NOTHING VENTURED, NOTHING GAINED
Setting up an E-Commerce website can be an expensive venture. There are a number of services and products that must be purchased and maintained, on a monthly basis. The most challenging aspect of E-Commerce is the Host, or Web Space Provider, that sells secure services. Will the SP (Service Provider) be reliable? What is their uptime? What are my guarantees? Important questions for you to ask.

Then there is the task of finding a service provider that will not demand a portion of your monthly transactions! And, that is on top of your regular monthly bill. A single month could very well cost you over $500, depending upon your total transactions.

Spinner Media is not satisfied with that type of service. After extensive research we have found that using a third party E-Commerce provider is not only beneficial but quite cost effective. The company we have decided upon is Paypal.

For more complete information, please feel free to visit the Paypal website.

Quick Web Tips for Security

You know you are on a secure site when that little pad lock in the bottom right of your browser takes on a glow and locks tight. The internet standard for encryption is 128. Anything higher gets the US military angry.

The second hint that you are inside a secure website is the "https://" at the beginning of a website's url (Uniform Resource Locator). That little "s" stands for secure. In truth you can plunk an "s" there anytime you want, but most servers will have no clue what you are trying to get to and will give you an error. This example as well as the above one, denote an SSL service. (See Below)

What does SSL mean?
SSL is an acronym for Secure Socket Layer. It is a protocol used for authenticating and encrypting web traffic. For web traffic to be authenticated means that your browser is able to verify the identity of the remote server. For web traffic to be encrypted means that traffic between the server and your browser is scrambled so that it is unintelgible if intercepted.

Here is a (short) list of secure browsers. (Click the browser to have a look)

This is my personal favorite browser. As with all great products it is a work in progress, so there are little bugs here and there, but the community that maintains it is pretty close and very easy to contact should you run into difficulties. Mozilla follows all recognized standards and is excellent for web site development. It is almost guaranteed that if it works in Mozilla it will work anywhere. Mozilla is an open source product.

Anyone that doesn't know about IE, must have recently ventured out of their cave. IE is now up to version 6 with 2 service packs, and you need to do the updates! IE follows most of the recognized standards and inserts a great number of their own. Although fun and fancy it is not guaranteed that if you develop for IE that a page will work in all browsers.

Netscape has the privilege of saying they helped the internet take hold. With their original browsers they allowed web travelers to see the Net in a whole new way. Of all the browsers Mozilla and Netscape are the most alike in their styles and philosophy. The major difference is that Netscape is owned by AOL and has a corporate angle to it.

This little browser follows all the rules and offers a clean, crisp and fast browsing experience. Opera comes in 2 flavors, a buyable version or, the freeware model. The only difference is that there is ad ware in the freeware version.

This is in no way the only browsers on the market today, but it is a list of the major players. Don't hesitate to download and give one, or all, a try.

If you have further questions please feel free to email us at info@spinnermedia.net.

www.spinnermedia.net