How To Write More Powerful Online Text

Although there are significant differences among the various types of online communication, there all have one critical thing in common - they're read off a screen. There are substantial benefits, too, in that while your message is on someone's screen usually it has their undivided attention. You are genuinely "one-to-one" with them and that's something you must respect - you are literally "in their face" and encroaching on very personal territory. The bad news about online communications is that your message can be "disappeared" faster from a screen than with any other medium.

There are a few more stark facts about online communications that significantly influence how your message is received. One, according to the world-acclaimed web expert Dr Jakob Nielsen, is that 79% of online readers don't read - they scan. That's a little like the way people browse through brochures. What it means is that your message must be delivered in a way that allows key points - and benefits, of course - to be picked up at the same speed as readers scroll and scan.

Secondly, Dr Nielsen has also calculated that when people read from a screen they do so at a rate 25% slower than they read print on a paper page. That's because, despite high-resolution screens and all the other technological wizardry, on-screen text is harder to read. For this reason your messages have to be very much more concise than they do for printed media - some experts say screen text should be just half the length of its paper equivalent. In my view, therefore, there are two very important things you have to remember if you're going to get the best out of online text.

Firstly, go with the flow of the physical restrictions and write so you minimize their effect. Also, create your text so it works well for scanners (human scanners that is) by highlighting key points in bold - not italics or underline because people think those are links. That way people get the gist of your message while scrolling, although of course they will stop and read more carefully when an emboldened section really does catch their eye.

Secondly, bear in mind that even in its short little life the internet has already started to put its early folklore on a nostalgic pedestal and this plays a key role in determining what works online now. Having begun its days as an electronic kaffée klatch for individual tekkies the net has developed a very personal informality and straight-talking ethos that, miraculously, is being preserved and perpetuated with considerable success. And that's all the more astounding when you consider the vast commercialism that's replaced the early net's endearing woolly-sweater-and-sandals innocence, naïvety and honesty.

Never mind, though. There are other good reasons why brief, straight, plain - even blunt - speaking is a sensible style to maximize the success of your online text. Obviously it helps overcome the physical restrictions (see above) and also works well in such a personal, one-to-one medium that is, literally, in your face.

Today you only have to think how emotional people get over the issue of receiving "spam," to understand just how firmly the PC or PDA or other forms of electronic screens have established themselves as part of their users' personal space. "You don't just use a computer," my late mother used to shout when she came by my office to see if I was still breathing, "you wear it."

Well, although I don't exactly read it a story and kiss it goodnight I'm bound to feel pretty close to my computer (and the messages it displays) especially as I often spend more hours a day with it than I do with my family. The moral? When you're writing online text, in fact online anything, respect the close relationship people have with their screens. Knock before entering, then be the perfect guest. Be direct, don't waste their time, but remember to say please and thank you. Then leave before you've worn out your welcome. That's the way to ensure not only that you make a good impression, but also that you'll get invited back.

E-mails

The one huge problem nobody seems to have solved yet, as I see it, is how to handle the vast amount of e-mails that most of us receive every day. Even I, as a humble one-person-band little business employing no-one other than myself and my two rescued dogs who spend most of the day asleep under the desks in my office, receive between 50 and 100 e-mails per weekday. Some clients of mine receive double that. No doubt busy business people I don't know receive even more. How do you prioritize those? How do you decide which ones to read now, which ones to read later, and which ones not to read but to dump?

Ah, ah, I hear you say, what's that got to do with writing? Let me tell you. If you're writing a personal e-mail to a friend there's no problem, particularly as you're more likely to send it to their personal e-mail address than their business addy. But what about business e-mails that you want the recipient to take notice of? How do you make the best of the medium when your e-mail is likely to be surrounded by at least 49 others all shouting for the same person's attention?

In the earlier days of the internet, if you were smart and could write a snappy short phrase you could attract attention in the subject line, perhaps including the words "relax, this is not spam." Now though, the spammers have cottoned on to that one and if you see a subject line in your e-mailbox saying "not spam" it almost certainly is - to the extent that this is the first thing looked for by most of the spam filters you can get.

Spam filters will also choke out all the obvious spammy words like "free" and "opportunity" and "give away." And you can't be believed if you write something really homely and innocent sounding like "message from your cousin Marianne" because that's what all the porno spammers do. So what's the answer?

Or, so what's the problem? If the recipient of your e-mail is likely to know you and knows that what you have to say is usually interesting, they'll open it and probably sooner rather than later. It's when they think your message is not likely to be of use, relevance or interest to them; that's when you're relegated to the delete tab.

So what's the most efficient way of ensuring people open your e-mails? You have to be interesting. That's what's in it for them, and their previous experience of your being interesting provides them with the incentive to read your new e-mail.

It's also a good idea to confirm the fact that you're interesting by getting over "what's in it for you" in the first few lines of the text. If you don't readers are often tempted to move on without going further, especially if they have 27 other e-mails to read. However here we risk straying into pure online marketing areas and once again, there is an impressive selection of reading matter available that goes into chapter and verse about that. But I do want to emphasize this point about being interesting.

Whereas the e-mail marketers might be agonising over how to write subject lines that get through the filters and get people to open the e-mail, a fair few of them may be missing the point that it's not the subject line that matters so much as the name of the sender. If the recipient doesn't know the sender it doesn't matter how cuddly the subject line is, they won't open the e-mail for fear of being sold some ugly garden furniture or pornography or even a virus. If they do know the sender but also know that he/she/they never have anything interesting to offer, they won't open that e-mail either.

Do I hear the ringing of bells in terms of the quality of message? In online communication probably more than any other kind we have a tendency to forget that all the electronic gizmos are just enabling devices, and that at the end of the day the only thing that really matters is the message, not the means of delivering it. If the recipients of your e-mails know that you usually communicate interesting messages with something worthwhile in it for them, they'll open yours even if the subject line is "more boring BS from Bobby."

Text messages

As we progress further down the route of wireless, mobile communications, happily the boffins are busy finding ways to increase the screen sizes so we can use slightly less strangled abbreviations on the screens. But text-based comms for marketing are probably the most miniaturized challenge for copywriters since the old subliminal advertising scandals of the 1950s and 1960s. (They had to keep the messages short and powerful then too.)

If you're tempted to use texting for marketing purposes, do please consult a professional, and a professional copywriter, not a professional telecommunications guru. Despite only working in half words and soundalikes, text ads are difficult to get right, because of the fact that there is so little to play with and so little room for manoeuvre.

Websites

This is the Big One. This is the topic that has given birth to more experts than there are websites, and that runs into the muchomillons. Everyone you meet has their very own views on what makes the perfect site and that varies from the all-singing, all-dancing variety that looks great on a fearfully expensive turbo-charged computer but takes ages to load into most people's cooking PCs ... to the belts-and-braces merchant who believes a website should load faster than he can sneeze and has to give him all the info he needs within the first three bullet points. Are they all wrong, or are they all right?

At the risk of sounding boring and repetitive, once again the answer lies in researching your audience. The bad news, though, is that very often websites have to do not one but several jobs to do for not one but several audiences. Unlike offline print media whose audiences tend to be easier to define, many websites are expected to work as advertizements, brochures, catalogues, shops, customer service centres and technical support bureaux all rolled into one.

This does not make life any easier for those of us who work at creating and writing websites. And although we all have our pet theories there is no single, simple answer to the question "how do you make a website that works as powerfully for audience Z as it does for audience A?"

Probably the most sensible way to define and manage the variants of your site's audience is to split it into two broad groups - new visitors and re-visitors - and ensure that home/landing pages give a clear, simple direction for either group to follow. In the early stages of a website that's probably as much as you can do, but there are ways in which online audiences can be researched and website traffic tracked which will give you clear indications of how to develop the site in the future. However that's something you should discuss with specialist internet and e-commerce experts - it's not a writing issue.

It helps to compare your website with an offline business or other organization, even down to size and proportion - from small boutique to huge department store. At the small end it's obviously much easier to map a site using common sense. At the large end common sense works too, if you take the analogy to the limit. When planning a commercial or otherwise interactive website think of an offline equivalent that works well for its customers or users, and translate its key good points for online use. The sort of offline equivalents you might use for the analogy are:

¨Shopping mall or department store

¨Large public library or government department

¨Bank, insurance bureau, travel agency, real estate agency

¨Bookshop, giftshop, etc

If your website is not a trading site as such but is to act more as an online showcase, then think your way through your organization's most successful capabilities overview presentation. If the approach and content work face-to-face, they're likely to work on a website too.

Of course you can't control the order of presentation on the site in as disciplined a way as you can live. But if you invite site visitors to look at your credentials in a logical and appealing (to them) order, there's a good chance many of them will follow your suggestions and not necessarily jump about in non-linear grasshopper fashion. That's especially true if your content holds their attention equally well at each stage of the progression - there's nothing like sudden boredom to make grasshoppers take a huge sideways leap.

Many internet purists are going to shout abuse at me for comparing websites with offline media, saying that online comms are completely different. But please hush for a moment, folks, while I explain further. I do not advocate trying to squash and squeeze offline material into online manifestations like podgy feet being squelched into shoes 3 sizes too small.

What I advocate is to use the logic from an offline application if you know it works well with people, because the people who look at your organization's website are people - and what's more, it's likely they're from the same or similar audiences as those of your offline comms.

If you know that the thought process behind your offline business communication works very well, why on earth should you consider rethinking your whole strategy and taking a completely different approach for the website? Remember that old line, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it?" In the same way, if a strategy works and you can't foresee any reason why it should stop working in the near future then don't change it. People are people wherever and however they receive your message.

Obviously the way you implement the logic, and what you hang off it in terms of text and other written material, yes, all that will be different online. Websites involve many considerations which do not enter into the offline picture - for example, writing text with one eye on Search Engine Optimization, which is a specialized discipline in itself.

Another very important consideration is for the writer to work very closely with the technical developers and maintainers of a website, because what and how you write is very closely linked with the way the site is structured and how visitors use it. All in all, if you're undertaking anything other than a fairly simple and uncomplicated website it's safer and more effective to use professional specialists all round, writers included.

But do not let anyone try to persuade you that creating a website requires you to undergo a brain transplant. By all means show respect for the technical expertise required to make a good website work well, but equally be aware that at the end of the day all that really matters is how well your website helps you communicate with your audience, not how to calculate the square root of its exponential gigafactor.

Okay, so now we've got the logic right, what do we say? Let's look at some key issues connected specifically with websites.

Obviously you need to create a skeleton structure first of all, and usually that needs to be done in close cahoots with the web designer. The primary objective when putting together the skeleton structure is to make the site work as well as possible for visitors and not, as some designers would have you believe, how many fancy animations and galloping gargoyles can be incorporated and to hell with how long they take to load on old systems using dialup access.

Please don't forget that some people - your customers, perhaps - are still using dial-up access and not only can that be expensive (in the UK at least) but also it's slow and often dependent on the foibles and vagaries of ordinary telephone lines. Assuming that many countries will continue to depend on dialup access for some years to come, slow-loading websites are not going to be very successful in markets outside of the mainstream industrialized nations.

That's one of the reasons why I believe simple, uncluttered websites work far better. Another of those reasons is because I think they're stronger and more effective anyway!

As for the text itself, shorter is sweeter. I normally set about both my offline and online work with hedge clippers several times before I submit it to clients and/or for publication, and when I wrote the text for my own website I took an axe to it over and over again before I was happy. As I've said earlier, it's as hard if not harder to write concisely than it is to waffle on, so writing text for websites is no picnic.

One useful tip, though, is to write down your thoughts in as much detail as you want, and then ask yourself "okay, now what is it that I'm really trying to say?" Often you'll find that you come up with a vastly simplified, shortened version of all those words and you can express your thoughts in a fraction of the space.

A good example of this happened years ago when I co-wrote a book about jewellery with Antwerp-based gemmologist Norbert Streep and we agonized for weeks over a suitable title. At the end of our fourth or fifth brainstorming session I said to Norbert, "how have we been referring to it all this time?"

"As the Jewellery Book," replied Norbert.

"Then that's our title," I said, and it was, too. The publishers loved it.

As with all online text, short, straight, simple and to the point is preferable for any form of website text, even if there is pressure from elsewhere to write it in the "corporate voice." If you do get pressurized it's worth reminding the pressurizer that no matter how big and important the corporation is, its website gets stuck straight into the faces of visitors via their screens and with that level of physical intimacy we really do have to speak to them as one human being to another.

Business website-speak should be as natural and informal as the way you would speak to someone across a table in a meeting - not as informal as chit-chat over a beer at the golf club, but certainly not as pompous and stuffy as the Chairman's Statement in the Annual Report and Accounts. And now if the pressurizer asks "why" you can say, because that's how the culture of the internet has developed since the 1980s and if we go against the grain, we are unlikely to maximize our online business opportunities. (That one works especially well with Financial VPs/Directors - remember to squint meaningfully at them while saying the words.)

One thing I must point out here is that although your website should be written in a way that's crisp, short and to the point, this does not mean that you should keep the range and variety of information to a minimum. On the contrary; one of the beauties of a website is that it can offer a great deal of information to visitors who want to read it all, but unlike with a brochure, if site visitors don't want the lengthy detail it stays tucked tidily out of sight and out of their way.

In people's understandable efforts to keep websites short and sweet they sometimes avoid including background information, archived material, back issues, related articles, etc. Yet some visitors are likely to find that stuff quite useful. And apart from the relatively small cost consideration of website size, there's no need to exclude such material - all you have to do is make sure it's sectioned off in an appropriate part of the site.

Anyway, a great many excellent books and other publications on how to create a good website exist at the time I'm writing this. In the main their advice will be excellent, but do please remember to see the wood from the trees. In the gushing welter of information you'll find about the subject you, in your role as writer, must keep your eyes focused on your audience, "what's in it for them," and how to communicate "what's in it for them" via the most direct and effective route.

Canadian-born Suzan St Maur is an international business writer and author based in the United Kingdom. In addition to her consultancy work for clients in Europe, the USA, Canada and Australia, she contributes articles to more than 150 business websites and publications worldwide, and has written eleven published books. Her latest eBooks, "The MAMBA Way To Make Your Words Sell" and "Get Yourself Published" and available as PDF downloads from BookShaker.com.

To subscribe to her free biweekly business writing tips eZine, TIPZ from SUZE, click here.

By Suzan St Maur

What is Blogger.com?

In the late 1990's three San Francisco based web developers came up with the idea of being able to share information about anything on the web. The terminology they used was called blog. It's use was considered a mix of web page / personal journal. It's original usages were vast and wide, but more and more people came to use them as a personal tool that is available anywhere the Internet is. The three friends would eventually create Blogger.com one of the largest blogger sites on the Internet today. Blogger, which stands for Web Logger, has increased in popularity over the past three years. There has been so much interest in what capabilities it holds Google.com purchased them. Eventually, Google assimilated their technologies and imported them into the popular plug-in, The Google Toolbar.

Blogger.com allows a user to create a userid. Depending on the userid and password the user creates a specialized link namely "yourlinkname.blogspot.com". This space can be saved as a bookmark and published to the public or through a distribution list to a select few people. Your site is logged as a "webring" type of atmosphere, should you decide to take the information public. You can see all users who have published blogs and even enter in information on the blogs should they let you. Discussion groups and personal files are housed all within this environment making it a fun place to surf about and learn about different people and things.

You can create a private discussion group and send out information via email to let people know when content or a thread has changed. Blog is like a portal for individuals, instead of business. There are many robust features involved to keep your blog private should you not want to share information publicly. Its interface even includes a word processing editor so you can format the background and font all from one simple location. The ideas are simple; you can share information around the world without having to let everyone on the Internet community know your blog exists.

The necessity for a personal online portal or "blog" has considerable potential, as the Internet continues to evolve.

By Jakob Jelling

What Hosting Companies Dont Tell You, Could Hurt You?

Did you know that hosting companies overcrowd their servers despite all the issues caused by servers running hundreds of accounts? Are you aware of what happens if your website is hosted on a server that's overcrowded? You're probably thinking to yourself, "what do you mean overcrowd their servers?" Overcrowded servers mean big money for your hosting company, but also big problems for your website.

Hosting companies are willing to sacrifice the success of your website in order to build their own profit. The more accounts hosted on a server, the more revenue they can generate. Greed takes priority to a hosting company. Sure the plans they offer sound good, but do you really know what's going on behind the scenes? After they take your hard-earned money, what happens next? Unless you're a system administrator or network engineer, you probably have no idea how your website functions on an overcrowded server.

If you've reviewed or researched hosting companies you will notice they all look the same. They offer similar packages, claim they provide support, and appear to have a network worthy of the highest caliber websites. But what they don't tell you is the type of disk space or bandwidth your website will be using. They don't mention possible security risks. And they especially don't mention how many accounts they create per server.

Avoiding the problems associated with overcrowded servers is extremely easy?


By Dave Young

Functions and Subroutines in ASP

Functions and Subroutines in ASP

If you read our Tutorial on Include Files (SSI) then you learned how to encapsulate ASP code within include files and the benefits it brings us.

As developers, we should endeavour to make our lives easier wherever possible... no one wants to re-invent the wheel after all.

Functions and Subroutines exist to not only save us time, but to bring power to our ASP.

They are just another way of encapsulating code, but have a lot more functionality than just 'saving some code for later'.

First, let's look at Functions... Imagine a balloon salesman in the street. We've all seen them they require one piece of information when you buy a balloon, the colour.
Let say we asked for a red balloon... The balloon salesman armed with this 'information' then does a pretty basic action... he hands you the balloon. The balloon you received is a direct result of the information you gave the balloon seller.

Functions are just the same... they return to you a value based on the information you provided. Lets look at an example Function: -

<%
Function getBalloon(strColour)
Dim Tempstr
strColour = lcase(strColour) 'This converts the value lowercase.
Select Case strColour
Case "red" Tempstr = "Here is your red balloon"
Case "yellow" Tempstr = "Here is your yellow balloon"
Case "green" Tempstr = "Here is your green balloon"
Case "blue" Tempstr = "Here is your blue balloon"
Case Else Tempstr = "Sorry, we have sold out of that Colour"
End Select
getBalloon = Tempstr
End Function
%> A Function is passed some information. The information we pass a Function, is known as an 'argument'. The information we get back from a Function is known as the 'return value'. Whilst a Function can have many arguments, it can only have one return value.

Let us look at one more example: -

<%
Function calcTax(amount, taxrate)
Dim Tempvar
Tempvar = amount * (taxrate / 100)
CalcTax = Round(Tempvar, 2) 'round the result to 2 decimal places
End Function
%> Again, another basic example. We should notice this time that the Function accepts two arguments.

By now, we have some idea of how to write a Function. How do we use one?
Let me show you now how we can use the calcTax example.

<%
shoppingbill=goodsTotal + calcTax(goodsTotal,17.5)
Response.Write "Your shopping came to £" & goodsTotal
Response.Write "
VAT amount = £" & calcTax(goodsTotal)
Response.Write "Total Amount Due = £" & shoppingbill
%> Above you see the example function in action... easy huh!

I have tried to make understanding Functions as easy as possible... Understanding a Subroutine (Sub) is now going to be easy for you. Imagine a block of code that performed some instructions based on information you gave it...
Sounds very much like a function, doesn?t it? Well this time, we do not get anything back. A sub does NOT pass back information it just uses the data we give it for some purpose.

I will use only one example of a Sub, and in the same example make use of the sub: -

<%
Sub Bday(strName, intAge)
Response.Write "Happy Birthday " & Name
Response.Write ", You are " & intAge & " years old today"
End Sub

'now, call the sub
bDay "Joe",26
%> The above Sub, demonstrates my point. We put something in, it performs an action (in this case writing to the screen), but nothing is returned to us in the code. One thing that REALLY IS important when using a sub, is that we do not put brackets around the arguments... Because we do not have a return value we do not need brackets and in this case, if we try we will get an error.

Well, that just about concludes this article. We should by now be writing efficient code with the use of Functions and Subs. Don?t forget that if you use your functions and subs in multiple pages then you should really store them within include files for reasons of easy maintenance and better performance.


By Rob Collyer

Adding Word Rich Content to Your Website

You have permission to publish this article electronically, in print, in your ebook or on your web site, free of charge, as long as the author bylines are included.

Adding Word Rich Content to your Website. Duplication vs. Individualism

How can we add Word Rich Content to our Websites without overtly duplicating others website content, and as an end product maintain our own Individualism?

In theory Article Libraries are the answer to the above question. But, is it true that if you continually add like information to your site, you no longer maintain an individual posture?

Not every article that is submitted to your site will fit the needs of your particular agenda. Your site contains individual keywords that are meant to enhance the theme of your pages. Although it is true that many persons who submit articles to you may also have a similar website theme, it is important to examine the content of each article.

Ask yourself:

Do I agree with the message this article is conveying. Why is the information relative to my website? Does this article contain information that enhances my visitor's experience? Does the article provide correct information?

Providing article and content that is intended for the soul purpose of gaining Page Rank will in the end take away the individualism of your website.

Remember the average visitor will stay at your site between two minutes or less. As they scan your pages, it will not take long for them to realize they have seen the same information over and over.

The same rings true of the Robots and Spiders that eat your pages everyday!!!

The "Value" placed on your site by your visitors will be recognized by the "Value" you place there.

There is no reason why we cannot use "others" materials in our journey for original material, but how we "choose" that material will in the end reflect our destiny.

"Duplication does not necessarily mean the loss of individualism, nor is individualism lost through Duplication."

Written by Tina Rideout

Optimal Website Design

Optimal website design is the art of logical navigation.

It will offer consistency while providing useful, quality information that is attractive to the eye and easy to understand. A well designed site will lead your viewers to the starting point and direct them through your site without confusing them.

While there are many ways to design a website there are a few basic design principles that will help you create a site that is user friendly and attractive.

1. Use lots of white space.

Don't feel that because you have a whole screen you need to fill it up with 'stuff'. Your page should follow a clean outline. Include your site name at the very top. Below that, list the subject of your page followed by information on your topic. Leave adequate space between each section.

Don't cram a lot of pictures and ads on your site. If you have an ad, keep it off to the side or subtly intersperse it between your text. The idea is not to overwhelm your reader with a lot of advertisements.

It's best to keep your text on a white background. If you do choose a colored background be careful that your text doesn't blend into the background making it difficult to read.

2. Don't use animation and flashing objects.

As advertisers we feel the need to get our viewers attention. This is important but we need to do it gracefully. Flashing objects and scrolling images distract your visitors and take away from the content. If your product is better demonstrated with animation, music or some other multi-media, allow your viewer to select the option. Don't force it on them.

3. Include an 'about' link.

Allow your viewers to find out about who you are and what you are about. Include a biography and some background on why you are in the business you're in or why you created your website. By helping them to get to know you, they will find it easier to develop a trust. If they can like you and trust you, they will feel a lot better about doing business with you.

Always include your business address, phone number and email address. This also lets viewers know that you welcome contact and are serious about your business.

4. Include a 'Privacy' Link

Reassure your visitors that you follow privacy guidelines by including a 'Privacy' page. This is particularly important if you are collecting names and email addresses. Visitors want to know that you will not sell or give away their information.

In these days of rampant spam, your privacy policy needs to be prominently displayed. Many viewers and business partners won't do business with you unless you have it.

5. Always keep your links in blue.

Internet surfers have long been accustomed to seeing links in blue. It's simply an expectation that viewers have. There's certainly no law that says your links must be blue, but people prefer consistency, therefore it's good practice to keep your links consistent and recognizable. If they're not, you may lose out on clicks.

6. Keep navigation consistent

The navigation scheme you create on your index page should be done the same way throughout your site. Don't force your viewers to relearn each page of your site. Keep your navigation bars, colors and fonts consistent for each page.

7. Use Understandable buttons and links.

Title your links appropriately. Don't use cute or misleading names. For example, if you have a link to 'cameras' don't label the link 'hotshots', label it 'Cameras'. Your viewers don't want to waste time figuring out what things are. Be clear with your text or you could risk losing your visitor.

8. Focus on the 'YOU', not the 'ME'.

Make it obviously clear to your readers that you are in business for them. Encourage feedback, provide useful information and keep advertisements to a minimum. Your objective should be focused on what you can do for your reader? Convince them that your main interest is how you can deliver what it is they're looking for?

9. Make sure your page loads fast.

If viewers have to wait for a page to load they will click elsewhere. If a page doesn't load in 8 seconds you could lose 1/3 of your visitors. Here's a great free tool to help you check your website's load time:

http://www.1-hit.com/all-in-one/tool.loading-time-checker.htm

10. Use a site map.

A site map will give visitors a "guide" on viewing your site, especially with larger sites. it's a road map for your visitors to follow. Sitemaps are also popular with search engines and are often recommended to help ensure indexing.


By Elizabeth McGee

What is The Google Toolbar?

No matter what browser you may want to use, you should consider using Google's toolbar. Google.com, the innovative, stripped-down, add-free search engine that has taken the web by storm has provided an innovative interface through most web browsers; mainly Internet Explorer. This toolbar has many great features for searching around the Internet as well as blocking those annoying Pop-up ads that scream "BUY ME!" every twenty seconds.

Anyone can go to toolbar.google.com and download this great plug-in for your browser. There are various features that come with using it that you may or may not wish to employ. Taking a few minutes before you install it will definitely save you time later on.

Google Search Web
In this interface you can type in keywords, terms, phrases as well as URL's (Universal Resource Locators) and away you go. By harnessing the Google engine you magically fly through their portal to your destination. You will render a Google search or a direct shot to your URL.

PageRank
With any good toolbar, Google let's you know how important it thinks the site you are looking is. This rank is rated from 1 - 10, 1 being a very light, low-traveled website and ten which is a site like Google where millions of people visit each day. Your page rank is determined by several factors, keywords, keyword in URL, and reciprocal linking. Reciprocal linking alone buys the user a popular rank as Google looks favorably at websites that share good karma. The larger the number of websites pointing to your site will ultimately help you rise up through the ranking status.

Pop-Up Blocker
You get them, we all get them, those nasty pop-up ads that ask you to lose weight or tell you how to increase your libido. These advertising snippets have become annoying to the point that some websites you cannot even get on because you can be barraged by a plethora of pop-up ads. The Pop-Up Blocker plug-in allows you to receive little if no pop-ups. Google designed this plug-in as an approach to invasion free web surfing. Every time a pop-up rears its ugly head, POW! Add another pop-up to the counter. It actually tells you how many pop-ups the toolbar has thwarted. 

BlogThis!
An interesting technology that was designed in the late 1990's and recently purchased by Google. Blog This! Allows the user to create a private or public diary or workspace to share ideas, search for people, create discussions and just jot down information. These blog's have become infamous over the past few years and Google has purchased the leading company in the boom. 

Autofill capabilities
You may have been looking up a specific keyword or term and found a result that you liked. The Autofill capabilities cache your searching information for present as well as future use should you need to call up previous search requests.

As you can the Google toolbar displays many great features and technologies that you can harness in a few short clicks. The technology involved has far surpassed any other search engine on the planet.

By Jakob Jelling

Server Side Includes (SSI) with ASP

Server Side Includes (SSI) with ASP

People often have identical sections of code spread throughout many ASP pages, typically code at the top of the page (usually referred to as the header) and the lower part of the page (the footer). Similarly, you may have code that performs a certain set of instructions that you are repeating across multiple pages. Consider an example:-

<%
If foobar="yes" then
response.write "YES!"
Else
response.write "NOT YES!"
End if
%>

Ok, ok... it's simple, but imagine that you used this on multiple pages. What's wrong with this picture?

Well... you don't have to think about that long before realising that if you ever wanted to change something about that piece of code, you'd have your work cut out. you would have to change every page... everyone has done this at some stage and luckily most usually take the steps to learn a way around this problem.

If we could save our valuable chunk of code into a file and have that file accessed whenever we needed the code, then we no longer have a problem when it comes to changing things, as we simply update one file. Include files or Server Side Includes (SSI) as they are more commonly known are a powerful way to not only save time when it comes to maintaining and updating a site, but also increase efficiency and speed of that site too!

Ok, lets see how we use an include file... to start with we need to use one of two methods. The first one allows for including files relatively. By that I mean relative to the directory the ASP file that is using the include file resides. The second method includes files virtually. Including files virtually means that the path is taken from the root directory.

Consider that we are going to have a file (/main/somefile.asp) include another file (/includes/someinclude.asp).

To demonstrate, relative inclusion, look at this:-

<%
Response.Write "executing included code now"
%>
<!--#include file="../includes/someinclude.asp"-->
<%
Response.write "done executing included code"
%>

And here, we give an example of the other method, virtual inclusion:-

<%
Response.Write "executing included code now"
%>
<!--#include virtual="/includes/someinclude.asp"-->
<%
Response.write "done executing included code"
%>

Note the slight difference between the two methods. With virtual inclusion, you can move the file that calls upon the include file anywhere without affecting the outcome, because the path is always relative to the root. The same cannot be said however for relative inclusion. If you move a file that is using relative inclusion to a different directory, you'll most likely find the relative path is no longer correct.

From the examples above, you may also notice that both methods, when calling the include do so OUTSIDE of the ASP script block. This because #include declarations are not interpreted by ASP. Include files are included before a single line of ASP is processed which means the following WONT work:-

%lt;%
Page=request.form("page")
%>
<!--#include file="../includes/<%=page%>.asp"-->

We were attempting to perform a dynamic include and I would be the first to admit that the above would be very useful indeed if in fact it were possible. I do intend to cover a few methods that work around this set back but I know you will now be itching to get started right away on using include files to even worry about this, so I will cover it in a future article.

I hope that you have found the above informative and hope it inspires you all to write code that's more efficient and more easily maintained.

By Rob Collyer

Effective Webdesign

D.zigns dzignerwebs

The Basics


Before starting on how to design a website effectively, how about clearing some basic web design concepts? Designing Effectively

Now that you know what web design and related terms mean, lets get down to the real thing: Designing Effectively How to balance artistic design with practicality and functionality.

Use of graphics and content

Unless your website is all about graphics, how to make them, edit them or just a bunch of links to graphics websites, I suggest you use graphics sparingly, especially the flashing, twirling kind. They not only detract readers from the content, but they also take ages to load. You do not want your readers to leave your website because your graphically attractive page does not seem to load fast enough. Then again, too much text is boring. So mix and match the graphics and text on your page, having enough white space so that the page is not plain annoying.

Layout and design

While designing, keep in mind that poor layout and design will make your pages unreadable and difficult to keep your visitors on your website for long. Some of the things that make a poor design and layout:

Text that is too small to read

Color combinations of text and background that make the text hard to read

Large graphic files that take forever to load

Multiple things that blink

Unclear navigation; over complex navigation

Paragraphs of type in all caps, bold, and italic all at once

Graphics that don't fit on the screen (assuming a screen of 640x460 pixels)

Animations that never stop

Complicated frames, too many frames, unnecessary scroll bars in frames

Cluttered, not enough alignment of elements



Some of the things that make a webpage stand out from the crowd:

Stay away from bad design features listed above.

Background does not interrupt the text

Navigation buttons and bars are easy to understand and use

Good use of graphic elements (photos, subheads, pull quotes) to break up large areas of text

A large site has an index or site map

Link colors coordinate with page color

Every graphic link has a matching text link

Animated graphics turn off by themselves

Pages download quickly

All pages have the immediate visual impact within 640 x 460 pixels

Planning

Most of the time, all it takes to design your website effectively is a little planning. When designing a website, it needs to be clean, uncluttered, attractive and easy for users to read and find what they need. Begin with a webdesign plan:

what colors do you want to use?

Are these colors complimentary?

What items - text, images, data - do you want to put in your pages?

What layout do you want? Look at other websites and then decide.

Follow the above steps to get a website that speaks for itself and your business. You can always contact me for suggestions and webdesign projects.

By Tasneem Rangoonwala

The Topic Of Your Website

The first thing you will have to deal building your website has nothing to do with the web design itself, it's me related to content writing but it must be defined and will effect the rest of your actions. So first of all you need to decide what the topic of your future website is. Topic is very closely connected to another web design issue: keywords. The keywords you select will depend upon the topic you have chosen. When thinking about website topic ask yourself a few questions: What is the goal of the site you are making? What are you trying to achieve with your site. Specify a goal, preferably in one short sentence.

Take a sheet of paper and a pen and put all you can think out about your future website. Brainstorm! Just put everything that comes to your mind: what you want to give to your visitors, what the site is about, what you want to accomplish with your website, what is your experience in the area you would like to select as topic? The more points you could think up the better. Then sort it in the number of importance. Think what points can be deleted without harm to your project. Delete them. Leave only what is REALLY important. Try to get your goal out of those points.

Choosing topic is like choosing the topic for college research paper. You should try to select reasonable balance between too wide and to narrow topics. Narrowing down your website topic might be very helpful. If you have narrower topic that means you have less competing topic thus it will help you to get better position among your competitors. However if the topic is too narrow nobody will ever bother to search for it. Let me give you example: you want to build a website devoted to website design, but if you try to develop this website guess how many websites you will have to beat to get on the top? I got 4,030,000 pages devoted to website design according Google . To check this number just enter http://google.com and then enter "website design" in the search form on the first page. Now let's see how many sites Google indexed with the topic "Flash website design". I got about 22,300. As you may see the result of indexed web pages is four millions smaller. So creating website about flash design will be much smarter then just to make "website design" site and be lost in those millions pages. Note that "Website design" and "Flash Website Design" are not only keywords, the Flash website design is a part of website design but it is smaller part. Searching search engines keywords related to the topic you have selected may be helpful in making decision about your website topic. I'll teach you how to select "right" keywords to obtain better position on the search engine listings in the next articles.

Do not hesitate to reset your goals. Try to think about audience of the website. People like to visit websites with the original and unique content. Will your website be able to provide your visitors with such content? Will visitors come back again and again or they will simply close the browser window and forget about your website?

The better the plan the less work you will have to make. So if you could define the topic and define it clearly you may proceed to another step of website building: choosing a domain name.

Click Here

This article may be reprinted and distributed with no charge until the credit line below remains without changes.

Thanks for reading.

By Oleg Lazarenko