How's your website, then?

I'm not asking whether it's a good site or not, but what its performance is like. Is it slow to load? Does it have problems with certain web browsers? Occasionally you'll find that code working perfectly on, say Internet Explorer, doesn't work with Firefox. And vice-versa. Any coding problems?

How should I know? Who... who cares? I hear you ask.

Because it's important. You only have seconds -- tenths of seconds, even -- to make an impression on people who come to your site. If the site isn't working, has dead links or some old code that doesn't work and leaves the site with blank areas, you can bet your life those lovely, potential customers will click away at the drop of a pixel. And more than likely they'll be clicking away to the welcoming site of one of your competitors.

Wake up and smell the Mugicha! After reading this post you no longer have any excuses for not knowing. There's a website I often turn to when I want to see how my own site is doing, performance-wise. It makes for uncomfortable reading sometimes, because it doesn't hesitate to tell me stuff I don't particular want to hear -- the site's too heavy, too many images, too many elements, you've failed at life, you're a bad, bad person... et depressing cetera. But it's well worth it.

I have no connection whatsoever with the owners of the site and this isn't an affiliate link, so click in confidence. Here it is:

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

Put in the full address of your website and have a look at what it says. Pretty eye-opening stuff, eh? You didn't realise it was that bad, did you?!

I'm not particularly interested in contacting the owners of the site to ask for their optimization services, but the results I get when I check my site are very interesting. Useful, too. Oh, and completely free. Check it out.

Anyone can have a website, but is that website going to be seen by anyone?

There is so much more that needs to take place when building a website. Most people have no idea. Websites need to have good content, proper keywords, good hosting etc...

Do you really want to know how to create a website that is steps above most and one that will make you money? If you answered "yes" then you need to follow the rules of CTPM in order. CTPM stands for:

Content

Traffic

Presell

Monetize

Good Content will get you alot of traffic. Preselling is when you build a relationship with visitors, not treating them like another digit to your bank account. People visit this site looking for ideas to improve their lives, so that's what must be focused upon. The last step is monetization. This should be the least of your concerns.

Pick a niche that you know something about or at least a little bit about. This will make building content alot easier. Don't worry about doing anything else except writing good content. I know you are saying "I can't write", but don't let that get you down. Do some research on the topic you chose and pick out some key topics and write about that. It doesn't have to be award winning, just keep writing.

Once you have Content the the rest is very easy.

If you want the rest to be very simple in a step by step format you should check out SBI (Site Build It). Domain name, hosting, analyzers, keyword research etc are all included at one place. They'll even help you find a niche.

SBI over delivers unlike anything I have ever seen.

This site will help if you are an experienced website designer or someone who knows nothing at all. I've never seen anything that even comes close.

When you get that profitable site up and running you can send me part of your profits. My address is 4934 East St... Just Kidding. But really do check out the site. You'll be so impressed.

Become the expert on the block.

An SSL, or Secure Socket Layer, is technology that has been developed that allows web browsers and web servers to communicate over a secured connection.

The system uses cryptography that uses two keys to encrypt data  a public key known to everyone and a private or secret key known only to the recipient of the message. It’s a way to encrypt data, like credit cards numbers (as well other personally identifiable information), which prevents the "bad guys" from stealing your information for malicious intent.

The recently introduced SSL v3 improved upon SSL v2 by adding SHA-1 based ciphers, and support for certificate authentication. SSL v2 was known to be flawed in a variety of ways. Identical cryptographic keys are used for message authentication and encryption. The older version did not have any protection for the handshake, meaning a Man-in-the-middle downgrade attack could go undetected.

SSL has recently been succeeded by Transport Layer Security (TLS), which is based on SSL and is included as part of both the Microsoft and Netscape browsers and most Web server products. SSL uses the public-and-private key encryption system from RSA, which also includes the use of a digital certificate.

SSL-enabled client software can use standard techniques of public-key cryptography to check that a server's certificate and public ID are valid and have been issued by a certificate authority (CA) listed in the client's list of trusted CAs. Client authentication allows a server to confirm a user's identity. It’s a way to assure a client that they are dealing with the real server they intended to connect to. It can prevent any unauthorized clients from connecting to the server, preventing anyone from meddling with data going to or coming from the server.

From the very beginning SSL was designed to provide security between client and server, and to avoid any kind of 3-way man-in-the-middle attack.

Conceptually it’s quite simple: it negotiates the cryptography algorithms and keys between two sides of a communication, and establishes an encrypted tunnel through which other protocols (like HTTP) can be transported. It can also be easily passed through firewalls and proxies, as well as through NAT (Network Address Translation) without issues.