by WebKeyDesign | Sep 13, 2006 | News & Trends
I am not sure about the whole Web 2.0 debate, but something which is very noticeable about the Internet in 2006 is that forum based sites are dying a slow death, and the sites that include a forum as part of their main site are doing even worse. Forums on those sites are being posted to less and less. It seems that much of the forum posting community has gravitated to either posting primarily on their own web blogs or commenting only on blogs. This has created a shift away from forums and for sponsored forums, it has meant a loss of ad revenue. It may be possible that this trend may continue and cause some sites to scale back or disappear completely.
Lack of Discussion
The most obvious turn off to forums is the moderator. Keeping the conversation going between multiple members is quite hard to do. Most moderators are faced with either not moderating at all discussions and letting other members get offended while a couple of members go at it and argue pointlessly about which operating system is the best or whether you support The President or not. Eventually moderators do buckle down and impose some civility and this causes hard core members to feel censored. Once they leave, the forum becomes a ghost forum with only old discussions left. A moderator is pretty much a thankless job.
Not Enough Ad Revenue
As for the webmaster, you have to pay for the forum software which is not exactly cheap or risk going with an open source script that will require more technical maintenance. Then you have to pay for the domain and hosting services; all of this is added cost. Most webmasters depend on some sort of steady revenue from sponsers and forums have a reputation for not performing well in this area, unlike blogs.
Ease of Publishing
The irony is that while forums were once the easy way to publish quickly, they are now being outclassed by blog scripts. Today almost anyone can learn to publish on Blogger or in WordPress, but learning to navigate, search, and setup your profile in most forums takes longer than the five minute WordPress install.
Not Trendy
Then there is the obvious: web blogs have adapted the latest technologies like CSS, XHTML, AJAX, and other Internet buzzwords. Forums are just catching up and unlike small blog scripts, forum scripts are quite complicated and large, making even small changes sometimes requires thorough testing.
Internet Evolution
All of this leaves forums on the brink of unpopularity, forcing forum script developers to rethink their audience anf evolve into something else. Perhaps the web blog is the natural cousin to the forum, and the Internet may still have future uses for the once popular online forum.
by WebKeyDesign | Sep 11, 2006 | Web Site Basics
Many people often ask me about eCommerce and how to setup their own online store, and the first thing I tell them that unlike a personal site, an eCommerce site requires planning and adequate funding. While there is no definitive book that I can point you to and say read this…, there is a variety of online resources that can prove helpful. I believe that the nature of business is that if you truly desire to be successful, then you have to put in the effort. Small business is all about outsmarting your competition and for this reason I think there are not a lot of comprehensive guides on how to put together an online business. Then there is the fact that eCommerce can encompass so many things depending on what your business is.
In my view, there are three components to an online site, the technical, the financial, and the legal details. We will focus mostly on the technical.
The Online Store
Before starting your business, you should already have a solid business plan and have done some planning into what you want your business site to look like. You should have set aside proper funding for launching your online venture. A minimal site, may require around $500, but if your online business is going to be your only source of income, you will definitely need to invest a substantial amount.
- Webhosting: The first thing to consider is how much the webhosting or web server is going to cost. While a part-time home business might make due with a reliable shared-webhosting account, most businesses will want to setup their own web server. Whichever you choose, webhosting or your own server, make sure that it can be reliable and maintained. The last thing you want is for your 24-hour online business to be down for any significant amount of time.
- Shopping Cart: The face of your store and backend is provided by software, usually referred to as a shopping cart. A good shopping cart will provide you with your exact business needs. This can include everything from adding new items to your site, to offering discounts, tracking payments, and helping you ship items. The shopping cart will need to be maintained and because it is the heart of your online business, it is the most important choice you make when starting out. There are many shopping cart scripts. You will want to evaluate multiple carts and pick the one that can grow with your business and which is compatible with your webhosting. Some popular carts are: OSCommerce, ZenCart, X-Cart, CS-Cart, 3DCart, ShopSite, and ASPDotNetStorefront.
- SSL Certificate: In order to process transactions securely your business will need a Secure Socket Layer certificate installed on the web server. This is what encryts communications between the web browser and web server. SSL certs are traditionally expensive and can cost around $100 or more per year, but they are a necessity if you want customers to feel safe while conducting business on your site.
- Payment Gateway: Your shopping cart will integrate with multiple payment gateways and allow you to take credit card information. However, you will need to sign-up with these gateways or acquire a merchant account from your bank or third party processor. Although this is more of a business decision than a technical one, because the fees vary widely you will need to shop around for the best rates. Most eCommerce sites can take a variety of payment options and so you will want to offer your customers at least a couple of choices of payment. The most popular are credit card processing and PayPal.
Accounting & Marketing
No business can survive very long without solid business decisions. These decisions need to based an accurate information. Keeping track of how much your business is spending and how much it is taking in is important. For this task, most business rely on their accounting package. This usually means Quickbooks Pro or some equally professional accounting software. Something to keep in mind is how well your shopping cart software can integrate with your accounting software.
For new online businesses, marketing is going to be very important. Your domain name for your site should reflect what you sell and should be easy for your clients to remember. The next step is to bring potential clients to your site. This can mean having a search engine friendly site, an AdWords campaign, or traditional print advertising. Don’t forget word-of-mouth advertising either! The simple business card is still one of the best forms of marketing around.
Privacy And Trust
Today privacy is still the most debated argument of an online world. Successful businesses are trustworthy businesses. Your eCommerce site should put consumers at ease by having clear and published policies. The common privacy policy and terms of use pages need to be quickly accessible and easy to comprehend. Since eCommerce deals with goods and services, consumers also need to know about return policies, shipping methods, and other customer service assistance provided. Make sure that your customers have all this readily available to them. For some policies you should consult a lawyer, who can verify that you are following all the necessary rules of whatever type of commerce you are doing. Legal consultation beforehand is always cheaper then later.
Additional Resources
The internet offers plenty of information, but most of it is pretty generic and not localized to your state or county. It is best to always consult with professionals in your local area who can advise you on the business issues that you need help with, and use the Internet for general assistance. WebmasterWorld is an excellent source of general information like in this eCommerce 101 post.
by WebKeyDesign | Sep 6, 2006 | Webmastering
If you are thinking of starting up an eCommerce site or simply want to secure part of your website, then you probably are shopping around for an affordable SSL certificate. A few years ago there was no such thing as an affordable SSL cert. Every certificate would cost hundreds of dollars and the ones that did not were not officially recognized by the major browsers. Today, you have better options unless your eCommerce business is significant, in that case, you are still better off using a more expensive certificate. For the rest of us who can’t afford a 100% recognized certificate, there are options. The following sites all offer certs at reasonable prices. Our site, WebKeyDesign uses a RapidSSL certificate.
- EV1Servers offers affordable RapidSSL certs and higher end QuickSSL certificates. EV1Servers is a major reseller of certificates, so that is why their prices are lower than other resellers and the certificate authority.
- GoDaddy.com sell their own branded Turbo SSL and High Assurance certs. These certificates offer 256-bit encryption which is twice the encryption of most SSL certs.
- Registerfly.com is another SSL reseller. They include custom Registerfly SSL logos with their certs.
You should be able to purchase an affordable SSL cert for around $20 from any of these sites. Although most older browsers will not officially recognize this type of certificate.
Before purchasing the certificate, you should decide before hand what url the certificate should be installed to. Most webmasters select a subdomain, like http://secure.yoursite.com, but you can use your regular site url (http://www.yoursite.com). For Windows servers, double-check before hand that the certificate you are purchasing works on Windows and your particular webserver software. Most of these certs should work on your standard cPanel based server (Apache + UNIX based OS like Linux).
by WebKeyDesign | Aug 28, 2006 | Firefox
One of my daily annoyances is having to OK pass Firefox’s Mismatched Domain Warning box. This comes up any time I connect via SSL (otherwise known as https://) to any of my hosted sites. This warning comes up because the certificate being used to provide the SSL encryption is a wildcard certificate for the actual server and not the domain I am connecting to. There is no effective way in Firefox to turn this feature off, unless you install Andrew Lucking’s Remember Mismatched Domains extension.
With RMD installed, you will get an option that states Don’t warn me again about this certificate for this domain. Checking the option box, will make the warning dialog go away the next time you visit the same url.
It may not seem like much, but after a while all those extra OK clicks add up and so I consider Remember Mismatched Domains a real time saver.
by WebKeyDesign | Aug 17, 2006 | cPanel
One of the perks of having your own domain name is that you can setup your own email addresses for your domain. While cPanel makes it easy to manage email accounts and have access to webmail applications like Horde, it does not automatically give you a nice simple url for accessing your preferred webmail application. However, with a few extra steps you can fix this.
Step 1: Your WebMail URL
First find out what the login url is to your preferred webmail application. cPanel’s default mail path is http://www.yourdomain.com/webmail. Your web host probably provided you with the default mail url. Once you login, cPanel gives you a variety of options, usually Horde is one of your webmail options. For example the direct url for Horde is usually something like:
https://www.domain.com:2096/horde/login.php
Once you determined the webmail url you need to login into cPanel and setup a subdomain.
Step 2: Add The Subdomain
In cPanel find the Subdomains icon and select it. If you do not see a Subdomains option, then your web host does not offer this feature for your account. You may need to have the web host complete this procedure for you or upgrade your account.
In Subdomains, you will want to Add, a webmail subdomain, so that your subdomain will be webmail.domain.com. Do not add the subdomain as mail as this is most likely already being used by your web host for other reasons.
Step 3: Setup Redirection
The last step is to choose Setup Redirection for the subdomain you just added. You want to redirect the subdomain you just added to the direct url for your webmail. For example:
webmail.domain.com should redirect to https://www.domain.com:2096/horde/login.php
Note that it is best to take advantage of SSL and redirect to the https url instead of the regular http url. This provides an encrypted connection. Although most browsers will display a security warning stating that the SSL certificate does not match the domain name, the connection is still encrypted and therefore secure.
