It’s that time of year again where everyone scrambles for last minute shopping. Whether you are looking for a big gift or just a small stocking stuffer, if you are shopping online there are some things to be aware of to stay safe.

This infographic below provides a lot of this information.

Via: Trend Micro

Happy holidays from jonlee.ca!

Popularity: 1% [?]

Web host review sites are a dime a dozen these days so it really takes a lot for a site to set itself apart from the crowd.

I’ve found that most web hosting review sites I’ve looked at fail to do more than provide a table comparing some of the common features.

This is where WebHostingDeals.org is able to set itself apart. They have the obligatory comparison chart but they also provide very in-depth reviews of individual hosts complete with screenshot tours and current coupons/promotions. They also feature a user-submitted rating system which provides much more credibility to their rankings. I’d prefer it if they would show percentage of votes that like the service as opposed to just the number of positive votes. This information is available but would be nice to see at a glance.

Furthermore, every person looking for web hosting services will have varying needs. Depending on what that need is, there are categories provided along with top recommendations in each of those categories. For example, if you are looking to become a web host reseller, they provide the top choices for reseller hosting. Of particular interest are the blog hosting and green web hosting categories.

If you’re just beginning to venture into the vast word of web hosting, you’ll find that choosing a reliable web host is a very important step, which is why WebHostingDeals.org also offers very well written guides to help you avoid cheap marketing gimmicks and to make an informed choice. Cheaper isn’t always better!

You can tell a lot of work went into building this review site into what it currently is, and a lot more work goes into maintaining and keeping the information current. Kudos to them for creating a masterpiece of a web host review site.

They also have a twitter account at https://twitter.com/#!/TheHostingDeals that is actively tweeting. It’s always nice to see a business actively use social media, and not just have it just because it’s the current trend.

So check out WebHostingDeal to find a new web host or maybe just to see how your web host stacks up.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Whether you’re a business or blogger, the success of your web site depends on many factors. You may have the best content or product but if users are unable to navigate or interface with your site in a user-friendly manner then it’s likely to translate into poor results for, either, your bottom line or viewership. There are many tools that web sites need to employ and web design is as essential as your content. Here’s a list of five ways that you can quickly improve your site’s design and usability.

Improved Navigation:
One of the biggest, and surprisingly most common mistakes that sites make is not having prominent navigation buttons. If some one is browsing through your site on their 4G Slide Android Phone or laptop and the link buttons are too small or blend into the background then it’s going to make for a poor user experience. They won’t be able to navigate through your site and see the features or services that you provide. It can frustrate a user and they will commonly abandon a site that is difficult to use.

Making The Message Clear:
It’s far too common for sites to use a lot of graphics in their sites. You don’t want your page to be boring and devoid of color or style but too much can overwhelm a person and make your site unappealing. Less is more and the best way to communicate your message to audiences is by being short and to the point.

Just The Right Size:
If you’re blogging or describing a product, you may be very excited and have a lot to say but you don’t want to take up a whole page to say it. A frequent mistake is to make the font size smaller to supplement the space that you’re working in. This is a bad idea. You should never make the font size smaller than 10 or larger than 14. Look at most successful web sites, they follow this rule. Not doing so will make your message hard to read. Also, don’t use fancy, or odd, font styles. This just makes the reading that much harder. Stand out with your products or intellectual approach, not your presentation. It’s best to follow the format and stand out in other ways.

Too Many Links:
Social Media has definitely been a game changer and often sites want to increase their online profile by providing links to all of their extra pages and various content off-site. Sometimes, this has brought down the usability or function of a site. The desire to connect your readers to all of your other sources can often clutter up a page and confuse the content with the links. Adding links is fine but you need to do it thoughtfully and sparingly. If someone is interested in looking at your Facebook or Twitter page, they’ll find it but don’t overwhelm them with your dozen, or so, external links.

Scrolling:
This last one is simple but essential. Do not add a left-to-right scroll. This used to be done often on sites years ago but it’s a really antiquated way of interacting with a page. You should only incorporate vertical scrolling on your page. Keep your most important information up top and less important content in descending order. Don’t cram you site full of material that’s going in every direction, that’s poor planning.

If you’ve found that you’re not getting the kind of following you’d like then look at some of these quick ways that you can improve your site’s overall usability. There are many ways that you can do this so look online and seek advice on what you can do towards this aim. Also, one of the best tips is to look at what the competition is doing. Often sites run along a similar approach and you don’t want to look just like the competition but you do want to get your message across clearly. This is essential to having a successful design to your site.

Popularity: 2% [?]

As the highest option of web hosting, there is no doubt that having a dedicated server will give you all the control over the security you need to maintain a stable website. This is an important fact to know especially if you have a business website where it’s imperative for it to function without fail, and where having nearly 100% uptime is required for the success of the business.

If you’re just starting out with your business website, shared hosting can seem to provide you with the needed space you might require for a certain span of time. Although it may seem economical at first, it’s very common when you’re on a shared hosting plan to notice periods of when your website’s response time slows down, which is usually due to another account on the shared server using up the resources. This will compromise the speed of service you deserve, making dedicated server hosting a very attractive alternative to guarantee stability.

With your dedicated server, it secures your customization needs. Although a technical background is required, especially for hosting companies that offer less support features, if you know how to modify your server effectively, then you can utilize all resources that come with your dedicated server.

Though switching to a dedicated server is quite a leap as far as cost goes, you have to look at the price as an investment for not facing downtime due to sharing resources. The server will be yours alone, providing you optimal loading speeds, which equals more business for you as visitors will not deal with slow loading times. Disk space and RAM will be yours to control, which constitute effective bandwidth management for your business.

If you feel that the cost of a dedicated server may be too expensive, you can take advantage of a virtual private server (VPS), which is the intermediate option between a shared and a dedicated server. A VPS allows you to involve yourself in the transition between a shared hosting plan to that of a dedicated server plan. With the provisions of data security, the VPS provides you with security at a cost you can afford. However, with the increasing data management issues that arise, a dedicated server would be the more dependable choice.

Another instance that for considering a move to a dedicated server is for data management. For example, huge organizations may focus on tremendous amounts of data management. This may involve large databases, video files for visitor streaming and other activities related to the business itself. This consumes a lot of bandwidth, especially if there’s a lot of simultaneous uploading and downloading that occurs daily. Having a dedicated server conveniently allows you complete control over your server’s resources, which drops the compromise that you would get with any kind of shared server.

Moreover, with your dedicated server, you can have dedicated email that will allow visitors to contact you more securely. Adding to this, since you have complete control over your server management, you can install firewalls and other protective measures that will ultimately provide your website the security it deserves.

Dedicated server hosting provides you with the highest caliber of stability and performance rates. With your growing business at hand, you may want to consider visitor traffic utilizing your resources effectively. Although it may seem like an expensive upgrade, keep in mind the amount of business you face losing if your shared hosting plan cannot keep your business website up and available to your customers online all the time.

Brian Flores is a writer for InMotion Hosting, one of the top dedicated server providers in the country. He and his awesome team of writers regularly posts useful tutorials on WebHostingHelpGuy. You can follow him on Twitter @WHHG_InMotion or @BrianAFlores.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Have you ever wanted to put a world map on your site? Does your latest application require support for an interactive map? With almost 200 countries in the world, creating even a simple map of the world from scratch, even given the appropriate boundary information is a major undertaking.

Flash World Map
Flash World Map provides a pre-made high quality and fully customizable world map in Adobe Flash. I’m currently using it right here on my site to show the countries in the world that I’ve travelled to as well as the cities that I have actually lived in for an extended period of time. This is similar to the “Where I’ve Been” Facebook app but hosted locally, fully customizable and without the ads.

As you can see from the above map, it first zooms in on a continent/region to more clearly show the countries, then hovering on a country will popup a custom tooltip with HTML markup. The zoom is helpful since what appears to be 2-3 points in Southern Ontario, Canada is actually 5 upon closer inspection. Individual points can also be labeled with longitude/latitude coordinates, with a description of each point. This lets me point out individual cities I’ve lived in, not just countries. Each country/location can also be hyperlinked to another page, although I have not opted to do this.

Customizing the Map
The map is customized by editing an .xml (eXtensible Markup Language) file to specify individual descriptions and links for each country. The layout and format of the file is logical as it is an XML file so it is not hard to figure out how to make the appropriate changes.

However, with so many countries on the list, I found that the best way to edit the .xml file was with simple Find and Replace commands in a text editor. Manually inputting unique descriptions for each country will be a very time consuming task although I see no way of getting around this if it is a feature you require. One might also consider using an XML editor to make sure you don’t mess up the format of the file.

Incorporating it into your Site
Adding the map to your site could not be simpler.  Simply upload two files (the Flash and XML map data file) and add a small block of HTML code to your site.  One important thing to note is that the map data file must be contained within the same directory as the page calling the HTML code.  If your site structure is complicated (e.g. has directory rewrites), you may need to edit the source to point the Flash file to the map data directly.

Price/Cost
The cost of such a high quality map is $199 which I think is quite expensive but a trial version with limited features is available for non-commercial use. The trial version works indefinitely but is branded with the FlashWorldMap link which some people may be bothered by. You may find that the trial version is sufficient for your needs but if you want access to the source code to customize the flash app itself, then you’ll have to get a paid license. Keep in mind that location/country/style customization is still available in the free trial version.

Summary
What I like about Flash World Map:

• Very slick and clean interface
• Fully customizable through editing an easy-to-read XML file
• Easily stylized via CSS
• Easy to incorporate into the site (2 files and a block of code)

There are several things that I would like to see improved:

• An incorrectly formatted XML file simply displays “Loading data…” It would be nice if it pointed out where the syntax error is to help debug the XML file.
• There’s a little bug where a previously selected continent does not get deselected until you mouseover it again.
• Perhaps a less expensive non-commercial license for those that just want a little unbranded widget to add to their blog
• A more detailed flash map of the US is also available. A Canadian one would be nice to have too!

This is definitely the best implementation (Flash or HTML5) of an embedded world map I’ve seen thus far. If this is a feature you need on your site I would definitely recommend downloading the trail version to test it out!

Popularity: 3% [?]