Articles

Databases and Web Development

Irina Ponomareva

Database-driven web development survived the general decline that hit the Internet industry at the start of this century, and is now one of the most important and fastest growing branches of IT. The time and cost benefits that come with web-based dynamic applications continue to stimulate increasing interest as large, medium and small businesses inevitably realise its importance.

How Can Search Engines Help You with Your Business?

Dmitry Antonoff
Irina Ponomareva

The world wide network known as the Internet, is gradually becoming more and more similar to the physical space inhabited by human beings. Surely, you know (or knew some day) one or two 'nerds' who long ago settled in the Internetland, and now find there everything to serve their needs. They work and earn their living in the Internetland, find their newspapers, books, magazines, movies, and music, have fun, visit e-shops, and pay for everything with e-money. They occasionally leave their hermitage, for a short time, to appease their hunger and to find more confirmations that 'Offlinia' is pretty lifeless.

Fortunately, the majority of people employ the Internet within reasonable limits. Its user numbers continuously grow, and while travelling through the plains, jungles and cities of the World Wide Web, there’s a slim chance that they might sooner or later come across your site. If this site is devoted to your business issues, it is quite likely that occasionally a visitor will become a new client, a partner, or an employee. It is important, therefore, to present your information in an attractive style. Still more important is making it easily accessible in the WWW. In this article we will do our best to clarify the latter issue, that is, how to achieve good visibility of your resource in the Internet.

How to Create a Site That Will Be Liked by People As Well As by Robots

Irina Ponomareva

Why would you want a site?

Why indeed? The unceasing growth of the World Wide Web has resulted in an enormous number of sites, and new ones show up daily. Why would you want to create more? And what do you think about the widespread opinion that the Internet has been made for evil, and that people may get permanently lost there, breaking their connections with real life and all its virtues?

There is only one way to reply to this. Good or evil dwells inside us, not in the tools intended for everyday use. If the Internet is evil then so is the car, since people meet their deaths under its wheels. Fire, knives, pills and even water find uses in good and bad. It depends entirely on context. So how should we use this phenomenon, still pretty new for the majority of us, to make it work for people, not against them? What can it do for the hypothetical site owner described below?

Inappropriate Website Promotion Methods

Dmitry Antonoff
Irina Ponomareva

The list of dubious means of search engine optimisation lengthens year on year. In theory, of course, we could all employ such means, but there are ethical issues to be tackled. And even if we ignore fair-play principles for a moment, it’s worth pointing out that cheap, scam-like promotion methods usually look cheap and scam-like, annoy Internet users and have a short lifespan because counter-measures are created.

This article describes misleading, illegal and unethical methods of search engine optimisation, explains why they are wrong and highlights the possible adverse results.