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Business Hosting! |
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Serving all of: |
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Pinellas |
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Hillsborough |
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Pasco |
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Manatee |
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Sarasota |
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(Mostly) Free
Tools |
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Your Computer
Site Management
Site Creation
Site Marketing |
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For Your
Computer |
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Nothing is more annoying than trying to create a web site on a computer that
barely runs! In this day and age, you simply MUST be running
anti-virus AND anti-spyware utilities, and they must be kept
updated! (NOTE: the average computer that's on the internet typically
has 200 - 400 individual pieces of spyware on their machine!) The good
news is that this is an area where the spirit of the internet is still
alive, and people still offer FREE utilities that are better than you
can buy! Yes, better than Norton and better than McAfee.
Including updates! For free! |
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AVG Anti-Virus - by Grisoft, Inc. - is FREE, and includes the
ability to schedule automatic updates and run full system checks in the
middle of the night. It also filters incoming email and strips away
viruses. About the middle of the page, choose the "Download Free
Version" button, choose save, (like in My Documents somewhere), then the "Run"
button when it completes. Once it is fully installed, click on the
"Tutorials" button above to see how to set the automatic update options,
etc. |
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Ad-Aware2007 - by LavaSoft - is a FREE anti-spyware utility, and rated
one of the best. The link is to download.com's site to get it, as it's
hard to find on the LavaSoftUSA site. With the free version you have
to run the Ad-Aware scan manually, (it updates automatically), but once a week is usually
enough so it's no big deal. No tutorial necessary here. Download
it, install it, manually update it the first time, and punch the "Scan"
button (remember to do that regularly)! |
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For Managing Your Site |
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cPanel - Is your site's back-end control panel that is included free with our
hosting. Your control panel allows you to set up email accounts, set spam filters,
create email lists, bulletin boards or chat rooms, do search engine submissions, and
much more. It also gives you full statistics on visitors to your site to
assist you in tracking your marketing campaigns. (For a demo of
AwStats,
click here.) Your cPanel is
accessed by adding /cpanel after your domain in the address bar, then entering
your username and password. The blue cPanel link is to the full documentation for
cPanel, (anything you ever *wanted* to know), but click "Tutorials" above and there
are tutorials on what you *have* to know. |
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For Creating Your Site |
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Logo
- Even if all you want to do is type your company name in a particular font,
you ought to create it as a graphic image file. Otherwise, the viewer
may not see it the way you intended unless they have that font on their
machine. So to be on the safe side, you're limited to Times New Roman,
Arial, Verdana, or Trebuchet MS. But a .jpg or .gif image file is a
"picture" of a fancy font, and is seen the same by everyone. You can create one for free
at
FlamingText.com! Just click on "Headings", and select from 36
different styles and a million fonts. Remember to modify the
background color of the heading to match the background color of your site.
(And have your pop-up blocker running!) |
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Graphics Viewer & Editor - XnView is a freeware utility for
viewing and editing photographs and other graphics. Setup is easy, and
you can crop, resize and resample, adjust brightness, contrast, and colors,
convert to .jpg, and save in different quality settings. Everything
you need to get a photo ready for the web. See the "Tutorials"
for setup instructions once you download and install it. (INSTALLATION
NOTE: - When you get to the screen that asks for a registration number,
just hit "Cancel" and installation continues.) |
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Encrypted Email Address - Many spammers use automated programs,
(called robots or "bots", and spiders), to crawl through your site and pick
up your email address for spamming purposes. To avoid this, here's a
free encoder that will translate your address into it's decimal equivalent
that 95% of the bots won't pick up. It will still display the same on
your site. It requires going into the code of the page, but it's
really a simple "copy and paste" operation. |
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FrontPage
Webmaster - Thomas Brunt does a good job with this FrontPage help
site. Naturally, he tries to sell you stuff too, but the site is free.
Of particular use are the "Web Development" forums in the middle of the
page. There are forums for "Beginning Web Design", "Advanced Web
Development", and for "Web Business Matters and SEO" (marketing and search
engine optimization). |
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Check Your
Work - This free site, (ImagiWare.com), will check for errors on any
given page in your site. Now don't panic, you're going to have some.
What you don't want is meta-tag errors, font support errors on any Windows
OS from 2000/ME on up, and easily correctable errors, like ALT tags on your
graphics. If you have any questions on what you see here, just give us
a call. |
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For Marketing Your Site |
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WebPosition Gold - Need a better search engine ranking?
Hopefully you've read our FAQ on the search engines first. If it
sounds time consuming, it is. But here's a tool that does a lot of it
for you. You can download a free, limited use version. If one local
business site is all you're doing, that's all you need. But for those selling globally,
the full version is $149, and it's probably
worth it. |
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SearchEngineWatch.com - Marketing your own site on a global level
requires you know something about how the search engines work.
SearchEngineWatch.com is a great resource for learning both the basics and
the advanced stuff. Although they make their living thru subscriptions
and advertising, many articles are free, and they have a couple of free
newsletters as well. Very informative. |
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Check
Link Popularity - Once you get your reciprocal links campaign going,
you can check to see how well it going here. The site, (SubmitExpress.com),
quite naturally offers several services, some free and some pay, that you
may or may not want to take advantage of. If your site or marketing
campaign is new, remember that it can take anywhere from a few days up to 6
weeks for the search engines to re-visit any given site and pick up new
links to it. |
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Verizon's SuperPages
- Don't forget to list your new web site on the SuperPages. It's FREE!
Click the link, then "Advertise With Us" at the top right. When the
page changes, straight down from that you'll see "Login" and "New User
Registration". If you've never been there before, create a user name
and password, (and write it down!), then follow the prompts to find your
business listing and modify it if it's already there, or create it if it's
not. You can add a business profile, select 5 categories for it to be
displayed in, and a direct link to your website, all for free. Yes,
the site is slow and annoying, but it's worth it! |
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