Frequently Asked Questions
Select a question below to find the answer
The world-wide web is made up of billions of websites linked together with hypertext links. Thousands of new websites and web pages are added to the world-wide web every hour. Websites are located on hosting servers, computers continually connected to the rest of the web. The information is then available to anyone else with access to the Internet. Web pages can have a mixture of text, graphics and multimedia. Nowadays, there’s information on practically anything you could be interested in available somewhere on the web. You can use a search engine to find what you want.
Acquiring a website all begins with first acquiring a domain name. InBlue Web Media can do this for you, but you’ll need to think carefully about what domain name to acquire (see “What domain name should I choose?”). After you have acquired your domain name, the next step is to acquire web hosting (see “What is web hosting?”) and to delegate the domain name to point to the web hosting server. Once this is achieved, files can then be uploaded to the server. If you don’t have an existing website, InBlue Web Media will put an “Under Construction” page on your website, so people can see that there is progress being made on your website and that it will be launched soon. If you do have an existing website, InBlue Web Media will develop the new website on a separate testing server which you will be able to view and test during the construction process. Once the website has been completed to the client’s satisfaction, the website will then go live (launched).
A domain is like a title deed on the internet which can be purchased and owned. It is identified by a domain name (eg www.yourdomainname.com.au).
There are different types of domains with country-specific domain names such as Australia (.com.au), UK (.co.uk), New Zealand (.co.nz) for example and operational-specific domain names such as non-profit organisations “.org” (international) or “.org.au” (Australian), educational institutions (.edu.au) and government departments (“.gov.au” and “.nsw.gov.au”). There are even industry-specific domains, for example, TV stations and TV programs can opt for “.tv” domains.
It’s best to make sure that your domain name reflects your business or organisation name, rather than your occupation or operational role. As an example, if your business name is “Assurance Insurance” and you’re based at Pyrmont, it’s best that you try to acquire the domain name “assurance.com.au” and if that is not available, then try to get “assuranceinsurance.com.au”, rather than “insurance.com.au” (which would no doubt already be taken) or “pyrmontinsurance.com.au” (which makes your business seem small (limited to Pyrmont) and restricts search engines ranking of your website with your actual business name). Domain names can be purchased from various places on the internet and vary in price. If you are commercial business in Australia it is best to go for a “.com.au” domain, but if your business will be doing business internationally (or has the potential to) it is best to acquire a “.com” domain (which tend to be cheaper than “.com.au” domains). However, just because your domain is “.com.au” doesn’t mean that you can’t do business overseas.
If you already have a registered domain name, it’s easy to transfer it to InBlue Web Media and use it with one of our hosting plans. The process of transferring a domain is called delegation. Delegation involves modifying the domain name servers (DNS) your domain name points to and then waiting 12 to 36 hours while the change propagates through Australian and international DNS. If you wish to manage the delegation of your domain, you need to log in to your domain’s registrar (the website which you originally purchased the domain name from) and modify the DNS to point to the name servers provided by InBlue Web Media via email with your account information. If you would prefer InBlue Web Media to manage delegation, you will need to provide us with your username and password (or registry key) for your domain’s registrar (the website which you originally purchased the domain name from).
Web hosting is a server (commercial-grade computer) which hosts (stores and displays) your website so it can be viewed by the world-wide community 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
Shared hosting is a server that hosts multiple websites on its hard-drive and dedicated hosting is a server that is completely dedicated to one website. InBlue Web Media generally uses shared hosting for the majority of its clients as it’s reliable and cost effective. Dedicated hosting is more powerful and faster, but much more expensive and is usually reserved for powerful e-commerce websites and/or websites with comprehensive content management systems (CMS), intranets or VPN’s (virtual private networks).
Depends. If we are developing a simple website from scratch, we usually opt for Linux based hosting as it is fast and cost effective, however, if the clients previous website (and database) was based on a windows-based hosting, then we would host the site on a windows-based hosting server. Sometimes we choose to host a website on a windows-based server because it would be more beneficial for us to develop the website in ASP.NET (windows-based server-side language) as we then have the opportunity to employ a whole host of other programming languages into the project.
We strongly recommend that you allow InBlue Web Media to manage of all the web hosting responsibilities to do with your website. However, if you are adamant that you own and manage the web hosting for your website, then we ask that you supply us with all the web hosting access details such as the FTP username and password, the control panel username and password and if the website includes a database, then all the database access details as well. InBlue Web Media’s management of your web hosting means that InBlue Web Media will take responsibility for all the virus-protection, spam prevention, security, email and maintenance requirements. You may find “cheaper” hosting, but you will lose the convenience of our valued support and generally end up with web hosting of a lesser quality.
- 10,000MB disk space
- Unlimited data transfer
- Unlimited email accounts
- Unlimited MySQL databases
- Unlimited subdomains
- WHM/cPanel
- PHP, Perl, CGI, MySQL, SSI, HTML5
- 30 day money back guarantee
- Instant account activation
Our servers are located inside Australia, so your sites will load faster than if your sites were located on a server in the US or Europe. Our pricing is very competitive and plan resources are generous.
Yes. We offer FREE support for the lifetime of the website. However, we will charge for making any structural/graphic changes.
Web design is more to do with the layout, presentation and graphic design of a website. A “web design” project would consist of non-dynamic pages (pages that are static and don’t access a database) such as HTML and XHTML pages.
Web development is to do with coding and scripting the actual architecture of a website. Both the frontend (the part that you see) and the backend (the part that you don’t see, such as CMS etc.) Web developers develop websites with server-side scripted programming languages such as PHP (Linux based), ASP (Windows based) and ASP.NET (Windows based). They are called server-side languages because when you visit one of these sites, the code operates on the server interacting with a database and resends the HTML to your web browser which is what you see at your end.
Every project is completely different, but with the most common websites undertaken by InBlue Web Media the timelines can be the following:
- Standard WordPress sites may take approx. 2 to 3 days
- WordPress sites (with ecommerce capability and product inventory) may take approx. 7 to 10 days
- Custom (non-Wordpress) sites may take approx. 3 to 4 weeks
Yes you can. In most cases InBlue Web Media will develop the new website at a temporary address such as “yoursite.com.au/newsite/” or on a separate testing server accessible via an IP address.
InBlue Web Media does not have a standard cost that we charge per website. We gauge our prices based on the clients requirements and the amount of work involved.
A website will generally be 25% more expensive if it is an e-commerce website (which has the ability to purchase products or services and is linked to a merchant account for the client to receive funds).
It depends. If the work involved costs more than $1500, we would usually charge 50% upfront and 50% on completion. We may also charge domain purchasing fees and web hosting fees (if you require a domain name purchased and web hosting to host your new website on). For ecommerce websites, we would also charge upfront for the costs for the SSL certificate.
We may charge recurring domain purchasing fees and web hosting fees, which are usually on a yearly basis. Web hosting fees will be due exactly 1 year from the day that your web hosting account is set up.
Other ongoing fees could include SEO costs and website maintenance costs.
Yes. InBlue Web Media approach to web development is responsive web design (RWD), which means that our websites appear beautifully across all platforms including desktop computers, small screen laptops, tablets (including iPad’s) and smartphones.
Yes, absolutely. Considering our websites are built using WordPress, you have the benefit of using its superior ‘Dashboard’ content management system (CMS). The Dashboard conveniently allows you to manage all your websites content, including pages, blog posts, homepage features, side panel features, as well as all your media content (images, videos, PDF docs etc).
A CMS (content management system) is the backend section of your website where you go to update information and images. This will significantly reduce costs in avoiding InBlue Web Media or anyone else to update your website for you on a frequent basis. Fortunately for you, because we develop our websites using WordPress, you have the benefit of utilising WordPress’ powerful “Dashboard” content management system. The Dashboard conveniently allows you to manage all your websites content, including pages, blog posts, homepage features, side panel features, as well as all your media content (images, videos, PDF docs etc).
Adobe Flash is a form of interactive animation technology on websites. You can generally tell if a website or part of a website has be developed in Flash by right-clicking on a section of a website and if that section is in Flash then it should say “About Adobe Flash Player…” on a menu. We strongly recommend that you avoid having Flash on your website, because Apple users of the iPad and iPhone will not be able to it. Apple devices such as the iPad and the iPhone have been configured to not display Flash, due to the fact that Flash significantly overworks the processor in the device and hence drains the battery.
Short for “search engine optimisation”, the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a website by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. The higher a website ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by web users. Web users tend to select a search result found on the first page and ignore the other pages and pages of search results, so where a site ranks in a search is essential for directing more traffic toward the site. The most popular search engine is without a doubt Google who make up 90% of searches. Other search engines include Ask, Yahoo! and Bing.
Organic SEO is an approach that helps to organically boost the search results of a website on a search engine. In other words, the website has ‘earned’ its ranking on a search engine because techniques have been used to optimise it accordingly.
PPC SEO are advertised paid listings from which companies and individuals pay search engine companies to list their website high and visible on the search engine page (in most cases above the organic listings). PPC stands for “Pay Per-Click”, which means that the advertiser pays for every time a web user clicks on a PPC listing.
This depends entirely on when the search engines send out their web crawlers or spiders to catalog your site. This can take 1 week or up to 6 months. We help the process along by submitting your site to the search engines. This lets them know you would like to be added to their queue for indexing.
Your website will be optimised and registered with all the major search engines on the web, including: Google, Ask, Yahoo! and Bing. All other search engines will catch on once you’ve been listed with the larger search engines. You’re website will also be registered with DMOZ, the internets largest human-edited directory.
There are generally three ways to do this.
- Firstly, decide what keywords you will be optimising your website for, then go about planting these keywords on the specific pages you wish to promote. There are really good SEO software programs out there to help you find the best keywords to promote your business.
- Secondly, you will need software to help you with the optimal ‘keyword density’ ratio, which is the ratio of keywords to non-keywords.
- Thirdly, you will need to look at ‘inbound-linking’, which means getting as many quality links to your website as possible. If you can get a link to your website on as many other websites as possible, then it will help to boost the ranking of your website on search engines. It’s very important that the websites that link back to your website are of a similar business nature to your business. For example, if you are a fishing company, try and get a link to your website on as many fishing related websites as possible. Also, when linking to your website, always make sure that the link is embedded as a keyword for the nature of your business. For example, instead of having the link as: “Trevor’s Motor Group”, do this: “car dealership”. Another thing, try to register your website (with a link) with as many free online business directories as possible.
These 3 suggestions will be a significant step in getting premium search results with search engines.
The servers on which InBlue Web Media hosts its websites features state-of-the-art security including hardware and software firewalls. Our SSL certificates boast up to 256-bit encryption. You can have peace of mind with your website being behind the best internet security that the world has to offer.
SSL stands for “Secure Sockets Layer”. It’s like a secure section on your website that has an encrypted forcefield around it. You will notice that e-commerce websites all have SSL to protect peoples identity and credit card information as they shop online. When SSL is purchased for a website, it comes in the form of an electronic (or virtual) “certificate”. Most SSL Certificates come in 128-bit encryption, but you can get up to 256-bit encryption. You can tell if the web page you’re on is protected by SSL. If you have a look on the left hand-side of the address bar at the top, if the web address starts with “https:” instead of “http:” then your viewing a web page with SSL security. You can also tell if there’s a padlock icon on the status bar of your browser (down the bottom). Is your website in need of SSL security? Contact InBlue Web Media for more information.
RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”. It is a method of receiving constantly updated links from specific chosen websites. Once you have set up a connection to a website you will receive a list of all the stories currently shown on a certain page or section of that site.
There are several ways of receiving RSS feeds, but the technology is moving forwards and adapting very quickly. The main method is to download a program called a ‘News Reader’. You can then set up this program to receive RSS information from whatever websites you wish that offer it, and browse headlines and story summaries that link through to the full story on the website. There are several News Reader programs available for all platforms, many of which are free.
Web browsers should offer similar functionality already built-in which will detect whether the website you are viewing offers an RSS feed and will then let you create a constantly-updated list of links in your ‘bookmarks’ menu. Web browsers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Chrome will all alert you to an RSS-enabled page.
There’s one major distinction between an intranet and the internet: The internet is an open, public network, while an intranet is designed to be a private network generally for large corporations. An intranet may be accessible from the internet, but as a rule it’s protected by a password and accessible only to employees or other authorised users.
From within a company, an intranet server may respond much more quickly than a typical website. This is because the public internet is at the mercy of traffic spikes, server breakdowns and other problems that may slow the network. Within a company, however, users have much more bandwidth and network hardware may be more reliable. This makes it easier to serve high-bandwidth content, such as audio and video, over an intranet. Is your company interested in an intranet? Contact InBlue Web Media for more information.
A “virtual private network” is a way of working from home or from a remote office, by using the internet to extend your company’s office network across large distances. It is possible to log into your office computer account from an internet connection. There are hacker and eavesdropping concerns, of course. But gratefully, modern VPN’s are quite safe.
Server side languages carry out operations on the remote web server, usually in response to requests sent by the user’s computer. Server side operations can access data or functions that aren’t available to the user. For example, server side languages can serve up dynamic content from a database or can process orders in an e-commerce application. Server side languages that are commonly used on the web include PHP and ASP.
PHP stands for “Hypertext Preprocessor” and is a server-side, HTML embedded scripting language used to create dynamic web pages. Much of its syntax is borrowed from C, Java and Perl with some unique features thrown in. The goal of the language is to allow web developers to write dynamically generated pages quickly.
ASP.NET (or just .NET (“dot net”) as it is more widely known) is a web development technology developed by Microsoft. Programmers can use it to build dynamic web sites, web applications and XML web services. It is the successor to Microsoft’s previous stand-alone “ASP” technology.
WordPress is a free and open source blogging tool and a content management system (CMS) based on PHP and MySQL which runs on a web hosting service. Features include a plug-in architecture and a template system. WordPress is used by over 18.9% of the top 10 million websites as of August 2013. WordPress is currently the most popular blogging system being used on the web with over 60 million websites worldwide.
Some high-profile companies using WordPress-based websites include: Ford, Wall Street Journal, Sony, NYTimes Blogs, General Electric (GE), Samsung, CNN Blogs and Jeep to name a few.
