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Tip: Use Your Own Naming Convention |
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| This used to always happen to us, we would get a ton of documents in a directory and not be able to find what we were looking for because of the amount of documents and their obscure names. For web developers, name your files with prefixes to help you identify what they are and do. We prefix our web sites’ administration areas with ‘admin’, like admin_login.asp. If you get really good, then you could just use an ‘a_’. For images, try a ‘nav_’ prefix for images that are used in menus. This will help you keep your sites files categorized and easy to find. |
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Tip: Debug Your Web Applications Using Internet Explorer |
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| If you design and build dynamic server pages and often have trouble finding out what is causing the errors in your pages, IE can help. If you ever get a ‘Page Can Not Be Displayed’ error with no other information, then you should turn off those friendly messages. Got to-->Tools-->Internet Options-->Advanced-->Uncheck ‘Show Friendly HTTP Errors’. This will allow you to see exactly what is causing the problem with your pages, even what line the error is on. |
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Tip: Use Viral Marketing |
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Sounds like something you wouldn’t want to do, but what we mean is create a flow of information that goes beyond just your website. A great tool to use to get the word out is a Mailing List or Newsletter program. They allow your site’s visitors to request information from your site on a regular basis. That will then allow you to contact those people who enjoyed your site and inform them of updates, improvements, or new products. Click through ratios are incredible in direct email, especially opt-in email. Don’t spam though, that just makes people mad, mad, mad.
Link: FanBlast! Newsletter Service |
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Tip: Optimize Your Site for Search Engines |
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Aside from having good content, getting people to your site is probably the most important thing. One of the main tools people use are search engines. A site needs to be modified to enable search engines to index and categorize its pages properly. Using keywords, description tags, and page titles found in the head tags of your document can greatly improve your results. When submitting your site to search engines, submit it by hand to the major ones. Something like, 90% of all web searching is done on the top 10 web engines.
Link: Spider Food |
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Tip: Gamers, Down The Textures, Up The Resolution |
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| New games are all about looking good. But for the hardcore gamer who is only interested in frags, these detailed textures can slow down gameplay. To increase your speed, go into your game’s settings and lower the graphic and texture quality. This will increase your FPS (frames per second). Also, increase your screen resolution so you can see more of the playing field and that guy coming from above. Using stereophonic headphones in almost any game today will enable you to localize your opponent using just your ears! |
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Tip: Need a Simple E-Commerce Solution? |
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Enabling web sites to accept credit cards and other forms of payment for goods can be a difficult task, involving a large number of parties, just to get your doors open. PayPal provides a system where any person with an e-mail address can begin accepting payments in less than 15 minutes. Their system is scalable to meet any demands placed on it, we even built a dynamic store using ASP and an MS Access database based on this technology (See Ustore in applications).
Link: PayPal Web Site |
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Tip: Step Up to a Hardcore Database, SQL Server |
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Many people just getting started with dynamic server page technology are using MS Access. While that is a great starting point, they should look to move quickly into using a more robust database for larger projects. Microsoft provides a free developer download of SQL Server at their site. Don’t worry if it looks daunting, the key to the entire program is the Enterprise Manager. Use it, learn it, love it!
Link: Microsoft SQL Homepage |
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Tip: See How Other Sites Do It |
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| Finding programming and design tips can be as simple as browsing the Internet. If you see a site you like, you can either view its source code (View-->Source in IE) or Save it to your hard drive (File-->Save As). You can then open up their pages and see what neat things they did to create the effect that you like. Be careful not to infringe on their programming. Use it for inspiration, not to steal code. |
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Tip: Make Use of Your Web Logs |
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| Many hosting providers now give their users access to a web site statistics program to view information on the traffic their site generates. In many cases, it is free, but needs to be requested from your host to turn it on. Once you get them up and running you can find valuable information like, where users are coming from, what pages they like the most, which pages they dislike, and more. A person who can effectively use their site’s statistics can build a very usable, site that generates more return visitors. |
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Tip: Slow Downloads? Try Download Accelerator |
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All users have been sometimes plagued by either slow connections or slow download sites. Take a look at Download Accelerator to dramatically improve download speeds. What this program does is request several copies of a file to download and requests them at different times in the download process. What you get is four smaller files downloading at the same time. The program then, stitches them back together and its available for use. A huge timesaver.
Link: Get Download Accelerator |
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| Team Macromedia |
Our
Lead Developer, Shannon Sofield, has been asked to serve
another term as a member of Team
Macromedia.
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| PayPal Advisor |
We
are a member of PayPal's Developer Advisory Board.
More information can be found at the:
PayPal
Developer's Site
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| TShirt One
|
Check
out our new gear for the body.
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| Dynamic
PDFs |
We
use ABC PDF to dynamically generate PDF files for our clients.
A great product that saves us time and money.
Learn more at the WebSuperGoo
site |
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Some of Our Sites:
PayPalDev.org
PayLoadz
ECommerce
FanBlast!
Newsletters
Dorna
USA, Inc
Rock
Center ASP/DB
NJ
Calendar of Events
Wave
Riding Vehicles
ShannonS
Art Gallery
Vision
Pro, Inc
Macromedian
Xerox
XDS, Inc
Harbor
View Properties
|
