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These links cover an assortment of more technical topics
vaguely related to website development.
Browser Wars
Finally something new in the browser market. Firefox is setting a new
standard for security and reliability. Want better pop-up ad blocking?
Want tabs and live bookmarks and better security? Want to avoid Microsoft?
Now you can do better. Release 1.0 is now available. I've been using the
pre-release version and loving it. Switch today. (12 Nov 2004)
Domain Names
There are lots of places to register your domain names these days,
from the overpriced Network Solutions to deep discount
places. My own preference is
pairNIC which offers a nice mix of good prices, good service, and
a nice user interface.
Website Hosting
A hosting company owns and maintains computers and internet connections
to support a large number of websites. They will charge a monthly
or annual fee for this service. There are many hosting companies,
and their services, prices, reliability, and customer support vary
considerably. I've had experience with some amazingly poor hosting
companies, so I'm very happy to say that I'm extremely pleased
with the company I'm using now,
pair Networks. They have good
prices, great reliability, the database and cgi services I need,
prompt customer
support, and a range of plans that fit my smallest site to my
biggest client. They also use only UNIX servers. I don't consider
Microsoft operating systems reliable enough for web hosting.
Search Engines
When the web was smaller, it was easy to get a good search engine
ranking. With more sites, there's now a lot more competition
for the choice positions. Most commerical sites should consider
additional forms of advertizing and announcements to get the word
out about their site. Still, there are things you can do to
get higher rankings.
- First, provide unique content on your site which makes your
site deserving of higher rankings and listings in the
internet directories used by search engines. The more
targeted and specialized your site is, the more likely
it is to get a top ranking when folks are searching
for those specialized keywords.
- Second, make sure your site is linked from at least one site
that is listed by search engines. The best links come from
sites that are related to your own. Reciprocal links
are much easier to get if you offer something unique
on your site and if you are not a competator for the
site you've asked to host your link. In general, the
more links the better, but be cautious about the quality
of those links.
-
Third, design your pages with search engines in mind as
well as your human readers. For this job, there are
tools that can help. The best tool I've found for
improving search engine ranking is
Web Position Gold from First Place Software. It
includes tools to analize your pages and suggest changes
and also tools to monitor the ranking of your site. A
free trial download is available.
Essential Tools
- GnuPG is a free replacement
for PGP - an encryption package.
- Perl a
programming language popular for CGI scripts.
- PHP a scripting language
for server side programming that can be embedded in an
html page.
- MySQL is a
database popular on unix webservers.
- phpMyAdmin is a database
administation tool for mySQL written in php.
- The Apache Software Foundation
provides support for many open-source software projects
including the Apache webserver.
Resources and Information
- Google never underestimate
how much you can learn from a good search, or just how
much mis-information is presented as fact on the web.
- Webmonkey
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The CGI Resource Index - Documentation
- Getty Images
Great source for stock photos, not always cheap, but good.
- PHP Freaks
Help with PHP and MySQL Scripts
- PHP Builder
Advanced help with PHP Scripts, and lots more.
Sources for Scripts
Some of these are simple scripts, others are pretty complex, and some are
full of security holes. A wide range of odds and ends. Choose wisely.
- CGI Scripts by Very Simple
- eXtropia
- Matt's Script Archive
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The CGI Resource Index - Programs and Scripts
Website Accessibility
- W3C Web Accessibility Initiative
-
Duke Chronicle article on web access for people with disabilities
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Final 508 Standards Issues 12/21/00
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Summary of Section 508 final rule for government websites
E-Commerce
- Authorize.net
a credit card gateway and transaction processing system
for accepting credit cards over the web in real time.
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PayPal is a credit card
gateway suitable for folks who can't afford or don't want
a credit card merchant account.
- Merchant Order Form
a great web based shopping cart. Requires a hosting package
that allows custom cgi programs and is best installed by
someone with some understanding of Perl programming, though not
required.
- Americart
is a shopping cart server suitable for accounts that
do not have custom cgi capability.
- Thawte a provider of
secure certificates for websites. Cheaper than Verisign
and just as good.
Portfolio
Websites I've built for myself or others, some are paid projects others
are volunteer efforts.
- Plant Delights Nursery
- My favorite site, perhaps because it was one of my first.
It features a shopping cart with secure server,
a database for catalog generation which the client can access
to keep availabity up to date and which allows catalog searches.
This site serves over 10,000 pages requests and transfers over
600 Mbytes of data per day. The on-line catalog has over
1000 items and is completely redone twice each year. In addition,
the site includes thousands of images and a great deal of
educational information provided by the site's owner, Tony Avent.
A webcam and a virtual garden tour are in the planning states.
- Start A Nursery
- A companion to Tony Avent's book So You Want to Start A Nursery
with links to sources of information and supplies helpful to
someone starting in the nursery industry.
- Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University (2001-2003)
- This site featured a database
which dynamically generates many of the pages in the site. The
news and events pages are generated on demand to be as up to date
as possible. The Pratt Press newsletter is generated by a script
after the content is entered
into the database. An interface is provided to Pratt so that
the staff can make the most frequest updates without needing
webmaster assistance. Server side includes are employed to
ensure subnavigation menus match on all pages in each section.
- Computational and Applied Genomics Program at Duke University (2002-2004)
- This was a small site that
had to be put together very quickly. It featured a dropdown menu.
Stock photography was located and modified and a matching texture
pattern created to accent the site as no images were available from the
client.
- The Department of Electrical and
Computer Engineering at Duke University (2002-2005)
Parts of the new site are still based on the work I did, but most of
it has been replaced by an in-house webmaster.
- Cyberlily Gardens
- The site you
are at now. The site includes a shopping cart, an on-line searchable
database of daylilies, both a simple style of image gallery and a much
more advanced one, and over 1400 of my own photos. Being my own site,
it's usually the most out of date.
- Holly Hill Daylily Farm and
Chatham Wholesale Daylilies
- Jim's one of the people who got me into daylilies. He only sells wholesale
and at the garden, so he needed something to convey open garden
dates and current promotions to customers and potential customers in
the local area and the current availabity for wholesale orders.
- Greg Piotrowski
Daylilies
- I made this site for my friend to showcase his hybridizing program.
- Betts' Daylily Robin Trademart
- is a private site accessable
by invitation only. All pages in the site except the entry page
are dynamically generated. Forms are provided for users to enter
and edit their data, and database queries display current data.
A very utilitarian site.
- DaylilyRust.org
- The opening
page of this site is maintained by Sue Bergeron, though I host
several of her images as Sue's server disk space is limited.
I built and maintain the on-line daylily rust survey. Users
may take two surveys related to daylily rust. Data submitted
is automatically recorded in a database. All data from the
cultivar survey is combined and the results are available when
a sufficient number of reports are available. The full data set
is available to those actively researching daylily rust. The
rust survey is supported by the American Hemerocallis Society
Committee on Scientific Studies.
- Bannoche Gardens
- Former nursery in Tennesee owned by a waterlily hybridizer.
- Iron Gate Gardens
- The daylily introductions of Van Sellers and Victor Santa Lucia.
- AHS Region 15
- Now both the official website for the region as well as the
companion pages created to support and promote Region 15
of the American Hemerocallis Society. There are galleries
of region 15 hybridizers and region 15 display gardens,
and there's an event calendar for region 15 clubs and
discussion forum. A work in progress... Most of the club
sites in the region are hosted with the companion and share
the regional calendar.
- Downing Creek
- Community pages for the neighborhood of Downing Creek.
- Region 15 Summer 2004 Meeting
- It's over now, but you can still enjoy the site.
- Vole Control
- A Bait Station System for eliminating pine voles that destroy landscape plants.
- Plant Safari
- A California Nursery
with some amazingly cool plants, many of which are too tender for me
to grow. Site design incorporates page layout
designed by the client's graphic artist.
- Home Reporter Systems
- Everything you need to start a home inspection business.
- Dragonfly Hill Daylilies
- Daylilies offered for mailorder and local sales, featuring Daylily and Garden Galleries with hundreds of images from the owner's garden. Site is designed to be updateable by the site owner.
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Last updated on
04/04/05