Competent, friendly and creative computer services for your short-term or long-term projects, large and small systems. Here are some of the services we provide. If you don't see what you're looking for, please don't hesitate to ask us about it. We are available for national and international projects.
- software and hardware installation, configuration, and upgrades
- assistance with file management, database, inventory control
- network support
- website development, assistance, training (brochure available)
- troubleshooting
- recommending
- training
Experienced with most common software and hardware systems, including IBM mainframe, mid-range, PCs and Macs
Clients have included IBM, Amdahl, Apple Computer, Conoco, LSUHSC and many more
Detailed resumes available
25+ years experience
ZydeTech member
Here's a Freebie: Creating Your Own Website
Friends have asked what steps we took to create the initial website. (It's gone through several iterations by now.) So the details of how we did it follow. These are our steps. They aren't the only ones, so do your own research. (That's our disclaimer.)
We've had ideas for a variety of endeavors for some time. A friend in New Orleans strongly encouraged us to grab our website name before it was too late. Finally, we were propelled into action when we saw a website created by someone who had a major credit card debt and had turned to the internet community to ask for help, and people were indeed helping her. We were inspired to present our ideas to the wild wild web.
- You must register a name, have a computer to host your site (your own computer if it's up 24-7-365) or someone else's computer (aka a server or "hosting service"), and you probably want email capability. We went to a source we trusted CNET to get reviews of various outfits who offered such services. When you consider a hosting service and domain name registration service, please take into account all that they provide. CNET is a good source for that. Based on CNET's reviews, we thought Catalog.com offered good value for the money ($70 a year for registration, hosting, email, tech support; the breakdown is $35 for domain name registration, and $35 for hosting--hosting is free only if you have a membership; expect to pay more if you want more features). We signed up. Another good hosting service is Aplus.net. Their service is $71 for hosting, and, after the first year, $8 for domain name registration. The next level of service for Aplus.net is about $120 per year and provides some nice goodies.
- Next we began to develop our site. HTML. We initially grabbed HTML source from another website we liked. From your browser (Internet Explorer, Netscape, Opera, etc.) click on View and Source, then Select All, Copy, and Paste into a text program. That source got pasted into a simple text program (Notepad on a PC, Simple Text on a Mac) and saved as an index.html file. The index.html is your home page. We then searched for basic HTML tutorial programs on the web to educate ourselves. We found a few we liked, Webmonkey, Annabella's HTML Help and HTML Primer. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is developing standards for HTML, so you might also want to check out W3C's Getting Started with HTML. Then we labored over the HTML.
- Next we uploaded various index.html, page1.html, page2.html, etc. files up to our site's home directory via Catalog.com's file manager, and uploaded image files (gif or jpg format) to the site's image directory.
- Finally, the search engines have to know about you. We did this thru Submit Corner. You can also visit individual search engines (Yahoo, Google, etc.) to submit directly to them. Expect to wait for as long as three months before your website shows up in a search. Yahoo is popular and if your site is commercial (ie for profit), you should expect to pay a fee to be listed with them. However if you wait (three months), no doubt you will be listed for free. Google, another search engine, as of a January, 2003 survey, was top-rated. At a minimum, submit your site to Google and then Yahoo...then sit back and wait. Keep in mind that web crawlers find sites for search engine listing by following links. It's therefore to your benefit to have some links to other sites and have them link to you.
- No doubt you will spend hours upon hours tweaking your website. You can make a very simple site. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are a useful tool you'll want to explore. Keep in mind, the more HTML code you have on a page, the longer it takes to load. Don't get carried away with tables. Those with T1 lines or DSL most likely won't have a problem, but keep in mind the poor folks with dial-up connections. In four or five years dial-up connections will be a thing of the past as broadband connections become cheaper, but as of late 2002, some 80% of home users have dial-up. Check out your results on these recomme nded browsers: Internet Explorer v6, Netscape v6 (Mozilla), and Opera v6. Don't forget the Macintosh crowd. Try at least Internet Explorer for Macintosh v5 . Once you see how your own pages look using different browsers and especially older versions of the browers, you'll have more sympathy for web developers and what they have to contend with. (W3C is trying to change that by creating some standards.)
- If you're setting up your site to sell a product or service, you might want to take advantage of PayPal to receive payments, and Vista Print to get nice, inexpensive business cards. See our Links page for the links to these sites.
If we discover any other nifty info that you should know, we'll post it here. Meanwhile, we're open for business. We do provide personalized one-on-one instruction, or a 2-page website package (we develop your basic site, then show you how to change and maintain it for a one-time fee). Please note that your annual hosting fee is not included in our rates. If you need or want help, please contact us.