Online Trail Blog

Don’t make a splash!

Are you thinking about using a splash page when you create a web site? You would be wise to think again.

What is a splash page?

Generally, it is a fancy entrance graphic which requires your visitor to click in order to enter the main home page of your web site. It may include a movie-like presentation with lots of sound effects and moving, flashy, animated graphics. These are often created using a technology called Macromedia Flash.

Top three reasons

Here are the top three reasons why you shouldn’t use a splash page when you create a web site:

1 – Your visitor’s don’t like them

According to test conducted by web site research firm Marketing Sherpa, 80% of visitors surveyed preferred a web site without an entrance splash page. One quote by a survey responded summed it up: “When searching the web, my most immediate concern in generally time, how quick I can find/do it.” Since a splash page just takes up your visitor’s time without providing real and useful information, they generally don’t like them.

2 – They are slow to load on a dial up connection

Even though the world is slowly moving to fast broadband connections, there are still millions upon millions of web users who connect to the internet using slower dial up connections. Putting a splash page on your web sites makes them wait – in effect, putting a block between them and your chance to present them with information. Why would you want to do that?

3 – Search engines generally can’t read splash pages

While technology is evolving, the search engines like Yahoo and Google search and index the text on your web site. If you don’t provide text (meaning you have only a graphical splash page), the search engines may not be able to find your web site – and that means that your potential visitors won’t be able to find you either.

Herb and Monica Leibacher operate Web Builder Express. Create a professional web site for your business or non-profit organization with Web Builder Express. At http://www.WebBuilderExpress.com, you can request your free Quick Start Guide that tells you how to create a great web site.

Mortgages can be one of the most confusing and frustrating parts of the house buying process. Fortunately, these days, you don’t have to spend months researching the ins and outs of mortgages to guarantee the best possible experience. There are mortgage brokers and mortgage broker bonds available that ensure the rules and regulations are followed. There is also a wealth of information to be found online, through mortgage broker agencies and mortgage broker bonding companies. It would be in your best interest to find out as much as possible before signing any contracts or making any final decisions. While the jargon can sometimes by a bit over most people’s heads, especially if they have never had any experience with mortgages before, there are plenty of online reference forums that provide explanations in clear terms. Take a look around with plenty of time to spare so that you can maximize your efforts. When dealing with mortgage broker bonds, it is important to consider the fact that different states have different laws. Most of these laws have to do with the expiration or start dates of bonds. Make sure you check with your bonding company about your state’s requirements before you apply.

Why on earth would anyone want to install a piece of spyware onto their Web browser? No sensible right minded person would …unless you are a webmaster and you want to improve your SERPS ranking that is.

The Alexa toolbar is not “technically” spyware as it doesn’t retrieve any private or personal information. It does however log all the sites you visit and as webmasters we can use this to our advantage. It uses this information to compile traffic ranking statistics and a relational list. The relational list is very useful as it shows what other sites people who have looked the current website have also visited. Alexa is owned by Amazon and it is possible to make your own Alexa toolbar with your Amazon affiliate code included. You can then place this on your site and get credited when anyone buys through Amazon using the Amazon button on the toolbar you’ve distributed, it is also possible to include a link to your site in the toolbar.

Alexa ranks sites from 1 to 5,000,000 and sometimes higher. Ranking 1 has the most traffic and so on, anything below 250,000 and you should be getting some decent traffic levels. This information can be used to determine how well your advertising campaigns are going and how traffic levels are growing over a period of time. This information can also be used to determine how you rivals are doing and keep you one step ahead of them. The Alexa information is also picked up by other search engines so you benefit from an increase in you SERPS as your site progresses up the rankings .

One drawback of the Alexa toolbar is that it only works on Internet Explorer and not the tool of choice for most webmasters Firefox. However I personally feel this is a small price to pay for the benefits I get when using the tool bar for research and to check my sites daily. Checking the stats of your own site has a positive impact on your Alexa ranking as the toolbar is not generally used by the general public so every extra hit from a browser with the tool bar installed is valuable. I have 1 site that is almost exclusively used by webmasters , As webmasters are the people who use Alexa more than any other group 500 page views a day are enough to get this site into the top 500,000 Another site that has 3 times the traffic but the visitors are mostly the general public so this site is languishing in the 2,000,000 ’s.

Why not try an experiment for a month, Download the toolbar and monitor one of your sites, once you see the data you get and the way it can be used you won’t know how you survived without it.

About the Author

Mark Thompson has spent a number of years traveling the World and Racing Motorbikes, when funds got low he worked as an IT consultant In London. He now lives in Spain and runs a number of Websites Including http://www.WorldoftheWeird.com and http://www.Links-Factory.com

I have always been a naturally curious person. Ever since I was a little girl, I have always been full of questions. My mother and father frequently tell me and my family stories about how they could never make it through a car ride, a grocery trip or almost anything without me stopping them at least once with a question. For me, everything holds a little bit of mystery and magic. One of the biggest things that is mysterious to me is marine life.

I became interested in marine life upon my family’s first vacation to Florida during my elementary years. We visited a couple of large aquariums and zoos that contained a lot of marine life and I was hooked. I didn’t know such a thing as marine life existed before that trip to Florida, but my curiosity couldn’t be stopped from that day on. I asked my parents for books about marine life, for stuffed marine life animals, and for trips to the zoo as often as I had the opportunity.

I think the main thing that first intrigud me about marine life is the fact that is takes place mostly under water. Marine life is a totally different kind of life, and that’s why I am full of wonder about it. When it came time for me to choose a college and to prepare for a career, the choice was obvious. I went to university in Florida and studied Marine Biology. I chose this subject because it meant that I got to spent four years studying marine life. I couldn’t be happier.

Even if you have no desire to study marine life for a profession, there are many ways for you to curb or entice your curiousity about it. Get online and see what you can learn or get off to your local library and check out a few books or magazines about marine life. See what can be learned and see if you can even narrow your interest further to include a particular variety of marine life.

If you are full of mysterious wonder about marine life, one of the best things you can do is to make a visit to an aquarium that is full of marine life. There is nothing like seeing your favorite species of marine life live. So make plans to explore the wonders of marine life on your next vacation. You’ll be so glad you did.

Julee Mitchelsin is a marine biologist that continues to be fascinated with marine life. See www.funmarinelife.info for more details.

Are You A Bill Clinton Webmaster? Post-Florida Google Pulls Back the Fig Leaf By David Leonhardt

One of the most frequent questions I get asked about my ebook, Don’t Get Banned BY The Search Engines, is whether I amended it to include post-Florida Google. “Florida” is the code name that search engine optimizer wizards gave to a November, 2003, shakeup at Google that left many webmasters covering themselves up with makeshift fig leaves while dangling upside down above the proverbial crocodile moat.

I am tempted to explain that, “No, I did not amend it, because nothing has really changed.” But just try telling the world that Bill Clinton did not have “sex” with Monica Lewinski. Yeah, right.

So I take the lazy way out and I just say, “Yes.”

But the guilt has been creeping up on me, grasping at my skin, gnawing away at my bones, chewing on my heart, mauling my conscience, and spitting out my toenails one by one. So this is confession time. Don’t Get Banned By The Search Engine has not been amended to include post-Florida Google.

Is this because I am peddling stale goods? Am I leading people astray? Do I have a clue what’s going on? “No”, “I hope so”, and “Maybe”.

In fact, nothing really has changed at Google, and webmasters who have been following Google’s guidelines can just keep doing what they have always been doing, just as Presidents who follow public decency guidelines can keep doing what they are doing (until we vote them out of office for other reasons, of course).

“But I followed the guidelines, and I still took bullets in several vital organs,” I hear many webmasters say. In fact, very few webmasters have been following Google’s guidelines. Most have been following the Clinton what-can-I-get-away-with fig leaf guidelines.

Remember that Bill Clinton never had “sex” with Monica Lewinski. Technically. Honest, he did nothing wrong. He followed the rules by not having “sex” with Monica Lewinski. In fact, he was seen in public not having sex with Monica Lewinski on several occasions.

And webmasters follow the rules by not linking to “link farms” or “overoptimizing”. Sure, they will link to sites that have nothing to do with their site’s topic, but not to a “link farm”. And they will “exchange links”, but surely that does not violate Google’s” uniquely democratic nature of the web” principle. As long as you are not actually caught publicly stuffing the ballot box, how could Google possibly suggest that you are doing so?

So here are my post-Florida rules:

You only link to relevant sites, because that’s what you know Google and your visitors want. Keep doing that.

You don’t exchange links, because that would be stuffing Google’s ballot box – and that is NOT something Google wants. Keep not doing that.

Your link does not appear on many useless “links” pages, where it has to share PageRank with dozens of other web sites. Keep not doing that.

You accept links only from relevant web pages, because you know that’s the only meaningful traffic … and that’s what Google wants. Keep doing that.

Your links look different on different web pages around the Internet, because that’s how a democratic process would create your links. Keep doing that.

You keep adding relevant content to your web site, because that’s what you know Google and your visitors want. Keep doing that.

See? No change. And if there is a change, it simply means that you were not following Google’s guidelines in the past. Oh sure, technically you might have been following Google’s guidelines, but technically Bill Clinton didn’t have sex with Monika Lewinski. Another round of fig leaves, anyone?

Google implemented “stemming” along with the Florida update, or more likely a few weeks earlier. Since your inbound links are varied and often unique, you probably already are taking advantage of stemming, so it won’t bother you. And since you write meaningful copy for your visitors, you probably already have all the stemming you need right in your copy. You are ready to really excel in Post-Florida Google.

Google is also implementing a “communities” factor. Since your inbound links all come from relevant web pages, you are already part of the community. You are already well placed to succeed in Post-Florida Google, right?

Google has implemented “penalties” for some typically overoptimized terms. Actually, I think penalties is probably the wrong word, but that is what most SEOs are using. Since you write quality content, meaningful headers, and don’t cut and paste the same phrase over and over in every possible place, you are ready to conquer Mount Google.

In other words, if you were following Google’s guidelines, not the Bill Clinton fig leaf guidelines, just keep doing what you are doing. For the rest of you, isn’t it time you dropped the fig leaf and wrapped yourself up in something a little more substantial that will weather the high winds of Google’s next big storm?

And, “No.” I did not amend Don’t Get Banned By The Search Engines to include post-Florida Google – because I never advised people to follow the Bill Clinton fig leaf guidelines in the original edition.

There is no refuting the fact that the triumph of a firm ultimately depends on the work of the workers, however one catastrophe can wipe out all your plans & shrink the revenue to dust. In order to keep away from such an instance, you must insure your firm, whether it is a SME or a giant corporation. However, please bear in mind that smaller businesses are significantly more probable to require business insurance cover in today’s busy world. This is generally since SME owners will have put their complete lives and salary straight into the business.

A couple of the topics frequently covered by the majority of business insurance covers entail: natural disasters, tornadoes, machine or apparatus stoppage that closes down the business, loss of money because of workforce fault and legal cases brought against the firm.

There are very many insurance organisations, which offer policy covers that combine protection for all main property and liability risks in one entire package. You can also acquire a separate coverage. Such cover is commonly referred to as a business owners’ policy (BOP). Bigger businesses might obtain a commercial policy cover. Don’t fret; find a public liability insurance business today.

BOPs comprise of property insurance for buildings & gear owned by the firm. If there is any loss of earnings caused by disruption of functions and trade because of tragedies like landslides, it can be protected under the Business Interruption Insurance.

There are an assortment of liabilities, which cover the businesses legal duty for the damage it may cause to others. It is the result your firm’s failure to do the business operations. It can as well be the physical injury or property damage caused thanks to defective products, faulty installations & slip-ups in services provided.

Despite this, BOPs do not cover professional liability, vehicle cover, workers’ reimbursement or health and disability insurance. In this instance separate insurance policies are vital for professional services, motor vehicles & workers. More often than not, floods, earthquakes & terrorist attacks are not covered in the business insurance. Always check before you acquire!

Launch your site, before it is finished.

When you launch a site, you face three major problems: The search engines don’t know you, the users don’t know you and you might not have any meaningful amount of content. These problems can cost you time, before your site starts to pay off.
Three solutions to hit the ground running on launch day.

Waiting for the search engines
Telling “Google” your new web-address is only getting you a spot in its sandbox. The sandbox is like a queue. You line up until your have gotten to the front-gate. Only if you are passed it, will your site be spidered. Word on the web is that this takes 6 months – regardless of how fancy your submission technique is. There are of course other search-engines who process you faster. But can you afford not to be found in “Google”?

Once your domain is listed, they need to be found by their spiders and ultimately by the user. Although your DNS entry should cascade very fast around the globe, there are bottlenecks. It can happen that you wait for the update a couple of weeks – regardless of your TTL-definition. Nearly unbelievable, but it happens. You should get a very wide dissemination within a few days, but it is better to be safe than sorry.

Getting the users to the launch
Every web page is made for its visitors. If you don’t get them, all your efforts and money spent have been in vain. Unless you have a substantial marketing-budget for your launch, it takes time for users to reach your site, to tell other people, to list it or to write about it in blogs. The shorter the time you need to reach that critical mass of users, the sooner your site pays off. Also you will quicker get to the point when it is really fun to look at your web-stats.

Welcome to our empty pages
Users will not repeatedly visit your site just because it is nicely designed and structured. You need enough content already on launch-day to have something interesting for most of your visitors. Any “coming soon” on a fully operational site is very likely to be a frustration to the user. A database of 2 articles does not inspire confidence. It is like peeking into an empty restaurant on a Saturday night – you might think twice about even looking at the menu.

Waiting for the search engines, having very few users visiting your site and not offering any content will unlikely result in a good start.

“Under Construction” revisited
What was considered very bad form some years ago, might just be one way of solving the problems. When development work begins, you need to set up a page or a mini-site. When search engines are visiting they have a place to go. At the same time it solves the DNS update delay you might encounter from some backbones.

Unlike the classic “shovel and hard-hat” logo, even this simple page or site needs an identity and content. It will be visited and looked at by your potential costumers. Have you noticed how real-world construction-sites start to be tidy and nicely wrapped up – sometimes even following corporate design guidelines. Many people are walking past construction-sites – and they just might link the image of the company to the piles of bricks carelessly lying about. Sometimes you even find a little description what the new store will look like, offer and when it will be opened – a smart move.

The visual design can be much reduced, but still should convey the appropriate message. Have your designer create a layout, using your corporate identity or claims. The visitor, even the search-engine, should know on an emotional as well as a factual level what will be up and coming.

The best thing would be to have some content available. Put up an article every week for example, a review, a recipe or whatever content is related to your site. This shows search-engines that something is happening; boosts your placement and the visitor sees some activity. And you will already have some content ready for the day your site goes really life.

Getting the users to the launch
There is no other way but to directly address them. Most effective is some meaningful content, not simply a note that your site will start in three weeks time.

The indirect approach might work best. If you receive an email by someone you know or someone who has a positive reputation, it is likely to be read. Find some opinion-leaders related to your products or services. Maybe you can get this person to write content and distribute it to the community while linking to your site? You could organize an event together or simply ask for input – they might just have this great idea that you can use to make your site known before it is even fully life. Blogs are often published by “opinion leader” and you can find them as strong voices in forums.

The goal is to increase you link-popularity, get email-addresses and get access to a network of people who can avalanche information from your site to their communities.

Having Content
It is not likely to have on launch-day the same amount of content like a site that is already up for five years. But usually you only have one chance to interest and satisfy a fist-time user. One key element here is having content available. Empty article-listing or three reviews are simply not enough to interest me to delve into the site. If you would launch a print-magazine, you would also have every page filled with the best content available – the same applies to the new site.

Another advantage is that search engines love content – especially if it changes. If you have a reasonable turnover, your chances for a good ranking are high.

If you can’t create content in-house, articles and reviews are relatively easy to get. You can either peruse article directories or collaborate with blogs. The quality of the content reflects on your site. Editorial-work and selection is essential.

A word of caution; It is easy to republish what is already out on the web. But original content is still best. Since you cater to the interests of your prospective visitors, the article you re-use was likely to have appeared on a site similar in target to your own. Quality over quantity is still what counts.

Launching a site starts well before you put it online. A well prepared launch will let you hit the ground running and might save months in getting the visitors you need.

Raoul Dobal focuses on usablilty and is partner of ADWIRED, a Swiss company specialised in webbased communication. Visit www.adwired.ch for information about services or www.iquse.ch to read further articles on usability.

We were getting a number of querries from our clients and friends, asking about what AJAX is? With the development of Microsoft’s Live, everyone is going crazy about AJAX. So, we at Xaprio Solutions thaught of publishing this small article about AJAX, which will help you guys understand it better.

Like DHTML, LAMP, or SPA, Ajax is not a technology in itself, but a term that refers to the use of a group of technologies together. In fact, derivative/composite technologies based substantially upon Ajax, such as AFLAX, are already appearing.
The Term AJAX refers to, Asynchronous JavaScript and XML.

For a number of tasks, only small amounts of data need to be transferred between the client and the server, allowing a number of Ajax applications to perform almost as well as applications executed natively on the user’s machine. This has the effect that pages need only be incrementally updated in the user’s browser, rather than having to be entirely refreshed. “Every user’s action that normally would generate an HTTP request takes the form of a JavaScript call to the Ajax engine instead”, wrote Jesse James Garrett, in the essay that first defined the term. “Any response to a user action that doesn’t require a trip back to the server such as simple data validation, editing data in memory, and even some navigation the engine handles on its own. If the engine needs something from the server in order to respond if it’s submitting data for processing, loading additional interface code, or retrieving new data the engine makes those requests asynchronously, usually using XML, without stalling a user’s interaction with the application.”

Traditional web applications essentially submit forms, completed by a user, to a web server. The web server does some processing, and responds by sending a new web page back. Because the server must send a whole new page each time, applications run more slowly and awkwardly than their native counterparts.

Ajax applications, on the other hand, can send requests to the web server to retrieve only the data that is needed, and may use SOAP or some other XML-based web services dialect. On the client, JavaScript processes the web server’s response, and may then modify the document’s content through the DOM to show the user that an action has been completed. The result is a more responsive application, since the amount of data interchanged between the web browser and web server is vastly reduced. Web server processing time is also saved, since much of it is done on the client.

The earliest form of asynchronous remote scripting, Microsoft’s Remote Scripting, was developed before XMLHttpRequest existed, and made use of a dedicated Java applet. Thereafter, remote scripting was extended by Netscape DevEdge at around 2001/2002 by use of an IFRAME instead of a Java applet.

http://blogs.xaprio.com

Weve had close to 2 metres of snowfall in the last week. The snow was so deep that lifts were stopped, the local train was stopped at Chamonix’s train station and not going onwards to Le Tour. Some roads were shut past our luxury chalet and avalanche warnings released.

Compare this to a few winter seasons past, with the incredibly mild Feb conditions, grass appearing on the ski slopes, and admonitions that climate change could mean the end of snowboarding in Europe. Indeed the OECDs study from winter 2006 predicted that climate change would make ski holidays far too expensive for a lot of snowboarders, with a third of ski towns closing and the melting of alpine glaciers. Glaciologists say that it is nearly impossible to attribute these seasonal differences in the weather patterns to the consequences of global warming.

We might be experiencing the longest downturn in nearly 25 yrs, and the Sterling has plummeted to record levels against the Euro, however the skiing is grand, and the recent bookings show that skiers are keen to enjoy the great snow conditions. It is undoubtedly the best in six seasons, and many skiers are saying that it’s the best ski snowboarding conditions in 10 seasons.

All the same remember that this amount of snow means raised avalanches risks.

NCAA Basketball Betting

Umpteen bettors will likely have encountered the caption “offshore sports betting” recently, though aren’t entirely in the know what it expresses. An overseas gambling web site inherently operates out of the territory of any particular country on the other hand it could also be a networked gambling web site which situates their central servers within the boundaries of a land in which internet sports gaming isn’t currently illegal. In short then, it can be represented as a sports gambling business operating outside the area of the player. Computer accessible gaming webpages are modulated via 3 federations. These are named the OSGA (the Offshore Gaming Association), IGC (Interactive Gaming Council) and the Fidelity Trust Gaming Association (the FTGA).

The Offshore Gaming Association is a self ruling watchdog bureau which regulates the overseas sports gaming business with a mission to also supply the public the ability to easily track down honorable internet companies to play games of chance with. It strives to maintain the rights of gamblers, and also they do not impose any particaption dues. The Offshore Gaming Association is a well-qualified and non-biased third party company who reveal non-biased info, established on your comments, unbiased examination, phone discussions, tips also offers inside intelligence.

The Interactive Gaming Council is a non-profit-making organisation. The administration was created to provide an arena for interested parties to discuss problems not to mention to encourage progress in the field of relevant worries in the worldwide interactive gaming industry, to ensure reasonable and effective industry precepts and methods that endeavor to heighten consumer certainty in interactive betting products and services, and in addition to aid as the trade’s extensive practise spokesperson and the council also works as an info hub.

The IGC has made a reputation for safety, equity and in addition credibility because of the principles it demonstrates, and in addition its appeal to trustworthy businesses. The Interactive Gaming Council influences overseas sports gaming by championing a particular 10 step code of conduct and also charges betting business concerns a price to show their logo. Discontented clients can, should they desire, report any of their disagreements to the IGC.

The Fidelity Trust Gaming Association was founded in order to create a benchmark to raise the policies of on-line sports gambling internet sites. The IGC think that conducting business exclusively with respectable enterprises, they are able to develop an alliance of the most ethical and professional overseas betting operations world-wide.

So, in summary there are agencies which work to control the behavior of computer accessible sports betting and which should aid to take the edge off a few of the insecurities felt by detractors. On-line betting internet sites are entirely trustworthy, beacuse individual data shouldn’t be submitted and the payouts and the odds are generally equivalent to common Vegas-style sportsbet. These sites wipe out traveling, but nevertheless retain the ethos of a Vegas-style gaming internet site, only today you are able to game in your home.