Free Theme Vs Customized Theme

Every blogger, especially in the begging, comes across a typical question: whether they should use free theme for their WordPress blog or they should go for customize theme specially designed for them by someone. Literally there are tons of free themes available over the internet; all you need to do is to have an eye for details. Unless, you don't have some specific needs for your blog, such as different plugins, categories, feed options, comment moderation and management, some free themes can be just sufficient.

This is more at the beginning than at the stage when your blog is up and running. Perhaps, that is because, initially you don't have a fair idea about your exact needs, wants and even desires. You cannot (and/or shouldn't) reach at the final decision unless you have tested a few changes in the overall theme and design for your blog. Moreover, with every change in the theme there are certain changes that are inevitable, such as number of visitors increasing or decreasing for that period, CTR changes, and overall page views before and after, number of people who subscribed, visiting different categories etc.

Believe it or not, these changes coupled with others are bound to happen with every change in the theme or look. That's why it is generally said, the Internet visitors are very visual by nature. They do what they see. Not only this but they also lack in patience too. For example, if the theme is not impressive or navigation is confusing or troublesome they will immediately move away within no time. For every blogger this is something very serious that they can't afford. After all they are writing for visitors or readers who should enjoy it and at the end there should be a favorable action, either in the form of a constructive feedback or comment or should result in some revenue or a sale.

No doubt, when designing your blog you have several great options for different themes to choose from. You can use another theme as a base that is available for free on the Internet, but sometimes the free theme can be exactly what you want instead of paying hefty amounts to theme or template designers. In our view there is not point in starting from scratch when the framework is already there.

However, if you know what you're doing, the quality could be worth the extra time but eventually you will have to pay for customized theme. Depending upon your choice you can choose 2 column or 3 column layout for your blog along with different color combinations to suit your taste. In the advanced stage, however, you may have to take care of the preferences of your visitors. You will have to choose a theme that results in more visit, more referrals, and finally generates more revenues.

Let's see some common advantages of free themes:

• The first and foremost advantage of free themes is that they are FREE. So without spending even a single penny you can have a large number of themes and designs available to choose from.

• Next, common advantage is, as you didn't pay anything so the moment some new theme arrives in the market, you can change it immediately. Suppose, earlier you opted for 2 column theme but later you felt or some of your visitors told you to go for 3 column theme or 4 column theme then without a second thought you can take help of any search engine to find a perfect theme for your blog.

• Another advantage is that the moment a new version of WordPress is released; you can find another free theme over the Internet instead of paying your designer to make those changes. Most of these designers who work for credit are very smart, so the moment a new version arrives, they will immediately release the updates theme. Sometimes, you can also make certain changes in the existing theme and even customize them without much pain.

Advantages of customized theme:

• The most obvious advantage of a customized theme is that it is designed and fully customized as per your needs, wants and requirements. So they are unique, tailor made and completely customized to suit your requirements.

• Not just your requirements or preferences, but they can be designed as per feedback received from your visitors over a period of time. Generally, most bloggers start with free themes but eventually as a part of their business plan or strategy they go for a fully customized theme so there are high chances that they might be having some useful feedback and suggestions from some of their previous visitors, customers or even friends.

• Using a customized theme you can showcase your creativity, can create a strong brand image using your company logo, color or style that matches your company website. In case of free theme it is not always possible.

• Lastly, in a customized theme there are not back links, credit or reference statement or sponsored links to the original theme designer, so your blog seems original and unique for your visitors and customers.

I am sure after going through these common advantages of free themes and customized themes you can easily point out some of the disadvantages associated with them. Instead of individual choices and other technical issues, in a majority of cases it is a matter of price tag associated with customized theme that prompts more bloggers to choose free worpdress themes.

Web Hosts – No Match!

One usually thinks that he/she will receive same services with the certain range of price, which type of host it doesn’t matter. This is not a fact. Basically, one will not find differences in the web hosting but if one will carefully analyze there will be a vast difference between each one of them. Some of which are not adequate to user’s business. There are several hosts charging $10 a month for a particular package which one can get at the rate of $5a month with other hosting provider.

Mentioned below are 3 of the steps following which one can end up on an ideal hosting selection.

1. Deciding one’s Price range:

Price is the top most concern. One can spend anything to meet his/her requirements ranging from a few dollars a month to a few hundred. There is no one but the user who knows about his/her requirement and about his/her budget. One should consider it. Here one should find providers offering shared and dedicated hosting solutions. It is quite crucial to know the actual disparity among the two. Normally, it is shared web hosting is more inexpensive as compare to dedicated hosting. In the case of shared hosting their will be several web sites on the same server making it quite affordable for each individual.

Due to this reason only a large amount of individuals and businesses began with shared hosting and its reliability and consistency is increasing day by day due to which several businesses have raised on the basis of price and reliability. One can get web hosting prices generally in the range of $5 to $30 a month. If one will talks about Dedicated hosting then the user will have all the right to exploit entire resources. User will command the web server according to the available resources. When it comes to this type of hosting it will differ in both the price and services. It can be from $99 a month to a huge amount of $300-$400 a month. Certainly, here one will enjoy a reliable service and command over content and customization area.

2. Deciding one’s Needs:

What is the requirement of the user? However, one cannot deny the fact that web hosting has become quite affordable and competitive over the last few years but one should first search out the answers of few of the basic questions. Is user’s requirement is the 100% uptime i.e. 24/7/365 or just the modest uptime i.e. 99.9% which one can find at a cheap price as per the standardization of industry in comparison to a SLA (Service Level Agreement). What is user are Criteria regarding support? Does the requirement is 24/7/365 email support or in addition to it phone support? Loss of potential data is a topic which is quite crucial but generally overlooked by the user. Does user should ensure that his/her web host offers back up / restore services or rather an option to ad it or which one can buy on additional cost. Several user’s take it easy as it is automatic but one should mind it that without proper inquiry and involvement in the package it is not going to be accomplish. Requirement of quantity of email accounts and databases can be the other criteria. If the user possesses employees then the probability is that they would like individual email accounts for the use in interoffice and external communication. While user is opting for a strategy to run an e-commerce shopping cart or rather a community forum of any sort then requirement of one or more databases is must.

Normally, email accounts are standard but several hosts demands additional amount for databases and/or limit as per their business structure. Next, important aspect is the amount of disk space and data transfer required by the user? Now a day’s disk space and data transfer are available quite cheap. It is the Performance, features, reliability, and customer service for which the user is paying. For instance, if in the future user feels requirement of graphics resulting in large data base then it is not bad to have much disk space in advance because user may not feel its importance in beginning but it can be fruitful with respect to future strategy.

3. Accomplishing one’s Homework:

After considering above steps one should go for the research mode. The step deals with the outlook of providers. User should start his/her research from host’s own web site. The web site of several companies has a section called “about us” through which one can inquire about their background/history and a synopsis regarding their products, services, infrastructure etc. one should also go through their terms and policies regarding privacy and service. No doubt, one should be aware of the depth of the lake in which he/she is diving into. This is because several problems may arise later on if the user do not have the in depth knowledge of his/her concern host. By going through these policies one may have insight knowledge on restrictions between providers and which direction one should proceed by avoiding any trouble as per changing scenario. There are several companies delivering a customer testimonial and FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page in addition to it. User can consider Testimonials as a source of providing useful information about kinds of web sites being hosted and the way the company is delivering services to its present customers. If FAQ page delivered by the company is accurate then one can solve majority of problems in a very simple manner, whether the problem is related to sales or technical doesn’t matter. Certainly, one of the crucial ways to conclude research on the concern host is to charge them with questions/need which may not be apparently answered.

Thus at the end we can say that there are literally hundreds of specific needs that any one company or individual requires while searching for web hosting services. The problems and solutions are so much that even a book can be written on it. Thus the above given is a fundamental foundation of steps that will help user in beginning with good success.

Semantic Web Modelling Centre of Excellence

Semantic Web Development and dealing with complexity is a tricky issue. Representing information is a problem where complexity can preclude any single approach. In order to find our way around large quantities of information it needs to be structured. But the information already exists and is still being created, so this makes it a moving target.

I'm sure such matters will be covered at the www2006 conference at Edinburgh 23-26 May http://www2006.org/. Kurt Cagle refers to this in his article on complexity on his Understanding XML blog at http://www.understandingxml.com/.

The structuring of ontologies from the top down can be useful, but can only be achieved where the ontology developers have some control over the information. Much of web development and other creation of information is bottom up, in that there is no controlling authority. This is good for inclusiveness and speed of development, and something that encourages community, and encourages individuals to create their own content, which is a good thing. In his interview with the British Computer Society Tim Berners-Lee http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/blog/4 answers a question on ontologies. He talks of a top level ontology that can be created to hold certain terms and the need to find out who is using these terms, so that other web pages and databases can be categorised. This would be achieved using URIs (Universal Resource Identifier) and RDF (Resource Description Framework). In answer to what Tim Berners-Lee hopes to achieve, he talks of this bottom up development that is going on, using blogs, and wikis etc and a possible approach of 'web science' - 'the science and engineering of web based things that have a bottom up Web-like structure'.

I think this approach is highly relevant to my PhD research on user-driven programming, with University of the West of England (UWE - Bristol). Not everyone has the time to learn programming especially if their main expertise is elsewhere. They then have to ask others to do the development for them and this leads to delays and mis-understandings. The approach advocated here could enable visual creation of software by members of a community. Members of this community would not need advanced programming skills if other members with more advanced development skills could create a suitable interface for the creation of software. This could be achieved in a similar way to that used in visual web page creation tools, or word processor and spreadsheet software. Also the members who do possess advanced skills could provide ways of sorting, searching and navigating the programs created using the visual development tools. Members could work with either or both groups, according to their skills and interests.

A good first step would be to link communities and sites that have a mix of those with advanced software skills who want to encourage and enable others to learn to program, and of new starters who want to learn. This could involve those who are willing to try out new techniques to make it easier for new starters to train learn and gain experience.

Sir Tim-Berners-Lee's interview - http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.3337.

This talk by Nigel Shadbolt explains research about coping with diverse sources of information - http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.3043.

This article by Bill Thompson for the BBC technology site examines new developments in Web 2.0 technologies - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4842498.stm.

I am a Researcher in the final year of my PhD at the University of the West of England, Bristol UK. I specialise in applying Semantic Web techniques. My current research is on a technique of 'User Driven Modelling/Programming'. My intention is to enable non-programmers to create software from a user interface that allows them to model a particular problem or scenario. This involves a user entering information visually in the form of a tree diagram. I am attempting to develop ways of automatically translating this information into program code in a variety of computer languages. This is very important and useful for many employees that have insufficient time to learn programming languages. I am looking to research visualisation, and visualisation techniques to create a human computer interface that allows non experts to create software.

Shared Hosting: Merits and Demerits

With the advent of time, several type of web hosting emerged in the market which can broadly be divided into various categories as under.

One can get hosting service both Paid and Free; Linux/Unix-based and Windows-based (other which are inferior in terms of popularity); shared, dedicated and VPS. However each of this type of hosting has its own merits and demerits.

But the main objective of this article is to explain user about the prevailing merits and demerits of shared hosting.

However, before that user should understand what is the term "shared hosting".

Shared hosting is type of hosting in which a host provides space to a user on his/her server which he/she has to share with other customer’s web sites. Same software and operating system is applied by all web sites. With this type hosting however a user can have more advantages as compare to free web hosting.

One can again divide Shared web hosting into two categories:

Free Shared Hosting:

It is considered an ideal choice for a person trying some new concepts and who is not interested in paying money for paid hosting. This type of web site hosting provides the user with everything which is required for boosting his/her site. However, one cannot avail excellent facilities for his/her site. Site will receive restricted amount of Bandwidth and Disk Space. Such type of hosting will not guarantee user with MySQL, PHP support. Web statistics will also be of worst condition.

Paid Shared Hosting:

This will provide all the essential features which free shared hosting seldom to provide, these include e-mail, MySQL, and PHP support. One can use it if he/she wants to host small business web site, intermediary or large professional site but don't requires the entire server’s space. Via shared hosting one can get a good possibility to host his/her site on an influential, well administrated server at a cheap per month cost.

Shared hosting is quite popular among the webmasters who are beginners, because of providing reliable web service to that user also who do not have unique technical skills.

As now one must have understood what is the shared hosting, we can come to merits and demerits of shared hosting:

Features in favor:

A. Low cost
B. Fine server administration
c. Multiply e-mail, MySQL, PHP support
Users don’t having special knowledge in web site and server administration can also conclude it very well.

Features in against:

A. Low security level
B. Resource limitation - same memory, CPU and Hard Drive is used by everyone. The user is compelled to use only that software which is provided with his/her particular hosting company, and likewise one cannot install his/her own server.

Other restrictions can be due to security policies of the company.

The best part of shared hosting is that one doesn’t need to worry about possible server problems as for this hosting company's support service is available to sort all problems. Thus, while selecting a shared hosting one should carefully examine the company support's quality, the better the quality of support - the better would be the conditions for site.

Also with shared hosting one can place several sites in the neighboring parts of the server.

So, finally after knowing all the pros and cons it is on the user to decide the one which is most suitable as per his/her needs.

Web Hosting Service

Web Hosting Service is a form of Internet hosting service, which permits organizations and individuals to offer their own websites that are accessible through the World Wide Web. Web hosts are the firms that furnish space on the server owned by them, for the usage of both the clients and also, for providing better connectivity on the internet as in case of a data center. Additionally, web hosts could provide connectivity and data center space to the internet for servers not owned by them to be placed in the data center. This is called as “colocation”.

Web Hosting Service Scope:

Web hosting services scope may vary widely. Small-scale file hosting and webpage are the most basic scopes where the files could be uploaded through a web interface or a file transfer protocol. These are usually delivered with little processing to the Web. Most internet service providers extend this service free of cost to the subscribers. They can also obtain hosting of web pages from alternative providers of service. Typically, personal web site hosting is cheap and advertisement-sponsored are free but very often, business web site hosting has a higher expenditure.

Generally, single page hosting is adequate for personal web pages. A more comprehensive package is provided by a complex site providing application development platforms such as ASP.Net, Java, PHP and database support. Such facilities permit the customers to install or write the scripts for applications such as content management and forums.

An interface control panel may also be provided by the host for installing scripts such as e-mail and for managing the web server.