Web Site Design Blog

The other day one of our larger sites had what they thought was a security breech and jumped out of their seats rushing to conclusions about site security. Their first conclusion went public and set off a bad series of events that could lead to legal ramifications. Now site owners should know that before you rush to judgment about what is going on in your forum, your first step is to stop and investigate. As this larger site may have learned, tossing out allegations of site breach and hacking are not a good idea without contacting a professional to find out what is really going on.

Since we do lots of forums for larger groups, we thought it would be a good idea to set out some guidelines for site owners. Now let’ say you are sitting in your private forum and suddenly you see another member in there that is not allowed. Oh my God, what to do. Well first of all don’t jump to conclusions about your security system, feeling you’re being hacked or worry that there is anything amiss. The best thing to do in any business is to first, take a breath, investigate and then proceed. Hopefully you have all your wits about you, and are not too stressed, sleep deprived or overly paranoid before you go jumping around concluding things that may not be true. You don’t want to start harassing site visitors and announcing that they are hackers when this might all be just a misunderstanding on your part, and geez, worse yet – don’t tell anyone you are going to file criminal charges for something they had nothing to do with. In the legal world I’m not sure how the courts will view this, but likely they will feel that you did not do your due diligence before making the accusations and this could lead to a big legal action against you. You don’t want that now, do you?

Most professionals have two sets of IT eyes on things to ensure they are not making rash decisions when it comes to forum security. It’s likely part of your obligation as a provider of services and you might consider it an important aspect of business especially if you are a large company with possible legal exposure.

Now, Can people access a private forum? A little googling will answer that for you. Not really but yes they can “appear” to be there. Anyone who is wandering around with time on their hands can put your url into the browser and start switching around numbers to see what is out there. A hidden forum or a private forum might appear, but likely they will only see a login or an error message. While you, sitting in the forum will see them browsing simply because the call to show who is browsing is higher on the list than the error message or login form. Fear not. You are safe. All those wild thoughts about hackers and site violators can be put to rest. Nothing is amiss except the subtle reminder that you need a qualified professional to explain to you what is going on, and possibly a lawyer if you’ve already banned members and jumped to conclusions, pointed fingers and made wild accusations about someone trying to find out what you’ve been thinking or worse yet, accused anyone of trying to take down your website. If you’ve already gone that far my advise now is put a nice apology in writing and last but not least get a lawyer.

If things haven’t deteriorated to this point and you need more help and don’t have a Phpbb forum site admin or web designer, check out our services or ask your host for more help.

Any questions?

As a recent Chairman of Ethics and Moderation for one of the trade groups dealing with internet commerce and eBay sellers, I have to say that the experience was interesting. As time went on, I had been involved in two groups. Some people know why I quit the first one. The second one promised to be even more open, member owned and transparent. As time went on I grew leary of these claims as things were done in the back room and not reported to the members. *edited*
Day three: The Ethics of that group decided it had gone far enough when the Board refused the Ethics committee vote and wrote their own ticket. The Ethics committee balked and posted a statement that the Board had overruled a vote and took their own vote. The Board promptly moved the post, Moderators promptly moved it back and after several attempt the post was deleted by the Board, the Ethics Chairman suspended which left members of the member owned group guessing at what happened. One Board member resigned, another threatened to take public action and was suspended… and that leads to this post.

Are these groups really worth it? I guess if all you are doing is gleaning information you’re in good company. But if you get sucked up in the rhetoric and start volunteering, watch out. Nothing in these types of groups is member owned, and here’s why.

1. The Presidents of these groups are often egotistical backed by a posse or hopefuls that will do or say anything to be part of the upcoming promised success

2.  Hours can be invested to no avail because at some point it will be overturned by the Board who has gone googly eyed over their fearless leaders.

3. At some point, usually when $100,000 or more is in the kitty, someone wants to take all  the glory and keep their own reputation from being besmirched while running things the way they seem fit. After all,  they built this city and they should never be challenged.
Any questions?

We think we’ve done some impressive ebay store designs and thought we’d write a little about the web design process for ebay store design. We usually make a template, then create the store design. First of all the ebay header in the store will go across all of the entire ebay store. For any template that is 800 wide, that means that in the ebay store it will have to spread 100% or it hangs there not looking so grand. We can adjust design for a 100% store header, and leave a centered 800 pixel wide about me page, but it isn’t always that pretty. In addition in ebay stores you’ll always have a white space between the header and the bottom part of the page. That can be difficult to design around as well. Unless you have an integrated ebay store homepage, it’s not always perfect. But then again, it will look fine to most people.

When you build your ebay store, rememeber that eBay puts some restriction on the amount of code you can use there. You’ll likely have to strip out some styles, and at the very least some spaces in the html code.

As far as the left navigation goes, we’ve done some nice stores with upgraded navigation on the left, but again if you have lots of code you’ll notice the white line separating the middle section of the nav.

Overall eBay store building is fun and a fantastic way to show your wares on ebay. Design your ebay store with these things in mind and all is well.

Take a look at some of our ebay store design here

Some eBayers have asked me about alternative shopping cart systems to for example Miva which I highly recommend. Two alternatives come to mind: 1. ProStores: for an eBay seller this one is a natural. The reason is that it can interface with eBay like no other. It’s a quick study to get started and I will post some additional information here to get you started quickly and easily. This system carries some issues, such as pricing on the transaction end, but overall I would rate it highly for eBay sellers. Check out the offering of ProStores here. 2. OSCommerce. This solution is fully customizable, but who would want to. To get going quickly there are no issues, it’s pretty much install it and run. But there, that’s the key issue. If you are going to use this type of system you will need to understand how to install it, or get a host to install it for you. The customization for headers and site design are not that difficult and I will post some additional information as time permits on quick starting this project.

If you want your online business to be a success, you have to accept credit cards. Statistics showed that right after starting to accept credit cards; the sales can increase by as much as 400%. To do this you need to have an Internet Merchant Account.What is an Internet Merchant Account?
Essentially it is a bank account for an online business, it allows merchants to deposit and refund online payments. In trust, the bank agrees to allow you to charge people’s credit cards for goods and/or services you provide. The bank in turn, has the responsibility for debiting the funds from the customer(s) and depositing it into your account. What kind of options are there?
Typically, you have two when it comes to acquiring a merchant account. First, the normally preferred method is to acquire your own merchant account. The second option is to use a third-party merchant account. This means that another party allows you to accept credit cards using their merchant account. This can be more expensive, percentage-wise, but is a good option for people with very low volume or who are unable for some reason to get their own merchant accounts.What are the advantages of having my own merchant account?