There were times when the development of websites took a developer weeks time to work on one project. Lengthy codes and use of different programming languages was required to be done in the earlier websites. So, it was never very easy for the person. But, with the growth of the demand of the websites from all quarters it became imperative that the development time of the website got reduced substantially lower. To meet this end, there was ever continuing work on the evolution of the programming languages which were more quick to work on and enabled the developer to make websites fast to meet the increased demand. There were two more factors which further fuelled the creation of the new programming languages. One of these was the requirement of the website development to be SEO-friendly and the other was to enable the vast amount of databases which were generated. PHP, MySql, HTML and others thus assumed increased important and so did the Joomla development as well.

Joomla, being based on the PHP, is actually a content management system. It has many inbuilt modules as well as third party add-ons and extensions which can be used by a Joomla development expert to design the website in days. It is possible to provide much distinct functionality to the joomla based website without having to write the lenghty codes for the same. Most of the functions can be found in-built as modules which you simply need to pick and place at the desired place on the site. At the same time, you manage the databases of different types in the way you want. Joomla design website provides a lot of control in the hands of the user or the administrator. The administrator is able to edit, add, delete any data from anywhere in the website. So, if you have to put up new content or new product images for the fresh arrivals or have to amend the prices of the products due to the off-season discounts, the administrator can very well do it without any trouble. There is a lot more which can be done as well.

Using Joomla design, you can create the websites from the most simple to the most complex ones. The creation of ecommerce sites or the sites which require a lot of data to be managed automatically, like those of the shopping malls, can be done easily using this platform of web development. There are inbuilt shipping modules, the invoicing modules and even the payment gateway integrating features that are easy to use and implement on the website. Another major benefit is that of the SEO friendly nature of Joomla design. There is a lot of support that can be taken from the joomla community as well. If you do not find anything inbuilt in Joomla, you have a good chance of finding it from the third parties or the community.

What is all that you would look for in a web design company, if you have to take its services? There are quite a good number of them providing their services and selecting one among them could be a real tough ask. But, with these quick tips, you can decide on which of these companies is suited for you.

1. Is the website of the web design provider itself effective? This is the first clue to determine whether the web design Sydney provider is capable of providing the right service or not. Is the website of the company itself effective enough to make you seek its services? Does it invite you to click through its pages, explore it and then make you buy its own services?

2. Check the portfolio: You can also check whether the company has provided the portfolio of its services or designs on the website. While looking at the portfolio it is important to note two things:

a) Quality of work: The quality of the work of the web design company can be noted in the sample projects completed.

b) Number of projects: The more the number of projects handled by the company, the more is the experience. But, it is important that the ‘quality’ parameter shall be ranked higher than the quantity of work done. So, it is not only the number of projects handled but also the quality which shall be guiding you to arrive at a decision.

3. Testimonials of the clients: Check out what the clients have to say about the company. It is expected that most of the companies would be publishing only the positive points about themselves. They might not be telling the negative ones. Some companies might be featuring the video testimonials from the customers as well.

4. Team: What is the type of the team which the company is having? Check for their background, expertise and the experience. This can also provide valuable information about the specialization of the company.

5. Technologies being used: you can also make a check on whether the technologies being used by the company are futuristic in nature or not. If the site is made in a technology which is going to be obsolete, it will require further up gradation.

These are some of the elements of the site which can be used for judging the web design company. The one of foremost importance is the portfolio on display. This single factor can help you take a decision on the selection of the web design Sydney Company.
Then, there are some of the off-site factors which can also be used for choosing the right company. The best way is to benchmark the different companies on the basis of different criteria. These criteria could be affordability, credibility, quality of work, turnaround time, technologies used and likewise. Even the abovementioned factors can also be used as the benchmarking criteria along with these ones.

A professional web designer cannot afford to remain confined only to his work of creating an appealing and eye-catchy site. There is a lot more that has to be done by him, chiefly to make the site SEO-friendly. SEO is in demand these days and every person wants to get the SEO of his site done to get more visibility, develop more popularity and generate more business through the search engine route. A professional website designer can no longer afford to remain oblivious to these of the people.

While making a site which is SEO-friendly, one of the things that the web designer has to take care of is the fast loading speed of the website. This can happen for a number of different reasons. Some of these things which shall be done or not done are the following:

1. Restrict the use of the images: Designers love to use the images to make appealing websites. Images do cast a lot of impact on the people. But, image files are heavy and the excessive use of the same can lead to the creation of the heavy pages which are difficult to load. So, the web designer Sydney shall minimize the use of the images on a web page. If some icons have to be used as images, these can be replaced with the tabular content instead of images, for the sake of improving the loading time of the site.

2. Do not put the bulky images on it: Due to the heavy file sizes of the bulky images, these are a strict no-no for the creation of a SEO friendly page. If however, it is necessary to use these images, then thumbnails of these images can be incorporated on the webpage with the option of bigger size image on clicking the thumbnail being given to the people.

3. Using the CSS: The cascading style sheets are better means of achieving fast loading of the website. A web designer Sydney shall make use of CSS which is more practical since it makes efficient use of the web page space and being basically HTML, it loads fast.

4. Say no to the animations using the Flash: Any professional web designer, who wants to make a SEO-friendly site, would never want to use the flash animations on the site, despite being highly eye-catchy, as these are very heavy files.

5. Animated GIFs: Some of the website designers do not use the Flash animation but they make use of the GIF animation files so that the site can be made more attractive. These too increase the loading time of the site and if these are not necessary, then it is better for the website designer to avoid these as well. If these have to be used, then these shall be used sparingly.

6. Coding language: Lengthy coding or scripts written on the web page also make the pages heavy. Therefore, the use of java script is not deemed desirable for creating the SEO-friendly site.

Zen Cart is an open source store management system based on PHP and MySQL. It is freely available to the public for use. It has come out as a branch of the OSCommerce software as a separate project. The main differences between the two pertained to the development and incorporation of additional features like the gifts certificate/voucher modules in it and in the architectural changes in the layout of the module. The architectural changes were, in the earlier times, essentially the template based design modules. But, that has now given way to the CSS based design modules.

A Zen Cart developer can make use of the various features of Zen Cart to develop an ecommerce website for your online sale-purchase transactions. Some of these features include the multiple language support, sales and discounts features, local taxes incorporation, multiple shipping and payment options and others. While it gives an easy way out to the Zen Cart programmer to prevent detailed coding for the functionalities again and again, it does require skillful customization using its modules. The use of Zen Cart and other similar ecommerce carts has facilitated the quick designing process of the websites. You can now have your online store ready in a few days time. The greatest advantage of these software lies in the fact that the owner of the website can himself carry out the changes required like the replacement of the product photos, incorporating the discounts, setting up newsletters and many others. All in all, the administrator can do everything that can be done on the online store.

Yet another advantage of the Zen Cart ecommerce solution is that it facilitates the creation of the SEO friendly site. With internet marketing catching fever and every one clamouring hard to gain the maximum visibility on the most visited internet resources, notably the search engines, it would not pay if the SEO process is ignored by the Zen Cart developer. All the features of a website which make it SEO friendly shall be present in the ecommerce site as well. Some of these features are:

• Easy navigation: The coding of the Zen Cart is based on PHP and MySql and this makes it suitable for SEO since there is no problem of navigation of the pages. The time taken for loading of the site is lesser.

• Static URLs: It is possible to create the static URLs that are SEO friendly by using the Zen Cart third party as well as built in modules and add-ons. There are a number of software available for this. Or, even a seasoned Zen Cart programmer can do the needful in no big time. Therefore, it goes to meet one of the most perceivable criteria for doing the SEO.

• It allows you to have the meta tags for SEO for every page, product or category page. Even the image alt tags can be incorporated.

So, with all these essential SEO friendly features, it becomes important facilitators of marketing as well as sales processes.

People often ask how can website be a brand when there are so many present online? They have a reason. It might become impossible distinguish your website from the others. How can you prevent your website from being lost into the jungle of websites out there on the World Wide Web? Does website design have a solution for this?
Interesting as it may seem, it is the web design only which has a solution for this. That your site is lost into a number of others is because the website design has not been done effectively in a professional way. The problem and its solution lie in the design itself. It is precisely the design which can create the elements of distinction so that the website leaves a lasting impression on the people’s mind. It is just the same as the product branding which bases itself on the product differentiation. Therefore, this is a key part of the overall strategy for building the online business. Unless the visitors see your business as separate from the others, there is less likelihood of your success, especially when there are many others providing the same.

Some of the activities that can be done for achieving these branding objectives are the following:

1. Study the competitor’s web design: Why not to make a beginning with the competitor who has been doing well online? Check out the different elements which he uses to make effective website design. You can benchmark your site with the one of the competitor element to element.

2. Write content as per the brand image of the company: If you are making the site for a company which has got a very good reputation offline and has a brand name for itself, you can not ignore the quality of the written content. The writing style of the content shall be in accordance with the brand image that has been developed by the company.

3. Pay attention to Prominence and placement of the different website design elements: Do you think that the company philosophy and its brand image warrant a prominent display of its logo over the others? Or, is it the products or the services which are to be highlighted more? If the company comes out with certain offers, do these need to be displayed prominently? These are the examples of some of the features of the web design which shall be looked into by the company. Relative importance of each of the element over the others needs to be clearly established.

4. Do not ignore the other pages: Do not put all the money on the landing or the Home page only. It is equally important to have the other pages designed well. Overloading of the home page with content, images or graphics shall be avoided. Space has its own relevance and it shall be given the place that it deserves on the web page. A confused look shall not come out of the website design.

Landing page is the web page where the users ‘land’ after clicking the domain name URL of the website. In most of the cases, it is the home page of the website which is made the landing page but it is not necessary to do so. The other pages can also be made the landing pages of the website. If the SEO activity has been promoting the pages other than the home page, then there are good chances that the visitors might land at some of the non-home pages. The landing web page design shall have the capability to make the visitor to stop, have look around the page, visit the other pages of the site and finally, make a purchase.

So, there are three key objectives which a landing web page design shall achieve. Let us examine what are these objectives and how to achieve these. First, it shall be able to stop the internet surfer from further surfing or hopping over to the next website. It is estimated that the searchers take split second decisions on whether to stay on with the page that they have opened or move ahead. Therefore, the web page design where the visitors would be coming shall be designed in such a way that the visitors are compelled to stay on. The second objective is to make the visitors to explore other pages of the site. To make this happen, there shall be links to all the relevant parts of the site which the visitor would logically think to visit. The third crucial objective is to lead the visitors to make a purchase. This is the most difficult part to achieve and the effective website design can help to a great extent.

Based on these objectives to achieve, the landing web page design shall focus on the following:

1. What the visitors hope to find shall be displayed prominently.
2. The page shall enable faster navigation to all the other parts of the site
3. The text and the pictures shall be placed in a good structural arrangement on the landing web page.
4. All information in which the visitors are least interested shall be pushed down on the page.
5. The content shall be concise, comprehensive and written in an interesting way.
6. Make the banner graphics attractive, capable of stopping the visitors.
7. Do not get the webpage to have confused look. You shall avoid making the website design too colourful or filling every inch of its space with the content or graphics.
8. Incorporate the credibility enhancing features. These can be achieved by mentioning about the awards being won, memberships of the associations, trust seals from independent agencies and also the client testimonials in the text format.
9. Avoid putting in too much information on the landing page which will make it heavy and will take considerable time in loading. Clients may not wait till the loading is over.

A well made professional web design reduces the bounce rate and increases the conversion rate to make more customers.

The evolution of ‘internet’ happened nearly 40 years ago when US military funded a research network system by the name of Apranet in1969. Since then it is being called by the name of ‘Internet’ because its network reach expanded to each and every corner of the world. The purpose of such networking system was not limited to just a military programme with a handful of computers connected but it reached every nook and corner of the globe and expanding to more than 1.5 billion consumers worldwide. It has been this widespread reach that helped almost each and every small, medium or big enterprise to promote and sell their products and services, growing by connecting with the customer. So, website design which involves the structure of the website, the information, navigation channels, page layouts and the elements of the design. The conceptual design with branding came into being with a clear strategy to promote and achieve the defined goals and this acts as a powerful marketing tool.

The purpose of web design is to make a website using elements such as text, bitmap images of different formats like GIFs, JPEGs, PNGs; using HTML/XHTML/XML tags, media (vector graphics, animations, videos,) etc. It also presents the content and interactive features to the end user in form of web pages on a web server. In other words, web design is like graphic designing done for the development of web applications, web pages and multimedia to make the website appealing and interesting for the visitors.

It is entirely upon the client for what he is looking for in a website design. It depends upon his tastes and preferences about the theme of his website. Whether he wants a static site (where pages don’t change unless manually updating) or dynamic one (where pages and their content can change from both end-user and client side). Also whether he wants to design his website by using design templates or hire a professional web designer to do it. In general, the basic aspects of web design are:

• The content or text in the website should be relevant and informative and should target the audience concerned.

• The website should be user-friendly and easy to navigate.

• The graphics and color story should be consistent. The style should look professional and appealing.

• The communication media like videos and animations should have a small file size so that they can be downloaded fast even at low bandwidth.

• The page layout should be done keeping in mind what you want to your audience to see first and how the navigation follows. It shall flow logically and shall reach the deepest links with the least number of clicks from any page of the site.

Website design is more affordable and economical now-a-days. It depends entirely on your budget and requirement whether you want a static one or a dynamic one, whether you want an e-commerce website or an informative one, you want to make your website using cascading style sheets or you want your website to be custom made using templates.

In recent days, I was one of the unfortunate persons to receive the “Mydoom” worm emails. Not just one, but at least forty appeared in my popserver mailbox. As frustrating as it was deleting all of these nasty little boogers, I realized that some of these “worm” emails even came from persons I knew – or so I thought I knew.

The problem with the “Mydoom” email worm is that it specifically targets email addresses with the following extensions:

* .htm
* .sht
* .php
* .asp
* .dbx
* .tbb
* .adb
* .pl
* .wab
* .txt

Furthermore, it sends “get” requests to target domains and uses direct connections to port 80. It will also attempt to send email messages using its own SMTP engine. The worm is successful by using a mail server that a recipient uses or local server as well. Some strings to these target domain names are:

* gate.
* ns.
* relay.
* mail1.
* mxs.
* smtp.
* mail.
* mx.

The “Mydoom” worm will have subject headings such as:

* “Returned Mail”
* “Delivery Error”
* “Status”
* “Server Report”
* “Mail Transaction Failed”
* “Mail Delivery System”
* “Hello/hello”
* “Hi/hi”

What persons need to realize is that even if you “know” the sender, you must make absolutely sure that any attachments are specifically clarified from the sender before you attempt to open these suspect emails. Most worms and viruses are spread directly through attachments. Unless you are expecting an attachment from a person you know, be cautious. Do NOT open attachments unless you are absolutely positive that your known correspondent has actually sent it to you. Another thing to remember is that the “Mydoom” worm ranges from 6,144 bytes to 29,184 bytes in size and can affect Windows 2000, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT, Windows Server 2003, and Windows XP. Luckily, if you have DOS, Linux, Macintosh, OS/2 or UNIX, your systems will not be affected by the MyDoom worm.

For those of you who share files through Kazaa, there is a new worm with aliases such as Worm.P2P.Apsiv (Kaspersky) and W32/Apsiv.worm!p2p (McAfee) and seemingly affects Windows systems 2000, 95, 98, Me, NT, Server 2003 and Windows XP. The damage profile has not yet been assessed, but it would be a good idea to steer clear of this one as well.

“Keylogger.Stawin” is probably one of the nastiest viruses as it attempts to steal a user’s online banking information. A Trojan is distributed through email messages with the subject line, “I still love you,” and has a “message.zip” attachment. Affecting the same vunerable systems as mentioned above, Keylogger records keystrokes and has the ability to steal personal, financial information. A few systems that Keylogger monitors are window titles such as “PayPal,” “Logon,” and numerous other window titles associated with banking logins.

Common Hoaxes

A popular hoax circulating the Internet is an email titled, “FREE M &M’s.” Sorry guys – no M & M’s here. More recently, you may have received the “Life is Beautiful” virus … er, hoax. The “Life is Beautiful” virus is not real and should be ignored. This is only a scare tactic that causes unwarranted fears and concerns.

In closing, the Internet is a massive electronical world filled with infinite bits of information. When using your “key” to this magnificent but vast window of versatile knowledge, it pays to use logic when distinguishing hoaxes from real threats such as viruses and worms. To learn more about current viruses and worms, go to: http://search.symantec.com/custom/us/query.html
For an updated listing of current email hoaxes, go to: http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html