A lot of people nowadays are establishing their own sites for a few reasons. Several of them establish sites because a simple-minded net brochure and a few are for net shops. That is not bad idea at all. Your site is one and only of the crucial elements in your business sector. So whether you’re establishing it as a simple-minded net brochure or a net shop, naming it’s fairly like as significant as naming your own baby. So it’s precisely a decent act to invest in naming it and to make it for a brand and you’ll after wards find out that it stays with you for long years.

Once you decide for your site domain name, you should then note some of the essential conditions for you to discover a great website domain name. It’s just important to know that a website domain name talks very much on the cyberspace. So for your site domain name to be easily remembered by the visitors, you need then do something to make it happen.

In selecting a site domain name, it’s interesting to know that a certain condition for your company’s name is one and only of the best tips for getting a good website domain name. It’s often believed that if you have a company, try to search a website domain name that involves the name of your company. Apart from that, it’s essential that you think for some website subject keywords that you will be able to include in your site domain name even for at least one keyword.

Furthermore, you should then be aware if the website domain name that you select identifies the content of your site. It’s slightly awkward to find some website domain names that don’t fit for the site content, right? Other experts also put some emphasis on the awareness if your website content can be classified in an online directory like the http://DMOZ.org based upon the domain name. And you should then ask if your site domain name involves some words that spelled variously in different parts of the world, like the word color and colour. So for you to not put some degree of confusion to the part of the visitors, you need then register both versions of such site domain name.

Since on that point are so a lot of fresh sites nowadays and the number of newly site domain name registration growth monthly, discovering the right site domain name might then keep a few website domain names in head or even just a combination of words once you’re still exploring for a domain name. As a matter of fact, buying a domain name today may be costly in case that you don’t find any that is available.

The domain name extensions are as well that requirement in selecting the right website domain name. You should then be well aware of the characters of the domain name extensions or top-ranking domain names and also it’s applies for you to catch the right one.

With such given information’s, maybe one of the sensible moves in selecting a website domain name is to select those site domain names that are not enforced by any other company with another extension. It’s in point of fact a basic belief that no one will be capable to register the additional domain name extension with your site domain name when it becomes well-known.

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post
• Tell a friend

I was speaking to John Lessnau via email yesterday about the WordPress plugin for LinkXL (which I am planning on reviewing soon). The site scans your website and looks for keywords etc but it wasn’t able to do it.

John then pointed to my plugin directory and said that one of the many plugins installed was conflicting with theirs. I pointed out that I didn’t actually have that many plugins installed and had just tried a few out (ie. most were not activated) but what did concern me was that everyone could see my plugins. I am not an expert with htaccess but I’m familar with most basic techniques. I’ve just been lazy and taken the time to hide my folders from the general public. Thankfully it is painfully easy to do this!

How to stop people viewing files in your directories

By default, everyone can see the files you upload to a directory (unless there’s an index file). Commonly, most webmasters forget to protect their images and banners folders. I cannot criticize anyone for this as I am quite lazy in this regard too and there really is no excuse as it’s incredibly easy to stop people viewing files in your directory.

To protect a directory from listing files all you need to do is upload an .htaccess file to the directory with the following :

IndexIgnore *

The * is a wildcard, a catch all that stops all files from being listed. You could of course only only ban certain file types. For example, if you wanted to stop your word documents but were happy with the graphic files being listed you could use :

IndexIgnore *.doc

Personally, I prefer to put all information in the root .htaccess file instead of uploading seperate .htaccess files to several directories. To do this all you need to do is add the folder path, relative to where your .htaccess file is.

So for example, if I wanted to stop people viewing the plugins and themes folder in this blog I would add this to my root .htaccess file :

IndexIgnore /wp-content/plugins/*
IndexIgnore /wp-content/themes/*

Should you be concerned about directory files being listed

Most of the time there isn’t any real harm in leaving directories open to the public but it’s probably still a good habit to protect your images, banner and video folders. At the very least it will reduce your bandwidth but it will also stop people viewing files directly outside of your main site.

For example, say you post a funny video on your site and it is bringing you a lot of traffic. If the directory the video is saved in can be viewed by everyone then the video can be viewed directly ie. people can see the non-embedded video directly which means less advertisements are being displayed to them which in turns means less money for you!

Also, goes without saying that if you have important private documents on your website then restricting them from public view is a must.

I encourage you to try this out on your site if you haven’t used this before. It’s very straight forward but should you be unsure about any of this please let me know and I’ll do my best to help

Thanks,
Kevin

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post
• Tell a friend

Branding is a very important part of promoting a website, be it a blog, forum, online shop or service. Personally, I can design basic websites and simple logos and graphics but on the whole, design is not my strong point. I always say I’m a jack of all trades and master of nothing!

Due to this I outsource a lot of my design work. In the past I have contacted designers directly when I have been looking for a new logo but recently I have instead held a contest. The site I use for this is 99designs.

Many of you may already be aware of 99designs. It was originally the contests section in the SitePoint Marketplace but was later moved to the domain 99designs.com (your sitepoint login should work on the site). The premise of the site is simple : 99designs is a place where webmasters hold design contests and designers submit their entries and the webmaster chooses what he thinks is the best design. Thousands of designers visit the site regularly and the standard of designs is pretty high.

Launching a contest costs $39. The minimum price you offer depends on the type of design you need :

Category	Minimum Prize	Suggested Prize
Web Page Design	$250	$600
Stationery Design	$150	$200
Logo Design	$150	$300
Button & Icon Design	$100	$200
Other Graphic Design	$100	$300
T-Shirt Design	$150	$300
Banner Ad Design	$150	$300
Print Design	$150	$300

I’m a pretty easy going guy and I think I’m good to work with but some of the designers I have worked with in the past must have been a little annoyed with me. When they asked for a general idea of what kind of design or logo I wanted I struggled for an answer. When they asked what type of colors I wanted to them to use I asked for them to show me a few different color schemes so I could decide. They must have been asking themselves what they were getting into!

To quote a famous saying :

I don’t know much about art but I know what I like

The above quote sums up my creative mind. The reason I outsource so much design work is because when it comes to design my mind goes blank. So when a designer asks me to point them in the right direction I’m not really much help however when I see a design I instantly have an opinion about it and can say why I like the design or why I don’t like it.

This is why design contests are perfect for me. They allow me to see several different ideas and the overall cost is only slightly higher than going to a designer directly. Also, most professional design companies require a deposit or partial payment up front and set a limit on the number of drafts they will do for you. If you don’t like any of their designs you might find yourself out of pocket.

I’ve been in this situation before but thankfully the times I didn’t like the drafts I hadn’t paid up front. Just recently Nate Whitehill recommend a banner designer to me but the guy was really poor and after I rejected the first 3 drafts (which were really bad) he suggested we part ways (which I agreed to very quickly!!).

My current contest for a logo

I recently had a redesign of Electric Bandits, a tech forum I’m trying to develop. The forum skin designer, Kolby, isn’t really good at making logos so I’m currently holding a contest at 99designs (in the meantime, a temporary logo has been uploaded).

The contest has only been live 2 days and still has 5 days to run but there have been some good entries already. I plan on letting the contest run the full week as there may be some more entries in the next 5 days. Here’s a preview of some of the best entries so far

Submitted by freeman

Submitted by naj-dreamer

Submitted by Durinthiam

Submitted by escalator73

You can see all of the entries here.

At the moment I’m leaning towards either the design from naj-dreamer or escalator73, but I’ll make the final decision next week. Let me know what you think, I’d love to hear your opinion on these logos and I’m sure it will help me with my decision

Design Contests

If your budget is tight you might not think that paying for a logo or design is worth it. Afterall, there are thousands of website, blog and logo templates on the web which you can tweak to suit your needs.

However, I do think that in the long term, a unique identity will prove to be a good investment, particularly when compared to other expenses like advertising. If, like me, you are graphically challenged, design contests are a fantastic way to see several designs from a wide ranger of designers.

Not sure if any of you have held a contest before but next time you’re looking to get a logo or template designed I recommend considering holding a design contest instead of contacting a design company directly

Kevin

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post
• Tell a friend

Do you display the time on your website and want to add a small greating next to it? Now you can with this simple tutorial. We will take the current time and display a greating depending on the time of day.

Continue Reading ->

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post
• Tell a friend

This tutorial is a follow up to our PHP Login Script Tutorial. You will learn how to encrypt passwords to make your login script more secure.

Continue Reading ->

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post
• Tell a friend

Have you ever wanted to know when Google crawls your website? Well now you can using a simple PHP script which emails you everytime GoogleBot crawls your site.

Continue Reading ->

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post
• Tell a friend

I have put together this tutorial to help you alternate the background colors of table rows. Alternating table row background colors it will make it easier for your website’s users to understand data in tables, as well as making your table look better.

Continue Reading ->

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post
• Tell a friend

Are you at the stage where your website needs to pass information from one page to another? If so then you might want to learn about PHP Sessions.

Continue Reading ->

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post
• Tell a friend

I have been asked to create a short tutorial to demonstrate how to make a simple PHP Login Script. I have put together 5 simple steps to help you get your PHP login script up and running in minutes.

Step 1: Create Members Table In Database

Before you can set up the Login Script you need to have the members table set up in your MySql database. Below is the code to create your members table:

[sourcecode language='php']

CREATE TABLE `members` (

`id` int(4) NOT NULL auto_increment,

`username` varchar(65) NOT NULL default ”,

`password` varchar(65) NOT NULL default ”,

PRIMARY KEY (`id`) ) TYPE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=2 ;

[/sourcecode]

You then need to create a user that can be used to test the login script. This can be done using the code below:

[sourcecode language='php']

INSERT INTO `members` VALUES (1, ‘david’, ‘password’);

[/sourcecode]

Step 2: Create a Login Form

You now need to create a login form, where users can enter their username and password. Below is the code for a login form and submit button:

[sourcecode language='php']

Username:

Password:

[/sourcecode]

When the submit button is pressed it sends the information and the user to the ‘login.php’ page.

Step 3: Create the ‘login.php’ file

Below is the code for your ‘login.php’ file. You will need to enter your database information into the top part. It will then connect to your database, search for a match on the username and password entered in the form, if it finds a record the user is sent to the ‘login_success.php’ file, if not then an error message is displayed.

[sourcecode language='php']

$dbusername=""; // Mysql username

$dbpassword=""; // Mysql password

$db_name=""; // Database name

$tbl="members"; // Table name

// This connects to server and then selects the members databse.

mysql_connect("$host", "$dbusername", "$dbpassword")or die("cannot connect");

mysql_select_db("$db_name")or die("cannot select DB");

// Assign the username and password from the form to variables.

$username=$_POST['username'];

$password=$_POST['password'];

$sql="SELECT * FROM $tbl WHERE username='$username' and password='$password'";

$result=mysql_query($sql);

// This counts to see how many rows were found, there should be no more than 1

$count=mysql_num_rows($result);

// If result matched $username and $password, table row must be 1

if($count==1){

// Register $myusername, and redirect to file "login_success.php"
session_start();
$_SESSION["logged"] = 1;
header("location:index.php");
}
else {
$_SESSION["logged"] = 0;
header("location:login.php");

}

?>

[/sourcecode]

If the username and password is matched a ‘Session’ is started, for more information about ‘Sessions’, see our guide to sessions. You can send the user to any web page after then have logged in, you simply edit the location to the file you wish to send the user to. You will need to use the code from the top of the ‘login_success.php’ file to ensure that the user is logged in. If you are sending the user to the ‘login_success.php file you will need to create it now.

Step 4: Create the login_success.php file

If the username and password is matched in the ‘Login.php’ file then the user is sent to the ‘login_success.php’ file. This file needs to check that the user is logged in. If the user is logged in then they can see the page, if they are not logged in they are sent to the ‘notloggedin.php’ file. Below is the code that needs to be entered at the very top of the page.

[sourcecode language='php']

// Check to see if session is not registered, if it is not redirect the user back to the notloggedin.php file.

// Put this code in first line of every web page that you only want logged-in users to see.

if($_SESSION['logged'] != 1){ header("location:login.php"); }

?>

[/sourcecode]

You then continue with the rest of the web page as you normally would, for example:

[sourcecode language='php']

Login Successful

[/sourcecode]

Once your users are logged in you will need to give them the option to log-out.

Step 5: Create the logout.php file

When the user logged in you created a session, so to log the user out you need to remove the session. To do this you need to put the following code in the top line of your ‘logout.php file’:

[sourcecode language='php']

session_destroy(); ?>

[/sourcecode]

This destroys the session. You can then continue with the webpage, and you could simply display a message to tell the user they have been logged out. You now have a working PHP login script, feel free to use it on your web site. Why not learn how to encrypt your PHP Login Script? If you have any problems please feel free to comment on this post and I will try to answer them as quickly as possible.

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post
• Tell a friend

There are alot of HTML tags available to a web developer and it can be hard to remember them all. That is why I have knocked together a HTML Cheat Sheet that you can print out or bookmark, to help you remember HTML tags.

Continue Reading ->

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post
• Tell a friend