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Are You Vying For Open Source Web Development?
Web development encompasses various activities related developing a website. The importance of building a web presence in today's times is immense, triggering rush by people and organizations to own websites to make themselves visible on the internet. This in turn has driven the need for web development software and tools that give competitive advantage to its users. Now the ubiquitous questions are • How expensive is web development? There are a wide variety of web development products being sold by different vendors that cater to all your web development needs. But they do come at a price and often we are either not in a position or simply not willing to pay the price. We are always looking for a cheaper alternative. Better still - Can we get it for free? Yes, we can - The same features and facilities as commercial web development software are available for free as feature rich Open source web development tools. Open source software offers us several advantages the most important of which are - • The software comes free of cost. Are you someone who is vying open source web development? Since web development is such an important and strategic area the need for open source software is even more important. This gives you freedom for creativity and experimentation while not denting your pocket with huge expenses. FORTUNATELY there are loads of free open source web development tools and software available that can satiate the need for a great looking web site by getting you the right tools to build it for free. Here are some open source web development products one can try: • Aptana 0.2.7 - An html/JavaScript editor intended for development of dynamic web applications. It provides integrated java script debugging and is excellent tool for ajax development. Go Ahead, Try these wonderful open source web development tools and build your dream website now.
Entrepreneurs - Who Gets to Keep the Website After You Divorce Your Webmaster?
Attention all business owners! Do you know the answer to this question: Who gets to keep the website after you divorce your webmaster? Just like in a marriage, it all depends on the pre-nuptial agreement (contract). Do you have one? My personal disclaimer: Some of this information may be about legal issues; however this article is not intended as a substitute for legal advice. I am not an attorney nor do I play one on webTV therefore you should consult with an attorney familiar with the laws concerning internet and intellectual property. Ok, now on with the story, the short version. . . Here's the situation, for whatever reason the client decided not to pay their annual bill for web hosting services. Even though there were several attempts to reach the client the bill went unpaid for more than 90 days. As a result, the hosting was cancelled and the site was removed from the server. Several months later the client sent this exact message: "you have my website and I need you to let me know how to get it back, like I said before I paid you money to build it so....? that money had nothing to do with hosting or anything". Just because you paid for the development of your website does not mean you own it. There are Intellectual Property laws designed to protect the creator and to encourage the creator to create. If you hired a company they own the software development and website design produced by its employees. If you hired an independent contractor you must obtain a written "assignment" of the copyright in the commissioned work from them. Most business owners unknowingly give their webmaster complete control over their business website. Even if you don't have a pre-nuptial agreement (contract) or own your website you can still maintain some control. While you and your webmaster are honeymooning be sure you can document the answer to these questions: 1. What software was used to develop the website?
2. How to access the code? 3. Where is the code located on the server? 4. How to change the content?
5. How to create a weekly back up? 6. How to grant access to additional users? 7. How to obtain the master copies of your website design? As a business owner, how many people realize their webmaster is like their spouse? Voluntarily joined for life (or until divorce), not many! Just like in marriage a prenuptial agreement (contract) is a practical solution to dealing with the risks and problematic topic of who gets to keep the website after your divorce.
Simple SEO Web Site Development Tips
So, you've bought your domain, got some hosting. Now what? You need to make sure that your web site is as friendly as possible to the search engines so that they send you some traffic. This process is called "search engine optimization" or SEO for short. It is probably the most important - and most neglected - part of web site development. Here are some tips to help your SEO web site development. 1. Don't use frames Frames may help you to control the layout of your site but they are a nightmare as far as the search engine robots are concerned and will make it difficult for your site to be crawled by the search engine spiders. 2. Make sure there's text on your pages This even goes for the page featuring that expensive Flash movie that you're currently forcing visitors to your site to watch (or more likely press the "skip intro" link). Search engines don't know what's written on images or animations. They can only read text (the images search is their best guess based on the text on the page and the video search is based on the description of the video). So make sure they have text to read! 3. Separate style and content This means using CSS as much as possible to control the layout of your pages. That way the spider can read more of your content if all the "this is how it should look" stuff is self contained in its own CSS file. The biggest snag with this is that CSS needs to be really well written if it is to look nice at different screen sizes, on different browsers and with varying amount of text on the page. Test at least in Internet Explorer and Firefox and play around with the width of the browser to see how well or badly your site copes. 4. Use a title tag HTML design programs are good at putting in really generic titles such as "Page 1" or "Home Page" but they're almost certainly not what you want the search engines to think your site is about. Change the title to something meaningful. If possible make your title catchy and make sure it's short enough to be completely displayed when the search engine results are shown. This is basic SEO but you'd be amazed how many people don't do it. 5. Put in a meta description tag Despite what you may read, the description tag is useful. It isn't often taken into account when Google or whoever decide which results to show, which is why some people say it isn't important. But it's normally used as the extract that's shown below the blue clickable link to your site. So if it says "XYZ home page constructed with Dreamweaver" instead of something interesting, that's what will likely show up below your title. And if it's blank, you're giving the search engines free reign to put whatever they want there. 6. Keep it simple Spiders like simple. Despite all the advances in the internet, they're fairly dumb and the easier you make it for them to understand what your site is about, the more they will reward you.
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