Domain Name Administration

For those directly involved with the day to day operations of your web presence... who also have a clear understanding how important flexible access to your domain name is. Select a service platform that you can understand, that is reliable and well supported. Best price is important in your selection because you do not want to pay for services and activities that you are capable of providing for yourself. This can become very involved and sometimes time consuming. Name administration requires that you understand the relationship between your domain and your hosting facilities. You must be able to properly interpret and administer your resources.

For those administrative types that do not have time or need to view the details. Select someone to oversee ALL of your web activities. This does not mean that this one person actually does everything… what it means is that this one person will pay attention to detail and is capable of taking direct control of resources. This person should have knowledge or skill in advanced Internet service provisioning. Allow this person to select and administer the facilities where your services and intellectual properties live. This person may or may not be your Site-developer. What they should definitely be is someone that you trust to see your big picture and is able to make sure that your best interest is kept in view.

Web Site Development

The long and the short of it is that Site Development is a continuous and sometimes quite intense activity. There are many ways to get there… By templates you can purchase that fit your design needs, By templates that come free with different software packages or services, By designing it your self and providing all the programming and technical skills needed in your project. If the business of your business takes place elsewhere, you will find that doing your own site development will seriously intervene in your process. Fast, Cheep, Good…. Choose any 2, but never all three. Your web site should reflect the purport of its being… It should serve its designed purpose. If you have the skill, the time and direct intervention serves your business need… then by all means… Put YOUR Hands On

Simple, Complex, Fancy, Interactive, Animated, Rich Content, Payment Ready… The "hands off" approach requires that you have a good grip on the reason you have the Site in the first place. It also requires that you are able to translate that vision to a designer or have a designer that understands your business need. One of the most costly attitudes one can have is "I want It ALL"... While it is entirely possible to have it all… ALL does come with a price tag. If you are on a budget, you or your administrator must match the design and functionality of your site to that budget. What this means is, paying for expensive bells and whistles BEFORE basic functionality will leave you unfulfilled. Get the basics straight. Watch out for the HYPE. People will sell you the latest and the greatest… you may not need it… in fact it could be a distraction from your business intent. Your web site should support the business you conduct or it should build the business you desire. Your visitors should be able to come to your site and get what they came for or receive exactly what you intend to impart.

1. Clean up your web site design and take out the cutesy music stuff. Video, on the other hand has become accessible and bandwidth abounds. Tasteful, relivant videos can be a boon to your presentation.

2. Readability issues – Squinting and struggling to read the words on the screen NOT GOOD!. Loud or wildly patterned backgrounds do not work well for your text. In addition, do not choose a light colored font for your text if the background is also light colored. The same principle applies for dark fonts and backgrounds. In your web site design, choose a normal sized font in a pleasing color that will contrast well with the web page’s background.

3. Layout woes – Avoid too much “fussiness” when tweaking your web site design. If a visitor’s eyes cannot focus on the text or pictures they are trying to peruse, then your web site has failed. This means that flashing text, a rainbow of colors and a disorganized layout of information should be avoided. Clean, simple lines are what retain your web site visitors and keep them coming back again.

4. Brush up your navigation skills – Web site design involves making sure that all the web pages you created for your web site have active links and are easy to find. When web visitors encounter too many broken links and cannot access all the pages, they will give up and go elsewhere on the internet.

Surf the internet for other web sites that are similar in content to yours. Check and see what features work well and what turns you off. This is a good rule to follow when coming up with your own web site design. You are not copying anyone else, just incorporating the same principles that make another site successful.

Your Hosting Company

Selecting a hosting company can be confusing… or maybe not. If you understand how web resources are allocated and have a clue how your web site uses services and storage, you can make a fairly intelligent choice for a hosting company. Depending on what you want, your services can be from free to just plain unaffordable and there might not really be a noticeable difference in product. Of course this is an oversimplification… in fact… you almost always get what you pay for and usually pay for much more than you need. In general, if you are truly a hands-on person, low cost hosting can be your friend. In some cases it may mean that you sacrifice availability, features or support… but if you are there with programming and design, that wont matter. It is reasonable to pay for robust hosting packages that include responsive network support and boast of high availability. Again… the allusion to more does not always mean better. Who ever you choose, there are the same things to keep in mind.

Research; find the best package for the best price with the best support and the best product… right. If you are not a "hands on" person, please do not shop for discount hosting. You need a fully supported package. You need a platform that is ready to accept what ever you might throw at it… mostly because you do not know. Getting the best price for the best cyber services is likened to shopping for shoes on a dollar table… you might find exactly what you like, but not your size. You might find exactly the right fit, but not quite the right style. All I am saying is that services vary and so do project requirements. If you go for discount and you are not hands on… who is going to take the blame or the responsibility for filling in the gaps. With a well supported back end, the help you may need is readily available (within reason). Most hosting companies do offer some support to end users. How much support, does not always line up with what you pay. If you are not really hands on, I can not stress the true importance of creating an alliance with someone that can translate in both directions. You need support that can relate to your view and help you to better interpret the cyber landscape as it really is.

Who is your ISP?

First off… If you are still on a dial-up… GET OFF NOW! A basic high speed service can be acquired fairly inexpensively. You will win back the cost for your high speed in time given back to you for other activities. Even the most basic high speed interface will be many times faster that a dial-up AND reliability will cease to be a question. So the question then becomes what do I buy? I like services that have low program overhead and minimum system interference. This lets out AOL, MSN and most other USER FRIENDLY service providers. The problem with most of these service types is that they presume the user to be an idiot… and by doing so they become intrusive and overbearing. AOL and MSN for example will invade your system with "helpful" services that take control of your Modem, Ethernet, Wireless and any other active or suspected way to get connected… You might think… well this is good. No it is not If you are a "hands on"/Power user… this type of ISP intervention is always in the way of a pure internet experience. The best choices for an ISP if you are a "hands on" user are companies that Offer downloadable support offerings but DO NOT require that you run their shell or Browser… Cable and Basic DSL services (NOT BUNDLED with AOL or MSN or Net ZERO type interfaces) are your best avenue for a clean high speed interface

When you purchase a new computer, it is ALREADY INTERNET READY. In most cases you have Virus protection, a Firewall and even sometimes Spy and Pest detection software (some may be introductory). Unfortunately there is also a full set of links that will get you "hooked up" with those ISPs that have paid to be put in your face. If you follow the yellow brick road…you will indeed find yourself in the land of OZ or maybe even tumbling down Alice’s Rabbit Hole. Yes it is easy to just Click and let it happen… Often in a new set-up this seems to be easy and painless. The problem is that you do not know what is happening. At that moment you usurp your own authority and turn control over to the vendor. If you ever want to sacrifice your good working otherwise healthy PC to the uncaring Computer Gods… just let AOL get hosed and call for support… I have seen many times where AOL, MSN and Net ZERO Support technicians FIX their problem… and leave the client with a whole new set of issues. Again, having someone that knows your intent and keep you in mind while getting you connected is a very good idea.

E-Mail (Yet another e-mail address)

Every ISP provides a service platform that usually includes, e-mail, personal web site, technical support, and other interesting goodies… and every time you change your ISP you get a whole new basket full. Nice??? Your e-mail address is much like a telephone number… it has many of the same benefits and suffers many of the same pitfalls. So how many e-mail addresses do you manage and why? You have the e-mail from your ISP, you have the free Hotmail account, you have the free Yahoo account, you have the free GMail account, you have the e-mail from work, you have the e-mail from school… you have ALL this e-mail and none of it is actually dedicated to you. Personally, I have given out the same 2 primary e-mail addresses for several years. I have changed my ISP several times with generally no interruption of my e-mail flow. How is that so?

1. I have my own domain names

2. I know and understand how e-mail works (in general)

Because of these 2 things only, There is no e-mail confusion in my life… Yes there is SPAM and yes there are viruses…

Yes I have a Hotmail account, yes I have a Yahoo account but I DO NOT USE THEM for Correspondence (with very little exception). My Yahoo, Hotmail and other e-mail accounts are for access to the associated on-line communities (we’ll get to that later)

If you are the stick to it type… an ISP monogamist so to speak… you may have the fortune of having the same e-mail address for years… and then along comes a reason to change your ISP, you want high speed, you move to a new place… something upsets the apple cart and voila… you now have a new ISP and a new bag of goodies. What do you do?? You can just change your e-mail address to the new one… But what about all the business collaterals that you had printed up last year, what about the list of friends and business associates that you communicate with… How do you handle this without loosing your mind?

There are plenty of services out there that can help with this type of migration… many are even free (but at what cost to your data/privacy). AOL even offers to let you take your e-mail address with you to another ISP… but again… at what cost?

Again, my solution is to have in place a trusted coordinator for you on-line services, have your own domain name for at least e-mail forwarding or for the most bang… do them both.

On-Line Payments

There are many merchant gateways that can provide you service. Whatever you choose, remember… this is your money and YOU should KNOW what it is doing. If you already have a merchant platform for your business, it makes sense to expand that service to cover your web activities. You are already paying for it AND the integration is likely to be fairly simple. If your business can support a standard merchant interface, this will be the most reliable and seamless to integrate into your web activities. This usually involves a little software, a little program configuration and sometimes a little hardware installation.  There are also third party processing houses that will process payments for you.  If you go this route... make sure you are with a reputable company AND be prepared to do a little program interfacing if you expect your web site interface to be smooth working.

HANDS OFF IS A NO NO… Be involved in your on-line payment process. If you have to rely on someone else to set this up for you it is BEST to go with a standard merchant service. Using merchant gateways in scenarios where you are delegating the integration and configuration to a 3rd party IS problematic. To configure a standard merchant account only requires the support of the service provider’s technical staff and reasonable abilities on the web. In contrast, most gateway solutions are clumsy and require program interfaces that may or may not work well. Another problem with 3rd party gateways comes as you may have to allow a 3rd party access to your personal account information. This may not be so bad if YOU actually understand and are in control of your gateway service. If on the other hand you do not know how it works you may give away the farm if the person helping you is not on your team. The bottom line with on-line payment is that your customer experience needs to be relatively seamless and your costs should be well under your average sustained sales.

On-Line Communities

You are NEVER Alone little Grasshopper… AOL, MSN, ICQ, Yahoo, Google Talk, IRC and a myriad of communal offerings exist (and have existed since Gore invented the Internet [that’s a joke… ok]). There are free venues, Paid Public venues, Private, Corporate. Is one better than another… who know who even cares. The platforms are becoming so robust and the areas between them becoming so gray. Fact is that most of the big players are working on cross platform access. I mentioned earlier that I had several e-mail addresses that were used to connect to various communities. This is becoming less the case as providers realize that communal loyalty is 2nd to user convenience. This means that sooner than one might think it will be possible to truly present a single point for contact over the internet. Regardless of the media type (text, audio, video, 2-way voice, etc). In all efforts you have to keep in mind what it is that you are trying to accomplish. The hype is always there… there are always the newest and the greatest even though you just picked up the next generation. As the lines between ISP and IAP or Network Provider become thinner, you realize that the boon towards on-line communalism is not new… the toys are just now becoming really socially superior for work and for play.

If your ISP had their way… everything communications would carry their brand and everyone you communicated would do the same… But that is not the way it is. The internet demands cooperation and collaboration… the juice of innovation and imagination is an environment that enables new ideas. The best (or shall I just say… more) is yet to come. The crossing of ISP boundaries is a given in post 911 public access venues… Homeland Security Demands it… not to mention that not having to have the same ISP account to chat with my sister from my Wi-Fi connected PC and then to be able to invite my cousins into the conference, who are on Cable and DSL in different parts of the nation just because they subscribe to the great Global Directory Service…. Hmmm... I actually Like it…

The only issue in any of this is Security and Privacy… How much is too little? Is too much ever going to be enough?

My Home Network

Once you have broadband in the home… nothing internet is ever the same. Home applications are as prevalent as your imagination. Not just your computer benefits from the internet. Video on Demand, Music on Demand, Downloads shared storage, Cable and DSL providers are all part of the landscape. You can buy some broadband, buy some cable or satellite video, buy a couple of boxes to plug all this stuff into and the next thing you know, everyone is at your house for anything entertaining… and this is a good thing. It is simple and for the most fairly reasonably priced. If you are the hands on person, you love it. Here are some of the out of the box capabilities of most home networks (well they should be).

1. Shared broadband access. Every internet capable device on the premise should be able to gain access

2. Shared Resources. In a simply defined home network it is expected that , files, printers, scanners, music and other media can be made available for anyone’s use

3. Services that interface home entertainment systems to cable and satellite providers are accessible

4. When introduced, wireless, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices should interface without a hitch.

They even have internet home appliances for the kitchen… Internet/TV on your Refrigerator… my my what will they think of next?

This can be one of the most frustrating supposed to be simple things you can get your "hands off" self into. On a good day you can bring 20 boxes into the house, open every last one of them and manage to get them properly connected together and the very first time you turn them on… EVERYTHING WORK JUST FINE. That is on a good day. If you have a simple network put together with decent tools and a clear intent, it is likely that you can be happy with keeping your hands off your home network. The other scenario is constant frustration brought on by unfulfilled and probably irrational expectations of what you get in a home network. Either way you need some guidance. The most ominous thing about the home network is the inerrant exposure created on startup. .