Microsoft have relaunched windowslive as a social networking platform. For some time they seemed to be desperately trying to buy Yahoo!, then [allegedly] tried AOL, they’ve got nowhere with Facebook, Bebo and the likes and seem to have given up hitting an existing, popular market. Even their most popular platform;  Hotmail has been falling behind as other webmail systems moved into the realms of AJAX programming (the ability to load web content without reloading the entire page), their Spam filter also leaves much to be desired, certainly compared to Gmail who’s spam filter is virtually flawless!

Microsoft have tried giving away free templated websites with Office Live (which they are still doing) but the uptake seems slow and promotion scarce (for which I’m certainly thankful for), the software itself is flexible but a little over-complicated. The bonus is that they provide the hosting and domain name for free which you can take with you if and when you upgrade. For small websites with few followers, this is an excellent solution.

So what are Microsoft doing now? They seem to have gone back to their corner muttering insanities under their breaths and started work on their own products again. I fear this is too little too late as they attempt to copy the best bits from other sites rather than being inspired and moving the web forward.

Microsoft should ideally stick to offline software and continue developing it’s own products rather than trying to hit the online market. As their web efforts increase, their software side seems to be diminishing, allowing open source equivilents and indeed Apple to take the limelight. Windows is, and always has been a great product, most complainers are complaining using this platform so they must be doing something right even though it’s not quite perfect for everyone. The online side of Microsoft, that is their email exchange software and various others should be opened up to avoid the need for specific Microsoft exchange servers. This way they can compete with Google documents (which is not 100% Word compatible, and certainly far from perfect) then they will continue to dominate the office and avoid loss of marketshare to these free services. Unfortunately as more and more people are storing documents online and slowly coming to terms with editing them online, Microsoft are losing out to online office solutions.

The moral of this story is really to stick to what you’re good at. In a previous employment, I worked initially on design, development, hosting, web, print, seo, stationary, and promotional products. Between two people it became impossible to do anything with 100% quality. We attempted to project manage printers etc. but this too impacted on what we were best at. Only when we removed these ’sidelines’ were we able to concentrate entirely on web design and development and spend time making things run efficiently with the quality we, and the clients were happy with. External products we could work with but were not seen as supplied by us, so once we sent clients out to a printer, we didn’t have to worry about how things were moving. This is a lesson I’ve brought into Zako Media and until we have the skillset and staff to offer a particular product or service, we won’t offer it. I only want Zako Media to give out work which we and the client are happy with, we will not dilute our efforts, attention, knowledge, time, or profits on external activities just to try and help make a sale.

Getting your website designed can be an expensive process, it can also take a few weeks to months of your time, so how can you be sure you’ll get the right person for the job?

A website is typically broken down into the 5 parts (more for more complicated sites)

• The Design:- the actual look and feel of the site
• The HTML:- the coding which works behind the design but allows (or disallows) search engines, readability etc.
• The Server-side Coding:- This adds the main functionality to the site, email forms, database, forums etc.
• The Marketing:- This helps your site be seen.
• The Support:- Who do you call when things go wrong?

Every-body’s requirements are different, but most people will need to consider all of the above to get the right long-term relationship. Here’s how:

The Design

Have a look through the designer’s portfolio, notice the colours, layouts and styles. Everybody has a different idea as to what does and doesn’t look good. If there was one right answer, every site would look exactly the same! What you want is a designer who can produce work that you like. If they already produce designs you like the look of, then you’ve saved half the trouble of this stage.

During the design process, most designers will allow constant amendments (within reason) to get the results you want. Be sure to check with them beforehand. Some designers offer 1 draft, 1 amends and 1 final. From experience, this is usually enough. For budget and time’s sake, it’s usually best to try and stick with this anyway. If you know exactly what you want, and are a good communicator, then this will be easy.

Also to make it easier for your designer, pick a few sites you like the look of, take note of colour-schemes, styles again and let your designer know. This again will save time as they should be able to merge the elements you like into a flat file ready for processing. BE SURE YOU’RE HAPPY WITH THE DESIGN AT THIS STAGE, CHANGES TO THE DESIGN LATER ON CAN INCUR EXTRA CHARGES.

The HTML

The next phase is usually to construct the HTML. This is where the design is taken by a CSS coder, broken down into it’s many parts to be rebuilt for the web. It’s up to this person whether to leave a large red box as a red box image, or write the HTML to draw a box with a red background on the fly. This is to ensure their are as few actual images as possible but keeping to the original design. This stage generates a list of instructions for the browser (firefox, internet explorer) to follow, for example ‘Show this image, put it over there, next to it write ‘Welcome to my site’ etc.

There are two main ways of doing this, neither are wrong, but one is certainly better practice than the other.

Method 1 - tables.
The boffins at the HTML decisions office decided to give us a command for our arsenal. The table allows us to add a table of information and add in prices, contents pages, menus etc. Web designers have figured out that if you have a 3×3 table, you can insert images and use this for placement.

Whilst this works, it does have further issues, the main one being accessibility and search engines. Blind people using the internet through screen readers and search engines, both read a site in a linear fashion, tables can make this a very awkward process as the machines will treat a table as a table of data. It also generates lots and lots of code which the search engines have to sift through to find your content.

Method 2 - CSS.
This is much better practice, the text and containers are placed in the html. A separate file tells the browser where everything goes. This separate file can be easily ignored by robots and search engines get right into your text. It also has many more positioning features than tables and can create a much more user-friendly experience. If you want quality over budget, you could also ask if they do XHTML rather than HTML. XHTML is a slightly better use of HTML, it is given slightly more preference again in the search engines but is has very strict rules so can be difficult to find someone who can.

Ask your web designer which method they use. For your purposes, it may not matter. You can often get cheaper rates from people using method 1, but better quality site, better search engine results and better accessibility from method 2. When you get your site, right click and hit view source. If your code is full of <table> , <tr> and <td> tags, they’ve probably used tables. Ask a random IT professional or web designer on Ecademy to check, most will take seconds to be able to tell you. Make sure you got what you paid for. While you’re there, check for the <frame> tag. If it’s there, you may need to kick up a stink. Search engines, particularly Google hate frames and they should be banned.

The Server Side Coding
PHP, Perl, ASP.NET, Coldfusion are just some of many. This code you never see on the website, but it manages so much. It doesn’t matter which one your designer uses, as long as they’re competent at it. If you want the site to be edited later by in-house staff however, it is better to match up the technologies to make sure they understand what they’re about to be given.

The serverside coding is the part that does things behind the scenes. (instant results and effects are usually another format entirely, Javascript. This is for another blog) When you upload a file, something needs to receive and know what to do with that file. When you complete a contact us form, something needs to know how to process it. If you’re administering your own site, there must be code to do so.

When browsing their portfolio, test what you can. If you want a user registration and login, have a look to see if they’ve done it before, try logging in with fake details. You’ll no doubt get an error message, but make sure the error message is on the same site. If the login sends you to another site, this code is probably managed by a third party. If you want a forum, make sure it can be done, calculators, crm’s, cms’s etc.

It’s at this stage you may hear words like Joomla, Mambo, Drupal. Don’t worry, your designer is not putting a hex on you. All of these (plus many more) are pre-built packages available for free download which many web designers use. They take a lot of the hassle out making a website editable. Some designers use their own software (like myself) as they can be pretty generic. All should be able to provide you with a demonstration so you can see how easy/complicated it is to manage your site. If you don’t like it, ask about alternatives.

Marketing and Search Engine Optimisation

Find out what they can offer you in terms of marketing. Search engines will not find you if they don’t know you’re there. Any good designer will submit your site to all the major search engines by default. If they don’t, find out why not. You can also submit your site yourself using services such as addme.com (use a temporary or free email address so you can avoid the junk mail) This submits your site for free to most of the major search engines. You only need to do this once however.

Ask about search engine optimisation. This is often talked about as a separate service but most of it should actually be covered in the HTML part of the site at no extra cost. If you have the ability to amend your own information, a good designer can give you good pointers, or speak to Nikki Pilkington on Ecademy for ongoing checks and reports. To do it yourself, 299steps.com offers some fantastic advice.

Pay-per-click, this can be completely self managed. Google’s own system allows you to pay for adverts on certain searches. You’re bidding for positions though so some keywords are more expensive than others. If you can’t work it out, or would rather not have to worry about it yourself, again your ongoing SEO person or Nikki Pilkington or even your designer can manage these for you.

The Support

By the almost random nature of the internet, things do go wrong. Your website will crash, it will go down, it will run slowly from time to time. Sometimes you can’t get your email, sometimes you can’t send. What support packages does your web design offer? More often than not, if things go wrong it’s not your web designers fault, but they should have enough knowledge to tell you where the problem is and what you can do to fix it. If you have an IT support person, this may already be covered but it’s worth checking. The most important points are how easy is it to get hold of the right support person when you need them? Do you often have to leave messages on voicemails or can you only call during certain times? How quickly do they respond to emails? Ask if you can speak to one or two of their clients, ask specifically for people on their portfolio and find out what they think of the designer you’re considering.

Hopefully this will ensure you are better armed for that first enquiry into getting your site designed or redesigned and that you can understand some of the jargon you may have thrown at you.

We’ve all had them at one point or another, and they’re so easy to get hold of. When you do get them, they can be a nightmare to remove and could destroy months, years or all your data.

What steps should you take to avoid them completely?

1. Backup your data regularly and often. If you can’t afford to lose a full day’s worth of data, then arrange some automated backup procedures to go on throughout the day. Don’t know how? Give me a call and I’ll put you in touch with a backup and IT security specialist
2. Install an antivirus. Personally, I don’t recommend the commercial ones, Norton tends to slow my machine right down and McAfee has let virus’s through. The best anti-virus I have ever used is AVG (http://free.grisoft.com/) It’s free for personal use (and a small fee for business) but has never let me down in the years of use.
3. Don’t download programs from the internet. Even trusted sites can be hacked discretely.
4. Don’t run software from free magazine CD’s. Though checked, they can be replaced with malicious code between the distributor and the store.
5. Don’t run programs or open attachments in emails unless you know EXACTLY what is in them. If friends send you pictures, ask them to send them as images not as ZIP files. DEFINITELY AVOID FILES ENDING WITH .EXE, .BAT, .COM, .SCR even if embedded within a ZIP file.
6. When opening files downloaded or unzipped. Right click the file and force a virus check. Usually this is done automatically but this is just to make sure.
7. When you run a program from any of these sources, if nothing seems to happen, or the file disappears, consult your IT specialist as soon as possible.

Always keep your virus scan updated, most do this automatically, do not disable it.

Always allow scheduled full system scans to run. If they set to an awkward time, change it to something more helpful, again don’t disable it.

If you follow all of the above steps, you too should be happy and virus-free.