What is an FTP Server

Your web site is made up of a series of files; pictures, video, text and formatting information. In order to get these 'on the Internet' we have to transfer them from our computers to a computer that is permanently connected to the Internet.  That computer is called a server.  

To do this we have to connect the two computers together.  Because the server is permanently connected to the Internet it has an address.  Generally that address is ftp.yourdomainname.co.uk but that's not always the case.  We need this address.  Once we try to connect to this computer it will ask us for a username and a password.  Your hosting provider will have that username and password and will pass them on to you if you don't have a copy.  If we have those three bits of information we can connect to a computer anywhere in the world!

Once we have a connection we can transfer the various files to and from the server.  To do this we use "file transfer protocol" or FTP.

Difference between 'hits' and 'visits'

An important question I was asked recently from a client was about his website log: "What is the difference between hits and visits?" There is a specific technical difference. Here goes...


The technical definition of a hit is each file sent to a browser by a web server. And the technical definition of a visit is each time a visitor views a webpage on your site, irrespective of how many hits are generated. This is not a visit to a site but a visit to an individual page within the site.


Pages are comprised of files. Every image in a page is a separate file. When a visitor looks at a page (i.e. a page view), they may see numerous images, graphics, pictures etc. and generate multiple hits. For example, if you have a page with 10 pictures, then a request to a server to view that page generates 11 hits (10 for the pictures, and one for the html file). A page view can contain hundreds of hits. This is the reason to check the page views and not hits.


Additionally, there is a high potential for confusion here, because there are two types of 'hits'. These are the hits recorded by log files, and interpreted by log analysis. A second type of 'hits' are counted and displayed by a simple hit counter. Hit counters record one hit for every time a webpage is viewed, also problematic because it does not distinguish unique visitors.


So this is why hits are not a reliable way to measure website traffic, the number of visits is what you are interested in.


So hits include all elements that make up your page: animation, images and the html itself. Whereas visits are the page as a whole.


I hope this helps.

The Disability Discrimination Act AA standard

As I understand it if a web site complies with the Web Content Accessibility Initiative Guidelines (WAI) as laid down by the World Wide Web Consortium then it’s generally regarded as being also compliant with the DDA legislation, this is however not defined in the legislation. The WAI does have an AA standard. Also compliance with the guidelines is not something that can be definitively tested. Our stance here is as follows :-

1. We test sites using the Cynthia Says online tool.

2. We generally work to get compliance to the WAI A standard , which is slightly lower, rather than the AA standard. Our advice to customers is that the A standard means that the site will work fine for the majority of disabled people and that unless a fairly large proportion of their potential clients are disabled or their site is specifically aimed at disabled people, then the extra compliance levels aren’t really necessary.

3. We can build a site to the AA standard.

Embedded Video

Embedding video into a web site these days is very easy. Lots of people have broadband so we don't need to worry nearly as much about potential problems with slow donwload times. We aren't videographers but we do have tools for taking someones video and turning it into a format that works well on web sites. You can embed controls for the video like volume, fast forward, play, stop and pause and match them into the colour scheme and look for the site.

Have a look at the site for North Jesmond Garage, they are one of our customers and wanted the video to play automatically once the site is loaded

Images on your website

Firstly I think I should introduce myself. My name is Jan Broderick and I am Alan’s partner in our web design business. I work mostly on the design and page creation side of things.

To this end I thought I’d say a bit about images and the effective use of these on your website.

We all know the adage: “a picture paints a thousand words” (although only some of us will remember the Telly Savalas version of the song) and it is very true. You can capture in a single well-chosen image what would take pages to explain. Pages that most website visitors would not read. If you are trying to capture the attention of a casual visitor to your site or persuade someone to part with their cash for your products, then please think carefully about the images you use. We have all seen sites with badly composed, out-of-focus images – many sellers on eBay seem incapable of taking a decent photo – and don’t they detract from the experience?

I won’t try to teach you how to take a picture – there are plenty of experts who will explain the workings of your camera to you. Nor will I explain how you can improve on your picture using software. And yes you can make an indifferent picture better, but you cannot make a bad picture into a good one. And yes I am more than happy to work on the images you provide to make the best of them.

What I will do here is point out that for a small fee you can buy well-structured images that will do the job for you beautifully. I am not here to advertise a particular provider, there are many, but a good search around within their stock will give you all kinds of images you can incorporate within your design. These can be specifically of your type of product or service, or they can be a more general image that is pleasing to the eye. There are literally millions of images in the likes of iStockPhoto.

These providers also have a facility on their sites to set up a ‘lightbox’ this is a collection of images that can be viewed all at once. A link to the lightbox can be emailed to anyone for their comment and a selection purchased. This is the method I use for clients who wish to source images without paying a professional photographer.

Google Adwords

Google Adwords is their online advertising program and the source of the sponsored links that you generally see on the right hand side and across the top of a Google search results page.



The beauty of Adwords is that they are targeted and that you pay per click.

When you set up your advert with Google you decide on a geographic target area. This can be a country, a region of a country, a town, or a specific distance from an address. That way if you are a very locally based business like a builder or a plumber you don't waste your money advertising to the other end of the country.

The next stage is the wording of your advert. You have

• A Headline
• 2 Description Lines
• A URL (web address)

Finally you have to decide on target keywords. These are short words or phrases that are

• relevant to your business
• popular search terms
• not too competitive (i.e. there are lots of other web sites all using the same target keywords)

Google can help you with this and provide you with hints and suggestions that you may not have thought of.

The final stage is to do with money. You need to.

• Choose a currency
  

• Set a maximum cost per click for the ad (CPC)

• Set your daily budget for the ad (This is not as expensive as you might think. If you set up a budget of £1.00 you will never pay more than £30 a month for advertising to the whole English speaking world!)
  

You also need to set up a Google Account and give them details of your credit card to pay for your advert.

More Information on Google Adwords

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (optimisation if you prefer the UK spelling or SEO for short) is a tricky, big and constantly changing area in web design. Part of the problem is that there are very few people who know exactly how they work. Whilst the people who run the search engines are prepared to say a bit, they are generally pretty cagey with this details as anyone who knows how the likes of Google work could make millions.

Wikipedia defines S.E.O. as

the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results.

Generally the process takes 4 Steps

Step 1 Ensure the Site Works Properly

Web browsers are very forgiving things. Web sites that look fine to a user can be riddled with errors some of them pretty serious. These errors can sometimes throw the search engine spider off the scent and prevent the site from being properly indexed by the search engines.

Step 2 Find Popular Search Phrases

When people search on a specific topic they will go into a search engine and enter a word or phrase in the search box for that engine. The critical question is

"what phrase are they using?"
There are a couple of ways of finding out. You can use online services like wordtracker, or Google's Keywords Tool

The important thing is to go with popular search phrases that relate to the web site or the business, search engines can sometimes exclude sites if they believe the search phrases aren't relevant and may be trying to mislead them in some way.

Step 3 Build Those Phrases into The Site

Web sites and search engines work best when web pages are specific and information rich. If for example a company makes widgets (don't they always?) and two popular search phrases are "blue widgets" and "widget sizes" then the company's web site needs to have one page about blue widgets and one about widget sizes rather than trying to cram all the information onto one page.

There are critical bits of the page that need to include the phrase "blue widgets" These include

• The page title
• The page desciption
• Titles on the page
  
• The main text of the page, at the beginning
• Links
• The ALT text for the pictures
  

Too much and the search engine thinks you are keyword stuffing or spamdexing, too little and it thinks you are irrelevant.

Step 4 Submit The Site

Each search engine has it's own page for submitting a site and it's details. Each needs to be approached to submit a site individually, and it needs to be done in that apallingly old-fashioned way, by a human being! Seriously there are automatic services that claim to submit your site to hundreds of search engines that most of the big search engines will ignore. There's no short cut you have to sit down and go through the motions for each web page.

Google have a technology called site maps. These are a file in a particular format that tells Google all about your site, how your site fits together, how often and when your site was last updated and the relative importance of the different pages. If you create one of these, place it on the site and tell Google all about it it can help smooth the whole indexing process and ensure that Google sees your site the way you want it.

Further Information

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