Sunday, October 2, 2011

Web development

Posted by Ben Mehdi at 2:20 PM 0 comments

Web development is a broad term for the work involved in developing a web site for the Internet (World Wide Web) or an intranet (a private network). This can include web design, web content development, client liaison, client-side/server-side scripting, web server and network security configuration, and e-commerce development. However, among web professionals, "web development" usually refers to the main non-design aspects of building web sites: writing markup and coding. Web development can range from developing the simplest static single page of plain text to the most complex web-based internet applications, electronic businesses, or social network services.
For larger organizations and businesses, web development teams can consist of hundreds of people (web developers). Smaller organizations may only require a single permanent or contracting webmaster, or secondary assignment to related job positions such as a graphic designer and/or information systems technician. Web development may be a collaborative effort between departments rather than the domain of a designated department.



Web development as an industry

Since the mid-1990s, web development has been one of the fastest growing industries in the world. In 1995 there were fewer than 1,000 web development companies in the United States, but by 2005 there were over 30,000 such companies in the U.S. alone.[1][dubious – discuss] The growth of this industry is being pushed by large businesses wishing to sell products and services to their customers and to automatebusiness workflow.
In addition, cost of Web site development and hosting has dropped dramatically during this time. Instead of costing ten thousands of dollars, as was the case for early websites, one can now develop a simple web site for free using one of the many free website builders such asGoogle Sites etc., depending on the complexity and amount of content. Smaller Web site development companies are now able to make web design accessible to both smaller companies and individuals further fueling the growth of the web development industry. As far as web development tools and platforms are concerned, there are many systems available to the public free of charge to aid in development. A popular example is the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack, which is usually distributed free of charge. This fact alone has manifested into many people around the globe setting up new Web sites daily and thus contributing to increase in web development popularity. Another contributing factor has been the rise of easy to use WYSIWYG web development software, most prominently Adobe Dreamweaver, Netbeans, WebDev, or Microsoft Expression Studio, Adobe Flex. Using such software, virtually anyone can develop a Web page in a matter of minutes. Knowledge of HyperText Markup Language (HTML), or other programming languages is not required, but recommended for professional results.
The next generation of web development tools uses the strong growth in LAMP, Java Platform, Enterprise Edition technologies and Microsoft .NET technologies to provide the Web as a way to run applications online. Web developers now help to deliver applications as Web services which were traditionally only available as applications on a desk based computer.
Instead of running executable code on a local computer, users are interacting with online applications to create new content. This has created new methods in communication and allowed for many opportunities to decentralize information and media distribution. Users are now able to interact with applications from many locations, instead of being tied to a specific workstation for their application environment.
Examples of dramatic transformation in communication and commerce led by web development include e-commerce. Online auction sites such as eBay have changed the way consumers consume and purchase goods and services. Online resellers such as Amazon.com andBuy.com (among many, many others) have transformed the shopping and bargain hunting experience for many consumers. Another good example of transformative communication led by web development is the blog. Web applications such as WordPress and Movable Type have created easily implemented blog environments for individual Web sites. Open source content management systems such as Joomla!, Drupal,XOOPS, and TYPO3 and enterprise content management systems such as Alfresco have extended web development into new modes of interaction and communication.
In addition, web development has moved to a new phase of Internet communication. Computer web sites are no longer simply tools for work or commerce but used most for communication. Websites such as Facebook and Twitter provide users a platform to freely communicate. This new form of web communication is also changing e-commerce through the number of hits and online advertisement.

[edit]Typical Areas

Web Development can be split into many areas and a typical and basic web development hierarchy might consist of:

[edit]Client Side Coding

  • Ajax Asynchronous JavaScript provides new methods of using JavaScript, and other languages to improve the user experience.
  • Flash Adobe Flash Player is an ubiquitous browser plugin ready for RIAs. Flex 2 is also deployed to the Flash Player (version 9+).
  • JavaScript Formally called ECMAScript, JavaScript is a ubiquitous client side platform for creating and delivering rich Web applications that can also run across a wide variety of devices.
  • JQuery Cross-browser JavaScript library designed to simplify and speed up the client-side scripting of HTML.
  • Microsoft Silverlight Microsoft's browser plugin that enables animation, vector graphics and high-definition video playback, programmed using XAML and .NET programming languages.
  • Real Studio Web Edition is a rapid application development environment for the web. The language is object oriented and is similar to both VB and Java. Applications are uniquely compiled to binary code.
  • HTML5 and CSS3 Latest HTML proposed standard combined with the latest proposed standard for CSS natively supports much of the client-side functionality provided by other frameworks such as Flash and Silverlight
Looking at these items from an "umbrella approach", client side coding such as XHTML is executed and stored on a local client (in a web browser) whereas server side code is not available to a client and is executed on a web server which generates the appropriate XHTML which is then sent to the client. The nature of client side coding allows you to alter the HTML on a local client and refresh the pages with updated content (locally), web designers must bear in mind the importance and relevance to security with their server side scripts. If a server side script accepts content from a locally modified client side script, the web development of that page is poorly sanitized with relation to security.

[edit]Server Side Coding

The World Wide Web has become a major delivery platform for web development a variety of complex and sophisticated enterprise applications in several domains. In addition to their inherent multifaceted functionality, these web applications exhibit complex behavior and place some unique demands on their usability, performance, security and ability to grow and evolve. However, a vast majority of these applications continue to be developed in an ad-hoc way, contributing to problems of usability, maintainability, quality and reliability.(1)(2) While web development can benefit from established practices from other related disciplines, it has certain distinguishing characteristics that demand special considerations. In recent years of web development there have been some developments towards addressing these problems and requirements. As an emerging discipline, web engineering actively promotes systematic, disciplined and quantifiable approaches towards successful development of high-quality, ubiquitously usable web-based systems and applications.(3)(4) In particular, web engineering focuses on the methodologies, techniques and tools that are the foundation of web application development and which support their design, development, evolution, and evaluation. Web application development has certain characteristics that make it different from traditional software, information system, or computer application development.
Web engineering is multidisciplinary and encompasses contributions from diverse areas: systems analysis and design, software engineering, hypermedia/hypertext engineering, requirements engineering, human-computer interaction, user interface, information engineering, information indexing and retrieval, testing, modelling and simulation, project management, and graphic design and presentation. Web engineering is neither a clone, nor a subset of software engineering, although both involve programming and software development. While web engineering uses software engineering principles, web development encompasses new approaches, methodologies, tools, techniques, and guidelines to meet the unique requirements for web-based applications.

[edit]Client Side + Server Side

  • Google Web Toolkit provides tools to create and maintain complex JavaScript front-end applications in Java.
  • Opa is a high-level language in which both the client and the server parts are implemented. The compiler then decides which parts run on the client (and are translated automatically to JavaScript) and which parts run on the server. The developer can tune those decisions with simple directives. (open source)
  • Pyjamas is a tool and framework for developing Ajax applications and Rich Internet Applications in python.
  • Tersus is a platform for the development of rich web applications by visually defining user interface, client side behavior and server side processing. (open source)
However languages like Ruby and Python are often paired with database servers other than MySQL (the M in LAMP). Below are example of other databases currently in wide use on the web. For instance some developers prefer a LAPR(Linux/Apache/PostgreSQL/Ruby on Rails) setup for development.

[edit]Database Technology

[edit]Practical Web Development

[edit]Basic

In practice, many web developers will have basic interdisciplinary skills / roles, including:
The above list is a simple website development hierarchy and can be extended to include all client side and server side aspects. It is still important to remember that web development is generally split up into client side coding, covering aspects such as the layout and design, and server side coding, which covers the website's functionality and back end systems.

[edit]Advanced

Some more advanced web developers will also have these interdisciplinary skills / roles:
  • GUI (Graphic User Interface) design
  • Audio, Video and Animation processing & encoding (for web usage)
  • Flash Capabilities (animation, audio, video, scripting)
  • Web content management system Deployment and/or Content management infrastructure design, development and integration
  • Web applications development, integration and deployment
  • Web server stress testing (how much traffic can a web server running a specific application endure before collapsing)
  • Web site security analysis & testing
  • Web site code optimization (which is an important aspect of search engine optimization)
  • Project management, QA and other aspects common to IT development

[edit]Security Considerations

Web development takes into account many security considerations, such as data entry error checking through forms, filtering output, and encryption.[2] Malicious practices such as SQL injection can be executed by users with ill intent yet with only primitive knowledge of web development as a whole. Scripts can be exploited to grant unauthorized access to malicious users trying to collect information such as email addresses, passwords and protected content like credit card numbers.
Some of this is dependent on the server environment (most commonly Apache or Microsoft IIS) on which the scripting language, such asPHP, Ruby, Python, Perl or ASP is running, and therefore is not necessarily down to the web developer themselves to maintain. However, stringent testing of web applications before public release is encouraged to prevent such exploits from occurring.
Keeping a web server safe from intrusion is often called Server Port Hardening. Many technologies come into play keeping information on the internet safe when it is transmitted from one location to another. For instance Secure Socket Layer Encryption (SSL) Certificates are issued by certificate authorities to help prevent internet fraud. Many developers often employ different forms of encryption when transmitting and storing sensitive information. A basic understanding of information technology security concerns is often part of a web developer's knowledge.
Because new security holes are found in web applications even after testing and launch, security patch updates are frequent for widely used applications. It is often the job of web developers to keep applications up to date as security patches are released and new security concerns are discovered.

[edit]Timeline

Web development timeline.png
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IT Consulting

Posted by Ben Mehdi at 2:16 PM 0 comments

Information technology consulting (also called IT consulting, Computer consultancy, Computing consultancy, technology consulting business and technology services or IT advisory) is a field that focuses on advising businesses on how best to use information technology to meet their business objectives. In addition to providing advice, IT consultancies often estimate, manage, implement, deploy, and administer IT systems on businesses' behalf, known as Outsourcing.
There are different reasons why consultants are called in:
To gain external, more objective advice and recommendations
To gain access to the consultants' specialized expertise
Simply as temporary help during a one-time project, where the hiring of permanent employees is not required
To outsource all or part of the IT services
[edit]Five basic principles

Five basic principles of IT consulting are:
Focus on the Relationship: Understanding the personality and expectations of client, client organization and all other stakeholders
Clearly Defined Role: Defined roles and responsibilities for both clients, other stakeholders and consulting team
Visualize Success: Helping the client see the end at the beginning
You Advise, They Decide: Client is the best person to decide
Be Oriented Towards Results: Ensuring that the solution addresses end user concerns, user training, implementation and maintenance constraints
[edit]Prerequisites and Major obstacles

Once a business owner defined the needs to take a business to the next level, a decision maker will define a scope, cost and a time-frame of the project [1]. The role of the IT consultancy company is to support and nurture the company from the very beginning of the project till the end, and deliver the project not only in the scope, time and cost but also with complete customer satisfaction[1].
[edit]Project Scoping and Planning
The usual problem is that a business owner doesn't know the detail of what the project is going to deliver until it starts the process. In many cases, the incremental effort in some projects can lead to significant financial loss.
The worst problem is that the baseline for evaluating the managers appointed to manage the project becomes blurred - making it more difficult to hold him or her accountable.[2]
[edit]Business Process and System Design
The scope of a project is linked intimately to the proposed business processes and systems that the project is going to deliver. Regardless of whether the project is to launch a new product range or discontinue unprofitable parts of the business, the change will have some impact on business processes and systems. The documentation of your business processes and system requirements are as fundamental to project scoping as an architects plans would be to the costing and scoping of the construction of a building.
[edit]Project Management Support
The most successful business projects are always those that are driven by an employee who has the authority, vision and influence to drive the required changes in a business. It is highly unlikely that a business owner (decision maker or similar) will realize the changes unless one has one of these people in the employment. However, the project leadership role typically requires significant experience and skills which are not usually found within a company focused on day-to-day operations. Due to this requirement within more significant business change projects / programs, outside expertise is often sought from firms which can bring this specific skill set to the company.
[edit]IT Consulting Skills

An IT Consultant needs to possess the following skills:
Advisory skills
Technical skills
Business skills
Communication skills
Management skills
[edit]Consulting fees

Under normal circumstances a fee for IT consulting is measured on a per day, per consultant basis. There is however an alternative option; fixed fee IT Consulting. A fixed fee IT consulting contract applies only to projects which are well defined, for example:
Infrastructure refreshment projects
Network design
Troubleshooting IT Consulting
Implementation of specific well described features, such as monitoring platforms
Infrastructure Capacity Planning
Generally, fixed fee IT consulting is for a specific amount of work, within a defined timeframe.
Many companies are now moving towards a fixed priced IT consulting model.
This trend is expected to continue as more companies now require delivery of IT Consulting services within a defined time and price structure.
Open ended consultancy models generally favour the consulting firm, as the consultancy firm is rewarded on a per day basis, there is no incentive to complete assignments within a fixed time. The result often being project overruns and significant cost overrun.
[edit]Management consulting and IT consulting

There is a relatively unclear line between management consulting and IT consulting. There are sometimes overlaps between the two fields, but IT consultants often have degrees in computer science, electronics, technology, or management information systems while management consultants often have degrees in accounting, economics, Industrial Engineering, finance, or a generalized MBA (Masters in Business Administration).
According to the Institute for Partner Education & Development, IT consultants' revenues come predominantly from design and planning based consulting with a mixture of IT and Business Consulting. This is different from a Systems Integrator in that you do not normally take title to product. Their value comes from their ability to integrate and support technologies as well as determining product and brands.
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Logo design

Posted by Ben Mehdi at 2:13 PM 0 comments

Logo design is an important area of graphic design, and one of the most difficult to perfect. The logo (ideogram), is the image embodying an organization. Because logos are meant to represent companies' brands or corporate identities and foster their immediate customer recognition, it is counterproductive to frequently redesign logos.
Color is considered important to brand recognition, but it should not be an integral component to the logo design, which could conflict with its functionality. Some colors are formed/associated with certain emotions that the designer wants to convey. For instance loud primary colors, such as red, are meant to attract the attention of drivers on highways are appropriate for companies that require such attention. In the United States red, white, and blue are often used in logos for companies that want to project patriotic feelings. Green is often associated with the health and hygiene sector, and light blue or silver is often used to reflect diet foods. For other brands, more subdued tones and lower saturation can communicate reliability, quality, relaxation, or other traits.
The logo design profession has substantially increased in numbers over the years since the rise of the Modernist movement in the United States in the 1950s.[13] Three designers are widely[14] considered the pioneers of that movement and of logo and corporate identity design: The first is Chermayeff & Geismar,[15] which is the firm responsible for a large number of iconic logos, such as Chase Bank (1964), Mobil Oil(1965), NBC (1984), PBS (1986), National Geographic(2003) and others. Due to the simplicity and boldness of their designs, many of their earlier logos are still in use today. The firm recently designed logos for the Library of Congress and the fashion brand Armani Exchange. Another pioneer of corporate identity design is Paul Rand,[16] who was one of the originators of the Swiss Style of graphic design. He designed many posters and corporate identities, including the logos for IBM, UPS, and ABC. Rand died in 1996. The third pioneer of corporate identity design is Saul Bass.[17] Bass was responsible for several recognizable logos in North America, including both the Bell Telephone logo (1969) and successor AT&T globe (1983). Other well-known designs were Continental Airlines (1968), Dixie (1969), andUnited Way (1972). Later, he would produce logos for a number of Japanese companies as well. He died in 1996.

[edit]Logo Design Process

Designing a good logo is not a simple task and requires a lot of involvement from the marketing team and the design agency (if outsourced). It requires clear idea about the concept and values of the brand as well as understanding of the consumer or target group as marketers call. Broad step in logo design process would be formulating concept, doing initial sketch, finalizing the logo concept, deciding the theme colours and format.

[edit]Psychy of Symbols

The effective design and use of a logo employs the understanding of human behavior. Whether cultural, or internal, people recognize and react to color, shapes, lines, fonts and other symbolic forms with emotions tied to their experiences.
Colors have a broad range of meaning according to different nations and cultures. A color could mean one thing in a particular setting, and something completely different in another.
Peoples minds have been trained to recognize the motion of a line. Horizontal lines often communicate a leveled security. Vertical lines convey dignity, and diagonal lines are full of energy, suggesting either rising or falling, or movement in one direction or another.

[edit]Dynamic logos

Nunc est bibendum (now is the time to drink), 1898 poster of the Michelin.
Coca-Cola logo
In 1898 the French tire manufacturer Michelin introduced the Michelin Man, a cartoon figure presented in many different contexts, such as eating, drinking and playing sports.
The famous MTV logo.
By the early 21st century, large corporations such as MTV, Google, Morton Salt and Saks Fifth Avenuehad adopted dynamic logos that change over time from setting to setting.[18]

[edit]Internet Compatible Logos

A company that use logotypes (wordmarks) may desire a logo that matches the firm's Internet Address. For short logotypes consisting of two or three characters, multiple companies are found to employ the same letters. A "CA" logo, for example, is used by the French Bank Credit Agricole, the Dutch Clothing Retailer C&A and the US Software Corporation CA Technologies, but only one can have the internet domain name CA.com.
In today's interface adaptive world, the use of a logo will be formatted and re-formatted from large monitors to small handheld devices. With the constant size change and re-formatting, logo designers are shifting to a more bold and simple approach, with heavy lines and shapes, and solid colors. This reduces the confusion when mingled with other logos in tight spaces and when stretched and squeezed between mediums.

[edit]Examples

[edit]Corporations, businesses and products

Due to the design, the color, the shape, and eventually additional elements of the logotype, each one can easily be differentiated from other logotypes. For example, a box of Kellogg's cereals will be easily recognized in a supermarket's shelf from a certain distance, due to its unique typography and distinctive red coloring. The same will be true when one is at the airport looking for the booth of theHertz Rent-A-Car company.
Some well-known logos include Apple Inc.'s apple with a bite missing, which started out as a rainbow of color, and has been reduced to a single color without any loss of recognition. Coca-Cola's script is known worldwide, but is best associated with the color red; its main competitor, Pepsi has taken the color blue, although they have abandoned their script logo. IBM, also known as "Big Blue" has simplified their logo over the years, and their name. What started as International Business Machines is now just "IBM" and the color blue has been a signature in their unifying campaign as they have moved to become an IT services company.
There are some other logos that must be mentioned when evaluating what the mark means to the consumer. Automotive brands can be summed up simply with their corporate logo—from the Chevrolet "Bow Tie" mark to the roundel marks of Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz andBMW, to the interlocking "RR" of Rolls-Royce—each has stood for a brand and clearly differentiated the product line.
Other logos that are recognized globally: the Nike "Swoosh" and the Adidas "Three stripes" are two well-known brands that are defined by their corporate logo. When Phil Knight started Nike, he was hoping to find a mark as recognizable as the Adidas stripes, which also provided reinforcement to the shoe. He hired a young student (Carolyn Davidson) to design his logo, paying her $35 for what has become one of the best known marks in the world (she was later compensated again by the company).[19]
Another logo of global renown is that of Playboy Enterprises. Playboy magazine claims it once received a letter at its Chicago, Illinois offices with its distinctive "bunny" logo as the only identifying mark, appearing where the mailing address normally appears.
Corporate identities are often developed by large firms who specialize in this type of work. However, Paul Rand is considered the father ofcorporate identity and his work has been seminal in launching this field. Some famous examples of his work were the UPS package with a string (replaced in March 2003), IBM and NeXT Computer.
An interesting case is the refinement of the FedEx logo, where the brand consultants convinced the company to shorten their corporate name and logo from "Federal Express" to the popular abbreviation "Fed Ex". Besides creating a shorter brand name, they reduced the amount of color used on vehicles (planes, trucks) and saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in paint costs. Also, the right-pointing arrow in the new logo hints at motion.
Logo of Facebook Inc.
Starting about 4 years ago, certain companies, especially online technology companies, began to adopt a common look and feel. Many people refer to that standard as "web 2.0", but there is no official "web 2.0" standard. Web 2.0 logos often use small chunks of large type, with bright and cheery colors. Although there are literally hundreds of fonts used by web 2.0 companies, the logos are generally dominated by soft, rounded san serif fonts such as VAG Rounded (Crowdspring) and Helvetica Rounded (Skype). There are, however, numerous exceptions, as some web 2.0 companies have used classic fonts (Trade, News Gothic, Frutiger, Helvetica), while others have chosen to differentiate completely, using fonts like Klavika(Facebook).

[edit]Sports

The Cap logo of the New York Yankees.
See also: Baseball uniforms#Graphics and logos and Major League Baseball#MLB uniforms

[edit]Logos in subvertising

See also: Culture jamming and Guerrilla communication
The wide recognition received by the most famous logos provides the brand's critics with the possibility ofmeme-hacking, a process also known as subvertising, turning the marketing message carried by the logo (either in its pristine form, or subtly altered) into a vehicle for an alternative message, frequently highly critical to the brand in question. An example is the AdBusters' corporate flag, a U.S. flag with the stars replaced by major corporate logos.
Virtually all distinctive design elements related to brands or logos can be subject to subvertising. Two groups known for subverting established logos and brands are ®™ark and AdBusters.
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Email marketing

Posted by Ben Mehdi at 1:38 PM 0 comments

Email marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fund-raising messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. However, the term is usually used to refer to:
sending email messages with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its current or previous customers, to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business,
sending email messages with the purpose of acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately,
adding advertisements to email messages sent by other companies to their customers, and
sending email messages over the Internet, as email did and does exist outside the Internet (e.g., network email and FIDO).
Researchers estimate that United States firms alone spent US $400 million on email marketing in 2006
Advantages
Email marketing (on the Internet) is popular with companies for several reasons:
An exact return on investment can be tracked ("track to basket") and has proven to be high when done properly. Email marketing is often reported as second only to search marketing as the most effective online marketing tactic.[2]
Advertisers can reach substantial numbers of email subscribers who have opted in (i.e., consented) to receive email communications on subjects of interest to them.
Over half of Internet users check or send email on a typical day.[3]
Email is popular with digital marketers, rising an estimated 15% in 2009 to £292m in the UK.[4]
[edit]Disadvantages
A report issued by the email services company Return Path, as of mid-2008 email deliverability is still an issue for legitimate marketers. According to the report, legitimate email servers averaged a delivery rate of 56%; twenty percent of the messages were rejected, and eight percent were filtered.[5]
Companies considering the use of an email marketing program must make sure that their program does not violate spam laws such as the United States' Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM),[6] the European Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003, or their Internet service provider's acceptable use policy.
[edit]Opt-in email advertising

Opt-in email advertising, or permission marketing, is a method of advertising via email whereby the recipient of the advertisement has consented to receive it. This method is one of several developed by marketers to eliminate the disadvantages of email marketing.[7]
Opt-in email marketing may evolve into a technology that uses a handshake protocol between the sender and receiver.[7] This system is intended to eventually result in a high degree of satisfaction between consumers and marketers. If opt-in email advertising is used, the material that is emailed to consumers will be "anticipated". It is assumed that the consumer wants to receive it, which makes it unlike unsolicited advertisements sent to the consumer. Ideally, opt-in email advertisements will be more personal and relevant to the consumer than untargeted advertisements.
A common example of permission marketing is a newsletter sent to an advertising firm's customers. Such newsletters inform customers of upcoming events or promotions, or new products.[8] In this type of advertising, a company that wants to send a newsletter to their customers may ask them at the point of purchase if they would like to receive the newsletter.
With a foundation of opted-in contact information stored in their database, marketers can send out promotional materials automatically—known as Drip Marketing. They can also segment their promotions to specific market segments.[9]
[edit]Legal requirements

In 2002 the European Union introduced the Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications. Article 13 of the Directive prohibits the use of email addresses for marketing purposes. The Directive establishes the opt-in regime, where unsolicited emails may be sent only with prior agreement of the recipient.
The directive has since been incorporated into the laws of member states. In the UK it is covered under the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003[10] and applies to all organisations that send out marketing by some form of electronic communication.
The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 authorizes a US $16,000 penalty per violation for spamming each individual recipient. Therefore, many commercial email marketers within the United States utilize a service or special software to ensure compliance with the Act. A variety of older systems exist that do not ensure compliance with the Act. To comply with the Act's regulation of commercial email, services typically require users to authenticate their return address and include a valid physical address, provide a one-click unsubscribe feature, and prohibit importing lists of purchased addresses that may not have given valid permission.
In addition to satisfying legal requirements, email service providers (ESPs) began to help customers establish and manage their own email marketing campaigns. The service providers supply email templates and general best practices, as well as methods for handling subscriptions and cancellations automatically. Some ESPs will provide insight/assistance with deliverability issues for major email providers. They also provide statistics pertaining to the number of messages received and opened, and whether the recipients clicked on any links within the messages.
The CAN-SPAM Act was updated with some new regulations including a no fee provision for opting out, further definition of "sender", post office or private mail boxes count as a "valid physical postal address" and definition of "person". These new provisions went into effect on July 7, 2008.
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Web design

Posted by Ben Mehdi at 1:34 PM 0 comments

Web design is the process of planning and creating a website. Text, images, digital media and programming elements are shaped by the web designer to produce the page seen on the web browser.[1] Web designers utilize markup language, most notably HTML for structure and CSS for presentation to develop pages that can be read by web browsers. In the world of Web 2.0 other programming languages, such as javaScript, PHP, ASP.net, and Perl, are used to develop websites that are both interactive and engaging.
As a whole, the process of web design includes conceptualization, planning, post-production, research, advertising as well as media control that is applied to the pages within the site by the designer or group of designers with a specific purpose. The site itself can be divided into its main page, also known as the home page, which cites the main objective as well as highlights of the site's daily updates; which also contains hyperlinks that functions to direct viewers to a designated page within the site's domain.
Best practices

Ideally, web designers should strive to write code that is valid HTML and CSS. In doing so it makes it easier to correct problems, edit pages, or update pages. Additionally, keeping your HTML files and CSS files separate helps to make it easier to make changes. For example, having a separate CSS file allows for aesthetic changes to be made to the entire site rather than to just a single page. If CSS rules are included within a single HTML page, changes would have to be made to each and every page. The reasoning is that HTML should only be used for raw content and CSS be used to manipulate the content for aesthetic style. This is true for scripting files as well.[citation needed]
[edit]Changes and updates

Initial website designs normally need small tweaks and changes after they go live, but major updates and re-designs may be undertaken periodically.
Changes to websites almost always provoke a backlash from its regular users.[2] The reason for this is primarily that change is disruptive to the user: for example, the link that the user previously learned was always in the lower left corner is now "missing", and the user must search the page to discover its new location. The user is disoriented, frustrated, slowed down, and needs time to learn and adapt to the new arrangement. On websites with users who spend significant amounts of time each day using, like Facebook or Wikipedia, users normally respond to even moderate changes with noisy protests and empty threats to leave the website.[2]
Within a few weeks or months, however, most users have adapted to the changes and no longer object to them.[2] For example, the signature feature of Facebook, a news feed, drew millions of complaints when it first appeared, but users now say that it is an important and highly desirable feature.[2]
Major websites may try to minimize this with phased rollouts of changes, testing the new design with a small number of randomly selected users, describing the importance of the upcoming changes in advance, and offering users the option of keeping the old design until they have acclimated to the new one. However, the primary cure for complaints is simply to wait.
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Services

Posted by Ben Mehdi at 1:20 PM 0 comments
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