CamTrack 2.5 Free 30 days Trial and $14.95 to buy.

CamTrack 2.5 lets you add video effects, text and images to your webcam video chat. But the plus point of CamTrack 2.5 is not the cool animations but the feature of “Face Tracking”. Face tracking automatically locates your face in the video image and zooms in on it, keeping your face centered in the middle of the frame at an optimal size.

CamTrack also allows you to zoom in and out. Combine this feature with face tracking and you never need to adjust your webcam with your hands. you can do it with your keyboard and mouse.

ManyCam Free

A free software, ManyCam allows you to use your webcam with multiple programs which means that you can use your webcam with Yahoo, MSN, Skype and Google Talk simultaneously.

ManyCam allows you to add text to your webcam stream. You can use display images or create a slideshow of images from your computer and broadcast it to your webcam. You can play videos on your webcam. I have used this feature to share a birthday video with my aunt on yahoo. Using Manycam and yahoo voice chat it was fun to share the video with this new way. I mean of course I can upload the video to youtube but it was a huge file and I didn’t have time.

Using Manycam you can create many effects like change the color, brightness and contrast of your webcam. Add visual effects to your webcam there are some really cool effects built in and they are a lot of fun. You can rotate and zoom in or out of your webcam video.

If you know of someother cool software please let me know. I want to make my Yahoo chat more fun. I am also looking for software to change the voice make it girly, high pitched or childish.

Content Management System (CMS) is an application or a software used to create, edit, manage and publish content in a consistently organized fashion. We will be using one to manage our small business website. Those used to manage content on the web are called Web CMS. These are usually web applications. Which means that the software resides on your web server. It handles the appearance of your website, organizes your content and serves it in HTML when some one visits your website. Most open source and free CMS use PHP for scripting and MySQL database.

Why CMS?

You can create a web site by simply using a text editor to create your own HTML documents. Even for people with good HTML knowledge it is a lot of work to copy paste the same code on all pages to maintain consistency, check the website for broken links and manually update the navigational structure of the website. Why spend time on that? When you can spend the same time on creating the content.

• Using a CMS your site has the same look and feel and you manage site’s design with templates. So your pages have a consistent feel which is good for branding your website.
• Creating and publishing new content is easier as you will not have to worry about HTML and navigational structure of your website. Most CMS show your newest content on the main page and since they serve the pages dynamically so all your documents get updated with new content.
• You can add new users to work with you on the same site. You can set their roles and manage the content they add.
• Using a CMS allows you to give your site’s visitors a place to interact without breaking your site. Visitors can comment, join mailing list or take part in forums.

Which CMS is right for me?

There are many applications available and a great number of them are free open source CMS. You choose the one that meets your needs. What you should look when choosing the right CMS for your website:

• Does it have the features that help you publish your site the way you want. For example if you want to create an online store, wordpress which is a great CMS is porbably not the best choice in your case. But then if you want to create your main page with news and articles then wordpress is definitely a good choice.
• Does it have the ability to extend functionality using plugins or modules. Using plugins and modules you can add extra functionality and features to your website without breaking it.
• It has a template system that is easy for you to understand. Are there many free templates available on the web? This is important so that you can pick a well coded template that you can modify with your own branding.
• Support, does it have a well written manual available on the web? Is there a forum, mailing list, or a chatroom where you can go and ask questions.

There are many Free and Open Source CMS available on the web. They come with great community support, plugins, templates and themes. WordPress is probably the most popular example of an Open Source CMS. If you want a more e-commerce CMS then you can try Zen Cart or SilverStripe. You can also use more than one CMS on your site, for example you can use WordPress for your static pages and company blog, PHPbb for your web forum, and Zen Cart for your product gallery. Many web hosts offer one click installs for these popular open source CMS. You can also download and install them on your web server and play with them for a while before making your final decission.

Create Your Web Site

Now that you have decided to create your website with any CMS. Next step is to modify the default installation. First of all you need to change the logo, site’s name and title, design and layout to meet your needs. Most Open Source CMS has web forums, mailing lists, tutorials and Wikis on their websites with details about modifying your site. For example look at WordPress support pages, zen-cart tutorials, phpbb documentation and support, SilverStripe community support.

This is a great skill you are learning yourself and once you are familiar with the support system of open source community you will feel powerful and confident. Now lets say you want to change the header image of the default installation with your company’s logo, you go to your CMS website and look for tutorial to do that. If you don’t find a tutorial then simply ask in forums or mailing list. Some one will answer your question with in a couple of hours sometimes even in minutes.

Don’t rush to launch and announce your website until it is ready. Keep modifying your website, work on it, browse it, fill it with content, add plugins and try different layouts. Take your time, take a week atleast or a month if you are a perfectionist. Once you are satisfied with the look and functionality of your website launch it as “Beta” which means that product if polished but you are still testing it. After a while when you have enought users and you have resolved most issues with the website you can remove the Beta label.

In the next posts we will be discussing the content you should publish on your website and how you will be working to make your website popular.

This post is part of a series. To read more posts from this series go to “Creating a Small Business Website“.

There are thousands of companies out there offering cheap and affordable web hosting but not all of them are good. It is important that you go with a company that offers reliable and affordable web hosting. Then again, they all claim to be reliable and affordable, how do you find out?

I go for word of mouth. I was working on a small website for an NGO and my agreement with them included web hosting and domain name registration. Normally I go for DreamHost which has proven itself very reliable to me. But a friend of mine had used Bluehost recently so he suggested that I should give them a try. I did and I have found another reliable and cheap webhosting solution. But you shouldn’t just go for what your friends say, make sure that you do check out reviews and packages before buying them.

First of all you should never go for the advertising jargon most web hosting companies use on their websites. Instead, you should carefully monitor their offerings. Compare packages and read their descriptions carefully. There might be some words that would confuse you but don’t worry lookup for them in web hosting glossary or search the web. While comparing packages you should pay attention to:

1. Bandwidth and Disk space. To make sure that it meets your needs. If you are going to upload lots of audio video files on your website than you need more bandwidth and disk space. But since hardware is becoming cheaper every day so all good web hosts offer quite enough disk space and bandwidth for a medium sized popular website to run swiftly.
2. Do they offer you to add additional domains and subdomains. This is important because at some point you might want to add additional domains and subdomains. like for example you might want to add an extra customer services website under your main site. If they do not offer you to do that freely than they are a bad web host. Dreamhost offers me to add as many domains and subdomains as i want to my existing hosting package.
3. How many email addresses they offer. You might need this if you start offering email accounts to your clients or staff.
4. Do they run latest PHP/MySQL. Since you will be using a CMS and most open source CMS use PHP and MySQL and most web hosts support PHP and MySQL. But some lazy web hosts use older versions which might cause you trouble while installing or upgrading your CMS.
5. What support options they offer. do they have help pages, do they offer email and phone support. You should make sure that help is available whenever you need it.

You can find answers to all these questions on their website but if its not there you should email them for the answers. I would say that you should email them any way because it tells you how quickly they respond to user queries. Ask them questions and make sure that they satisfy you with their answers. If they don’t then move on to the next web host.

After that you should check out forums such as Webmaster World and Ozzu Web Master forum. These forums have sections for web hosting related discussions where you can ask other web masters to advise you chosing the right host. Most probably someone has already used their services and you can hear from the users directly how they found the services. There are also many websites around that offer user submitted reviews of web hosts. Web Hosting Geeks is one such site.

Web Hosting and Domain Registration are two different things. There are many web hosts that offer free domain registration for your hosting period. But some times a Domain is not included in your web hosting package. I would say that you go for the web host that offers Domain Registration with hosting, but if your prefered web host does not offer this then you will have to register a domain name elsewhere and then redirect it to your web server. It is very simple and most of the time your web host will assist you with that.

Or if you want, I have connections with Dreamhost and I can talk them to offer you a special deal as an special Easy Life subscriber. Drop me an email if you want the details.

I have carefully handpicked a few webhosts some of them I have used personally and others are considered reliable in the market. But you are once again advised to review the offerings and package details to make sure that you are buying the right services.

• DreamHost: This website is hosted with Dreamhost. We have used them and found them very reliable. They have great customer support with wikipages and user forums, you can also email them, or telephone them. They offer unlimited diskspace, bandwidth, add your own domain names and subdomains, unlimited email accounts.
• Bluehost: They also offer unlimited diskspace and bandwidth and enough email accounts and mysql databases. They have good support options and I have used them for a client once and my clients are satisfied with their services.
• Yahoo! Web Hosting: Yahoo web hosting for small businesses is just as reliable as it gets. It is a little more expansive than the previous two hosts but they have great features to justify the price tag.
• AN Hosting: They are in the market since 2001, they offer you reliable installation and upgrades to many popular content management systems such as wordpress, joomla, drupal, b2evolution, etc. You add 20 additional domain names, 500 GB disk space, 5000 GB bandwidth and unlimited MySql databases.

 
All above mentioned hosting services also offer one free Domain Name registration with their hosting packages. Remember that you should do your homework before signing up with any webhost including those listed above. Let me know if you found some other reliable web host and we will add them to this list here.

This post is part of a series. To read more posts from this series go to “Creating a Small Business Website“.

It is an old technique but still effective, get a pen or pencil and a peice of paper and write down your plan. Since we are talking about putting your ideas on the paper, have you ever heard about mind mapping? Though mind mapping is not the topic of discussion here but since I found out how useful it is, I can not stop myself from advising others to give it a try. Back to our discussion, so when you are writing down your plan for the website make sure that It has the following:

1. What you want to do.
2. Do you know how to do it.
3. Your budget.
4. Your long term goal.

You can think about other aspects and ask yourself other questions too. I am not asking you to answer these questions. You can answer them if you want to but just writing them down is also enough to help you understand your position and it will help you achieve your goals more effectively.

What I want to do with my website?

Lets say if you have a small pet shop. You would probably want to do the following with your website.

1. Advertise your shop to new customers.
2. Make an online customer base.
3. Sell your expertise.

You might have different ideas and products to sell. You should be clear about what you want to do with your website and there is no better way than to write down.

How I am Going to do this?

After that you should ask yourself how you are going to do this. By this we mean that do you have the expertise to do that, is your idea technically feasible, are there online resources available to help you achieve your goal which we described in last paragraph. Don’t worry if you don’t have the expertise yet, or if you think your idea is technically difficult to achieve. Web is a great place to learn, you will find free expert advise on almost every topic. But we are writing it down so that we know where we stand.

How much money I can spend on my website?

Now that you know what you want to do and have thought about how to do it. lets think about the costs. The cost of creating a website depends on how you are going to use it. If your plan requires you to host lots and lots of audio and video files then you will need to spend more money on web hosting and bandwidth. If you want to purchase things rather than using the free tools available then your costs would be even higher. A couple of hundered dollars are ok to get you started with a business website. This estimate includes web hosting charges and domain registration and you will be using free tools to achieve your goal.

What are my long term goals?

In the end write down how you want to see your website growing up. Where you want to see it after an year or so. Write down your long term goals in sales or daily visitors to your website. Write about how you want to become from just an ordinary pet shop owner to a web celeberity. Be creative and feel free to write about your idea of success. It is going to keep you motivated and will also help you stay focused during your journey.

Now make a copy of this paper and save the original one in somewhere hidden from your view. We will look into this document after an year and see how much you have achieved. The working copy would keep you motivated and on the track.

This post is part of a series. To read more posts from this series go to “Creating a Small Business Website“.

There are lots of people out there with great ideas that they want to sell on the web. But they can’t do it because they think they don’t have the expertise and money required to do that. Well folks you were wrong, you don’t need neither much expertise nor much money to sell your ideas or products on the web. This series of posts will help you get started with your wonderful online journey.

Since its going to be a little lengthy discussion so we are breaking it into topics. I will update the links below once they are published.

1. Do you have a Plan?
2. Finding the right web host.
3. Choosing a Content Management System and its usage.
4. What you should put on your website.
5. How to sell products/ services or add a shopping cart to your website.
6. The importance of updating your site frequently.
7. How to make your small business web site popular.

 

The purpose of this series is not to make you an expert in web development. These posts tell you that how you can create a simple business web site on your own without spending much time on learning new things. It gives you a solid start and then you can improve on your skills. Believe me or not, but there is a lot of people out there who started their successful business ventures by just reading something like this on the web. I am one of such people, one day I was reading a blog post about how to start a blog and the other day I was blogging myself. Later on I created many blogs, and one of them is currently my main source of income. I hope you like this series and I would appreciate if you ask questions and leave comments so that we can improve this little tutorial and make it better.

There are Google Chrome based themes available for many applications. Google Chrome’s innovative new approach to design inspired these designers and users to adapt these themes. For example there are people who are using Firefox, they either don’t want to use Chrome or can’t use Chrome (as Chrome is not yet available for Linux and Mac users). So they Chromify their firefox.

Chromifox Theme for Firefox will make your Firefox look like Google Chrome.

There are Chrome like themes for popular blogging applications.

• Chrome WordPress Theme
• Chrome Theme for Tumblr
• Google Chrome Template for Blogger

I hope to see a Google Chrome theme for my Gnome Desktop on Ubuntu, and it would be nice to have a theme for Vista and XP too.

There are even websites offering themes to change the appearance of your Google Chrome with themes. I didn’t know that themes are supported or not so I didn’t try it. But HowTo Geek tried changing appearance of his Google Chrome browser to Windows Vista Aero Style theme with satisfactory results.

NoFollow and NoIndex Tags

If you have a form on your website’s contact page to collect user feedback. Then it would be wise to hide this page from search engines. If you are worried that what if there were visitors specifically looking for ways to contact your company or you then you should probably create another contact page with no form or provide the contact information on your main page.

You can hide your page from search engines by using a no follow tag on the link that leads to your form page and then by adding noindex meta tag. You can add this tag on the links and pages manually or add a few lines in your robot.txt file. This way the spammers wont find your page from search engines. Here is how to do that:

Lets say that your form is located at a page called “contact.php”, and you have links to your contact page in your site’s navigation menu and some pages. Then you will have to modify these links by adding a rel=”nofollow” attribute to your link.

<a href="http://www.example.com/contact.php" rel="nofollow">Contact</a>

Then create a robot.txt file and save it to your site’s main/root directory. Add these lines to your robot.txt file:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /contact.php


Then add a meta tag noindex in your contact page between <head> and </head> tags:


<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow">


Using the meta tag on your page will tell search bots not to index your page. Read more about Robots Exclusion Standard or check out Google’s webmaster guidelines’ support page.

Human Identification validating techniques:

Using this technique you try to present a challenge to someone who comes to submit the form. This challenge is something simple like copying the code shown in an image file, or answering a simple question. The image verification is called CAPTCHA or reCaptcha. There are several hundered plugins and tools available that allow you to include CAPTCHA image verification to your forms. For example the official reCAPTCHA project offers you to sign up for an account and you can then add their image verification technology recaptcha on your pages. They also have plugins for various Content Management Systems such as WordPress, MediaWiki or phpbb. The site also has tutorials to teach you how you can add the code to your php pages and use it with other server side programming languages.

But if you are a total newbie and can’t configure an image validating script, then you should probably go for simple questions. In this method you add a field to your forms asking users questions like: “2+9=?” the user then enters 11 in the answer field and when they submit form you can check out their answer. If it is correct then the form gets submitted other wise user is taken back to the form. There are ready-made plugins available to do that too on various content management systems.

Do Not Use A Form

Just in case if you get tired of fighting spam or if you lack the skills to get spam protection configured properly. Then it is highly recommended that you use a contact page with no Form at all. Use the No follow tag for your contact page and your email address in image format like this:

If your users have something important to say they would email you. I know that people are lazy, they usually find it easy to just fill out a form and send rather than opening their email client and manually typing your email address. But trust me they will email you if they have something valuable to say. I personally feel that spending time and money on fighting spam is such a waste of resources. Millions of dollars are spent each year on sending spam messages and combating spam. I feel that if we start using techniques that do not give way to other people for exploitation then we would be indirectly adding to conservation of human resources.

Google sites is simple but full of features to meet all your needs. You can add almost anything to your website by using it with other Google web applications. All these great features are available to you under the Insert menu when you edit a page.

Add Pictures
There is a handy button to upload your pictures. But you can also add pictures from Picassa web albums. This feature is particularly good if you want to publish albums of your products, your business, events, and so on. Using albums will provide your visitors a reason to stay, browse, and would eventually compell to take action and contact you.

Add Videos
You can upload your videos to Google Video or YouTube and then embedd them on any page on your website. If a picture is worth a thousand words than a video is better than thousand pictures. You can use your handycam to make video and upload them to Youtube. Just make sure that your videos are not too lengthy. Make short clips and make sure that they are good. You can always edit your videos with Windows Movie Maker. Add music to them, add subtitles, slides, or logos.

Add Documents, Spreadsheets, Presentations
You can embedd your documents from Google Docs to your website. Even if you use MS Word or Open Office, you can always upload your documents to Google docs just for the sharing purposes. I specially love the presentations feature. I think it is a great idea to create promotional material in slides and add them to your pages or offer them as downloads so that visitors can learn more about your business by viewing a colorful presentation.

Add Forms
People are lazy, and with the wealth of information available on the web it is difficult for them to memorize your site and your business details. They are lazy to pick up the phone and dial your number. So it is a good idea that you add forms to your site so that they can leave their contact information and you can tell them more about your business, products and services. You can create a contact page with a form on Google Sites. First create a form in Google Docs then add it to your page. It is hassle free and you don’t need to know any programing, scripting or html to do that. You can place an order /query form, run a poll on your website and ask visitors questions. Run surveys and display the data on your pages.

Add Google Gadget
Click on the More button under the Insert menu and you can choose from hundereds of gadgets to add interactivity and usefulness to your website. You can add translate tools, you can add calendars, add an online chat gadget to talk to your site’s visitors. Browse the gadgets and you will be surprised to see how many tools are there to make your site interesting. But a word of caution, don’t use too many gadgets and don’t use them at all if you don’t need them. They are available to add interactivity and external functionality to your website. Using them un-neccarily would be annoying for your site’s user experience.

There is nothing to worry about if you ever run into any problem while working on your website at Google Sites. They have support available for you. You can browse their help pages, join their forum and post your questions, or you can subscribe to their Google sites blog. They often feature websites that are taken advantage Google Sites, so drop them an email and they might even feature you on their blog.

While improving your content, you should also check out ‘The seven deadly sins of web design‘.

• Find tutorials
• Find Sample Documents
• Find Templates
• Find clip art
• Interact with each other and people from all over the world to improve the process and learn from the experience of others.

Google is not only a search engine. It has a web based office suite with a word processor, spreadsheets, we can create web pages with Google pages, chat with friends using Google Talk, and there is so much more that we can not think about covering it all in this blog post. But you get the picture. We are going to use Google as our notebook, web office suit, hosting our work and interact with friends.