The
Basics
What
is the world wide web (www)?
What is the process in acquiring a website?
Domain
Questions
What is a domain?
What's the difference between different domain names?
Which domain name should I choose?
How do I delegate (transfer) my domain name?
Web
Hosting Questions
What
is web hosting?
What's the difference between shared hosting and
dedicated hosting?
Does InBlue Web Media use Linux or Windows based
hosting?
Does InBlue Web Media have to manage the web hosting
for me or can I manage it myself?
What are the web hosting features that InBlue
Web Media will use for my website?
Email
Related Questions
How
do I set-up my new email accounts?
Costing
Questions
How
much do you charge for a website?
Do you charge anything up-front?
Do you have any on-going fees?
Services
Questions
Do you offer ongoing support?
What is the difference between web design and web
development?
How long will it take for InBlue Web Media to develop
my website?
Can I view the progress of the website while it
is in development?
Once a website is launched, how long will the website
take to be visible to everyone?
Does InBlue Web Media design advertisement banners?
Does InBlue Web Media offer branding services including
logo design?
Does InBlue Web Media engage businesses outside of Sydney?
Copyright,
Intellectual Property & Ownership Questions
Once a website has been completed by InBlue Web Media,
who owns the copyright?
Can I have a copy of the Flash source files (FLA files)
or any other source files upon the websites completion?
Technology
Questions
Does InBlue Web Media develop websites for other web
browsers other than Microsoft Internet Explorer?
Can I update my website myself?
What is a CMS?
What is Flash?
What is SEO?
How long will it take for my website to be ranked by
search engines?
Which search engines will my website be optimised
for?
Is there anything that I can do to help my website
achieve a better ranking on Google or any other search engine?
What is Flash deep linking?
What security measures will InBlue Web Media implement
to insure my websites protection from viruses and hackers?
What is SSL?
What is RSS?
How
can I receive RSS feeds?
What's the difference between an intranet and the
internet?
What is a VPN?
What are server-side languages?
What is PHP?
What is ASP?
What is ASP.NET?
Which server-side language should my website by
scripted in: PHP, ASP or ASP.NET?
The Basics
What is the world-wide web (www)?
The world-wide web is made up of billions of websites linked together with hypertext links. Thousands of new websites and web pages are added to the world-wide web every hour. Websites are located on hosting servers, computers continually connected to the rest of the web. The information is then available to anyone else with access to the Internet. Web pages can have a mixture of text, graphics and multimedia. Nowadays, there's information on practically anything you could be interested in available somewhere on the web. You can use a search engine to find what you want.
What is the process in acquiring a website?
Acquiring a website all begins with first aquiring a domain name. InBlue Web Media can do this for you, but you'll need to think carefully about what domain name to acquire (see "What domain name should I choose?"). After you have acquired your domain name, the next step is to acquire web hosting (see "What is web hosting?") and to delegate the domain name to point to the web hosting server. Once this is achieved, files can then be uploaded to the server. If you don't have an existing website, InBlue Web Media will put an "Under Construction" page on your website, so people can see that there is progress being made on your website and that it will be launched soon. If you do have an existing website, InBlue Web Media will develop the new website at a temporary address such as "yoursite.com.au/newsite/" or on a separate testing server accessible via an IP address. Once the website has been completed to the client's satisfaction, the website will then go live (launched).
Domain Questions
A domain is like a title deed on the internet which can be purchased and owned. It is identified by a domain name (eg www.yourdomainname.com.au).
What's the difference between different domain names?
There are different types of domains with country-specific domain names such as Australia (.com.au), UK (.co.uk), New Zealand (.co.nz) for example and operational-specific domain names such as non-profit organisations ".org" (international) or ".org.au" (Australian), educational institutions (.edu.au) and government departments (".gov.au" and ".nsw.gov.au"). There are even industry-specific domains, for example, TV stations and TV programs can opt for ".tv" domains.
Which domain name should I choose?
It's best to make sure that your domain name reflects your business or organisation name, rather than your occupation or operational role. As an example, if your business name is "Assurance Insurance" and you're based at Pyrmont, it's best that you try to acquire the domain name "assurance.com.au" and if that is not available, then try to get "assuranceinsurance.com.au", rather than "insurance.com.au" (which would no doubt already be taken) or "pyrmontinsurance.com.au" (which makes your business seem small (limited to Pyrmont) and restricts search engines ranking of your website with your actual business name). Domain names can be purchased from various places on the internet and vary in price. If you are commercial business in Australia it is best to go for a ".com.au" domain, but if your business will be doing business internationally (or has the potential to) it is best to acquire a ".com" domain (which tend to be cheaper than ".com.au" domains). However, just because your domain is ".com.au" doesn't mean that you can't do business overseas.
How do I delegate (transfer) my domain name?
If you already have a registered domain name, it's easy to transfer it to InBlue Web Media and use it with one of our hosting plans. The process of transferring a domain is called delegation. Delegation involves modifying the domain name servers (DNS) your domain name points to and then waiting 12 to 36 hours while the change propagates through Australian and international DNS. If you wish to manage the delegation of your domain, you need to log in to your domain's registrar (the website which you originally purchased the domain name from) and modify the DNS to point to the name servers provided by InBlue Web Media via email with your account information. If you would prefer InBlue Web Media to manage delegation, you will need to provide us with your username and password (or registry key) for your domain's registrar (the website which you originally purchased the domain name from).
Web Hosting Questions
Web hosting is a server (commercial-grade computer) which hosts (stores and displays) your website so it can be viewed by the world-wide community 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
What's the difference between shared hosting and dedicated hosting?
Shared hosting is a server that hosts multiple websites on its hard-drive and dedicated hosting is a server that is completely dedicated to one website. InBlue Web Media generally uses shared hosting for the majority of its clients as it's reliable and cost effective. Dedicated hosting is more powerful and faster, but much more expensive and is usually reserved for powerful e-commerce websites and/or websites with comprehensive content management systems (CMS), intranets or VPN's (virtual private networks).
Does InBlue Web Media use Linux or Windows based hosting?
Depends. If we are developing a simple website from scratch, we usually opt for Linux based hosting as it is fast and cost effective, however, if the clients previous website (and database) was based on a windows-based hosting, then we would host the site on a windows-based hosting server. Sometimes we choose to host a website on a windows-based server because it would be more beneficial for us to develop the website in ASP.NET (windows-based server-side language) as we then have the opportunity to employ a whole host of other programming languages into the project.
Does InBlue Web Media have to manage the web hosting for me or can I manage it myself?
We strongly recommend that you allow InBlue Web Media to manage of all the web hosting responsibilities to do with your website. However, if you are adamant that you own and manage the web hosting for your website, then we ask that you supply us with all the web hosting access details such as the FTP username and password, the control panel username and password and if the website includes a database, then all the database access details as well. InBlue Web Media's management of your web hosting means that InBlue Web Media will take responsibility for all the virus-protection, spam prevention, security, email and maintenance requirements. You may find "cheaper" hosting, but you will lose the convenience of our valued support and generally end up with web hosting of a lesser quality.
What web hosting features that InBlue Web Media will use for my website have?
Web hosting features include:
- Hard Disk
Storage: 4 GB
- POP3 Email Accounts: 500
- Monthly Transfer: 240 GB
- SSL for Secure Ordering
- SmarterStats
- FrontPage Extensions
- Unlimited FTP Users
- Installed ASP Components
- Perl, CGI
- Optional: MIVA Merchant Store
- Email List Server
- Web based control panel for email accounts
- Read email through the Web (SmarterMail) or any mail client
- Unlimited aliases
- Unlimited email forwarding
- CGI capable accounts with Perl scripting support
- Microsoft Active Server Page (ASP)
- Daily data backups
- Diesel generator and UPS battery backup
- Redundant data centre cooling and climate control systems
- 99.9+% network uptime track record since 1997
- Dedicated IP address
- HTTP streaming for Real media and Windows media
- Microsoft Gold Certified
Email Related Questions
How do I set-up my new email accounts?
The easiest way for you to set-up your new email account in Microsoft Outlook is by downloading our email set-up guide.
Choose your appropriate guide:
Microsoft
Outlook 2007
Microsoft Outlook 2002
Microsoft Outlook Express
Microsoft Windows Mail
Costing Questions
How much do you charge for a website?
InBlue Web Media does not have a standard cost that we charge per website. Reason for this is that our websites are custom built and are all different with featured technology and the amount of work that goes into them and thus each website differs in cost.
A website will generally be more expensive if it contains Flash, has a CMS and/or is an e-commerce website (which has the ability to purchase products or services from its website).
Do you charge anything up-front?
It depends. If the work does not include designing or developing a website, we will charge at the end of the project. If the project does involve designing or developing a website, we charge 50% up-front and request 50% on completion. We may also charge domain purchasing fees and web hosting fees if you are starting up from scratch (if you require a domain name purchased and web hosting to host your new website on).
Do you have any on-going fees?
It depends. We charge 50% up-front and request 50% on completion. We may also charge domain purchasing fees and web hosting fees if you are starting up from scratch (require a domain name purchased and web hosting to host your new website on). Web hosting fees will be continual on an annual basis. So the next time that the web hosting fee will be due will be exactly 1 year from the day that it was first purchased.
Services Questions
- Yes. We offer FREE updates and maintenance support for the first two months from the website going live. Updates is for text content only and not for any structural work (graphics editing or layout changes will incur additional charges). After the two month period is up we charge $150 per hour for updates and any maintenance on the website (most updating/maintenance usually takes about 30 minutes).
What is the difference between web design and web development?
Web design is more to do with the layout, presentation and graphic design of a website. A "web design" project would consist of non-dynamic pages (pages that are static and don't access a database) such as HTML and XHTML pages.
Web development is to do with coding and scripting the actual architecture of a website. Both the frontend (the part that you see) and the backend (the part that you don't see, such as CMS etc.) Web developers develop websites with server-side scripted programming languages such as PHP (Linux based), ASP (Windows based) and ASP.NET (Windows based). They are called server-side languages because when you visit one of these sites, the code operates on the server interacting with a database and resends the HTML to your web browser which is what you see at your end.
How long will it take for InBlue Web Media to develop my website?
- Non-Flash
sites may take approx. 2 to 3 weeks (6 to 7 weeks with a CMS)
- Part-Flash sites may take approx. 3 to 5 weeks (1 to 2 months with a
CMS)
- Elaborate Flash sites may take approx. 3 to 4 months (2 to 4 months
with a CMS)
Can I view the progress of the website while it is in development?
Yes you can. In most cases InBlue Web Media will develop the new website at a temporary address such as "yoursite.com.au/newsite/" or on a separate testing server accessible via an IP address.
Once a website is launched, how long will the website take to be visible to everyone?
In most cases, once a website is launched, it becomes visible from the moment it has been uploaded. But in some cases, it may take up to 12 hours to become visible. Also, keep in mind that sometimes peoples cache folder will need to be refreshed for the new content to be visible.
Does InBlue Web Media design advertisement banners?
Yes we do. We do Flash as well as animated GIF advertisement banners. Please contact InBlue Web Media for more details regarding this.
Does InBlue Web Media offer branding services including logo design?
Yes we do. Please see our Brandmark Sheet for some examples of our logo designs. Please contact InBlue Web Media for more details.
Does InBlue Web Media engage businesses outside of Sydney?
Absolutely. We not only deal interstate, but overseas as well. We have previously developed a website for Angelmilk Records based in the UK.
Copyright, Intellectual Property & Ownership Questions
Once a website has been completed by InBlue Web Media, who owns the copyright?
The copyright of websites created by InBlue Web Media will belong to the client, yet source files used to create the site belong to InBlue Web Media (see below).
Can I have a copy of the Flash source files (FLA files) or any other source files upon the websites completion?
InBlue Web Media (as is with most other web design agencies in Australia) by default does not relinquish source files of any kind. Why? Because they contain our techniques, intellectual property and trade secrets. Some clients pose the question "If I have paid for the job then why can’t I have the source files?" The answer to this is simple. You paid for the finished job, not for the technology that made it. It is just like when you order some fried chicken, you get to eat the chicken but you are not entitled to the recipe or the list of the 11 secret herbs and spices that make up that unique flavour.
Technology Questions
Does InBlue Web Media develop websites for other web browsers other than Microsoft Internet Explorer?
Yes. InBlue Web Media develops websites that will work and display correctly for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 and above, Firefox 2.0 and above and Safari 2.0 and above.
Can I update my website myself?
Yes, but it is not recommended. You can obtain FTP Upload programs off the internet and upload content to your website yourself, but you'll really need to know what you're doing. FTP Upload programs are not html editors. To find a program that edits web pages and uploads them to your hosting server, then you'll need to look at purchasing Adobe Dreamweaver or Microsoft Frontpage. Yet, once again, you'll need to know what you're doing as InBlue Web Media does not bear responsibility to websites that have been adversely altered by the client taking it upon themselves to update the website themselves. InBlue Web Media also does not offer technical support to clients requesting help in updating their website themselves (with a website that does not have a CMS). We do however highly recommend the client obtaining a CMS (see below) so the client can update their website themselves as often as they would like.
A CMS (content management system) is a separate section of your website where you go to update information and images. This will significantly reduce costs in avoiding InBlue Web Media or anyone else to update your website for you on a frequent basis. A CMS is vital for an e-commerce website as the CMS manages the product inventory, customer records and tracks sales. Most of the time InBlue Web Media develops CMS's as part of a new website, but we can also develop CMS's for existing websites that don't currently have a CMS.
Adobe (previously Macromedia) Flash is a form of interactive animation technology on websites. You can generally tell if a website or part of a website has be developed in Flash by right-clicking on a section of a website and if that section is in Flash then it should say "About Adobe Flash Player 9..." on a menu. A website with Flash work in it is generally more expensive then websites without Flash. Some people don't like Flash because of long loading times and large bandwidth usage, but most people like Flash because it makes websites more interactive and graphically exciting.
Short for "search engine optimisation", the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a website by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. The higher a website ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user. It is common practice for internet users to not click through pages and pages of search results, so where a site ranks in a search is essential for directing more traffic toward the site. The most popular search engines include Google, Yahoo! and MSN Search.
How long will it take for my website to be ranked by search engines?
This depends entirely on when the search engines send out their web crawlers or spiders to catalog your site. This can take 1 week or up to 6 months. We help the process along by submitting your site to the search engines. This lets them know you would like to be added to their queue for indexing.
Which search engines will my website be optimised for?
Your website will be optimised and registered with all the major search engines on the web, including: Google, Yahoo!, MSN Search, Altavista, LookSmart, Inktomi and Teoma. You're website will also be registered with DMOZ, the internets largest human-edited directory.
Is there anything that I can do to help my website achieve a better ranking on Google or any other search engine?
Yes. We strongly encourage you to get as many links to your website as possible. If you can get a link to your website on as many other websites as possible, then it will help to boost the ranking of your website on search engines. It's a good idea to have your link on websites that are of a similar business nature to your business. For example, if you are a fishing company, try and get a link to your website on as many fishing related websites as possible. Also, when linking to your website, always make sure that the link is embedded as a keyword for the nature of your business. For example, instead of doing this: Booth's Motor Group, do this: car dealership. Another thing, try to register your website (with a link) with as many free online business directories as possible. All these suggestions will be a significant step in getting premium search results with search engines.
Flash deep linking is new technology which successfully enables the Back, Forward and Reload buttons of the browser to work with a Flash website and creates unique URLs that can be sent over email or IM. Deep linking also allows Flash sites to be indexed by search engines. Contact InBlue Web Media for more information.
What security measures will InBlue Web Media implement to insure my websites protection from viruses and hackers?
The servers on which InBlue Web Media hosts its websites features state-of-the-art security including hardware and software firewalls. Our SSL certificates boast up to 256-bit encryption. You can have peace of mind with your website being behind the best internet security that the world has to offer.
SSL stands for "Secure Sockets Layer". It's like a secure section on your website that has an encrypted forcefield around it. You will notice that e-commerce websites all have SSL to protect peoples identity and credit card information as they shop online. When SSL is purchased for a website, it comes in the form of an electronic (or virtual) "certificate". Most SSL Certificates come in 128-bit encryption, but you can get up to 256-bit encryption. You can tell if the web page you're on is protected by SSL. If you have a look on the left hand-side of the address bar at the top, if the web address starts with "https:" instead of "http:" then your viewing a web page with SSL security. You can also tell if there's a padlock icon on the status bar of your browser (down the bottom). Is your website in need of SSL security? Contact InBlue Web Media for more information.
RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication". It is a method of receiving constantly updated links from specific chosen websites. Once you have set up a connection to a website you will receive a list of all the stories currently shown on a certain page or section of that site.
There are several ways of receiving RSS feeds, but the technology is moving forwards and adapting very quickly. The main method is to download a program called a 'News Reader'. You can then set up this program to receive RSS information from whatever websites you wish that offer it, and browse headlines and story summaries that link through to the full story on the website. There are several News Reader programs available for all platforms, many of which are free. See a list here.
Alternatively, some newer web browsers offer similar functionality already built-in which will detect whether the website you are viewing offers an RSS feed and will then let you create a constantly-updated list of links in your 'bookmarks' menu. Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 (Windows, Mac OSX) allows this capability as does the Firefox browser (Windows, Mac OSX, Linux) and will alert you to an RSS-enabled page by displaying an orange icon in the bottom-right corner of the window . Apple's Safari browser (Windows, Mac OSX) offers an even fuller service, and other browsers will probably follow.
What's the difference between an intranet and the internet?
There's one major distinction between an intranet and the internet: The internet is an open, public network, while an intranet is designed to be a private network generally for large corporations. An intranet may be accessible from the internet, but as a rule it's protected by a password and accessible only to employees or other authorised users.
From within a company, an intranet server may respond much more quickly than a typical website. This is because the public internet is at the mercy of traffic spikes, server breakdowns and other problems that may slow the network. Within a company, however, users have much more bandwidth and network hardware may be more reliable. This makes it easier to serve high-bandwidth content, such as audio and video, over an intranet. Is your company interested in an intranet? Contact InBlue Web Media for more information.
A "virtual private network" is a way of working from home or from a remote office, by using the internet to extend your company's office network across large distances. It is possible to log into your office computer account from an internet connection. There are hacker and eavesdropping concerns, of course. But gratefully, modern VPN's are quite safe.
What are server-side languages?
Server side languages carry out operations on the remote web server, usually in response to requests sent by the user’s computer. Server side operations can access data or functions that aren’t available to the user. For example, server side languages can serve up dynamic content from a database or can process orders in an e-commerce application. Server side languages that are commonly used on the web include PHP and ASP.
PHP stands for "Hypertext Preprocessor" and is a server-side, HTML embedded scripting language used to create dynamic web pages. Much of its syntax is borrowed from C, Java and Perl with some unique features thrown in. The goal of the language is to allow web developers to write dynamically generated pages quickly.
Active Server Pages or ASP, as it is more commonly known, is a programming technology developed by Microsoft that enables you to make dynamic and interactive web pages. ASP uses server-side scripting to dynamically produce web pages that are not affected by the type of browser the web site visitor is using. The default scripting language used for writing ASP is VBScript, although you can use other scripting languages like JScript (Microsoft's version of JavaScript).
ASP.NET is a set of web development technologies developed by Microsoft. Programmers can use it to build dynamic web sites, web applications and XML web services. It is part of Microsoft's .NET platform and is the successor to Microsoft's previous stand-alone "ASP" technology.
Which server-side language should my website by scripted in: PHP, ASP or ASP.NET?
The choice of PHP, ASP or ASP.NET will ultimately come down to the requirements of the application, as well as the environment where it is to be hosted. The familiarity with similar programming languages and/or paradigms may also help sway the decision one way or the other. The bottom line is that there is no perfect technology and your individual circumstances will dictate the best option. For example, building a one-page form-mailer application for a Windows server in ASP.NET might be considered overkill, but it's a perfect situation for an ASP page. If a site has to work with a MySQL database on a Linux Apache server, though, you'll be fighting a losing battle to use either ASP or ASP.NET. Half the battle between competing technologies will be won if your individual needs are well ironed-out beforehand. InBlue Web Media can establish which server-side language would be best for you. Contact InBlue Web Media for more information.
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