PSPINC Official Company Blog

Does your company sell your products or services online? If your company is in the manufacturing, distribution, or retail sales industry, then you are selling products, and I would like to talk about that another time.

A service business provides services regularly, rather than delivering goods as products. It is also considered a service when the customer comes to the location to receive service. In short, anything that does not involve the delivery of a product is a service.

For example, medical appointments, consulting, maintenance, beauty salon appointments, tutoring, parking lots, lodging, restaurants, and so on. Needless to say, these are things that are not sold on Amazon (although I'm sure Amazon will appear in the future). By integrating them into your website, you can use your site to sell these services.

At Pacific Software Publishing, Inc., we have developed custom reservation systems in the past. Why don't you consider selling your services online using the Internet for your business? Needless to say, all of the hosting services we offer have been developed so that they can be purchased online.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. 1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

Dreamersi is a web and email hosting platform developed in-house by Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. Let me tell you the story of how we started this service. In the early days of the Internet, if you wanted to have a domain name of your own and manage your web and email, you had to get a dedicated Internet connection. As well as set up and manage your domain server, web server, and email server. This was a huge cost and involved a lot of time and effort.

In 1996, we started hosting these services on our behalf, and in 2000, Dreamersi was launched as an integrated system that automated these services. The following is a description of the site at the time.

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From Dreamersi.net on September 1, 2000

Dreamersi.net is a new service that makes it easy to set up a mail server.
For an initial fee of $150* and a monthly fee of $75, you can have 50 email accounts and up to 20MB of web space for free. If you wish, we can also provide you with a complete service from acquiring your domain name to hosting.

You can also create and delete email accounts, change passwords, and create large numbers of email addresses in bulk by importing files through the administration screen. You can also create a website without any knowledge of HTML by using Homepage Wizard, and you can easily embed bulletin boards, guestbooks, counters, and other commonly needed features in your pages.

Dreamersi.net will greatly contribute to your company's CI using the Internet.

If you have any questions or inquiries, please contact us at info@dreamersi.net.

*Initial cost includes domain name ($70) and DNS, HTTP, FTP, SMTP, POP configuration ($80).

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Currently, our service is provided at dreamersi.com with the URL https://dreamersi.com instead of dreamersi.net. Our email has evolved from the POP-only service of that time to IMAP, with webmail as a part of our mail servers. As for web services, space has been expanded from 20MB to 10GB, and customers have their choice of web environments. They can choose custom (to add their HTML or other web files to the web server via FTP), WordPress, and WebdeXpress (a web builder tool developed in-house).

In addition, the original price of $150 initial fee + $70 monthly fee is now $250 per year with no initial fee. This is the story of Dreamersi, the flagship hosting service of Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. With 21 years of experience and evolution, we hope you will consider Dreamersi when choosing your hosting services.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. 1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

Many tools make it easy to build a website yourself these days (we offer a super easy-to-use web builder ourselves). However, building your website is only part of the battle. Once you build your website you want to make sure it is optimized for performance and SEO. Whether you build your website yourself or hire a professional to do it for you - below are some useful tips for you to be aware of to make sure your website is well-optimized.

Don’t use extremely large images

This includes both the size of the file and the dimensions of the image being used. It is important for users that when they visit a page on your website, that it loads quickly. The more your customers have to wait for your page to load, the more incentive they have to leave your site and go elsewhere. It’s for this reason that Google and other search engines consider this when it comes to determining your rank. Want to be ranked higher? Load faster!

What you can do to decrease the size of your images:

• Make sure your images are in the right dimensions. There is no need to load a 4000-pixel wide image on your website. Decreasing the dimensions will also decrease your file size.
• Use the save for web feature in Photoshop to decrease the size of your images.

For more details on this, watch a video we made about optimizing your images for the web using Adobe Photoshop.

Use real text, don’t embed it within your images

When you include site content within your images rather than as actual text you create issues both with the page speed and search engine optimization. The more images that the web browser needs to load, the longer it will take to load. Whereas plain text loads much quicker.

Search engines also rely on real text to index your site and serve it to users who search for particular words or phrases. Web crawlers cannot read the content within images, even if it is extremely valuable information. You are doing yourself a huge disservice by not allowing search engines to know about this content and provide it to their users.

In addition to these points, embedding images within text create accessibility issues for visually impaired individuals who rely on screen readers to dictate content to them.

Make sure your site is mobile-friendly

Everyone has slightly different statistics to back this up, but one thing that is universally agreed upon is the growth of web viewing through mobile devices. If your website is not mobile-friendly, those users who are viewing it on their smartphone are going to bounce almost immediately - potentially costing you a customer.

Your website should be coded to be responsive so it will scale to fit whatever type of device your visitors are viewing it on. We’ve talked about responsive design before, so be sure to read that blog post for more valuable information.

What you can do to make sure your website is mobile-friendly:

• Test it out for yourself, open your website on a mobile device. If it is really hard to read and everything looks small, chances are your website is not mobile-friendly. You could be due for a redesign. If you don’t know where to start, reach out to use or a free quote!
• If you are building a website yourself, make sure your web builder offers responsive themes. Our web builder, WebdeXpress, offers a ton of mobile-friendly themes.
• If you have hired a Web Developer and the website they are building for you isn’t readable on a smartphone, consider that a huge red flag. Every website we build at PSPINC is responsive and meant for devices of all types.

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These are just a few of the things we take into consideration when we build websites for customers. There are so many other things we do to ensure the websites we provide are well optimized, extremely visible, and perform to the best of their ability.

If you are looking for a free quote, or have a question for us please contact us on social media, by phone at 1-800-232-3889, or email at contact@pspinc.com. We would be happy to help make sure your website is a valuable tool for your business!

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. 1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

You can get away with an informational website, but mobile devices are often an afterthought when creating a website where programs run on the backend. Of course, when developing a program, the developer uses a computer to do it. In many cases, developers use powerful computers with multiple large screens for development.

The finished program is then tested on a computer to make sure it works. After this is complete, the developers think about the support for mobile devices. This is where a lot of problems often arise. The biggest difference is the size of the screen. Also, programs that require user input are often very difficult to use on mobile devices.

If you think about the actual usage of the Internet, you will find that there are more and more mobile users these days. So if you are creating a website or a program, you need to think about the usability of mobile devices from the beginning. In some cases, it may be necessary to develop programs that are designed to work on mobile devices first, and then figure out how to transfer that functionality to computers.

Also, more and more companies are ignoring computers and only developing programs for mobile devices. Are you thinking that the program you need is only for use on a computer? The mobile market has surpassed the computer market. Don't forget that when you are developing a web application.

Our company has experience in developing Internet programs for web browsers (mobile and desktop) and mobile applications. If you are interested, please contact us at any time. We will be happy to discuss the differences, advantages, and disadvantages of each development option.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. 1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

We often use the word "server" when talking about the Internet. What is a server? Some people ask me if a server is a type of device or a specific OS (operating system). For example, in my company, we have over 500 servers in our data center. It sounds great, but what does it mean?

What is the difference between a server and the PC that you are using?

The answer is, that both your PC and the server are basically the same. The PC you are using can be used as a server. However, a server has its role and certain modifications to perform that role. Let's look at the hardware differences, which are just modifications to keep the computer running stably, and are not absolutely necessary.

• Duplicate power supplies so if one of them breaks, your server can still run.
• The network cards are also duplicated so that if one of them breaks, your server can still run.
• More memory than a normal PC
• It uses multiple, high-speed CPUs
• More disk space

These are some of the ways a PC and a server differ, but beyond that, there are no other major differences.

Next, let's consider the usage.

On a PC, individuals use various software to do their work.

A server processes and delivers the necessary data to a large number of users.

A PC allows users to install and use any software they want, such as word processing software to write sentences. A server, however, is not something that an individual user can install and use as needed. From the beginning, the software installed on a server is determined based on its use. For example, a server with mail server software installed is designated to be a mail server. A server that stores data is called a storage server and a server that hosts websites is called a web server.

This is the difference between a server and a PC. Servers are difficult to set up and require expert knowledge to maintain and operate. This is the reason why people don't have servers in their offices.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. 1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

Permalinks are the URLs to your pages and posts on your WordPress website. These are permanent links search engines and web visitors see when they go to your site. For these reasons, it’s important to customize your WordPress permalinks for better SEO and visibility.

WordPress Permalinks Default Settings

This is not very user-friendly, because the address does not tell the users what the page is about. Search engines will also associate your pages with a number, which is not good for SEO. The URLs to your pages and posts should contain relevant keywords that reflect your content.

Changing WordPress Permalinks

Changing permalinks will affect existing pages and posts you have already created. If you have existing pages with good search engine performance, you should create 301 redirects to preserve your traffic. Install 301 Redirects – Easy Redirect Manager plugin to setup 301 redirects to prevent a loss of search ranking on your existing pages.

Ideal Settings for WordPress Permalinks

Customizing Permalinks

You can customize your permalinks further under “Custom Structure”. A popular custom structure uses /%category%/%postname%/, this would include the category name in the URL address. For an example, if you were to create a how to customize wordpress permalinks blog under the category “Better SEO”, the URL would come out as:

You see how this might improve page rankings, as the URL includes several relevant keywords that users might search for on Google.

Why Not Day and Month

Putting a date on your content URL tends to make your content seem outdated very quickly. When people are searching for answers, they are less likely to click on something dated 5 years ago. People want to know the content they click on is up-to-date and relevant.

However, there are times when putting a date in the URL makes sense. If you are a magazine publication, putting dates in the URLs will allow your users to search for specific content they want to read. High traffic news websites will also benefit from having proper date structure in their addresses.

In Summary

WordPress default permalink setting is not user-friendly, and it’s bad for SEO. Having the proper permalink setting configured from the start is ideal. Utilize a 301 redirect plugin if you have existing content and you want to preserve their traffic when making permalink updates.

Looking for reliable cPanel WordPress hosting? Check out Parcom’s 60% off promotion for only $2.90/month and get a free domain name. Launch your own WordPress website today! Need technical support or web design assistance? Call 800-232-3989.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. 1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

Common mistakes people make

Too Many Pages

Too Few Pages

Bloated Top-level Navigation

Multi-level Dropdown Navigation

Tips for designing your navigation

• While there is no minimum or maximum for top level navigation items, if you have more than 7 top level nav items, especially with a horizontal navigation, it is starting to get a bit busy.

• Avoid extremely lengthy page/navigation names

• Your site should be responsive (read a previous article for just some of the reasons) and when you are on a mobile device, your navigation should collapse into a hidden hamburger menu to make it easy for users to use your website.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. 1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPinc Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

What is responsive design?

Why is responsive design important?

Is your website mobile-friendly?

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. 1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPinc Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

Choosing the right typeface.

First of all, yes it’s called a typeface, not a font. Without getting into too many details, Helvetica is a typeface, 18pt Helvetica Light is a font. Moving on. Generally, when choosing a typeface for your website, the choice often comes down to serif vs sans-serif. There’s not necessarily a right or wrong answer here, but some people feel very strongly one way or the other. Recent studies have found that sans-serif may be slightly more readable than serif, but the margin is very slim and ultimately comes down to preference, and what you’re used to reading. Display fonts are fine for headers, but avoid using anything other than a basic serif or sans-serif for your body copy.

Font size and line-height.

The next step is deciding the right size and spacing for your chosen type. These values will need to change based on device type and screen size (see image below), but in regards to font sizing for a desktop the common rule is to choose something in the 16-21px range. Your line spacing (line-height) should be in the range of 130%-170% of your font size. For instance, if you have a font size of 16px, a line-height of 150% would equal 24px.

Line Length for maximum readability.

Another important aspect to typography for the web is setting a reasonable line length. There have been many studies on this, which all find that the ideal line length for maximum readability is somewhere in the range of 45-80 characters. This is probably one of the most easily overlooked topics of typography, but critical to retaining user attention. See the image below for examples of various character lengths.

A couple more things.

Anyone who has ever tried to read yellow text on a white background has experienced the importance of a proper contrast between your type and background color. A general rule is to shoot for a contrast of at least 4.5:1 between type and background, but this varies depending on the weight of your font. Finally, make sure to establish an appropriate visual hierarchy between headers and body copy. This will allow users to scan your content as needed to find what they’re looking for.

If you’d like some help figuring out the perfect way to reach your users by creating a beautiful, easily readable and scannable website, don’t hesitate to reach out. Let our design team help you out with that.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. 1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPinc Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

Enter "Responsive Design"

More than one way to build a responsive website

1. Mobile-first: It’s the idea of first building a website for the lowest browser size (mobile). This version should display the most basic functions and features. Anything that is perhaps unnecessary is hidden or pushed further down the page. As you advance to tablets and PC’s, additional interactions, effects, and complex layouts are slowly added over time.
2. Graceful degradation: This is the opposite, you start with the design at the most advanced end (desktop computers). As you scale down you start to limit functions, reduce the number of columns, and deliver a beautiful single-column mobile experience.

A few important considerations when building a responsive website

• As your website scales down to mobile, your navigation should be contained within a ‘hamburger menu’. It is a fairly universal practice to manage your navigation, users can click to expand a full list of navigation items. This will save you space and make your nav links more manageable.

• Previously mentioned, but as you scale down to mobile it is best to utilize a single column layout and stack everything to make it easy to read.

• Make sure to utilize proper line height, spacing, and size for your typography as your screen size decreases.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. 1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPinc Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.