Like a lot of web developers, I'm not always that disciplined when it comes to the file naming convention I use and I sometimes end up with a situation whereby I have some files that are in lowercase, some that begin with a capital, and some that are a bit of a mixture.

One web site I maintain contains about 2000 web pages and has about 20,000 hyperlinks. As you can imagine, I had one of those sinking feelings when I was told that in order to migrate the web site to a new content management system, all the file names and hyperlinks would need to be changed to lowercase.

Whenever I am presented with a problem like this, my instinct is always to write a Perl script using one or more regular expressions to solve the problem. This particular situation was no exception.

Change a string to lowercase

The following regular expression changes all the characters in a string to lowercase. The first part of the regular expression finds a hyperlink, and the second part converts the string. (Just in case this article is not displayed correctly, there should be a single backslash in front of the 'L$1').

Change a filename to lowercase

Likewise, changing a filename itself is very simple. The following two lines perform the task quite nicely:

(Again, there should be a single backslash in front of the 'L$name'.)

If you need more information on how to incorporate the above code snippets into a complete script, feel free to contact me directly.

Hello

I am a person who decided 3 years ago that I wanted to create or build my own websites.

The company I use to assist me not only has ALL the tools and All the advice and ALL the assistance and can prove ALL that it says and is SO cheap to purchase, just today it surprised me AGAIN.

It appears that they had a little setback with one of the tools they provide. This tool is a major tool for all of us who are building websites.

Did they deny the problem? No.
Did they try to pass the blame onto someone else? No.
Did they try to hide from a lot of angry customers? Again, no.

Here is what they did.
They sent an email out to everyone, yes that's right everyone telling us that there was a problem AND APOLOGIZING PROFUSELY!

In addition they compensated us for the inconvenience by adding credits to the tool that was affected.

They kept in contact with us all through a forum which was very easy to locate and use.

They received many, many words of encouragement from a lot of website builders basically saying - thanks for the extra credits and no problem with the glitch.

Then the company advised after many testings that the problems were all fixed and we were good to go.

NOW IS THIS THE TYPE OF SERVICE YOUR COMPANY PROVIDES?

I'm reasonably confident that a lot of people are paying a lot of money for a product which does NOT do all that this particular company does. Question is why do so many people stay with that type of website building company?

So you managed to get a website up and working. You managed to set up a pay per click campaign. But you have not managed to get lots of buyers, callers, joiners, clickers or whatever it is you were after. You may even be advertising to a niche market, yet your website speaks to a general audience. If you try to be everything to every body these days and you will end up being nothing to anybody. So let's look at how you might make changes to your site to speak to a niche and get some conversions.

News Flash. The general store can't compete with the amazons of the world.

If you try all by yourself to compete with mega mart, you will get lost in the big black wormhole of the internet-- also known as the limp, lame, solitary server for misplaced website owners. That's why you choose a segment or a niche strategy. It offers you an opportunity to carve a market share out of that big giant pie. The trick is to identify the niche market or brand audience who will value the service or product enough to pay for it.

How can you position to a primary target audience ?

Don't shoot at the ocean hoping to hit a fish. You need to follow a plan or niche strategy to develop your website so it speaks to this primary target audience. A website is a marketing tool. So here is a brief outline regarding how you might go about the process of creating a well-positioned, marketing savvy website that is not generic. This is an extremely simplified website plan for positioning to a target audience but it outlines a process that you can follow.

• Define your site- Before you can actually choose the type of software or tool you will need to create your site, you need to first determine what KIND of site you want. Is it a site to promote your business? Or an eCommerce site to sell stuff? Is it a community forum for like minded. You site definition determines which development tools you'll need. A free template might do the trick or you might like to look into ecommerce programs.

• Define your goals- What do you want this website to do for you? Sell? Get additional business? Advertise more high-profit items or services? Serve as a status gateway for your sales and marketing team? Do you want it to be an informational platform that is supported by advertising. Writing down your goals gives you a focus.

• Define your target market- It's not "everyone on the internet". Big companies spend MILLIONS to define their market and create an appropriate strategy. So you need to research the segment of the population who you are trying to reach. If it's teenagers, is it female teens with self esteem issues? Is it teens who are book worms? If you know which segment it is, you can further define the audience and know how to speak to them.

• Define features- These are the features you want on your site. If you are a real estate firm, do you want an amortization calculator? Do you want a venue for people to leave comments? Do you want a slide show, streaming video, audio files? Do you want a schedule of how-to clinics and sign up capability for these clinics? What about registration and payment capability? All of this helps determine the tools you use, the package you might buy the host you will choose. Some hosts are better if you happen to be posting lots of video or audio content for example. Still others offer ecoommerce packages with a higher level of tech support for these customers.

• Target marketing strategy-Your marketing strategy is a plan to reach specific objectives. It does not have to be catchy. It just has to define what you would like the site to accomplish. Example: For instance, you want your computer repair business to cater to home office entrepreneurs who want same-day repair. Your focus is getting computers fixed fast from a remote location and keeping the business person at peak productivity by minimizing downtime. You may also want to get an affiliate cut for spyware you recommend on your website and other products that keep computers virus free and performing smoothly. You want to keep in touch with your market through a newsletter with free tips on how to boost performance and with latest virus alerts. You would like to start offering monthly contracts for being the "IT Department" for the home office entrepreneur and eventually establish yourself as the go-to company for IT services.

Remember to write or use copy that does not focus on yourself or your company, but think strategically in terms of how your product(s), service or company benefits your target market. Then your website should guide them along the path to the action you wish them to take much like a live sales person would do. Plan your website well and it could become one of your least expensive and highest yielding marketing and sales tools.