Many businesses or individuals in Windsor who want a website commonly ask the question: “Can I develop my own website?” The short answer to this question is yes, absolutely. In fact, developing a simple website is easier now than it ever has been. Programs such as Macromedia's Dreamweaver or Microsoft Front Page have made it easy to develop web pages with little to no skill. Simply pick a pre-made template, type in your text, add a couple of pictures and voila! You have yourself a website, right? Well, sort of.

There’s no denying it, the Internet has changed our lives – it’s allowed the entire world to communicate, share ideas, and do business faster and more efficiently than ever before. From Toronto to Tokyo, people are connecting with one another in ways that just a few years ago would have seemed impossible.

When you are developing even a simple website, the issue of programming language and framework can come up for things such as contact submission forms, photo galleries or any other dynamic content components that is generated by the web-server. When you are shopping for a web designer or web developer, you will hear them say “We program in PHP” or “We develop in ASP.NET/C#”. You might wonder what’s the difference between the programming languages, and is one better than the other?

This is a very brief outline of some commonly used terms that are used when inquiring about a merchant account, online payment processing and online payment gateway services. Understanding what each of these terms mean will help you on your way in determining which merchant account provider is best for you, and what all that jargon means on your merchant account application form!

If you are thinking about setting up an online store, the first thing you will probably realize is how much work is involved in getting your ecommerce store off the ground! I get a kick out of clients who call for an initial consultation and start asking questions like “Can we get this done in a week?”. More often than not, they are talking about the actual design/development of the online store, but haven’t put an ounce of planning or thought into the whole process of setting up an online store. The actual design and development of an ecommerce website is only a portion of the process of setting one up, this article will give a better representation of the things that you will need to research and plan for when launching an online store.

A very common misconception out there is if a person is a graphic designer, they can effectively design websites without any further training. The truth is, while similar in concept, the actual mechanics of graphic design and web design are very different. While it's true that many graphic designers evolve in to very competent web-designers, the transition is not at all automatic or without extensive learning of the various web-standards and coding conventions.