How to Choose a Domain Name

Need help setting up your own web site? Don't know where to start? Carving out your little piece of cyberspace requires more work than you might think and a lot of planning. Developing a web site will consume a lot of your time if you've never done it before, thus making the experience very frustrating. And this shouldn't be the case, because you know what? Web design is supposed to be fun. Everyone has different needs, though. A business that requires a shopping cart has a bigger task ahead than the one that doesn't.I'll be writing a series of posts that will cover the most basic and practical information you need before getting started. I'll explain the four steps of web development from start to finish. This guide will address important questions I've been asked regarding domain registration, web hosting, design, and marketing. So get ready to learn all the tips and tricks of the trade. I encourage you to ask me questions along the way, and I'll address them as we go along.

Choosing a Domain Name

A domain name plays a critical role in the success of your site, thus making this task the single most important step in the set-up process. It could potentially work for or against your business. For this reason alone, I'll begin the series with domain registration tips you should always keep in mind.

1. Be Creative: I personally refuse to register anything but a dot com name, even if other Top Level Domain (TLD) extensions, such as dot net or dot org, are available. More than 70 million domain names have been registered to date, so don't be discouraged if it seems impossible to snag a catchy name. But don't despair, instead be very creative. Dare to create a word that no one's even heard of yet. Ever heard of Digg, Skype, Flickr, Typepad, YouTube or MySpace?

2. Dot Com or Bust: Always aim for dot com extension, period. I've heard so many people complain about losing traffic to another site because they registered their site under the dot net or dot org suffix. People will instinctively enter dot com first 99.9 percent of the time, so don't risk it. The most dreadful story I've heard to date was from a friend who was invited to talk about his business on national television. He had registered a dot net domain name, so when the domain was flashed across the screen, the domain name appeared with a dot com extension at the end. Big mistake. The owner of the dot com domain was running an adults-only web site. Needless to say, that major news station got plenty of complaints from angry viewers, and my friend eventually decided to shut down the site. True story.

3. Keep it short: I know, impossible. Today's short means means 10 letters or more. Gone are the days when you could get anything shorter. But a short name is more memorable than say, www.techiedivasguidetogadgets.com. A domain name should be easy to spell, remember, and type.

4. Avoid Confusion: Stay far away from domains with dashes, numbers, dots, and anything else that requires too much thinking. Del.icio.us is a great name, but I could never remember how to spell it. Unless your business name contains a number or dash, you should just avoid these characters altogether.

5. Use Keywords: This crosses over to marketing a bit, but any search engine optimization guru will tell you that incorporating keywords into your domain name is a very strategic move. If you can, optimize your domain name by including the all-encompassing word that describes the scope of your site. This will minimize your search engine advertising costs in the long run. Keywords based domains also help your audience identify your site's purpose.

6. Play it Safe: Avoid the use of trademarked names in your domain name to prevent legal issues. This may seem like a no-brainer to most of us, but even fan sites run the risk of being sued. It doesn't matter if you're an affiliate who sells the company's products or accessories. If you register a domain with a trademarked name you're just asking for trouble.

Whew! And those were just some tips on choosing a domain name. Next up, things you should know before you register your domain name.

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What's Better Than Bookmarking Your Favorite Web Sites

A lot of new and interesting web sites and pages come to my attention every week. They arrive by phone, email, voice mail, radio, TV, and newspaper, just to name a few sources. I used to clip articles, flag pages, write myself notes and then try to file everything in some organized way, so I'd be able to find it when I needed it.

When I began spending a lot of time on the Internet, I learned how to bookmark various sites and add them to my FAVORITES list, using my browser to keep the files organized. That system was great, but it was only available when I was at the computer that I originally used to capture the link.

So when I worked on my laptop instead of my desktop or I was at a client location, I lost access to all that information. And when the desktop computer died.....well, it wasn't pretty.

I found a great solution about four years ago that I still use today.

Furl (www.furl.net) is a social bookmarking site that allows you to store, organize, search, and manage your favorite web pages. You can make notes about them, rate them (one to five stars), categorize them in whatever ways are useful to you, and even share them if you like. Since I'm not particularly interested in the social aspects of the site, I mark all my links as private, which means that I'm the only who can search them.

You can give each web site that you've saved a name that will help you to recognize and find it. For example, when I furled the site http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/65, I figured that I wouldn't remember the name of the organization or the speaker, but I'd remember that the talk was about cool new keyboards, so I named the link CoolNewKeyboards.

Furl allows you to store up to 5 gigabytes of searchable web pages in your account. Furl also privately archives a complete copy of the html of each page that you bookmark, making it accessible even if the original content is modified or removed. This means that if the web page has been moved, is temporarily down, or is now totally defunct, you can still look at a copy of it.

This feature makes it dramatically different from the other bookmarking sites.

To avoid claims of copyright violations, the archived copy is visible only to the member who bookmarked the page.

The service is totally free. After you sign up for an account, you'll receive instructions on how to install a button in your browser toolbar that will let you furl stuff by clicking the button. If you don't want or need any more buttons on your toolbar, there's another way.

Look at the advanced tools menu for the right click option. This is quite handy. Whenever you land on a web page that you want to save, you just right click on the page, choose furl it from the menu, and you'll be automatically taken to your furl account page where you can quickly log in and save the page.

This service is a great solution for saving important information from web pages and finding them easily when you need them many weeks, months, or even years down the road.
Sheryl Schuff is a Certified Public Accountant, author, and consultant who has been in private practice for almost 30 years. She teaches small business owners how to use PCs and the Internet to simplify their business operations. You can get Sheryl's FREE audio mini course with time saving tips at http://www.SherylSchuff.com

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Why is My Computer So Slow? Four Possible Reasons

Today's computers have faster microprocessors, more memory and bigger hard drives. When you think about the differences between a Pentium 4 and 386, you have to conclude the improvement is astounding! So, why are so many of these modern day miracles running way below their potential?

In this article we will discuss four very common but often overlooked reasons why that rabbit in your PC has turned into a snail and we'll tell you what can be done to get it back up to speed.

You need more memory.

Don't overlook the obvious. Up until recently not having enough memory wasn't a problem. With the price of RAM becoming very affordable, most people were filling their computers with more than enough memory to do the job. Enter Windows Vista! Many computers built to an older spec were loaded with Vista and put on the market.

When the new owner got the computer home and took it for its first joyride it just didn't live up to expectations. The reason for this is, Vista is a resource hog. Many computers now come out of the box with Vista and 512MB of memory. With Vista you need at least 1GB of Ram. If your computer is slow and it has Vista with 512 MB of Ram you need to add more memory.

Spyware and viruses

Speaking of resource hogs. Spyware and viruses steal a lot of your computer's resources. Though it is not their main function to just make your computer run slowly, these programs can bring your computer to a screeching halt.

Of course, you do have a good Spyware/Virus remover. Don't you? Also, you do realize for them to be effective, you have to keep up to date. By up to date, it means up to the minute.

You should have your remover program set to update and run automatically overnight or at some other time you don't regularly use your computer. If you don't, spyware and viruses will eat your computer alive! Slowing down is nothing compared to what could happen to your computer's resources if you don't have a good remover program you update and run daily.

Background programs

When you install new software on your computer, often times you install it to run in the background every time you start up. Most times you do this without knowing it. Look at the bottom right hand side of your screen.

If you see several icons there, you have extra programs running and stealing resources. Right click on these and see if you have the option of closing them. Many times, you can open the program and choose an option to keep these programs from starting automatically. Many times I've seen this move get a PC back to its old fleet footed self.

Corrupted registry

Here's one problem that is mostly overlooked. Any changes you make to your computer effects and actually, corrupts your registry. So, it stands to reason, even when you do something positive; like remove spyware, you end up with a corrupted registry.

After months of corrupting your registry, albeit unintentionally, it will become good and out of whack. This will, in its early stages, cause your computer to slow down. In its advanced stages, it will freeze and crash and do more mysterious and troublesome things.

Many times, I hear people say they have scanned for spyware and viruses and found none, but still the computer runs very slowly. Most times, it isn't until the registry is cleaned out and repaired by a top-notch registry cleaner that the computer's speed is restored. Make sure to run a good registry cleaner every week or so to keep your registry in excellent working order. After all, the registry is what your operating system is made of.

So there you have it. To recap:


512MB is usually enough for Windows XP but not Vista.

Keep your computer free of spyware and viruses.

Don't let too many programs start automatically, and

Run a good registry cleaner often.

Keep these key points in mind and put them to use. Then, you'll never have to ask, "Why is my computer so slow?"
The author, Ed Lathrop is an experienced comp TIA A+/Network+ certified computer technician thoroughly familiar with the operation, repair and upkeep of today's modern PC's. His site, Free Use Registry Repair Compare Website rates the latest registry repair programs and gives you an analysis of what is effective and what may, actually be harmful to your computer.

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Disadvantages Of Free Email Services

Most of us use free email services to create email accounts and maintain them. Sometimes we use these email accounts to send very important emails. I also have experienced this. But there are times we hate these email services due to many reasons. I will describe some disadvantages of these free email services in this post.

The most important disadvantage is the security and privacy. We cannot control our privacy and security of our emails and profile data. All the free email service providers including Gmail, Yahoo and hotmail say that they guarantee the full privacy. But can we make sure that they actually do that. Most of us receive unwanted emails (spam) even if we don't provide our email addresses to a third party. Some of you may know that many free email services sell their email addresses to various marketing companies. Therefore we can't believe on the guarantees of these free email service providers.

Another disadvantage is most of these free email services provides simple web based email facilities where we can't do many modifications. For an example if we use Gmail web interface to send an email, it is very hard to add a picture from our local machine instead of sending as an attachment. It also limits the customization of text and images. It is hard to add a customized email signature also.

Many companies provide free email services to make it as a good advertising and marketing medium. Actually that's all they want and don't care about how it affects the email user. For an example when you log into your Gmail or Yahoo email account, you will see advertisements in the right side and top. This is not a big headache in Gmail, but in Yahoo it is a real headache especially with their new webmail interface. I'm not comfortable with it and actually it is a headache for me. I think that most of you feel in the same way. It is possible to assume that we will lose our actual email workspace size in the coming future where more and more advertising and marketing methods are added to our web email interface. Up to now, there is one way that we can stop this by configuring an email client like Outlook or Thunderbird for our email account.

As far as I know, some companies and individuals pay less attention to the emails they receive from free email services addresses as they experience that most of them are spam. Due to this, there is a great possibility that they will miss very important emails sent to them. This will also affect us if we send important emails from free email services. Therefore it is better if you can have a personal email account in your own domain (Ex. yourname@yourdomain.com) if it is affordable. If not, make sure that you use an email client and put an attractive mail subject where the receiver will put more attention to your email.
Sampath Wijeratne is the administrator and main contributor of http://www.best-internet-guide.com which provides information on various topics related to the internet with free of charge. It also provide RSS subscription through a RSS link and by email. You will find more related articles in his website.

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How To Prevent And Eliminate Spyware, Adware, And Viruses

Wow, sounds like a big topic, doesn't it? It's not so bad. Sure, you can go buy expensive solutions-in-a-box. There are offerings like Norton Anti-Virus, Webroot Spy Sweeper, and Lavasoft Ad Aware. The first two will cost you, whereas Ad Aware is a free download. All three are decent programs.

Here's the deal, though: before you invest in such programs, you might want to think about ways that you can prevent/eliminate spyware, adware, and viruses on your own. Then, you can decide if it's worth it to install a solution-in-a-box. You may find that you don't need them after all.

The first thing to consider is whether you're using a router. If you use a router for your home network (which allows multiple computers to connect to the same internet connection) then you most likely have a firewall running already. You probably already use Windows XP which has a built in firewall as well (Windows Firewall).

A firewall blocks internet traffic that might cause harm to your computer. This traffic flows on virtual pathways called ports. Firewalls block ports, essentially preventing hackers from accessing your system without your permission or knowledge.

If you're already running a firewall on Windows XP and in your router, you are already protected to a large degree. The other type of protection you will need in order to prevent malicious processes from running on your machine consists of one thing: you.

That's right, other than a firewall, the number one way to prevent malicious software from getting on your system is by you preventing it from ever getting onto your system.

There is a common myth that spyware, adware, and viruses are these magical, nebulous processes that no one understands. There are a few viruses that are terribly complex, but for the most part these types of malicious processes are simple to prevent and eliminate.

Preventing Malicious Processes from Getting Installed:

Tip #1: Do not download all kinds of random stuff!

For example, it's ok to download a picture (by right clicking it and choosing "Save Picture As") from a website. There is no harm in this, generally. However, downloading screensavers and "free" games and other supposedly free software constantly is not good. It doesn't mean all free stuff is bad, just be careful only to download free programs from sites you trust (big name sites are often a good choice).

It's also ok to open an attachment from a friend you trust, but avoid opening and reading email forwards, especially if they have attachments! Email forwards start with "FW:"-ask friends who send forwards not to send them, as you do not open or read them anyway. Forwards are arguably a waste of time and ones with attachments are not worth the risk.

Tip #2: When downloading and installing a program, don't just click Next or Yes.

When you download and install a program, don't just click Next or Yes when the installation prompts you with options. Uncheck boxes with toolbars and other add-ons that you may not want.

Tip #3: Don't just install things when prompted while surfing the net!

When a website says, "This site wants to install bla bla bla," make sure it's a site you trust and that you REALLY NEED whatever you are trying to access. For example, if you are on a major broadcasting company's site trying to watch a video, it's obviously ok. If you are on some unknown site trying to get something, think twice.

If you weren't trying to get anything at all, definitely click the red X in the corner! Never click Yes or No, just click the Red X. If that doesn't work, press ALT+F4 on your keyboard to close the site!

Eliminating Things Manually:

Tip#1: Stop unneeded processes!

Press CTRL+ALT+DEL (all at once) and see what is running in the Processes tab. See something you don't recognize? Google it. If it's not needed, you'll want to end it by right clicking it and choosing End Process. Do this any time your system acts up. Go through the list and see if anything weird is there, then Google it. (NOTE: Don't end something unless you are sure it is not needed!)

Tip #2: Control what runs when Windows XP starts up!

Click START, go to RUN and type msconfig, then click OK. Choose selective startup, and go to the Startup tab. Anything you don't recognize here? Google it. If it's not necessary, uncheck the box. Go through the whole list and do this, then click OK and restart when you are ready. After rebooting, Windows will remind you that you've chosen selective startup.

Here's more:

If these things don't help, try asking a search engine your question (type your question then press Go or Search). You'll be surprised the other tips you'll find. Once you learn to do these things, you may not need other software to do it for you. You'll save money, plus you'll feel more in control of your computer! Finally, you'll prevent anti-spyware programs and the like from having to run and steal precious CPU and RAM resources (which can slow your system even more!).

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