Web Design, the Malaysia Way

Registry, Registrant, Registrar, Domain Name Reseller, Admin contact, Billing contact, Technical contact… It is never easy to understand the difference between them.

You are lucky if you have one good domain name service provider who take care of your domain name so well that you don’t need to deal with those terms!

Finding a good domain name provider is not a hit-or-miss decision. To understand your rights as a domain name owner, it would be helpful if you know what should be done by a domain name company.

Companies who provide you the domain name registration services, should at least be responsible for the following matters,

1. Assist the domain name owner to maintain up-to-date registration info (WHOIS records). At least remind your customers every one or two years!

2. Collect renewal fee and renew the domain name. Reminder and a short note on successful renewal is a must!

3. Able to provide their customers an access to the domain name manager to make any changes. Customers should have the rights to ask for this information. Most Registrars provide domain name manager, except a few country-level registrars such as Vietname or Cambodia Nic.

4. To respect domain name owner’s decision to choose for new domain name service provider. Full support such as providing Auth Code without delay, is the industries ethics!

To all domain name owner:

if any of your domain name service provider who failed to comply any of the items above, it is not end of the world or dead-lock. They can’t just ignore you like that. They are always ways to bypass them and reclaims your rights. Let me know if you need any help! You can reach me at pin@1.com.my.

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Like building house, you need a plan. The house owner don’t draw the plan, but the architect did. Why? Isn’t that house owner the best person who know the best of his own house and what he wants?

See, the plan outlines how the house is built. It is a detailed engineering drawing which outlines more specifications in a format commonly understood by every contractors.

Website plan, in this case - should be done by a Web Design Architect, not the Owner.

It reduces dispute that always happen between web design companies and website owner. Both side failed to have the same picture, because the picture is not done correctly at first place!

1. Who knows you might have come out with a good name that worth some good money like pizza.com? Check your domain name availability from sources you can trust. NEVER use Netsol.com, they have a strange policy that block you from register the new-found-name from others between a certain period of time.

2. Find a domain name reseller with shorter processing time. Domain name registration can be done in minutes except those country-based domain name such as .com.my which take hours to a day. Before placing an order, make sure your reseller can process your domain name without any delay.

3. After your domain name registered successfully, run WHOIS to make sure the domain name was registered under your name or organization. Make sure it’s your email under the Registrant section. Your name and email are the two most important information to prove the ownership of your domain.

4. You can find two DNS address associated with every domain name. Remember when you have entered a domain name in the web brower and hit enter? The query sent to DNS to find out where is your web server, etc. If your DNS server is down, the query will fail. Check out this DNS uptime report!

5. Your domain name expires every year unless you have renewed it in time. A good renewal system by your reseller is important and make sure you don’t miss any of this important date like Advertlets.com

Suggestion to choose a good domain name

I have seen many revamp of website done without a proper system study. This works only if this is just a cosmetic upgrade. System study is important, but most of the time it was skipped.

I don’t think any company in Malaysia will pay for a system study before revamping their website!

To be frank, I believe it is far more important than any other stage of the whole revamping process. Perhaps, it is easier to look at it this way…

System Study + Development = Good Website

Where, System study can be done by one company which is experienced enough to draft out the whole blue print, while Developement can be outsourced to another company to make sure the work done properly!

Isn’t that iPhone is done this way?

Yes, I came across this advertisement slogan just recently. It was not the funny statement that catch my attention, but the advertised guarantee that promise top 10 ranking in Yahoo & Google search engines.

It says the guarantee apply to any keyword. I wonder how this can be done? If only this can be done, why not their website appears when I did a quick check on keyword ‘web design malaysia‘.

This is as weird as building your website in Jungle? Misleading and over promising!

1. CSS replaces Table
2. Blogger replaces Web designer
3. PageRank replaces Design
4. Website is no longer an one-off project
5. Creative agency develops trendy website, but not useful website
6. Reducing page size even though we have faster Internet connection now
7. Video is uploaded to Youtube than your own web server
8. Web developers charge lesser now
9. Web maintenance is expensive

Watch the Video Blog by Bob, founder of GoDaddy.com. Bob talked about 10 very useful tips of picking a domain name, interesting!

Event: The 4th Webmaster Malaysia Gathering (a.k.a WMG)
Date: 27th September 2008
Venue: Level 10, Suntech Building, Penang.
Time: 7pm to 10pm

*Admission - totally FREE.
*Halal Food and Drinks will be served.

Featured Speakers:

Rohan Thomas (Microsoft)
KC Lau (KClau.com)
TL Guan (Security Engineer)
Derric Chew (derricchew.com)

Well, if you are coming, as usual, reply a “I will certainly be there!” to this thread. Else, you may send your name and phone number (for registration purpose) to limcs@webmastermalaysia.com.

I always believe that a nice WordPress theme should be designed as simple as possible. A WordPress theme is the presentation of content of a Blog. Therefore, I believe the theme should be simple enough in order to make the content stand out, conveying messages across clearly.

Still, simple is the most difficult part of it. A simple theme should also carry their own identity. The following are two WordPress theme designed by Lucian E. Marin. They are simple and nice!

Andrea, most beautiful WordPress theme ever made, inspired by an incredible woman. See the Preview Page. Download Now!

The Journalist, or redefinition of minimalist, is a smart, sophisticated WordPress theme designed for professional journalists. See the Preview Page. Download Now!

If this is a revamp of your current website, I bet you wish to see some improvement. Sadly to say, face lit upgrade has becoming the de facto measurement to the result of the revamp. Key important parameters including number of visitors and conversion rate are not taken into consideration.

Ask website owners around you, most of them do not even have a solid idea of the goal of their website. Make sure your goal is measurable. Number of online order or inquiry are good example of goal.

Ok, now if we have a goal, it would be much easier. If you have 100 visitors a month, and 10 out of them make an online order. That means, you have 10% conversion rate in that particular month. If you are revamping, you should have some figures in mind. Example, you might be looking at 1,000 visitors after the revamp and probably to increase the conversion rate to 20%.

If everything works (no shortcut, lot of hardwork for sure), you will be getting 200 orders a month. If each new sales generates RM10 revenue, that means your monthly revenue would be around RM2,000 a month.

See, it is never hard to estimate a budget. Just make sure you are clear about the purpose of revamp, in a MEASURABLE way!

(Using website to reduce your operation cost is another way to determine your budget, we will talk about this in my next post)