News & Media

An online community for writers and publishing professionals is a raging success by the old dot-com criteria – heaps of traffic (140,000 visitors a month) and average visit times of over seven minutes. But it’s a dud as a business venture. It has operated at a loss every year.

Why do we code in PHP rather than ASP? For reasons including price, capability, its “open source” and platform-agnostic nature, popularity, speed, security, and efficiency.

Usability. Boring but crucial, it’s about making your website easy and intuitive to use. Users shouldn’t need to learn how to use your site. Put stuff where people expect it.

We recommend writing web scripts in PHP, not CGI / Perl. PHP is much better suited to the Web and takes less “overhead,” meaning that scripts will run faster and the server will be able to handle more simultaneous users on your site. Here’s Why…

I decided to go on a virtual field trip through the corporate sites of the biggest companies in New Zealand. I’m amazed I stayed awake. You’d think by now corporates would have realised their online visitors don’t want to read marketing-speak, testaments to the brand, letters from the chief executive or assorted press releases.

If you’re operating a website or conducting internet-based business, what you don’t know may hurt you. Dangers abound: your contractors could infringe on others’ copyrights and trademarks; others could infringe on yours; you could be held liable for mistakes or omissions on your website; your legal contracts with your online customers could be deemed unenforceable; and your visitors’ behaviour on your site could land you with a libel or slander lawsuit.