hard enough, you will find one that is willing to work within your budget, partially because there are more than ever before, and just like you, they are looking for business too.

Other options

Of course there are templates and themes available all over the Internet for purchase, but they often lack the personal touch of using a real designer. And by purchasing these things, chances are that there are a bunch of other sites that bought them too and look exactly the same, and that is not the best way to make your business stand out from the crowd.

Make Design a Priority

To wrap this up, just make having a professional-looking web site a top priority for your business. Your customers will appreciate it and so will you when they start taking you seriously and buying from you.

Here are some interesting facts…According to Setnet, an internet monitoring firm which has been measuring website growth since 1995, in November 2006 there were 101,435,253 websites with domain names and content. This figure is consistently rising - and fast. So, to answer your question, yes, I think ALL businesses - new and ‘old’, small and big - should have some kind of web presence. Don’t miss out on this growth!

Even though having a website isn’t (yet) a requisite for doing business; it certainly makes sense to have some kind of web presence in order to get or remain competitive in today’s fierce marketplace.
What’s more, marketing experts are predicting that the number of online consumers will grow by about 50% in the near future.
So, I guess the real question is can you afford to be left behind?
Even a simple website or blog presence will do. Just something that allows your potential customers, business partners, investors and employees to find out more about you quickly and easily.

Here are just some of the benefits of having an online presence:
’ You open your doors wide open to an international customer base - tapping into the multi-billion global marketplace makes good business sense.’ With the use of relevant images, sound and animation combined with magnetic copy your clients get a real interactive feel of doing business with you.’ Communicating your message through a web presence can be a lot less expensive than traditional media.’ It offers an easy, convenient way for people to do business with you. The last time I bought tickets over the net (cinema tickets, FWIW), I did so from the comfort of my sofa.’ You can always keep your product/service information up to date and fresh. If you were to reprint a new offline brochure, the cost could be quite steep. With the web, it’s instant and free to change details.’ Your information is available to clients and prospective customers 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.’ You can sell direct and hang up the phone. Well, almost. With the web, you can change a “just looking” mindset into a “I’m buying that!” one through the use of persuasive, engaging words. It’s your salesman in print, really.’ Your website’s URL can be put on other promotional material so that people always have a way of finding you.’ You can collect email addresses - and potential new customers - with a website.’ It shows people you are serious about doing business.’ A website can take orders for you.’ It makes for an excellent and efficient marketing support tool.For me, having a website really comes into its own when I’m on the phone, for example. If a potential client asks whether I have any testimonials I can show them, I can say, “If you’re hooked up to the web, I can show you them right now.” They type in the link and it’s all done and dusted in a few seconds. The first time I tried something like this, I was impressed by the sheer ease and speed.Getting started on the web needn’t be a daunting task. There are plenty of host providers who will provide ready-to-go web templates. You just fill in the blanks for the text areas, and upload your website. And, hey presto, you’re open for business online.

When asked the headlined question, most web entrepreneurs would serve an answer detailing a certain demographic of people. A website that sells computers might be targeting people who are in the IT industry, or even home users, while a college website might be catering to the students studying in that college. Every business has a target audience, even if it is “anyone and everyone”. The might of the Internet is such that targeting any kind of demographic, be it a local group or even a global community is totally up to the discretion of the website owners. For a majority, this is the deciding factor to step into the on-line world with a website, but most end up being exceptions to the fact themselves. When a website is built that only serves people using a specific combination of web browser and platform, the website is forcing upon itself a demographic that does not always match the audience the business aims for.

Multiple browsers, platforms, media devices

When people started making websites, they were made to work in Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator. But over the time, the Internet has evolved in ways more than one. The way Internet is used has changed, the way people access the Internet has changed, the technologies used on the Internet have changed. People have started using newer platforms like mobile phones, televisions, and gaming consoles to access the Internet. The web browsers have changed, the older ones have evolved and they keep evolving on a daily basis. We now have not just two, but a number of web browsers. We have different web browsers for different platforms and media. This means that people are now using various different combinations of web browsers and platforms to browse websites, and thus the number of people using the “specific combination of web browser and platform” your website is optimized for, has also decreased.

Bringing order to chaos

So, does this mean that you keep track of all new web browsers, platforms and their combinations and optimize your websites to work in all of them? No, the constant evolution of Internet has led to the development of web standards - a central set of standards for various technologies. These are aimed at helping web browser vendors implement these technologies and web developers to use the same technologies. These web standards aim at making the various technologies work the same way on all different platforms, and user agents. In practical terms, web standards eliminate the need to follow the market for newer web browsers, web browser updates, and to update your websites to work with them. They form the converging center, being followed by web browser vendors and web developers alike.

Keeping pace

Hence, these web standards have also led to the evolution of the rules of doing business on-line. Instead of targeting web browsers or platforms, they give you the freedom of targeting the end customers, the real market of your on-line business. Making your websites compatible with web standards rather than a specific web browser would make sure your web sites work not only with majority of the web browsers but are also accessible by people browsing the Internet from various different platforms and media. All this said, there is however still work to be done. As we update our ways of making new websites, web browser vendors are also updating their browsers and tuning them to the latest web standards. So in this stage of transition, we need to make sure that the websites we make, work for all users. Also, we need to make sure the websites work, not only right now but in the future versions of various browsers as well. Here are a few pointers to keep in mind while developing websites today, and making sure they work tomorrow as well:

As the popularity of the web continues to grow, it appears to be more and more prudent for businesses, big and small, to get themselves a web presence.

Different companies take different routes to acheive this goal. Some, not realizing the enormous effort required, design it themselves, with little to no previous experience. Others hire the neighberhood wiz kid to do it for them. The option that most choose, however, is to hire a professional web designer.

Many people hire the first name they come across. Few realize that hiring a web designer is just like hiring for any other opening. You must investigate and make sure the applicant is qualified. With that in mind, here are some helpful hints that will help you find the web designer that’s right for the job you need.

A) Decide what will be on your site.

Before you even start searching, you have to decide what will be on your site. Will it be an online store, a company brochure, or a informational site. This decision is crucial, because different designers have different skills which are suited for certain tasks, but not others.

B) How Much?

Before you start, you need to make a budget. Website Design should be treated no differently then any other expense. You need to see how important this project is for your company, and how much you’re willing to spend. Once you do this, make sure to let each prospective web designer know how much you’ve budgeted. It will make things that much easier for you and your designer in the long run.

C) Make sure the Designer can Design.

This is the most crucial, but often overlooked, part of the job. You don’t know how many times I’ve seen a web design company’s web page that makes me cringe. If the web design company can’t design nicely for itself, what makes you think they’ll do a good job for you? Also make sure the designer knows how to design, not just write code.

D) Find out what you’re paying for.

Since this may be a expensive outlay for your company, make sure you know exactly what you’re paying for. Does the price include graphics design and copy? Who pays for the web hosting? Does the fee include periodic updates? The more you find out beforehand, the more trouble you save yourself before you begin.

E) Don’t be afraid to ask questions.

If you’re curious or inquisitive about something, ask! You have the right to know everything your designer does, even if it takes them a while to explain it to you. After all, you’re paying for the service. If at ever the design company seems to be holding something back, be very wary. Anybody who is not upfront with you is bad news.

In the end, the most important thing I can emphasize is this: Choosing a Web Designer is a lot like choosing an accountant, a lawyer or a doctor. You investigate and find out more about them, and then ultimately you go with whoever you feel the most comfortable with. Just because it’s more technical, does not mean it should be any different then the offline world.