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Thursday, November 1, 2001 |
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Signature Hosting Takes Off
Signature hosting has been a real success for us here at BIGSEA. Our next generation hosting platform offers a lot of new features, better performance, and better server management tools.
Here's a summary of some of the features now available with Signature hosting:
- Web based e-mail
- Unlimited POP, IMAP, and FTP accounts
- Control Panel features include user management tools, statistical reporting, server file manager, easy password protection for directories, and much more.
- PHP and Perl scripting support
- Your own cgi-bin
- SSH and Telnet access
And best of all, Signature can be combined with our web site maintenance tool, Rev9.
Want to learn more? Give us a call. We're here to help.
Announcing New Signature Hosting
BIGSEA is proud to announce its newest offering: Signature Hosting.
Signature Hosting is built on our next generation web hosting platform and offers many advantages over our previous web hosting offerings.
With Signature Hosting, you can:
- Check your e-mail from any internet connected computer through a web browser (web-based email).
- Manage files and folders on your web server using a web browser
- Change your e-mail signature or autoresponder while traveling
- Add unlimited user/email accounts
- Check your web site statistics
- Password protect directories
- Edit web pages online
- And much more!
Click here to see a Signature Control Panel demo and learn more about how BIGSEA is working to improve your web hosting services.
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Thursday, September 27, 2001 |
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Some things are harder than they look.
It's true.
Take web development, for example. Most people think you put text and images on a page just as you would with any other computer application like a word processor or page layout program.
Not so. It's much harder than that. You don't believe me? give it a try. Find a professionally-built page on the internet that you like and try to recreate it. Try to create graphics that look like the graphics you see. Try to get the text to line up and look the same as the text you see on the page you are mirroring.
I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm just saying it's harder than it looks.
But sometimes, something comes along that makes things a lot easier. Like Rev9 web editing. Rev9 makes it easy to keep the content on your web site up-to-date. But we're not stopping there. Our soon-to-be-released Signature web hosting product makes managing your web hosting account a breeze. Coming soon. Watch this page for details.
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Tuesday, September 18, 2001 |
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Code Rainbow / NIMDA worm is loose
A new worm is loose on the Internet today that is causing an excessive amount of port 80 traffic to our webservers. All the additional traffic is causing a situation similar to a denial of service attack, so you may experience some slowness when accessing web sites across the Internet.
The new worm was initially dubbed Code Rainbow but is now referred to as NIMDA (W32/Nimda.A-mm). Here is a page with links to more information about this new worm: http://www.superopendirectory.com/directory/4/events/emailEnclosureVirus
This worm attacks computers running Microsoft operating systems and Microsoft's e-mail, web browser and web server applications. Here is a link to more info about the affects of this worm: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,46944,00.html
To prevent this worm from infecting your system, disable active scripting in your web browser and e-mail software - see the article referenced above for instructions - and do not open e-mail messages containing attachments from unexpected sources. An unfortunate side effect of disabling active scripting is that javascript will no longer work on web pages you visit.
The worm is exploiting several known vulnerabilities in Microsoft's IIS web server. We do not host any accounts on IIS, but the worm is port scanning random IP addresses, so it can slow down web servers running on port 80 (port 80 is the most common port that web servers listen to, so this is a widespread problem).
Several attempts are being made to filter traffic generated by this worm, but until everyone running IIS patches their systems, we can continue to expect to see more attacks using known vulnerabilities with IIS.
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Tuesday, September 11, 2001 |
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How do people value your work?
I had a conversation with a client last week that was very revealing. This client used to do custom graphic design work for her customers, creating catalogs, brochures, logos, etc. She's not doing custom work anymore. More on that later.
In my head I imagine that there was a time when people truly appreciated craftsmanship. Oh, people today say they have an appreciation for craftsmanship, but when they have a choice between buying a tailored custom-fitted suit for $2,000 or a $500 suit off the rack, most people choose the $500 suit. The tailored suit will fit perfectly and make you look great, but the off-the-rack suit is "good enough".
We have become accustomed to manufactured goods at the expense of craftsmanship. But that's O.K. Most manufactured goods today are higher quality and have a lower price than the same goods could be made by hand. Higher quality, lower price, that surely is good for the consumer.
But here's the rub. We have come to expect custom work at manufactured-goods quality and manufactured-goods prices. In so doing, we have devalued craftsmanship.
A question begs to be asked: Why would someone pay more for craftsmanship when the result may be lower quality than they are used to getting with manufactured goods?
Sometimes you have to.
Let's get back to my client. When she was doing custom graphics work, she never had a problem finding work. Clients would come to her with a new brochure idea, or wanting a new logo, or needing a hand-drawn graphic for the cover of their next catalog. She would design the piece and present it to the client, and then there would be one or more rounds of changes before the final piece was approved by her customer.
You're probably thinking to yourself: "So what? Revisions and changes are a part of the creative process." Yep. That's true. But are you willing to pay for it? My client finally decided that it wasn't worth it. By the time she did the creative work and the revisions, she was losing money because she had agreed to a price before they started and her customers expected to pay that price when the project was delivered. She said that if she charged more, her customers would not be wiling to pay her prices. She told me the thing that bothered her most was when her clients would say "I could do what you do if I had the time". To her, that sounded like "I don't really appreciate your skills and it's cheaper to pay you than to do it myself".
She got out of the custom graphics business and now has a successful creative manufacturing business. So, if you want to buy custom creative work, or fine craftsmanship, be prepared to pay for it. That is, if you can find someone who is willing to do it for the price you are willing to pay.
Good luck.
We made the list: Charlotte's Top Web Design Companies
We were pleased to be recognized last week by the Business Journal of Charlotte. They ranked us as one of the top 25 Web Design Companies in the region.
Other local companies that made the list were:
- Ballantyne Consulting Group
- Solution Masters, Inc.
- Pro Systems, Inc.
- eBased Evolution
- CC Communications
- ettain, Inc.
- Webpro.com
- Net-link Corp
- Xion Media, Inc.
- DP Web Services, ad division of DP Connections Inc.
- Analysts International
- Vialogix Communications
- carbonhouse inc.
- E-dreamz
- Wray Ward Laseter Advertising
- CAI Concepts, Inc./Capital Automation Information Systems
- Seurat Co.
- Burke Communications
- Stripling and Beck
- Carolina Computer Link, Inc.
- Cydecor, Inc.
- Axiom Creative Group
- TechnikOne
- WebsiteBiz Inc.
You can find the complete rankings on page 34 of the June 22, 2001 edition of the Business Journal of Charlotte (volume 16, number 12).
Thanks Business Journal!
A new web hosting platform
Life on the cutting edge of the internet is all about change. To keep BIGSEA's products and services up-to-date and competitive with the changing marketplace, we are constantly in search of new product enhancements for our customers.
With that in mind, we would like to announce a "heads-up" to let our customers know that our R&D department is beta-testing our next generation web hosting platform. The key advantage to this new platform is that our customers will be able to start small with just the web hosting features they need. Then, as their hosting needs grow, our customers will be able to seamlessly upgrade their web sites and web applications to an increasingly more powerful web hosting engine.
Of course our existing products and services will continue to work perfectly with this new hosting platform. What this means to you is that by choosing BIGSEA as your web host you are making a choice for expandability and flexibility in web hosting.
Want to learn more about BIGSEA and how we can help you get the most out of your web hosting platform? Give us a call. We're here to help.
8 ways Rev9 can make your life easier
If you are wondering what Rev9 is and what it can do for you, here's a quick summary:
What is Rev9?
Rev9 is a browser based web site maintenance tool that allows you to keep your site maintained and up to date. You can use Rev9 wherever you have access to a computer with an internet connection. "Browser-based" means that you can edit the text on your website using your web browser. No additional software is needed.
How can Rev9 make my life easier?
Rev9 allows you to:
1. Edit the content on your site yourself. You no longer have to send a request to your web developer to change a word or phrase, add a new page, or post an update.
2. No FTP software needed. After you make the changes to the text on your web pages, you can preview the changes in your web browser. If everything looks the way you intended, you just click a button, and your changes are published to the public web server.
3. No WYSIWYG editor needed. When you decide to edit a page, you simply login, browse to the page you want to edit, click a button that says "Edit this page", and you will see an editing window with your current text available for you to edit. Just change the text in the editing window, and click the "Post Changes" button.
4. Add as many pages to your site as you want. If you want to add a new page, you can do that very easily with Rev9. Your new page will maintain the look and feel of the other pages in your site.
5. Add new pages to your site whenever you want. If you decide to add a new page while on vacation in Sydney, Australia and it is 3:00 AM Sunday morning, you can add your page if you have access to a computer with an internet connection. No longer do you have to wait for standard business hours to contact your web developer.
6. Create links to other sites just by typing the url. The url you typed will become a link.
7. Edit your site while traveling, from any computer with an internet connection. See number 5.
8. Preview your changes before sending them to the public web server. With Rev9, you get two servers in one. The Rev9 server is your development server where you can make changes and update your site at your convenience. If you make a mistake, don't worry. The Rev9 server can be kept hidden from the public so that your changes will not be seen until you are ready. Then, when you get your site looking the way you want, you send your changes off to the public webserver where anyone in the world with an internet connection can see them.
Sound good? It is. If you want to learn more about how BIGSEA and Rev9 can help you maintain your web site, give us a call. We're here to help.
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Wednesday, April 11, 2001 |
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HTML Basics
If you have been keeping your website updated using our Rev9 tool, you have probably run across the occasion when you would like to add a little emphasis to a word or sentence. If you are using the WYSIWYG interface (What You See Is What You Get) available to Internet Explorer users on the Windows platform, you probably haven't put much thought into what is going on in the background.
But, if you are like me, you might be a little curious as to how your browser and the html code in your pages work together to create what you see on the screen. Or, maybe you haven't enabled the WYSIWYG mode in your Rev9 web site. Maybe you are editing your website on a Macintosh (my personal preference), or you use Netscape (or any other browser at this writing) and you don't have access to the WYSIWYG tool that is built into Microsoft's Internet Explorer for Windows. If this paragraph applies to you, continue on...
O.K. Its time to learn a little HTML. Don't click away so fast... it won't be that bad.
Here we go:
Almost every HTML formatting function uses opening and closing tags to tell your browser how to display the text on your page.
Opening tags look something like this: <tag goes here>.
Closing tags look something like this: </tag goes here>. Note the "/". Closing tags always have a "/" before the tag.
To make your tags work, you just put some text between the tags. This might not be too clear yet. Let's try an example:
To make some text italic, add these <i>tags around the text you want to make italic.</i>
To make some text bold, add <b>these tags around the text you want to make bold.</b>
To center some text, add these
<center>tags around the text you want to center.</center>
To put a double-space between two lines, use <P>these tags.</P> (By the way, if you have not enabled the WYSIWYG mode in your Rev9 site, you don't have to use these <P> tags. Just double space your text when you type it into the edit window, and Rev9 will automatically insert the code for you. This is a really cool feature.)
To put a single-space between two lines, use this tag:
<br> at the end of a line of text. The next thing you type will appear on the next line. (This tag, incidentally, doesn't have a closing tag).
Now lets try something a little more advanced. To make a hyperlink, type something like this:<a href="http://www.domainname.com/pagename.html">click to visit my domainname.com</a>
(Be sure to put the code shown above all on one line-- it wraps here because there is not enough room to show it all on one line.)
That's a really brief tutorial on some common HTML tags. That wasn't so bad, was it? If you are interested in learning more about html and how it can help you spruce up your pages, pick up a basic html book from any bookstore or the library. Another great way to learn is to use a WYSIWYG editor like Pagemill or Frontpage to generate some code, then view the code to see what the editor did to create the results you see.
Or, if you are working on a Rev9 website and have WYSIWYG mode enabled, modify some text using the WYSIWYG toolbar, then view the source code.
Here's another great reference I just found: http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/teachingtool/viewsource.html
If you would like to learn more about how BIGSEA can help you spruce up your web pages, give us a call. We're here to help.
A store without price tags.
Imagine that you were to walk into a attractive boutique to make a purchase. You see a lot of great stuff, and you wonder: "How much is that?"
You pick up an item. No price tag. "Must be expensive", you think. You pick up something else. No tag. You pick up another item-- no tag there either. How would that make you feel?
That's how I feel when I browse the web checking out different web development firm's web sites. A lot of these sites are professionally developed and very attractive. But don't bother trying to find any hint of pricing. It's not there.
On the other end of the spectrum, you will find firms clearly selling based on low price. You'll see a headline like this: "Get a professionally developed web site and one year of hosting for only $499." I don't know for sure, but I have a feeling that a site like that will give you a choice of templates to choose from and give you a brochureware site with limited functionality. For some small business people, that may be just what they need.
Or you might see a hosting firm touting a web hosting package for $14.99 per month. And if you buy a year's worth of hosting in advance, they will give you a 10% discount. Never mind that they pack their servers full with thousands of sites and you have to wait on hold for 49 minutes to get someone from tech support to answer the phone. They don't tell you that a "techie wannabe" customer could bring down the whole server with a poorly written CGI script. They don't tell you that you have to put in a service request to create a new e-mail address. They don't tell you a lot of stuff.
I know some people shop on price. There must be a good market for it because a lot of firms sell on price. But this brings me back to the boutique in my first example. What is wrong with building a business around value, and not being afraid to post your prices?
Marketing types would say that it puts you in the position of being "stuck in the middle". On the one hand, you have the "price sellers" setting a percieved value on the low end. On the other end, you have the custom development shops that charge you based on who you are and how much they think you will be willing to spend. The poor guy "stuck in the middle" ends up trying to defend his pricing on one side but not being able to build high percieved value on the other side.
O.K. I'll accept that that theory has merit. But I think there is a segment of the market that the two ends of the spectrum are missing. I'll call this segment the "Man in the Middle".
The "Man in the Middle" is the business person who doesn't have time to put out bid requests to the custom firms, who wants a general idea of what things will cost, and who is willing to pay a little more for personalized service, custom design work, and other value-added services.
So, if you are the "man in the middle", you are the person BIGSEA is trying to reach. Our prices are not the cheapest, and our clients are not the biggest, but we feel that we offer a good value for your money. I like to think that our customers feel that way too.
If you are interested in learning how BIGSEA can help you build an effective internet presence for your business, give us a call. We're here to help.
Another Free Upgrade!
In January 2001 we offered a free bandwidth upgrade to all of our web hosting customers. We're at it again!
We are pleased to announce that all of our existing web hosting customers will receive a free web space upgrade. Here's how the free upgrade stacks up:
Personal Plan: was 20 MB, now: 50 MB
Professional Plan: was 50 MB, now 125 MB
Corporate Plan: was 75 MB, now 175 MB
Commercial Plan: was 125 MB, now 225 MB
Enterprise Plan: was 140 MB, now 275 MB
High Volume Plan: was 200 MB, now 525 MB
And you thought the days of free 'anything' on the internet were over.
This is a free upgrade for all of our hosting customers. Enjoy your new web space. Use it. We'll buy more.
What is your screen resolution?
Statmarket.com recently did a study (February 17, 2001) to try to figure out how much screen area web users were seeing on their screens. They found that most users had their screen resolutions set at 800x600 pixels. In fact, 53% of web users had their screen resolution set at 800x600 pixels.
Why is this important? Well, if you are designing pages for the web, you want to make sure that the viewer can see all of your page without scrolling horizontally, if possible. On the other hand, you don't necessarily want to design for the smallest screen resolution because on a larger screen, your design will be swamped by empty space.
But what if the viewer doesn't have their browser window set to maximum? What if they customized their browser tool bars to make more viewing area available? What if global warming is real?
What I am getting at is that there are a lot of factors beyond our control when it comes to viewable screen real estate. So how do you design for this infinitely flexible canvass?
Two techniques come to mind (but I am sure there are many other creative solutions). One solution is to make the design stretch to fill the browser window, regardless of the screen resolution, or the size of the browser window, or anything else for that matter. The other solution is a hybrid: make the main area of the page float so that it always stays in the center of the screen.
For example, this page is totally "stretchy". Go ahead. Change the size of your browser window. The page should stretch or squish to fill the screen. If you want to see something cool, watch the top navigation bar as you resize the window. See how the geometric thingies slide over the net in the background? This is an example of a stretchy design.
NormanRussell.com is an example of a hybrid design. When you resize your browser window with this design, the central elements stay the same size, but move together to the center of your window. In general, a hybrid design is easier to build than a totally stretchy design.
By now, you may be wondering how all the screen resolutions stack up with regard to popularity. Here's what statmarket.com learned in their study of 50,465,595 user sessions:
- 640x480: 7%
- 800x600: 53%
- 1024x768: 31%
- 1152x864: 2.5%
- 1280x1024: 2.5%
- other: 4%
The bottom line is this: web designers should concentrate less on what the most popular screen resolution is, and focus more on how they can make the pages useable for the viewer at any screen resolution or browser window size.
If you want to learn more about how BIGSEA can help you make your design stretchy, give us a call. We're here to help.
Separating Form From Content
If you work around the web building web sites for any amount of time, you will eventually hear the phrase "separate form from content". What, exactly, does that mean?
In a nutshell, it describes the concept of separating the appearance and layout of your web documents from the text that those documents contain.
Why is this important? Say, for example, you are maintaining a web site with 100 pages. You built those pages using static html files and you painstakingly applied font sizes, colors, and font styles to all 100 pages. Someday, your boss or client will come to you and say: "change all of my type to a light blue, and make my headlines dark gray.". You will say "arghhhh..."
If you had the foresight to use a style sheet to apply the color formatting to the text in your documents, you will make the change in two places, and suddenly all 100 of your pages will take on the new appearance. If you weren't blessed with foresight in this instance, you will get busy editing all 100 of your pages manually.
That's the beauty of separating form from content. In fact, the concept behind Rev9 is all about separating form from content. If you want to learn how BIGSEA can help you separate form from content in your existing web site, give us a call. We're here to help.
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Saturday, February 17, 2001 |
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Why you need a content management system
Here's a link to a pretty good article that explains why you need a content management system.
This page summarizes some of the existing content management systems available in the marketplace today.
Of course, we can convert your site to a Rev9 site and give you the benefits of a content management system at a fraction of the cost compared to building your own content management server and database.
While we're on the subject of content management, have you been thinking about ways to separate your web content from your web design? You aren't alone-- at BIGSEA we understand the importance of this idea. But content management systems are just one piece of the puzzle. Cascading style sheets, XHTML and XML are a few others. In this article, Zeldman discusses his efforts and the efforts of other developers to convert their sites and web content to support standards-compliant web browsers. Zeldman believes that developers can pull users along to upgrade to newer browser versions by ending the practice of creating backward-compatable web pages. Whether you agree with him or not, this article is a good read if you want to stay up-to-date with the latest web development techniques.
And, as always, if you are interested in learning how BIGSEA can help you build a better web site, give us a call. We're here to help.
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Friday, February 16, 2001 |
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Client-Side Javascript Includes
I saw something this morning that got me thinking. It was a really ugly (and poorly built) web site that had an interesting feature. On the right hand side of the page, there was a nice looking news feed from internetsoccer.com. How did this gem get on this page?
The answer: client-side javascript includes.
First a little about news feeds: if you don't already know, news feeds make it easy for people to share links to interesting articles that are (hopefully) related to the content of their web site. For example, this site includes a news feed to Wired News. See the right-hand column of this page? Those links to articles are coming directly from Wired. They get updated every day, and the best part is, I don't have to do anything to maintain it. New articles appear on the news feed whenever Wired adds them.
But enough about news feeds. Lets get back to the client-side javascript includes. If you know some of the more technical details of the web, you know that some pages are static (they are just text files stored on the server, and the server just serves them up, as is), and some pages are dynamic (the server builds the page from bits and parts every time someone sends a request for the page). The page I was looking at was most definitely a static web page. So how was this dynamic news feed appearing on the page? Client-side javascript includes.
Hmmm. Pretty clever, but simple really. Instead of having the server build the page dynamically, some javascript on this page caused my client software (Internet Explorer) to build the page dynamically.
How did they do this? There are two parts to the solution. The first part is to create a text file consisting of a snippet of html that you want to include on a page. This text file has to have two special characteristics. One, the text must look like this:
document.write (' html snippet goes here ');
And two, all of the text, including the html, must be on one line.
The second part of the solution is to include a bit of code on your page where you want the included html to appear. Here is what that line should look like:
<script language="javascript" src="http://path to file you created in step one"></script>
If you did everything right, and you have javascript enabled in your web browser, viewing your modified (static) web page should include (dynamically) the html snippet you created in step one. Pretty neat.
There are a couple of potential problems that you should be aware of: one, you are totally dependent on the client machine to properly render your dynamic page. If the browser has javascript turned off, the include won't work. Two, if you want the included html snippet to update dynamically like our news feed does, you will have to find someone who is providing the news feed in the proper format (like the example above).
Our Rev9 product handles news feeds a little differently than the example above, but I thought it was an interesting technique that someone could use. And you don't have to use it just for news feeds. You could easily break a web page into simple text files and have the client put it all back together. Why would you want to do this? It could make editing the site easier. Instead of editing the complete static web page, you could edit sections separately. This would allow you to separate form from content.
But if you are going to go to that much effort, you may want to consider a browser based content management system like our Rev9 product. With Rev9, you get all of the benefits of separating form from content, dynamic pages that can be rendered out to a static server (for speed, reliability), and you don't have to worry about all of the messy details that are going on in the background. Rev9 makes it easy for you to use your brain power to manage the content on your web site so you don't have to waste brain cycles managing your web site.
If you want to learn more about how BIGSEA can help you ease the pain of maintaining your web site and help you keep your content fresh, give us a call. We're here to help. |
