http://www.practicalecommerce.com/topic/16/Development--Programming/ Articles to help designers, developers and programmers create successful, search engine friendly ecommerce websites and improve existing ones. en-us Copyright 2007 Confluence Publishing Wed, 07 May 2008 17:24:42 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/rss/ Practical Ecommerce v2.0.1 Ecommerce kmurdock@practicalecommerce.com bgetting@practicalecommerce.com 60 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/730/Five-Fast-Steps-to-Improve-Website-Usability/ Problem: Your website doesn't work like it should, and every day you're losing sales because of it. As much as you'd like to take the time to comprehensively study the problem, you've decided you can't afford to wait. In many instances, you should take some time to step back and look at your entire website and how its usability can be improved. However, there are some things you can begin looking at right now. 1. Checkout More sales are lost at checkout than any single spot on a website. Look at your analytics to see if you have an unusually large number of visitors who abandon their shopping cart before completing the sale. This may indicate a technical or design problem. Have someone look at your checkout procedure to see if it performs as it was initially designed. If it's not, you're likely losing sales. Things to consider include ease of use, payment terms, cart accessibility from each page of your site and helpful instructions. Ask friends to recommend sites and checkout... Wed, 07 May 2008 17:24:42 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/730/Five-Fast-Steps-to-Improve-Website-Usability/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/707/Bells-And-Whistles-Or-Accessibility-Stop-Signs/ With the advent of high-speed Internet, a treasure trove of possibilities presented themselves to the web developer. Java, embedded video, Flash and other coding options afforded online retailers the opportunity to provide entertainment, in addition to merchandise. Something to keep in mind is that while you might find a catchy tune or nifty Flash animation appealing on your home page, you may be putting up impenetrable barriers to people with disabilities. Let's say you sell music. Having a snippet of a popular song play when a visitor arrives would seem to be a natural sales aid. But do you offer an option to turn the music off? Is there a SKIP INTRO button? Do you allow for a few seconds between the time your page loads and the start of your music or video clip? If not, you should. The visitor using assistive technology may not be able to hear his/her screen reader if there is, simultaneously, music or video content playing. If that user cannot hear the contents of the page... Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:30:06 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/707/Bells-And-Whistles-Or-Accessibility-Stop-Signs/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/703/Interview-ICANN-Official-On-The-Domain-Name-Infrastructure/ The Internet Corporation for Assigned Name and Numbers, or ICANN, coordinates the domain name system globally. ICANN was created in 1998 to perform various Internet administrative tasks previously done by a range of bodies including universities, private companies and the U.S. government. These tasks involve ensuring the domain name system functions properly and that individuals and companies can easily obtain and use domain names for their lawful purposes. We asked Jason Keenan, Media Advisor with ICANN, how it all works. PeC: How is it that someone located in, say, Asia types Practicalecommerce.com in a web browser and our site appears? Keenan: Well, your website resides on a specific computer that is attached to the Internet. That computer is automatically assigned a unique number, called an Internet Protocol or IP address. Someone in Asia, or anywhere else, could type your IP address in the browser and your site would appear. But, the fact is that Practicalecommerce.com is... Wed, 26 Mar 2008 19:07:05 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/703/Interview-ICANN-Official-On-The-Domain-Name-Infrastructure/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/702/Frameworks-For-Web-Designers/ I've written previously about frameworks and how they help developers build web applications. For the most part, my praise of frameworks has been directed at those of us who develop web applications, such as coding up the Ruby, Perl, PHP or .Net scripts that make applications work. However, frameworks can also be used to help teams work together, as in the case of a graphic designer and a web application developer. I can say from experience that it is often difficult to get creative people from different disciplines to work effectively together. Enter the Blueprint CSS framework. Blueprint CSS is a framework for visually styling web pages with Cascading Style Sheets. Rather than writing your own CSS for every website that you work on, Blueprint provides a foundation of CSS styles to work with and build upon. As CSS gets more advanced, and the shortcomings of web design are overcome, a framework like this can prevent problems, as well as give developers the tools to bring the... Wed, 26 Mar 2008 17:56:13 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/702/Frameworks-For-Web-Designers/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/657/Determine-Analytics-Questions-In-Advance/ 
Once a web analytics solution is installed, the most common initial use is to validate some past event. User testing shows that 80 percent of marketers focus on charts that go up and to the right, thus validating the success of the website or an advertising campaign. I call this “web analytics for entertainment.” While this is gratifying and fun to do, it’s not very productive. 

The truth is that good web analysis can give you a competitive advantage across many aspects of your online business, such as search engine optimization, site design, advertising and on-site conversion. But the key is to ask the right questions, in advance, of your web analytics tool and not to let the tool determine what your questions should be. 
Here are the three requirements for forming good questions: A. The question must be related to yourbusiness goals. B. The question must be answerable by web analytics. C. The question must have actions related to the... Wed, 23 Jan 2008 09:22:49 -0700 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/657/Determine-Analytics-Questions-In-Advance/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/654/Testing-Site-Accessibility/ Here's how to perform a standard test to see if your website and store are accessible to the vision impaired. First, for PC users, open the Narrator program. For Mac users, use the APPLE+F5 keystroke to turn on VoiceOver. Do this before you open your browser. Open your browser and load your site’s home page. Note that you will hear your keystrokes read aloud. Unplug your mouse and turn off your monitor. Navigate using the arrow keys and keyboard commands. Feel free to close your eyes; you're not going to need them for a while. Use CTRL+HOME to start at the top of the page. (Shift+APPLE+H for Mac users.) The screen reader should read out the name of your site. If it doesn't, you need to change your title tag so that a visitor using assistive technology knows where they've landed. Using the arrow keys, toggle through your navigation buttons. Let's say you have links to your blog, product search page, view basket and checkout. Pick one and hit ENTER or the space bar.... Fri, 18 Jan 2008 14:44:12 -0700 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/654/Testing-Site-Accessibility/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/649/What-Makes-A-Site-Effective/ A client recently asked me to do a quick-and-dirty analysis of a half dozen competitor websites. I decided to look at each competitor site and then give it a good/fair/poor rating for certain criteria. I thought that these criteria, and some explanation of what I was looking for, could benefit Practical eCommerce readers. I had two main sections, with sub-criteria in each. My first section was “Graphic Design,” and I rated the following criteria: Instant Affinity This is a term that I use for the “that’s what I was looking for” reaction that we sometimes have when we find new sites. It’s an important (albeit subjective) measure because research has shown that visitors make a judgment about a website in a fraction of a second. I have found that clean, crisp looking sites, with an appropriate image and a 7-12 word headline, tend to work well. I’d suggest shorter landing pages, so that no scrolling is required. Credibility We’re all wary of scams on... Mon, 14 Jan 2008 15:51:51 -0700 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/649/What-Makes-A-Site-Effective/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/619/Programming-Notes-Importance-of-Hand-Coding/ Let's be honest. Most people do not go into website design because they enjoy writing code, or because they want to root through hundreds of lines of seemingly non-sensical expressions. That comes later. Most people start with a visual idea and work from there, usually taking advantage of applications like Dreamweaver or GoLive to help them avoid writing code. While great for the beginner and available to the masses, it's important for developers to wean themselves off these tools as soon as possible. Hand-coding, while probably not the most popular option out there, is the best way to ensure that your code is clean and compliant. Visual editors tend to make assumptions when they are automatically writing code, which can lead to code bloat (code that is unnecessarily long). For example, Dreamweaver will automatically include extra attributes on some tags, or will insert JavaScript code in order to achieve certain functionality. Even if you use these tools to make developing easier,... Wed, 19 Dec 2007 13:19:38 -0700 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/619/Programming-Notes-Importance-of-Hand-Coding/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/593/Software-Frameworks/ In broad terms, a software framework is a code library that is designed to facilitate software development. The idea is that all of the tedious, low-level details of creating a web application are already addressed in a reusable package. For a web developer, this means you can spend your time worrying about specific problems related to your application, and not the actual building of the code behind it. For example, a developer can quickly and easily access a database using a framework, rather than having to write all of the code required to accomplish this simple task. To get a better idea of how a framework can help, let's take a look at two notable web development frameworks — Ruby on Rails and Prototype. Ruby on Rails, or Rails, is a framework for creating web applications with the Ruby programming language. Developed by David Heinemeier Hansson in 2004, Rails is designed to favor "convention over configuration," which translates to mean that Rails makes opinionated... Wed, 24 Oct 2007 11:15:25 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/593/Software-Frameworks/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/570/Video-Tutorial-Scriptaculous-Effects/ Script.aculo.us is a JavaScript framework that is built upon the wildly successful Prototype JavaScript libraries. Script.aculo.us allows web designers to create engaging user interfaces quickly and easily, due in part to the animation effects it is famous for. In this tutorial, we will look at a few of the more useful Script.aculo.us animation effects and how website designers can easily use them in their websites. We'll take a look at the ubiquitous "highlight" effect, various methods of making content appear and disappear and finally create a simple JavaScript that will combine effects to create advanced user interface possibilities. Software Used: TextMate Additional Files: tabs_tutorial_2.zip Click the image below to launch the tutorial. This video tutorial requires Flash Player version 8 or above. Please forward us your ideas for additional video tutorials, via our Contact Us form. Thu, 18 Oct 2007 06:04:06 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/570/Video-Tutorial-Scriptaculous-Effects/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/569/Video-Tutorial-Tabbed-Content---Part-2/ Tabbed content appears more and more frequently in web pages, and is an interesting way to simultaneously save page space and effectively present information. In part two of this two-part tutorial on creating tabbed content, Practical eCommerce's online director Brian Getting illustrates how to utilize JavaScript to get our tabbed effect working (Click here to view Part 1). Software Used: TextMate Additional Files: tabs_tutorial_2.zip Click the image below to launch the tutorial. This video tutorial requires Flash Player version 8 or above. Please forward us your ideas for additional video tutorials, via our Contact Us form. Thu, 11 Oct 2007 06:45:27 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/569/Video-Tutorial-Tabbed-Content---Part-2/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/568/Video-Tutorial-Tabbed-Content/ Tabbed content appears more and more frequently in web pages, and is an interesting way to simultaneously save page space and effectively present information. In part one of this two-part tutorial on creating tabbed content, Practical eCommerce's online director Brian Getting illustrates how to create an XHTML/CSS based page layout that will work for tabbed content. Software Used: TextMate Additional Files: tabs_tutorial_1.zip Click the image below to launch the tutorial. This video tutorial requires Flash Player version 8 or above. Please forward us your ideas for additional video tutorials, via our Contact Us form. Thu, 04 Oct 2007 06:41:24 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/568/Video-Tutorial-Tabbed-Content/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/567/Video-Tutorial-JavaScript-Tooltips/ You've probably seen those useful "tooltips" text boxes that are displayed on some websites when you roll over a specific link or graphic. These typically serve several purposes. Most likely, your customers or visitors could benefit from additional information that doesn't warrant an entire page or even another trip to the server. Or perhaps you are developer creating a complicated application, and some simple tool tips and help icons, strategically placed, would improve the usability. This simple tutorial illustrates how to use the ToolTips script available from ger-tentler.de. Software Used: TextMate Additional Files: tooltip_tutorial.zip Click the image below to launch the tutorial. This video tutorial requires Flash Player version 8 or above. Please forward us your ideas for additional video tutorials, via our Contact Us form. Thu, 27 Sep 2007 06:36:29 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/567/Video-Tutorial-JavaScript-Tooltips/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/572/Nine-Simple-Ways-To-Speed-Up-Tedious-Tasks/ Because I’m all about automation of the tedious of tasks, this month I’m offering up some key, yet very simple ways, to speed up tasks you’ve probably never given much thought to. While it may take me time to figure it out, I always try to tackle the pesky mundane tasks first. Auto-loading Daily Sites In Browser Tabs I have a minimum of three secure areas I must log into each morning. It’s such a hassle to have to go to File...New Tab every day. Here are two possible solutions: • In FireFox, go to Tools...Options. On the Main screen enter each URL to auto open, with each separated by the | character. • In IE 7, go to Tools...Options. On the General screen enter each URL on a separate line. Email Aliases And Text Messaging For urgent issues, there’s a special email address people can use (no, I won’t post it here). I set the alias to shoot copies of the message to the entire team, and as text messages on our phones. It’s actually quite handy as well... Mon, 24 Sep 2007 09:54:29 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/572/Nine-Simple-Ways-To-Speed-Up-Tedious-Tasks/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/538/Video-Tutorial-Validating-A-Form-With-JavaScript/ In form validation two common questions often arise. The first is how do you ensure once you've asked for an email address on an online form, you actually get one? The second is how do you make sure your customers include a name and phone number when they contact you from your website? The answer lies in form validation, or checking a form's data before it is submitted, and JavaScript is particularly useful for client-side validation. In this tutorial, we will create an online contact form our visitors could use to send us an email message. To guarantee they include their name, email address and a short message when they submit the form, we will use a simple JavaScript function to illustrate how validation works. By checking our form data before we submit the form, we will eliminate the potential of receiving a blank email from JavaScript enabled users. Software Used: TextMate Additional Files: form_validation.zip Click the image below to launch the tutorial. This... Thu, 20 Sep 2007 06:15:08 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/538/Video-Tutorial-Validating-A-Form-With-JavaScript/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/556/TechSupport-Whats-A-Relational-Database/ Q: Our web developer tells us that our ecommerce site uses a relational database, but I don't understand what this means. Could you please explain? At the foundation of nearly all web applications, including dynamically-generated websites, lies a relational database that stores and manages all of the data for the application. Whether you are using MySQL, PostGRES or another of the many database applications, your data will be stored into various tables in the database. Having a clear understanding of how you intend to use that data is crucial when creating a database for your application, particularly in understanding the relationships between tables of data. In an effort to explain what relationships are, I will illustrate the most commonly-used type, called "one-to-many relationships." A one-to-many relationship is, as the name implies, a relationship between one record in one table and many records in another table. As an example, let's say we have a shopping cart application... Mon, 10 Sep 2007 16:16:30 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/556/TechSupport-Whats-A-Relational-Database/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/541/Site-Search-Increases-Conversion-Rates-Average-Order-Value-And-Loyalty/ If your online store has hundreds of products, you may want to consider implementing a more sophisticated site search to help your customers find what they need quickly. For those of you running shops with an inventory of less than 500 products, you may only need to make sure your navigation has been designed effectively. But for shops with 500 or more products, an advanced site search solution will help you in many ways, including increasing revenues. There are several factors in determining whether your site should utilize the features of a site search solution. The main factor is the size of your product catalog. “The more SKUs a storefront has, the more difficult it is for shoppers to find the right products,” said Joe Lichtman, director of retail product management for FAST, which develops advanced search technology solutions. “Advanced site search with dynamic navigation helps shoppers quickly sift through thousands of products in just a few clicks.” Large... Wed, 15 Aug 2007 11:04:15 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/541/Site-Search-Increases-Conversion-Rates-Average-Order-Value-And-Loyalty/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/522/Tech-Support-July-2007-Accessibility/ I keep hearing about accessibility. What is it and why is it important? Accessibility, in the context of a website, is the measure of how easily people with disabilities can perceive, navigate, access and interact with electronic content and information. People with disabilities face unique challenges when it comes to using the Internet. Whether the user is suffering temporarily from a broken arm and cannot use a mouse or has a visual impairment that requires an assistive device, most websites have accessibility barriers preventing users with disabilities to effectively use certain sites. Developers have a special responsibility, in some cases a legally binding responsibility, to ensure that websites are built in a way that enables them to function with assistive devices and technologies. In many cases, neither the owners of websites or developers of websites are even aware that accessibility standards exist. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has spearheaded the Web... Mon, 16 Jul 2007 10:21:41 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/522/Tech-Support-July-2007-Accessibility/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/509/Protect-Data-From-Cross-Site-Scripting-XSS-Attacks/ Security is always going to be a concern for both developers and ecommerce business owners alike, since providing a secure environment for making transactions is not only a matter of gaining customer trust, it is also a legal requirement. As websites become more interactive they are utilizing more and more client-side scripting, such as JavaScript, to provide a rich user experience. At the same time, user submitted content is also becoming a standard feature of most websites, the combination of which can leave a website open to what is called a Cross Site Scripting (XSS) attack, which can threaten the privacy of your confidential data. A common XSS attack will utilize JavaScript, which is run locally on a user's computer, to capture some bit of information and deliver it to the attacker. Most commonly, attackers will configure a script that will harvest cookies from a user's machine. The hope is that the script was run while the user was logged into a protected interface that... Mon, 25 Jun 2007 10:22:54 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/509/Protect-Data-From-Cross-Site-Scripting-XSS-Attacks/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/505/Video-Tutorial-CSS-Design-Part-Two/ In the conclusion of our two-part video tutorial on CSS layout and design, we will take the layout we created in the beginning of this tutorial and begin to apply graphics and other visual stylings to it, in order to achieve the look we are going for. In Part Two, we will be looking at how to identify the basic graphic elements we need. From slicing the images out of our original Photoshop document to optimizing the images in Photoshop to applying the images correctly to our page, we do it all in this tutorial. We start by breaking our Photoshop document down into the basic graphic elements we need to achieve our design goals, and then proceed to optimize each graphic element. Once created, we apply graphics to our page using a variety of CSS techniques that can be intimidating to designers. By the end of this tutorial, we will have quickly made a basic web page using HTML and CSS that almost exactly matches our original Photoshop document. Please feel free to download and... Wed, 20 Jun 2007 11:38:31 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/505/Video-Tutorial-CSS-Design-Part-Two/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/504/Video-Tutorial-CSS-Design-Part-One/ Designing search engine friendly websites can be intimidating, particularly for designers who are just learning how to use CSS formatting. One of the most intimidating aspects to learning CSS design is creating page layouts that do not rely on tables. In the first of a two-part video tutorial by Practical eCommerce's online director Brian Getting, we will look at some of tricks and techniques used to create flawless CSS page layouts. In Part One, starting with a Photoshop layout, we will look at how to markup an HTML document based on our design needs, and create the proper code we will need to get the results we are looking for. Once we have our markup in place, we finish Part One by using CSS to create a formatted two-column page layout that does not rely on tables or other non-compliant code. Once we achieve a lean, efficient layout, we will find ourselves ready for Part Two, where we will learn how to apply graphics and visual styling to our layout in order to match it up... Tue, 19 Jun 2007 06:33:59 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/504/Video-Tutorial-CSS-Design-Part-One/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/498/Web-Conversion-Strategy-When-Design-Dominates/ A local business magazine had written an article reviewing the website designs of various local companies. As you may imagine, I read with dismay as the three-page article focused solely on graphic design. There was no mention of usability, conversion rate or site effectiveness (using actual metrics). Unfortunately, I think this is all still fairly typical. When I meet people in a social setting and they ask what I do, I get the distinct impression I am instantly pigeonholed as a web designer. Granted, “web conversion strategy consultant” is somewhat of a mouthful, and an earful, but as soon as people learn I’m involved with making websites effective, they decide I must be a graphic designer. In the same sense, many business managers/owners I speak with spend 90 percent of their web budget (as well as energy and focus) on graphic design and only 10 percent on “the other stuff.” To some extent, I understand this. Graphic design is obvious; it’s the part everyone sees.... Fri, 08 Jun 2007 13:53:49 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/498/Web-Conversion-Strategy-When-Design-Dominates/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/494/Critique-Part-Four--Site-Search/ The Problem: The results aren't always relevant. The Fix: A search for "snowboard" returns wax as the top result — but no snowboard until the fourth page of results, even though the site has an entire section dedicated to snowboards. Similarly irrelevant results came back for "bindings" and "longboard." Relevance is the most critical feature of site search. Daddies Board Shop could significantly improve the relevance of search results by adding weight to the keywords that appear in titles and categories. The Problem: The search yields results with a jumbled appearance. The Fix: The results are ordered in a 2x10 grid format and the "add-to-cart" buttons don't line up, giving the search a fairly jumbled appearance. It would be worthwhile to experiment with a list layout that presented longer descriptions beside each product with search terms in bold. This additional information can help users find what they want. It's also nice to offer users the option to switch between... Mon, 04 Jun 2007 09:00:06 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/494/Critique-Part-Four--Site-Search/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/474/Installing-Google-Maps-On-Your-Site/ Implementing Google Maps into your website is an easy way to provide rich, interactive map features that can help your customers find your business. Of particular interest to brick-and-mortar stores, Google Maps provides an Application Programming Interface (API) that makes it easy for developers to incorporate custom maps into websites they create. The first step in working with the Google Maps API is to sign up for what is called an API key. Each website that contains Google maps requires its own API key — an effort to reduce spam and abuse of the service. Once you have your API key, you're ready to go. Now that you have your API key, you will need coordinates that tell the API where the center of your map should be. The process of converting addresses to geographic coordinates (latitude and longitude) is called geocoding. Google Maps provides access to geocoders that can easily convert the address you want to serve as the center of your map (such as your business) into... Wed, 02 May 2007 09:21:21 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/474/Installing-Google-Maps-On-Your-Site/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/464/Basic-Definitions-Web-10-Web-20-Web-30/ "What do people mean when they talk about the Web 2.0?" is a query we receive repeatedly, and probably has as many answers as the number of people out there using the term. However, since talk about the Web 3.0 has surfaced in the last year or so, a whole new level of confusion seems to have set in. In an effort to help people understand the ideas behind buzzwords like Web 2.0 and Web 3.0, let's go through what exactly these terms mean (if anything), and how they apply to your ecommerce business. I want to make it clear at the start that this article is meant to be a broad definition of the challenges that cause people to think in terms of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0. Since these are buzzwords and not clearly defined terms, think of this as an attempt to provide a bird's-eye view of the ever-changing lay of the land on the web. In an effort to create discreet "versions" of the web that can be compared, I will borrow from the W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee's notion of the read-write web,... Wed, 18 Apr 2007 14:44:05 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/464/Basic-Definitions-Web-10-Web-20-Web-30/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/458/What-is-Ruby-on-Rails/ First there was Ruby, and now there is Ruby on Rails. Ruby is an open-source web-programming language that was developed in Japan in 1995. Ruby resides on your web server and operates similarly to other programming languages, such as PHP, ASP and Perl. “Rails” is a separate pre-built framework to help automate common Ruby commands. It was developed in 2004 by a Danish programmer, David Heinemeirer Hansen. It, too, is open-source and it makes programming in Ruby much easier and quicker. For example, to write programming code to create, update and delete files from a database can take much time and effort. Rails, however, has a pre-built framework for quickly programming this common task in Ruby, and by using it a programmer can accomplish in minutes what would sometimes take hours to do. As such, Ruby on Rails is gaining in popularity as a simple, easy and free programming option to create websites. To read more, see Ruby-lang.org/en/ and Rubyonrails.com. Mon, 09 Apr 2007 11:57:04 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/458/What-is-Ruby-on-Rails/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/456/Why-Authenticate-Email/ Mail servers require a username and password authentication for outgoing mail (mail being sent from your computer to someone else) so the servers can maintain control over who is allowed to use the resource. The first, and probably most obvious, motivation is to control email spam. By requiring a username and password (which can be revoked), a company that operates a mail server can prevent spammers from sending massive amounts of email through its servers. This provides legal protection for the company as well as a practical benefit: The mail server the company invested in, and intends to use, is not bogged down with spam email. We all know spammers don't just send one or two emails — they send thousands. In addition, since email accounts are typically provided as part of a larger bundle of services, such as website-hosting and Internet service, the companies want to make sure their customers have a secure mail server available. The average customer expects his/her incoming... Mon, 09 Apr 2007 11:11:32 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/456/Why-Authenticate-Email/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/447/Diagnosing-Site-Performance-Delays/ When your site begins to experience performance drains, which usually show up as slow-loading web pages, the problem's diagnosis can be more challenging than its solution. The first thing developers should examine is the nature of the website. Is the site a static HTML website, or does it rely on dynamic scripting such as ASP, PHP or Perl? If the site is a static HTML site, then database connections, web services and inefficient scripts are probably not the cause of performance bottlenecks. Bottleneck sources might be found in the server's Internet connection — if client-side connections and ISPs have been ruled out — or in the server hardware and software. Perhaps the server is overloaded and unable to respond to the number of requests your visitors generate. Perhaps the allotted disk space in the hosting account is full or the server is not configured properly. The answer might be simple: Upgrade your hosting account or switch to a hosting company with a more reliable... Mon, 26 Mar 2007 11:40:35 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/447/Diagnosing-Site-Performance-Delays/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/433/Will-All-My-Windows-Applications-Run-On-A-Mac/ This question relates to the new Apple computers that include Intel chips. Since the switch to Intel processors, it has been possible to load Microsoft's Windows operating system onto Apple hardware. As long as the system requirements for the version of Windows you plan to run are met by your machine, there should be little or no difficulty in using Windows (or at least, not hardware-related problems). Mac users who want to run Windows have a couple options, the first of which is simply to erase your Mac's hard drive and install only Windows. This is a pretty rare implementation, as there are few Mac owners who want to run Windows exclusively. However, for the few that do exist, this is an option. However, Apple provides an alternative for users who prefer OS X, but also want to run Windows periodically. The solution is called Boot Camp, a start-up utility that allows you to choose the operating system you want to run. In this case, both Windows and OS X are installed on the... Thu, 08 Mar 2007 10:28:55 -0700 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/433/Will-All-My-Windows-Applications-Run-On-A-Mac/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/431/Tips-To-Hire-The-Right-Website-Designer/ Websites don't just build themselves. The conundrum for the small business owner is that there is a host of choices as you establish an online presence. The decisions are important: They'll determine the online business activity that comes with the new sales channel and, of course, the additional profit from the online endeavor. Choices abound. A few of the critical early questions a business owner needs to settle include: "What kind of website do I want for my business?" "Do I need outside help building my site?" "If I need help, how do I go about selecting a website developer?" We've provided four steps to help you through the process. Step 1: Before taking the first step toward creating a website, ask yourself three questions: 1. Does my website need to have a one-of-a-kind design, or would a neat, clean, pre-made template work just as well? Novices can locate various templates available for purchase on the Internet that allow a person to create a well-designed... Mon, 05 Mar 2007 07:31:15 -0700 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/431/Tips-To-Hire-The-Right-Website-Designer/