What we commonly use when building / hosting

An understanding of

• > IP, TCP, DHCP, POP, PPP, SMTP, SSL, DNS (MX, A, CNAME Records etc) conventions and protocols

We frequently make use of

• > HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, Perl, CGI bins, RSS, Java applets

We don't like

• > Flash only sites that take an age to load, ridiculously expensive commerical solutions where a great Open Source alternative exists, bloated databases when there's no real need, and of course 'miracle money' spammy or scraper sites

General (web related stuff we've got more than a passing aquaintance with)

• > Cute FTP, Dreamweaver, Emacs, Firefox, Flash, GNU/Linux (Red Hat, Fedora Core, Suse & Debian), Java, Mozilla, M$ Front Page, M$ Office including Publisher, Notepad, nVu, Open Office, Opera, Outlook Express, Photoshop, Spybot S&D, The Gimp, Thunderbird, Windows (all flavours), WS_FTP, Filezilla,

Major Search Engines / Directories we regularly check / use and submit to / optimise for

• > Google, MSN, Alta Vista, Ask, Yahoo, dmoz
• > Basically though the truth is that despite the fact that MSN.com search gives our sites some of their greatest breaks we are all pretty much Google users day in day out but advocate against total reliance on it. We do not try and optimise exclusively for Google, go with the latest 'ramping' fad or whatever. We like to pretty much follow the importance of various wider trends / developments in users' communities such as expanded Yahoo Groups, MSN My Space and GMail, Google Earth etc etc and the impact it has on use of search facilities.

Operating Systems / Webservers / Control Panels (GUIs)

• > Okay; we admit it. Although we may be Open Source fans we do, at times, use M$ Windows on our own computers but we've never used or offered Windows based web server space. For us, like many others, Apache on Linux is our combination of choice for cost, reliability and widely available troubleshooting advice
• > Cobalt RaQ 3 - 550 - Although we don't use them a great deal these days, for many years (1999-2004) the RaQ series were our servers of choice
• > CPanel - It's okay; over the years we have quite a bit of experience with it but it ain't our favourite
• > Plesk 7.5 Reloaded - The panel that we went with for many of our sites in 2005

Site Development / Community Facilities etc

• > Chat - We've incorporated Chat rooms either locally or remotely hosted. Recently we've been installing GTChat locally though known bugs, and lack of development, will lead us to change to another solution soon
• > eZboard network - can be a simple off site solution to board hosting and management
• > Gallery - A powerful multi-user enabled community image hosting and management solution (latest stable relase June 2005 v 1.5)
• > Mambo - Powerful CMS (latest stable relase June 2005 - 4.5.2) now Joomla! 1.0.7 [Sunburst] (latest Jan 2006)
• > phpBB - One of the most widely implemented message board solutions. Use v. 2.0.11 or later to avoid "Net-Worm.Perl.Santy.a" (NeverEverNoSanity). High end commercial forums, however, warrant vBulletin, a poweful and flexible forum platform
• > phpWiki - A Wiki for online collaboration (latest stable relase June 2005 v. 1.2 / 1.3)
• > postNuke - Powerful CMS (latest stable relase June 2005 0.750 Gold)

Blogs / RSS / XML etc

• > Blogger - Simple and easy for anyone (use this now more than Xanga, Movable Type or any other hosted / local solution)
• > Feedburner - For pushing our own RSS feeds
• > Jawfish (and Carp) - When we need a quick solution for displaying RSS feeds on sites

Promotion

• > Google AdWords - We have substantial experience designing, developing and managing PPC (Pay per Click) campaigns through the Google Search and Content (AdSense for Publishers) network across many different industry sectors such as Travel, Bookselling, Marine related and more. We regularly run PPI (Pay per Impression) ads on third party sites through the same and target sector specific sites with proven click through rates
• > Text Link advertising networks

Financial and Selling

• > ClickCartPro (Kryptronic) - A reasonable and popular e-commerce package. Memory says it was okay but not used on new projects
• > OSCommerce - Our favourite 'out-of-the-box' but reasonable to customise ecommerce software (latest stable release June 2005 v. 2.2 Milestone 2)
• > NoChex - For UK specific transactions
• > Moneybookers - UK based, international transactions
• > PayPal / eBay - A bloated commercial monster but (almost) universal and "Hey, Well everyone does don't they?" Member of PayPal Developers Program, ebaY Affilliate, Trading Assistant and Developers Program member.
• > SSL Cert supply
• > 64 bit and above security within website's specified areas

Generating Revenue

• > Google Adsense™
• > Numerous Affiliate Marketing Networks for serving external adverts incl Commission Junction, Deal Group Media & Affiliate Future plus direct affiliate accounts with Amazon.com and .co.uk plus a number of other major site's schemes including Pipex (123)
• > Timed banner placements
• > In house managed advertising networks based on scripts including WebAdverts 3.20 and phpAds / phpAdsnew, Noahs Classifieds, Aardvark Toplists and more

Stats

• > Alexa Traffic Ranking - We've got a lot of experience charting this, in fact enough to recognise its major shortcomings
• > Google Page Ranking - We understand it well but always caution against an obsession with it
• > Webalizer - Woo, hoo. It does graphs, pie charts and when you eventually see figures like telephone numbers it makes all those hours of coding seem worthwhile

>

Developments that interest us

• > The expansion and landrush of the various majors, ebaY's aquisition and promotion of Skype, the development of Google Base and payment integration in addition to all other aspects, Yahoo! launch of YPN and My Web Beta, 3rd party data feed management, ever shifting white hat SEO tactics and lots more

>

So...

You made it this far down the page without heading off elsewhere. Your interest in the stijlnet.com network is very much appreciated and there's definitely a ton of stuff that we work with occasionally or even every day that I've forgotten to include here. There are loads of great resource sites and forums out there that we check on a regular basis including Tech News, Scripting, Virus Alerts, Open Source Development, Security focussed, Anti Spam, Hardware reviews, SEO, Affiliate Marketing and the likes. We've ventured into some of the darkest recesses of the web to find out just how the scammers, pyramids, spam merchants, phishermen and their ilk operate and distribute information. We have Sourceforge and Savannah accounts and are always looking to develop new skills or try out new things. We've evaluated systems such as Zope, phpNuke and lots more besides. Some of us even have knowledge of stuff like VB6 and the likes but it never comes into our daily work nowadays and has consequently been left off the list. Instead we hope that the information above may help to show you the kind of flexibility and freedom from dogmatic approaches that we are able to apply to a project, whether it be our own, communal development, a partner site or support for a client. If you like our methods and approach then please feel free to get in touch.

Best wishes,

Mike

Last updated Jan 2006

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