Webmaster Articles

Webmaster Articles

BWDP's webmaster articles fall into two categories: long articles and short articles. Each long webmaster article has it's own page whereas every short webmaster article is part of this page.

Long Webmaster Articles

BWDP's long webmaster articles include:

• Computer Viruses and Antiviruses
• Popular Domains and Typos
• VoIP Security
• Web Accessibility
• Web Marketing
• Web Programming
• Web Security

• What is Web Development?
• Benefits of a Website
• Threats to Webmaster Success
• Web Forum Marketing
• Online Security
• Up-to-date Web Programming Books and Online Tutorials

Web development is the science and art of developing websites. This involves web accessibility, web marketing, web programming, web security and web graphics design.

The benefits of a website are all based on its communicative abilities, whether directly or indirectly, and can roughly be summed up under three main categories: a means for communication; a platform for creativity; and a source of revenue.

A means for communication

• to learn or teach
• to share knowledge, information or data
• to inform or update
• to engage or consult
• to link with and support
• to discuss or explain
• to communicate - conveniently and predictably

A platform for creativity

Especially useful for arts groups, web design can incorporate various interactive, expressive and entertaining audio-visual features.

A source of revenue

If well-managed, a website can provide a steady flow of income for an organisation, funding projects and organisational costs.

The biggest threats to webmaster success:

• Getting hacked, or otherwise attacked. (Advice: Keep it simple, safe, secure and honest.)
• Getting blacklisted, or otherwise censored, from marketing by search engines, forums, directories or other major marketing tools. (Advice: Keep it simple, safe, secure and honest.)
• Hosting downtime. (Advice: Get a reliable host!)
• Lack of marketing direction. (Advice: keep it well marketed and targeted.)

In Other Web Forums

The best places to market your web forum are in other web forums. They're full of people who are likely to participate in your forum because they're already participating in these other forums. Become an active member of other forums and use your signatures to invite people to join your forum.

The best web forums in which to market your web forum are those of similar themes to your own. The next best are popular webmaster forums that have website critique sections where you can ask people to review your site. This uarantees high exposure to other web forum users and also to search engine users.

In Search Engines

As they are to most websites, search engines are likely to be one of the main providers of traffic to your web forum. Search Engine Optimisation is therefore likely to be one of the most erwarding methods of marketing your web forum.

Paid Posting and Posting for Hosting

While struggling to develop popular online communities, web forum owners often hire people to post high quality content in their forums. Web forum posters are sometimes offered other rewards as alternatives to money, such as hosting (hosting for posting), domain names and links to the posters' own websites.

To learn more about web forum posting, see forumposters.org. For an agency that pays money to casual online staff who write well-written and relevant, knowledgable posts in clients' web forums, see theforumfairy.com.

Knowing Your IP Address

Knowing your Internet Protocol (IP) address is often a hacker's first step to compromising your computer system. Common sense should be your first line of defence, closely followed by installing a good firewall and a secure web browsing system.

Download With Caution

Avoid downloading executable, unfamiliar or otherwise suspicious file formats, particularly from unofficial, ill-established or otherwise untrusted websites. Use similar scrutiny before downloading email attachments. From the moment you run a malicious file your whole commputer system, and any other networked computers serving it, could be ridden with undetectable, irremovable spyware.

Due to the rate at which web technology is developing, whether you're buying a general web design book or a dedicated web programming book, or even just browsing an online programming tutorial, be especially sure to check the year of publishing. Ideally the book (or tutorial) should have been published no more than one or two years since you've purchased it (or otherwise read it). Otherwise, it's likely that you'll be learning out-dated functions which are either no longer supported by modern technology or have been depreciated in favour of more secure, more accessible or otherwise more efficient methods.

The W3C are revising web standards every year and web browsers are updated almost as promptly. Leading server-side languages are also commonly revised and redeveloped each year.

Finding up-to-date material online

To find up-to-date material online, simply include the term '2007' or any such other recent year as part of your search queries. For example, the search term '2007 Web Programming Book' (without quotes) is likely to yield better results than the term 'Web Programming Book' alone.