About two years ago, I had a go at commercial web site design. I put a medium-sized ad in a London classified ad paper. Nothing fancy: "Web designer seeks work ..." etc. This was expensive, about £500 for a month's run. 

Got a few replies. Lesson number one: advertise where clients of the calibre you want will see it. The clients I got thought £300 was a lot for a web site. They didn't want to pay web hosting. They wanted a lot of bang for their buck. 'Mission creep' was a term I grew to know and loathe. 

This set me thinking: how could I give these people all they could ever want, but not spend a lot of time and money? Lately, I realised how. 

So how can you get a full featured site up in a day? Easy (ish!). 

1. Mambo Content Management System http://www.mambo.com 

I wish I'd found this software a couple of years ago. It's freeware. The default set-up allows people without web design skills to update the site. It has a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) option. This adds HTMLArea code to text input form fields. Each HTML code input box becomes a mini HTML editor. 

If you can use Microsoft Word, you can add formatted HTML code to the site. 

To get it running you need to know how to install MySQL databases, or have PHPMyAdmin as part of your web-hosting package. 

You can add articles, edit them, send emails to members, and be contacted by users. 

The only criticisms I have of this software are: 

1. The admin interface is confusing. It's all there, just finding and using it is the problem! 

2. You need to search around template sites to find ones suited to your site purpose. I wanted simple, clean, business ones. Most of those available seem to have a fat graphic which covers half the screen. There are more restrained ones out there. 

These are minor gripes, compared to the relief of finding what is essentially a web site in a box. It can be installed in an hour, once you get familiar with it. 

To add ecommerce to your site: 

Oscommerce Shopping Cart http://www.oscommerce.com 

Again, this is a full-featured, freeware software. You can add lots of freeware 'plug-ins' to it, to get a professional shopping cart. 

Therein lies the danger. Some of these plug-ins require altering or overwriting the default cart files. When you try to upgrade the cart version later, you may 'break' it, by overwriting a plug-in, thus creating errors. 

The trick here is to only install plug-ins that add files (rather than overwrite them) or that require minor alterations to existing files. 

What I do is download all the versions of the plug-in type I need e.g. a WYSIWYG editor. I then choose the one which has the least files, or which creates a new directory for its files. If it requires that important files be overwritten, or is complex, I chuck it. 

Mambo and Oscommerce. Don't try to integrate them! Hyperlink from one to the other. I've tried integrations of other softwares, like PhpBB and PhpNuke. Fine, when it works, but when you upgrade one or the other, arrgh! 

*Keep databases separate*. If one goes skew-whiff, then at least the other will still work. Same goes for adding chat rooms and the like. If they're all running off the one database, and that database becomes corrupted ... 

It may offend your sense of tidiness for your visitors to have to sign up twice at your site, but you'll thank me for this sage advice later. Remember KISS is the basic rule of computing (Keep It Simple, Stupid!).

Web Conferencing is, very simply, a meeting, conference or seminar that is held over the World Wide Web. Web conferencing can refer to audio, video or text-based conversations and are conducted in real-time. 

Web conferencing is an incredibly useful resource for anyone who trades within a global market place. It literally allows you to be in two places at once - sitting at home or in your office whilst conducting a meeting with someone one the other side of the world. 

In its simplest form web conferencing can take the form of free downloads such as Microsoft NetMeeting or Yahoo Messenger. Subscribers can participate in text-based 'chats', inviting others into their conversations and being able to communication in real-time. Add a simple digital camera to this equation and you have the beginnings of an elementary web conferencing application. 

At the other end of the scale, the most sophisticated applications allow seminars and presentations to be made to hundreds of delegates at the same time. Meetings can be fully interactive, allowing question and answer sessions, the sharing of files and documents and slide show presentations to be broadcast. 

What Can I Do With Web Conferencing? 

How you choose to use web conferencing will very much depend upon your line of work. A webinar (an online seminar) is less interactive than a web meeting, but is a very effective means of presenting sales pitches, performance reviews and delivering staff training. 

A web meeting on the other hand, can be fully interactive not only in terms of audio and video but also by allowing the sharing of documents and files and viewing them online. 

What is Online Collaboration? 

Online collaboration is an excellent resource for project management, especially when team members are located in different geographical locations. Online collaboration provides an advanced level of document management and file sharing. Documents and files can be viewed, modified and updated online and in real time. 

What Are The Benefits Of Web Conferencing? 

The main benefits of web conferencing are to be found in terms of time and money savings. The need for travel is greatly reduced, and therefore so are the associated costs of travel - tickets, accommodation, subsistence, to name but a few. Employees spend less time waiting for flights, travel or just generally being away from their desk and therefore have more time to spend productively. 

Enhanced communication is another benefit of web conferencing. Where colleagues could perhaps only meet face to face a few times a year, for example, web conferencing allows them to meet on a daily basis, if required. With people talking more, work gets done more efficiently and more accurately. 

How Much Does It Cost? 

The cost of web conferencing depends on how sophisticated an application you need. Low-level, one-to-one systems can be set up these days for virtually nothing. The most advanced systems, unsurprisingly, can run into thousands of dollars. Careful research, however, and thoughtful analysis of what you need from a web conferencing system can allow you to budget accordingly and match a system to your needs. The chances are, if you are spending money on travel then you will recoup the cost of your web conferencing software over time.

In web ecommerce, you are going to find a wealth of information about what it is and what it can do for you within minutes of looking on the web. The problem with this is, it is hard to sort out the good from the bad and the worthless from the maybe-worth-something options. Relying on the bad stuff will leave you broke and everyone is in search of the best options to make them a ton. So, where do you begin when it comes to web ecommerce? 

In order to help you get started with web ecommerce, here are some of the things that anyone on the web selling can do to make their business more profitable and more potentially interesting to their buyers. 

• Provide quality and something that is user friendly to the client. If you want to sell, you need to convince them that you have something that is better than what is out there or something that isn’t out there at all. You need to provide for them a good experience as well. 

• Sales and promotions work as they would in the retail setting of a store. To get people in and buying, offering incentives can definitely help. 

• Provide a great looking website for them to visit. Make sure that it is user friendly and that it is easy to navigate as well. Things like photos and graphics that are exciting and appealing are great tools to use as well. 

• You can also do well by offering things like chat rooms and blogs that keep up the readership to your website. Allow them to play a role like this and they will likely book mark you and come back for more web ecommerce action! 

Web Ecommerce can be a remarkable tool when you use it well. So, as your first step, take the time to explore what ways you can create a great place for your customers and how you can make sure that they come and come back.