I have found this link from Twitter, and thought it will be good to share with all of you who are designing websites out there.  Here it is.

100 Terrific Web Design Cheat Sheets that Will Save you Time, Money and Mistakes

It is good to compile all the different cheat sheets together.  In fact, the person actually links to 100 different websites which provides the various cheat sheets.

It’s official. More and more people are using this term “social media”.  But do you really know what social media means?  It’s so commonly used that I really wonder who on earth really knows what this means.

Who says that social media means a media which has to do with online?

From my understanding, social media is basically means the websites which are utilizing publishing technologies to create a pull of information from interested parties.  For example, if you have a website which can contain various feeds of related information, the visitors will be very glad to find out more from you.  And those releated information are made available using the publishing techologies which is basically in the form of an RSS and ATOM feed.

(Ok, here’s the meaning for social media from wikipedia)

But do you think social media an overused buzzword?

Social media is becoming more and more aggressively used by many people out there. But do you think social media an overused buzzword? I thought so!  A lot of my friends are using it like nobody’s business.

Who is right? Who is wrong?

I think it’s not an issue here anymore.  Why?

Because we must all understand that there’s no such thing as the real standard anymore.  (For example, pluto is no longer part of the planet.)  We are all human beings.  A standard will be formed if you are able to spread the news fastest to everybody’s attention.  That’s the “real standard”.

More and more blog stars are born. They do not need to go through the endorsement of the media companies.  All they need is an Internet access.

Social media is a place where you will exchange more ideas than ever before!

Every website owner will want to earn more money.  It’s as direct as that.  And when you are stucked with the same consistent amount of traffic everyday, what do you do to create more traffic else where?

You probably have a certain amount of conversion rate for all of your traffic in one website.  You might want to think of how to increase the conversion rate by doing some landing page optimization.  You might want to add more varieties of potential income generating widgets around your website.

But how do you look out for more sales, other than just tweaking your own website?

Selling the same product again and again

If your website is selling the same product consistently (such as Pepsi), you might think of new product launches such as “Vanilla Pepsi”.

But other than adding varieties to your own product, what other ways you can do to remind people to buy your product?

• You could be doing more advertisements to disturb people “Ermm excuse me, this is our product. Please remember to buy”.
• You could be creating a new facebook page and gather all your fans, reminding them to “buy” your product again and again.
• You could be paying money to sponsor people to play soccer, reminding them “We paid money to make your sports event successful! Remember to return favors”.
• And many other ways so that you can create more eyeball impressions…

After you have done so much, is that the reason why you want to pick this brand over others?  Chris Brogan has some thoughts about the small talks of all brands.

Selling new products again and again, discarding the old ones

This seems very common in many companies.  They are always launching new products, and making the old products end-of-life.  They keep on making new versions, and making the old ones obsolete.

This is one way how they can find a reason why they need to talk to the same crowd again and again.

• Some paid huge money, talking to the same crowd because they don’t own the database.  TV advertisements, radio advertisements, newspaper advertisements and online advertisements.  All these are owned by the media companies.  They have the database (both identified as subscribers as well as unidentified as strangers) to speak to every moment.  They leverage on the crowd that they have, to sell to the big companies who don’t want to manage the crowd.
• Another way, is to create your own media and communicate to the same media.  You are your own sponsor and you talk to the same people again and again.  Your database is growing.  And you are saving a lot of money.  But it really depends on which media you have chosen, and how sustainable this media is going to hold.
• Big companies have already identified the usage of facebook.  More and more of them are jumping onto this ship and enjoy the bandwidth that they can reach.  They can probably

So what do you do to sell more?

image credit: tripleoptix

While jobs are lost, personal branding becomes important because that is the key selling point for potential customers to buy in. 

Social media remains personal because it is something which belongs to you alone.  It’s personal.

MNCs don’t stand a chance to be any more personal in social media than you.  That’s because they come in a team. Huge team! They have to go through a lot of consensus before they can proceed.  And don’t forget, they are on paid salary.  The employees yearn more for a job security than anything else.  Most will not dare to take the bold step to change the world, although it is easy for them to do so.

Personal branding is the way for the individuals to sell to the world, leveraging on the social media.  Social media is so powerful because human beings are finally more united through the Internet.

Individuals have no choice… But to become unique and change the world.  Their “job security” depends on their uniqueness and to communicate in the social media.

For the first time in my life, I can see how helpless the MNCs are when it comes to broadcasting their message to the world through this simple tool called “social media”.  

What do you think?

As the brand guardian of our own companies, we have to manage our companies’ reputations.

It is interesting to note that offline reputation tends to be easier to protect.  That’s because our customers don’t have the tools that we have to spread the news of our own reputation.  They don’t have the money to spend on advertisements in TV, radio, newspapers or magazines.  That’s too expensive for them.  When any of our customers have problem with us, we can manage them in silo.  We can try to keep them as happy as they can be with our customer service.

However for the online reputation, our customers have exactly the same tools as us to create websites, to spread the word in social media, in search engines and even affordably in online advertisements!  It’s a total different way of managing online reputation when you have the same power as your customers in spreading the message.

What’s the key thing in managing online reputation?

Online reputation speaks about being real with your customers, and always to improve your products and services.  If your products and services have certain flaws, you may have to admit it and to improve.  Failure to listen to your customers online, will tend to open up more people talking about your problem, causing your business to deteriorate easily.

And what’s the key thing in managing offline reputation?

Offline reputation speaks about making your unhappy customers to become happy.  You got to have a dedicated customer service department who can cater to their needs, hoping that they will not spread bad news to their friends (or even through the Internet although your online presence is very little!).

Maintaining your quality of your products and services

Whether it is online or offline, it voices down to maintain your quality and to become better!  That’s because as of 2009, social media is confirmed to stay and is on the rise with Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, and even more.  Every webware online is becoming social in one way or another.  That’s because everybody wants to care and share with one another in this world!

What does this mean to the offline businesses?

It is as good as saying that you are losing competition to your competitors who have presence online.  No matter where you are, whether you are in Asia where people tend to say that online store don’t work, or whether you are in a rural country where the Internet is very scarce.  Social media is here to stay.

Will this become another Internet bubble burst like in 1997?

This time round, the bubble has become bigger than ever.  In 1997, everybody are so excited about setting their own online portal.  Investors are rushing in to give their money.  One-stop shop seems to be ideal in the online world.  Although not many people can get the idea that one-stop-shop website is as difficult as building a business with multiple businesses (like Courts and Ikea), many people have started to build a website with a single focus.

Online store like Amazon is not easy to start actually.  It involves a lot of hidden agendas to work with.  Internally, you have to manage inventory, externally you have to handle sales.  Unless you have huge amount of targeted traffic, it is probably not going to work.

Today, the websites have become very smart to research, build and measure so that they can be very useful.  The bubble is definitely going to be bigger because this time round, people are spending money and we will never know where it will head into.

Conclusion

Online reputation is a very different ball game from offline reputation.  You cannot use offline tactics to handle online, and vice versa.  Many businesses are evading social media because they are not in the capacity to be “exposed” for their trade secrets (which can be easily googled).  Businesses are definitely clear that online is the new way to go, but they are not willing to “let go” since they have been working in this way “efficiently” for many years.  We’ll see how long they can still survive without hearing the people’s crying voices online…

Recommended reading:
Radically Transparent: Monitoring and managing reputations online

HostMonster, is another web hosting company, which is run by Matt Heaton. Just over my previous post, I reviewed bluehost.  I just thought it should be right to get my review done with Matt Heaton’s hosting business since I am quite familiar with his business as his customer.

I have clients hosted in HostMonster

While I am working as an Internet reviewer in August 2007, I helped some clients of mine to start their hosting plans with HostMonster.  What’s the reason for hosting with HostMonster, instead of bluehost (since I was a bluehost customer myself)?  Simply because it is much cheaper.  We’ll see why later in this post.

Introduction to HostMonster

HostMonster is a hosting company, which provides shared hosting plans to customers.  And they only provide a one-size-fits-all plan.  That is to provide unlimited usage in everything except for the number of databases.

Basically, bluehost and HostMonster are the same.  For more technical review, please refer to my bluehost review.

No reason not to choose HostMonster

I cannot find a reason why you should choose bluehost.  Both are from the same company with the following differences:

1. Bluehost is much more expensive.  You have to pay $24 more than HostMonster.
2. Bluehost has a limit of 2500 POP3 accounts that you can create, while HostMonster has unlimited creation of POP3 accounts.  This is necessary for you to have your very own email addresses.  I can understand that you don’t need 2500 email addresses… But would you want to have a limitation if you have a choice of unlimited email addresses?
3. With the two outstanding differences above, you still get the same kind of support from them.  What are you waiting for?

Anyway, I have just left bluehost, and made my switch to another hosting company called “Media Temple” after being a bluehost customer for about 1.5 years.  To find out why, please go to see my bluehost review.

HostMonster Price Plan

Because the plans are so similar to bluehost, I just copy and paste the price plans from my bluehost review and change the prices accordingly below.

HostMonster comes with 5 price plans for different customers’ needs.

If you wish to try their plan for just 3 months or 6 months, you can sign up with the following plan:

• US$30 setup fee
• US$9.95 per month for 3 or 6 months
• US$10 for a new domain registration with bluehost (with an optional domain privacy for free)

If you are pretty serious with your online business, and wish to test your plan for 1 year, this is the plan for you:

• No setup fee
• US$6.95 per month for 1 year
• Free registration of a new domain name of your choice with bluehost (with an optional domain privacy for free)

If you are here to stay to own your online business, this is the 2 years or 3 years plan for you:

• No setup fee
• US$5.95 per month for 1 year
• Free registration of a new domain name of your choice with bluehost (with an optional domain privacy for free)

So you can see over here, the prices are basically cheaper than bluehost.  For 3 to 6 months, the prices are the same for both HostMonster and bluehost.  And for 1 year plan, you will pay $12 less when you choose HostMonster.  And if you choose 2 years’ plan, it will be $24 less when you choose HostMonster.

Payment is made easy by credit card or PayPal.

Conclusion

Shared hosting is a very affordable plan for those of us who are starting to embark on their online venture.  However, if you have connections which can bring in torrents of traffic for that one-time-offer, you may face problem serving the website to all of them and even cause your website to be down.  Pro and con here indeed.

Get Your Web Hosting Plan With HostMonster at only $5.95 Per Month

Bluehost is a web hosting company which is run by Matt Heaton.  It is basically providing affordable and reliable web hosting plans for small companies and individuals.  And today, it claims to be hosting over 775,000 domains.

I’ve been an ex-customer of bluehost

I had been a bluehost customer before, and I was quite pleasant being their customer for almost 2 years.  But I moved on to another hosting company about 5 months before my contract expired, and I will tell you why later in this post.

Introduction to bluehost

Bluehost basically provides one shared hosting plan (It means many clients sharing the same server.) only.  With this plan, you have unlimited hosting space (hard disk space in other words), have unlimited file transfer (unlimited bandwidth in other words), have unlimited domain names in the same plan, and up to 2,500 email accounts.

Bluehost President is very hands-on

Bluehost is using linux operating system for its servers.  It is a very reliable operating system, and Matt is a performance freak who will find out any server problem arises and solve the problem even at the very programming code in the kernel.

What does your web designer need to know about your purchase of hosting plan?

As for server scripts, it supports

• PHP 5,
• Perl 5,
• Python,
• Ruby / Ruby on Rails.

As for databases, they have

• MySQL 
• and PostgreSQL.

Please note that this is a very important point to take note when you are engaging a web design company to help you to create your website.

You will be using CPanel to manipulate your stuff

CPanel is widely used by many shared hosting companies.  It is very easy to use, and it has many friendly features for non-technical people to perform technical configuration easily.  CPanel seems to be everywhere, and I almost can’t find any other shared hosting companies using other software.

With CPanel, you will be able to install many types of website scripts very easily with a few clicks.  Blogs like WordPress and b2evolution, Forums like PHPBB, Mailing Lists, Image Galleries, Poll and Survey software, Content Management System like Joomla, shopping cart like OS Commerce, and so on.

What other features does bluehost provide?

It provides multimedia features such as video streaming, audio streaming, flash support, REAL audio and video support, shockwave, and midi.  You can also add your own MIME types too.

What about the support side?

Technically, it provides battery backup (in case of power failure), website backups (in case of file missing or corruption), and 24/7 network monitoring for server stability.

It provides live chat for visitors and customers who wish to talk to bluehost directly.  It also allows you to open a help ticket, and they will give you a better explanation and support in their replies, and they have their knowledgebase for you to look through the frequently asked questions.

And if you wish to speak to the customer support directly, they do have phone numbers for you to call as well.

How much does it cost?

Bluehost comes with 5 price plans for different customers’ needs.

If you wish to try their plan for just 3 months or 6 months, you can sign up with the following plan:

• US$30 setup fee
• US$9.95 per month for 3 or 6 months
• US$10 for a new domain registration with bluehost (with an optional domain privacy for free)

If you are pretty serious with your online business, and wish to test your plan for 1 year, this is the plan for you:

• No setup fee
• US$7.95 per month for 1 year
• Free registration of a new domain name of your choice with bluehost (with an optional domain privacy for free)

If you are here to stay to own your online business, this is the 2 years or 3 years plan for you:

• No setup fee
• US$6.95 per month for 1 year
• Free registration of a new domain name of your choice with bluehost (with an optional domain privacy for free)

It is pretty straightforward here.  The more you buy, the more you save.  My suggestion is to buy 2 years if you have the intention to start your online business.  That’s because a typical online business will only work from at least 2 years onwards.  You can treat these 2 years as your learning curve with low traffic coming in with only a total payment of US$166.80.  Shared hosting will always have its constraint because you are basically sharing the same server with many other bluehost customers.  Hence, once you have established higher traffic and you are experiencing poor server performance to serve your website, you know that it is time for you to upgrade to a more dedicated server!

Payment is made easy by credit card or PayPal.  If you are paying by PayPal, it can also utilize the credit card details you have provided when your PayPal fund has no enough to pay.

Conclusion

Like I said earlier, shared hosting has its own constraint.  Bluehost has a very strong founder at the back supporting the operations.  I can still remember the time when I decided to move out of bluehost.  That was because my websites have been suspended due to causing performance issue with the bluehost server.  At first, I was really angry about it because bluehost is stopping me from serving my customers.  But of course, looking at the big picture, the server may cause other hosting customers to be angry as well.  They will rather have me to be angry, than to cause many more to be angry.  I think it is a reasonable move and it is the right move to take.  But because I am also busy with my other projects, I have no time to find the root of the problem which the bluehost support has indicated to me.  It seems to be easier for me to copy the whole thing out, and paste it onto a new hosting server and get it up and running.  And I did so, and I am now with another hosting company called “Media Temple”.  And the reason for causing the performance issue is because I have used a single user to access the database from all my websites.  Anyway, the day before they suspended me, I was only upgrading my WordPress to version 2.7.  :)

Find out more about bluehost’s affordable and reliable web hosting plan today!

Like it or not, the world is changing.  Internet is becoming an important factor in our lives.  Ideas are being shared across countries.  Whether they like this company or not, it is no longer determined by that particular company anymore.  Everybody has equal say, just like a company which has the money to broadcast through various medias.

Companies have a certain fear inside them when they are thinking of mixing with the Internet arena.  They are afraid of joining the social media, just in case they might attract negative feedback.  They feel secure controlling their own website which has no communication with the world.  They don’t deal with Digg, Delicious, Facebook and probably not even producing RSS feeds for RSS readers to subscribe to.

Only companies which are grown from or for the Internet, will be very proactive about it.  Such as Dell, Sun, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and even HP have all taken the step into the Internet.  These are mainly US companies.  What about the Japanese companies?  We seldom see most of them doing such thing as they are very brand conscious and may want to work towards conservative in the Web 1.0 world.

When I say 1.0, I mean it is a one-way communication.  This way, it doesn’t allow feedback, and also don’t allow a conversation to happen.

2.0 means a two-way communication.  It allows two parties to communicate, and thus creating a conversation.  That’s how I view Web 2.0 is all about.  Using the Web, to create a conversation with the visitors.

It is just a matter of time, when the conservative brands will start to roar back in the Internet.  The Internet is spreading the idea very quickly that it is the new media, and it is the most affordable way.

Talking about affordability of the new media.  Multi-national companies are very much willing to spend more money to the expensive agencies in return of “quality” and “reliability”.  Many of these expensive agencies are just doing the same job as the low-budget agencies.  It’s not so impressive to me after all.

If only the companies are willing to embrace open-source software, those proprietary software is quoted at such an expensive price that the Internet is just another expensive tool similar to television or radio.

Whether the companies are willing to embrace Web 2.0 or not, it voices down to the management’s comfort zone.

Yes, it may create trouble for the companies when negative feedback from the visitors voice out and spread.  But the thing is that these kind of feedback is already there.  Just do a google search and you will find them all there.

The point is that the companies must embrace those feedback, and improve.

In fact, Web 2.0 is all about making your company stronger and better than before.  In the past, there may have a lot of hidden trade secrets of the companies’ products and services.  They are so used to hidding those secrets that they will feel insecure being exposed.

But what’s the point since the web is already there talking about you?

Just think about it.

image credit: bensheldon

This is an introduction of Internet Review dot Me on YouTube video. Read the full review »

Welcome to Internet Review dot Me.  This is my first post here. And I would like to welcome you to see what I am going to do in this Internet Review website.  I hope you will enjoy it and continue to come back for more via RSS or revisits.

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