Creating a Mobile-Friendly Website

Today, it is not enough to just have a website. Gone are the days when just having a website would guarantee you visitors and inquiries to your office about your products. Today, there are roughly 30 million pages being indeed by Google every day. So you need to compete with a million other websites for eyeballs and critical user attention. And where are the users doing all of their browsing and chatting now?

It’s invariably on the mobile. The mobile is not just a means of communicating with someone any more. It is your window to the world. In this scenario how do you ensure that the website that you’ve built for your business, is tailored for the mobile?

The primers

1. Firstly, you need to stick with the basic HTML tags, images and tables. This will go a long way in ensuring that your testing is hassle free and smooth.

2. Keeping your layout small can help a lot when you design for mobile websites. This not only gives you a better view of your design on mobile, but also avoids clutter.

3. Focus on graphics because you’re most likely to go wrong there. Now for graphics:

Graphics

Graphics on desktops are not the same as graphics on mobile devices. Mobile browsers invariably have lower resolutions than a personal computer. Devices generally resize the images that fit the screen, making your images look rather ugly.

Content

This is the most important part of your website. Your website is only as good as the content it carries in it. The content should neither be bulky nor incoherent. It has to be crisp, clear and polite. Give precedence to clarity and try to cut down on length wherever possible.

What we’ve seen are just some of the many points which go to making your website perfectly adaptable for the mobile web. For more, watch this space.

How Php Helps Your Data Security Strategy

 One of the questions that is most important to web development but often not given adequate attention is how the platform or language that you are using to build your website with helps you secure your data. This question becomes all the more important in the present scenario where we have threats to private data from all quarters. In this article, we look at how PHP helps you secure your data.

Data Validation

This is the first thing that should be focused on while trying to secure web apps with PHP web development.

The first thing that should be done is to filter and validate the incoming data as that will prevent a hacker from entering any bad input. The data should be validated in the PHP code. This is one of the sheer advantages of using a PHP web development over Java because users can always turn off the javascript in their browser and prevent an app from validating an input. So, the first kickass way of securing a web app is to hire PHP developers.

Protecting Session Data

A session information gets automatically written on a tem directory. When it comes to a shared hosting server, anyone with whom it is shared can write the script and also read the session data quite easily. Hence, it is advised that one should not retain sensitive data such as credit card information and passwords in the session. An easy way of safeguarding the data is to adhere to encryption. However, that too isn't a completely secured way.

Guarding Included Files

A lot of PHP files are often included in PHP scripts. These scripts contain things such as code for connecting to a database. In some cases it has been found that some developers include .inc extension. However, files with such extensions are not analyzed by PHP. This can be a safety issue as hackers might get an easy access to the data in the app. The safest thing to do is to use the .PHP extension.

What You Should Know About Cloud Hosting

Cloud hosting is the latest fad among web developers. Having grown in popularity over the last few years, Cloud hosting is now being sought by every major business to streamline its processes. This article looks at what Cloud hosting really is, how it works, and the issues involved.

Cloud hosting

So, what is the principle behind Cloud hosting? The crux of Cloud hosting has been the concept of ‘divide and rule’- i.e. the resources you require to maintain your website are shared across servers and are rendered on a need basis. This reduces the chances of downtimes even in case of server malfunction.

Cloud hosting also allows you to manage peak loads easily without bandwidth issues as the servers are shared and another one can pitch when one faces a problem.

The best example of Cloud hosting is the Google search engine. Ever faced downtimes on Google? Unlikely. This is because Google spreads its resources over hundreds of servers (in the cloud, of course) and the chances of all of them going down are almost nil!

Enterprise Cloud hosting, dedicated servers and VPS

Quality comes first when it comes to providing Enterprise level services. This is why enterprise cloud providers do not look beyond reliable cloud providers such as VMWare. So, that’s about Enterprise Cloud hosting. What about dedicated hosting?

                                   

In a dedicated server, as the name indicates you’ve got only one server to deal with. So, if there are problems, you just need to sort out the one server. But, if there is an increased burst of traffic, you can do little about it.

It is here that Cloud takes the cake providing your website with reliability though you need to bear higher costs as well.

In a Virtual private server, a single server is partitioned to appear as multiple servers and also provides you with greater security. The cost here is extremely low, but so is its reliability. So, a cloud hosting arrangement is actually a good tradeoff.

Here again, you needn’t be bothered too much about the cost as cost has consistently been on a downslide in the past for to 5 years. So, it’s a win-win for you!

The 3 Maxims of Ecommerce Design

Websites require practical and thoughtful design in order to achieve their purpose. But, websites that have shopping carts require an added level of planning and expertise that is unique in the field of design. As designers, there are rules and techniques that drive what we do. We know that visual elements can entice users to click or to scroll. Some visual elements are used to simply draw the user's attention to an area of the page. So, how does this differ from the techniques used in e commerce website design? Well, here are 3 design rules that are unique to the world of e commerce design.

                        

1 Less is more. Really, it is.

You might think that this rule applies to all design. It does. However, in e commerce website design, there really needs to be far less on the page during the process of ordering. The fact is, on an e commerce website, designers need to eliminate any and all distractions from the page. Have just one or two buttons. Show only the most important information. Allow for only a few choices at checkout. And, never show animations or any movement that might make someone want to leave the site.

2 If you design it, they can't build it.

Unfortunately, unless you are designing with a development team right there to make suggestions, you're likely to get a negative response from your developer. Also, if you're using a pre-built cart or some other popular cart software, there will be limitations to the layout and complexity of template customization. If you're part of a talented development team, you will have no issues as they can direct you while you're designing for the client. Overall, the main thing to remember is that your direction needs to be mindful of e commerce website design restrictions.

3 Testing is better than planning

Sometimes, we painstakingly fret over every design element, layout, color scheme, and font before handing

the work over to the developer. This process makes some sense. However, your web users will always amaze you. You may think that your large, impossible to miss, yellow button will convert the visitor into a buyer. You're probably wrong. So, when you are in the design process, ask yourself if you need to spend time on one element or move onto the next.