McStyles Software

We’ve been busy here, especially during the last several months. McStyles has created over 100 web sites, and is responsible for maintenance for over 100 web sites. Most of the sites we have produced are content sites supported by advertising. Others are business storefront sites.

The work we’ve done recently is a big change from doing primary contracted software development. As it became apparent that Kristyne McDaniel, our primary consultant, was going to need to work entirely from her home office, it was also apparent that it was not possible without a paradigm shift in our business model. We had three contracts last year for contracted software development that was to be done in our own home office, but the clients were not happy with the reduced level of personal contact with Kristyne. After several failed attempts, we decided that our current clients would not be able to make the transition effectively, so we had no choice but to allow those contracts to expire.

Meanwhile, our foray into internet marketing has been slowly gaining ground. While we are not yet fully up to the revenue levels we previously experienced, we believe the climb in revenues will continue and will completely replace our lost contractor programming revenue. This is great news for Kristyne, who has opted to stay near her disabled spouse to the maximum extent possible.

More news to follow soon!

Site design and structure is a lot of work. One of the most important considerations is often overlooked by first-time site owners is content management and structure. Where to put it and how to display it? What is the message that you are trying to get across?

If you don’t consider content management and structure in the design of your site, your site won’t perform at optimized levels. It’s as simple as that.
You won’t be getting good results as far as site visitation.

Does your site have all of these qualities?

• Attention grabbing headlines that make a person look and investigate.
• Compact statements
• Meaningful words: Discover, Learn, Investigate, Make Money, etc.
• Sub-headings that lead the eye from top-to-bottom, left-to-right on each page.
• Graphics that support the brand or products (not stale, seen-it-before clip art).
• Professional sales copy to explain your product.
• Do you have a host that is good and guarantees you plenty of uptime?

If you are debuting your site without all these key factors, you may be in trouble before you even start out.

If you are struggling, you should get a good web consultant or web marketing team to assist you with site development. If your business depends on your web sales, don’t be cheap! Put in the time, effort and money to get a professional to develop your site for you.

When people come to your site, they want to see professionalism and organization. If there want to buy a coat then you need to show them the picture of the coat. People don’t like reading long statements on web sites. They just want brevity and clarity and then want to check out what you’ve got to sell or what type of service you provide.

If your web site is out of whack, get professional help. That even addresses branding because in a lot of businesses, your URL is your brand name. Get help if your business is web dependant!

Sometimes, to get the service you want, you have to make changes. Things happen, especially with web hosting providers. Your host services may have taken a performance dip or you may have notice a lack of customer support. You make a decision to change host providers and you go with it.  You have to be smart about changing over so here are some steps for you to consider.

Backup Your Files – Most people don’t perform backups of their files on their web servers. That’s bad because if something does happen, you lose everything. Make sure that you backup your files before you switch providers. Don’t forget to copy some files, designs, graphics, databases, or emails prior to discontinuing your present hosting service. Otherwise you will find that once you are no longer a customer, all of your data is wiped clean.

Get a compatible host for your business - Many customers switch web hosting providers not even considering researching the host services to see if they are compatible. Find out if the new provider supports your applications or files. This is important when it comes to server side scripts, shopping cart systems, merchant accounts, e-commerce software, SSL security. make sure they can support your operation and applications.

Know Your Transfer Settings - One fundamental step in transferring your site to a new web hosting provider is going to be to change name servers for your domain. Don’t wait until the last minute to do this. Waiting too late could mean your site and domain name could be down for a few days.

Make sure that everything goes smooth if your old host goes out of business or if something happens, such as a change in service that would prompt you to look for another web host. Treat it as a marriage! Make sure your new web host is compatible.

It’s easy to lose your domain name if you don’t pay attention to the renewal notices that come in your inbox. Usually, web host companies start sending these notices about 90 days from the date that the domain name is to expire. It’s a bad feeling to go to your site and all you see is a 404 page.
So how do we avoid this problem?

First of all, most people don’t keep their domain registrar in the loop concerning emails and contact information that changed during the course of the registration period. For most domain name owners, they have the attitude that they will get to it someday. The last time that the domain registrar hears from the person that owns the domain is the first day that they purchased the domain. How unfortunate!

When your web site stops working, that’s when reality hits. You haven’t paid your hosting fees or haven’t renewed your domain name. Renewing your domain name is the hardest deal because there is nothing written in stone saying that you might get that name back.

Some registrars honor a 30 day "redemption period" allowing expired domains to be redeemed. It may be possible to save the registration within 30 days following expiration by contacting registrars during 30 day domain redemption periods but you have to act quickly. If there is a problem, check out this link at the ICANN organization on redeeming domain names.

www.icann.org/bucharest/redemption-topic.htm

So how does a domain owner find out who their registrar is if they’ve forgotten? Simple WHOIS inquiries will tell you everything the registrar knows about your domain. Public WHOIS records show the owner’s contact email, street address, phone and fax numbers. But that’s not all; it also shows the current registrar, DNS servers, and the creation and expiration dates of the domain name.

Keep track of what’s going on with your domain name so you won’t have headaches as far as trying to redeem your URL name down the road.

Pay Pal is an excellent money transfer system that you can embed in your website or use for customer payment for your online services. It is easy to use and set up and they even have a merchant account package that you can integrate into your web host. There are three types of accounts that are listed below that you can sign up for.

Personal: For your personal shopping use. You cannot accept debit or credit card payments, but sending and receiving money is free.

Premier: For buying and selling under your name. You can send payments for free, with low fees for accepting money.

Business: This is perfect for your online business. Add your name to be included on your customer’s credit card statements. Sending money is free, but you are charged small fees to accept payments.

There are no set up fees and the fee you pay PayPal when accepting cash is based on your sales volume for the month.

Standard Rate: $0 to $3,000 - pay 2.9% and .30 per transaction Merchant Rate: $3,000 to $10,000 - 2.5% and .30 per transaction $100,000 and up - 1.9% and .30 per transaction. To apply for the merchant rate, you must have a month of sales that meet the ranges above and fill out a short application for approval.

The business account package is still the best without getting into all kinds of e-commerce fees and charges. It’s the most efficient package that you can ever use to transfer and receive money from business transactions and you always have access to business statements.

Paypal is the e-commerce standard for small businesses and has carve a niche as a dependable end user type of company that handles business as well as personal transactions. Try it out by going to www.paypal.com.

What platform should your server be on? There are a number of different choices out there but the main two are Linux and Windows web servers. For the majority of people it will be far more important to choose a really good web host that will meet their needs

Microsoft has the Windows OS System. Linux is open source and generally a free download. A Windows host server can cost you money to develop. This doesn’t mean much if you are not setting up the server yourself so we’ll focus on hosting companies that provide server service.

The cost involved in running a server does not affect the cost of a web-hosting package. It all depends on your web applications and how detailed the application is. Some people assume that because their computer runs Windows they need to buy a Windows hosting package. This isn’t true. Access to your web account will most likely be through FTP or a control panel and both servers support these methods.

The main difference is that some of the FTP commands are slightly different between the two operating systems and some FTP programs are designed to be cross compatible in their platforms.

If you intend to create your site using the majority of Microsoft products (or IBM compatible software) ASP, FrontPage, the .NET environment, Windows Streaming Media, Access, MSSQL, or any of the other Microsoft proprietary technologies then you probably need to consider a Windows host.

Linux is kind of “new” considering its host server technologies and is open source. There aren’t that many compatible applications compared to Microsoft. Sometimes, you have to have the knowledge to tailor the application to what you want it to do and that’s cool if you are a tech head.

In terms of performance there’s not a big difference between the two servers. Linux reportedly performs faster because Windows (as usual) has too many threads and procedure calls to go through. If speed is not that important to you, well, you might want to try Windows.

Linux is making strides in the software and hosts markets making it easier to implement. There are applications that are being designed that really operate better than Microsoft applications. The ultimate decision on whether to go with Linux or Windows will be up to you.