Imaging software (design and editing)
Programs like Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop are quintessential tools for web designers. Nowadays, web layouts are created by combining these two programs. Illustrator is vector-based drawing tool while Photoshop is ideal for creation of design layers that include images as well as vector files. This can help in creating websites, banners and independent web pages.

Adobe Flash
Another vital tool for creative web designers, Flash brings more dynamism and depth to flat web design. This is idea for those who wish to create more elaborate designs with additional effects and animation, and make computer screens and web browsers more interactive while adding something new to the template, beyond what HTML can offer.

Image Optimizer
Web images need to be optimized in order to retain its high quality, and to avoid consuming too much space, allowing websites to run smoothly. Image optimizer is a powerful tool for compressing and resizing of images ready for website implementation. It can be used for several image file formats and for conversion.

Media Cleaner
For videos, media cleaners allow videos to be streamed much well by optimizing video quality at a shorter amount of time.

Take a break

There are times when you don’t get ideas for a new design. It happens. Rather than scratching your head for hours, just take a break. It can help you refresh yourself and in turn find new ideas. Taking time out to meet your friends or watching television / movie for few hours might boost your creativity.

Don’t shy away

It is often noticed that when we are confronted with a huge task, more often that not we shy away from it. No matter how big a task is, never loose your creativity. Don’t be taken aback by the stringent deadline or volume. Ideas will start to evolve as you start.

Enjoy your work

More often than not, we work under pressure rather than pleasure. When we do our work with pleasure, there is a bit of creativity added to it. No matter what the task is, we need to enjoy it to give our best.

Don’t plan

When we try to plan things there are more chances that we might loose creativity in work. Too much planning could spoil your creativity. Once you start the work, things will surely fall in place.

Try new things

If you are bored of the same old stuff, don’t be afraid to try out new things. Don’t limit your imagination.

Project plan document

Before you actually set out to get your web application developed, it is quite essential to have a detailed plan in place. This document should contain the complete details about the goal, objectives, purpose, future expansion plans and other related information based on which your web application will take its shape.

Research

It is very necessary to make a proper research before you set out to develop a web application. This would help you understand the realistic chance of driving the internet traffic towards your website. You need to understand what your competitors are offering for similar product or service and then adopt a better strategy in order to survive.

A proper research before hand will help you to analyze the cost involved in developing the application, number of audience to target, type of audience who would require this product or service and other factors that would determine the success of your website.

FRS

Functional requirement specification is the most important document which would be required for developing a web application. This document speaks about the options your application should contain, reports that needs to be developed in order to monitor the activity, the technical specifications and the rules that needs to be followed while developing it.

In the absence of clarity in FRS document, it is very difficult for a developer to meet the expectations of the owner of website. A clear FRS document on the other hand will help the developer to finish the task in a lesser time and make it more effective.

Design and technology

Once the specification is finalized, the next task is to choose the design and technology for the web application. You need to choose a proper design that is user friendly and also attractive. The technology that you choose should be flexible, latest (to cater to the needs of the users of new generation) and cost effective.

It is always advisable to choose a technology that is not outdated and is flexible to changes or improvements in future. Your web application should also have a provision to make use of the latest social media technology in order to market your product or service. Irrespective of the technology you choose, it should be useful for a longer period of time and there shouldn’t a need to change the platform every now and then.

Developing the application

Now the real challenge is to develop the application. Make sure you have chosen the right person or firm to this professional job for you. Always set a time frame to finish the task. Once the development is done, it should be properly tested before the launch. It is quite common to have few bugs in the application but they need to be fixed before going live.

Before we actually compare these 2 kinds of hosting, let us first understand their meanings.

Shared hosting

Under this kind of hosting, your website will be hosted with various other websites. All these websites are hosted on a single large server and there are many advantages and disadvantages associated with this kind of hosting. This service comes under low cost as well as high end hosting.

Managed hosting

Here your website is hosted through a dedicated server. This kind of hosting is required for a large ecommerce websites that run 24X7. This service is also available in both low cost and high end category, based upon the requirement of a client.

Let us look at the advantages and disadvantages of both these type of hosting services.

Advantages of shared hosting 

•  Suitable for a static kind of website which doesn’t need to handle too many users.

•  The small business companies can avail these services at cheaper rates and don’t have to pay for services which they won’t need.

•  More suitable for the websites which do not have to maintain large number of users and profiles.

Disadvantages of shared hosting

•  Low level of security.

•  Vulnerable to hacking.

•  Due to high load on CPU, the performance and speed will go down.

•  Cannot guarantee 24X7 functioning of website.

•  The maintenance activity might run into several weeks and make the website not accessible.

•  Offers low storage space and bandwidth which makes it difficult for business related websites.

Advantages of managed hosting

•  Your website runs on a dedicated server which ensures better performance and speed.

•  Website and email accounts will not be shared with other users.

•  24X7 service is assured.

•  Large storage space and bandwidth to ensure optimum performance.

•  Easy backup of data.

•  Greater security to your website and data.

•  Easy maintenance that ensures no breakdown in service.

•  Zero downtime.

•  Easy to customize and edit your website and applications.

•  Reliable

•  Greater CPU allocation

•  Multiple numbers of users can access the website at good speed.

Disadvantages of managed hosting

•  Expensive. Not suitable for small sized businesses.

•  Most of the service providers do not allow adult content.

•  Hosting a content for which you do not have the copy right could prove fatal.

Overall, managed hosting is more preferred if you require a dedicated ecommerce website which functions 24X7. If the intention is a hobby kind of static website, shared hosting will do the job for you. You’ll have more options such as low cost and high end hosting service to suit your budget.

Both PHP and ASP.NET are the most popular web application platforms known today with their reliability, flexibility and scalability. When we want to compare both these platforms, there are various aspects that need to be considered to choose the best among these two.

Both the platforms have advantages as well as disadvantages to go with their name. There is not much to choose between both these platforms. While both have the characteristics of being used for feature rich and dynamic websites, the cost of development tools and usability differ a lot. While PHP has some advantages in certain areas, the ASP.NET enjoys upper hand in others.

Cost

The major thing that separates the PHP with that of ASP.NET is the cost of development. PHP is an open source code language and is absolutely free to start with. In contrast, ASP.NET requires Microsoft server as well IIS.

User friendly

PHP platform is much easier for a developer as it follows the basic scripting language where as the ASP.NET is considered little complicated and requires good coding experience.

Add-ons

PHP is dependent on lots of addons and plugins in order to match the Visual Studio. This is not the case with ASP.NET as everything is inbuilt.

Use of database

Both these web application platform facilitate use of popular databases such as SQL, Access and many more.

Apart from this the advantage, ASP.NET enjoys over PHP is through its direct extensive support for debugging. This is the most crucial factor which sets apart ASP.NET from its competitors.

Magneto, OScommerce and Zen Cart, the three well known eCommerce applications that allow your users to have online shopping transactions have certain things in common while they differ in some aspects. In order to have a flexible and productive web store, you need to know the difference between these 3 platforms and choose the best among them.

All the 3 platforms use open source code and therefore carry that little risk of getting hacked. Since the source code is available for download, the security is vulnerable. To add to this, none of these applications have built in tools and therefore require add-ons or plug-ins which again carries the risk of maximizing the security loophole.

While the Magneto platform offers title, meta tags and keyword friendly URLs, OScommerce and Zen Cart need add-ons to do the same. However, when it comes to speed and performance, the OScommerce and Zen Cart applications overtake the Magneto platform.

Major differences

The most important difference to be noted between these 3 application platforms is that both OScommerce and Zen Cart use the old legacy style coding and therefore is difficult to customize the shopping cart. In contrast, the Magneto coding is based on PHP. However, the coding used by Magneto is little complicated and is hard to learn.

Even though the Magneto application is filled with rich features, most of them are unwanted for the users and hard to remove. The admin interface in Zen Cart as well as OScommerce is messy. Certain important aspects such as arranging products in order, multiple product images coupons different pricing for each customer groups is not possible in these 2 platforms.

Speed and performance

All these application platforms have limitations when it comes to speed and performance. The Magneto because of its unwanted additional features (which are not even used by users) becomes very slow as it requires higher CPU power. The OScommerce and Zen Cart platforms are comparatively faster but will slow down when the number of products reach the 4 digit mark.

The best thing about these 3 applications is that they are compatible with the well known open source platforms such as Linux, PHP, MySQL and Apache.

Disadvantages

These applications platforms have some disadvantages too and one needs to know them in order to understand the compatibility factor. Magneto’s complex kind of coding and OScommerce or Zen Cart’s legacy style of coding makes it very complex to customize or even maintain the application.

Installing OScommerce add-ons requires some sort of technical know how and is not suitable for a common man. Moreover, these add-ons cannot be used for Zen Cart until and unless are redeveloped. Apart from this, developing shopping cart on Zen Cart and OScommerce application is expensive and also too much time consuming.

This comparison should give better idea about what these applications are capable of delivering. A better choice can help you in easy maintenance of your ecommerce website without spending much over a period of time.

Cheers to the HTML users. The new HTML5 is here and it is filled with many inbuilt features that will empower your website with the latest tools essential in today’s world. For starters HTML5 may sound little different but for the HTML4 users the transition isn’t much difficult. The following are the major changes one would be happy to note.

The HTML5 is developed to suit the latest needs of the modern website and therefore have all those essentials to cater to the needs of the ever so needy internet users.

Better bug handling

One of the major differences between both these versions is better and improved bug handling. It is more flexible in handling errors and therefore will come in handy. The later version has stringent parsing rules and can pinpoint the errors instantly. For a developer who spends hours in debugging the codes, will surely feel relieved with this feature.

Leftovers

The HTML5 has left away some features and tags but are suitably replaced with better options such as CSS. In HTML4, a user had to use third party software such as flash player etc in order to play the audio or video files. This is done away in HTML5 version. Earlier, in order to include audio or video files into the page, you had to use the tags such as <audio> and <video> respectively.

This has been left away too and made simpler. To add an image, audio or video you just have to use the inbuilt HTML specification.

The technology has changed based upon the new business needs. The user needs are also kept in mind. SEO is perhaps the most important aspect of building a website these days and HTML5 has given importance to it.

Article tag

This is mainly intended to give cleaner coding in search engine. This would benefit the website largely because article tag separates segment of each page. Apart from this, the section tag will also prove to be handy as it separates the main section of an article with the rest thus achieving better rankings as per the search.

New additions

The notable new additions in the HTML5 are header and footer tags. This has come as a blessing in disguise for SEO experts. The inclusion of paragraph of the content in this section will boost the search engine rankings.

Apart from this, the most important addition is website navigation block tag. The HTML5 will allow creation of more powerful forms and inputs. Input types such as URL, search and email along with controls such as date pickers are a delight to the users.

Summary

Although the difference between HTML4 and HTML5 are marginal, these changes will surely help in designing and maintaining the website in a better way. With all the latest tools inbuilt in the HTML5, there is no need for a third party software and add-ons for multimedia support. HTML5 is definitely a new generation platform where in you can launch your business website with all  credentials.