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Nobody would even think that the web developers would be worried about the viruses in particular. But the fact is that it is getting harder to hide from the smart virus writers. The most common SirCam virus is so dangerous that it is capable of searching the cached web pages or the email addresses. As this virus has an inbuilt mail server, it makes use of those email addresses for sending out the annoying spam email messages. The worst part is that this spammer is not used for sending any mail, but instead sends a virus to all the recipients.

How to protect yourself?

• Add anti-spam messages to your email addresses: These are special messages that cannot be recognised by a virus or a spambot but a person would easily be able to strip out.
• Take off your email address from your web pages: Make use of feedback forms where your email address was embedded in the CGI and not the HTML. The main reason of using the CGI here is that CGI cannot be cached and at the same time, you can still get your comments.
• Convert your email address to an image: Viruses and spammer programs cannot cache the images in the same way as they would be grabbing the email addresses. Always ensure that your email address is not included in your alt text.
• Make use of the JavaScript for building your mailto field: Try to use the JavaScript with variables which has been used for splitting up your email address, for building up mailto link, which cannot be read by the spambots.

Anti-Spam Messages in the Email Address
The easiest method of preventing the viruses and spam from spreading is by making use of the Anti Spam messages. Just add the words that would be recognised and should be removed from your email address in the mailto field.

The biggest drawback o using this method is that people easily skip out on the email addresses while clicking on the mailto link. And there is every possibility that if a bounce back message is received by them, it will be simply deleted.

Removing the email addresses
The most effective method of avoiding span or viruses would be to remove completely your email addresses. You just need to create a web form and send the mail using the CGI. Although there are variety of forms to email CGI is available but it is quite imperative to concentrate on the one which has the ability to store the email addresses in the CGI itself. Virus or a spambot can easily get the email address it is in the HTML.
The biggest drawback of this that people avoid using them as they feel more impersonal. Many of the customers who would have otherwise intimated you about the broken link will think twice before intimating you.

Convert Email Addresses to Images
If you have the comfort with the graphics, you can easily convert your email addresses to the images. There is a free Windows tool available for converting the email addresses to the image format for hiding from the spammers.

The biggest drawback o this is that once your email address is converted to an image, it cannot be used in the mailto tag. Also, your email address will have to be written by the customers themselves which can also cause typographical errors.

JavaScript to hide the email addresses
It is considered to be the most effective ways of hiding your email addresses from the viruses and the spambots, but always ensure that your customers have the convenience o using the mailto link.

The biggest drawback of this is that certain people work with the JavaScript turned off due to security reasons. The mailto link for these people will not be effective at all.

Removal of a page from a website, by the web developer or a designer without putting up the replacement page which would describe the details of the previous pages, leads to the generation of the Link Rot. The reader is treated to a page not found or a 404 error message.

Why do page not found or 404 pages exist? The simple answer to this question is, that it is quite imperative to get some error message, when the user tries to go to the URL that does not exist. But unfortunately, this error message is still seen even when the URL exists. The only problem here is that the link does not exist in the location where the customer went.

There can be a number of reasons why the addresses of the pages are changed by their websites. Some of them are as follows:

• Our site was organised by us for its betterment
• We were not able to keep a proper track of our existing docs.
• Our site is getting rebranded
• Our hosting services have really gone down

At first these reasons might seem to be good enough for moving the page and leaving behind page not found or 404 error pages. But the truth is that, this change clearly indicates to the lack of planning and forethought at the time of creation of URLs.

Why care about the Link Rot?

You might not be aware about who will be having links to your site. You would want your targeted customers should bookmark your pages, but then suddenly your location is changed by you. You might feel that your navigation is too good and the customers should be able to find page anyway. But unfortunately, this is not always true as would be wished by the web developer. And the fact is that as a website owner, you have exactly eight seconds for forming your very first impression. If someone finds your URL in a book and after typing he gets a 404 or page not found error, there is every possibility that the user will not stay on your site long enough for navigating through your fabulous site.

Do not complain about Link Rot If you cause Link Rot

You are the prime contributor of the link rot if you have complained of it and ultimately changed your page locations without actually compensating or it. But unfortunately, the developer usually gets blamed for linking to you.

The first and the foremost thing is to consider permanent URIs. If your web pages are not at all well organized, take a deep breath and move on. Once your vision is set to recognize your site, make use of the tools which are available with the server for relocating the URIs. But, in case if you do not have the access to the server level redirects, you always have the option of using the JavaScript or meta refresh tags.

Organize Intellectually

• Always date your articles
• Don’t date static pages
• Leave out information
• Consider your software

Do not be a contributor to this link rot. You should always try and make the pages of your site stick around. If at all there is a possibility of moving them, always remember to leave the redirects up so that the customers are still able to find what they have been looking for.

Like many of creative people, website designers can also get caught into the trap of the writer’s block. But there are certainly many methods available which can help you deal with these blocks, and help you get unblocked. The following six methods or suggestions will help to a great extent in getting new design ideas:

• Be prepared for procrastination which can try blocking you: Whenever you will be involved in working on any new article or design idea, you will find that’s the time that new ideas about other projects will come to your mind. For example, when you are working on some project, there is every possibility that you might think about the wool that you have to wash, or may what colour you need to paint your office with or may be the appropriate location in your house for the kitchen garden. Although its quite understandable that these are simply different methods of procrastinating, but you cannot deny from the fact that these are the thing that you would also want to do. If you are currently involved in working or writing a web design, you simply write them down and continue brainstorming the current project of yours. It really works if you write down the things that you would be interested in procrastinating, they would not be really pressing as much as if you just try ignoring them.
• Start in the middle: It has been commonly noticed that for some reason or the other, almost all the web designers follow a top down approach while designing their web sites. Certainly, you will have to think in this aspect about the CSS and HTML, but when involved in web designing, it is important to focus on first things first. For example when writing a web content, if the title is written first, maximum number of times, it will be noted that the actual content will be quite different from the actual title. Many of the times, you will have to rewrite the title by the end of the article.
• Stay away from the computer: It is quite [possible to get stuck on any of the initial technical problems related to Java Script or HTML if you try to design directly on the computer. It is always better to do your initial designing or drafting on a rough paper as it will be easier to erase, scratch and last but not the least throw, if you are just not happy.
• Take enough time that you require: Planning is certainly one of the most important aspects of any project which is both least used and the most important. Most of the web designers just directly jump on to designing the main page. It is always better to first take sufficient time and plan what and how exactly things need to be done. It is a well known that planning can in no ways hurt your website but lack of planning can certainly do.
• Ask for help: Never be reluctant and afraid to ask for help, but always ensure to find the right quality people who can provide you be some kind of constructive criticism.
• Try something else, if you are really stuck: The main idea is to get your mind totally out of the problem that you are involved in resolving. This will enable your subconscious state of mind to think of the problem unobstructed.

It has been around ten years since cascading style sheets or most commonly known as CSS have been around, considering from the beginning during its development in the year 1997. But, surprisingly it has been into public consciousness relatively for a short time now. The main reason for this is that until 2000, its features were not supported and recognized by most of the web browsers. Gradually down the line there have major improvements where almost all the web browsers support atleast the minimum level 1 of all the web browsers and a few support level 2 and some have even gone way beyond and support level 3 as well.

As a matter of fact, you cannot find even a single site which would not be utilizing CSS in some for or the other in their development and design. In fact, all the web sites that are completely developed using HTML are becoming extinct or following the footsteps of dinosaur. There are no two thoughts to the fact that both HTML and CSS are important aspects of web design and will continue to do so for years to come. CSS has been successful in bringing in a widespread impact upon W3C.

Originally CSS was developed just with the intent of providing the web developers a means for defining both the feel and the look of the web pages. Using this, web developers were able to treat both the design and the content of the web page as two different entities. As a result of this HTML was able to perfume its functions more in accord with its actual intended purpose which is to focus only on the markup of the content of any particular website.

The style sheet in CSS or cascading style sheet here refers to the document itself. This concept is nothing new for the web developers, infact the documents have been used by the web developers for many years now. To be more specific, style sheet can be defined as those specifications which are used for governing the layout of the particular website, whether it is on print or online. The cascading style sheets are not only capable of determining the technical specifications of any particular document on the web but also provides with an added functionality of communicating with the viewing vehicle, here the web browser. The most important thing to be remembered here is the keyword Cascade. The cascading style sheet, by virtue of their nature, is capable of flowing or cascading through any number of separate style sheets or documents.

In the areas of XML and XHTML markup, cascading style sheets go way beyond the font specifications. This clearly indicates that Cascading style sheets can be used for defining the look of any XML and XHTML markup language that is being used by you in your website. Cascading style sheets can be considered to be one of the most powerful tools that can be used by the web designers which can undoubtedly impact the entire feel and look of the website. It is crucial to have a thorough knowledge of CSS if you are planning to be a web designer.

There are no two ways about it: You can actually make good money with Google AdSense, but you are inviting trouble on yourself if you commit any of these top ten mistakes.

• Do not in any way use any kind of fake information when opening up the Google AdSense Account: Fake information about identity is a big no-no with Google. In fact, all the money earned by you will be seized if you are found guilty of supplying wrong information. Besides this, hiding your true identity from the tax authority can also cause you serious problems.
• Never try to modify or the hack code of Google AdSense, other than just changing the parameters, more than you have been authorised to: If there is any kind of attempt to bypass the built-in algorithms of Google AdSense it will not pose major issues or the integrity of the network. But also at the same time it will threaten the financial model of Google AdSense.
• All your confirmation, registration and thank you pages should be kept away from the AdSense Ads: Although those would be wonderful pages to put the ads on, it is really not allowed to put the ads on thank you as well as registration pages. According to Google, it is a hanging offence as per their terms and conditions to place the ads on any of these pages.
• The ads of Google AdSense and their competitors should not be placed on the same page: Undoubtedly Google is not expecting a complete 100% loyalty from your end but the company does insist that their adds should not by any chance be cluttered by the offerings and deals of their competitors.
• One should not try to give any kind of offerings or incentives or beg for clicking on your Google Adsense Ads: This is a violation to the terms and Conditions laid down by the Google AdSense. Even a small polite note saying Please click on our links to keep the site running and going is also not acceptable.
• The individual owning the site should not click on the links even if he or she is genuinely interested in buying the products: Nothing in this world can scream the word FRAUD louder than the owner of the website trying to click on his own website and increase the number of clicks or hits so as to earn or make more money.
• Avoid any kind of misleading labelling: Google from the very beginning has been very specific and particular about the kind of content that is placed in the ads. Do not label the content of your site as gaming related, or dealing with the Nintendo DS Lite, when it is in fact a site dedicated to household appliances like dishwashers and refrigerators. This will help prevent confusion of any kind on the part of visitors.
• Avoid any kind of device tricks or keyword spamming: It is quite possible that one might get tempted to employ such techniques, which would help in generating more traffic and better hits to your website.
• Nothing should be advertised on the prohibited list of Google: This list of prohibited items is undoubtedly much shorter than eBay or Pay Pal’s list but definitely includes the same set of things such as weapons, hard alcohol or beer, gambling sites, illegal drugs, porn, hacking and cracking content and all other usual stuff
• And last, but not least, follow these nine points to ensure an honest site.

If your business is totally dependent on the websites for generating revenues or more business, then it becomes extremely important for you to know exactly how everything is working and what your websites are doing. This means that you not only need to track your website but also measure the total effectiveness of your website. You can make use of either the spreadsheets or the log files for measuring the success of your website. There are software solutions available that integrate perfectly with your servers or some of the log analysis tool that come with the hosting packages.

It is a common thought by almost all the small business owners that the software installed on their local machines is the only solution they have for web analytics. But the fact is that there are tools which are hosted at the outside site and web analytics tool that are placed directly on your web servers. There are both the hosted as well as the server solutions available with each one having their own advantages. The main advantage of the server solutions being that they offer a greater flexibility and the hosted solutions are maintained outside or by someone else. You will need a solution on your web servers or for that matter hard drive if your main intention is to keep all your statistics a secret.

Whenever you select any web analytics tools it is very important that it should incorporate certain standard reports such as referrers, pageviews, visits and unique visits, HTTP errors, robots, entry as well as exit pages, countries, domains, operating systems, web browsers and authenticated users. Besides these standard reports there should also be an option wherein you can create your customised reports for getting the analytics of any specific area.

One of the most common methods adopted by any web analytics package to tack any web pages is to tag each and every page with a unique identifier. This way with the help of these tags the tools will have more accurate information about the pages that are being displayed and requested for. But for ensuring this you would need a tag assigned to each page. Another method of achieving good analytics would be by setting cookies for each customer that visits the site. This would enable the tools to have much better vision and information about the browsers that visit the site which would also include the unique visitors along with the information about the session lengths.

The two most important aspects of web analytics are flexibility and scalability. The more custom reports generated by you, the better for you as you will be able to generate and get more information out of it. In order to get maximum out of your tool, you should be able to find the one that is able to provide maximum support. The next important thing to be considered is the total cost that would be involved. To avoid any kind of problems later always remember to include recurring costs into your decision.