Archive for April, 2006

How To Redirect Your URLs By Using META Tags

Monday, April 3rd, 2006

There are many occasions when you might wish to display your URL in the form yourdomain/display.html but would like, instead, to direct visitors to another URL, say some-other-domain/best-mouse-trap.html.For example, you could be promoting an affiliate program with URL your-merchant-URL/sales-page/your-affiliate-code, and you think that the URL is too long, or you want to hide the fact that it is an affiliate link, or you might want to prevent people from stealing your affiliate commission, you could use this technique. You could even check how many people have clicked on your affiliate link, through checking the number of clicks of the displayed URL before it is redirected, from your Web site log.Here is another example. If you are using a tracking software, or a tracking company, to track your advertisement, usually, the tracking URL will be in the form of your-tracking-URL/…/tracking-?blah-blah or tracking-company-URL/…/tracking-?blah-blah. You want to use your own domain name or you don’t want others know that you are tracking the ad. You can use the URL your-URL/your-sales-description which redirects visitors to the tracking URL.Knowledge of technique of redirecting URLs will give you a lot of, amongst other benefits, flexibility. Here is how to do it with META tags…Create the page, "display.html," with the following META tag in between the HEAD and /HEAD tags in the HTML codes…META http-equiv = "refresh" content = "0; URL = some-other-URL/best-mouse-trap.html" without any other content (if you wish, you could include the title "World’s Best Mouse Trap" in between the TITLE and /TITLE tags, to show that this page is about mouse traps).Upload the page "display.html" to the root directory of your Web site. With that, when visitors click on the link of your-URL/display.html, they will be redirected to some-other-URL/best-mouse-trap.html.Please note that for the URL some-other-URL/best-mouse-trap.html in the above META tag, and other URLs through out the rest of the article, you should include the "http" protocol which has been omitted.The following variation of the above method can give you a neater way of displaying your URL, namely, without using the ".html" extension in your displayed URL…First create a sub-directory, say "best-mouse-trap" in the root directory at your Web site. Instead of naming the Web page created above as display.html, name it as index.html.Upload this "index.html" file into the sub-directory "best-mouse-trap". And then, when your visitors click on the URL your-URL/best-mouse-trap they will be redirected to some-other-URL/best-mouse-trap.html.Article Source: http://www.webdesignarticles.net.

Make The Move Towards Virtual Dedicated Web Hosting

Monday, April 3rd, 2006

Most webmasters today are familiar with what the industry calls shared web hosting accounts. A shared hosting account is where you rent a small amount of space on a server which is shared amongst many other users.This is a cheap way of getting started online but it has many disadvantages. For example, you might encounter email delivery problems because of spam complaints against other sites on the same server. You’ll find your site will be grinding to a halt when someone else does some heavy database work on your server. You might even find your site going down because of a denial of service attack against someone else’s hosting, hacking or piracy related material on your server. These type of sites can attract antisocial elements!How can you avoid all of these problems?You can avoid this problem by upgrading your system to a virtual dedicated server. A virtual dedicated server will let you run your sites as if you had your own dedicated server, except that it is cheaper because you are really just using part of a server that has been split into multiple virtual dedicated servers.You can find out more about this by searching Google or any other search engine for "virtual dedicated hosting". Virtuozzo is one of the main commercial softwares that web hosts use to run virtual hosting services.You’ll find virtual dedicated server accounts starting at just $30 a month. You will get a much larger chunk of bandwidth compared to shared hosting, and none of the problems that go with a shared host. You will also be able to get multiple IP addresses that are exclusive to your sites.So where’s the catch? Not very big. You might spend a bit more on hosting each month. The main disadvantage of upgrading to virtual dedicated hosting is that you’ll need to be more technically proficient so that you can administer the server.This will require a bit of time learning the necessary Linux skills to make sure that your server runs smoothly.Many hosting providers will have a "premium" support offering which includes a bit more hand-holding. This is definitely recommended if you do not have much experience with Linux, or are new to virtual dedicated hosting.With the increased speed and bandwidth that a virtual dedicated host can offer, and none of the shared hosting headaches, the move is one you’ll never regret. So, the question now becomes, are you ready and willing to take-on the challenge of virtual dedicated web hosting and save yourself some hard earned cash? The choice is always yours…Article Source: http://www.webdesignarticles.net.