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Benefits and drawbacks of Flash web design

Flash is a powerful tool that adds a fillip to website design, if used judiciously. But before you use it, consider the Whys and Why Nots of Flash web design.

Pros

1. Interactive movies, animation and menus are possible
2. Flash animation is easy to create and easy to view
3. Flash is independent of browsers and operating systems. It can be viewed correctly by anyone who has the Flash plug-in.
4. Animated banner advertisements in Flash have higher click-through rates than static gifs.
5. Flash is good for web site intros and adds zing to a site
6. Video works well in Flash applications. It doesn’t need a plug-in that’s dependent on a specific operating system like MediaPlayer or QuickTime.

Cons

1. Search engines crawl text, not Flash intros and bannersIt’s tough to get an all-Flash website to rank high in search engines. Search engines have problems indexing images, even text rendered as an image. HTML pages get indexed in search engines like Google while Flash pages do not. This is a major reason not to use Flash. To overcome this problem you may need to create another site in HTML for the search engine crawlers. Be sure to include a robots.txt file that bars the Flash pages, so that these pages are not seen as duplicate content. You will also have to face the added effort of creating and maintaining two sites.

2. Ask yourself, what’s the purpose of using Flash? In general, Flash for the sake of using Flash serves no useful purpose. Visitors come to websites for information, not animation. Using a flashy introduction to grab a person’s interest won’t work unless your website provides well-written content that provides the information he’s looking for. Routine Flash website intros, with images fading in and out and text messages changing position, don’t capture the reader’s attention unless the messages are focused on his area of interest or stimulate him to visit the rest of the site.

3. Flash intros make the homepage take too long to load.Flash increases the size of the homepage which takes too long to download.Readers are time-conscious and may flip to another website by the time your Flash intro loads. Give them a “Skip intro” option so that they don’t miss the content on your site.

4. Audio files embedded in Flash increase download time.This can turn off visitors who might otherwise be interested in your site content.

5. Music and sound can be annoying to some readers. They are forced to listen to the audio of your choice, not theirs. This can turn off visitors who may quickly exit from your site. Do include a Mute button so that visitors can turn down the sound if they want to.

“But I still want to use Flash. How can I do it effectively?”

If you must use Flash, you can embed it on an HTML page, say as a Flash Photo Album, or as a catalog organized into categories, or a slide show. You need to add text or captions below the Flash images. Remember, it’s the text that’s indexed in search engines, not Flash. Also ensure that the images used in Flash are optimized with the lowest compression for quicker loading time.

You could also consider using a Flash header for your web site. This allows you to write text that is indexed in search engines, and also use Flash in a smaller area of the web page so that it downloads faster. Once the Flash animation downloads, the visitor can page through the rest of the site without waiting for the Flash part to download each time.

Flash is effective for visual presentations and would even be expected by visitors on sites relating to gaming, music, photography, events and movies, for instance.

Whether you decide to use Flash or not is up to you. The above pointers will help you make a considered decision that will benefit your business, your visitors and boost your site traffic in the long run.

Take a look at our wide variety of ready-made website templates, that include Full Flash templates, CSS Websites with Flash Headers, static webs.

Borrowed from ENTHEOSWEB BLOG

Should You Consider a Premium Domain?

Times are certainly tough these days. Because every dollar counts, it is vital to get significant value on every penny you spend. Although the economic situation has left most consumers with tighter budgets, there may be a few investments that warrant a top dollar price. This article will introduce you to one of them, the premium domain name.

What are Premium Domain Names?

Often referred to as simple domain names, premium domains are basically those that were once registered and now available on the market again. While ambitious internet entrepreneurs snatched up names like trucks.com and tools.com long ago, these domain owners are now willing to let them go for the right price. Premium domains typically sale for anywhere between hundreds and thousands of dollars but some of them have gone for millions.

Sure, you probably don’t want to roll out a 7-figure budget for a domain name, but here are a few reasons why you may want to consider spending more than usual.

Instant Branding - When using a premium domain, you are instantly branding your online presence. Your domain name will likely be easy to remember and cause visitors to immediately associate it with your business. If you’re lucky enough to snatch up baseball.com, it won’t take potential customers too long to grasp the nature of your business.

Increased Search Engine Visibility – Search engine algorithms consider the relevance of your domain to the content on your website. This in turn, makes it easier to associate your domain name with your particular product or service, giving you the ability to increase your visibility through the search engines.

Increased Traffic – Although most web surfers rely on search engines, others simply type keywords directly into their browser address bar. If someone types in “baseball”, there is a great chance that your baseball related URL will come up and direct them right to your site. Direct traffic is one of the biggest advantages to having a premium domain name.

You don’t have to be a large corporation to secure a premium domain name. To figure out the budget you need to set aside, visit register.com and find out if there are any available domain names relevant to your business. You may also want to consult an internet marketing expert to better determine if a premium domain name can really give you a worthwhile return on your investment. A professional can also help you get your hands on special search tools that will reveal what domains serve the most benefits.

Think About It

On the surface, buying a premium domain name seems like a huge investment and possibly one you can do without. However, it can also increase visibility and play a major role in the success of your online business. Though it will be more expensive than the standard rate of $9.99, it will help you save on marketing, enhance your search engine rankings and help potential customers better identify your business. Who knows? This is one substantial investment that could be worth your while.

Borrowed from WebHostingGeeks

Is Your Business Website Secure?

People are using the internet to commit malicious crimes everyday. And while virus infections and scams pose a significant threat, one of the biggest problems of all is website hacking. If you’re running a business online, losing sensitive data to a security breach could be enough to shut you down for good. If you truly want to know how secure your business website, we suggest posing the following questions to yourself:

What are your trying to secure? For most companies, this includes confidential data such as customer records and payroll information. However, you shouldn’t forget all the essentials like staff morale and most importantly, your company’s reputation.

What are your risks? The scope of today’s threat model is larger than it has ever been. Not only do you have to worry about malicious software and hackers, but internal theft and physical threats as well.

Who is responsible for security? Do you have an experienced system administrator or are you going at it alone? Many companies leave themselves wide open all because they do not have the internal resources needed to enable adequate security.

What are your doing about security? What are your plans for security? Have you installed the appropriate software technologies to protect your network? Are you enforcing security policies and training staff to make sure they know the risks?

Making sure your business website can be a full-time job. Fortunately, there are several preventive measures that can be taken to prevent a disaster. While some of it only seems practical, far too many companies overlook the intangibles and increase their likelihood of being victimized. This checklist will help you understand what you need to do right now to start protecting your business.

Invest in Physical Security – While cyber crimes have become highly sophisticated, the easiest way to disrupt any business is to still their PC or server. You can make this far more difficult by physically locking your office and coupling that with motion detectors and alarms.

Frequent Backups – The importance of data backups is something that just can’t be stressed enough. Even is disaster does strike, you can ensure a speedy recovering by regularly backing up critical data and storing it in an off site location.

Implement Access Controls – As unfortunate as it is, everyone can’t be trusted – even some of the members on your staff. You should only provide employees with access to confidential data on a need-to-know basis in accordance to their role in the organization. Nothing is guaranteed but this can dramatically minimize the risk of sabotage and data theft.

Continuous Training and Policy Enforcement – The mere behavior of your staff can be a major security risk. Make sure your staff has a clear understanding of what they are and are not to be doing online. Put some policies in place to ensure that everyone is operating with security in mind and come up with some repercussions for those who don’t comply.

Protect Your Website – When doing business online, the website is what forms the foundation for your organization. The more you rely on your site, the bigger target it will become. Therefore, it is critical to do everything to possible to make sure your applications and the site itself is secure.

Borrowed from WebHostingGeeks

Internet Security Tips and Tricks

Spyware:
Spyware is a catch-all word encompassing malware like Trojans, adware, pop-ups, altered cookies, key-loggers, and so on. Spyware is usually designed to observe your activities online and to discover security flaws. Hackers have acquired innovative implements, like key-loggers, capable of remembering each key pressed, enabling the discovery of your password, bank details, and email.

Stop Spyware:
Look for spyware-combating software that has been endorsed by a reliable source like Microsoft.

Identity Theft:
Hackers use various methods to steal your personal information. Once this data is obtained, it may be used to make purchases on the Internet with your credit card information, misdirect direct deposits, and produce counterfeit documents. Ordinarily, the best online security programs include some sort of safeguard against this issue.

Stop Identity Theft:
Be aware of who you are conducting purchase transactions with. Make certain that a legitimate SSL certificate is located on any page where you will enter information without the presence of error or warning icons appearing in your browser. Safe pages start with ‘https:’ instead of ‘http:’.

Spam:
Spam email (email you did not sign up for) can contain malicious links that can do all sorts of things, including infecting your computer with a virus, introducing spyware, as well as attracting additional spam. Having an effective online spam filter is generally a wise choice. Utilizing Internet security software as well as a certain amount of common sense will help you avoid having your inbox swamped with spam.

Avoid Spam:
Don’t ever ‘unsubscribe’ any email messages you did not solicit or subscribe to. This notifies the spammer that you are an actual person and your spam potentially could double or triple very quickly.

Phishing:
Connected to the category of identity theft, as described above, phishing presents a serious online security threat. This works by sending you email messages posing as trustworthy web sites like your bank. The links steer you in the direction of a fraudulent website that imitates the reputable site. After you enter your private information, a hacker uses this to buy things over the Internet with the help of your identity or your funds.

Stop Phishing: Don’t ever click on any link that appears suspicious. Be sure to take note what the “.com” in the URL is attached to. A URL ought to conclude with the expected title, rather than start with this name. For an example, the URL for the Bank of America should look like this: http://somesubdomain.bankofamerica.com, but a Phishing link might look something like this: http://bankofamerica.myphishingdomain.com. If you are using Internet Explorer, you may be alerted to suspected phishing sites because IE has a phishing filter – but it is not foolproof – always be suspicious of any site that asks you to enter information on their site from email.

What’s all the Twitter about?

By now if you are not a user of Twitter, you have at least heard of it. It has experienced an almost unbelievable growth in its short lifetime. Twitter is a micro-blog that anyone can participate in. Each post, a tweet, is limited to 140 characters. That’s not very long so it’s pretty easy to read a lot of posts. Twitter asks the question “What are you doing?” Some people actually use it this way… you will see things like “brushing my teeth” or “going to bed” or “eating.” However, most use it to communicate things that they consider more important than those mundane examples.

There is a lot of good and worthwhile information flowing on Twitter every hour of every day. So much, in fact, it’s a bit difficult to keep up with. There is also a surprising number of celebrities (politicians, stars, athletes) using Twitter. You can follow them all and see what they are saying. Even Barack Obama is there, and I believe he is the most followed player.

You follow anyone you want, and people follow you. Of course the more people you follow, the more tweets you will be exposed to, and the harder it will be to develop relationships with your Twitter “friends.” You have the option to communicate privately with a friend (a follower that you are following) by using the Direct Message, or DM feature. All other postings are visible to everyone, but mostly to those following you.

Twitter is so new (started mid 2006) that appropriate Twitter etiquette and protocol is just developing. It is clear that many people have likes and dislikes about what others say and/or do. It seems that the majority of users dislike being contacted automatically with a DM. This is a fairly common practice when saying welcome to new followers, except they don’t like the automatic message because it’s not personal. This can get the relationship off to a bad start. In addition, many don’t like Twitter being used for commerce but I seriously doubt that will stop. Marketers will market where they can if it brings in business. The marketing I see personally does not bother me. Remember it’s limited to 140 characters and real easy to just skip the tweet.

So, should you get involved with Twitter? Why not? It’s going to be here for awhile and it’s growing. About one year ago there were 600,000 users and now the number is somewhere north of 6 million. Twitter subscriber numbers are doubling every month. I say you better jump on now while there is still room. I should warn you though, it can be addicting!

Happy Tweeting!

Free Or Paid Web Hosting

There is a big difference between paid and free web hosting, the most important thing to figure out which one you need is to know what you require for your website. Some do not mind spending for a website but some do. All one need to have is the information to help them decide. In order to decide, you have to look at a few aspects.

Firstly, the type of website must be determined. Is it a informational website, a small business or a product website? This is important because different type of website will need different services. Some are general but if you have a certain requirement, it will be easier for you to decide which type of hosting is more suitable for you. If not, you might have to go through a lot of trouble if you end up with a free hosting when you should have used a paid hosting.

Then, you need to think of the content that you want to have in your website. Is it going to a single page website or a multi page website with extra features? Are you going to include videos, images or audio files? This is crucial because the type of content will determine how much bandwidth and disk space you will have to get from your hosting provider. You must be able to make estimation according to your content to find the right hosting plan.

Free we hosting packages are very easy to use and perfect for newbie that has no experience. It cana help create web pages with ease and you can learn about it when you use it. With time, you can learn about HTML and improve your knowledge before leading you to a more professional website builder in the future. Most newcomers to the internet will start with this before they move onto a paid hosting solution.

However, there are some drawbacks with free hosting. You will have limited control, bandwidth and disk space. These are just to name a few. Furthermore, you will get different kinds of advertisements appearing on your website taking the focus away from your visitors. The technical support is also limited. So, if you are okay with this, you can go ahead and use a free hosting package.

On the other hand, a paid hosting provides the direct opposite. Not only has it provided more control, bandwidth and disk space, it also provides you with dynamic programming language and database features that you will not get from a free hosting.

In the end of the day, it is your business and everyone wants to prosper from the business and having to trouble over a hosting plan isn’t really worth the time. Whoever that want to do serious business must go for a good hosting solution. Therefore, a paid web hosting is the solution for them, you can build your business online with a peace of mind.

Promoting Your Website

Promoting your website can be the hardest thing you have to do. It is easy enough to make a site, get great starting content, and get on the web. Getting the traffic with browser ranking and advertising can prove to be much harder. Everyone knows that you need to be high on the search engine radar if you want to make it today. This not only means having the right product or service, a good looking site with great content, but also being able to keep your ranking and get the right audience to come and keep you in your glory.

Where To Advertise

Where you are promoting your website will say a lot about who you are and what you are made of. Some people will advertise anywhere and everywhere. These are the people who do not get a lot of visitors and waste a lot of money. When you spread yourself too thin and in places where there is little to no interest in what you have, you do not get the targeted traffic you desire. You will want to research companies to be sure they are loved by their patrons and in good standing. They should sell or provide information on your niche so that they are directing specific traffic to you all the time. You will also want to make sure that they are in a high ranking status with the popular search engines. This will allow you to know where to put your time, effort, and money.

Banner Ads

Creating banners promoting your website can be a good idea if you have somewhere to put them. Banner ads offer you a way to promote your site on other sites. Again, you will want to choose websites that are within your niche market. A banner selling candles on a hockey website is not going to get you the type of traffic you are looking for. This can be a money loser if you are paying people to use your banner to advertise for you as well. Make sure that the website has a high traffic count, good search engine ranking, and is reputable. This will bring you the type of visitors you are looking for and help you make the money you spent back.

Forum Ads

If you have a new site and want to get up and running with the bog sites fast, promoting your site on forum boards is the best way. Often you can join a forum and become part of the community. Then you will be allowed to advertise in your signature your website. Other forums may ask for a donation or yearly fee for a personal banner. This can be very much worth it as forums have many daily members and high traffic content every day. Your site will be advertised for viewing on a continuous basis. You can find yourself getting more traffic daily from the forum alone than if you used ads with larger companies who sell products.

10 reasons to choose Firefox

Often asked why should people switch from their existing browser, which was bundled with their PC. The short answer is that their old browser is obsolete, and I genuinely mean this. But this leaves too little space for people to really understand the actual benefits of using Firefox 3. So I whipped up the following list:
Ten reasons to choose Firefox 3 over your obsolete browser
Safer browsing

* 1 – Proven security track record, with more frequent, transparent updates, so that you use a safer browser
* 2 – malware protection to be protected against unwanted downloads such as viruses and trojan horses

Better browsing, with thousands of improvements

* 3 – Awesome bar, so that you can find places you’ve been before with a couple of keystrokes
* 4 – “Save on exit” so that when you launch Firefox, you’re immediately ready to surf, with last windows and tabs open
* 5 – Remember passwords without a dialog box, so that you decide to save the password after you’ve logged-in
* 6 – New download manager, users can pause a download and resume it later, with a search box to easily retrieve previous downloads
* 7 – Customizable: change the look and feel (themes) and add features (extensions) to Firefox through the built-in add-ons manager. More than 5,000 community-built extensions are available for free!

Better performance

* 8 – Fastest on complex Web applications, such as GMail so you are more comfortable, even on old machines
* 9 – Uses less memory than any other browser, so you’ll get more mileage out of your computer
* 10 – Moving the Web forward by supporting advanced Web standards so that the Web keeps evolving and benefits users in the long term.

I tried to sneak in the Open-Source / Free / Libre concept in here, but as I try to stay as concrete as possible, I found it hard to make clear in a few words why this was directly benefiting users…

Borrowed from StandBlog

Reasons for a Website

Did you know that 71% of Internet users go online to research products and services for their area rather than using a local directory or phone book? What are the reasons people prefer to look online?

Convenience – They can learn about your services and buy your product, even when you’re closed
Availability of Information – A website provides more information than the yellow pages, with pictures
No Sales Pressure

#1 Reason For a Website?

To Serve Customers!

Providing information on your business and services is one of the most important ways to serve your customers. A website provides information on your business 24 hours a day, seven days a week, when it’s convenient for them! When you put the focus of your website on serving customers and clients, it will be easy to find even more ways to use the Internet to promote your business and services.

#2 Reason for a Website?

To Answer Questions!

In regard to phone calls, you know your time is spent answering the same questions over and over again. A great deal of time is spent fielding the same questions customers and potential clients want answered before they deal with you.

Provide potential customers or clients with a page of FAQ’s on your website. This shows that you are addressing the needs of your customer and you have just reduced the amount of time spent on the phone answering the same thing over and over again.

So if you don’t have a website, how will potential clients find you online? And, if they’re not finding you, who are they finding instead – your competition? Contact Horizon Webs today to find out how we can help you get online today.

Web Safe Colors

We placed this display of colors to help the communication on color choices between Horizon Webs and our clients. If you use colors listed on this page, your web page will look the same on monitors that can display 256 colors or more, and on both Macintosh and PC computers.

#000000 #000033 #000066 #000099 #0000cc #0000ff #330000 #330033 #330066 #330099 #3300cc
#3300ff #660000 #660033 #660066 #660099 #6600cc #6600ff #990000 #990033 #990066 #990099
#9900cc #9900ff #cc0000 #cc0033 #cc0066 #cc0099 #cc00cc #cc00ff #ff0000 #ff0033 #ff0066
#ff0099 #ff00cc #ff00ff #003300 #003333 #003366 #003399 #0033cc #0033ff #333300 #333333
#333366 #333399 #3333cc #3333ff #663300 #663333 #663399 #6633cc #6633ff #993300 #993366
#993399 #9933cc #9933ff #cc3300 #cc3333 #cc3366 #cc3399 #cc33cc #cc33ff #ff3300 #ff3333
#ff3366 #ff3399 #ff33cc #ff33ff #006600 #006633 #006666 #006699 #0066cc #0066ff #336600
#336633 #336666 #336699 #3366cc #3366ff #666600 #666633 #666666 #666699 #6666cc #6666ff
#996600 #996633 #996666 #996699 #9966cc #9966ff #cc6600 #cc6633 #cc6666 #cc6699 #cc66cc
#cc66ff #ff6600 #ff6633 #ff6666 #ff6699 #ff66cc #ff66ff #009900 #009933 #009966 #009999
#0099cc #0099ff #339900 #339933 #339966 #339999 #3399cc #3399ff #669900 #669933 #669966
#669999 #6699cc #6699ff #999900 #999933 #999966 #999999 #9999cc #9999ff #cc9900 #cc9933
#cc9966 #cc9999 #cc99cc #cc99ff #ff9900 #ff9933 #ff9966 #ff9999 #ff99cc #ff99ff #00cc00
#00cc33 #00cc66 #00cc99 #00cccc #00ccff #33cc00 #33cc33 #33cc66 #33cc99 #33cccc #33ccff
#66cc00 #66cc33 #66cc66 #66cc99 #66cccc #66ccff #99cc00 #99cc33 #99cc66 #99cc99 #99cccc
#99ccff #cccc00 #cccc33 #cccc66 #cccc99 #cccccc #ccccff #ffcc00 #ffcc33 #ffcc66 #ffcc99
#ffcccc #ffccff #00ff00 #00ff33 #00ff66 #00ff99 #00ffcc #00ffff #33ff00 #33ff33 #33ff66
#33ff99 #33ffcc #33ffff #66ff00 #66ff33 #66ff66 #66ff99 #66ffcc #66ffff #99ff00 #99ff33
#99ff66 #99ff99 #99ffcc #99ffff #ccff00 #ccff33 #ccff66 #ccff99 #ccffcc #ccffff #ffff00
#ffff33 #ffff66 #ffff99 #ffffcc #ffffff

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