cPanel and Plesk are two examples of web hosting control panels utilized by many hosting providers. Currently cPanel is only available for use on Linux operating systems, but this is set to change from 2008 when cPanel releases it’s cPanel/WHM 2008 Suite for Windows 2008; Plesk has been available for both Windows and Linux for a while now.

cPanel

cPanel is seen by many as the preferred control panel for Linux operating systems because of its quick loading times which is main due to the fact that the system is based mainly on Perl scripts meaning that it requires little to no database access at most times. cPanel also has greater capabilities than those which Plesk contains, these being that cPanel gives more server side information to the end user which they may need to use at times which can be mission critical in some cases; cPanel is also able to sort add-ons, examples of these include ‘Fantastico’ and ‘RVSkins’ - this add-on functionality also allows developers to build their own custom functions and programs for use within cPanel.

cPanel provides better reseller hosting than Plesk does. This is because cPanel has a specially created control panel included with it called WebHost Manager (WHM for short) which has been designed specifically for the purpose of reselling web hosting services. Plesk is only one control panel and makes setting up reseller account remarkably hard.

cPanel has also made migrating your hosting account to another cPanel hosting provider easy by intergrating a site migration module. This allows people to transfer all their sites and settings without loosing any data. This is something which makes cPanel stand out from the rest as it is something most control panels lack.

Plesk

Plesk is a cross platform control panel which is available in versions for both Windows and Linux. It is seen as the preferred control panel in the Windows hosting industry because its closest rival, HostingController, is remarkably unreliable and has helped give Plesk a big boost in the control panel industry. Plesk is a relatively closed operating system meaning that isn’t open for developers to create their own add-ons, however, it does have intergration for many other programs in different fields such as the ability to allow customers to use SmarterMail in the Windows version of Plesk.

Being a cross platform control panel, Plesk has the advantage over cPanel meaning that companies can run the same control panel on both panels meaning that minimum training is required for technicians as they only have to work out the operations of one control panel - this can save a business both time and money. However, on the security side of things Plesk for Windows doesn’t fair as well as it’s Linux counterpart or competitor do; there have been several holes found within the Plesk software allowing hackers to take control of a Windows server through the Plesk control panel, and the hacker can still gain access a second time after the administrator password on the server has been changed.

Conclusion

If you are after one control panel that suites all then go with Plesk - it can save you both time and money as a business and what you learn can be applied to both systems. However, if you prefer to go with the market leader and are willing to spend some time studying both options (cPanel for Linux, Plesk for Windows) then fo with cPanel as you will be able to customize it more to suite the environment in which you want your customers to control their websites.

Title: Why XHTML and CSS?

Simply put, XHTML and CSS has an indefinate bond together, they work together perfectly and they shape everything for the prospect of the future Internet.

XHTML is a stricter and more cleaner version of HTML. It stands for Extensible HyperText Markup Language. If you currently know HTML and use it in your Web pages, you’ll come to grips of how much of a mess it is. The original intention of HTML was for structuring documents (for example; paragraph’s, headings, and the likes), however more and more demanded features such as colour and font sizes - and thus Netscape and other companies such as Microsoft added these complementary features. Back then they weren’t aware of what an issue it could cause.

If you design with HTML you’ll come to face with tables - and I suppose you have (at least once) used tables for layouts, instead of their original intention - which is for tabular data. And again tables take hours to create and although its helpful for creating quick and easy layouts, it would consume huge amounts of disk space and bandwidth. Altogether they weren’t the solution to designing; after a few years people started getting fed up of having the backaches of making layouts in such a way - this is where CSS comes in.

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets and was created to replace HTML styling. CSS is a dream come true for developers, and to tell you the truth, CSS is very versatile when designing. This is because you can make many things out of CSS in little time with the same type of code. CSS is a huge help to bandwidth bills because with CSS you can use the same code over and over again for different types of HTML elements. For example, lets say we wanted to change the colour of our headings - we’d use the following CSS code:

h1 {
color: #FF0000;
}

Now theres nothing else to add to the HTML heading element - just add

This is text

to your HTML document - and your heading will be red. In many aspects this saves bandwidth and your precious time. Let’s face it, us Webmasters always want the easiest route in cases similar to this.

I am not going to go in-depth in CSS but there are plenty of tutorials on-line over the Web. You can search on Google for tutorials, but at the bottom of this article I will give you a few links to Websites and resources that may be beneficial to you.

Okay, moving on to XHTML. As in the preceding sections of this article, XHTML is a stricter and cleaner version of HTML and will one day replace standard HTML. XHTML is becoming increasingly popular around the Web. You’ll find that more people are demanding XHTML compliant Websites, so for example if you provide a Web design service, most of your clients will demand XHTML compliant templates. Further on this, most people are moving onto CSS as well. There is a slight difference between HTML and XHTML, for example the
tag is
as XHTML demands HTML elements alike to have a self-closing stroke. This would be the same for the tag as well - as the tag does not have any closing tag in standard HTML. Another thing to point out is everything in XHTML needs to be lower-case. Unfortunately so, XHTML demands another thing in your document at all times; the document type. Theres two different document types; XHTML Transitional and XHTML Strict. I recommend you visit the following URL for a reference on this: http://w3schools.com/xhtml/xhtml_dtd.asp

Overall XHTML and CSS make a good couple and you should really consider moving into the 21st century of Website design (in other words, XHTML and CSS). Below is some links to both XHTML and CSS tutorials:

XHTML Tutorials and Resources:

• http://w3schools.com/xhtml/default.asp
• http://www.freewebmasterhelp.com/tutorials/xhtml
• http://websitetips.com/articles/xhtml/basics/

CSS Tutorials and Resoureces:

• http://www.html.net
• http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp
• http://www.tizag.com/cssT/

Recommended Books:
• XHTML for Dummies (http://www.dummies.com/WileyCDA/DummiesTitle/productCd-0764507516.html)
• CSS in Easy Steps (http://ineasysteps.com/books/details/?184078301x)

The debate over deciding which is better, Windows or Linux, has been one which has been ongoing since the early days of the internet. However, the debate is more or less based on their factors in relation to the web hosting business and what customers want, but factors such as security and usability do come into consideration. Linux is rarely used as a desktop operating system, as its main use is as a server OS; however, Microsoft has released many different versions of Windows meaning that it can be used in almost any scenario.

Linux

Linux is a free, open source operating system which comes in many different versions - these are known as ‘distributions’, ‘distros’ for short. Each distribution has been made for a different use in most cases, but all can be used for similar things; an example of this would be Ubuntu Linux - it was produced mainly for the home user but can be used as a server operating system as well. Linux also has the advantage over Windows that it is less resource intensive meaning that it can be used on older machines or lower specification machines. Security wise, Linux also comes out better than Windows; although viruses do exist for Linux, the number is far less than the number of viruses which can have an affect on the Windows operating system. In most cases viruses can sit in a Linux environment and not have any negative effect, in other words they can sit there in harmony doing nothing.

From a web developer’s point of view, Linux is much easier to work with than Windows is; this is because there is a greater range of free resources and scripting languages that will work within a Linux environment. Also, Linux web hosting is much cheaper than Windows web hosting because the cost of the server software is little or nothing when compared to Windows software.

Windows

Windows is a premium operating system which comes in many different versions, that you can only buy. It is the world’s most commonly used computer operating system and is what has made Bill Gates the richest man in the world. At this moment in time, the current main versions of Microsoft’s operating system are: Vista and Server 2003; Windows Vista is Microsoft’s latest desktop operating system and Windows Server is run on servers. As Windows is widely popular, it is a virus magnet meaning that there is thousands of viruses at the current time capable of causing damage to someone’s computer; this means that people have to fork out more money for anti-virus and internet security software to ensure that their computer is safe.

Windows was the first main-stream computer operating system which gave it a head start within the market; however, Unix based systems like Linux and Mac OSX are starting to eat their way into Microsoft’s market share. If you are a web developer Windows isn’t a very versatile system to work with; you are limited to the languages which will run on Windows, the main ones being Microsoft’s classic ASP and ASP.NET - however, you can get RoR and PHP to run on Windows.

Conclusion

If you are looking for a robust system then you can go with either Windows or Linux, but if you don’t have any experience with Linux then you shouldn’t go with it as the only support that you will receive is community support which may not always give you the answer you need. With Windows you are paying a price, but you are guaranteed support from Microsoft - there is also enough websites on the internet to help you along with both. If you want better security then go with Linux, but if you have the ability to fork the extra money out for Windows’ security software then go with Windows.

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets and is the language behind the design of most web pages. In order to achieve a good looking website desifn that is XHTML 1.0 compliant, you should always build your pages using CSS. Its structure is similar to that of both PHP and Javascript, meaning that if you already develop using either of these languages then you should find CSS realtively easy to learn. If you are new to the concept of coding, then you will need to start by learning the basic structure of CSS.

The Basic Structure

CSS elements are normally contained within a code structure which normally takes this form: ‘[element type]#/.[element name] { style properties }’. The element type is the type of element which you want to style, such as a div; the element name is the actual name which you want to give the element, such as ‘bob’. An element which is an id can only be used once within a web page, and in the CSS code is defined by using ‘#’ before the element name; elements which are defined as classes can be used multiple times within a web page and is defined by using a ‘.’ before the element name within a CSS document. The actual properties of the element are contained within the ‘{} tags, ‘{’ being the opening tag and ‘}’ being the closing tag.

You can also style elements without using a name. This is useful is you want the same style to be applied to the same element type throughout a web page. To do this you don’t need to use the id or class symbols since no name is being specified; all you need to put before the opening tag is the element type as seen in HTML format, for our example we want the paragraph element to have the same style properties throughout the web page, so we define the style in this way: ‘p { style properties }’ - we used the ‘p’ element since this is the HTML for a paragraph within a web page. Each style property is defined in the following format: ‘property: value;’; as you can see a colon is present after the property name is defined - this is important as browsers are only able to read elements which are set out with the colon; the semi-colon is present to represent the end of the property - without this present at the end of each property, browsers won’t be able to read the rest of your style sheet.

Style Properties

There are many different properties that you can use within a style block to make an element look good; however, the likelihood is that you will never use all of them. The most important properties within a style block are the ‘width’ and ‘height’ properties since they control the size of the element. However, if you only want to style a text element, such as a ’span’ or ‘p’ element then you will not need to use either of these properties since they are only used to control a box object; in your case the most important properties would be the ‘font-family’, ‘font-size’ and ‘color’ elements since they control how the text will appear.

With CSS you can control how far away other objects on the page must keep from a certain object - the property to control this is called the ‘margin’ property; it has four ’sub-properties’ for each different side of an object, these being ‘margin-top’, ‘margin-bottom’, ‘margin-left’ and ‘margin-right’ - these ’sub-properties’ provide margin styling for each separate side of the object and can be defined individually.

One problem which many people face when building websites using CSS is getting their pages centred. Achieving this is quite simple, all you have to do is define the ‘text-align’ element of the body tag within the CSS document as ‘center’, and each element which you want to centre must have their ‘margin-left’ and ‘margin-right’ properties set to ‘auto’.

Other CSS Resources 

The following is a list of resources you may want to visit if you want to extend your knowledge of CSS:

• http://w3schools.com/css/default.asp - W3Schools is the learning medium trusted by most. This site gives you an extended knowledge base of tutorials which should help you learn CSS.
• http://www.devarticles.com/c/a/Web-Style-Sheets/Learn-CSS-part-1/ - This is the first part of a serious of articles discussing CSS.
• http://www.utexas.edu/learn/css/ - This article is perfect for beginners and covers the higher up basics.

Blogs are online journals in which people write about things - whether it be the ramblings of their life or tutorials to help others along. The word ‘blog’ comes from the word ‘weblog’, and has many words which derive from it; these words being: blogger and blogging. The word blogger is the name given to the author of the blog, and blogging the name given to the process of writing to a blog; the world blog can also refer to the process of writing to a blog. Blogs have been becoming more popular over the last 2 years, and as of July 2007 there are around 70 million active blogs on the internet. If you are looking to start your own blog, there is no time better than now to do so.

To start your own blog, there are certain factors which you need to work out before you start anything, there are:

• What you are going to blog about.
• Your intended target audience.
• The name of your blog.
• Whether you are going to use a free or paid blogging service.
• If you are going to pay for a hosting service: what blog software you are going to use.

What You Are Going to Blog About

The most important factor to consider when starting your own blog is what you are going to blog about; this is because the content of the blog will determine how successful it is: if you write about personal stuff then your blog is not going to gain much traffic, as the only visitors will probably only be friends or family; if you write posts which will help others out in any way then they are most likely to recommend your blog to others which means that it will gradually gain traffic.

Identifying Your Intended Target Audience

Once you have worked out what you are going to blog about, you need to work out who is most likely to visit your blog, and why; this is important because when you come to promoting your blog, you want to make sure that you are promoting it to the right group of people. This also plays a huge part in the amount of visitors that you receive; if it’s only family and friends visiting your blog then the amount of traffic that you receieve won’t be a huge amount, however, if people are finding and visiting your blog from web searches then they are most likely to be returning visitors, and will recommend your blog to others.

The Name of Your Blog

You can name your blog anything you want, you can even name it after yourself. However, most blog names are normally linked to the blog’s subject in some way or another. The name of your blog must be simple to say, and easy to remember; simple names are more likely to stick in people’s heads which means that if people can remember the name and address of your blog then they will most likely recommend it to others.

Using a Free or Paid Service

There are many different services which you could use to host your blog. You could use a free service which gives you a sub of their main domain name; the main downside of free blog hosting services is that they normally fill your blog with unwanted adverts. The following is a list of free blog hosting services which you can use to help get you started:

• http://www.blogger.com/ - Blogger is Google’s free blog hosting service. It is one of the most popular in the world. The adverts that they place are rather discrete and blend in with the chosen design. The address given is normally ‘blogname.blogspot.com’.
• http://www.cjb.net/ - CJB.net run a free blog hosting service along with a range of other free services. Adverts placed by them aren’t that discrete and don’t blend in with the blog. The url provided is normally ‘http://blogs.cjb.net/blogname’.
• http://www.wordpress.com/ - Witth Wordpress.com you can create your own instance of the popular open source WordPress blog system, but hosted on their servers. The url provided is normally ‘blogname.wordpress.com’.

If you are not tempted to use a free blog hosting service, then you buy a cheap web hosting package with a web host along with a domain. With paid blog/hosting services you have full control of your blog and don’t have forced advertisements displayed. You can then install one of the following free blog software packages:

• http://www.wordpress.org/ - Wordpress is the world’s most popular open source blog system.
• http://www.b2evolution.net/ - B2Evolution is another piece of popular blog software. It is different from Wordpress in the way that you are able to create multiple blogs within one installation.
• http://www.mephistoblog.com/ - Mephisto is a relatively new piece of open source blog software. It is different from both Wordpress and B2Evo since it was written in the up and coming RoR scripting language.

Websites can be used for many different purposes; you can make a personal website about yourself where you may want to post family photos that you might want to share with friends and family, or you may want to build a business website so that you can sell your products online and promote your business through the means of the internet. Many people would love to be able to create their own website, but don’t necessarily have the knowledge to do so; although there are many web-based products which claim to let you build your own website, they don’t necessarily let you customize your website as much as you want since your are limited to certain templates- because of this you should always learn how to build your own website from scratch with HTML.

Learning Languages

To build the most basic of websites you need to start off by learning HTML and CSS. HTML is the basic language of all web pages - without it you won’t even be able to create one page. CSS stands for ‘Cascading Style Sheets’ and is the language used to style elements on a web page - you need to know this if you want to make your web pages look good. If you want to extend the features of your website to include something dynamic, such as a shopping cart then you will need to learn a server side web language such as PHP or ASP.

There are many resources on the internet that you can use to learn web languages, including:

• http://www.w3schools.com - This site has tutorials for languages which are widely used on the internet. This resource if perfect to get your from being a novice to having intermediate knowledge of web languages.
• http://www.4guysfromrolla.com/ - This site has many different articles, tutorials and code examples which can help you to learn ASP.NET, and its older sister - classic ASP.
• http://uk3.php.net/tut.php - PHP.net - the home website of the PHP scripting language has put together a simple tutorial to help out beginners.

Once you have learnt the basics of HTML and CSS, you are ready to start building your website.

Choosing the Design Software

When building a website you need to design what piece of software you will be using to do it. When choosing web design software, there are several variables that you should always take into consideration, these are: cost of the software, the complexity of the software and whether you are going to build using your own code or by using a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor. Website design software can range from nothing to around £500; if you are going to be building your site using your own code then you have no need for a WYSIWYG editor meaning that all you need is a text application, such as Microsoft Notepad or jEdit - a piece of software specifically built for this kind of scenario. If you are after a piece of software which you would like to do all the coding for you and that lets you see the final outcome without having to do anything complicated then you want a piece of software which is known as a ‘WYSIWYG’ editor; these pieces of software generally cost, and examples include NetObject’s Fusion and Adobe’s Dreamweaver. WYSIWYG editors are generally more complicated to use than normal text editors since they have more built in features to help someone along with the building of their site. Listed below are some of the most commonly used website design programs:

• http://www.microsoft.com/express/vwd/Default.aspx - Microsoft Visual Web Developer Express Edition is a free piece of Microsoft software created to encourage more developers and designers alike to take up ASP.NET coding. It can be used as both a WYSIWYG editor and a plain text editor, and has many features built in.
• http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-gb/vstudio/default.aspx - Microsoft Visual Studio is VWD’s bigger brother and it’s costs vary since there are various different editions of it.
• http://www.jedit.net/ - jEdit is a free plain text editor that was created specifically for web designers. You can use it to script in any language, but it doesn’t come with a WYSIWYG editor.
• http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver/ - Adobe Dreamweaver (formally Macromedia Dreamweaver) is probably the best known piece of website design software throughout the world. It comes with both a code editor and a WYSIWYG editor, but is quite costly priced at $399 (approximately £199).

Getting Your Website onto the Internet

Getting your website onto the internet doesn’t have to be the complicated process that many make it out to be. All you need to do is purchase a domain and website hosting and you are all set to go. A domain is the address which you type in to go to a website - the cost of these is relatively low as you can pick a domain up for about £5/year these days; web hosting as well is relatively cheap as in most cases you pick a package up for £22.99/year. After you have purchased both of these you should be given access to an online system known as a ‘control panel’ where you can control all aspects of your website and its hosting.

To upload your website to your web space all you need to do is establish an FTP connection with the FTP server for your site (normally ftp://ftp.yourdomain.com). You will be asked to login with your FTP account - these can normally be created through your control panel. Once a connection has been established you have to copy your website files into the root of your website, this is a folder normally named ‘public_html’ under Linux hosting or ‘httpdocs’ if you are on Windows hosting.

Once the files have been copied, all you need to do is open a fresh browser window, type your domain into the address bar and your website should appear as if by magic!

Promoting Your Website

You’ve got your website completed and on the web now. The next thing to do is to get your website promoted so that you can start receiving visitors. You can submit your website online directories under a category that fits your website and sign up to online advertising services so that your website will be advertised on other websites; you should also make sure that your website is listed in the results of popular search engines such as MSN, Google, and Yahoo - this will ensure that your website receives visitors. You should find the links below helpful when promoting your website:

• http://www.google.com/adwords/ - Google AdWords is Google’s advertiser network which is known as a PPC (pay per click) program where you can create your own adverts for your website which will be then shown on the websites of Google publisher’s.
• http://www.url-free.net/ - This is a prime example of a website directory where you can submit your website to a certain category where it can then be found by others who are browsing the category.