NGKSoft also offers other business solutions. Their strongest service is basic web site design and development. They also specialize in marketing options such as brand identity which is something not every web development company offers. In addition to SEO services, NGKSoft also handles Pay Per Click (PPC) setup and maintenance. This is a nice extra since many businesses new to the web find PPC advertising quite intimidating. Click here to learn more about NGKSoft’s services.

You can learn even more about NGKSoft.com by visiting their website. They also have a nice list of web design resources you can read here.

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Thankfully, there’s a product out there called WebStudio that is a full-fledged website builder with ecommerce capabilities. With WebStudio you can build your own online store using their browser-based application in a matter of minutes. There are templates to pick from for your site so that it has a professional look to present to your customers. All of the site maintenance and updates are handled by the storeowner themselves so they always know that they’re in control and responsible for the content on their own site.

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I find myself relying more and more, as the demand for my development services increases, on finding an outside website design company to help me with the graphical front end to my own personal, side projects. This has proven especially true with the growth in my web development career where I’m more interested in getting side projects done quickly and efficiently so that I can get back to focusing on client work.

The vast improvement in free web design templates has also helped me out a lot lately. Again, for personal projects, a free or low-cost design template is a great way to get an alpha or beta version of a site idea out and into the wild quickly. I find myself prototyping layouts and admin panels for my projects using free templates more and more. When the project hits a certain point where I’m happy with the behind-the-scenes action I can then go back in and worry about improving the look and feel of the site for visitors.

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When I started this, Fore Score was the 10th result on the first page for a “golf stats” search on Google. Occasionally, it was dipping to the top of the 2nd page as well. After working on some of the code and putting extra effort into getting targeted backlinks with the right anchor text I’ve seen Fore Score rise to the #4 or #5 position depending on when you run the search. I’d say that’s a step in the right direction. I’ve managed to outrank some pretty large competitors: Sports Illustrated, Golf.com and USA Today to name three of the biggest.

This has been an interesting little experiment. In the world of Internet marketing, SEO and monitoring and tracking keywords and search engine results is a part of daily life. Internet marketers usually have a much better understanding of these things than someone like myself, who is mainly focused full-time on web development.

I’m probably going to switch my focus to another keyword or keyphrase here as the summer wraps up. I’ll keep everyone posted on the results.

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TicketStumbler has a really nice look and interface with cool slider widgets and an easy to navigate listing of the tickets for each event. Their search runs on natural language and they have geolocation features as well to show you upcoming events near your location. I don’t know how many tickets or events they’re currently storing but it has to be a pretty large figure; over 1 million tickets at least.

Right now, the site only lists tickets for the current seasonal sports in the United States: NFL, MLB, NCAA Football and the NHL. I’d assume the NBA is coming soon once we get closer to the start of the season.

For all of us in northern Ohio, on the edge of our seats for the upcoming football season, TicketStumbler has a great Cleveland Browns section with seats to all of the games this year.

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I recently took on a small site project for a local client and we decided to save time and money and use WordPress as the site’s backend. Normally, I would use a stripped down version of my own custom-built CMS for this kind of site but I was interested in trying something new.

So far I have the basic template made and the next step is converting it into a WordPress theme. After that, we’ll have some brief WordPress training and the site should be live.

What’s interesting about this project is that we won’t be using any of the blog features associated with WordPress. The only portion of the WordPress admin we’ll be taking advantage of is the “Pages” interface. All of the site’s content will be controlled with pages, and not posts, because we don’t want this site to look or function like a blog.

I’ve debated in the past whether or not WordPress (especially the 2.5 release) was ready for primetime as a content management system. I’m still not 100% sure it is but I’ll learn a lot with this local client. I’ll report back in a few months on how this all worked out.

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There are lots of companies offering cheap web hosting plans with outrageous guarantees about storage space, bandwidth and uptime. Of those three the most important is clearly uptime. Storage and bandwidth are getting cheaper by the day but a reliable server at a decent rate is becoming more and more of a rare commodity.

This lack of reliable web hosting is why I always stress to other web developers the importance of taking the extra time for research to compare hosting plans. It’s never, ever the wise move to jump for the cheapest web hosting solution. Instead, take your time and conduct due diligence before making a decision. Ask other people what hosts they use but keep in mind that every host is going to have horror stories. Make sure you ask a variety of people for their opinions before making a final decision.

It’s very important that you make the right choice for your web host. If you make a mistake and choose a lousy provider the downtime to switch hosts is going to drive you, and your client, insane and it might result in a lost job.

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Luckily, thanks to Web Hosting Geeks, I don’t have to take the time to do that. This site is overflowing with unbiased web hosting reviews for all sorts of different providers. Anyone looking to switch hosts or just get started in the web development game might want to check the site out.

The most convenient part of their site, in my eyes, is the break down of hosts by theme or category. They’ve taken all of the hosts in their system and selected the best for such things as: blogs, forums, ecommerce, etc. There is also a breakdown for Unix and Windows hosting.

Web Hosting Geeks provides more than reviews though. They also have an entire section of their site dedicated to web hosting articles. This is a great resource for anyone struggling with picking a host, managing their current host or those just interested in how web hosting really works. In addition to host related topics, there are articles that cover standard web development subjects such as traffic, SEO and domain names.

Picking the right web host is sometimes a hit or miss proposition especially if you’re just starting out. It’s important that you take the time to do proper research before picking a web host. Remember that going with the cheapest option isn’t always the best idea and that many people have probably gone before you and have advice to give. That’s what makes a site like Web Hosting Geeks is so valuable. You can use it to learn from others’ mistakes and make the right choice for yourself.

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I’ve used my fair share of Ecommerce Software in this time and, really, they’re all about the same. They come in two flavors: hosted and self-hosted. My preference is to always go with the hosted solution because while the costs are usually higher the headaches are few and far between. A lot of the hosted solutions also have really excellent hooks that let you tie into your own CMS or scripts.

The one big knock on hosted shopping cart packages is that you lose almost all control over the look and feel of the interface. This is unfortunate because the best Web Design firms out there didn’t exactly build most of these carts. This is where the hooks they provide or so important. With the right hooks and programming you can do as much as you can on your side of the equation to offset what’s lacking on the hosted side.

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With the wild popularity of BANS and phpBay Pro these days it seems like you’ve hit a gap in the marketplace for eBay affiliates. Can you take a minute to describe what phpBayAds does for those that haven’t heard yet and who is most likely to benefit from using it?

I’ve noticed the increase in the popularity of the eBay affiliate program for awhile now and I’ve even started using phpBayPro on a few websites of mine and found great success with it. I also noticed a lot of press on AuctionAds (now ShoppingAds) and it’s shortcomings.

All of these things got me thinking about what type of products I could develop to capitalize on the publicity surrounding the eBay affiliate program which eventually led me to creating phpBayAds.

phpBayAds lets you create adsense-styled ads that feature images and links to eBay auction products using your own eBay Affiliate ID. So when a user clicks on the ad and either makes a purchase or signs up for eBay you get the commissions.

Although results will vary from site to site, I think phpBayAds can benefit every webmaster who tries it as it adds an additional source of income to your websites. phpBayAds are fully customizable from the color of the links to the color of the border to the size of the ads and can be made to blend well with any and all websites.

What was some of your reasoning behind releasing phpBayAds for free?

When I initially set out to release phpBayAds I planned to sell it for somewhere around $20. However when I got to thinking about it I realized that at least at the start of my development that releasing it for free and getting the largest amount of users using the script is to my benefit.

I truly want this script to succeed and to do that I need people to use it and I need people to provide me with feedback. I’m hoping that as the script gets more exposure and as I add features that I may release a low cost Pro version which would include more features and functionality.

What are some of the benefits/disadvantages to you as a developer in making people run the script on their own server?

I think the main advantage of being able to run this script on your own server is that you are in full control. Your ads will always be running as long as your own web host is running. You don’t have to rely on any 3rd party website.

In the future as phpBayAds grows in popularity I would like to offer a hosted version for a low monthly cost which would let those less technical users also use the script.

What’s in store for future releases?

I have a number of features that I’d love to add as long as phpBayAds grows in popularity.

One major feature that I plan to add in the near future is reporting. I want to be able to track all of the clicks going through the ads, show what keywords are performing, what ad sizes are working best and present it all in one useful control panel.

As I mentioned above I’d also like to offer a hosted version of the script and perhaps additional ad sizes.

Lastly I’d like to make the ads more configurable by allowing you to set whether or not the ads should have images, price range of the items, geotargetting and more!

The future is bright for phpBayAds as long as people find it useful.

I want to thank Erik for taking the time to answer my questions. You can learn more about phpBayAds and download it for free over at his blog.

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