24 ways

Putting the World into "World Wide Web" by Molly E. Holzschlag

Despite the fact that the Web has been international in scope from its inception, the predominant mass of Web sites are written in English or another left-to-right language. Sites are typically designed visually for Western culture, and rely on an enormous body of practices for usability, information architecture and interaction design that are by and large centric to the Western world.

There are certainly many reasons this is true, but as more and more Web sites realize the benefits of bringing their products and services to diverse, global markets, the more demand there will be on Web designers and developers to understand how to put the World into World Wide Web.

Internationalization

Internationalization is:

“...the design and development of a product, application or document content that enables easy localization for target audiences that vary in culture, region, or language.”

Many Web designers and developers have at least heard, if not read, about Internationalization. We understand that the Web is in fact worldwide, but many of us never have the opportunity to work with Internationalization. Or, when we do, think of it in purely technical terms, such as “which character set do I use?”

At first glance, it might seem to many that Internationalization is the act of making Web sites available to international audiences. And while that is in fact true, this isn’t done by broad-stroking techniques and technologies. Instead, it involves a far more narrow understanding of geographical, cultural and linguistic differences in specific areas of the world. This is referred to as localization and is the act of making a Web site make sense in the context of the region, culture and language(s) the people using the site are most familiar with.

Internationalization itself includes the following technical tasks:

• Ensuring no barrier exists to the localization of sites. Of critical importance in the planning stages of a site for Internationalized audiences, the role of the developer is to ensure that no barrier exists. This means being able to perform such tasks as enabling Unicode and making sure legacy character encodings are properly handled.
• Preparing markup and CSS with Internationalization in mind. The earlier in the site development process this occurs, the better. Issues such as ensuring that you can support bidirectional text, identifying language, and using CSS to support non-Latin typographic features.
• Enabling code to support local, regional, language or culturally related references. Examples in this category would include time/date formats, localization of calendars, numbering systems, sorting of lists and managing international forms of addresses.
• Empowering the user. Sites must be architected so the user can easily choose or implement the localized alternative most appropriate to them.

Localization

Localization is the:

...adaptation of a product, application or document content to meet the language, cultural and other requirements of a specific target market (a “locale”).

So here’s where we get down to thinking about the more sociological and anthropological concerns. Some of the primary localization issues are:

• Numeric formats. Different languages and cultures use numbering systems unlike ours. So, any time we need to use numbers, such as in an ordered list, we have to have a means of representing the accurate numbering system for the locale in question.
• Money, honey! That’s right. I’ve got a pocketful of ugly U.S. dollars (why is U.S. money so unimaginative?). But I also have a drawer full of Japanese Yen, Australian Dollars, and Great British Pounds. Currency, how it’s calculated and how it’s represented is always a consideration when dealing with localization.
• Using symbols, icons and colors properly. Using certain symbols or icons on sites where they might offend or confuse is certainly not in the best interest of a site that wants to sell or promote a product, service or information type. Moreover, the colors we use are surprisingly persuasive – or detrimental. Think about colors that represent death, for example. In many parts of Asia, white is the color of death. In most of the Western world, black represents death. For Catholic Europe, shades of purple (especially lavender) have represented Christ on the cross and mourning since at least Victorian times. When Walt Disney World Europe launched an ad campaign using a lot of purple and very glitzy imagery, millions of dollars were lost as a result of this seeming subtle issue. Instead of experiencing joy and celebration at the ads, the European audience, particularly the French, found the marketing to be overly American, aggressive, depressing and basically unappealing. Along with this and other cultural blunders, Disney Europe has become a well-known case study for businesses wishing to become international. By failing to understand localization differences, and how powerful color and imagery act on the human psyche, designers and developers are put to more of a disadvantage when attempting to communicate with a given culture.
• Choosing appropriate references to objects and ideas. What seems perfectly natural in one culture in terms of visual objects and ideas can get confused in another environment. One of my favorite cases of this has to do with Gerber baby food. In the U.S., the baby food is marketed using a cute baby on the package. Most people in the U.S. culturally do not make an immediate association that what is being represented on the label is what is inside the container. However, when Gerber expanded to Africa, where many people don’t read, and where visual associations are less abstract, people made the inference that a baby on the cover of a jar of food represented what is in fact in the jar. You can imagine how confused and even angry people became. Using such approaches as a marketing ploy in the wrong locale can and will render the marketing a failure.

As you can see, the act of localization is one that can have profound impact on the success of a business or organization as it seeks to become available to more and more people across the globe.

Rethinking Design in the Context of Culture

While well-educated designers and those individuals working specifically for companies that do a lot of localization understand these nuances, most of us don’t get exposed to these ideas. Yet, we begin to see how necessary it becomes to have an awareness of not just the technical aspects of Internationalization, but the socio-cultural ones within localization.

What’s more, the bulk of information we have when it comes to designing sites typically comes from studies and work done on sites built in English and promoted to Western culture at large. We’re making a critical mistake by not including diverse languages and cultural issues within our usability and information architecture studies.

Consider the following design from the BBC:

In this case, we’re dealing with English, which is read left to right. We are also dealing with U.K. cultural norms. Notice the following:

• Location of of navigation
• Use of the color red
• Use of diverse symbols
• Mix of symbols, icons and photos
• Location of Search

Now look at this design, which is the Arabic version of the BBC News, read right to left, and dealing with cultural norms within the Arabic-speaking world.

Notice the following:

• Location of of navigation (location switches to the right)
• Use of the color blue (blue is considered the “safest” global color)
• No use of symbols and icons whatsoever
• Limitation of imagery to photos
• In most cases, the photos show people, not objects
• Location of Search

Admittedly, some choices here are more obvious than others in terms of why they were made. But one thing that stands out is that the placement of search is the same for both versions. Is this the result of a specific localization decision, or based on what we believe about usability at large? This is exactly the kind of question that designers working on localization have to seek answers to, instead of relying on popular best practices and belief systems that exist for English-only Web sites.

It’s a Wide World Web After All

From this brief article on Internationalization, it becomes apparent that the art and science of creating sites for global audiences requires a lot more preparation and planning than one might think at first glance. Developers and designers not working to address these issues specifically due to time or awareness will do well to at least understand the basic process of making sites more culturally savvy, and better prepared for any future global expansion.

One thing is certain: We not only are on a dramatic learning curve for designing and developing Web sites as it is, the need to localize sites is going to become more and more a part of the day to day work. Understanding aspects of what makes a site international and local will not only help you expand your skill set and make you more marketable, but it will also expand your understanding of the world and the people within it, how they relate to and use the Web, and how you can help make their experience the best one possible.

About the author

Molly E. Holzschlag is a well-known Web standards advocate, instructor, and author. Among her thirty-plus books is the recent The Zen of CSS Design, co-authored with Dave Shea. The book artfully showcases the most progressive csszengarden.com designs. Molly is an invited expert to the Internationalization Activity GEO working group at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and is Group Lead of the Web Standards Project (WaSP). A popular and colorful individual, you can catch up with Molly’s blog at, where else? http://molly.com/.

Web Hosting Service

A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to provide their own websites accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server they own for use by their clients as well as providing Internet connectivity, typically in a data center. Webhosts can also provide data center space and connectivity to the Internet for servers they do not own to be located in their data center, called colocation.

Service Scope

The scopes of hosting services vary widely. The most basic is webpage and small-scale file hosting, where files can be uploaded via File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or a Web interface. The files are usually delivered to the Web "as is" or with little processing. Many Internet service providers (ISPs) offer this service for free to their subscribers. People can also obtain Web page hosting from other, alternative service providers. Personal web site hosting is typically free, advertisement-sponsored, or cheap. Business web site hosting often has a higher expense.

Single page hosting is generally sufficient only for personal web pages. A complex site calls for a more comprehensive package that provides database support and application development platforms (e.g. PHP, Java, and ASP.NET). These facilities allow the customers to write or install scripts for applications like forums and content management. For e-commerce, SSL is also required.

The host may also provide an interface control panel (e.g. cPanel, Plesk or others) for managing the Web server and installing scripts as well as other services like e-mail. Recently, Web.com holds many patents it claims cover broad methods for website building and web control panels. Hostopia, a large wholesale host, recently purchased a license to use that technology from web.com for 10% of retail revenues. Web.com recently sued Go Daddy as well for similar patent infringement.

Some hosts specialize in certain software or services (e.g. e-commerce). They are commonly used by larger companies to outsource network infrastructure to a hosting company. To find a web hosting company, there are searchable directories that can be used. One must be extremely careful when searching for a new company because many of the people promoting service providers are actually affiliates and the reviews are biased.

Hosting reliability and uptime

Hosting uptime refers to the percentage of time the host is accessible via the internet. Many providers state that they aim for a 99.9% uptime, but there may be server restarts and planned (or unplanned) maintenance in any hosting environment.

A common claim from the popular hosting providers is '99% or 99.9% server uptime' but this often refers only to a server being powered on and doesn't account for network downtime. Real downtime can potentially be larger than the percentage guaranteed by the provider. Many providers tie uptime, and accessibility, into their own Service Level Agreement, or SLA. SLAs may or may not include refunds, or reduced costs if performance goals are not met.

Types of Hosting

Hosting services limited to the Web:

• Free web hosting service: is free, (sometimes) advertisement-supported web hosting, and is often limited when compared to paid hosting.
• Shared web hosting service: one's Web site is placed on the same server as many other sites, ranging from a few to hundreds or thousands. Typically, all domains may share a common pool of server resources, such as RAM and the CPU. A shared website may be hosted with a reseller.
• Reseller web hosting: allows clients to become web hosts themselves. Resellers could function, for individual domains, under any combination of these listed types of hosting, depending on who they are affiliated with as a provider. Resellers' accounts may vary tremendously in size: they may have their own virtual dedicated server to a colocated server.
• Virtual Dedicated Server: dividing a server into virtual servers, where each user feels like they're on their own dedicated server, but they're actually sharing a server with many other users. The users may have root access to their own virtual space. This is also known as a virtual private server or VPS.
• Dedicated hosting service: the user gets his or her own Web server and gains full control over it (root access for Linux/administrator access for Windows); however, the user typically does not own the server. Another type of Dedicated hosting is Self-Managed or Unmanaged. This is usually the least expensive for Dedicated plans. The user has full administrative access to the box, which means the client is responsible for the security and maintenance of his own dedicated box.
• Managed hosting service: the user gets his or her own Web server but is not allowed full control over it (root access for Linux/administrator access for Windows); however, they are allowed to manage their data via FTP or other remote management tools. The user is disallowed full control so that the provider can guarantee quality of service by not allowing the user to modify the server or potentially create configuration problems. The user typically does not own the server. The server is leased to the client.
• Colocation web hosting service: similar to the dedicated web hosting service, but the user owns the colo server; the hosting company provides physical space that the server takes up and takes care of the server. This is the most powerful and expensive type of the web hosting service. In most cases, the colocation provider may provide little to no support directly for their client's machine, providing only the electrical, Internet access, and storage facilities for the server. In most cases for colo, the client would have his own administrator visit the data center on site to do any hardware upgrades or changes.
• Clustered hosting: having multiple servers hosting the same content for better resource utilization.
• Grid hosting : this form of distributed hosting is when a server cluster acts like a grid and is composed of multiple nodes.

Some specific types of hosting provided by web host service providers:

• File hosting service: hosts not web pages but files
• Image hosting service
• Video hosting service
• Blog hosting service
• One-click hosting
• Shopping cart software

Obtaining hosting

Web hosting is often provided as part of a general Internet access plan; there are many free and paid providers offering these services.

A customer needs to evaluate the requirements of the application to choose what kind of hosting to use. Such considerations include database server software, scripting software, and operating system. Most hosting providers provide Linux-based web hosting which offers a wide range of different software. A typical configuration for a Linux server is the LAMP platform: Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP/Perl/Python. The webhosting client may want to have other services, such as email for their business domain, databases or multi-media services for streaming media. A customer may also choose Windows for its hosting platform. The customer still can choose from PHP, Perl, and Python but may also use ASP .Net or Classic ASP.

Web hosting packages often include a Web Content Management System, so the end-user doesn't have to worry about the more technical aspects.

One may also search the Internet to find active webhosting message boards that may provide feedback on what type of webhosting company may suit his/her needs.

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Try yourself as a web hosting reseller first. This will help you to avoid hardware equipment expenses, gain stupendous experience in the web hosting area and make money. You may enter this business even without an intimate knowledge of web hosting servers and operating systems configuring, developing administration scripts, building servers, or security. Being web hosting reseller you learn all necessary information about a successful web hosting leading. You learn how to provide your clients with reliable and cheap web hosting without big initial investments.

What should I consider when choosing a cheap web hosting account?

There are four basic items you should think about when selecting the right web hosting account:

• How large will your web site be? Estimate the number of pages your web site will have and their content. How many images, music files, video files or other content do you plan to add? The more pages and files, the more disk space you will require.
• How busy will your web site be? Estimate the number of customers who will visit your site on a busy day. The more people on your web site, the more data transfer you will require.
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What is Clustered Hosting

Shared hosting seams about to exhaust its resource potential. Web users are most unlikely to share server power with thousands of users at shared environment. Just one "fat" web site might overload the system and get a server down; meanwhile one site is creaming others are out of the game. Alternatively to shared web hosting uses were offered to use VPS hosting, dedicated hosting etc., i.e. pay more and be happy to get your own virtual private server. Seams not bad, hah? But still : technologies move forward and it's awesome! Its evolution resulted in a new hosting class - clustered hosting.

Benefits of Clustered Hosting

Clustered webhosting provides some more benefits to users in comparison to shared hosting. Let's parallel cluster opportunities and shared hosting operation to our real life.

You know, shared and clustered web hosting might be compared in a funny game. Just like a game with 3 seats and 4 players who complete to take place, shared web hosting providing resources to some users leave others with nothing to do but wait. Clustered hosting looks like you sit on two chairs simultaneously and enjoy the peace. Yeah, nice scenario to relax and watch others to compete for the space to take, isn't it?

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Profits With Cheap Web Hosting And Google Analytics

Particularly for the small business owner, maximizing their online presence can be critical to their overall business success. Unquestioningly the first step is to find cheap web hosting. Thanks to the proliferation of shared hosting situations, this is more possible than ever. In short, web hosting packages are pretty much a dime a dozen and shared hosting is the most popular kind of hosting available.

Low-Cost Web Hosting V. Free Hosting

In order to have an online presence (a website), you must seek the services of a web hosting company. These entities are either large companies with data centers full of servers broadcasting websites online via fast connections or they are smaller firms renting a dedicated server in such a data center. These smaller firms, in turn, resell space and bandwidth on the dedicated server to their clients.

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Editor's notice: Web hosting packages ranked by the best value/price.
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