FAQs
Blog
Personal blogs
The personal blog, an ongoing diary or commentary by an individual, is the traditional, most common blog. Personal bloggers usually take pride in their blog posts, even if their blog is never read. Blogs often become more than a way to just communicate; they become a way to reflect on life, or works of art. Blogging can have a sentimental quality. Few personal blogs rise to fame and the mainstream, but some personal blogs quickly garner an extensive following.
Corporate and organizational blogs
A blog can be private, as in most cases, or it can be for business purposes. Blogs used internally to enhance the communication and culture in a corporation or externally for marketing, branding or public relations purposes are called corporate blogs. Similar blogs for clubs and societies are called club blogs, group blogs, or by similar names; typical use is to inform members and other interested parties of club and member activities.
CMS (Content Management System)
CMS is a Content Management System, and it is as it says. It is a piece of software that allows non-technically minded people to easily manage and change their web site content. For example ToughTomato can design a site to your specifications to make it look how you want. Then in the future when things change, as they do, you yourself will be able to add new text to certain pages or edit old pages to reflect new information, without having to learn any new skills or pay web developers to carry out the up dates for them.
Database Driven Sites
This type of site is one that relies on a database as its main backbone. Web sites like job sites, forums and social networking sites are database driven. This is because the type of information that keeps these web sites going needs to be stored somewhere. The best way to do this is via a database. For example here are a few sites that are database driven: Monster, Gumtree, Facebook, Wikipedia, StubleUpon. Generally the information that is added to the database is done by the users that visit the site, or in the case of jobs websites, by the clients of the site.
Domain Management
What is a domain? A domain is www.google.com, www.youtube.com or www.toughtomato.com. It is the character address of your web site. It is used to easily remember your web site address. Domains are bought (you could say rented) as you pay an annual fee to own your domain. Domain management is the process of ensuring that your domain does not expire and is renewed so that it does not become available to be bought by other people.
eCommerce (Online Stores)
An eCommerce web site is one that sells products or services online to people from either a specific region or from people all around the world. eCommerce web sites are fundamentally different from standard sites. This is because they require shopping cart software to manage stock, provide secure online services and define shipping costs and tax rates for clients whether they are from your country or abroad.
Flash
Flash has become a popular method for adding animation and interactivity to web pages. Flash is commonly used to create animation, advertisements, and various web page Flash components, to integrate video into web pages, and more recently, to develop rich Internet applications.
Managed Hosting
Hosting is the process of providing a gateway for your web site to reach the rest of the world. It gives your web site presence on the Internet. This is done using dedicated servers that have 24/7 access to the Internet and have very little down time. Managed hosting is the process of ensuring that your web site stays up 99.9% of the year whilst dealing with the difficulties that arise when dealing with hosting providers. A hosting provider is generally a company that supplies the hosting environment (servers) in order to host your web site.
Online Advertising Management
Online Advertising Management is the process of advertising your web site online using popular search engines like Google or Yahoo. When people search words or phrases on those search engines your web site appears on the first page of their search results. You are only charged when people click on your advertising links, therefore you are getting your money's worth as you only pay for people that visit your web site. The process involves a continuous vigilance to determine the best keywords to attract the clientele that you require.
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines as opposed to search engine marketing (SEM) which deals with paid inclusion. Typically, the earlier (or higher) a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine.
