Flash has gained immense web popularity because it provides a convenient way to let web sites include interactive and animated movies, which could not have been possible otherwise. In the beginning, Flash made its mark because it provides advantages in two sectors; animated banner ads and Flash intros. Web designers considered Flash to be the latest, and that having Flash projected them as better designers.

Even though Flash movies as ad banners continues because of a high click thru rate as compared to static gifts, there is a marked and continuing decline in their usage. There are several reasons for this, and are all connected to the relative advantages and disadvantages of using animated Flash movies as web-site intros.

One of the reasons for the decreasing popularity of Flash intros is because it fails to fulfill any useful purpose. It is simply an animated visual presentation of appearing /disappearing images and text messages from various parts of the screen with all the animation and interactivity actually serving no particular purpose, in many cases not ever succeeding in attracting the visitor’s attention.

Another disadvantage is that your homepage takes much more time to load when you use Flash intros. When you create a Flash intro, it surely has raster graphics, which increase the file size of the .swf file leading to a greater overall time to fully load your homepage. Now it would be too much to expect your time conscious visitor to keep waiting while your Flash intro gets loaded and then again go on to read your animated sales pitches. You know very well that had you been in the shoes of your visitor you would have just clicked out instead of waiting.

Embedding music and sound files in Flash intro movies increases their file sizes again leading to greater download time. Moreover, not every visitor is a music lover and even if he is, he may not like music forced upon him instead of being able to listen to what he prefers.

However, the biggest disadvantage of using a Flash intro is difficulty in being picked up by search engines, which cannot index text embedded in movies. It is also wrong to suppose that placing keywords in Meta tags or within HTML comment tags is going to overcome this problem as even an advanced search engine like Google faces problems indexing text and following links created in Flash movies.

All this is not to deny the advantages of Flash intros. If you use animation and interactive features properly, it certainly makes Flash catchy. Flash intros are a great way to thrill your visitors in case they have a lot of time on their hands. Another advantage with Flash intros is that if visitors are at a higher bandwidth or if they have time to let your intros to load you have a great opportunity to showcase your corporate objectives through a Flash intro as compared to a static page. It is also possible to build good interactive menus in a Flash intro. These menus tend to serve as excellent navigation guides for the site’s human visitors.

Albert

Today, if you look around the internet you can find lots and lots of web hosts. So much so that you may not know which web host to choose. It is important to make a right choice while selecting a web host because many factors need to be taken into account. It is important to make a right choice right from the start because it is very hard to move from one web host to another. As moving from one web host to another may require a significant amount of effort and a significant amount of money as well.

Customer Support

When choosing a web host one of the most important features that you must look at is customer support. Customer support can save you from a lot of trouble and probably some money as well. Customer support enables you to report a problem, or ask for help whenever you need it, that is why it is an important feature to have. If possible, try to make sure that your web host has 24/7 customer support. 24/7 customer support is needed because a problem may occur anytime, however you need to be careful to ensure that your web host does indeed provide 24/7 customer support. You can check if your web host has 24/7 customer support by contacting their customer support a few times to test them.

Disk Space and Bandwith

The next feature that you will need to look at is disc space and bandwidth. Disc space is the amount of space that is available to you. Bandwidth on the other hand refers to the amount of information that can be transferred. For example, if you have a page that is 75KB. Whenever some one views that page 75KB of you bandwidth would be used. There is no exact way to determine how much disc space and bandwidth you will need. It is impossible to determine how much disc space and bandwidth you will need because each persons needs is different from one another. A word of advice here is that don’t get tricked by web host that claim that they will provide 500GB of disc space and 2TB of disc space for $6.95. It is impossible for a web host to provide that kind of service at that kind of price because the cost of doing so will be much more than profit. If you see that a web host claim to give extraordinary amount of disc space and bandwidth than the particular web host is overselling. Overselling gives the ability to the web host to provide more disc space and bandwidth to their customer than they have, however if the web host runs out of disc space and bandwidth you will not get what you have been promised. So beware of web hosts with extraordinary claims especially if the price is at rock bottom.

Uptime

Another feature that you need to look at when choosing a web host is uptime. Uptime is important because if your website is not up no one will see your website. If no one can see your website what is the point of having a website at all. The amount of uptime that you are looking for is 99.9% uptime. 100% uptime although may seem good is not entirely good. 100% uptime may mean that the web host does not update their server or do regular maintenance which may result in sloppy server performance or even cause the server to crash. However 100% uptime is possible but only if the web host perform several complex procedures which may be very costly.

Operating System

One more feature, that you will need to look at when choosing a web host is the Operating System (OS) which is being used. Typically there are two types of OS which are used by web hosts on their server. The two types of OS are Windows and Linux. It is important to look at the OS because depending on the OS you can install different types of script on your web hosting account. Personally I prefer Linux based servers because Linux based servers are more flexible because Linux open sourced. Open source basically mean that people can modify the software giving Linux more flexibility and variety compared to Windows.

Expandability

The last feature that you need to look at when choosing a web host is expandability. Expandability is often neglected by people when choosing a web host. Expandability is basically the ability to expand. The ability to expand is very important because a web site will grow and when a website does grow it will demand for more resources. If the most powerful package of a web host is the one you need right from the start chances are that is not the right web host for you because you cannot grow anymore if you need to do so.

If you can’t make your choice, I recommend the hosting company I use myself:

All in all, always remember to look at customer support, disc space and bandwidth, uptime, OS, and expandability when choosing a web host.

Albert