Question:
None of these existed in 1970. There were 3 million in 1998. Earlier this year there were 65 million. Currently there are well over 100 million. To what am I referring?

Answer:
Websites

The increase in the number of domain name registrations has been exponential in recent times. People are using the World Wide Web more and more not only for business, but also for daily activities that other media such as print may have been used for in the past. For example, I am connected to the Internet for the major part of most days of the week. I used to have copies of telephone directories for each of the capital cities and several country areas in Australia. I have dispensed with them all. To find a number anywhere in Australia, or anywhere else in the world for that matter, I just get onto the computer keyboard and find it in less time than it would have taken me to find the correct hard copy of the telephone books I had. The Internet certainly has changed  the way many of us do things.

But, this is a dance blog site. What has all the preamble above got to do with dance?

Well, my simplistic single word answer to that question is "heaps".

Anyone in any sort of business without a web site is missing out on what could be a large increase in their market share. But the way your business is presented on the WWW is also important.

I regularly browse the Internet looking at what people are doing and how. Dance web sites are frequently the subject of my attentioin. The vast majority are beaut. They are well presented, easy to navigate and informative. But there are some that have attributes which I find disconcerting.

My biggest dislike is pop-up or pop-under pages when going to a site. I don't want to go to a page advertising I-pods or whatever when it was a dance site I went to. If I am interested in I-pods, I shall "Google I-pods" and find the information myself.

The equal second biggest dislikes on my list is links that don't work, and out of date information. Disfunctional links can be a problem for any webmaster. Web sites can change their structure or domain name servers, or pages can even be deleted. So the occasional broken link can probably be excused. But if you come across a web site where many of the links go to "this page cannot be found", it means that either an Internet Service Provider is down, or the web site owner and/or the webmaster is slapdash. The best solution is to periodically check all of your links, and fix or get rid of those that no longer work. One dance site I visited just this week had several links that didn't work. One link on the site that did work went to a page advertising an event planned for 2003, which had in fact been cancelled. This bad link had been sitting there for over four years without anyone taking appropriate action.

I could go on about other dislikes, but two will do for now.

If you have a web site or web sites, try to look at them from the point of view of those you would like to visit your site(s). Be critical of it (them), or get someone else to be critical of it (them), and keep making appropriate changes.

If you don't have an Internet presence, and you are involved in some sort of business to do with dance, there are a few alternatives that you may like to consider:

The first is to get a free listing on the appropriate dance site listed to the left of this blog site. Anyone with any dance related business in Australia is entitled to this. In fact this applies whether or not you have a site of your own. If you do have a site, I would be happy to exchange reciprocal links.

Alternative number two is to get your own page on one of the relevant dance sites. Each of my regional dance sites has a home page with details how to do this. The cost is a mere $110 including GST to set it up and a yearly maintenance fee of only $27.50 which also includes GST.

With your own page you will have a unique URL (web address) that you can refer your clients to.

A third alternative is to register a domain name through Ian McKenzie's Domains (less than $10 per year) and get a free hosted web site, and also a free hosted blog site if you wish. This blog site you are currently on is an example of a free hosted site. The hosting cost is covered by non-obtrusive advertisments across the top of the page. If you don't have the necessary software to build your own site, I can refer you to some which is totally FREE. Just click on the link and scroll down the page until you come to the appropriate link.

The fourth alternative is to once again register a domain name through Ian McKenzie's Domains and pay for hosting. Economy hosting costs as little as around $5 per month and is advertisement free.

I am able to assist with the above alternatives and many others. I am only as far away as the telephone or an email. All of my prices are very competitive. My phone number is 07 5547 7187 or 0400 106 654 or email me at ian@ozdance.info . Further contact information is available on my personal site. www.ianmckenzie.name

Happy dancing

Ian McKenzie

PS
For those of you who subscribe to my blog, I inadvertently hit "publish" without proof reading. My Keyboarding skills are only mediocre, and there were plenty of typos. Hopefully I have fixed most of them now.

Ian