Even if many people say that it’s better not to program the whole site in Adobe Flash, I still see lot of new heavy-flash sites. In a previous post, we suggested to limit the use of flash in a website because this is not good for many browsers.

Last month, in the Google official Webmaster Blog, Mark Berghausen wrote an article “Best use of Flash”. He recongnized that “Googlebot (the Google robot) can typically read Flash files and extract the text and links in them, but the structure and context are missing”,. He also says that “textual contents are sometimes stored in Flash as graphics, and since googlebot doesn’t currently have the algorithmic eyes needed to read these graphics, these important keywords can be missed entirely”

So, he suggest the webmasters to use Flash only where is needed. He recommends that the site structure and the important keys should remain outside the flash so googlebot can take a look into them.

He also says that the use of non-flash version is another good option when you need to place a heavy-flash site.

Finally, even google is one of the most important search engines, you must remember that there are many other ones that people uses. Most of these search engines do not have the same technology to seek inside the flash files, so heavy-flash sites are loosing an opportunity to get register in them. So, pay special attention when planning to build your next business online.

There are many good software applications that can help you with your daily duties, much f them very expensive. Software for image processing, design, and office suites are my favorites. But, why pay too much for tools that perhaps have similar totally free. Even more, sometimes, the free versions are better that the paid ones.

Blogger Not a Blind prepared a list of useful free applications; from FTP clients to file encrypters; from image editors to compression tools, this list includes the most wanted software applications. Take a look at the “94 of the Best Free Software Applications that are Better than Purchased Software”.

If your business or your job depends too mucho on your computer, you’ll probable want to keep it update with the latest versions f your favorite software.

With Update Checker you can quickly scan your computer for installed software, check the versions and then get informed on the new software releases.

You require only 100Kb in your PC and only takes seconds to run.

The Update Checker works on any Windows PC running Vista, XP, 2003, 2000 or 98.

It requires that the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 is installed.

One of the programs I mostly use to program web pages is Dreamweaver. This is a terrific tool fordoing this job and is part of Macromedia (now Adobe) suite. The program itself it’s perhaps a expensive if your budget is low. In this case, I recommend you NVU, another great.

NVU is a complete Web Authoring System for Linux desktop users as well as Microsoft Windows and Macintosh users to rival programs like FrontPage and Dreamweaver. Nvu (which stands for “new view”) makes managing a web site a snap. Now anyone can create web pages and manage a website with no technical expertise or knowledge of HTML.

NVU includes an FTP administrator in order to publish online your works; It also comes with a WYSIWYG editor and helps you validating the code while you write it down.

The other good reason for choosing NVU is because is Open Source. Go ahead, test it!.

I started my professional life as a business consultant. I worked in lot of projects and get involved in many consulting firms. During that period, I co-worked with people from the big six (now big four) and many other small consultant firms. I have to admit that the big lesson I learnt from the big firms -that generally did not find in the smaller ones- is methodology.

Methodology is a ‘way of doing things’. Is something that was already test by many people and, when they figure that it really work, they write it down in papers and start teaching it. It’s a kind of ’steps’ that everyone has to follow in order to get thing done better.

Even if each of the big consulting firms has their own methodology, the common thing is that they already have it, and their business consultants have to follow it. This is amazing, because it also teach discipline on your daily job.

When planning a business, even an online one, you have to take care of the methodology. You can read many articles, get many advises, but at the end, you should have a methodology of doing things.

Whit the methodology I learnt how to prepare a business plan, even a draft. I learnt about managing difficult customers and how to change not productive meeting. It also helps me when creating a presentation or a university class.

An excellent book I do recommend you for learn about methodology is The McKinsey Way. McKinsey is a big business consultant firm worldwide. It’s also one of the teachers in my professional life. I learnt a lot working with McKinsey people.
The McKinsey Way was first print in 1999 and its content has many lessons that can be applied anytime. From preparing a 3 minutes presentation for the CEO in the elevator to be successful in you job meeting, this book is all about methodology.

Do you need to create professional layouts ready for the press? The most common options for this are Illustrtator or Quark, well known programs that helps you with this issue. But, if you a starting a business with really low budget, Scribus is a very good option for this task.

Scribus is an open-source program that brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/Unix, MacOS X, OS/2 and Windows desktops with a combination of “press-ready” output and new approaches to page layout.

Underneath the modern and user friendly interface, Scribus supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK color, separations, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation.
I tested Scribus and it’s really easy to use. Go ahead, test it yourself…

As many of you know, my company sells e-business applications all over the world. Many times we found customers that, in addition to an e-business application, they need a hosting service. In order to give an end to end service, we offer our customers a hosting service based on resellers plans that we frequently purchase online. Other customers what to purchase their hosting plans themselves separately from our services, and so they asked us how to choose between the different available hosting companies.
Here is my practical guide to choose a reliable hosting company. I’ve to admit that, since using these techniques, we never have a problem with any of the hosting companies that we resell.

1. Select the server operative system you need.
Before you start choosing the best hosting company, you should know if you need a Windows hosting or a Linux one. This depends on the application that you’ll host there. Ask your programmers and designers which server type you need; they’ll probably help you with this subject. Even some Windows servers also support PHP and MySQL, if you really need a Linux plan, it’s better to get a Linux plan and not a Windows one that supports Linux extensions.

2. Determine the amount of space you need.
Nowadays, almost all hosting plan has a huge amount of disk space and data transfer. But still exists some MINI plans that both features are not too high. Perhaps you are planning to host a small application and you only need a great amount of data transfer; maybe you are planning to host lot of media (images, videos, etc) and you require extra space. Before start looking for a hosting company, you should estimate the amount of disk space and data transfer that you business will need, at least, for the next year. You can also get help for your programmers and designers.

3. Search for well known hosting companies.
Once you know the server system you need (Windows, Linux, etc), and the disk pace / data transfer require for your business, you can start searching the web for companies that provides the hosting services. Don’t get into panic. You’ll find thousand companies that can be your potential hosting providers, but be sure that only a few deserve that responsibility. The best way for searching companies, is by recommendation. Ask your colleagues, talk with other companies and let them tell you their experience with their hosting providers. At this point, I recommend you to open a spreadsheet and gather all the information you find for each company in order to help you taking the final decision. It’s very important to pay attention and see if the company offers a plan that fits your need.

4. Find hosting reviews
Once you get a list of potential hosting providers, you can star looking how other people rated that hosting companies. There are many hosting reviews sites: FindmyHost.com, TopHosts.com, WebHostMagazine.com, RateMyHost.com, WHReviews.com, etc. You can find many good and bad comments over there. Some of them could be totally invented in order to position a company on the top; some of them are real costumers’ comments. Just check that reviews and see if how many good/bad comments that those companies have and make your appreciation.

5. Test their service
Finally, here’s the most important task in the process of choosing a reliable hosting company. As you could see, all hosting companies say that they have a 24×7 support. But.., is that really true? Here’s what I used to do:
I tried to contact those companies in some special holidays, for instance, on December the 24th, near midnight, or the day after. I also contact them on December the 31st near midnight, or the day after. I also check where in the world the hosting datacenter is located and figure which holidays that country have. For instance, if the company is located in the US, I contact them on July the 4th. I used to talk to a representative, via chat, or phone and ask them some commercial doubts.
Just figure this: If a hosting company has a commercial people waiting for your call or chat during that special days (and pays for that, of course), probably they also have a support team in the same moment in order to attend any customer call or requirements. So, they seem to be really prepared for any inconvenience, anytime, 24×7. In the other hand, If a company does not pay a commercial representative to be online and ready for your call or chat during that special moments, we can not infer too much about their support area, but clearly they do not have all their critical (sales and support) staff 24×7.
This is the most important part of any decision process for a hosting company. Test their service, especially their commercial one, during those hours and days that you know that almost everyone are celebrating, or sleeping. If they can attend you it’s because there’s somebody that will listen to you anytime.

I did a matrix decision with many hosting companies and I frequently updated it with this information. Many of them fail on the fifth evaluation point.

In order to end this article, if you need my personal recommendation, maybe there are many other really good hosting companies, some of them cheaper, but, up today, we trusted our hosting in the following companies that have really good qualifications: WebHostingbuzz.com, HostGator.com and Rexoy.net and I used to recommend them based on my experience.

If you are looking for a reliable hosting company, just follow this practical guide and do not base your decision only in the hosting price.

When opening your e-business websites you’ll probably need one or more forms from where your visitors can contact you without purchasing. The most common one is the “Contact Us” form, but there are many others that can be useful for your organization in order to segment your contacts depending on each visitor needs.

For example, many stores have, in addition of the basic “Contact Us”, an online form for those who wants to be affiliates or resellers.

If you don’t have a programmer and you don’t know haw to create them, you can user JotForm, a web based WYSIWYG form builder. Its intuitive drag and drop user interface makes form building a breeze. Using JotForm, you can create forms, integrate them to your site and collect submissions from your visitors. It has many preformatted forms, as:

It’s basic usage is completely free and comes with all the available tools that can be added to a form, including CAPTCHA, Star Ratings, autoComplete, and many, many more. Nice tool for everybody!.

Many times I was asked about an online application that let us create business presentations. I just find PrezentIt, a community where someone can create (by himself of in group), share and show business presentations.

This endeavor, created in Peru, allows users to create up to 30 presentations and store up to 30 MB of images.
 
Ah, by the way, PrezentIt is totally free. You only need to register. Nice tool, but, IMO, needs to make some extra improvements and increase the storage per user.

Are you planning to going e-business? Maybe your budget is not too much. In that case, you have to take care of any penny involved in this adventure. When planning your web design, you can hire designers whom can create exclusive artworks for your site, but this represents money.

A free alternative is using an open source wed design. One of my favorites is OSWD.org, where you can find hundreds of free designs for your site.

The Open Source Web Design project (OSWD.org) was founded in September, 2000 by Francis J. Skettino. Their goal was to provide the Open Source community with quality web designs to help get people’s projects on the web in a way that is both organized and good looking. From personal blogs to content managements systems to full fledged businesses, OSWD has been providing free web designs to those who need them for years.

Day after day, many people contribute with this project with their designs. Take a look, some of them are really beautiful!.