Copyright © 2010 Web Development 2010-03-22T11:55:12+0000 2010-03-22T11:55:12+0000 http://www.i-com.net/blog/ Leading Manchester SEO, SEM and web design agency blog. http://www.i-com.net/blog/ http://i-com.net/images/icom-net.gif http://www.i-com.net/blog/ Leading Manchester SEO, SEM and web design agency blog. I-COM International blogmaster at i-com dot net Web Development Web Development en SEO, SEM, Web Design, Web Development 1440 http://www.i-com.net/blog/that-cheap-website-may-cost-more-than-you-think-202/ Small businesses looking for their first professionally designed and developed website do not usually have a internet marketing expert on staff - or a web developer - and very often don't really know what things should cost. They may have a rough idea based on what friends or business associates have paid for their sites or they may have a friend or relative who works in web design. When they start looking at web designers and web developers, the recommendations and the cost can vary massively depending on who they call. It's easy enough to find a web developer who will build a site for 500 with a CMS included. It's also pretty easy to find a web designer who will tell you that you need to spend 20,000. If it's your first website, and you only need a few pages and a basic content management system in case you want to add anything new to the site, 20,000 on a website may be a little high. But, at the other end, 500 may be a little low - and if you're being offered a website this cheap, there's one BIG question you should ask in order to avoid headaches later on: "Will I own the code to my website and the copyright or will you?" One of the ways that companies cut costs in order to design and build websites on the cheap is to sell small sites built on a proprietary CMS that is owned and maintained by the developer. you pay them to customise a design for you and build the initial pages and you pay them for the right to use their CMS and host your website on their server. While this is a cheap option, and many of these packages are search friendly and easy to use, it also means that if the relationship goes sour, or you decide to redesign or upgrade your site using a different company you won't be able to take anything with you - you'll have to start from scratch and rebuild everything. You may not even have access to your own data including customer lists and your database of products in order to easily move everything from the old platform to the new one. When you sign a contract for a new website, always make sure that you own the copyright and you own the code - even if it costs you a little more money. Paying 1,500 for a site now instead of 500 will save you a lot of time and money later. Imagine that over the first few years  you've built your small shop into a thriving e-commerce business selling hundreds of products. If your developer owns the content of your site then you may have to re-enter every product, image and detail back into  your new site by hand - not to mention finding a way of reclaiming your customer database and order history! Is it really worth your time and money later to spend less now? "I still don't have much to spend on a website, what should I do?" In an ideal situation, you should be willing to spend enough on your website to get a bespoke system designed for you that can be upgraded and improved as your business changes and as technology develops. If you don't have the budget for that, however, there's plenty of open source software on the market these days that is easily customisable, easy to use, fairly search engine friendly and will do the job you need it to do. Open source software is free, you can modify it however you like, and you don't have to worry about who owns the copyright. Two quite workable solutions are WordPress, if you want a brochure site with the ability to add new pages easily; and Magento, if you want an e-commerce site. Because of the nature of open source software, your developer should be able to work with these systems - or another similar system - without claiming that it's their software so you can't take it away with you elsewhere. Web Development 2009-06-11 10:59:17 http://www.i-com.net/blog/that-cheap-website-may-cost-more-than-you-think-202/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/benefits-of-using-open-source-platforms-versus-closed-proprietary-platforms-194/ Open-source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. It promises better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in. Until recently this was a radical idea to many business people. Many believed that open-source software was not necessarily "professional", that it was shoddily made and more prone to failure than closed software, but the foundation of the business case for open-source is its high reliability. The open-source model has a lot to offer the business world. It presents a method by which companies and individuals can collaborate on products that none of them could have developed alone. It offers the opportunity for rapid bug fixes and implements the changes that the user asks for to a specified schedule. The open-source model also means increased security; because code is in the public view it will be exposed to extreme scrutiny, with problems being found and fixed instead of being kept secret until the wrong person discovers them. In January 1999, attackers were able to plant a Trojan Horse version of the TCP/Wrappers tool on a well-known FTP site; since source code was available, the back door was quickly noticed and removed. Contrast this with a monolithic operating system like Windows 2000, which has tens of millions of lines of secret, bug-ridden code. Without access to the source code, customers are 100% reliant on the good will and competence of the Microsoft Corporation, a reputation for self-serving behaviour. And last but not least, it's a way that the little guys can get together and have a good chance at beating a monopoly. Of all these benefits, the most fundamental is increased reliability. If this concept still seems a little abstract, think about how closed sources made the Year 2000 problem worse, and how they may very well have killed your business. Open-source software is peer-reviewed software; it is more reliable than closed, proprietary software. Mature open-source code is as bulletproof as software gets. Here at I-COM we believe in these principles, and thus chose Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP (LAMP) as an underlying platform for our bespoke online applications. LAMP platforms give us the advantage of higher flexibility, scalability and interoperability with other systems over closed system platforms like .NET. We did our homework and went with mainstream web providers. The clear leader amongst web servers used by the million busiest websites is Apache with a 66% share. It has a 47% lead over its closest competitor, Microsoft-IIS, much greater than on the web as a whole. Server Share amongst the Million Busiest Sites, March 2009 PHP and MySQL database are business ready applications used by some big names like:Bell Canada and Montral Exchange www.bell.caFiat Group Automobiles SpA www.fiat.comin ticketing www.inticketing.comtagged www.tagged.comIBM Research & Development LabsMcAfee www.mcafee.comUnited Press International www.upi.comVirgin Mobile www.virginmobile.friStockphoto www.istockphoto.com *) Sources: www.zend.com/en/company/customers/, www.mysql.com/customers/ As a Project Manager, I had the opportunity to manage projects developed on LAMP, ASP and C# .NET. Due to problems with integration of legacy systems to .NET, which caused projects to overrun and incur extra costs, I became an open-source advocate. It is blindingly obvious to anybody with business sense that a project based on open-source platforms can be integrated and customized much more easily, which means that the main project concludes successfully prior to the project deadline. Project overruns not only cause extra costs to I-COM, but are damaging to our clients, as our products are seen as important marketing tools. Since I joined I-COM International Limited, I have been pushing forward open-source platforms by using LAMP. We have developed our own libraries of Object Oriented code, which enables us to build robust solutions for every client, and are building bespoke applications based on clients own business models, which prohibits us from reusing code. But as mentioned above, time spent on a project is reduced by using well-tested, underlying platforms which we can rely on. The other issue with closed proprietary code is, that users end up in a "locked-in" situation, as there may not be any support from proprietors after the product life cycle is over, and any further scaling or extension is not within original software scope. This is another benefit of the open-source applications, as the user is in control of the source as well, and can freely move around, maintaining it themselves in case the product support ceases for any reason. We have seen many businesses buying off-the-shelf products or online services, where they do now own the software, data or have to pay torturous premium charges for support. With the open-source application you can opt for your own support, or pay developers to support the product. IMHO the open-source software business model is fairer, friendlier and more ecological then the closed proprietary one. Web Development 2009-05-15 14:50:47 http://www.i-com.net/blog/benefits-of-using-open-source-platforms-versus-closed-proprietary-platforms-194/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/what-the-ftp-is-going-on-118/ Following recent conversations with web developers, whilst trying to obtain FTP access for prospective clients sites, I have begun to notice a certain trend developing in the response from said developers and it has led me to wonder what the big secret is.When advising clients on search visibility and whether their current web site will support SEO, FTP access is needed to get the complete picture of what you are going to be working with.So you call the web developer or hosting company and ask them for FTP access, so you can actually help one of their customers to build their online business, and the response is one of shock, denial and secrecy. This I do not understandIs it because the idea of customer service is completely alien to these people, or is it because of the highly sensitive information that  can be accessed here, perhaps secret files on the truth about who shot Kennedy? Apparently not, all most web sites have is source code, files and folders, data and images Etc. Nothing desperate intellectual property wise and no reason for a veil of secrecy.So whats the big to do?Im no techie, but even I get what read-only access means and access can be limited to a single public folder, so surely there is no big problem, but these people react like you have asked to for their cash card and pin number I now believe it is this: that customer service within this industry has a got a long way to go, and that these people are protecting themselves.In an age where people are hysterical about data theft, many developers are reluctant to release any information on the development of  a client web site - they want to be seen as the only knowlegable person (after all "knowledge is power" the guys at microsoft are keen to tell us) on a particular web site, the only person who can work effectively on a web site - persuading many companies not to change their web sites or hosting companies for years - for fear of losing everything.Im sure there must be many companies and individuals out there with older websites with no idea of what a modern web solution could be doing for their business,  because they are wary of crossing those who people who hold the keys to their online real estate and somehow loosing the lot.So FTP Gate keepers, open up and chill out!! Web Development 2008-10-29 10:06:51 http://www.i-com.net/blog/what-the-ftp-is-going-on-118/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/apples-operating-system-market-share-grows-100/ Market Share, the internet tracking firm, has today released its latest statistics for operating system usage. It reveals that Apple's share of the internet-connected operating system market has increased to over 8%.Whilst they're still not challenging Microsoft's dominance, it does show that Apple are making significant progress; they've seen a growth in their market share of over 20% in the last year.What lies behind these figures is that Apple appeals in the main to a younger market who are looking for style and social approval. This is the key "Generation Y" market sector that many businesses are trying to target.This research supports what we're seeing with our clients whose sites are seeing increasing amounts of traffic from users employing Apple's Safari browser.Organisations putting up sites should ensure that their target audience has the best experience possible when visiting their property - this means sites need to be optimised for appropriate browsers. Web Development 2008-10-02 11:52:00 http://www.i-com.net/blog/apples-operating-system-market-share-grows-100/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/what-is-the-opposite-of-the-htacess-qsa-flag-67/ Normal procedure for using mod_rewrite is to translate friendly url's into something your underlying server technology can interpret. Something like:RewriteRule ^blog-blog-title-(14)\.html$ blog.php?id=$1 [L]But recently I had to do the process in reverse which seemed straightforward:RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} id=14RewriteRule ^blog\.php$ blog-blog-title-14.html [L]But when the rule was invoked, this happened:blog-blog-title-14.html?id=14mod_rewrite was attaching the query string automatically, assuming this was the behaviour I was looking for. After spending a long time Googling various things to try and find an answer (and finding precious little to help me, even on webmaster help forums such as ExpertsExchange) I came up with nothing. It's almost as if nobody had attempted this before.After some intensive really obscure searches I managed to find the not so straightforward solution which I could not find anywhere in the Apache docs. The solution is to stick this string (I have no idea what it does or why it works, but it does) after your mapped url:${pages:%1NULL}?Example:RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} id=14RewriteRule ^blog\.php$ blog-blog-title-14.html${pages:%1NULL}? [L]This little string is nowhere near publicised enough nor is it easily searchable on Google, so I hope that I can help to spread the word by mentioning it here. Web Development 2008-08-06 13:26:32 http://www.i-com.net/blog/what-is-the-opposite-of-the-htacess-qsa-flag-67/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/preparation-is-the-key-to-a-successful-online-business-56/ One of the problems I've come across when dealing with clients who are developing their first websites or looking to redevelop an  existing site is the tendency to overcomplicate the planning process.From the business owner's perspective, I've come up with the following 5 questions to consider when planning the development or redevelopment of your site. Additionally, from the service provider's perspective, I've tried to identify (not in full) some key areas that may be directly influenced by your answers. It's not meant to be rocket science but sometimes (like when writing an essay) you just need to have an outline from which to build your thoughts to make the process less daunting. Preparation A good foundation is the key Ask yourself Will influence What do you want your site to achieve? Sales, Enquiries, Exposure, Social Awareness How your site will look, function, develop Style of copy What do you sell / produce? What service do you offer? Site content - actual copy and how much there is How much control do you want over your site? Hosting Maintenance Resource and customer service requirements How content is managed How important is the website to you? Attitude Willingness to invest Current & future marketing budgets Resource requirements Development potential Where do you see your business in 3 years time? Attitude thinking creatively Willingness to make changes How you prioritise your resources money, people, time Site functionality programming and contingency planning Web Development 2008-07-21 09:36:32 http://www.i-com.net/blog/preparation-is-the-key-to-a-successful-online-business-56/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/avg-link-scanner-creates-web-traffic-jam-38/ AVG, once seen as one of the best free anti-virus software packages on the market is now a webmaster's nightmare.  Some of you may be aware that the latest version of AVG (version 8) comes with a new feature called Link Scanner. Link Scanner pre-scans links on a web search results page to determine whether they are safe to visit. What seemed a good idea to start with soon turned into a fairly large issue. Early on, we noticed problems with using the link scanner when our internet connection started to suffer noticeably. The link scanner on all machines in our office was causing considerable bandwidth usage and slowing our internet connection down. We were quick to turn this feature off. Little did we realise at that point another problem lurked around the corner which was to be a webmaster nightmare. With an estimated 20 million users worldwide using AVG 8 and a possibly 50 million users still to upgrade, webmasters are faced with the giant problem of fake traffic. These pre-link checks are skewing web logs all over the world by creating traffic statistics that aren't real human traffic. Comments from fellow webmasters have shown that in some cases website statistics are being skewed by as much as 40%. Effectively, the more you are shown in the search results the more your web statistics are likely to be distorted. What AVG does not realise is that for site optimisers and website owners this is causing a serious issue because it affects decisions that are made based on web stats. AVGs focus is on security above and beyond the statistical issues that are being caused.  However, recent communication from Roger Thompson of AVG suggests that they are looking to work with webmasters to help resolve these issues. At the moment the focus has been on those that rely on log files for their analysis, so the question I hear you asking is does the link scanner effect those Analytic packages that rely on JavaScript? The answer is YES. My research has led me to understand that because AVG is trying to mimic human activity it executes JavaScript. So the next question on many people's mind is whether Google Analytics is being affected. As yet I don't have a definite answer, but I will post again when more is found on this hot topic. To find out more on Link Scanner and JavaScript read this article: http://judah.webanalyticsdemystified.com/2008/06/avg-linkscanner-bot-executes-javascript.html If youre worried about AVG affecting your Google AdWords then don't worry, it seems that AVG have a work around on this see: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/19/avg_linkscanner_and_adwords/ for more info. For some there is an extended issue that a large amount of bandwidth and server storage is being used by such a feature. If your hosting company limits you on either of these, keep an eye out as you could be seeing a rather large bill soon. We are interested in hearing your views, opinions and results on any analysis so please post your comments below. Web Development 2008-06-23 11:13:32 http://www.i-com.net/blog/avg-link-scanner-creates-web-traffic-jam-38/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/all-developers-work-for-microsoft-10/ Anyone who has spent any significant amount of time developing websites will be familiar with the ongoing crusade of patching and hacking around Internet Explorer 6 issues. The amount of development time this consumes can be quite significant and we'd rather have more time to spend on new innovations and pushing your website onto the next level. If you take a step back from the "required" nature of implementing fixes so your website will look nice in this browser you will realise that you're actually working for Microsoft indirectly by enabling people to carry on using this outdated piece of software. Many people use Internet Explorer because they simply aren't aware of alternatives or don't want to break away from a piece of software they know so well.This creates a problem for web developers where we are fixing bugs Microsoft created because if we don't, those users think that our product is broken. They are blissfully unaware that the fault lies with the very browser they are using and the only reason most modern websites display correctly is down to the various hacks and work-arounds we implement specifically for that browser. Public awareness of this needs to be increased so that the web can move forwards. This will save your local web developers many hours of unnecessary stress and allow them to spend more time making your web experience more interactive and engaging. So tell your friends, your family and passersby on the street that not only are there are alternatives, but that they are simple to use and often have extra functions that you don't  get with Internet Explorer 6. If you want to upgrade your web browser, try one of the following free alternatives: Internet Explorer 7 Safari Camino Firefox Opera Web Development 2008-05-13 11:34:58 http://www.i-com.net/blog/all-developers-work-for-microsoft-10/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/safari-so-good-4/ Through our website analysis software we've noticed an increase in the number of browsers using Apple's Safari. Last month around 5% of the traffic on one of our e-commerce client's website was viewed using the Safari browser. The ramp up in traffic has been quite dramatic over recent months and the current level implies that it's not just Mac users that are looking at the web with it. We believe the increase in use is down to it being offered as a download for pc's with iTunes and Quicktime updates, encouraging many windows based users to try it out. Anyway what does it mean for you and us, well some of your visitors might get a good impression of your website if it looks bad in Safari, as a result we now test all our web developers' work on Safari for PC browsers. Unfortunately, we can't guarantee that all of our older sites perform well on this browser but as we come to refresh them it's something we consider and optimise for. If you're worried that your site doesn't do it on Safari, give us a call and we can review the site and help you improve the way it looks. Web Development 2008-05-06 09:03:47 http://www.i-com.net/blog/safari-so-good-4/