The Difference Between Web Design and Web Development

When you think about the difference between web design and web development you can compare it to the difference between architecture and construction. One deals with the appearance inclusive of the layout, colors, interaction between links etc related to a website or application while the other deals with the implementation or the "how" part of the process. This includes method of implementation and programming of the website or software.

When designing a website the designer must be very imaginative and creative. In addition it is necessary that the designer contact the client and fully understand what is required; the priorities and requirements. This will enable the designer to create a suitable design for the requirements. Colors also needs to be taken into careful consideration and also the appearance as it relates to the client's marketing needs and wishes they may have..

Consider web designing for the Coca Cola Company as an example. The designer would need to consider the color and as we all know the most dominant color of Coca Cola is red. So it would not be wise for the designer to hint at the company to put another color as the more dominant one when designing their web site. Also the company's lively and young image suggests a design that will closely match a youthful and vibrant look. This can be accomplished by adding videos, texts that has stars coming out from them and any additional graphic that will create a spark in a younger crowd.

Web development on the other hand involves implementing the design from the website design model.

The developers may need to perform a feasibility study with the designers in the initial phases of the website development. Sometimes the expectation of the designers is very high and often exceeds the limits of the technology available to the developers. Thus the developers may need to find the best way they can develop the website without interfering too much with the look and feel of the product.

As with our Coca Cola example; once the company accepts the design presented to them the designers will then present the model to the developers. The developers in turn will analyze the model and decide what is possible and what needs to be reconsidered or altered. Then an actual technical solution that best suits the design will be implemented. It is not necessary that the developers know why certain colors are preferred; they just need to follow the design specifications. However, the developer may call a meeting with the company and the designers to inform them about anything that is beyond the scope of their technology and decide on a more suitable way of developing their website.

To ensure quality work which is expected by all clients it is essential for web designers and web developers to work together. It is important to note though that both of them have different parts to play in the overall development of the website; one is focused on the appearance and the other on the foundation just like architect with its constructors.

Unique Content Management Software and Sales Manager Solutions.

Google Says Internet is a Cesspool, Why Would it Not Be?

Internet is a cesspool, quite so, there are many who are working hard to produce something worthwhile, and many who are simply trying to create valid and permanent links to increase visibility of their websites and also get them a good search engine ranking.

It is surprising, why internet would be converted into a cesspool, here quality is of utmost importance, plagiarism is booed on and there are check points for what your website actually contains. The reason for cesspool is a rampant advertising that is required for a website to make it to the top.

Creating permanent links is important because paid links are expensive. Google and Yahoo both run paid links which are exorbitantly expensive for those whose home currency is a dollar and also for those whose currency is not a dollar. Though PPC campaigns are fairly valued asking for links more than a thousand per day can actually empty a person's pocket.

This race to create permanent links through blogs and article directories would have lessened if the PPC campaigns were not so exorbitantly valued. Cheaper PPC campaigns would mean people using this means for finding website exposure rather than writing the same thing again and again and submitting it to hundreds of article directories on the Internet only to create links.

The above would have helped considerably in reducing the cesspool on the Internet. All those who can write for themselves are able to maintain some quality check, hiring a writer however, means they have to rely on the information provided by the writer rather than their own. If people who are hiring other writers had any other affordable means to reach their audience, the cesspool on the Internet would have decreased considerably.

Blogging forums do provide a way for the people who find writing difficult to reach online community, however, blogging is an art, quite difficult to master. Catching on your audience's vein and using this information to become their favorite has been the virtue of quite a few quality bloggers.

There are a valuable few who are trying to reach their audience by providing them the latest information and developments in the related area. Not everyone has the creativity therefore, it is obvious that there will be thousands of pages of information which is not needed, on the other hand there will he a paltry hundred pages of information which is most required.

All of us are equally guilty of adding stuff to the cesspool. However, if out of 100 articles one article is useful to the readers I would take it as my day has been made.

Website Development Search Engine Optimization, Keyword Tools, Internet Advertising, Web Content

Moving Pages on Your Server? - For SEO Use a 301 Redirect and .htaccess

Are you doing a major website redesign and moving some of your web pages around? A quick SEO (search engine optimization) tip you can use is to use a 301 redirect with htaccess to keep your page rank for that page. This kind of redirect will also make sure that the major search engines can still find your previously indexed content. Doing this will also ensure that the search engines can still find the pages with that have moved and should pass along your existing page rank.

Here is a good example of when I was ran up against this very problem. Recently I changed the location of some of the files on my website. I moved some of them into the old portfolio directory they were in to new and different location. Here is how I kept the search engines informed about this change.

Use you favorite text editor to create a file named .htaccess in the directory that contains your web pages. I use a program called pico on my server to do this, but any text editor should do the trick. If the .htaccess already exists then open it up and add this text to the bottom of the file:

redirect 301 /old-page.html http://www.yourserver.com/new-directory/new-file.html

Make sure to substitute your file names for "old-page.html" and "new-file.html", and edit your server name from "www.yourserver.com".

Depending on how often the search engines crawl your site your links should be updated to the the new location within a few days to a few weeks.

Daniel Catts is a web designer and web developer at http://www.dancatts.com

Strategies to Make Your Blog Web Site More Valuable

One of the main ways to increase sales is to put offers in various places that are normally overlooked by Internet marketers. One such place is the error page. Another is the thank you page or the order entry form. There are different ways to market people when they finally land on your site, but you want to add offers wherever you think they might be visible to people, so even the error page can be a good place to add an offer.

When your buyers see the trouble you've gone to in order to customize the site to add offers in places that can generate unexpected sales, they will be delighted and impressed. So, let's go through some of the details here.

An error page is the page people get when they type in a URL in your domain that doesn't exist. This can either be due to a misspelling or because you took the page down and people had the old page bookmarked. To add offers to the error page, also known as the 404 error page, you can use a plug-in too.

Download the 404 Error page plug-in available at askapache.com/404-google-WordPress-plugin.html and FTP it up to your site. You will want to put it into the same plugins folder you put the other plug-ins into before. Then, activate it the same way by getting it to turn green.

While you are in the admin area of your site, you will want to look for the option panel and select that. There will be a submenu entitled "AA Google 404."

You will want to insert the Google Search API key there. Hit the update button. Then go back to the main admin area and look up the Presentation > Theme Editor area. There should be a link there that will allow you to edit the 404 error page. Create a template for how you want the error page to look and add the code that tells it to add some offers.

Another thing that buyers like to see are site stats. You can offer these directly on the web site by installing the Cystats plugin. It is located at WordPress.org/extend/plugins/cystats. This nifty plug-in lets visitors to your site see the number of referring pages, most read categories, and even most read comments, and a whole lot more. It is a great way to prove that your site has readership and a high interest level.

By the way...do you want to learn exactly how to create a high income online business by meeting the needs of people in your niche through coaching, consulting, and teaching online classes?

Download my new recording: "How to Sell High Ticket Products Online" here: High Ticket Selling

Or...do you want to learn how to increase your online income by adding coaching, consulting, and online classes to your existing practice or business? Find out how here: Internet Marketing Coaching

Make Money With Website Customization Services

After you sell a web site, there are still other ways to make some extra income off the site. If you are particular crafty with web site programming, graphics design, or even freelance content writing, you can offer some of these services as "customization services."

Most of the time people want a turn-key web site they can start to make money from right away, but they also need to continuously update it and market it to make money. If they don't necessarily have the experience, they may turn to someone to put up their own logos, graphics, get new content up, or change the layout and design of the web site. They may want to add an eBay or CafePress store. There are endless ways that they can improve on an already made site, but they may not want to bother with doing the work themselves.

That's where you come in. If you have several contractors you trust who can do this sort of work, you can sell these services to your customers after the fact. Just let them know that you would be willing to do any customization work for them, should they decide they want additional features or custom graphic work to make the site more individual.

In essence, you're really only going to have market that offer in email a few times and then wait to see if they want it. As mentioned earlier, many will only buy a site that doesn't need a huge amount of customization, but some will buy a site that has everything except one or two features they want. Why not be the one to offer them that work? You can even give them a discount from the normal customization fee, if they buy the web site from you.

This can turn into a healthy stream of income, particularly if you are outsourcing the work, instead of doing it yourself. What you are basically doing is giving out referrals, finding some qualified but cheap labor, and then farming out the work to other people. You get to set the rate and you can figure out how much money you are making additional per hour. And, if your workers are in India, you can be sleeping in your bed while they're out there making money for you.

The customer doesn't have to know you've outsourced the work. You can be the project manager to make sure your client gets exactly what they want and that the workers are doing what they are supposed to do. Then, collect some monies up front (some people prefer 1/3 of the total estimated project costs) and wait for the workers to finish their job and present the final product to your client.

If you get very good people working for you, not only do you have ways to make good money with clients that you sell web sites to, but you can outsource some of the work you're doing to create web sites too. Anything that frees up your time so that you can market more and sell more offers is going to end up putting more money in your pocket than actually doing the work yourself. That's one way to leverage other people's time so that you create a system that can bring in money, whether you are lying on a beach in Hawaii or sitting at your desk in front of the computer.

By the way...do you want to learn exactly how to create a high income online business by meeting the needs of people in your niche through coaching, consulting, and teaching online classes?

Download my new recording: "How to Sell High Ticket Products Online" here: High Ticket Selling

Or...do you want to learn how to increase your online income by adding coaching, consulting, and online classes to your existing practice or business? Find out how here: Internet Marketing Coaching

Transferring Ownership of the Web Site When You Sell It

Transferring Ownership Of The Web Site

There are multiple steps to transferring a web site although the total process only has to take a half hour, if you did it all yourself. But, your buyer may want to do some of the work themselves or you may want to opt to have them do it, depending on if they are knowledgeable enough to complete these tasks. If not, you can do it yourself, but even though the process itself may take about a half hour, the total propagation of the site from one server to another may take several days. That's because the Internet is such a large entity that it has to update several servers that point the site to the new home in order for it to finally be transferred. But, here we'll go over the steps you need to take to transfer a web site you sell in detail.

Push The Domain To The Buyer

You are going to have to first push the ownership of the domain name to the buyer. This is done by having the customer sign up to the same registrar in which you registered the name. This is accomplished by setting up a free account where you can push that domain name to the new owner. There is typically no charge for pushing a domain name from one owner to another on the same registration service.

Each registrar may have different ways to do this, so you will need to check the registrar's website to find out how to do it for your particular domain name registrar. After the domain name has transferred ownership, then your buyer has to set the name servers to point to the new web host they want to use. If they're going to continue to host with you, then they won't need to change the name servers and you're basically done.

Transferring A Site From One Host To Another

If you have an experienced buyer, you don't have to move the site yourself. You can just give them the FTP information they need to log into the server it's already on and thus they can copy the site over to another host. You might want to give them a time deadline to do this in so that they don't wait forever to finish the transaction. Ten days is a good time limit.

The Experienced Buyer

On the other hand, if you have an inexperienced website buyer or you just don't want to give access to the FTP information so that there can be no problems with the new customer screwing up the site before it's transferred, then you can offer to move it yourself.
Here are the steps you will need to follow to move the files from your host server to another distinct hosting provider:

1. Log in to your web site server using your FTP program.

2. Go to the public_html directory where you should have installed most of the WordPress files. If you didn't follow our instructions to do this, then you will have to go to the directory which you did pick to install those files.

3. You are going to want to download everything that is necessary to run the web site on another server. Copy all those files to a folder on your desktop and save it.

4. Don't delete any files, folders, database, or anything while doing this process. If you miss something, you can always come back and find it later instead of wondering what happened and not being able to recreate a working setup.

5. In the folder you just created on your desktop, create a subfolder. Label it aaa_database for the name.

Copy The Databases Too

Next, you want to make sure that any databases associated with your web site are also transferred onto the new host. This will be a process of backing up the databases to the subfolder you just created called aaa_database. Then, from there, you will have everything you need in one folder to be able to successfully move all the files without missing anything.

To copy the databases, you have to follow these steps:

1. Log in to the Cpanel area on the server that is currently hosting the site.

2. You will see an option or icon that says, "MySQL databases." You will need to review each of the databases listed to see if they are part of the web site you wish to transfer or not.

3. Review the WordPress database information for this web site and make sure that you at least copy this one to the subfolder. Make a note of the user that is assigned to each database you are copying to your subfolder. Make note of any other databases that also need to be copied and backed up that are associated with this web site and their associated user.

4. At the bottom of the page, you will see another option that reads, "PHP My Admin."

5. After you are in this area, you will see a listing of databases and just select the one that you already know are needed for this web site installation to work correctly.

6. Then, you will want to choose the "export" column and SELECT ALL.

7. Then, choose SQL.

8. You will want to choose the next option that says, "Save as File."

9. Click, "GO."

10. Then save it to the subfolder you've created within the WordPress main folder, which is named aaa_database.

11. If you have more than one database you have to copy to the folder, than just repeat steps 5 through 10.

The Big Move

While that may seem like many, many, steps, once you get the hang of this you will find it actually only takes a few minutes to complete. All this work is necessary to make sure that you have a full copy of the website still hosted while you have a full copy in one folder on your desktop so that you can easily move it.

One thing that you will notice as you are downloading the database files is that they all will have the same prefix, and that prefix is the username you logged in with. So, if you have gone to your Cpanel and logged into the MySQL area with the username NANCYM, then the databases associated with that account would start with a prefix of NANCYM and then an underscore and the name of the database file. So, it would look something like NANCYM_mydatabasename.

Of course, just because you chose the username NANCYM for your account doesn't mean your buyer did too. In all likelihood, you can expect them to have a different username. You will need to know what that is so that you can rename all of the database names to change the prefix to the new username that is associated with your buyers Cpanel account and MySQL databases. Then, you will need to make sure that you import those databases into the area with that username.

Here are the steps to ensure that you will have harmony between the new customer account and the old databases when you move the information over, after you've already renamed the prefixes:

1. Ask your customer for the username and password for the Cpanel of their new hosting site.

2. Log into the customer's Cpanel to continue the process.

3. Get into their MySQL databases area.

4. You are going to want to create a database in their MySQL area that has exactly the same database name as the one on your hosting server.

5. You will also want to create the same database users and passwords that were available to your old database that was hosted on your site.

6. After you've created the user(s), you still need to attach the user(s) to the database with the exact same privileges as what they had on your hosting server. Most of the time this will be set to all privileges.

After you've done this preparatory work, you are ready to import the information into the new database that you've created.

1. Go back to the MySQL database page and find the PHP MyAdmin link at the bottom of the page.

2. Click on the PHP MyAdmin link.

3. Look for the database you just created. If it's not listed you may need to open the drop-down menu and look for it there.

4. Click on it to select it and open the database.

5. There will be an option to IMPORT. Select that.

6. It will ask you for the location of the file you are importing. In the "location of text file" option, click the BROWSE button and look for the database that you stored in the folder on your desktop.

7. Select that database file and choose GO.

Following these steps you can import any database necessary for the proper functioning of the site. First create a shell database that has the same users and privileges of the old hosted site and then import the information into that shell. It's actually a very simple process even though there appears to be many steps. It probably won't take more than a few minutes for each database you need to import.

Other Options To Activate

If your buyer just got any old host and didn't do any work to prepare that platform, you will need to check other things and activate them if they aren't already setup to go. If the site you created didn't have any of these options activated or being used, then you won't need to check them out on the new host site either. But, just in case you did fiddle with these and then need a reminder, here are a few things that some people forget to check or activate that can cause errors when running the web site later.

- Email
Did you have a bunch of auto responders, email addresses, and more set up to run some marketing on your web site. You had better make sure that you set up the accounts for your buyer too or that portion of the web site will fail to work and notify them of potential buyers or someone wanting to join their email list.

- Special Directories
Did you have other directories that were running special features on your site? Make sure those are also set up. If they were password protected, you will also have to make sure they are password protected on the new host too. And, they will have to be password protected with exactly the same username and passwords as you used on the old site, to be safe and make sure things continue to function.

- Redirect Pages
Some Internet marketers use redirect pages to be able to quickly change an affiliate offer, should it go sour or they find a better option for the same type of product and service they've advertised. In that case, they may have the affiliate offer go to a redirect page that has programming that then takes them to the affiliate offer.

When they want to change out ALL affiliate links, they don't have to go to every single page and manually change the code. They just change the redirect page to another offer and all their web pages are updated automatically this way. If you do have redirect pages on your site that server a highly needed function, you will need to make sure they are also set up on your new customer's site too. They will need to have exactly the same information as what you had in your old site.

- Special Jobs
Have you set up CRON jobs to run to do special things? You will need to program the same jobs to run automatically on the new server too.

Configure The New Site

So, you have done a lot of work, but you still haven't transferred all the files that you had in the public_html folder. Before you do that, however, you will have to change the basic configuration file that WordPress uses so that it reflects the new database names, usernames, and passwords. To change the configuration file before uploading your files, do the following steps:

1. Go to the WordPress files in the folder on your desktop.

2. Locate the file called wp-config.php. If you don't have the extensions listed, it might just show up as a wp-config filename.

3. Open in file in a text editor and change the database names, usernames, and password information.

4. Be sure you include the new prefix that is associated with your customer's Cpanel account and not the one you used for the old site.

5. Save the changes you made and close the file.

Upload Remaining Files

You're almost done, so don't fret. Again, this seems like a long chapter, and it is! But, the details take far longer to write in detail than they take to actually execute. Once you have the hang of this, you will be able to do this entire process in about half an hour. Of course, the site itself won't propagate through the Internet for at least three days.

To finish uploading the files, use the following steps:

1. Create an FTP connection to your customer's hosting server.

2. Connect to their public_html directory.

3. Upload everything in the public_html folder on your desktop except for the subfolder that contained your database. Those have already been imported.

That's it! You're done. All you need to do now is to test the site thoroughly before you inform your buyer that the transfer has been completed and it awaits further propagation through the Internet, which usually takes a period of three days. What that means is that when they type their domain name into the URL before the three days are up, the customer might not get their site up as expected. Just wait three days, then test the site again and make sure it comes up when you put in the proper URL.

Note: Please keep in mind, these steps are designed to help you, but they may not work exactly the same way for you, depending on your computer or hosting...

By the way...do you want to learn exactly how to create a high income online business by meeting the needs of people in your niche through coaching, consulting, and teaching online classes?

Download my new recording: "How to Sell High Ticket Products Online" here: High Ticket Selling

Or...do you want to learn how to increase your online income by adding coaching, consulting, and online classes to your existing practice or business? Find out how here: Internet Marketing Coaching

Some Thoughts on Website Flipping

One thing you do have to keep in mind is that the Internet is constantly evolving and your sites need to evolve with it too, to stay competitive. The Internet is just starting to recognize how to make money online from web sites. These practices can change very quickly. Once SEO was the only way to go, and then Google decided to weight real content more heavily. Some tricks like meta tag stuffing (considered "black hat" tricks) to increase search engine exposure might have worked once, but now Google ignores the meta tags. They are constantly changing their algorithm for ranking and placing web sites on result pages. If you don't keep up with the changes, you might end up having trouble selling sites that relied on old techniques and information. And, today's consumer is extremely savvy, so you need to be too.

One of the biggest changes in recent history is the advent of social networking sites. These sites are an excellent new form of Internet property that are highly desirable. If you can learn how to set up some of these sites and then flip them, you should have a steady income for quite some time, until the public tires of them or something new comes along.

It's also desirable to have more than one selling venue for your sites. While eBay is a really great place to sell your web sites, they can also change their policies to make it hard to continue your business. This happened with people selling information products online, when suddenly (quite overnight), eBay said these types of products could not longer be listed on auction and had to be put into classified ads, where they had far little exposure. The new policy only allowed the sale of physical items in auctions, so sellers of e-books and virtual reports, were left trying to change their entire business model so that they could still make a profit while providing an e-book on a physical product like a CD-ROM, to be able to list it in eBay's auction pages.

In order to keep something like that from hitting you in the face, check out other places to sell your web sites and explore these markets too. That way if one selling venue changes it's policy, you still have a way to continue your business model regardless of any new rules.

Other places to sell your site are webmaster forums, like DigitalPoint and Sitepoint. There are many new users that come in looking for web sites that can generate an income and are ready to go. Take a look at these too. They are a valuable source of information on what the public wants in a web site and what are the most popular features and criteria that make a web site more valuable. Have a look at the Resource section that follows, to find links to other places to explore this fascinating and profitable topic. There are so many helpful sites and aides out there for people getting into web site flipping that we just couldn't list them all. However, it is a great place to start to get a broad view of how to start to create a business that can generate not only instant sales, but also residual income for years to come.

So, don't be afraid to dip your toe! The world is waiting for you to take that first bold step into creating your own home business that can fulfill your income needs while giving you the thrill of discovering a whole new unexplored territory, the glorious World Wide Web.

By the way...do you want to learn exactly how to create a high income online business by meeting the needs of people in your niche through coaching, consulting, and teaching online classes?

Download my new recording: "How to Sell High Ticket Products Online" here: High Ticket Selling

Or...do you want to learn how to increase your online income by adding coaching, consulting, and online classes to your existing practice or business? Find out how here: Internet Marketing Coaching