Most people love to surf the internet looking for great sites filled with useful information or meeting other people with the same interests.  If you enjoy surfing the web, you might also enjoy creating web sites.  Here are some tips on web development for beginners.

It is easier than ever to develop a web site. Not only are there plenty of tools to use, but you don’t even need to know any program languages or have any technical abilities.  With some web development services you can start your web site in only a few minutes.

If you are a little creative, there are plenty of web tools that can help you to develop a web site that is very unique and filled with great information.  Web development has changed in the last few years and the web development packages available today are extremely affordable, many of them costing less than $10 per month.

One of the ways web development has become extremely easy over the years is with the innovation of cpanel.  Cpanel is an easy way to manage your web site and web hosting. You can have plenty of control over many functions no matter how basic or advanced your web site is.  Cpanel is usually standard with many web development packages.  Many web development packages include php, multiple domains, pop3 email and advanced web statistic packages.  If you are looking to set up a web site on the web, check out the above web development tools.

A typical challenge faced by Flash developers like me is getting fonts to look like you want then to. For any project choosing the right font face and size is a process that requires both you and ultimately the client to see eye to eye.

In Flash MX and earlier versions fonts were by default anti-aliased, meaning that the edges of the text are smoothed. This is good when dealing with large type but it causes small text to appear blurry. Earlier versions of Flash also had other issues. For instance if one were to realign textfields around other objects fonts might come out of focus (because of positioning), and getting it right could take several tries.

More recently with the advent of Flash MX 2004 came the “alias text” option but, more importantly the TextField.StyleSheet() class. What is the TexFiled.StyleSheet() class? I’ll get to that but first let me tell you about this new “alias text” feature. The latter hides the anti-aliasing to make small text sharper and more legible yada, yada, yada. However, most often than not, fonts appear overly pixilated and cracked. In my opinion “alias text “ is nothing more than a little ransom note generator making every character appear as if it had been cut out of a magazine. Adding insult to injury if you are publishing for the Flash 6 player or earlier versions on Flash MX 2004 the “alias text” feature does not work on dynamic and or input textfields.

Moving forward with stylesheets. If you don’t already know something about CSS don’t fret the small stuff. Get to your favorite search engine and key in CSS (short for Cascading Style Sheets), and in seconds flat you will find hundreds of articles on CSS benefits, syntax, usage and whatnots. Very quickly, CSS is the language of style on the web and as opposed to other languages CSS is much easier to read and write. One of the reasons for this is you can pretty much read everything just as you would plain English, another is the ability to write everything in lowercase, something you could never getaway with in JavaScript.

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When it comes to search engine ranking “cute won’t cut it”. While search engines can generate a mind staggering volume of traffic what they feed off specifically is content. Search engines utilize software known as crawlers or spiders. Unfortunately spiders are blind to web design they do not index images or flash animation. Essentially a spider will visit your website peruse your content and report back to the search engine.

Based on the creepy little crawler findings your site achieves a ranking. The higher the ranking, the more visible your site becomes and a greater number potential customers using search engines will be more likely to find you. Needless to say our goal is to achieve the best possible ranking. So given that beauty is only skin deep and content is king, “Why would you spend thousands of dollars to hire a professional web designer?” What’s worse; drive yourself crazy looking for original concepts, matching appropriate color schemes etc, etc, etc…

Nevertheless people are influenced by the esthetic characteristics of your design, and quality web design lends credibility to your brand. While design might not be the most important reason visitors end up finding your site, it is one of the key ways to keep them coming back again and again.

Before you do anything rash, check out the alternative. Website templates are ready-made web designs created to be used as a basis for fast and high-quality website. Each template is unique and completely customizable right out of the box. What is more, most quality template shops will provide you with a free sample template so you can evaluate the quality of the product and try your skills before you buy.

These quality website templates are also perfect for self-taught designer such as myself always hungry for knowledge and looking for inspiration. I can’t count the number of times I have stared desperately at my laptop in search of a new idea or two. Now whenever I’m stuck, one of the things I like to do is browse to one of these template shops. In seconds I’m perusing through hundreds of different flash animated templates. Once I come across a design that I find particularly intriguing I’ll purchase the template download the complete set of source files and study it. Ultimately I’ll be able to pickup a new masking technique, duplicate a fancy movie clip, advance my knowledge of ActionScript or simply find simpler solutions to old remedies.

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There are hundreds of ways that you can promote your online business or website, some more effective than others. These five proven methods will help you to generate traffic to your site and also to generate income into your wallet.

1. One thing that appeals to everyone is “free.” If it is free people will take it. Think of the samples of cheese given away at grocery stores. Do you really want a small piece of cheese? Of course not! But you take it simply because it is free and someone is nice enough to offer it to you. The same principle applies with information or services offered from your website. You can send out free newsletters or offer a free trail period. One popular thing that is being given away now are free credit reports or free PC scans. These freebies are what we in the marketing field like to call teasers. After running the free credit report or PC scan we alert the customer if there is something found on their credit record or PC and then offer to show them what it is or repair the problem for a price. This can be an effective way to get information to your potential customers, create sales or to generate traffic to your site.

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History and Background

The virus was one of the first ever threats to computer security. It brought a whole new fear upon computer users. Bugs and glitches could cause damage unintentionally, but a virus created havoc intentionally, and therefore often caused much more damage then just glitches in software. Technically a virus must be in a host file and spread manually by people, versus a worm which spreads by an automated process and doesn’t require a host file, but we will include worms as part of the term virus. Therefore, the threat of viruses quickly multiplied expotentially. One computer infected by a virus is manageable, but a virus spreading uncontrollably and automatically can cause damage to sometimes entire populations. And with the introduction of the Internet, billions of computers worldwide could be accessed with a click of a button. These abilities are what made the virus probably the greatest security to personal computers in the 21st Century.

What kind of damage will it inflict?

Since up to 100 new viruses are discovered every minute by anti-virus industries worldwide, the damage they inflict varies considerably. Some will display an annoying popup. Some will swap your mouse buttons. Some will uninstall Internet Explorer. Some will delete all your personal files. And some, though rare, will slow down your computer fan to the point that your computer processor starts smoking. All have 1 thing in common - they reduce your productivity in some way and they inhibit you from comfortably using your PC. Therefore you must take several precautions to insure you do not to become infected with viruses. With just a few simple security measures, the chances of getting infected with a virus can be cut down by over 90%.

Security Measures

The most important step - Be careful of everything you do on the Internet! It is extremely rare for a computer to get infected by a virus if you only download and browse trustworthy sites and emails. If an email has an attachment and looks suspicious it is very likey to be a virus. If a site is providing illegal or inappropiate content, it should be considered a risk. These are basic rules of safe browsing of the Internet and unfortunately, most people only learn these rules after a disaster. Don’t learn from experience! Don’t let it happen in the first place.

Keep your system up-to-date. Nearly every major virus threat to operating systems are patched soon after discovery. Visit your operating system update website often, which is www.windowsupdate.com for Windows users.

Get a reliable antivirus solution. The most common is Norton Antivirus, but I personally do not like its unreliability and incompatibility with many PCs. On the otherhand, it is probably the most user friendly antivirus solution on the market, and is probably best for PC beginners.

If you’re looking for a free yet extremely reliable and easy-to-use antivirus solution, Avast may be your answer. I am currently running Avast and am very happy with it. I previously tried Norton Antivirus, Norton Client Security, NOD32 Antivirus and McAfee Antivirus, but each had their own individual problems and so I had to constantly change antivirus software until I finally reached Avast.

Some people go overboard and install many other security measures but I don’t recommend this. These measures only hog resources, confuse users and cause conflicts with other software. Some of this software includes firewalls, memory explorers and file protection.

References

www.wikipedia.org

us.mafee.com

www.netmom.com

www.pcworld.com

Links

Avast Antivirus - www.avast.com

Author:
Soroush King is a certified programmer, adept in VB, C++, Delphi, as well as web developer and scripter, having considerable knowledge of both PHP and Perl. He also owns and manages several professional websites.

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