Weebly: A Great Tool or Just Another?

Weebly is an easy to use, free, WYSIWYG online website building application. With its entry, our long wait for good website building tools is at an end. There are other tools like Freewebs for instance, but none of them offers such freedom, flexibility, and features as Weebly does. With its intuitive interface, you can create a cool, brilliant website free of cost, and host it on a Weebly subdomain or in your private domain.

Weebly helps you create a feature-rich website. You can add hundreds of megabytes of data, and many third-party functionalities to it. You can choose the site design from their list of templates; you can even set site keywords and Meta tags. For more details of the features, methods, advantages, and disadvantages, please read on.

The registration in Weebly is ridiculously simple; it doesn’t require any information from you other than a user name, password, and an email address. You needn’t type down your life history as you do in many social networking sites. Also, no email address confirmation is required here! Nor do you have to verify indistinct words in jumbled graphics, as nearly every other Internet registration requires. However, there is a downside to it. The word verification is used to identify if the registrant is a human being or a machine. With this step in oblivion, Weebly might get so many machine registrations, and victimize its customers to potential attacks such as Denial of Service (DoS).

The Weebly website builder has loads of features. You can design the website, with the help of the templates provided it. The templates have menus placed on the side or on the top, and you can add extra pages or blogs. It allows you to add pictures, widgets like HTML code (you can display your advertisements, Adsense ads, etc., using this feature), Google maps, RSS feeds, YouTube or Google videos, Adbrite ads, a contact form, files from your computer, Flickr photo gallery, etc., on each page.

Weebly provides options to publish your site free on a Weebly subdomain (yoursitename.weebly.com); on a separate domain, which you can purchase in Weebly; or, on your private domain, if you have one. Overall, this is a perfect online publishing platform. In addition, you can download the whole website as an archived package.

One of the most important features of Weebly is that you can get your website optimized for Search Engines. You can edit the Meta tags and description of the site, and add keywords of your choice. Isn’t it wonderful? I don’t know of another free website builder that provides you more in depth customization.

But, most of the great tools usually have some simple catch, do they not? But, as far as I can fathom, there is no such drawback in Weebly. It seems to keep promises. There are no hidden charges, no glitches, and no troubles other than some apparent lapses, which I have touched upon below.

The things overlooked by Weebly are these: it doesn’t allow you to edit your HTML code. Had we had the privilege to edit the given code, we could have had great flexibility to customize our websites. Another (and perhaps the most important) lapse is that the word verification step, which seems ubiquitous, is not here. Since machines can easily carry out registration steps and make use of this great tool, genuine users are at risk of losing much of their usage time and space to machines. We cannot judge its effect as early as now. Weebly is still in its infancy (in popularity), and when it becomes more popular, it may be difficult to fight the problem of these machine sign-ups. Another great letdown is the set of templates it provides, all of which look like siblings of one another. Some have good graphics in them, some have nice backgrounds, and some have differences in menu positioning, color schemes, number of columns, etc. But there is no more distinction than that. I believe more distinct templates might have made more sense. Save for the mentioned drawbacks, Weebly is simply a great tool.

Weebly is your answer to the quest for the best website builder. When it becomes more popular, Weebly might make itself a great competitor to Googlepages, blogging applications, Yahoo website builder (360 degree), and many other free and priced site creation applications.

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Image Hosting

An image host is a secure and cost effective way to save all your important pictures to one location.

If you’re a serious online eBay auctioneer, this class of services is priceless. It’s a fact high calibre images can increase sales. For a minimal cost your photos are hosted by a reputable website. Image hosts offer file saving and backed up through a secure network. There is a myriad of image hosting providers on the web, each offering its own unique brand of services to clients. When considering your image hosting needs it’s smart to ask a few simple questions:   

1. Is the user interface easy to understand, i.e. - uploads and saved files stored in a simple to find location?
 
2. Does the site allow you to link URL’s and HTML code to other websites, such as eBay, blog and webzines? 
 
3. Does the site offer free multiple image storage, or are these services charged individually, (per image)?
 
4. Does the host provider offer tools and features to enhance and edit images?
 
5. How long has the provider been in the business of hosting images on the web? Is there a verifiable client comment/testimonials section?
 
When choosing an image host asking these questions will help target your specific requirements and avoid potential stress and headaches, due to an ill informed client. Consider the old adage: “You get what you pay for.”     

 Speaking of cost it’s also important to consider “any” additional fees that may not be included in monthly packages. In some cases multiple image hosting is included in the flat rate while others may charge on a per image basis. It might cost as much as fifteen cents per image; therefore a little research upfront will save you from unexpected additional expense.

There are many software programs available that improve image quality, create slide shows and photo galleries. However, time and money are precious commodities in our high speed lifestyles. Choosing a top notch image host with built in tools and features is an inexpensive alternative to purchasing costly software.

Anyone can find a package to fit both user and budget requirements, as most image host’s offer bundled packages to suit their diversified client base. Some of the features, services and tools offered by an image host may include:

- Multiple images upload; supporting the most popular file types such as: JPG, GIF and PNG.

- Ability to pre selects image quality ranging from low to high prior to upload.

- A simple user-friendly storage manager that allows you to create personalized files/folders for ease of organization, storage and retrieval.

- Images are backed up to a secure environment.

- Easy to use plug-ins for sites such as eBay, websites and blog.

- Offers simple tools to create stunning high quality galleries, slide shows and 360 spin on site.

Whether you’re a serious eBay auctioneer or a weekend photographer it is important to remember, high quality visual images are worth a thousand words. Uploading images to a secure host will save time, money, and disk space. Memory and storage can be costly to manage. An image host takes the worry out of uploads, back ups and storage space, while at the same time offering services and features to provide even the most creative entrepreneur a fun and interesting environment to create that perfect web ready master piece.

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Image Hosting

Images pack power to Websites and blogs. They can transform a ho-hum e-bay auction item into a buy-it-now! Sale. Adding imagery packs a punch to any story, and can close the deal for you by allowing potential buyers to see what they’re getting. But, chances are, your image files are a mess.

Most home computers have a My Pictures file which is a jumble of images uploaded at random from your digital camera. How does one keep track, and keep up with what is on your hard drive? And what happens if your hard drive suffers a catastrophic failure? Using an image hosting service can make all of the difference to keeping you backed up and organized.

So, what is image hosting, and why should you bother? Image hosting services – such as myPhotosHub.com – gives you a central storage location for your images. It enables you to create easy links to your images, allows you the ability to upload and store only images that are pertinent to personal or professional subjects, and saves time by keeping you from browsing through folder after folder of pictures on your hard drive.

Image hosting services range from easy linking to safety storage. Easy linking provides the user with the ability to link directly to an image without having to upload it multiple times. Safety storage enables an individual or business to store photo documentation for insurance purposes, or personal reasons – if you experience a catastrophic loss of your home computer. Image hosting services are reliable, functional, and traditionally easy to upload and manage large quantities and types of image files.

Whatever the reason, using an image hosting service such as myPhotosHub.com allows anyone to easily access images at any time, from any location. With this online service, you can snap pictures of your items for sale, upload them to a central location, and access them later when you have time.

Imagine, on your lunch break, you want to update your E-bay auction item, or update a listing on Craigslist. If you stored your images at home, you’d have to wait until dinner was in the oven and the kids needed help with homework. Who has the time? If you had updated your image hosting service with your items for sale, an E-Bay user could easily take a moment to browse through your hosted items and link to images for online auction, or Craigslist postings on the fly from any location.

Image hosting services are a great way to centralize your photographs for a variety of purposes. Prices can range from free to a stepped hosting plan that you can design with a hosting company such as myPhotosHub.com to serve your personal or business needs. 

Bandwidth Stealing and Hotlinking – What to Know

Direct linking is an effective tool to link pages or embed files such as images into a web page or onto a website.  When files (image, video, documents, etc.) are copied without permission from a web page and pasted onto another site, it is called bandwidth leeching a.k.a. hotlinking a.k.a. inline linking a.k.a. piggy-backing. What it amounts to is bandwidth stealing, and it can be done so stealthily that many people do not realize it is happening to them.  Not only is bandwidth stealing an issue of copyright infringement, it can cost a person money.  In addition, the content linked may not be used in the way the owner intended, and hotlinking can be used for phishing expeditions.

Legitimate Uses for Linking
There are legitimate uses for direct linking.  For instance, a blogger or Ebayer may want to embed images onto their site instead of having the images uploaded each time a person visits their pages. Direct linking is also used with web banners and as a way for web hosting companies to divide their bandwidth on their servers. Also, some website owners allow and want links to other sites, but these should be pages and not files.  This article centers on the illicit use of linking as it relates to bandwidth stealing.

Why Bandwidth Matters
Every time a person visits a website the information on the site is transferred to their computer using bandwidth.  Bandwidth is measured in megabytes and is calculated by the amount of data or information that is transferred to a computer. Companies that host websites, images and blogging spaces allot each customer a certain amount of bandwidth that can be used in a month’s time.  With regard to bandwidth, a web page can also be images and blogs that are hosted by a company (image hosting services, blog hosting sites).   For instance, each time someone clicks on an image in Ebay bandwidth is used.

Online companies charging for bandwidth usage is something like cellular phone companies service plans.  For a monthly charge, a cell phone customer is given a set number of minutes that they can use. If they go over their minutes, they are charged for the overage.  The same happens with bandwidth.  If a person goes over their bandwidth megabytes there is an extra charge for that overage. The hosting website can also close your account. 

When a person’s bandwidth has been hotlinked, they are using more bandwidth than they normally would.  If there is an overage, they pay not the person who has leeched.  The other scenario is that the person who has been hotlinked buys a larger bandwidth plan, spending money unnecessarily.  

How Hotlinking Is Done
While all files on web pages can be leeched, hot linking is most commonly associated with images.  Anyone who has a web page can easily link image files to their site.  It is only a matter of copying and pasting the images URL onto the new page. Once the image is embedded onto the leecher’s web page, every time someone visits that page it costs the original owner of the image bandwidth megabytes because the file is still linked to the original site.

Checking for Bandwidth Stealing
One of the easiest ways to check whether an image is being hotlinked is to check the website’s access logs (statistics) for the site and compare them to the expected activity.  If there is a big jump in megabyte usage, chances are hotlinking is the cause.  On the server logs check to see if images are being pulled up by a particular IP address more than is reasonable. Your web page host site can give you more details on how and what to check. 

Also, try googling the image name to see if it is comes up on other websites.  If images are stolen from an Ebay account or photo hosting service notify customer service.  A deterrent to hotlinking is to imprint a logo or name on all images.

Remedying Hotlinking Situation
There are several options to remedy the situation if images have been hotlinked. Write an email to the person and let them know what they have done and that the image should be removed from their site.  There are many people who do not know that hotlinking is wrong.  So, most people will readily take the image off their site once they are made aware of it.

The image file can also be changed to an “htaccess” file.  If the person totally ignores the situation, replace the image with something that is embarrassing.   Another image can be used, or words to the effect, “This image was stolen from me.  This person is a thief.”  To find out how effective this is type  “John McCain hotlinking” in a google search.

Preventing Bandwidth Leeching
To prevent bandwidth leeching use the “htacces” file change. This website - http://underscorebleach.net/jotsheet/2004/06/htaccess-prevent-hotlinking - gives detailed directions on how to change image files to an htaccess file.  One of the things to be aware of in adding a “htacces” file is that legitimate uses of linking can also be denied.  Although, there are ways around that, it may be easier to just contact customer service for the web hosting site to assist in preventing image leeching.
Most image hosting websites have built-in filter that protect images from being hotlinked.  Some of them allow a person to opt in or out of the filter.
 
Final Note
At the moment, prevention and removal methods for hotlinking are cumbersome and not easy to do for the average computer user.  However, issues regarding hotlinking are just beginning to come into the mainstream, and it is only a matter of time that programmers develop effective programs that guards against bandwidth stealing.

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The Pros And Cons Of Virtual Hosting

Virtual hosting is where one or more domain name is hosted on the same computer.

Virtual hosting is most commonly used by companies that provide website hosting services. For example, a web hosting company may host the sites for Dave’s bar and Bill’s window cleaning business. The pages for both sites will be physically stored on the same computer (known as a server).

When somebody visits one of the sites, the domain name system (DNS) translates the website address (www.filetonic.com or www.constant-content.com) into an IP address, which is a string of numbers that identify a particular server. As both sites are on the same server, the DNS information will include both the IP address for that site, and which files to show.

The main benefit of virtual hosting is economies of scale. A web hosting company can host many sites on one server and split the costs between all their customers, allowing them to charge low prices. This also means the customers do not have to worry about running their own server, which involves technical know-how and requires maintenance and physical security.

Some large businesses also use virtual hosting for their own websites. For example, a business may have one website for customers, one for suppliers, and an intranet site for employees. With virtual hosting, all three sites can be stored on the same server.

The main drawback of virtual hosting comes when the domain name system (DNS) is not working properly. Normally in this case, the person visiting the site can type the IP address directly if they know it. However, with virtual hosting, the IP address alone will not necessarily bring up the correct site.

Another problem is that virtual hosting cannot usually deal with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) security. This is the most common method of encrypting information such as passwords. However, with virtual hosting, the server may have encryption set-ups from more than one site and not know which to use.