Whether you prefer developing in ASP, PHP or Colfusion, Adobe Dreamweaver and the WebAssist Super Suite extensions can turn an ordinary website into a dynamic database-driven workhorse that rivals those from professional developers costing tens of thousands of dollars.

Super Suite extensions for Dreamweaver

Just like a professional carpenter, the right set of tools can make all the difference in the finished product. In Dreamweaver, having the right set of extensions can not only allow you to build more extensive, usable websites, but they can also save you an immense amount of development time and frustration.

WebAssist Super Suite gives you The Power to Build Anything

The Super Suite extension package covers everything from website security, user administration, user login, site cookies, sessions, database administration, email processing, dynamic dropdowns, a full ecommerce shopping cart, a website import tool, Eric Meyer's CSS Sculptor, a full-featured text editor, dynamic Flash charts, dynamic Google map integration and a whole lot more!

Database-driven websites, e-commerce and more

The Super Suite set of extensions gives Dreamweaver users the tools to create every facet of a functional content management system, full featured forums with access-level rights, complete website database administration tools including search, add, edit, update and delete fuctions, full digital file upload and download features, and a complete ecommerce shopping cart system with fully customizable storefronts. All this is achieved through an extremely easy-to-use wizard interface which walks you through each step in simple, intuitive fashion.

Easy-to-use Dreamweaver wizard interface

Super Suite can be easily integrated into your current site Dreamweaver template. The wizards take you through the steps needed to configure your options, you choose your template, and Super Suite creates all necessary pages, navigation, recordsets, CSS and javascript. You simply upload the new pages and files to your server, and the new functionality is live, with the look and feel of your existing website.

Create advanced Dreamweaver websites without knowing any code

WebAssist Super Suite extensions are perfect for Dreamweaver users who are hesitant to dig into the code. The extensions create all the code for you, and you can easily return to the wizard at any time to make changes. Super Suite has some similar functions to Adobe Dreamweaver Developer Toolbox, but it includes one-of-a-kind extensions like the iRite WYSIWYG editor for integrating FCKeditor into your Dreamweaver websites, CSS Sculptor which allows you to create complete standards compliant websites in one easy operation, and Site Import which allows you to import complete websites including all HTML, CSS, script, Flash and image files onto your local drive.

Advice from a Super Suite user

As a Super Suite user, I have used all their extensions extensively in my client websites. The ease-of-use and the Dreamweaver integration make them a must-have extension bundle if you want to develop websites faster, create more intuitive and complex websites, and make more money as a website designer or developer.

Adobe Dreamweaver Compatibility

The WebAssist Super Suite package is an all-inclusive Dreamweaver toolkit which provides developers with all the necessary tools to make dynamic database-driven websites in Adobe Dreamweaver. The extensions are compatible with Dreamweaver 8 and Dreamweaver CS3 on both PC and Mac. PHP, ASP and ColdFusion are supported by all the extensions.

I've done quite a bit of research into web analytics lately, and I have found a couple of things. Google analytics Is a great tool, but it cannot be the only tool an organization relies on. Because it is a purely JavaScript based, it is unable to catch browsers that do not have JavaScript enabled, this includes the search engine robots, some hand held devices, as well as a percent of users that manually turn this off. That being said we need a tool to parse the log files from the server and to give us information about these users, as well as providing us with "on demand" stats where as Google's stats are next day. The server logs also contain a wealth of other information that we are collecting automatically, so we might as well take advantage of it.

I have come to the conclusion that we need to use Google Analytics but we also need a tool that reads the server logs. There are quite a variety of tools that would fill this need. Google recently purchased Urchin who's web analysis product runs Google analytics, costs about $3k and will work with the Google Mini, Urchin also gives the ability to read logs from server software other than IIS (like apache, the software used for open source applications) .

Urchin will be releasing another version shortly, and this will be the first release since the Google buyout. Another option is WebTrends Analytics it costs about $4k. It Like Urchin will read both IIS and Apache logs, and has a web interface for users. The last product is NetTracker, it runs about $4k for the software, and another grand for support. it was recently bought out by Unica. The administration of netTracker is not the smoothest, and the support seems to have declined on quality since the buy out.

Just what is a 301 Redirect?

There seems to be a lot of confusion as to what to do when you move, delete, or want to redirect incoming web traffic from an 'old' web page to a 'new' web page. A 301 redirect is the most efficient method for web page redirection from an old web page to a new web page location. There is also some confusion as to how to handle the complete move or redirection from one web domain to another web domain. According to Google, "If you need to change the URL of a page as it is shown in search engine results, we recommended that you use a server-side 301 redirect instead."

How to Set Up a 301 Redirect

Depending on your web environment, there are several methods to set up a 301 redirect. A 301 redirect is not that hard to implement and it should preserve your search engine rankings for that particular page or web domain.

.htaccess 301 Redirection

The .htaccess file needs to be placed in the root directory of your old website. In this example, we are redirecting incoming web traffic from an old domain to a new domain.

Options +FollowSymLinks

RewriteEngine on

RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

The .htaccess file is the most common method used for 301 web site redirection.

PHP 301 Redirection

You would place this code in a file at the old location.

Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );

Header( "Location: http://www.new_location.com" );?>

IIS 301 Redirection

• In Internet Services Manager, you need to right click on the file or folder you wish to redirect
• Select the radio button titled "a redirection to a URL".
• Enter the redirection web page
• Check "The exact URL entered above" and the "A permanent redirection for this resource"
• Click on 'Apply'

That is all there is to it.

There are other methods in addition to set up a 301 redirection which include coding for ASP, ASP.NET, Java, CGI, Cold Fusion and Ruby on Rails. The above are the most common that I've encountered. When set up correctly, a 301 redirect will preserve your search engine rankings when it is necessary to move files around or switch, or consolidate, domain names.