Webmaster Crap
Nigerian Scam – Still Going
Being in the internet biz, I get quite a bit of email every day. Being that I use Outlook, I make use of Cloudmark to filter crap out of my inbox. But, stuff still gets through, and yesterday I got another issue of the famous Nigerian scam. It’s a classic, too. I guess I should feel so special to get an email from the son of the former President of Liberia. 
He tells me of the coupe on his father, blah blah blah, and how they need to hide family assets with a “trustworthy person” (I guess that’s me) abroad. Oh yeah, and this must be top secret. Of course.
Authentic secret report reaching my father holds it that this new Government will affect the seizure of all my family’s assets both in Liberia and abroad by enlisting the assistance of other countries to achieve this. Therefore, my family decided to take care of certain business interests by mandating me to contact trustworthy persons whom we can go into alliance with to protect most of our liquid assets which are located abroad before the new government will settle down to work. If you are interested to work with us please reach me immediately through my email address above for details and immediate action. Please treat this letter as urgent. I can assure you of my family’s full co-operation and protection.
This has got to be the most famous scam on the internet, and yet they still try it. Pity the poor fools that fall for this crap. It goes right up there with the stupid stock quote emails.
How Does Your Forum Compare?
A new site called ForumRank was recently launched. The idea behind the site is that you sign up and set your forum up to be ranked and compared with other forums on factors such as posting rate and registration rate (among others). They will be coupling this with articles and interviews on the subject of forum ownership. Adding a forum is pretty easy. You need to sign up for their forums, then you go back to the homepage and click “Add Your Forum”. I am now waiting for them to crawl my forums at PC Mechanic, which they say can take up to 12 hours.
If you don’t yet have any forums, you might want to consider starting some. I think any serious web publisher needs to have at least one forum site, because a dedicated forum community is a great asset to have.
Template Engines Fundamentals for PHP
Today, I thought I would change the pace a bit and dive into something a little more on the technical side: PHP Template Engines. For those of you who are not programmers, let me give you a basic rundown what I’m talking about. Let’s take a PHP-driven website. The content is being created dynamically, probably be being pulled out of a database on-the-fly. The PHP code on the site has to take that data out of the database and insert it into the website’s template. When this is done, the website has the look it should. However, when one looks at the source code for that PHP, the very messy way to do it is to have your layout mixed in with the code which actually queries and processed the data for you. PHP allows you to embed code right into an HTML file if you wish, but the problem is that doing this means that changing the layout later can be a REAL chore – you would have to update every single script on the site. Another problem is that the design and the code is all mixed together, so you cannot delegate tasks properly. A designer probably doesn’t know programming, and vice versa.
What a template system does is allow you to separate the site’s design from the underlying PHP code. By placing certain syntax into the template such as placeholder variables, blocks, and includes, the designer can create the layout separately from the programmer. And the other beautiful thing is that you can change the templates in one place and the entire design of the site can change in one swoop. This makes maintenance MUCH easier. Click Here To Continue Reading »
The Business of Forums
Many sites today use web forums and many others are looking into starting one. Forums can make a great addition to a website. By providing that sense of community, your site gets a new level of stickiness. Once you get the forums off the ground, they will be a source of continual repeat traffic. But, there are some things to consider when looking at starting forums on your website. And if you are looking to start a site which is 100% forums, you need to pay special attention to these considerations.
The Software
This is the easy part. There are a lot of pre-written forum software packages out there which are quite good. My personal favorite is vBulletin. The software sells for $159, which compared to some of the others is expensive (especially considering that many of them are free). However, the software is rock solid and very powerful. If you are serious about starting forums which are going to be more than a simple hobby, I would seriously recommend checking out vBulletin. Some of the popular alternatives are PHPBB and Invision Power Board but you can also head over to Hotscripts and check out a long list of them written in PHP. Click Here To Continue Reading »
How To Hire a Developer
Today, most businesses want a website. Some already have one. Others want one. They don’t want to hire IT staff and probably can’t afford any. And in most cases, an in-house IT staff, especially for your typical small business, just isn’t necessary. But, that doesn’t mean that you have to go without or will be forced to use some cookie cutter website or a personal Frontpage experiment gone awry. You can hire a web developer/designer to create a professional website for you, set it up, then hand it over to you for you to do what you want with it. But, how should you go about finding someone to do this? What should you look for? There are literally thousands of companies/individuals out there offering to do your website. How do you pick from this large group? Click Here To Continue Reading »
10 Tips for Web Success
The webmaster’s biggest job is to get their traffic up and keep customers/visitors coming back. Building the site is one thing, but simply building and posting a website does not guarantee traffic. In fact, a website could be beautiful and an example of all the latest technology and still not attract a single visitor if not promoted correctly. Here are 10 tips to guide you to success with your website.
(1) The internet is a new medium.
At least compared to print, it is. A website is a waste if it simply re-hashes something which could easily be put into print. Don’t have the site be just an online brochure. Put up features which take advantage of the internet as a medium of communication. Filter information for them. Provide search capability. Provide interactivity with features like forums, quizzes and tools. Web visitors like to interact. Click Here To Continue Reading »
Website Automation – Getting More Done
Many of us who work on the internet these days are one-man shows. Speaking for myself, I have people doing work for me throughout the country, but locally in my office I am currently the only person. As any sole business owner can attest to, running a business this way makes you a true jack of all trades. In any given day, I am responding to emails, shipping orders, doing client development work, handling issues on the website, doing statistics, etc etc etc. Now, I am in the process of finding an assistant, but there are ways which you can use technology to assist yourself in performing the work of more than one worker.
I am speaking of automation, and there is nothing better than putting your web server and computer to work for you. Make your website actually perform some work for you rather than you working for the website all the time. Let’s look at some ways you could automate tasks. Click Here To Continue Reading »
Usability Tips for Your Website
In any web statistics program or service, you have a report regarding the number of pages a visitor views before leaving your website. I like to call this a measure of the site’s “stickiness”. The more pages they view before leaving, the more interesting your site is to them. And when your visitors are interested, they come back and buy things (if you are selling something). In order to increases the stickiness of your site, it is imperative that maximize the usability of your site.
When a visitor comes across your site, you have just a few seconds to get their attention and sell them on the fact that your site can solve some problem for them. One of the key things here is to design your site such that the visitor’s eye does not scatter when they arrive on your website. If they get to your site and are inundated with data overload, they will not know what to click on. And they are much more likely to leave. That means your site isn’t very sticky. Click Here To Continue Reading »
Stop Annoying Your Visitors
It’s one thing to get traffic to your website. You do search engine optimization, create a nice design, form a bunch of link exchange partnerships or even do a marketing campaign. It is quite another feat altogether to KEEP your visitors. The internet is no longer a novelty. It is part of daily life for many, many people and today most consumers are willing to put up with even less annoyances from the sites they frequent. Leave it to today’s consumer to demand more and tolerate less. Its just a fact, though.
I recently came across a press release from Hostway, a Chicago-based hosting company. The title: Survey Says…Internet Pet Peeves: What Drives Consumers Away From Your E-Business. They commissioned this study to come up with those things that do the best job of driving people away from a website. Among the top contenders are pop-up ads (93% dislike them) , registration log-on pages (requiring registration and login in order to view content) and Flash introductions. 89% of consumers said they are put off by requiring extra software to be installed to use a website. A full 70% of consumers said they’re not likely to purchase from, or even return to, a website after encountering one of these pet peeves. Only 25% of consumers said they would bring it up to the company, so that means 75% of those who get annoyed will just leave and you’ll never know about it. As to how consumers react to these pet peeves: Click Here To Continue Reading »
A Look at AJAX
AJAX is one of the newest buzzwords circulating in the field of internet development. We’ve all known it for a long time as a cleaning agent. Its funny how this field loves to use names with other meanings (i.e. SPAM). However, in this case, it stands for Asynchronous Javascript and XML. In short, AJAX is a mix of already-existing technologies to do something which is somewhat new. What is it that is new? Well, have you tried Google Maps or Gmail lately? These web-based interfaces are a lot more interactive than usual. With Google Maps, for example, you can drag the map around without even refreshing your browser. Many web-based email clients are now turning to AJAX to enrich the user experience. The technology allows the web to act more like a desktop application. For instance, the usual method of submitting data to a website is to fill in a form, hit submit, at which point the page refreshes showing some result. The user has to wait for all this to occur. In other words, the user’s actions are synchronized with the server – (1) fill in data, (2) receive data, (3) show result. With AJAX, the user is freed from this normal course of events, and user actions on a page can asynchronously interact with the server right as the user is doing it. There is no form submission required. Click Here To Continue Reading »
I'm David Risley. I've been making my living as a blogger for over a decade. Blogging is my business and how I support my family. With this blog, I'm just gettin' REAL and telling you how this business works. 
