We do believe in healthy sense of paranoia. Not paranoia, which makes us feverishly try to distinguish ourselves from our competitors, but paranoia, which makes us feel iron hand of competition and gives us stimulus to constantly develop and improve.

It is difficult to survive in media, where everybody claims he is best and where somebody is indeed better than you. It prompted us idea of carrying out a kind of analysis of products offered on Web, similar to Esvon Classifieds. In no shape of form, we are going to judge or criticize web applications, listed below.

The search engine has brought us to following software products:

http://www.interactivetools.com/products/realtymanager/

The first impression is that Realty Manager is quite a professional solution. Scanning pages, and studying this product more carefully we learn that script is realized using Perl and text files and its functionality is really worth being paid for. PHP/MySQL and Perl ext files solutions don’t have any distinction in kind when it comes to their functionality. But PHP code is more consistent and modular and it runs faster. The advantage of PHP is also ubiquity of web server platforms supporting PHP and MySQL. Fact: Over 25% of internet's web sites are running PHP and nearly 63% of internet's web sites are running Apache web server, so give it a thought.

Those, who have encountered problem of a script running slowly, probably know, that faster grows your database of users, slower your script works. In end, it just breaks. (it happens because it is based on text files). Thus, such solution can be used only when web site you are going to build is simple.

Moreover, with their license you are not allowed to edit scripts; it can be a disaster for you when you want to customize your solution.

The web site itself is very informative; it seems to give overall description of application. In general, this software script is enough if your web portal needs don’t go far. Yet, it is quite simple and friendly but has much fewer functions than Esvon Classfieds does.

http://www.mojoscripts.com/products/mojoestate/index.shtml

The web site layout and product presentation resemble a bit previous one. The application is Perl/MySQL solution, which however costs less. The price, as we have already indicated, is not a No.1 factor for making decision. But $199 seems nevertheless too little for a powerful script with “tons of features”.

MojoEstate includes a lot of features: internal mailbox system, saved search system, multimedia file gallery, advanced admin and member panels, powerful search facility, detailed who-is-online display, auto-generated thumbnails for uploaded images, etc.

We won’t enumerate all product features, described at web site. When a visitor reads content, it is often enough for him to know what is described. But developers and more competent users know that it’s just a surface. When it comes to product in action, they might face with problem of handling extreme amounts of traffic database queries, which can bring your server down. Some customers just may skip this peculiarity.

The product is also presented in a well-structured manner and seems to be a good cost-effective solution for budget-minded people.

http://www.smartisoft.com/products.php?product=phpBazar

We see that script manufacturers have preferred PHP code in this case. As we have already mentioned, we also consider it to be better for such kind of applications in view of its open source technology and fact that it is firmly implanted in LAMP family (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) of open source web development platform technologies.

A: The first thing you should do, Christopher, is find that designer and beat living Flash out of him. It won't increase time visitors spend on your website, but it will make you feel better after you've read this column.

What your designer thought would appeal to visitors is probably very thing that is driving them away. A Flash introduction page (Macromedia Flash is a software program used to create animations for Web pages) may seem "cool" to you, but from a website visitor's point of view, they can be about as appealing as sitting in front row of a Pokemon movie with four hundred screaming six year olds (and here comes segue, folks).

In December, 1997, during an episode of Pokemon, popular Japanese TV cartoon that has spawned everything from movies to action figures to lunch boxes, a scene featured a rocket explosion that flashed red and blue lights in rapid succession. After episode, over 600 children were taken to hospitals complaining of seizures, blurred vision, headaches, dizziness, and nausea. Any adult who has ever been exposed to Pokemon for more than two seconds can understand nausea, but seizures at first baffled doctors. Scientists ultimately came to attribute mass reaction to "photosensitive seizures," which are brought on by exposure to certain visual stimuli like rapidly flashing lights on a TV screen. Remember when your mom told you not to sit so close to TV or you'd ruin your eyes? Turns out she knew what she was talking about. Who knew?

The event caused such concern that Japanese broadcasters and health officials met to discuss ways to prevent future occurrences of bad-cartoon induced illnesses. They established guidelines for broadcast of flashing images: no image may flicker faster than three times per second; flashing images should be displayed for no more than two seconds; and stripes, whorls, and concentric circles should not take up largest portion of a TV screen.

It's my humble opinion that these rules should apply to websites as well. I've been in Internet design business for nearly a decade and I have been witness to numerous websites that could induce photosensitive seizures in blind moles. It sounds like your website might be suffering from a similar ailment.