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FAQ's (Frequently Asked Question's)
How is Online Suites connected to the Internet?
Should, I have a web site?
How do I get a web site?
What does it take to make a Web Site?
How long does it take to create a Web Site?
Now that I have a web site...
I already have a web site, but are not satisfied with the results.
How do I upload my files?
Error "404 Access Forbidden"
What is a good graphics viewer?
What is a Merchant Account?
Should, I have a web site?
Perhaps this question should be "Can I afford not to?".
Keeping up with your competitors may be a good enough reason to add the Internet to your marketing arsenal. However, a strong online presence offers a vast assortment of advantages :
-Corporate image enhancement
-Open or strengthen national and international market potential
-Reduce customer service cost
-Display marketing materials with no postage or printing charges.
-Quality lead generation
-A web site is open for business 24 hours a day, 365 days a year
And those are just the obvious ones. Interactive use of multimedia can turn
your web site into a lucrative project.
How do I get a web site?
Introducing your business to the online world can be quite an undertaking. A web site must present your information quickly and clearly the first time, or a potential customer may be lost and your image tarnished. You need an attractive and effective web site. Allow Online Suites to harness the power of the Internet and deliver your information effectively and clearly. Take advantage of our team of experienced marketing and advertising professionals, solid computer programming skills and creative graphic design. Web sites come many flavors and sizes. Have your site tailored to fit your specific needs and budget.
What does it take to make a Web Site?
Web Site development occurs in stages. The first stage is Organization, which mostly consists of planning -- composing a hierarchical structure for the site, deciding what pages will link to what, creating directories. The next stage is Construction, and includes creation of shell of the site, creation of some graphics, and creation of the actual pages. The third stage is Content, where the actual information that will appear on the site is added, including creation of forms, adding text, designing graphics, CGI scripting. The final stage is Proofing, where any incidental mistakes or oversights are fixed and the customer gives his/her final approval.
Organization
This first stage is key in efficient, effective development of a web site.Without a clear, concise plan as to how the site will be organized, it often is difficult and time consuming to finish the site promptly, and any change in midstream can cause lots of extra work and delays.
Construction
Construction of a Web Site should only begin after a clear Infrastructure has been built. The first step in construction is to design the look and feel of an average page on the Web Site, including designing header and footer graphics, designing site buttons, arranging the elements properly on the page, and checking browser compatibility. Once this single page is designed, it is used as a model for the bulk of the site. At this point, every page that will be accessed is created using the model, but devoid of content. At this point filenames are decided and necessary links are created to make the site physically work.
Content
At this point, after all the pages are created and all the links work properly, it is time to go back through the site and put all of the proper content onto the pages. Content can be anything that actually appears on the page -- formatted text, graphics, movies, sound clips. It is at this point that images are scanned and color corrected, designed and optimized, movies are captured or created, sound is captured. After the Content stage, the site is mostly completed.
A Word About Graphics
It is a commonly held belief that the proper way to capture an image for display on the World Wide Web is simply to scan it. This is not always the case. Due to the nature of the Web, it is preferable to use images with the smallest file size possible for users with modems to realize the fastest possible throughput. Among factors that influence this are the compression method, the actual size of the graphic in pixels, and color depth. With certain file formats, the actual number of colors used in a graphic can be reduced to limit file size. Since scanning is a color depth maximizing process, it is often inefficient to scan an image and then reduce the color set. This process will result in an image larger than it needs to be, often with compromised quality. A more efficient way to capture the image would be to recreate it from scratch, keeping color depth minimization in mind. Although this can be marginally more time consuming, the result is a small, optimized graphic, with the highest possible quality. For any sort of photographic image, scanning is almost always the most effective solution. Given this information, it is important to remember that it may be more appropriate for a customer to incur Graphic Creation charges instead of Scanning charges, even though he/she may already have hard copies of their graphics.
Proofing
The final stage in Web Site development is Proofing. This occurs after all development is finished, and the site includes all of the features requested by the customer. It is important that the site be proofed by the developer and another party before being submitted to the customer for final approval. After the customer proofs the site and any final corrections are made, then the site is finished and on-line.
How long does it take to create a Web Site?
That depends on the size and complexity of the site. A small company site can easily be done in a day. An average corporate site of about 20 HTML pages and a modest amount of graphics usually takes about a week. A elaborate site takes around two months. The best thing to do is to consult a Web Developer on turnaround time.
Now that I have a web site...
Online Suites does not believe in a hit-and-run approach in dealing with customers. Once your web site project is completed, major search engines will be populated with your company's profile to allow prospects to locate you quickly and easily. Have your information right in front of people with real purchase intentions.
In addition, visible efforts will be made to deliver prospects right to your web site. After all, what good is a web site without visitors?
I already have a web site, but are not satisfied with the results.
contact us for a free consultation. Highly competitive hosting packages may translate to substantial monthly savings. A chance to discuss your future web site will be greatly appreciated.
How do I upload my files?
You will upload your Web files via the Internet protocol (IP) FTP (File Transfer Protocol). FTP is a specification for transferring data across the Internet from one location to another. FTP is one of the protocols that you will need to use to administer your Virtual Web Server. When you signup for a Virtual Server account with Online Suites you will be sent some information about your account's various configurations, among which will be your assigned FTP log-on userID and password. You will need to know how to use the File Transfer Protocol so that you can upload your Web files from your local computer's hard disk to the Web space of your Virtual Server. We frequently recommend, and use ourselves, the program WS_FTP. It is available in the LE (limited edition) for free from IP Switch (http://www.ipswitch.com/downloads/) It's very easy to use. Just download it, unzip it, and then put it in your desired location of your hard drive. If you need a utility to unzip it, see http://www.winzip.com/
When you've installed it and executed it, just click on the connect button and you'll bring up a session profile window. These are the configuration information fields that you'll need to fill in to connect to your Virtual Web server with us.
There are really only 3 or 4 of these fields that are critical, and the information you'll need to fill in was or will be sent to you at the time your account with us was/is originated.
1. Profile Name: (Online Suites)
2. Host Name: (your domain name... "ftp.yourdomain.com")
3. Host Type: Serv-U
4. User ID: yourdomain
5. Password: (your administrative password)
6. Account: (leave blank or use for reference)
7. Remote Host: /
8. Local PC: (the path on your computer to your Web files)
9. Comment: (can be used for misc. comments)
That's it! It's fairly simple to configure and very easy to use. You might want to click the check box to the right for "Save Password" so you won't have to enter it every time you connect. The great thing about using a program specifically designed for FTP is that you can create folders, delete folders, delete files, rename files, and otherwise have a great deal more control over your Web space than is allowed with a Web browser. You can even tag entire folders or groups of folders and files for download or upload and preserve the folder structure in the process.
For simplicity of use, you can't beat WS_FTP in my opinion. However, for a rock solid robust
transfer of large or difficult file transfers, you can't beat WS_FTP-Pro (costs money).
If or when you decide to give WS_FTP a try, I'll be happy to give you specific help to get it going.
Note: FTP Pro, which is recommended for commercial use, was US$37.50 at the time of this
writing.
Why do I get the error "404 Access Forbidden" when I browse to my site?
In order for a folder to be browseable, it must contain a file with the name "default.htm". This is the file that will be accessed by the web browser when someone browses to that folder. For example, if your domain is "yourdomain.com" and someone browses to http://www.yourdomain.com, then the browser will bring up the default.htm file in your root directory. If no such file exists, the access forbidden error will be returned. Most likely, the only thing you will need to do to solve the problem is to change the name of index.htm to default.htm.
What is a good graphics viewer?
VuePrint is the most widely used Windows program for viewing images, with more copies downloaded from America Online and CompuServe than any other viewer. VuePrint is easy to download and install, easy to use, and easy to remove. You don't need to know anything about images or file formats to use VuePrint - just tell it to open a file, and it automatically displays any images it finds in this file. We also have a number of tips for using VuePrint available.
Please feel free to download VuePrint - Hamrick Software's shareware JPEG/GIF Image Viewer (it only takes 2 or 3 minutes to download). It's available in 16-bit and 32-bit versions, in 11 different languages. There are a lot of exciting new features so take a look for more details.
What is a Merchant account?
A merchant account is not a business checking account. It is a special facility that is arranged with a credit card clearing bank that allows you to process card transactions through their facilities. In general, as internet merchants you are required to declare to the acquiring bank who gives you this facility that that is how you trade. In many cases you will also have to pay higher rates than offline businesses such as shops or restaurants who obtain a signature from their customers.
The mechanism for obtaining a merchant account varies from country to country. In the US merchant accounts are sold by third party vendors, in the same way as many other financial services. In the UK and many other parts of Europe a merchant account is provided by a high street clearing bank. Either way, you are not required or expected to use the same bank for any other purpose so you are pretty much free to use who you like.
In general the best place to start searching for a merchant account is at the websites of the payment gateways, for example, Cybercash and Authorize.net in the US and Secpay in the UK.
