Should Your Website be Database-Driven?

(Published in the December issue of Bizillion Magazine.)

Today, as businesses and organizations need their websites to do more than they did ten years ago database-driven sites are often the answer. The most common type of database-drive site is e-commerce, of course. Another type of database-driven site is one that has a content management system. Content management systems are useful for medium sites (100+ pages of content) and large sites (1,000 + pages of content) as well as sites that have advanced functionality (custom searches, listservs, interactive calendars, etc.).

Simple HTML websites still have their place on the web as they are easy to develop and there are many software programs out there to create them, such as DreamWeaver and GoLive. If your site is small, 25 pages or less, or your budget is small, $5,000 or less, an HTML site may still work well for your business or organization.

However, websites that are developed as static HTML pages contain all the content within the page itself (text, graphics, menu functionality, etc.). Whereas, a database-driven site may have one or just a few template pages that contain a series of commands that make calls to the database and load information dynamically each time a page loads. Template pages are built dynamically, on the fly, as a web visitor moves around the site.

To carry that comparison one step further, if you make a change to the navigation in a static HTML site, you’ll need to revise each and every page. If you make the same on a site that uses a database-driven content management system, you’ll only need to make it once.

Your company or organization may benefit from a content management system if any of the following are true:

1) Your site has over 100 pages of content
2) It’s updated frequently (weekly, daily or hourly).
3) Site structure and navigation change frequently (weekly, monthly)
4) You’d like to delegate content updates to departments or specific people within those departments and define their access to sections or pages of the website.
5) You’d like to be aware of content changes, or you’d like your managers to be aware without having to check with staff members on their progress.
6) You’d like to sell more than 25 products online.
7) You would like to allow people in different parts of the world to securely access specific pages or sections of the site to update and maintain.
8) You would like your web pages to automatically reconfigure to a printer-friendly size on the fly.

It’s really a numbers game. If your website has more than 25 pages of content, if it’s updated frequently, if many departments or people need to be able to add, edit and delete content, or if you have more than 25 products to sell, it’ll be faster and easier to maintain your website content with a database-driven website. Content management systems harness the power of a database to enable anyone to update their website without knowing any HTML or programming languages.

Why should you even care about this? Can’t you just trust a web design and development firm to pick the right programming language and functionality for your website? Yes, however, communication is key to ensure that they develop your site in a way that will support and grow with your company or organization. You don’t have to know thing one about programming, just the scope your website project and how you would like it to grow with your business or organization.

Web Video, Video Blogging, Video Casting, and all its iterations – Demystified

Are you thinking of adding video to your website? The benefits are obvious. Videos can add value to your website by providing real-time product demos, archived meetings, testimonials, historical events, and live broadcasts, to name a few.

So, now you’re eyeballing the 500MB digital video CD sitting on your desk and wondering how to put it on your website. Is it possible? No one can easily download a 500MB video, right? Right. (Not yet, anyway.) However, there have been quite a few advances in video compression software and most web visitors have at least a DSL connection to the internet.

Do you remember the early web video clips which were the size of postage stamps and had a runtime of about10 seconds? Thankfully, those days are gone. Now, you can compress your 500MB digital video down to about 10MB and you don’t necessarily have to buy expensive streaming server space to offer it to your web visitors.

Video Delivery Methods
There are two methods to deliver video to your website: downloading and streaming. Which method is best for your website? It depends on the size of the video file, if it’s a live broadcast, your majority audience’s internet connection (modem, DSL, cable), your anticipated video traffic and probably most importantly, your budget. Let’s look at the pros and cons of both types.

Downloading, also known as HTTP streaming, downloads a temporary file onto each visitors’ hard drive. The movie doesn’t begin playing until it is completely downloaded, however, once it starts playing, it’s easy to access to any part of the movie without waiting for it to be delivered from a server. It’s less expensive than hosting your video on a special streaming server as video files reside on the same server as your website.

Downloading is the way to go if your video is 10MB or less and you anticipate 10 people or less watching your video at exactly the same time. One of the downsides of downloading is that you can not detect your visitors’ connection speed to serve different versions of the video on the fly. The workaround is to offer a series of links on your website to different sized videos letting visitors pick the best one for their internet connection speed.

Streaming, also known as true streaming, webcasting and netcasting is delivered directly from a streaming server continuously. The biggest con to streaming your video files is that it is expensive. If you have an in-house IT staff and server, you may want to buy your own streaming server software, which starts at about $2,000.

The benefits to true streaming are that your video can handle a lot of traffic without affecting your website server, it can deliver appropriately sized videos to visitors dynamically, based on their connection speeds and you’ll have the ability to broadcast live events. Plus, videos that are streamed, play as soon as they are delivered, no need to wait until the entire video downloads to the desktop before it begins to play.

It’s important to know that unless your video draws unprecedented web traffic and crashes your server, most web visitors will not know whether a video is downloaded to a temporary file on their hard drive or streamed directly from a media server. That is because videos always display in a player (windows media, real media, quicktime or flash) and there is almost always some buffer time as the video loads. Except for live broadcasts, the user experience is the same.

What About Video Blogging and Video Casting?
So, now you may be asking yourself, Ok, I get the difference between streaming and downloading but what about video blogging or video casting – what’s that?

Video blogging, Vblogging, and Vlogging all refer to the same thing – a video that is a blog. Usually, video blogs take advantage of RSS feeds and other syndication functions, much like a text blog. And, as we all know, blogs refer to a web log, or regular journal entry online.

Rocketboom introduced many people to their first video blog experience and demonstrated the viral marketing power of video blogging. My current favorite is zefrank.com/theshow.

Video casting, vodcasting, vidcasting, vcasting and video podcasting all refer to videos which deliver true streaming content via a syndication such as RSS feeds or Atom feeds, much like blogging. And, as we all know Podcasting originally referred to audio and music thanks to Apple’s iPod, which now of course delivers video as well.

To summarize, you have two basic methods of delivering video to your web visitors: streaming and downloading. If you want to deliver live broadcasts they need to stream and then it’s a video cast. If you post a new video on a regular basis and syndicate it, it’s a video blog.

Vista – Microsoft’s new Operating System – Hello Macintosh!

A few weeks ago I went to a Microsoft presentation at WSTPA to learn about Microsoft’s new operating system, Vista. (Charles Keating the VP/Secretary of West Sound Technology Professionals Association wrote a very good article for Kitsap Business Journal regarding Vista.)

And, I’d just like to say up front that I use both MAC and PC and I’m currently typing this on my Dell laptop, so I know what I’m talking about when I say MACs are not only easier to use but a tad more fun too. I guess Microsoft realized this as well and has added so many MAC-like features to their operating system that you’ll think you’re using a MAC, almost.

One of the more fun features of iMacs are their Widgets. Widgets are fun information feeds to your desktop to keep you informed about your favorite stocks, sports teams, weather, whatever. Well, lo and behold, Vista has Gadgets that look very much like Widgets and tell the weather and whatnot, although they don’t have the developer base behind them yet, so there not that many Gadgets as Widgets.

The look and feel of all the desktop components have a decidedly MAC feel right down to the gel-like buttons and color swish background. But, the new security features are all PC. Users with legitimate licenses won’t notice a change in service when their PC’s verify their operating system license every six months. However, if you bought your computer from a vendor who didn’t purchase the appropriate user licenses then you could see degraded performance after six months. Not to worry. Microsoft will let you purchase the correct user license for a reduced fee. Ouch.

Find out more from the source: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/features/default.mspx