web hosting

SEO and Your Website Design

There are many elements that go into SEO.  Keyword implementation comes to mind along with quality inbound links.  One of the most essential components of all is your actual website.  When preparing to embark on an SEO mission, the first thing you need to ensure is that your site has a user-friendly feel.  This basically means that your pages are navigable, links visible and set up correctly.  It also helps if your site is built with complete, intriguing, quality content.  If the navigation of your site is sloppy with misspelled words and improper grammar, your SEO efforts will likely be less than effective.

When designing your site with SEO in mind, it is important to provide usability for your visitors and accessibility for the search engines.  A proper design will ensure that visitors can get around with ease and do not run into pages that take too long to load.  You should also know that Flash and errors in HTML code could possibly prevent from search engine robots from properly crawling and indexing your site.  A good site structure is one that caters to both your visitors and the search engines.  As a website owner, achieving a site optimized for the search engines could be a challenge, especially if you lack design skills.  When this is the case, you may need to rely on third-party professionals.

Expertise is Key

Because these elements are so important, several companies have emerged to offer their services.  Some even employ both SEO experts and web designers, allowing you to kill two birds with one stones by having someone make sure your site is optimized, and another to ensure that its easy to navigate and use.  The key is to do your research and take a little time evaluating different firms.   The best company is one that responds to your inquiries in a timely manner with satisfactory answers.  Rather than making claims about how fast or where they can ensure your rankings, they are honest and confident that their expertise will deliver results.  In short, you want a reputable firm that has proven the ability to create designs that meet W3C compliance and posses an understanding of the latest web trends as they relate to SEO.

No Guarantees

Even when turning to a professional web designer, one should never automatically assume that shelling out cash will guarantee you a top spot on Google.  The internet has opened up numerous opportunities and because of this, the web is a very competitive arena. Chances are, there are thousands of entrepreneurs who share your ambition for succeeding online.  They could even be targeting the same market as yourself.  You can spend a pretty penny on web design but without optimized content and a good marketing strategy, your beautiful website will get buried in Cyberspace.

Expectations will constantly be higher as the web continues to evolve.  Your visitors expect more feature-rich content while search engines increasingly prefer fast loading sites.  For this reason, the proper coding and effective optimization of your site are crucial.  If you don’t get it right the first time, you could find yourself paying even more to get the right design.

Cross Site Scripting: The Underestimated Website Attack

Cross site scripting or simply XSS, is one of most common threats facing website owners today.  This exploit occurs at the application layer, usually targeting scripts embedded in a web page from a client-side browser rather than the server-side.  In general, XSS is an attack that takes advantages of weaknesses in client-side technologies such as HTML and Javascript.  The intent of cross site scripting is to manipulate the scripts within a web application and execute them in a malicious manner for the benefit of the attacker.

Cross site scripting is one of several threats that uses vulnerable applications to exploit a website.  The major difference with XSS is that it does not have the ability to directly steal sensitive information from a back-end database.  Unfortunately, this has led several webmasters to believe that XSS isn’t a high-risk threat.  Ironically, many have gone on to learn the hard way, forced to suffer through public defacement and embarrassment.

The Consequences of Cross Site Scripting

The damaged inflicted by XSS exploits is widely documented.  There have been cases where large corporate websites were hacked by this attack with the results almost always being catastrophic.  Cross site scripting is used to achieve a wide variety of malicious goals and below are some of the most common:

DoS (Denial of Service) Attacks

Accessing sensitive, unauthorized information

Modifying browser and security settings

Spying on victims’ computing activities

Website defacement

Identity theft

The consequences of a successful XSS attack can be crippling for businesses of any size.  Security vulnerabilities in some of the most popular websites have led to the theft of credit card numbers and other identifying customer information.  Consumers have been duped into clicking links that direct them to a rogue site purporting as a legitimate business.  Unaware of the malicious ploy, the customer enters their details into the application, handing them right over to the hacker.  If you are the cause of your customers being compromised, they will rightfully lose trust in your site’s security, a situation that could lead to liability issues and ultimately the loss of your business.

Educate Yourself About Cross Site Scripting

The increasing number of successful attacks is proving that large enterprises are just as vulnerable as organizations working on a smaller budget.  What this really shows is that there is not necessarily a lack of resources, yet a lack of awareness within businesses at all levels.  Numerous security reports reveal that a great number of applications on the web are vulnerable to XSS.  Sadly, is not uncommon to find website owners putting their customers and business at risk by not practicing sound security.

On the surface, cross site scripting may not seem as severe as other threats but that is what makes it so dangerous.  This is one exploit far too many webmasters are not prepared for.  Until more become aware, the problem will only escalate and continuously claim new victims.  Unless you want a disaster on your hands, take every measure you can to ensure that your web applications are secure.

Hosting Your Site with FrontPage

If you want a website that looks professional but you are not well versed in programming technologies, FrontPage hosting could be something you’re interested in.  This type of hosting is a great option for the website owner who wants a site that looks good but are working with very few coding skills and money.  The powerful, simplistic technology behind FrontPage makes it ideal personal sites as well as small business ventures.  This article will introduce you to FrontPage hosting and explain the advantages it offers to your website.

What is FrontPage Hosting?

FrontPage hosting is a niche market hosting that offers support for the FrontPage application.  Developed by Microsoft, FrontPage is a program used to create and manage websites.  It offers flexibility that allows you to design professional websites all without knowledge of HTML or complex server-side scripting languages such as ASP or PHP.  Although programming skills are not required, the capabilities of FrontPage can be greatly enhanced as it allows you to format and edit HTML.  This can all be done through an intuitive user-friendly interface that contorts to those familiar with Microsoft Office applications.

FrontPage hosting is much like conventional web hosting services.  The major difference is the implementation of Microsoft server-based programming technologies known as FrontPage extensions.  In fact, FrontPage is only effective if the web host has FrontPage extensions installed on their server.  Though originally intended to run on Windows-based servers, FrontPage extensions can also perform seamlessly on Linux and Unix platforms as well.  For this reason, FrontPage hosting can usually be obtained at an affordable price.

FrontPage Features

The functionality of FrontPage hosting was extended greatly with the release of FrontPage 2003.  This version offered many new features such as a photo gallery, instant team websites and usage analysis reports.  Other features like the drop-down menus, radio buttons and check boxes all simplify website development and ensure a smooth ride for inexperienced developers.  FrontPage also offers a number of dynamic website templates that allow you to enhance the presentation of your site in minutes.  While there are limitations in terms of development, FrontPage can help you create a data-driven site through XML (Extensible Markup Language), a process that is made easy with the built-in WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor.  

Who Needs FrontPage Hosting?

As mentioned above, FrontPage hosting is geared towards webmasters who lack web design skills.  It is also best for users who do not require a significant amount of dynamic functions within their website.  If you can get by with features that are simple yet appealing, FrontPage hosting makes a great choice.

FrontPage hosting is a straightforward hosting solution that caters to beginner developers.  If you have a basic knowledge of Microsoft Office applications, you can truly excel in this environment.  The comprehensive Graphical User Interface allows for easy web page creation while the WYSIWYG editor virtually eliminates critical mistakes.  Though it is a niche offering, FrontPage hosting isn’t hard to find as a wide variety of companies offer support for the underlying technologies.