A Newbie's Guide to Web Development

Wikipedia.org defines Web Development as follows:

Quote:

Web development is a broad term that incorporates all areas of developing a web site for the World Wide Web. This can include e-commerce business development, web design, web content development, client-side/server-side coding, and web server configuration. However, among web professionals, "web development" usually refers only to the non-design aspects of building Web sites, e.g. writing markup and coding. Web development can range from developing the simplest static single page of plain text to the most complex web-based internet applications, electronic businesses, or social network services.

For larger businesses and organizations, web development teams can consist of hundreds of people. Smaller organizations may only require a single permanent or contracting webmaster, or secondary assignment to related job positions such as a graphic designer and/or Information systems technician. Web development may be a collaborative effort between departments rather than the domain of a designated department.

This book aims to enlighten you about the steps involved in building websites. Hopefully, after reading this series, you will be able to build a website of your own. Smile

A Newbie's Guide to Choosing a Domain Name

In this article, I will share my thoughts on how to choose a domain name.

A domain name is usually composed of two parts. The one to the right of the dot (.) is called the top-level domain (TLD) name while the one to the left is called the (SLD) second-level domain name.

In choosing the second-level domain name, I always choose or look for a word or phrase which is descriptive of what I am trying to achieve with my site. My reason for this is two-fold. First, it will be easier for humans to remember, and second, it will work better with contextual advertising programs like Google AdSense.

In my experience, the words that can be found in the SLD are the set of words which the AdSense program initially looks at to determine which ads to serve on your site. Thus, the second-level domain name of my websites: FilipinoWriter, WriteLit, PinoyFilm, PinoyTechie (PinoyTech and the better PinoyTechnology already taken). In choosing an SLD name which is composed of more than one word I see to it that the name is not too long -- again, for easy recall.

As much as possible I avoid using the dash in my second-level domain name. There are assertions that using a dash is very "sploggy" and may turn off the search engine spiders/crawlers especially that of Google and will penalize you in its Search Engine Results Pages or (SERPs).

Footnote. Splogs or spam blogs according to Wikipedia, are "artificially created weblog sites which the author uses to promote affiliated websites or to increase the search engine rankings of associated sites. The purpose of a splog can be to increase the PageRank or backlink portfolio of affiliate websites, to artificially inflate paid ad impressions from visitors, and/or use the blog as a link outlet to get new sites indexed. Spam blogs are usually a type of scraper site, where content is often either Inauthentic Text or merely stolen from other websites."End of footnote

Meanwhile, I always go for the .com top level domain name if it's still available. (A good place to look into the availability of a domain name is the site Domainsbot.com which also gives a myriad of domain name suggestions based on your domain name search.) Since the birth of World Wide Web, the .com TLD has always been the most well-known and popular TLD so one figures that it will be the first thing which the user will try. Although one can argue that a user can always search for the name of site, I think it's better not to leave anything to chance and to have all your bases covered.

A Newbie's Guide to Finding a Good Web Host

There are, for me, four main criteria in finding a good web host.

 

Excellent Uptime

Uptime is the percentage of time the web host's server or computer system is "up" or working. Downtime, meanwhile refers to the amount of time that the system is "down" or is non-operational. A good place to look for the uptime of a web host is at webhostingstuff.com where I found the web host of this site PinoyTechie.com, web.com.ph. As you can see, web.com.ph's current overall uptime is 99.97%, which is considered Excellent.

 

Server speed

Server speed is the amount of time a page from a site downloads to your computer. To test the download speed of your host, look for the sites hosted in your potential web host and enter their URL or web addresses at Vertain.com. After the test, Verttain.com will tell you if your site is up to standards. Pinoytechie.com for example has a current speed of 3.98 seconds which is within the acceptable rate of 3-4 seconds. Any result slower than that is a cause for concern.

Meanwhile, you can also compare and test multiple sites at the website speed tool of iwebtool.com. The results are labeled as either, Slow, Average or Fast.

 

Bandwidth Limit

In web hosting parlance, Bandwidth Limit is the amount of data in a single month which can be downloaded and/or uploaded by site visitors and administrators. If a visitor views a page, for example, that's a data download and if he or she, for instance, uploads a picture within the site, that's another type of data transfer. A site administrator uploading new pages to the site also uses up bandwidth.

A downloaded or uploaded page is usually measured in kilobytes of data or KB. 1000 KB is equal to 1 megabyte. 1000 MB is equal to 1 gigabyte or 1 GB. As a newbie, a minimum of 2000 MB or 2G worth of bandwidth per month is okay. You just upgrade as your needs increase.

 

Cost

The trick is to find potential hosts which meet the above criteria and at the same time affordable.

 

Among the aforementioned features, the Server Speed and the Uptime percentage are the most crucial and the most important things to consider, especially when you are trying to earn with your sites. If the server is too slow, the user will be impatient and might leave without seeing your site and if you site is down, well...

A Newbie's Guide to Web Hosting

Find here articles on the how's and why's of web hosting.