Use Server Side Includes To Ease Your WorkloadWritten by Jeff Colburn
I’m all for making things as easy as possible. The whole idea in business, and life, is to work smarter not harder. When designing websites, I not only want to create them with as little effort as possible, but I also want to make maintaining them easy. One way to do this is with Server Side Includes (SSI). SSI’s are an easy way to add or update content to one or more web pages on a site. One way I use SSI’s is for copyright on my pages. By changing year in one file, it changes year on all of my pages. I also use SSI’s for links on my pages. If I decide to add or remove a link, or rearrange them, I simply make changes in one file and my entire site is automatically updated. As I said before, make it easy. Why should I go to each of 80 plus pages on my site to change something when I can do same thing with one little file? Another great thing about SSI’s is that you can’t see them on a web page. If you, or anyone, view contents of your page, SSI won’t show. Instead, you will only see HTML put there by SSI. Before you try to use SSI’s you need to check with your web host to see if server is set up for them. Most servers are. If they say they are, then you need to do a little test. Create a web page with following HTML. Testing SSI Save this as an HTML file and upload it to your server. Now try to open page with your browser. If you see current weekday, like Monday, Tuesday, etc. then you can start using SSI’s. If you don’t see anything, rename file extension. Instead of using HTML use SHTML. Some servers require “S” and others don’t. Another thing you need to know is that you shouldn’t use SHTML extension on your Home or Index page. Spiders don’t like it and won't be able to Index page on their search engines. Now that you know your server will let you use SSI’s, let’s start saving time. The first thing you need to do is create a text (.TXT) file that contains information you want to include. This can be graphics, text, links or anything else you want to include. You will want to include HTML that you would normally put on a web page. Think of this text file as something that will be pasted into your web page, since this is exactly what will happen.
| | The technical stuffWritten by Rob Rawson
(including how to build a fantastic website, all elements you need to consider and how to make it work with little or notechnical abilities). It can be done. I’m almost certain that many people reading this Ecourse have no technical skills at all? I’m not embarrassed to let you know that I don’t have great technical skills… I’ve learned how to build really basic websites, but nothing fancy (I don’t think Profit Puppy site is going to win any design awards in near future!). The fact is you don’t need to have great technical skills to make a good website. In some ways having limited web design abilities gives you an advantage because you won’t get caught up in, what can sometimes be, confusing details. As a novice you’ll be able to focus on what counts … That is; making money, marketing your site and getting visitors. If you have no money, then you will need to learn how to do all of these things yourself which will slow you down considerably. If you can afford to pay someone else to design your site, then you can get a great site designed at a tiny fraction of cost (compared with what it would cost to start a “real” bricks and mortar business in offline world). Web design can be a be a bit overwhelming when you are starting out, especially if you haven’t done it before - it’s hard to know what you should do and where to start. However, once you’ve been through initial process it gets easier and easier. To start with, let’s look at all “technical” elements that you need to include for consideration on your new site. We will be covering several of these aspects in more depth in later issues, but for now, I’ll provide an overview of things you will need to get started: Domain name – you need a domain name for your site (E.g. www.yoursite.com) Web hosting – you need to get your site hosted somewhere so other people can see it. An auto-responder email service – you probably want to have some kind of email auto-responder set up. This is can help communicate effectively with your audience by send them a series of emails from you automatically. Copy (i.e. words). Design – you need to get a template designed for your site. Audio - audio has proven to generate more sales and interest to visitors. A shopping cart service – if you are planning an ecommerce site and want to be able to accept online payments, you will need a shopping cart service where you can accept credit cards via a secure server. A merchant account – to accept credit cards you need to have your own, or a third party merchant account. An affiliate program - you may want to have your own affiliate program. We’ll talk about this in future issues of Ecourse. If you can combine above elements and put them together effectively, you’ll have essence of a great website. Keep in mind that you may not need shopping cart service, merchant account, or affiliate program if you are not actually selling your own product.Below, I’ve provided valuable information about how to build 9 most important elements of a successful website: The Domain name and Web hosting I will be examining domain names in more detail in a later issue of Ecourse, but for now, I’ll assume that you need a new domain name for your site. A goodplace to start is somewhere like http://www.mydomainfriend.com/ - this is a great keyword combination tool that I built for researching and finding new domain names. My Domain Friend helps to simplify, what can be, a quite often lengthy and tiresome process. When you find a suitable domain, there are number of cheap services where you can register it for under $10. For more info on domain names and web hosting check out http://www.profitpuppy.com/hosting.htm An Auto-responder service If you want to build a profitable site you should definitely consider an auto-responder service. If you get someone to your website, there’s a good chance they may never come back. By using an auto-responder you can build a valuable relationship with you your visitors and increase likelihood that that they will visit your site again (unless they unsubscribe!). There are many different ways you can use auto-responders. For example, you might start an Ecourse, or remind your visitors of upcoming events or product developments in a newsletter. Auto-responders are crucial if you want to maximize profits from website. In a later issue of Ecourse, I’ll be showing you how to put together great sounding newsletters to help you get more bang for your buck. So, how do you set up an auto-responder? The best (and easiest) option is to go with one of many third party services that are available on web. For more information and a list of best auto-responder services visit: http://www.profitpuppy.com/compare-autoresponder.htm
|
