Tips : How To Built a Cheap but High Quality Website

Normally, if you want to have professional designers custom build your site, you must be prepared to dish out at least a few hundred dollars. All this can change if you know where to find the best deals, the best designs for the lowest price. Here's a rough guide:

First, you must understand that it is a rip off to get companies to design websites for you. Have you ever seen those advertisements in newspaper classified ad sections that offer a 5-page website at $500? These companies are established companies with physical locations, therefore they have to increase the amount they charge to pay off some overheads: office rent, designer's wages, advertising costs and so on.

Therefore, it would be wise to find freelance designers who work from home. These people are often working from home so they do not have a high operation cost like that of a company. On the other hand, they will be able to design images with quality similar to those of designers from big companies, so it's a "no-brainer" choice.

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Tips on Forum Advertising

Forums or message boards are a great way to reach like minded people in the same area of business your in, a growing number of business owners use forums to promote their slaves, their businesses, products and services, forums provide individuals and business with a unique opportunity to get involved with a community, which with time and dedication builds you a reputation which can be smartly used to market what you have to offer.

Some mistakenly think that forum advertising is limited to posting your AD in a specified forum, members and readers are less inclined to click on a topic if they don't know who the writer is, and they are even less encouraged to process to a website that this Ad mentions if the writer has not been contributing in the community.

I've seen a number of visitors to a forum come and go, post their Ad, disappear for a week, to come back and post another Ad, thinking that they are doing this an advertising campaign with repeating the same thing to probably tens of other forums, readers are not stupid, they can see that this members doesn't contribute, and he's only participating the Ad related forums.

The best way to gain the trust and confidence of the community is to contribute and share useful information, and never try to recommend yourself or your business in your posts, a simple link in your sig. will get clicked way more if you provide readers with something useful.

I personally and through interaction with other forumers know this for a fact, people are willing to give their business to someone offering free help with no expectations for rewards, than someone else heavily promoting himself.

Opening topics with your Ads is also a good thing, but don't make it the only thing that you do on a forum, here are some tips for you to follow when opening topics in general and when you open an Ad.

1- Make sure your topics are in the correct place on the forum, most forums have specific sub forums to open Ad related topics, look for them.

2- Never ever spam the forum with your Ad or try to bend the rules, if they have a sticky topic in the Ad forum, read it, it usually contains important information, lots of topics get deleted simply because the writer didn't bother to read the rules.

3- Your 1st topic shouldn't be an AD! would you trust someone with a 2 post count that has only posted Ads on a forum ? I wouldn't, and I know that most readers wont, so your really only wasting your time, and the time of the members reading your topics, which is another reason why they will most likely quit reading any of your future topics, you should contribute on the forum your posting in, introduce yourself and write about what you do, most forums have an introduction forum, readers are more likely to trust someone with a good post count, that has good comments and views and that has expressed a good knowledge in the topics he has contributed in on the forum.

FROM http://jack-fx.com/tech-article/95.htm

Chosing Forum Software

Choosing the best forum software for you is critical to a new forum administrator about to start a community. While it may not be the key to your potential success, it can certainly help along the way. A forum or discussion board can be a very hard endeavor, but it can pay off in time with a large, loyal user database. But how do you choose the best software for you personally? Well, that’s when you must examine what you want and what your goals actually are.

Some things to consider:

What is my price range? How much am I willing to spend? What features are a necessity? Do I want forum modifications? Forum skins? There are several other questions you must consider, these are merely a few. With time you’ll get the answers, but it’s always best to plan.

In this article I’ll include a brief description and recommendation for the three leading forum software companies. From there on, it’s up to you to choose. Two are paid, one is free open source.  Keep in mind you’re not simply limited to these three options. There are scores of forum software systems out there of all sorts to fit your needs. Just try to find the one best for you.

The first sort of forum software I’ll discussion is Vbulletin. This is my personal favorite, so I might be a little biased. Anyway, you have two options as far as VB goes. You can buy the owned or leased license. Leased is $80 but is only good for one year - after that you have to renew it. Owned is owned - you can run it for life, but must pay a fee to get updates, which are often not necessary. I strongly recommend the owned license. Vbulletin has so many features, a huge user support system and a large amount of hacks and modifications over at vbulletin (dot) org. As far as I can tell, Vbulletin has every desired feature that other boards has. I would highly recommend this. The official website for vbulletin can be found at www.vbulletin.com.

The alternative paid forum software is Invision Power Board, or IPB for short. Invision Board started out as a free software but began licensing it’s product out later. While it may be cheaper than Vbulletin, in my opinion it doesn’t have as many or as good features. Still, if you’re willing to pay money for the software but not quite enough for vbulletin, you may want to consider Invision Power Board. The official website for Invision Power Board can be found at www.invisionpower.com.

The last forum software I am going to briefly outline is PHPBB. This stands for PHP - bulletin board. PHPBB is overall a decent open source software. However, it has been known to have numerous security holes, which is something you should definitely consider before devoting to this software. It has the basic features and a limited administration backend, but good user support. Plus, it’s free. The official website for PHPBB is www.phpbb.com.

Now, realize there are many more alternatives for forum software… perhaps hundreds. I recommend you shop around, compare, and price. See what you think would be best to get you started. This article was made merely to point you in the right direction. Good luck.

FROM: http://jack-fx.com/tech-article/93.htm