Fortunately, there's another side to the story. Underneath all of the chatter is a concept that is even more powerful than the hype that surrounds it.
The concept of Web 2.0 started as a conference brainstorming session between O'Reilly and MediaLive International. During their discussion, they analyzed the companies that had survived the dot-com collapse. Interestingly enough, many of these companies had quite a few things in common. Was there a connection? Was the dot-com crash a turning point for the web? O'Reilly and MediaLive believed so. And therefore, Web 2.0 was born.
So, what is it?
Wikipedia defines Web 2.0 as:
"The term Web 2.0 refers to a second generation of services available on the World Wide Web that lets people collaborate and share information online. In contrast to the first generation, Web 2.0 gives users an experience closer to desktop applications than the traditional static Web pages. Web 2.0 applications often use a combination of techniques devised in the late 1990s, including public web service APIs (dating from 1998), Ajax (1998), and web syndication (1997). They often allow for mass publishing (web-based social software). The concept may include
blogs and wikis."
There is no official standard for what makes something "Web 2.0", but there are certainly a few common attributes
that often describe this new culture of transformation.
You can see many of these concepts in sites like Flickr, del.icious, Wikipedia, Amazon reviews, and the eBay reputation system.
Web 2.0 is built on a system of collective knowledge. It provides a social fabric for the Web, empowering the individual and giving them an outlet for their voice to be heard.
However, we have only seen a small glimpse of the effects of these new transitions. Del.icio.us and Digg are just the beginning of what will soon become a much more interactive Web.
Each day there are a variety of new online applications being released: online spreadsheets, online word processing, to-do lists, reminder services, and personal start pages.
In addition, many of the changes that are evident in the world of Web 2.0 can be seen through common design practices. Old-school HTML was full of boxes and square tables. Today's web designers are rapidly moving away from boxy designs to flexible curves. When designing for today's Internet, it's all about rounded designs, nice big text, gradients, glassy effects, and bright colors.
Rounded Corners:
Let's face it. The days of good 'ol tables and square boxes are good and gone. The Web 2.0 era has ushered in the pleasing sight of rounded corners.
Unfortunately, many web masters have spent unending hours trying to obtain perfectly rounded corners. Their pain and suffering has led to a number of tutorials that will help us bypass the grief.
Below are some links to tutorials that will get you started creating your very own rounded corners:
Nice Big Text:
Have you ever been to a web site where you could barely read the text? Well, join the club. Fortunately, times have taken a turn for the better. With Web 2.0, oversized fonts have come into style. You can start using plenty of oversized text to make important messages stand out. Of course, you don't want all of the text on your web site to be supersized, but make sure that the most important text on the page is bigger than normal text.
Gradients:
Gradients are another popular design element of Web 2.0. This is especially true of backgrounds. A common background used today has a gradient at the top, fading down to some other color that continues throughout the background for the rest of the page.
For a complete tutorial on how to create this type of effect, go to http://www.photoshoplab.com/web20-design-kit.html.
Colors:
Web 2.0 sites are strongly defined by their colors. They nearly always use bright and cheery colors - lots of blue, orange, and lime green.
They also often include large, colorful icons, sometimes with reflections and drop shadows. To see some samples of how web sites are effectively using bright colors, check out:
http://www.9rules.com/
http://www.iconbuffet.com/
http://www.linkedin.com/
Other common design characteristics include the use of tabs, reflections, glassy effects, large buttons, and big text boxes for submission forms.
Sites that are embracing Web 2.0 can also often be identified by their tag clouds. If you have traveled the web much in the last 6 months, then you have surely seen tag clouds. They are used prominently on del.icio.us, Technorati, and Flickr. A tag cloud is basically a visual depiction of the content on a website. Often times, more popular tags are shown in a larger font.
Why not add a tag cloud to your own site? Not only do they look cool, but they also provide your visitor with a search tool that helps them to find your content quickly and easily.
You can create your own tag cloud with a very simple service called Eurekster Swicki. This is a community-based search engine that creates free tag clouds for web sites.
Although we have discussed many of the design elements associated with Web 2.0, this change is much more than just an aesthetic transition. Web 2.0 is essentially about a transition in the way we experience the Internet. The new Ajax programming base allows web masters to create an architecture of participation for their users. Web 2.0 refers to the ongoing transition to full participation on the Web.
Your web site can be so much more than an information resource. Your web presence is a place. With the proper programming skills, you can create a virtual world complete with an online shopping mall that compares prices from a variety of merchants, looks for potential coupons, and displays Amazon reviews.
In addition, traditional desktop applications are rapidly becoming available online as a service. Why not offer your visitors the ability to create their own to-do lists, online note pads, reminder services, and personal start pages?
If you seriously want to build some sites then join the bandwagon of shared web hosting plan. The plan is simple and similar to the real life comparison of passengers sharing a same cab and paying a relatively lower fare to reach their destination. Similar the shared web hosting service distribute the server's resources among the accounts holder for a cheap and affordable monthly fee. The another most attractive aspect of shared hosting for most people besides the reduce cost is that though customers share the same physical computer but hard drive space is separated and so there is no interference and therefore no one else has access to your files or data.
Shared web hosting service will provide you with a pre-defined large indefinite amount of disk space, a fixed monthly bandwidth or transfer quota and a control panel to manage your hosting account. You will also come across shared hosting packages that usually come with a simple to use client management interface, that allows them to set up file and FTP access, manage email accounts and other basic functions, giving you control over your website. The features are not confined here. If you want more features such as shopping carts, automated backups, and security certificates, shared hosting packages will offer them as extras to your account but you have to spend some extra bucks.
You can lower the prices even more if sign up for a longer term contract 6, 12, or 24 months than paying at the end of each month. You no need to have any kind of headache with your security and software updates because shared hosting is managed by hosting company where their staff pay special attention to all kind of security, and software updates. Since the CPU and RAM resources are shared among on a single server so, if one tends to utilize a very high amount of CPU or memory, then the others tend to suffer and this factor is also looked after with care by the hosts. They monitor all accounts and take necessary step against the over-using customers. They ask to either leave or upgrade their plans.
Web hosting is one of the most important tools to help you build a successful website. If you buy hosting that lacks features and/or functionality, then you are looking at being forced to build a website without having the tools required to do so. A perfect example of this is trying to build a WordPress website on a web host that does not allow SQL databases.
If you’ve got the idea to build a main domain, with several spinoff subdomains, then your new web host that allows you to add subdomains without an additional charge. Otherwise, you’d be unable to build a website the way that it was originally designed. Some of the features you’re going to need to build a successful website are e-mail, FTP accounts, and analytics. Although you could potentially get by without them, you’re far better off paying a little bit more to get the features that you’ll need to build your website the right way.
There are basically three types of hosting accounts, all of which vary in some form or another. Shared hosting means that you are sharing resources with several other websites, which can be dangerous if you have a website with a lot of traffic. VPS hosting is a form of shared hosting, although each website has an instanced server environment that is dedicated for that website. Dedicated hosting means that you have one server dedicated to your website, which in exchange for providing the most efficiency and speed is also the most expensive.
Buying Web hosting can be a lengthy process but it is important that you spend the time to research all of your options so you can get the most bang for your buck. Since it is difficult to transfer a website from one host to another, you’re far better off getting it right the first time then trying to transfer it down the road.
One last thing to be cautious of when purchasing web hosting, is that the company you choose has good customer service. It does you no good to get cheap hosting if you can’t contact your provider in the event of a technical issue or outage. That is why I’d rather pay a little bit more and have access to customer service and technical support without a hassle.
For someone like me, that makes a living building websites, choosing a web host is like buying a car. It takes a lot of time to compare features and price to make sure that you get the biggest bang for your buck. Since every website is different, your needs when buying web hosting will be different almost every time. As a result, you want to make sure that you have a list of the features you need when you begin the process of shopping for a new host.
If you have a business website, then you might need to consider a dedicated or VPS hosting, however if you’ve got just a personal website or blog been shared hosting might be right for you. If you’ve got a very popular website, then you need a plan that offers a lot of bandwidth and storage, otherwise you risk a down website or a traffic surcharge, both of which can be very expensive. Although most shared hosting plans offer unlimited bandwidth and storage, make sure you choose a web host that lives up to their claims.
One of the most important factors for me when choosing a web host is the company’s customer service. I need to know that I can submit technical support claims via e-mail, telephone, and online chat. I want to make sure that the company will respond to my claim any time efficient manner and that my issue will not just fall to the bottom of the queue. Unfortunately, there are very few web hosts that offer this capability, so make sure you take the time to find them.
One last thing to consider is that you think about features you might need in the relative future. If you’re going to lock in a price for a year or more, then you might want to go ahead and add some additional features now, rather than pay for them individually down the road. This can save you a lot of money and will make it much easier to upgrade your website as the traffic and functionality increases. Although you might be tempted to take the best offer that comes along, I recommend that you spend some time analyzing each host to make sure that you get the best price and the most features.
