VISACT.COM IS ON-LINE

Our new Website VISACT.COM is now

on-line. In keeping with our ‘Keep It Simple’ philosophy we have kept the website simple in appearance and operation. The content of the site will increase as time goes by.

A simple website, like this, typically costs about $500 to $1000, depending on who you get to program it. Users can develop many of their own screens and text using standard products such as Microsoft Word. It pays to sketch out a design model on paper and supply as much input as possible to the web designer. This can help keep the cost down and ensure that you get something close to what you are looking for.

We designed this website and can offer this service to users requiring similar basic sites.

More exotic sites, with shopping baskets, credit card checkouts and the like can cost well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars but most smaller businesses just want a presence on the web and are not trying to become Amazon.com

Basic web hosting starts about $10 / month with domain name registration running upwards from $15 per year. Canadian site names are a little more expensive. Many Internet providers will host your site for free if you purchase Internet Services from them.

If the traffic at your site becomes heavy, you may be assessed a higher fee to host the site. The total space required to host a site also affects the price to host it, as more disk space is required for large complex sites.

The biggest challenge to a company’s website is to get registered with the various search engines that people use. Search engines are like the yellow pages. If you are not registered there, people won’t find you. You can do this yourself or pay companies to register your address. Moving up the search list from 2000^th to the top of the search list is another problem.

WINDOWS PROBLEMS RESOLVED

In previous issues we have described some of the problems that the Windows Operating System can run into and a few generic solutions that may cure the problem. In this issue I wanted to cover a few of the common simple problems that occur in Windows 98 & Windows ME and go over more specific solutions. Your hardware supplier and / or Microsoft may also be able to assist you with other problems if your software is registered.

SHUTDOWN PROBLEMS

In Windows 98 a number of conditions can result in the computer freezing when you shut it down. This then takes it a long time to start up the next day when scan disk starts.

Clicking the <Start> button, followed by <Run> and typing in “MSCONFIG” can often resolve this. In the program that comes up click on <Advanced> and turn off the options: <Enable Fast Shutdown> and turn on <Disable Scandisk On Start-up>

There is also a patch on the Windows Update page for one variation of this problem. Download the <Multiple Drives Shutdown> patch and install it to correct this condition. This works on many networked computers.

RECOVERY OPTIONS

Windows ME has a new recovery feature that snapshots Windows Registry and INI files before each software change. In our case a downloaded program crashed during installation resulting in a host of errors when Windows restarted. We went into <Accessories> / <System Tools> & picked the recovery option. We recovered from Tuesday and the problems disappeared.

Visual Accounting (905) 458-6650