Search results for: “label/Web Site – Review”

  • How to Organize Website Data with MySQL

    How to Organize Website Data with MySQL

    Suppose you have a tight budget and do not know much about technology, but have a unique idea for a useful site full of elaborate content.

    What is your next logical step? The answer is getting a low-cost web host such as iPage and explore the many user-friendly web tools provided.

    Here are ways to efficiently store information on your site using MySQL database, which comes free with iPage.

    What is MySQL?

    MySQL (often pronounced “my sequel”) is an Oracle-owned relational database, allowing you to enter, store and utilize information in tables, columns, and rows. It is useful for creating a marketing list with various data about your customers.

    Typical information stored in this type of database includes ID, name, address, phone number, and email addresses.

    You can think of it as similar to a spreadsheet, except it is much more powerful since it can be used for web development. MySQL integrates with WordPress, Drupal, and other open source content management systems.

    It is considered the standard database for websites.

    Common Reasons for Using MySQL

    As an example for the utilization of a database, Amazon stores, all of its product information in a database. Many popular sites with search engines, such as Wikipedia, Craigslist, and YouTube draw from databases in response to user queries.

    The two primary reasons for using this technology are to organize website data and provide easy, quick access to data. Here are some of the top benefits of connecting MySQL to your website:

    1. Warehousing for terabytes of data.
    2. High-speed performance for specific applications.
    3. Scalability and flexibility for customization.
    4. Reliable 24/7 access to data.
    5. Organizing and indexing data protected by encryption.
    6. Backing up data and recovery strategies.
    7. Support for application development (PHP, Perl, Java, Visual Basic, .NET).
    8. The capability of quick application downloading .
    9. Performance monitoring tools.
    10. Saves time and costs.

    While programmers need to learn SQL and a programming language, it is not necessary to know the code for storing information in MySQL. For example, you do not have to know how an engine works to drive a car.

    For a more user-friendly graphical experience, you can use a free software tool called PhpMyAdmin, which is an intuitive interface that resembles a website instead of typing in statements.

    How MySQL Makes Life Easier

    Multi-use tables used for multiple purposes, not only allow you to use tables to store customer information, but you can use them to store information on products, vendors, and employees.

    Each table denotes a particular type of information, which divides into columns and rows.

    For instance, use employees as an example of a table, the first column reserved typically for employee ID numbers. The second column might be for the last name, the third column is the first name, and the fourth column would be contact information.

    Rows called “records,” represent individual people. If the table is about inventory, then each record would be a separate product.

    For the database to connect to the web securely, MySQL allows the administrator to set users, passwords, and privileges. If you are working with a team, you may only want certain members to access certain tables and not others.

    Your web host, whether it is iPage or another platform, will provide you with the instructions on how to connect your website to the database. If you like, you can create multiple databases on the same server.

    The left column of your admin web interface gives you simple configuration tools for tasks, such as backing up a database. An option is to import an entire existing database from your computer or wherever you have stored it.

    You assign a unique name to your various databases, and you list them in the far left column of the admin interface.

    Once you select a database, you will then see a list of tables in the left column. You can create as many tables as you want, whether it is for finances, records, web content, or any other type of information you want to store.

    It is a great tool for archiving blogs, marketing campaigns, and future content. You can export tables to Excel spreadsheets.

    Conclusion

    MySQL offers essential database functions that anyone can handle. If you want to learn database programming, you will need to dedicate more time to learning a programming language.

    Either way, it can help you organize your business more efficiently and bypass investing in expensive enterprise software. This solution is practical for keeping all valuable company data in one place.

  • No Website is Crash Proof: What is Your Crash Plan?

    No Website is Crash Proof: What is Your Crash Plan?

    Although most web hosting companies will promise VPS hosting or dedicated hosting services with 98% uptime, failing to plan for that 2% of downtime is planning to fail. Having a crash plan is therefore extremely important for the overall success of your website.

    No webhosting company promises 100% uptime, and for good reason: It isn’t possible to fully prevent outages. However, safeguarding your site against downtime requires certain precautions, including the right technology and software, the right hosting partner, and the right managed services.

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  • One Year Later

    A year ago I decided to get into the world of blogging. I had thought about it for some time before, but never really sat down and tried. Then on June 23, 2007 I decided to give it a shot, and started a blog on Blogger. Today marks one year since I started Technically Easy and like many others who have started blogs, I have learned a lot about managing a blog.

    This week I will publish the three usual posts, but all posts will discuss how I managed Technically Easy, the mistakes I made and the successes I found. This post will focus on the name, logo, and design of Technically Easy and how they have changed over the past year.

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  • 3 Ways To Become Less Dependent on Google Search

    3 Ways To Become Less Dependent on Google Search

    When you compose a new post for your blog, what’s the first thing you have in mind? Is it your readers? Or is it Google? It’s a sad reality of the modern web that bloggers cater to the whims of Google, often to the detriment of their readers. They stuff their article with keywords and mind every little link, lest they find themselves not ranking in the top 10 for high-volume keywords. But you know what?

    You can’t blame them

    The incentives are there. Google is the world’s biggest traffic referrer. Bloggers need traffic, and so catering to Google’s rules can pay off. Unfortunately, at the same time it can create a poor experience for readers.

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  • 10 Reasons I Use LastPass to Manage Passwords

    10 Reasons I Use LastPass to Manage Passwords

    The one aspect of staying secure online is through the use of unique passwords for my different online accounts. Insecure passwords are by far the main reason many people have their online accounts hijacked or stolen. Unfortunately, remembering a unique password for every account is not really feasible for anyone. To solve the problem I have been using LastPass for over a year, and have found it to be a must-have tool for security.

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  • To Chat or Not To Chat

    To Chat or Not To Chat

    Whether you like it or not, live chat is used pretty extensively online in many different ways. Often it is large companies like AT&T or Hostgator.com who use live chat to answer the large volume of sales questions that are generated on their site.

    But Live chat is becoming more common for smaller sites and blogs and so I’m wondering – do people like to have a live chat opportunity on a website they are visiting? And do they like to have it pop up right in their face over the page they are currently browsing?

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  • Why Features of e-Commerce eBay Makes it Stand Out from the Rest

    Why Features of e-Commerce eBay Makes it Stand Out from the Rest

    Since its start, eBay has been one of the hottest retail sites that has utilized innovative ways to increase the sale of products. Initially, it was mainly known to be an auction site, but over the years it has evolved into a successful e-commerce site that offers a wide array of products from thousands, perhaps millions, of businesses and people.

    It has all the features that offer a solution to the various concerns related to the selling and purchasing of goods. One such effective method is the use of PayPal, which is owned by eBay, which secures payment and makes it easy to pay for the items without using a debit or credit card. Over the years, it has proven to be effective to secure the transaction.

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  • 5 SEO Tips for the Technical Blogger

    5 SEO Tips for the Technical Blogger

    When I first started blogging almost four years ago, I didn’t know anything about SEO. I wrote posts that I thought were useful to others, and didn’t worry about researching keywords, keyword density, or even how the post would rank in search engines.

    Being a technology-related blog, I knew that there was a lot of competition, in terms of SEO, with regards to many aspects of technology. I also knew that much of the content that is related to technology would be outdated. Today, however, I have realized a few things about SEO, and owning a technology blog, and have decided to sum them up in this post.

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