Resnodesigns

Recently, we decided to make some upgrades to our current theme.  As the process progress, I have found lots of wonderful online resources to aid in theme creation.  One particular help was:

Blank Theme

This next theme, is very helpful, it actually comes configured with several different column styles and configurations.  It allows a user to adjust the css file: @import url(’sandbox-layouts/3c-b.css’); By modifying this line with other css files found in the sandbox-layouts, folder a designer can easily manipulate its layout.

Second Blank Theme, which allows easy switching column styles and numbers

As I have created more websites, I have come to love includes.  They are useful when you need to use one file repeatadly.  For instance, you may want the same navigation scheme across a site.  It would be troublesome, or bothersome to insert you navigation code on each page.

What happens when you add or subtract a page? You would have to change every single page.  9 times out of 10, you always miss at least one page.  There are other situations where using an include would come in handy, but those are more programming oriented.

You will need:

1. PHP (in this case), or ASP based server
2. Main Page
3. Navigation Page

This code requires the use of PHP, on the main page you need  to write, and so this page must end in .php, for example, index.php.  The ending php tells your server it needs to do more work with that page before displaying it.

Whenever you are using a PHP tag, you must enclose it in

<?php **Place Code Here** ?>

On the every page you want this content to appear insert the code:

<?php include(”file directory here/link.html”);  ?>

This tells the server to include “file.html” in that place on the page. Now, you create “link.html”.

<ul>
<li><a href=”index.php” title=”Home”>Home</a></li>
<li><a href=”contact.php” title=”Contact Us”>Contact Us</a></li>
<li><a href=”location.php” title=”Location”>Location</a></li>
</ul>

Now upload these pages to your webserver and only update “link.html” as needed.

Recently, web hosts have been touting unlimited, un-metered hosting. At first, this sounds like an ideal situation but it’s neither sustainable or a good business move.

Machines have limits, a factory can only produce some many items in a day, barbers or stylists can only complete a few clients’ daily requests. Would it be wise for a stylist to claim it can complete 100 clients in a day? No, everything has a limit, and all good things must come to an end.

The same remains true for the computers which host websites. They have restraints including bandwidth, processing power and hard drive space. Hard drive companies recently introduced 1 terabyte hard drives, which offer unprecedented amounts of space. Yet, through all the technology innovations the “unlimited” hard drive has yet to be created.

The companies that offer these services generally offer them at “to good to be true” prices. These companies hope that bargain buy customers will bite at the wonderful deal, only to find out later the servers can not handle all the requests. Once, the computers are pushed to and beyond their limits they begin to break down.

How would you feel if every time you visited your favorite store, you found it closed? Or your stylist was booked solid everyday? You would be forced to book your services weeks in advance or change to another business. When your web host becomes to busy site reliability falls, information starts getting lost and your visitors stop visiting.

When can I use unlimited/un-metered hosting?

The perfect situation to use unlimited hosting is for a small website which uses a small amount of resources. The best websites include sites that do not include videos, music, (most unlimited hosts limit media files) although this defeats the purpose of having unlimited hosting. You want to make sure your website will remain live even when others are eating up the host resources.