You’re website’s happiness is probably making your visitors unhappy.

In this book, Steven talks about Happy Talk which welcomes your website visitors and thanks them for visiting.

It goes something like “Thank you for visiting our web site. We are so glad you are here. Feel free to look around and click on a product link and if you are interested, add it to your cart and purchase it”.

Whoa!!! How annoying is this. Even worse, it is pretty insulting. I did see this on one of my web design clients’ websites and I immediately told them to remove it. A LOT of websites do this.

First of all, you want to thank your website visitors. Don’t thank them until they become a customer and then thank them for the sale.

Next, I don’t care if the website owner is glad I am here. All I want is to find the product that I am looking for. That will please your web site visitor more than anything else. Bottom Line: Have what they want on your website and they will return later for more. If you don’t, you lose them forever! Most people usually ignore the “Welcome to our website” spiel.

Is this insulting or what –> Feel free to look around and click on a product link and if you are interested, add it to your cart and purchase it”.

Come on now, Mr. website owner, that is like a demand. I WILL look around. That is why I came to your website in the first place, to find something. By this website telling me to look around is like that insulting feeling you get when someone tells you to do something that they would normally tell a child to do. Then, he told me to add it to my cart and purchase it. I feel like he was demanding I buy a product.

In my hub If your website is not making you money, you obviously designed it wrong. 3 easy steps to redesign your site for success, I address the Call To Action. This tells website owners to ask customers to browse their catalog or “click here to purchase this item”, which is fine, but please do not tell the customer to add the item to his/her cart.

What does all this mean?

The client actually thought he was being cute, happy, and professional. Your website visitors do not want cute and happy. They want quick. They know how to add a product to their cart. Let’s not give them instructions. If they want your assistance in using your website, have your phone number available so they can call you for assistance.

I won’t lie about this. Being a web designer is a very stressful business since there are so many people who develop software for it. There is so much competition in this field, but anyone who has been in the web design field for at least 10 years will tell you that they are part of a nice big argument. Actually, they are part of lots of little arguments.

Why?

There are so many ways to design a website. Whether you are a novice who got into web design 2 years ago or someone like me who has been doing it for 15 years in 18 different web languages, you must admit that some of the choices when designing a website are mind boggling and every single web designer has their own unique combination of how they design.

Every web designer has a unique toolbox…There are so many options and so many pitfalls. Here are the most popular options that web designers argue about.

What’s YOUR unique web design toolbox?

Ok, this is the BIGGEST argument on designing websites. Some webmasters love HTML and some love using programs like Dreamweaver or Microsoft Front Page.

Me personally, I have been handcoding HTML and other languages since 1995 when Dreamweaver was not available yet. Some people thought HTML was a programming language and they would say “I am not a programmer, so I could never be a web designer “. The Dreamweaver got popular and all the web designers were coming out of the woodworks.

I have created over 350 websites and hand coded about 340 of them. I find HTML faster then Dreamweaver. Some of you are probably thinking “huh? Dreamweaver saves you from all that typing”. I really don’t know why I handcode faster than using Dreamweaver, but maybe it is because I have more control handcoding my own HTML.

The problem with using Dreamweaver: You have no control over the code and have to resort to messy code that sometimes breaks a website. Another “con” of using Dreamweaver is that you rely on a software to do all the coding for you and it does not prepare you for other technologies like jQuery or javascript or PHP.

For you Dreamweaver experts, one this is for sure: Test all of your websites in as many web browsers as you can. Just because you use a web design program does not make your websites work in all web browsers. Always test!

In 1998 when tables came into HTML 4, I loved it. I could make a website layout with multiple columns. WOOHOO! It was a dream come true. Nobody could yell at you for not laying out your web pages with CSS because CSS was not around yet. I was darn good at using tables to make multi column websites!

When the DIV tag came out in HTML 4, its original purpose was not to use it with CSS to make multiple layout websites. Since 2005, when it became clear that webmasters were using DIVs and CSS to make layouts.

All of the webmasters using tables to layout websites were now like criminals. BOY, did we get frowned upon for using tables. Afterall, tables worked well in every web browser. You NEVER had a problem making your websites look correct in all web browsers.

However, when you first got into CSS and tried to make your websites look correct in all the major browsers, it was a major pain in the neck! If it worked in Internet Explorer, it sucked in Firefox. If it looked great in Safari, it broke in Internet Explorer.

It takes a lot to get your websites looking good in CSS. If it breaks in Internet Explorer 6.0, you need to use CSS2 to determine that the web browser is IE 6 and then create a stylesheet just for that.

Well, I am happy to say that I am finally getting the results I was hoping for in CSS, but it was a long hard battle. Sometimes, I feel like going back to tables.

For the web programmers out there, there are so many choices. I started out as a Classic ASP programmer since it was a lot like VbScript. I loved it. Then Microsoft wanted to implement a design-separation-from-code concept and ASP.NET was born, so the classic ASP developers were ignored after awhile. I moved to PHP.

Well, I settled with PHP and after 7 years of using spaghetti coding, I finally made the plunge into MVC.

HTML 5 is finally here and we, web designers can finally move our websites to it. Correct? Not yet!!! Internet Explorer is still lagging behind and even though Microsoft has promised that Internet Explorer 9.0 will support HTML 5, there are still people out there using lower versions of HTML 4.

Half of the HTML 5 tags do not work in Internet Explorer. I suggest that if you move to HTML 5, do NOT use any tags that are not supported in Internet Explorer versions lower than 9.

They have this thing called the HTML Shiv which creates HTML 5 tags for Internet Explorer, but only the section level tags like articles, section, aside, and others. I suggest that you do not yet use the Audio and Video tags until ALL web browsers support them.

I am definitely interested in hearing your opinions to the arguments.

The truth about designing websites. Most people do not have a clue how to design a successful website! This hub will change all that.

If you are like me and have had a website for your business for several years now, you should be making money right now with your website. If you are not, you probably designed it wrong or have hired a web design firm who does not know how to design (even though they think they do).

Let’s face it, anyone can design a website. It is not hard. If you don’t know HTML coding (and don’t care to learn) you can design it for free over the internet or use a program like Dreamweaver. OR you can hire someone overseas from the USA.

Is your website making you money? If not, read my tips below because I redesign websites for a living and know what works and what does NOT work. My websites are all making me money and most of them do not have that much traffic.

Just for the record, this is not about search engine optmization(there are plenty of good hubs on that topic). This hub is about designing your website to make the your visitors take action.

First of all, you need to design the goal of success for your website. If you do not have a goal for your website, it won’t bring you any success at all.

Step 1: You MUST Define your website’s goal.

What is your goal? To make money? To get phone calls so you can sell your services over the phone? To sell a product online? Define that goal. It can be broad, but you still need one.

Step 2: Turn your website goal into a call-to-action that your website visitors will follow.

Now, whatever your goal is, you have to translate than into a call to action. Your call to action is simply that. You are telling your website visitors to take action. If they don’t take action, they leave your website and you waste a chance trying to convert that customer into a sale.

Examples of Calls To Action are:

• Click here to buy this product.
• Call us at (888) 555-1234 to talk to us about our services
• Donate to us for providing this free service.
• Fill out this form to sign up for free. Get a free membership on our website.

What I am doing here it turning my website’s goal into an action that my website visitors will take. I hope this makes sense.

And if you remember from grammar school, a verb is an action. Your call to actions should always start with a verb. Make your website visitors perform an action that will turn them into customers. That action is a verb…See my examples above: Click here, Call us, Donate, Fill out.

Step 3: Place the call-to-action in a place where people will see it right away.

Now, once you have that call to action, you must put that call-to-action in a place where people will see it. In the United States and other English speaking countries, your call to action MUST be put in the upper left hand corner of each and every web page so no matter where people go (whether they visit your website purposely or click on a Google link), their eyes will go right to that call-to-action.

This works, folks! My websites are proof of that. I AM making money on my 3 websites just following these steps.

I have been programming in PHP for almost 10 years now and recently just got into MVC. I tried a few MVC frameworks like CakePHP, CodeIgniter, and Zend Framework. I even programmed my own. I know most of us do not want to program our own MVC frameworks.

Do you really need to use models in MVC programming?

Now going through Zend Framework, I realized that we really do not really need models as the code used in models can easily be used in controllers. Now before the MVC experts say anything, please read on.

My question and answer is really pointed at other MVC beginners and I built a few MVC sites with Zend Framework with just controllers and views. The controllers even worked when I called certain libraries like Zend_Db into them.

So, for those learning MVC, if you find this programming concept overwhelming, concentrate on controllers and views first. Now, the bottom line is that for very simple websites, we do not need models, especially at the time when traditional PHP coders are learning MVC.

What about large scale websites?

Ok, NOW models may be needed. Being the business logic of the entire MVC concept, most of the programming should go here. When you see that your controllers are becoming very inundated with PHP code, it probably is the time to start using models.

Controllers are nothing but bridges between views and models.

From what I understand, controllers are supposed to be very slim, meaning that they should contain very little code. Your models can and should have most of the code. The controllers are simply a bridge that will tell the models to perform all of the processing and then whatever data the models produce will be ported over to your views as regular variables. If your controllers contain too much code, they will start looking like spaghetti code, which is one of the issues that MVC is supposed to avoid. If that happens, move your controller codes into a model.

Putting this all together for MVC beginners:

For small scale websites: If you are just learning MVC, stick with the views and controllers and learn them. For best practice, try to use a model if possible.

For large websites, start implementing your models and if you have code in your controllers that entails any type of processing, move them into the models and point their data to your views.

Ok, as any web designer who is up on technology trends knows, HTML 5 is now in the mainstream and some self proclaimed web design experts are saying that we should upgrade all of our websites to it while others say that the world is not ready for it yet, so this leads me to believe that there is definitely a debate on whether or not to use HTML 5. We’ll discuss the facts later on in this hub.

The big hesitation for some of us to move to designing websites in HTML 5 is the issue that versions of Internet Explorer before version 9.0 are not ready for it yet since Internet Explorer does not recognize the HTML 5 tags yet. I read today that HTML will not be officially ready until 2022. Really? That’s 10 1/2 years away and that is how long HTML 4 has been the mainstream, so I know HTML 5.0 is here to stay.

The big question: Should we upgrade to HTML 5 or should we not in spite of Internet Explorer’s inability to render it?

Well, since browsers like Opera, Google Chrome, Safari, and Firefox all render HTML 5 well, 4 out of 5 browsers aren’t too bad, but be careful, because most of the world is still using Internet Explorer. When version 9.0 comes out, this will not be an issue, but what about all the people still using 7.0 and 8.0?

My answer is “Yes”, it is OK to upgrade to HTML 5.

There are certain ways to get around the Internet Explorer issue and it involves additional coding, but you get to reap the benefits of what HTML 5 has to offer.

The Javascript Fix:

When we want to use all of the new HTML 5 tags like <header> <footer> <section> <article> and <aside> among others, we can apply the simple Javascript to create the new HTML 5 element so Internet Explorer recognizes it like this:

<script>document.createElement(‘TAG NAME’);</script>

You can use this command to tell Internet explorer to create the element and then style it any way you’d like using CSS.

For the <header> tag, your HTML 5 and CSS can be like this:

My favorite HTML 5 books

	Introducing HTML5 (Voices That Matter) Amazon Price: $19.99 List Price: $34.99
	HTML5: Up and Running Amazon Price: $16.60 List Price: $29.99
	HTML5 and CSS3: Develop with Tomorrow’s Standards Today (Pragmatic Programmers) Amazon Price: $19.13 List Price: $33.00

For everyone who owns a website or blog or if you design websites for a living, the biggest issue every website owner faces today is the fact that their website will be hacked. It is not a question of IF. It is a question of when.

Large and small websites get hacked every day, the CIA, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Ebay, Twitter websites were all hacked as well as over 2 billion other smaller websites.

What’s worse is if your website enjoys great search engine rankings on Google and Yahoo, the hackers find your website even faster since they search your website on the major search engines.

It is not a question of IF it will happen. It is a question of WHEN.

How to tell if your website has been hacked:

Some websites make it obvious that they have been hacked, but most of the time, we do not even know when he have been hacked. The hacker goes in silently and does his/her damage and you usually do not find out until one of your website visitors tells you that their antivirus or spyware software reported a virus when they visited your website.

This causes you embarrassment and sometimes lost sales to your customers.

1. Your website is displaying funky looking characters on your website.
2. Your customer calls and reports their anti virus software reported a virus or a spyware attack
3. Your customers call and report a strange popup window on your website (yes, they still popup in 2011 even with modern popup blockers).
4. Your web hosting company shuts down your website.
5. You are the webmaster and you find some code inside your website that you, yourself, did not enter.
6. You notice that the date and time of your web pages last being edited has a more recent modify date then when you last edited your website.

How do hackers break into my website?

First, I need to tell you the 3 major ways that hackers attack your website. Knowing these methods will help you protect your website and your customers or website visitors.

Note: You do NOT need to be technical to understand this. It is important that you are aware of how this is done so you know how to protect yourself.

XSS Attack (Cross Site Scripting)
If you have a website with a form which can be a contact form, a login form, a messageboard, a blog where people put comments into your website or virtually anywhere that people can “type” on your website, you run the risk of being hacked by XSS.

A hacker can add code to your website that sites in your site and launches a malicious program from anywhere in the world that gets transported to your customer’s computer. That is when the popups start appearing. That code can steal credit card numbers and personal information from your customer’s hard drives and then they can use their credit cards to buy stuff. Worse, they can also sell your credit card information on underground black markets. Hacking is big business, folks, but you can prevent yourself from being sold on that black market.

Database Injection or SQL Injection

This is the biggest threat out there and it occurs when a database is not secure. Website owners who have databases on their websites can all become victims of SQL injection attacks. Hackers can run commands against your database and steal all the hidden information that only YOU are supposed to have access to. They can steal credit card info, phone numbers, email addresses and other information that is personal only to your website visitors. Worse, they can also steal usernames and passwords.

How can you suffer the damage of having your website hacked?

1. You can and WILL lose online sales.
2. You website visitors will never visit your website again. Would you?
3. You could be sued by a website visitor or customer.
4. All your members have to log into your website and change their passwords and email addresses.

This is serious. Ok. I Get It. Now How Do I Protect My Site?

Usually most web designers don’t have a clue. You need an experience web designer who knows how to build a website that WON’T be hacked.

Here are some steps you can take:

1. Make site your web hosting company is reputable and has the proper security on their server. A website is only as secure as the web hosting company it is with.
2. If you have a feature where people register and log in through a form, make sure your web designer secures the form against SQL Injection and XSS attacks.
3. Make sure your web addresses are secure. Yes, hackers can break into your website through your URL (web address). Any ecommerce sites have special web addresses for each product and hackers can break in that way.
4. If you take credit cards, make sure you have a SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate which encrypts credit card information.
5. Make sure you use a popular merchant gateway like Authorize.net or Paypal who offer more protection to your customers.

In Conclusion

I hope this was helpful and informative. If you own a website, you owe it to yourself and your site visitors to make sure your website is secure from hackers.

It is not a question of IF it will happen. It is a question of WHEN.

The problem:

I always say that the internet is a beautiful place to live, but it is malicious people who make it a bad place sometimes. Every day we are on the internet, we risk other people from around the world seeing exactly what we type and having access to our personal information. Our credit cards, social security numbers, usernames, and passwords are all available for anyone to have access to if they know how to do it. Even the best virus scan security programs and spyware stoppers are not enough.

I am not saying this to scare anyone. I am saying all of this because it is the truth and in this hub, I will give you the tips, tricks, and strategies to protect yourself. I also travel around the country educating people on how to surf the web more securely. I will also tell you how to log into your favorite websites like Facebook, Twitter, Ebay, and yes, even Hubpages.

Table Of Contents For This Hub…

The Problem

The True and Scary Facts About Web Surfing Security

How Google Tells You If A Website is Not Safe

How The Mozilla Firefox Web Browser Tells You If A Website is Not Safe

The CORRECT Way to Enter Your Passwords. Most people log in the UNSAFE way.

I will Answer Any of Your Questions. Ask Your Questions In The Comments

1. Every computer on the internet gets attacked. Most of them time, the attack is invisible.
2. Any computer that is attacked will have viruses, spyware, malware, badware, and keyloggers.
3. Facebook gets hacked 10,000 times per day! This explains why it is sometimes very slow. The attack is called DOS (Denial of Service).
4. If you are visiting a web site for the very first time, you can search that web site on Google first and Google will let you know if that web site has spyware on it or not. Also, use Firefox, not Internet Explorer.

Google is not just for searching websites. It is also there to tell you if a website is safe BEFORE you visit it, so ise it for that purpose too.

If you are unsure about visiting a new website, make sure you search for it on Google first. If Google shows “This Site May Harm Your Computer”, it probably can. Find one of its competitors.

Firefox, like Google, will also pre-warn you about any unsafe websites. Internet Explorer does not do this. If you use Internet Explorer to visit a website that is not safe, it could mean trouble. Use Firefox first to find out if you really SHOULD visit that new website.

All of this information comes from stopbadware.org for which Google, Firefox, and AOL are all partners of.

Most people just enter their usernames and passwords when they log into a website. BIG MISTAKE. Did you know that your computer could be running a special malicious spyware program called a keylogger?

“What are Keyloggers?”, you ask. Keyloggers are programs planted by hackers from websites you visit that actually record everything you type into your computer and then transmit that info to a hacker probably half way around the world.

Don’t just type in your username and passwords when you log into Facebook, Twitter, or even Hubpages.

Follow these steps:

1. Store your passwords using one of the Microsoft Office Products like Word, Excel, One Note
2. Enter all your login information into one document including Web site address, Username, Password
3. Password-Protect that document with one password. This makes it possible for you to remember only ONE password. You can password –protect MS Word, MS Excel, and MS One Note.
4. When logging into the web site, copy the login information from your password protected document and paste it into the login form on the web site. Do this especially for Facebook!
5. Bookmark all your favorite web sites and use the bookmark to visit the site. Do not type in the web address into your browser.

Do you see what I am getting at here? I am simply advising you not to type your login information. Keyloggers are like cancer. They are slient, but deadly.

In my next hub, I will explain how to choose passwords that are easy for you to remember, but hard for hackers to crack, and yes, they can even see your passwords.