Online Web Tutorials

Today, a corporate web site is one of the most important marketing tools a small business has; and for many it is just as essential as having a phone number or business cards. Typically, companies rely on a variety of marketing “assets” like e-mailing lists, customer databases, and marketing materials to help them promote and build their businesses. But of all the marketing assets a business may have, its web site can be the strongest marketing asset of all, especially when it is part of a strategic, coordinated marketing plan.

A web site often includes the elements found in a marketing plan; from lead generation to advertising to online payments to customer service. With Web 2.0 interactivity now commonplace, companies can also add video, news feeds, online tutorials, and social networking integration to their sites to further extend the site’s capability and meet their customers’ ever-changing needs and expectations.

An Online Advantage

Here are 7 reasons your web site could (or should!) be the strongest marketing asset available to your small business today:

1. Everything is in one place – web forms for lead capture, company videos, industry news feeds, links to resources and partners, online tutorials, customer service, events calendar, photo gallery, testimonials, marketing materials, etc., can all be included on your site.

2. Integrates with other marketing – direct mail campaigns can reference online coupons or downloads on your site, email campaigns can lead to targeted landing pages, opt-in subscriptions can help build marketing email lists, social networking strategies can be integrated with the web site, etc.

3. Builds credibility with users – an outdated, unattractive web site sends all the wrong messages to your visitors, but an updated, user-friendly site is an asset that and can instantly make you more credible and trustworthy, regardless of the size of your business.

4. Results can be tracked and measured – by using web analytics tools, you can track visitors, conversions, search engine terms and keywords, entry and exit pages, traffic stats, and a multitude of additional information.

5. Information can be changed and updated – unlike printed materials where you have to order hundreds (or thousands) of brochures or postcards that may quickly become outdated, your web site can be changed whenever information changes.

6. Local reach, global reach – and everything in-between. Depending on how you optimize and promote your site, you can target customers regardless of geographic location.

7. Works for you 24/7 – your site is available for visitors to do research or purchase products and services at their own convenience, at any time, regardless of your business hours.

Show It Off!

If you are not currently using your web site as a marketing asset for your business, here are some tips to help you combine your site with your overall marketing strategy:

* Showcase your advertising and marketing online; e.g., re-use commercials, radio spots, print advertisements, coupons, flyers, etc., on your web site to extend their reach beyond initial audiences, and also stretch your investment at the same time.
* Include your web address on everything – advertisements, business cards, vehicle lettering, name badges, logos, printed materials, etc., to drive traffic to your web site and help build your brand.
* Update your web site on a regular basis – do something at least monthly to update the information, add new content, improve search engine positions, promote the site, build inbound links, etc. A stale, outdated site is not useful to your visitors, and is not much of an asset to your business, either.
* Take it seriously! Consumers today are already online, and every touch point where you intersect with your customers and potential customers should ultimately lead them back to a great user experience on your web site!

In this tutorial you will learn how to create your all important Dreamweaver Contact Form and have the details of the form emailed straight to your INBOX. Capturing Contact Information of potential customers in extremely important in the business world. Don’t let those potential customers or clients disappear just because you didn’t have a Contact Form on your website. By following this Dreamweaver Tutorial you will have a WORKING Contact Form up and running in a few easy steps.

NOTE: Before we start you will need to download this PHP Form to Email Script and unzip it to the root directory of your website. Dowload the file from dreamweaverspot.com

Now you are ready to begin inserting the form and the fields you would like onto the page. In this example I am going to create anew page, but you can easily add this to an existing page if you already have one in mind for the form to be placed on.

1. In Dreamweaver, choose File > New The New Document Dialog Box appears.

2. In the Blank Document list, choose HTML, then click Create to create a new HTML document.

3. In the Title text field in the Document toolbar, enter Contact Form to add a title to your document.

4. Choose File > Save, then save the document in your local site folder. Name it ContactForm.htm.

5. Next we are going to Insert a Form onto the page, Choose Insert > Form then Form from the Flyout Menu. A Form dialog box will then open. In the Action text box type in FormtoEmail.php (this is the file you extracted to the root of your website earlier). Change the Method to POST and then in the NAME text box type in ContactForm.

6. Next step is to place the form objects onto the page (the information we would like to collect). In this example I have placed a text box for Name and Email Address, and also a Text Area for Comments. To do this click inside your form object and then from the top menu select Insert > Form > Label. From the Code Window click in between the LABEL Tags and type in Name:. Next from the top menu again select Insert > Form > Text Field. Name the Text field name from the properties box at the bottom.

Repeat those steps and add another Label and Text Field and name it email.

7. Add another Label and type in Comments. Then add a Text Area, go to Inset > Form > Text Area in the top menu. Name the Text Area comments from the Properties box at the bottom and give the Character Width a value of 50 and the Number of Lines a value of 10.

8. Add a Button. Again from the top menu Insert > Form > Button. Your Form should now look like this: (note I have put each element on a different line to help with the usability).

9. Now we need to edit a couple of lines in the FormtoEmail.php file. Open the file in Dreamweaver. The first line you need to edit is the line that starts with $my_email.

Change the email address to the address you want the emails to be sent to. The other line that you may wish to change is this one:

This is where the visitor will be directed after they have pressed the SUBMIT button. If you have a page that you like to direct them to then place the location of the file in there, or simply leave it blank and they will get a thank you message on the same page.

10. Upload both files to your web server and bingo all done. You should know have a working contact form.

Creating your first website can be both fun and rewarding. Using HTML seems easy enough so you build your site around it. The problem you may have is that their is only so much you can do with this language. You need PHP on your website to make it more functional. But PHP seems so hard to understand. A PHP tutorial for beginners would be nice to have but is it really worth the effort to make the chance to PHP?

The good thing about PHP is that you do not need to make your entire website from PHP. You can use it in conjunction with your HTML. Certain applications like collecting e-mail addresses allows you to send the visitor straight to the page you want without you having to e-mail the link to them. This helps make you site automated. That means you do not have to step in every time someone subscribes to what you are offering. They can download stuff easier, submit comments that displays on your website instantly and more.

Depending what you want your site to do it is not necessary for you to use a PHP tutorial to build a site with. You can download scripts that you particularly need but the problem with that is you may not be able to adapt the code to match your website. By having some type of PHP tutorial for beginners you can create codes that perfectly match your website making you look more professional.

You do not have to worry about it not working on your visitor’s PC because it works on all operating systems and most web servers out there. Your visitors should have no problems when they land on your site.

A PHP tutorial is best if your site is a membership site. Your members will be able to navigate your site and upload and download software as well as send messages to other members without you having to do a thing. This will save you both time and money.

I could go on all day about the benefits of having your own PHP tutorial to build your website with but I think you get the idea. For beginners, this is the best thing to have so you do not make mistakes that end up costing you a potential customer. You only get one chance to make a good first impression so do it right.

DNS in a nutshell

As I said above, DNS is a translation service from computer readable names, to human readable names. The theory is similar to a phone book, or directory assistance, which translate phone numbers to names. The DNS system is distributed across the whole Internet, virtually every Internet provider has two or more DNS servers, most hosting companies do as well, and a lot of large businesses, ie Microsoft, Dell, HP all have their own servers. (of course, having 30,000+ employees, they probably have their own directory assistance too).

Every single person on the Internet uses DNS, 99% of them without even knowing. Every time you go to a website, you do a search of the DNS system to find the location of the site. Every time you send an email, your ISP’s mail server does a DNS search to find the mail server for that domain. As I said, DNS works on a distributed basis, no one server holds the records for every single domain. There are a lucky 13 master servers, that contain a list of which DNS servers handle which domains, when you look for a domain that your ISP’s DNS server does not know, it asks the master servers, which DNS server does know about this domain, then it asks that DNS server for the information it needs, before passing it back to you.

Changing DNS Servers

When you change hosting providers, the normal procedure is to also change your domain’s delegation to the new hosting providers DNS servers. This procedure, known as redelegation, is best, as it means one company handles everything for you, and if they make a change to the location of your website, for instance moving it onto a faster server, they can also update the DNS records straight away, so no one notices. To find out who your domain is delegated to, you need to do a ”whois search”. A whois search will not show you where your website is, but it will show you which DNS servers know where it is. Customers of Anchor should always see ”’ns1.anchor.net.au”’ and ”’ns2.anchor.net.au”’ in their whois information. If your domain is currently with another company, and you need to bring it to Anchor, you need to change that information. Generally, this is done through a web page of the company that you registered the domain with, it is a simple change.

Once the change is made, depending on the type of domain, it can take up to 3 days for the rest of the Internet to notice you have moved. (The same as when you move house, it can take quite a while for other people to realize). The reason for this is explained in the next paragraph. Suffice to say, for a period of 3 days, some people will see the new site, some people will still see the old one. Some email will go to the new server, some will go to the old server. This is avoidable through careful planning, and a week long changeover.

Buzzwords & Geek words, translated!

Often when talking about DNS, the words (and abbreviations), ”’TTL”’, ”’Cache”’ and ”’Propagation”’ come up, but what do they mean? In plain English, the DNS server responsible for your domain has a file with all the information about your domain in it, and when another DNS needs information about your domain it is pulled from this file, along with a TTL value. TTL stands for ”’Time To Live”’, and it is the maximum time a foreign DNS server can store this information locally, without asking if it has changed (the process known as caching). When you redelegate your domain from one DNS server to another, the amount of time it takes depends on the TTL value in the old server. If this value is high, which it generally is (around the 1 day mark) then any DNS server that has requested information on your domain in the past 24hrs will still see the old records; once the TTL period expires the servers will then see the new details.

Additionally for ”’.com, .net, .org”’ domains, no server will see the change until the DNS system reloads at midnight, USA time, whilst the ”’.au”’ domains are updated instantly. This process of waiting for all the Internet to see your move is called propagation. As I said above, there is a way to speed up the process, and that is to redelegate a week early with your new hosting company copying the old records, with a very low TTL, (ten minutes or so), and then when you are ready for the website and email to go to the new server, changing them on the new DNS server. This means the whole Internet will see the change in 10 minutes, regardless of the domain name (note, some ISP’s do not confirm to the standard for DNS caching, and may not update instantly).

So what does a domain record look like


@ IN SOA ns1.anchor.net.au. hostmaster.anchor.net.au. (
2004030401 ; Serial
28800 ; Refresh
14400 ; Retry
3600000 ; Expire
86400 ) ; Minimum
@ IN NS ns1.anchor.net.au.
IN NS ns2.anchor.net.au.
IN MX 50 smtp1.anchor.net.au.
IN MX 100 smtp2.anchor.net.au.
IN A 202.4.234.122
smtp IN A 203.98.94.10
www IN CNAME @
ftp IN CNAME @
mail IN CNAME smtp
pop IN CNAME smtp
pop3 IN CNAME smtp


That looks scary! What does it all mean?

Lets breakdown the file one line at a time


@ IN SOA ns1.anchor.net.au. hostmaster.anchor.net.au. (


This line, the Start of Authority, states that ns1.anchor.net.au is the domain server responsible for your domain, and that
hostmaster@anchor.net.au is the contact for this server

Skip the next 4 lines: ”’Expire, Retry, Maximum and Serial”’, as these are not important in this situation


86400 ) ; Minimum


The value of minimum is the TTL, ie the length of time, other servers can cache the information for your domain


@ IN NS ns1.anchor.net.au.


The third column on this line, NS, means nameserver, this line means that your server is listed in ns1.anchor.net.au (and below that in ns2.anchor.net.au). NS lines give a list of all the nameservers responsible for your domain.


IN MX 50 smtp1.anchor.net.au.


Again, the column after IN is important, (all your records should say IN), MX stands for Mail eXchange, and MX lines are a list of servers that handle your email, the number after MX is the priority, the lower the number, the higher the priority


IN A 202.4.234.122


On this line, A means Address. All A records are direct translations of names to numbers. If the line starts with a word, that is a host name, ie ”’http://www.yourdomain.com.au”’. If it doesn’t have a word, it means just ”’yourdomainname.com.au”’. If it has a * it means every subdomain of ”’yourdomainname.com.au”’ that’s
available.


mail IN CNAME smtp


The final record type is CNAME, whilst this stands for Canonical Name, it is often easier to think of it phonetically, ie; See-Name. As thats what it means, in this case, the record tells computers looking for mail.yourdomain.com.au to go look for smtp.yourdomain.com.au instead.

Now don’t you feel enlightened?

Do I have to have this? It all seems so complicated

If you want people to see your website, and email you, you must have DNS records. It is unavoidable. However as I said at the start of this article, you only need to have an understanding of the top level of the system, ie, when I redelegate, it takes 3 days, my email will be scattered. You do not need to understand how the entire system works, that is the job of your DNS administrator (often called hostmaster), who is typically your web hosting company.

Can I do this myself?

If you have a static IP address and a permanent Internet connection you can host your own DNS, and if that doesn’t make any sense to you, you are probably better off letting someone else handle it. You may notice in a whois search that most domains have 2 DNS servers listed, and some have up to 10. This is for redundancy: if one server dies, but the others are still working, then your website and email are unaffected; but if you only have one server, and it goes down for whatever reason, then your email and website are offline too.

Building a website is an often overlooked topic in the deluge of ebooks out there on how to start a business. But maybe you just want to build a simple website where you can put up a few photos and share them with your family and friends. Recently, a friend of mine needed a website to display his resume online. Or, maybe you just want to build a website to sell online and make enough residual income for a car payment.

With the right tools, building a website can be a step by step process and is much more simple than many people might think. It’s definitely not something to fear any longer. If you can get online and read this article, you can certainly build a website. You just need a little instruction.
Here are a few tips for getting started.

* Have an idea on what you need the website to do. Will it be for family photos, a resume, your journal entries, or do you want to put up products for sale, or work with affiliates and sell their products? Keeping this in mind gives you an idea on how complex building the site will be.

* Find an easy web building tool. This step is key. I’ve built numerous websites and have tried many of the tools out there. Some cost big bucks, some charge monthly fees before you even begin building, but I’ve found that the best, and easiest tool, is actually free. Tripod, owned by Lycos, lets you build your entire site before they charge you a penny. If you don’t like where you end up, you can start over and try again, all for no cost. If you like what you’ve built then the only cost is for a domain name (includes hosting fees) and removes any advertisements from your site. Simple as that.

* Find people like you who can help get you started and that you can talk to along the way. I didn’t have this chance when I got started, but it would have helped me drastically. With the advent of social networking sites, you can easily find a community where there are others like you who are in the same position, or willing to coach.

Thanks for coming,
Audry Grant