Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Internet?
What is a Web Browser?
What is a Search Engine?
What is an ISP?
What is a Blog?
What are cookies and what do they do?
What is a Domain Name?
How do I get my own Domain Name?
How Do I Select a Domain Name?
What is DNS?
How do I switch from one DNS to another?
What if I don't know my user name and password?
What is a Web Hosting Service (Hosting)?
Will my Website appear the same to everyone?
How do I get Traffic to my Web Site?
What is Web Site Maintenance?
What is E-mail Marketing?
What is E-Commerce?
What is a Virus?
What is Spyware, and what can I do to protect myself from it?
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What is the Internet?
The history of the Internet dates back to the early development of communication networks. The idea of a computer network intended to allow general communication among users of various computers has developed through a large number of stages. The melting pot of developments brought together the network of networks that we know as the Internet. This included both technological developments and the merging together of existing network infrastructure and telecommunication systems.
The earliest versions of these ideas appeared in the late 1950s. Practical implementations of the concepts began during the late 1960s and 1970s. By the 1980s, technologies we now recognize as the basis of the modern Internet began to spread over the globe. In the 1990s the introduction of the World Wide Web (WWW) saw its use become commonplace.
The infrastructure of the Internet spread across the globe to create the world wide network of computers we know today. It spread throughout the Western nations and then begged a penetration into the developing countries, thus creating both unprecedented worldwide access to information and communications and a digital divide in access to this new infrastructure. The Internet went on to fundamentally alter and affect the economy of the world, including the economic implications of the dot-com bubble and offshore outsourcing of White-collar workers.
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What is a Web Browser?
A web browser is a software application that enables a user to display and interact with text, images, and other information typically located on a web page at a website on the World Wide Web or a local area network. Text and images on a web page can contain hyperlinks to other web pages at the same or different websites. Web browsers allow a user to quickly and easily access information provided on many web pages at many websites by traversing these links.
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What is a Search Engine?
A search engine is a program designed to help find information stored on a computer system such as the World Wide Web, inside a corporate or proprietary network or a personal computer. The search engine allows one to ask for content meeting specific criteria (typically those containing a given word or phrase) and retrieves a list of references that match those criteria. Search engines use regularly updated indexes to operate quickly and efficiently. Without further qualification, search engine usually refers to a Web search engine, which searches for information on the public Web. Other kinds of search engine are enterprise search engines, which search on intranets, personal search engines, which search individual personal computers, and mobile search engines.
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What is an ISP?
An ISP, or Internet Service Provider, is a business or organization that offers users access to the Internet and related services. Many but not all ISPs are telephone companies, but more and more cable and satellite are offering ISP services. ISPs provide services such as Internet transit, domain name, registration and hosting, dial-up or DSL access, leased line access and co-location.
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What is a Blog?
A weblog, which is usually shortened to blog, is a website where regular entries are made (such as in a journal or diary) and presented in reverse chronological order. Blogs often offer commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. Most blogs are primarily textual although many focus on photographs, video or audio.
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What are cookies and what do they do?
An HTTP cookie, or a Web cookie, is a parcel of text sent by a server to a web browser and then sent back unchanged by the browser each time it accesses that server. HTTP cookies are used for authenticating, tracking, and maintaining specific information about users, such as site preferences and the contents of their electronic shopping carts. The term "cookie" is derived from “magic cookie”, a well-known concept in computing which inspired both the idea and the name of HTTP cookies.
Cookies have been of concern for Internet privacy, since they can be used for tracking browsing behavior. As a result, they have been subject to legislation in various countries such as the United States and in the European Union. Cookies have also been criticized because the identification of users they provide is not always accurate and because they could potentially be used for network attacks. Some alternatives to cookies exist, but each has its own drawbacks.
Cookies are also subject to a number of misconceptions, mostly based on the erroneous notion that they are computer programs. In fact, cookies are simple pieces of data unable to perform any operation by themselves. In particular, they are neither spyware nor viruses, despite the detection of cookies from certain sites by many anti-spyware products.
Most modern browsers allow users to decide whether to accept cookies, but rejection makes some websites unusable. For example, shopping baskets implemented using cookies do not work if cookies are rejected.
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What is a Domain Name?
A domain name is a name that is entered into a computer (e.g. as part of a web site or other URL, or an e-mail address) and then looked up in the global Domain System which informs the computer of the IP address(es) with that name.
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How do I get my own Domain Name?
There are many web sites that can help you with a domain name. Here are some of the companies that can set a domain name up for you.
http://www.networksolutions.com
http://www.planetdomain.com/1cheapdomains/
http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/default.asp?isc=goox1001bd
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How Do I Select a Domain Name?
When choosing a Domain Name, it is best if you can keep it close in name to your business or whatever it is the web site pertains to. For example if the name of your business is John’s Pizzeria, a sample Domain Name might be www.johnspizza.com. Once you have selected a Domain Name you can go to an on-line registry to see if the name is available. See "How do I get my own Domain Name?".
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What is DNS?
The domain name system (DNS) is the way that Internet domain names are located and translated into Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. For example, DNS translates www.yahoo.com to its IP address (64.58.76.224).
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How do I switch from one DNS to another?
First, you need to know where you purchased your current domain name. If the person who designed your current website bought the domain name for you, you must contact that person/company (the previous website host) to get the DNS/IP information from them.
Then, you simply use your user name and password to log on to their website and follow the prompts to switch your DNS from your former IP address to the new IP address that Nordic has given you.
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What if I don't know my user name and password?
If you don’t know your user name and password, you may be able to use the credit card number used for the original purchase of your domain name to get the log-in information you need. In any case, you would begin by contacting your current website hosting provider for assistance with recovering your user name and password.
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What is a Web Hosting Service (Hosting)?
A web hosting service is a type of Internet Hosting Service that provides individuals, organizations and users with online systems for storing information, images, video, or any content accessible via the 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. Web hosts can also provide data center space and connectivity to the Internet for servers they do not own to be located in their data center.
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Will my Website appear the same to everyone?
Users will see some things differently depending on their browser and screen resolution setting.
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How do I get Traffic to my Web Site?
Getting people to your web site is a matter of Marketing. The following are some ways you can market your web site to get the most traffic to it.
Linking
Linking can be by either fee based or free.
Fee based links, mean that you pay for your link to be shown other peoples’ sites. It can be costly, so the best suggestion that we can give you is to research the sites that you want to link with before buying. Know what you are getting before you pay for linking. If you want to link on an e-zine (on-line magazine) or news letter, be sure that they have at least 500+ subscribers before agreeing to pay the fee.
The unpaid method is through article creation. Article creation is a lot of hard work up front with a long term return on investment. When creating articles, they should be relevant to your site and products.
Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization is a way to get your web pages a decent ranking by a search engine such a GOOGLE, and thereby pulling people to your website by it relevance. There is much upkeep involved in Search Engine Optimization.
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What is Web Site Maintenance?
Web Site Maintenance is the time allowed for changes to be made to your website. The best way to perform Web Site Maintenance is to schedule it to be at the same time, all of the time. Choose any day of the month for it at a time that you think there will not be much traffic going to it. Create a list of changes to be made so the changes can be done quickly and efficiently. Or you can hire a professional maintenance company such as Nordic Interactive to provide the maintenance for you.
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What is E-mail Marketing?
E-mail marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every e-mail sent to a potential or current customer could be considered e-mail marketing. However, the term is usually used to refer to:
- Sending e-mails with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its current or old customers and to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business.
- Sending e-mails with the purpose of acquiring new customers or convincing old customers to buy something immediately.
- Adding advertisements in e-mails sent by other companies to their customers.
Researchers estimate that as of 2004 the E-mail Marketing industry's revenue has surpassed the $1 billion/yr mark.
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What is E-Commerce?
Electronic commerce, EC, e-commerce or ecommerce is the distributing, buying, selling, marketing, and servicing of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet. It can involve electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, e-marketing, online marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), automated inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. It typically uses electronic communications technology such as the Internet, e-mail, e-books, databases, and mobile phones.
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What is a Virus?
In computer security, a computer virus is a self-replicating computer program that spreads by inserting copies of itself into other executable code or documents. A computer virus behaves in a way similar to a biological virus, which spreads by inserting itself into living cells. Extending the analogy, the insertion of a virus into the program is termed as an "infection", and the infected file, or executable code that is not part of a file, is called a "host". Viruses are one of the several types of malicious software or malware. In common parlance, the term virus is often extended to refer to worm, trojan horses and other sorts of malware; viruses in the narrow sense of the word are less common than they used to be, compared to other forms of malware.
While viruses can be intentionally destructive, for example, by destroying data, many other viruses are fairly benign or merely annoying. Some viruses have a delayed payload, which is sometimes called a bomb. For example, a virus might display a message on a specific day or wait until it has infected a certain number of hosts. A time bomb occurs during a particular date or time, and a logic bomb occurs when the user of a computer takes an action that triggers the bomb. The predominant negative effect of viruses is their uncontrolled self-reproduction, which wastes or overwhelms computer resources.
Today, viruses are somewhat less common than network-borne worms, due to the popularity of the Internet. Anti-virus software originally designed to protect computers from viruses, has in turn expanded to cover worms and other threats such as spyware, identity theft and adware.
Included in the many types of viruses are:
A Trojan horse is just a computer program. The program pretends to do one thing (like claim to be a picture) but actually does damage when you start it (it can completely erase your files). Trojan horses cannot replicate automatically.
A worm is a piece of software that uses computer networks and security flaws to create copies of itself. A copy of the worm will scan the network for any other machine that has a specific security flaw. It replicates itself to the new machine using the security flaw, and then starts replicating.
An e-mail virus will use an e-mail message as a mode of transport, and usually will copy itself by automatically mailing itself to hundreds of people in the victim's address book.
Computer viruses are called viruses because they share some traits of types of biological viruses.
A computer virus will pass from one computer to another like a real life biological virus passes from person to person. For example, it is estimated by experts that the Mydoom worm infected a quarter-million computers in a single day in January of 2004. In March of 1999, the Melissa virus spread so rapidly that it forced Microsoft and a number of other very large companies to completely turn off their e-mail systems until the virus could be dealt with. Another example is the ILOVEYOU virus which occurred in 2000 had a similarly disastrous effect.
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What is Spyware, and what can I do to protect myself from it?
The term spyware refers to a broad category of malicious software designed to intercept or take partial control of a computer’s operation without the informed consent of that machine's owner or legitimate user. While the term taken literally suggests software that surreptitiously monitors the user, it has come to refer more broadly to software that subverts the computer's operation for the benefit of a third party.
In simpler terms, spyware is a type of program that watches after what users do with their computer and then send this information to a hacker over the internet. Spyware can collect many different types of information about a user. More benign programs can attempt to track what types of websites a user visits and send this information to an advertisement agency. More malicious versions can try to record what a user types to try to intercept passwords or credit card numbers. Yet other versions simply launch popups with advertisements.
Spyware differs from viruses and worms in that it does not usually self-replicate. Like many recent viruses, however, spyware – by design – exploits infected computers for commercial gain. Typical tactics furthering this goal include delivery of unsolicited popup advertisements; theft of personal information (including financial information such as credit card numbers; monitoring of Web-browsing activity for marketing purposes; or routing of HTTP requests to advertising sites.
As of 2005, spyware has become one of the pre-eminent security threats to computer-systems running Microsoft Windows operating systems (and especially to users of Internet Explorer because of that browser's collaboration with the Windows operating system). Some malware on the Linux and Mac OS X platforms has behavior similar to Windows spyware, but to date has not become anywhere near as widespread due to their comparatively smaller user base and better security.
As the spyware threat has worsened, a number of techniques have emerged to counteract it. These include programs designed to remove or to block spyware, as well as various user practices which reduce the chance of getting spyware on a system.
Many programmers and some commercial firms have released products designed to remove or block spyware. Programs such as Lavasoft's Ad-Aware SE and Spybot-Search and Destroy rapidly gained popularity as effective tools to remove, and in some cases intercept, spyware programs. Other well-known anti-spyware products include Webroot Spy Sweeper, PC Tools' Spyware Doctor, ParetoLogic's XoftSpy, and Sunbelt's CounterSpy (which uses a forked codebase from the GIANT Anti-Spyware product).
Major anti-virus firms such as Symantec, McAfee have come later to the table, adding anti-spyware features to their existing anti-virus products. Early on, anti-virus firms expressed reluctance to add anti-spyware functions, citing lawsuits brought by spyware authors against the authors of web sites and programs which described their products as "spyware". However, recent versions of these major firms' home and business anti-virus products do include anti-spyware functions, albeit treated differently from viruses. Symantec Anti-Virus, for instance, categorizes spyware programs as "extended threats" and now offers real-time protection from them (as it does for viruses).
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