Sid - Blogging for Newbie Webmasters’

It has been nicely explained in the following articles:

#1

#2

And in many other places. Worth reading and implementing the same.

Quick ToDO list:

Step:1

Open file, named as ‘hosts’ (found under c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\ folder in WiinXP)

Add the line mentioned below at the end of that file.

127.0.0.1 client-website-name.local

Save & close that file.

Step: 2

Open httpd.conf (Either search for it, or click White WAMP icon at system tray -> Config File -> httpd.conf)

Search for the string: DocumentRoot

DocumentRoot “C:/wamp/www”

Add FOLLOWING LINES BELOW DocumentRoot “C:/wamp/www”.
NameVirtualHost 127.0.0.1

<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1>

ServerName localhost

DocumentRoot “C:/wamp/www”

</VirtualHost>
AND below that, add these lines:

<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1>

ServerName myclient.local

DocumentRoot “C:/wamp/www/folder-name”

</VirtualHost>

Now Save & Close httpd.conf

Step: 3

Restart WAMP

Open your web browser and type: http://myclient.local

It will display local copy of your client’s website.

Well designing your own website/blog has never been easy. You have to think both in terms of the visitors as well as Search Engine Bots; Often it turns out to be a tough trade-off. You pay enough attention in choosing the most attractive layouts, adding some decent colors, or using a JPEG/GIF/PNG art-work to give your site a distinctive look. Me, although not a great fond of flash, still some websites continue to use it. Also I think there is no harm in adding a flash-intro if it is reasonably brief and with a skip-intro option.

But while designing website, how often do we consider adding the best-fit font-size? But to optimise your conversion rate, and to get visitors sticking to your web pages - font size is extremely important. Specification of font size is done in pixel, point or a more generic em unit; and it is extremely difficult to set any standards for font size as it depends a lot on the type of visitors you are targeting as well as theme, layout and overall design of a website.

Based on your own standards of smallest font size, you can set your font size to at most three to four different levels: Tiny, Medium, Large and Largest; Now you need to use them carefully to help visitors reading your content without much difficulty.

Now here I want to mention a minimum font-size guideline:

Microsoft: 11px Tahoma
Apple: 11px Lucida Grande Regular

Also, setting your body font-size to 70% will help you to set the font size of your web pages in terms of em.

But this is just the minimum font size using which you can write your text. Depending upon your website layout or design - it may sometimes look dull and some other time professional. It all depends entirely on the content type.

I just make a quick check at eBay and Amazon, and it was not surprising that both of these websites use rather a medium font size targeting a more general class of audience. You can also check sites like rackspace.com to get an idea of how tiny fonts help sites looking professional. And do not forget effective use of big fonts in some single page promotional web sites - that too works fine for the TG, believe me or not.

And before conclusion, i must say that it is always better to set font size in terms of ems and not in terms of px, or pt, and always use CSS to set font-size.

And one final note: setting the right font-size will definitely improve your site traffic as well as ensure better cross-browser compatibility.

A must read guideline by Adobe

OK friends. I’m using and have used different Content Management Systems like Joomla, Drupal or Some forum scripts like Simple Machines Forum; Basically, what I have felt is that CMS gives you an easy way to put your site online overnight without any HTML knowledge. Also CMS can be customised easily with different freely available templates, or better if you can edit CSS to give it an altogether different looks; updating CMS  based  Websites are also easy  as you get GUI to create new web pages, or modify existing pages. Undoubtedly, feature-rich CMSs available today seem to provide opportunity for everybody to have their own websites.

But this is just one side of the story. There are certain aspects of CMS that will put you into doubts before using them anymore.

1. Design and Layout Changes are easy but you must have some working knowledge in CSS  classes used in a particular CMS; otherwise, it will consume some appreciable length of time to modify the looks and feels of your website.

2. You may not get what you want: Fact is that unless you know how to use APIs used in a particular CMS, it is not that easy to alter an existing feature, or even adding new features as per your choice. And popular CMSs, being pretty hard-coded, it is not that easy to modify them. If you try to make such attempts on a production site directly without much knowledge of internal architecture, there  is every possibility that your site may even crash.

3.  Security issues and patches: As CMS codes are available for FREE, so anybody can see it and this exposes each CMS to vulnerable hacking attempts. Although update patches are available for download, but you may consider its significance only after your site has been hacked.

4. Popular CMS are often cluttered with different features, which may not be at all important for the kind of sites you are running. So, you have to take the trouble to deal with unnecessary features.

5. Problems using CMS: You may face problems while using a CMS arising out from nowhere; like the most infamous login loop problem, or access denied problem that webmasters using CMS have reportedly faced. Most fatal part of the story is that it is really difficult to figure out exactly what goes wrong in case you can’t login to your Administrative control panel. There is no alternative way. You have to login to administrative control panel for site administration and maintenance, and  when you can’t do that, your site is bound to be orphaned atleast for the time being.

So, although Free CMSs are great but only if everything goes right; in case you have a problem it may not be that much easy to locate what goes wrong without an in-depth knowledge of that CMS. You may even think, what was wrong with my good old HTML web site?

It seems to be commonest form of error that you’ll face with Drupal site, and, it is hard to believe your own eyes the way this error appears all of a sudden absolutely from nothin.

I have seen this particular Drupal Error message appears under different situaltions.

1. After a fresh installation when someone tries to login to his Admin Account.

2. After an upgrade from an old Drupal version.

3. After moving a Drupal site to a new host.

4. Even after logging in to your Admin Account, you may not able to Administer site for that Access Denied error message.

5. And sometimes, it comes from nowhere all of a sudden.

So, I followed a long thread in Drupal.org in this issue and finally have found an easy solution, hope it is the master patch for all the above cases.

Now here goes how to get rid of this error???

• Firstly, you need PHP Version 5.2.0
• Now open session.inc file found under /includes directory
• Around Line #17 find this :
• function sess_read($key) {
  global $user;
• Now paste one line of code below that line:

register_shutdown_function(’session_write_close’);

• Now save and upload session.inc file.
• Hope this will resolve the issue.

OK, just now I’ll share with you all few links to sites that offer FREE Banners and Logos:

FREE Banners
Creating your own custom banner in this site is simple and fun. All you need to do is to choose a style, add some text and click create button. Tha’t all, your custom banner is ready for use. But I can’t say that the banners are really professional looking, still, they will serve some purpose obviously.

Free LOGOs

The logos are really professional and may just fit to your needs. Here is the one example of different logos you can choose from.

I’ll definitely update this thread whenever I’m able to collect more input. Till then, bye!

What is domain transfer?

If you want to change the registrar of any domain name, it is called a domain transfer. It means, say, you have registered a domain with Company-A and now you want to change it to company -B. This is called a transfer of domain.

How long does it take to transfer a domain?   

Most registrars require at least thirty days (30) of registration remaining before attempting a transfer.

Can I transfer a domain name that has expired? 

If your domain name has expired contact your current registrar to purchase an additional year of registration. Once the mandatory 60 day waiting period (applicable to all new registrations or renewed domains) has passed, you can then put your transfer request through.

Hopefully this will help the newbies to avoid lots of hazards.

I got some nice input which will be particularly helpful for Newbies. you need to renew your domain name well ahead of the actual expiry time. Though, you will get another one month grace period to renew it, but, your website will not be available in the meantime.

I have also learnt that after expiry of that grace period, the domain name will be kept in dumps so that all records related to that particular domain gets erased in the meanwhile. And it is really difficult to get back that same domain name after expiry of the grace period.

So, the best time to renew a domain is well within its actual expiry date.

And if you are to register a new domain, renew or transfer an existing domain trust none othe than GoDaddy.com because

• #1 ICANN-accredited domain name registrar!
• 16 million domains under management!
  
• Reliable, Trustable, Industry Standard Service, 24 Hours online support, Inspiring customer care system that replies to all your Email Queries decently.