Wouldn’t it be great though if you could find even more new customers, increase business with your existing ones, and spend less on all those directories and publications that look great but increasingly fail to deliver?

Face it, you need a website and here are 10 reasons why:

1. Attract More Customers

 
Advertising your business through the good old channels may bring in a trickle of enquiries but these days more and more people are turning to the web as their ‘directory’ of choice. According to the Office for National Statistics 77% of people in the UK now rely on the Internet to find information about goods and services. If a directory or local paper offered this kind of coverage, you’d be biting their hand off (and happily paying a fortune, no doubt) to ensure you had coverage. Having a website significantly improves your reach no matter what products or services you offer.

2. Promote and Advertise Your Products and Services

 
So people may know you exist but do they know exactly what you do? Competition is stiff out there with more and more companies now fighting for the hearts and minds of customers. How do you differentiate yourself from the competition and make sure your offering stands out?

A website is a great way of accomplishing this. Your website can outline your full range of services or products in far more detail than any other form of advertising and can make sure you’re not just on people’s short lists when it comes to making a decision but that you’re their favourite.

A website can also extend your reach. Websites are not just local, they are global. Most small businesses are only able to market to their surrounding areas. With a website you can take your goods and services across the country and around the world, if you so choose, at no extra cost.

3. Provide Company Information 24/7

 
Most people surf the web at highly unsociable hours when most businesses are closed and most business owners are trying to get some well deserved rest. Your website never sleeps, never takes a holiday and works every single weekend! Whatever you may be doing, your website will be on duty 24/7.

It’ll be providing potential new customers with information on your services, it’ll be promoting your latest offers, and if you’re not there to take an enquiry in person, it can even take enquiries on your behalf (day or night) forwarding them to you so you can get back to people as soon as you’re free. Having a website is the equivalent of having an employee working around the clock, 365 days a year, without having to pay them!

4. Enhance Your Company Image

 
Your website can convey the professional and up-to-date image needed to compete in today’s increasingly aggressive marketplace. A professional website will improve your overall impression with the public and will show that you’re serious about what you do.

You’re great – so prove it! If your line of work means you need particular checks, accreditations or licences in order to comply with legislation (or just to make people have more confidence in you), your website can outline these clearly and give them the confidence they need in order to take their first punt.

Of course, your customers are your greatest advocates. All of us can claim we offer a service better than the next guy but after a while, it all starts to sound quite samey. How many times have you seen companies claiming to be ‘the best’ or ‘the UK’s leading’? So who do you believe? The customers, that’s who! A testimonial from a customer is far more powerful than any claim you make about yourself, however much you believe in it yourself. And your website is the perfect place to showcase these.

Which leads us nicely on to…

5. Improve Customer Confidence

 
A professional looking website will also do wonders for customer retention. Your customers will develop a greater sense of confidence in your organisation and customer confidence will keep them loyal and keep them coming back for more! Loyal customers will also refer you to their friends and acquaintances. Much as they love you though, they’re not going to be carrying your business card around with them, are they? But if they can point people in the direction of your website, job done!

6. Enhance Customer Service

 
A website is a great vehicle for people leading busy lives (and face it, aren’t we all these days?). With just a few mouse clicks, customers can get access to information on your hours, your services, your products, your prices etc. Furthermore, people who are regular email users will appreciate being able to send an email or asking questions via your website. It may be good to talk, but these days, electronic communication is becoming the norm for many. Make sure you’re keeping communication channels open and accessible, and your customers happy.

7. Support Your Other Forms of Advertising

 
We’re not advocating that you stop all other forms of advertising – far from it. Your website can add some serious weight to your other endeavours and turn an OK campaign into a truly knock-out one. Leaflets, ads, directory listings etc, can only provide so much information and give people a flavour of what you do. Your website can give people the full picture and can be updated at any time, meaning the info you’re providing is always current.

8. Sock It to Your Competition!

 
Ever wondered why your competitors seem to be gaining an edge on you? It’s probably because they have a website! Wouldn’t it be great to have a level playing field, or better still, get the upper hand? With 77% of people now using the internet to find what they’re looking for (we refer you back to point 1 here), not having a website means handing business to your competitors.

Making sure you have a website that can be found and stands out, meaning you’ll seriously increase the chances of being top of people’s list of ‘preferred suppliers’. To put it bluntly, if you don’t have a website you will be losing business to companies that do.

9. Keep Things Current

 
Think of your website as an online brochure, but better. It is distinct from a print brochure in that changes can be made and mistakes can be corrected almost instantaneously, at little or no cost. With your website, existing and potential customers can get the latest updates on your products, services and offers, on a daily or weekly basis.

Customer requirements change and your business is probably evolving in line with these changing demands. It’s more than likely that the products or services you provide now differ from those you provided when you started out. Your website can keep potential new customers and existing clients in the know, sharing company news with them and promoting your new offerings.

10. Save on Marketing Costs

 
Having a well-designed website that promotes your business is very effective and far more economical than other forms of advertising or more traditional marketing. The only initial outlay is the build of the website, but it’s a one-time cost and the Return on Investment (ROI) is huge. Updating and maintenance costs are minimal compared with other recurring advertising costs. Getting a website up and running should cost you no more than placing an ad in a local publication, especially if you know who to talk to.

Er, is this a good time to mention that this is exactly what we do?

At one time it was perhaps difficult to understand how a website could help your business. Now that’s changed, today more and more people are looking for products, services and business information via the web every hour of every day.
If you’re not there, they will find someone who is!

OK, so we’ve gone on a bit but we’re passionate about this and we know we can help. If you’re ready or just want to find out more about what we could do for you, why not get in touch? We’re a friendly bunch. Get in contact with us here… or check out our own website www.shiftscape.com

So, sit back with a cuppa and take a look at some of these awesome WordPress stats, delivered in an informal yet informative style.

The full size image can be viewed and downloaded from here…

This current wave of imagery is all due to a great little application called Instagram coupled with the equally great Apple iPhone (Instagram for Android is coming soon). Instagram allows you to take a simple picture and then apply a series of lighting, focus, blur and framing effects to it.

In fact, so cool is Instagram, in December 2011 Apple named it App of the year.

Wikipedia says this;

Instagram is a free photo sharing application that allows users to take a photo, apply a digital filter, then share it on a variety of social networking services including Instagram’s own. A distinctive feature confines photos into a square shape, in homage to both the Kodak Instamatic and Polaroid cameras. This contrasts with the 4:3 aspect ratio more typically used by mobile device cameras.

As an example and to prove the point here is a simple snap I took of a humble child’s toy (Even though it’s the uber cool Lego Space Shuttle I bought on the 8th July 2011, the day of the last launch).

I added a retro lighting effect (Amaro) and focussed on the centre of the picture blurring out towards the edges. The finished product is much more visually interesting than the original. Here’s a quick look at all of the pre-defined image filters currently available in the application;

As an interesting aside, it’s odd that we crave more and more mega pixels on our digital cameras and shiny new smartphones but intentionally blur the finished output.

The Instagram application can save the finished photo to your camera roll and also share it out to a selection of social media platforms. But, how do you easily use the image on your WordPress website or Blog? Enter “Instagrate to WordPress”.

Instagrate to WordPress is a great plugin for the WordPress platform that automatically creates a new post for each new Instagram picture you snap with the application.

At the time of writing the plugin is at version 1.1.0 and has been downloaded approx 2000 times with a rating of 4.5 stars.

Setting up and using Instagrate to WordPress couldn’t be simpler;
Once you have downloaded the app to your iPhone and registered an account.
Download the plugin and install it or use the “Add New” plugin option from within WordPress.
Authenticate the plugin with Instagram via the built in login process.
Tweek the settings as required and bingo, you’re up and running.
Start snapping away.

Here’s a quick look at the plugin settings page;

If you already have images in Instagram you can choose where to start new posts from. After which each new Instagram picture will create a new WordPress post, although it takes approx 2 mins for the API calls and new post to be created.
The image size can be set depending on your theme or personal preference.
Also the image style can be set by entering a little bit of simple CSS.
Images can link to instagram or be stored in your media library.
In the above settings you’ll see I’ve specified the post category too.
You can also choose whether the image is used for the main post, a featured image or both.

Well that’s a brief look at Instagram and the new Instagrate to WordPress plugin. Have a look for yourself and give it a go, you’ll be adding beautiful images to your site in under 10 minutes.

Feel free to leave a comment on this article or shout if you’ve got any questions.

But, have you ever taken a closer look at the way you can search for images using Google? I use it quite a lot and I’m often surprised at how few people know about it.

Lets take a quick look at a few ways of using Google image search to;
• Find images
• Find similar images
• Identify unknown images
• Find web pages containing images
• Find matching items based on colour

Find Images

First of all, lets take a quick look at the basics of finding an image.

Go to the Google search page.
Click “Images” from the menu.
In this example I’m looking for images of the classic 70′s Seiko Speedtimer so I type the search term, “seiko 6139 6002″.

The search returns thumbnail results that link off to various web pages containing images of the watch in question.
The menu down the left hand side of the page can be used to refine the results.

Find Visually Similar Images

In this example we are going to find images that are “visually similar” or look like another image.
This is useful for finding images based on colour, composition or detail within an image rather than known search terms.

Go to the Google search page.
Click “Images” from the menu.
Click on the camera icon inside the search box.

You will get a drop down that allows you to enter either an existing URL to an image or upload an image.
Click the “Search” button.

The search returns thumbnail results that are “visually similar” to the original image you entered the URL for, or uploaded.
The menu down the left hand side of the page can be used to refine the results.

Identify Unknown Images

In this example we’ll see how we can identify an image, the image equivalent of Shazam if you will.
We’ll use the beautiful “Miranda and the Tempest” by John William Waterhouse.

To do this follow the same steps as the example above.
If the image is well known or if Google has indexed it previously, you’ll get the following results.

Find Web Pages Containing Images

In this example we’ll see how we can find web pages where an image has been used.
We’ll use an illustration by local Poole artist and illustrator Jo Parry for our search.

To do this follow the same steps as the example above.
If the image has been used on a number of web pages that Google has indexed, you’ll get the following results.

Find Matching Items Based on Colour

In this example we are going to find something that matches the colour of an existing item.
This is useful for finding cushions that match a lampshade without searching for “red cushions”. (I know, I know!)

To do this follow the same steps as the example above.
The image used for the search would be the lampshade, in a rather fetching shade of raspberry red.
After you’ve clicked the “Search” button add the following text into the search box;
“cushion cover uk” as we are interested in raspberry red cushion covers to purchase in the UK.

Now click the blue “magnifying glass” search button on the right.

The search returns thumbnail results for “cushion cover uk” that match the colour of the original image.

Hopefully we’ve given you a quick overview of a couple of ways you can get the most out of Google image search.
Please leave a comment and add any other tips you know about.

Example: In the 7th episode of series G, Fry asked the question “How many men have been President of the United States?” and showed a clip of US President Barack Obama declaring himself the 44th person to have taken the oath. This is incorrect since Grover Cleveland was elected to two non-consecutive terms, meaning only 43 people have taken the oath.

We often espouse something we think to be true but have never really bothered to find out for ourselves. It’s easily done and I expect we are all guilty of it.

“You accidentally swallow about eight spiders a year in your sleep”
“Plasma TV’s need to be re-gassed or re-charged periodically”
“Sugary food makes young children hyper”

And who can argue with my personal favourite;

“Wagon Wheels were much bigger when we were kids”

What’s all this got to do with technology or web design I hear you cry? Well, allow me to explain.

How many times have you been asked or heard the following?

“Make the page a bit shorter”
“Avoid scrolling at all costs”
“Ahh, but your content isn’t above the fold”

If you’ve ever heard any of those, do two things…

Firsty, staple a Wagon Wheel to their forehead, to facilitate a closer look.
(Original with the jam bit in it, not the toffee or caramel “Johnny come lately”)

Secondly, explain this is the year 2011 and websites are not just viewed in 800×600

Let’s get a definition of “Above the Fold” by seeing what Wikipedia say;

“Above the fold” is a graphic design concept that refers to the location of an important news story or a visually appealing photograph on the upper half of the front page of a newspaper, or in case of webpages, the part of a page that’s visible without scrolling. Most papers are delivered and displayed to customers folded up, meaning that only the top half of the front page is visible. Thus, an item that is “above the fold” may be one that the editors feel will entice people to buy the paper.

This term has been extended and used in web development to refer the portions of a webpage that can be visible without scrolling. However, some have suggested that this term is vague as screen sizes vary greatly between users, especially in an era where websites are viewed with mobile devices as much as home computers.

On a more serious note, re-educate the person who raises the “Above the Fold” view and explain why it’s an outdated concept. I can find no more elegant a way of doing this, than by pointing them here;

A great article called Life Below 600px by Paddy Donnelly.

I’ll leave you with this thought. Wagon Wheels have supposedly shrunk in size as time has progressed. Burton’s Foods Ltd have denied this, instead suggest that the supposed shrinkage is due to an adult’s childhood memory of eating a Wagon Wheel held in a much smaller hand.

Challenge common misconception, biscuit related or not.

Here’s what Apple say;

“iOS 5 includes more than 200 new features for your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch.”

Well this post is all about the really useful features you discover and how to use them. All you need to do is post a comment explaining a new iOS5 tips or feature and I’ll add them to this post. Simple.

General iOS5 Tips

Word Suggestions
When writing text in an application double tap a word to see additional suggestions.

Mute Button
When you enable sounds with the mute button on the side it now shows the volume level.

Location Services Status Bar Icon
If you have the the Location Service Status Bar Icon set to on, via Settings > Location Services > System Services > Status Bar Icon, it will turn purple when an application is using Location Services.

iOS Software Updates
To check for available iOS updates, select Settings > General > Software Update. If a software update is available, you will see a description of the available update and a button labelled “Update Now”. Clicking this button will begin downloading the update. Updates to iOS5 are deltas or differences so are expected to be much smaller than the usual updates.
via Jason Pope

Emoji Emoticons
You can now type all sorts of Emoji emoticons (smileys) by using the new Emoji keyboard. To activate this goto Settings > General > Keyboard > International Keyboards > Add New Keyboard > Emoji. Now whenever you’re typing, tap the globe icon next to the space bar to select all manner of stuff.

Automatic Downloads
If you have multiple iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch devices, you can now enable Automatic Downloads. Go to Settings > Store and enable it for Music, Apps and iBooks. Now when you download something to one of your devices it will be automatically downloaded to your others.

Find My Friends
Not strictly iOS5 but download this free app from the Apple App Store to locate your friends and family from an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. Very similar to the “Find My iPhone” app but for people.
via Jason Pope

Keyboard Shortcuts
Use abbreviations that expand into commonly used full words. Go to Settings > General > Keyboard > Add New Shortcut… The default shortcut is omw which will expand into “On my way!”
via Polevault Web

Camera

Access to Photos
When using the camera, swipe from left to right to reveal existing Photos, swipe back to return to the camera.

Volume Up Shutter Button
Hold the iPhone sideways in landscape orientation, and the volume up button works as the camera shutter button.

Zoom Function
A two finger pinch or expand will activate the zoom feature.

Direct Access from Locked Screen
On the lock screen, double click / double press the home button to view the camera icon as well as the music player controls that feature on previous iOS versions. The camera button takes you straight to the camera app.
via Martin Lucas

Exposure Levels
When you’re taking a photo with the camera a single tap on an area of the screen will adjust the Exposure Levels based on the area you selected.

AE/AF Lock Levels
When you’re taking a photo with the camera tap and hold on an area of the screen to adjust and lock the Exposure Levels based on the area you selected. You can now frame the picture without the levels changing.

Screen Grab
Briefly hold down the power button then click the home button to save a picture of the current screen to Photos.

iMessage

Delivery Method Indicator
When typing a new message in iMessage the send button will be green if the message is to be sent over the SMS network. If the recipient is registered with iMessage the button will turn blue. The text box watermark will also change and say “iMessage”.

Typing Indicator
If you send someone a message via iMessage, when they start to type their reply you’ll see a bubble appear with an ellipsis (…) in it while they’re typing.

Mail

Important Mail Indicator
You can now highlight an email as important with a little red flag in the inbox. When reading an email tap “Mark” next to the subject.

Drag and Drop Recipients
You can now drag and drop recipients between the To: Cc: and Bcc: fields. Just press and hold the recipients name until it gets bigger, then drag and drop into place.

Text Format
When writing email messages, you can format text using bold, italic, or underlined fonts and create indents in the text. To access these features, select the text to apply formatting and then tap the right-pointing arrow to access the additional menu items. If you select Define, a handy dictionary pops up.
via Jason Pope

Contact Photos
If you have a photo assigned to a contact, in the Contacts App, a small thumbnail photo appears next to the subject line of the email in the inbox.

Notification Centre

Main Access
Swipe down from the top of the screen to reveal and drag down the Notification Centre. In Photos this reveals a new button that you can then drag down.

Direct App Access
When you get a new notification via the “locked” screen, swipe the notification from left to right to go directly to the notification in the application that generated it.
via James Lattimer

Detailed Weather Report
If you have weather configured as a notification in the notification centre, tap on the weather icons to bring up the weather page. Swiping down on the weather opens up further detailed descriptions of the weather over the next few hours.
via Mark Worboys

Photos

Edit Options
While viewing a photo a single tap will reveal the new “Edit” button in the top right. This gives a new menu on the bottom with the following features; Rotate, Enhance, Red Eye and Crop.

Album Management
Albums can now be added directly from within Photos. Click the Albums button at the top or bottom and then click “Edit”

Reminders

Location based Reminders
To-do items can be set with due dates and locations. Location based reminders will send an alert whenever you are near the destination that the item is associated with. Reminders pop-up in the Notification Centre as appropriate.
via Jason Pope

Safari

Uncluttered Reading
When viewing a web page you may see a “Reader” button appear in the address bar at the top. Click it to see a clean uncluttered version of the web page.

Twitter

App Integration
iOS5 lets you sign in to Twitter and then tweet directly from Safari, Photos, Camera, YouTube, and Maps. Setup Twitter from Settings > Twitter and then simply tap on the share / action button in the integrated apps and select Tweet. You also get a nice tweet sound when the tweet is posted.
via Jason Pope

WiFi Sync

Wireless iTunes Synchronisation
Synchronise your iPhone or iPad with iTunes on a computer that is connected to the same Wi-Fi network. To set-up Wi-Fi sync for the first time, connect the iPhone to the computer via the lead and turn on “Sync over Wi-Fi connection” in the device summary pane. After you configure Wi-Fi Sync your device will sync automatically once a day when its connected to power and iTunes is running. You can manually sync over Wi-Fi via Settings > General > iTunes Wi-Fi Sync > Sync Now.
via Jason Pope

What are the key messages here?

• The tolerance of poor performing websites is clearly decreasing over time. Remember, its a privilege to have visitors coming to your website, so give them a fast high quality experience.

• If your website delivers a key message via a slider, for example “Special Offer 25% Off”, then you only have a couple of seconds before people take no notice of it.

• If your website performance is slow (“slow” = greater than 3 seconds) then you may as well offer links off to your competitors websites.

• Each 1 second delay that you impose on your visitors will reduce your conversion rate and result in fewer actions.

• Bounce rate (the rate at which visitors land on a page then immediately click off your site) increases dramatically as page load time increases.

• As mobile devices like the iPad become the norm, website page load speeds will have to decrease to cater for these visitors.

Click on the image below to download the full size PDF file

If you don’t know how your website currently performs, why not get in touch and let us show you how we can help.

Feel free to comment on this article or get in touch if you would like any further information.

Google decided that to offer its users the best search engine experience it would take the speed of a website into consideration when calculating the page rank of a search result. Here’s what Google say;

Google’s goal is to provide users with the most relevant results and a great user experience. Fast sites increase user satisfaction and improve the overall quality of the web, especially for those users with slow internet connections.

Websites are much richer these days in terms of content, with many more objects per page than a couple of years ago. Websiteoptimization say this;

Even in this era of widespread broadband, slow websites still frustrate users. The average web page more than tripled in the 5 years from 2003 to 2008 from 93.7K to 312K in total size. An upcoming survey will show the trend continuing at a similar rate. We have seen home pages in excess of 4 to 10 MB in file size with hundreds of objects! Even on a broadband connection these fat and complex web pages will tax the attention thresholds of users.

The average number of objects has grown from 25.7 to 49.9 during the same 5 year time period with no signs of slowing down. Object overhead now dominates page load delays in this era of higher speed connections.

The end result can be an increase in page size and load speed that can quickly grow and more often than not, go unnoticed. However, the people that will be sure to notice are the end users as their experience suffers.

As end users become more and more familiar with modern feature and content rich websites, they also become less tolerant of poor performance. If you leave them hanging around for a response they will often quit and simply visit the next website in the search results, leaving your website in a trail of negative perception.

The Need for Speed?

Numerous studies over the last few years have proven beyond doubt that users love fast websites. These results aren’t just psychological, they can be measured too. Here are some real world examples;

• Aesthetic Perception
• Bounce Rate
• Perceived Credibility
• Quality Rating
• User Frustration

There are other benefits to keeping your web content lean and mean. Many websites use a shared hosting package which typically have a bandwidth limit associated with them. As well as bandwidth, shared web hosting has a finite amount of resource in terms of concurrency and DB access before we even start to consider network latency.

Things to Consider

• Number of objects
• Image size v quality
• Use a CDN for jQuery
• Script order and placement
• Compression
• Server caching
• Response headers
• Enable browser caching

Here is a snapshot of one of our customers who was getting some rather intermittent responses from their website during the Summer, which just happens to be one of their busiest periods. The image was taken from the Google tool that is used to measures website performance and would have directly affected the website’s search ranking.

We re-platformed the website, migrated the hosting to a new provider and after some detailed analysis gave the website a “performance tune” to bring it back in line (during early August). The result is a far more responsive website, quicker page load speeds and a decrease in monthly bandwidth usage.

Revisit your website from a customer’s perspective and ask yourself a few simple questions;
  What is the end user experience of my website?
  When did I last measure my web page sizes?
  When did I last measure my website speed?
  How can I improve them to help with SEO and search ranking?

Conclusion

A well constructed, tested and tuned website will perform better and if using a shared hosting package, may well save money. These days users will not tolerate poor performing websites, so keep your content as small and light as possible. The speed of your website is a factor in your SEO search ranking.

Need any more persuading? Take a look at this powerful Speed Chart Infographic from Google.

Feel free to comment on this article or get in touch if you would like any further information.

First of all let me introduce you to the concept of “Pipelining”. First lets think about a very simplified example in the form of a web page called test.html with some text and 3 images. Your web browser will need to make a separate HTTP GET request for each object on the page as follows;

A non pipelined request will do all the GET requests in serial;

Step 1: GET test.html
Step 2: GET image1.jpg
Step 3: GET image2.jpg
Step 4: GET image3.jpg

A browser using pipelining will do all the GET requests in parallel resulting in fewer HTTP connections, less latency and less traffic overhead between you and the web server;

Step 1: GET test.html, GET image1.jpg, GET image2.jpg, GET image3.jpg

In Firefox pipelining is not enabled by default. To enable pipelining we have to go beyond the normal Firefox preferences page and get under the covers.

Type “about:config” into the browsers address bar. (don’t include the double quotes) You will see a rather humorous warning message regarding “Dragons”. After promising not to break anything you will be greeted with a billion and one different options to play with.

At the top of the page you will see a “filter” box.
Type “network” into the filter box (don’t include the double quotes) and you will only see options relating to the networking configuration of Firefox.

Scroll down a little and you will find the following settings;
(double clicking will toggle between true and false)

network.http.pipelining – set this to true
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests – increase this to 8
network.http.proxy.pipelining – set this to true

Now restart your Firefox browser and Pipelining will be enabled.

Further reading and more in depth details can be found here;
HTTP pipelining at Wikipedia
What is HTTP pipelining at Mozilla

Feel free to comment on this article or get in touch if you would like any further information.

Let’s take a quick look at this question and work through some examples to help understand DNS.

First off let’s start by saying that I’ll make the answer generic, aimed at the reader gaining an overview level understanding of DNS and not a detailed dissection of each minute nuance. If that’s what you want I suggest asking Google or reading through the RFC’s.

Secondly, I will attempt to explain in a way that is system and OS independent. If you want specific instructions regarding the setup of a Microsoft or Unix DNS server, stop reading now.

Domain Name System or DNS

Let’s start by looking at mobile phones. Most people I know have a mobile phone. So many in fact, that I can’t remember every phone number associated with each person’s phone. What I do is assign a name against each phone number and store that association in a phone book or phone directory.

“James Mobile” = “07801 123456″
“James Home” = “01234 123456″
“Mark Mobile” = “07801 654321″
“Mark Home” = “01234 654321″

In the example above we are associating peoples names or “friendly names” with people’s telephone numbers or “unique identifiers”.

Now when I want to talk to one of them I select “James Mobile” from my mobile phone book and hit the dial button. The job of associating the “friendly name” of James with his phone’s “unique identifier” is done for me. Simple.

DNS is very similar. Each computer that is connected to the Internet and publicly available has its own unique identifier, a little bit like a phone number. This unique identifier is called an “IP Address”.

An IP address looks like this;
123.123.123.123 (example that I made up)
209.85.169.147 (a Google web server)

We would find it very difficult to remember all the IP addresses of websites we visit, so instead each computer is also assigned a “friendly name”, often referred to as a “hostname”.

A hostname can look like this;
www.mydomain.co.uk (an example)
www.google.com (Google website)

So instead of using the following in a browser:

http://209.85.169.147
I can use;
http://www.google.com

We use the global DNS system as a great big phone book to associate one with the other.

When I type the hostname of a website into a browser my PC sends a DNS lookup query to a DNS server and gets back the correct IP address.

How does that all work?

Well the next step is to understand the hostname a little better. I’ve simplified it so far but let’s take another, more detailed look. I’ve referred to what you type into a browser as a hostname up to now, but strictly speaking it is a Fully Qualified Domain Name or FQDN.

Let’s take a look at the FQDN for www.google.com from right to left:

com = Top Level Domain or TLD
google = domain name
www = hostname

So the FQDN consists of;
hostname + domain name + TLD

A more familiar example;
http://host.domain.tld or http://www.domain.com

There are approx 13 Global DNS “Root Servers” dotted around the world named A to M, (how dull) that are the very top of the DNS hierarchy. Next, under the root servers are servers that are responsible for the TLDs (.com .net .co.uk etc) Under the TLD servers are servers responsible for domains.

So when we fire off a DNS lookup query we can actually traverse several DNS servers at many levels. Below is a picture showing this traversal against an example DNS lookup query for www.wikipedia.org

Now it is highly likely that you are reading this article while connected to the Internet using an Internet Service Provider or ISP. Your ISP is probably running several DNS servers that are already configured in your ADSL router/modem. It is also likely that you are not the first person to do a DNS lookup query for www.google.com against your ISP DNS servers and the answer is probably already cached.

If there were no cached DNS entries then every time we wanted to do a DNS lookup query we would have to start at the very top of the DNS hierarchy and work down to the domain’s own DNS server, or the “authoritative name server” for that domain. Cached DNS entries vastly decrease Internet traffic and speed up DNS lookup queries.

The Authoritative Answer

Let’s go back to the mobile phone example earlier in this article to understand the concept of “authoritative”. Assume I’ve lost James’ mobile phone number so I ask Mark. Mark looks it up on his phone and tells me.

However this number is out of date due to the fact that James has a flashy new iPhone 4s complete with a new mobile number. I then bump into James at the pub and ask him his new number. He tells me the “authoritative” answer.

So in effect Mark gave me a cached answer and James gave me the authoritative answer. So caching is great but it does have its drawbacks. DNS uses a Time To Live or TTL mechanism to specify the lifetime that a cached answer is valid for.

In effect when you add a new server into the DNS system it can take up to 72hrs to propagate around the world and when you change DNS information it can also take a while due to the caching nature of DNS.

This type of information is stored in the “zone file” which is a file used to store DNS information about a particular domain. The zone file is also the place where the hostname is mapped to an IP address.

Zone File Entries

Lets have a brief look at a zone file and some of the information that it contains;

 example.com. NS ns1.nameserver.com ; specify name server for domain
 example.com. NS ns2.nameserver.com ; specify name server for domain
 example.com. A 12.34.56.78 ; ip address for domain
 localhost. A 127.0.0.1 ; ip address for localhost
 www.example.com. CNAME example.com ; www alias
 ftp.example.com. CNAME example.com ; ftp alias
 mail.example.com. CNAME example.com ; webmail alias

Above I have given examples of record types you would commonly find in a domain DNS zone file.

NS Record – This entry specifies the nameservers ns1.nameserver.com and ns1.nameserver.com as the authoritative nameservers for the domain example.com It is good practice to specify multiple NS records for failover.

A Record – These are the main entries that map a hostname to an IP address for the domain. You can see in the above example we have also specified an entry for the localhost or loopback address.

CNAME Record – This type of record specifies an alias name and maps it to an A record.

Many people use a shared server these days and typically have 1 IP address assigned to them by the ISP. These shared servers commonly offer multiple services to the user, for example; www, ftp, webmail, etc.

In such an example the main A record specifies the IP address of the shared server as per the first A record in the zone file example above. The other services offered are defined using CNAME records that point back to the main A record. As you can see from the above example the following would be available for use over the Internet;

example.com
www.example.com
ftp.example.com
mail.example.com

Obviously each of these services would be running on their own TCP/IP port number on the given IP address. Also note that localhost will resolve to 127.0.0.1 which can only be used internally on the server itself.

So there it is then, a brief overview of DNS. I hope this article has given you an insight into the global DNS system and may even prompt you to find out and read a bit more.

Feel free to comment on this article or get in touch if you would like any further information.