Tech Support Online Help Desk (Submit your tech support requests here.)

  Or call ABW Host's Tech Support Department at  877-366-7122

  Or email ABW Tech Support at support@abwhost.net

Our Flash Animated Tutorials include tutorials on how to use our mail server control panel, Linux web hosting control panel, various email programs, FrontPage, Dreamweaver, Flash, FTP, and osCommerce for Linux shopping cart system.

SiteBuilder for Windows Server hosting:  You can create a trial / demonstration site at  http://sitebuilder.w2k4.usbusinessweb.net/wizard/ .  The SiteBuilder customer login (for licensed use of an actual SiteBuilder web site) is located at http://sitebuilder.w2k4.usbusinessweb.net/Login.aspx

Create a professional looking web site just using your web browser!  Choose from 500 professionally designed web site templates.

How to Configure Your Email Program - web page version.

How to Use the Optional Webmail System (useful when away from your computer such as when traveling or working at home) - https://webmail.yourdomain.com .  (substitute your domain name with yourdomain.com.)

If you don't delete / purge your messages in the webmail system, they will be retrieved by your email program also when you get back to your main computer and use your email program.  It is possible to use the webmail system solely, but keep in mind the storage limitation for email messages.  If you fill up your mailbox, new messages will return to sender.

Email System FAQ  Within tutorial - view the Linux server demonstration for adding an email account, etc.

How to block visitors from unique URLs or IP addresses from connecting to my web site.  If you have a web page form, you may have experienced "spamming" of the form page or user forum.  Although there may be many IP addresses you would need to block on a continual basis, rendering this method useless, it may be that only a manageable number of IP addresses are spamming your form page.  You can block IP addresses and originating URLs by using an .htaccess file located in the directory you want to protect.  And first you will need to log the IP address of the person or "bot" (automated virus program) that is spamming your form.

Microsoft FrontPage 2002 Basic / Quick Start Instructions (2003 is almost the same instructions but with a different interface)  Our animated tutorial has a FrontPage 2002 demo showing the basics of how to use FrontPage 2002.  We have provided a copy of Microsoft's slideshow tutorial on FrontPage 2003 as well.

Microsoft SharePoint Services version 2 - Web Links on customizing / adding functionality using site templates and web parts.

Linux server shopping cart installation instructions.  No matter which shopping cart system you choose to use on the Linux servers - it should be installed into a subdirectory of the /httpdocs folder.  Then we will setup a "symbolic link" so that you can link to the order form that is in the shop cart which is in the /httpdocs folder, using SSL secure layer (encrypted order form.)  (Secure forms that are not part of a larger set of files such as with a shopping cart system, that are by themselves, can be located in the /httpsdocs directory.  But if you are using the above method with a shopping cart system, any other forms that need to be accessed securely in web browsers will need to go into /httpdocs.)

View your web site statistics

Domain Name Registrations starting at $15 per year.  Register new domain names or transfer your existing domains to our registrar of choice Open SRS.  Nine top level domain name extensions are available:   .com   .net   .org   .biz   .us   .tv   .cc   .info  and  .name .

Manage your domain name registration.  (If you registered or transferred your domain name registration to our BizOrgNet.Com registration system.)

Query the "Who Is" internet database of domain name registration records.

Search for a Premium Domain Name.

Your local computer's current IP address is:

Digital ID SSL Certificates for $15 per year.  (https://www.yourname.com certificates with your name for credit card order taking or other encrypted web access needs.)

Get a Merchant Bank Account with Included Internet Payment Gateway.  (For accepting credit card payments on your web site - will interface with various shopping carts the shopping carts we provide on our hosting plans for Linux and windows.)

PHP Form Mailer (works only on our Linux servers - for sending email form results for customers who do not use FrontPage or who use FrontPage but prefer this form mailer.)  Ask us to  install this Form Mailer for you in your root web directory when if host a Linux hosting plan with us.

ASPEMAIL version 5.0 / Full - to send email in a form page method (works only on our windows servers.)  This program is preinstalled when you host a windows hosting plan with us.

w3JMail version 4.4 / Free - to send email in a form page method (works only on our windows servers.)  This program is preinstalled when you host a windows hosting plan with us.

Need a search feature on your web site?  Check out http://www.google.com/services/websearch.html .  If you host on a windows server ask us about setting up an index server search engine for you it comes with the windows hosting no extra charge, and it integrates with the FrontPage search feature.  For our linux servers, there is a search application you can install from your control panel application vault.

Need to translate your web site into different languages?  Visit http://babelfish.altavista.com -- you can link to that page from your web site, putting in your web site address in the URL to translate field, then link to that page for your customers.  They can move the bottom window up so that they can maximize their browser viewing area.  Or you could translate that way and save the translated files to your computer then copy them to your web site if you'd rather have the speed.  The translation isn't anywhere near perfect but perhaps better than nothing depending on the situation.  One way you can tell how accurate the translation is is to translate a block of text at babelfish into a different language, then translate that block of translated text it back to English.  http://google.com now has an online translation tool also.

Make sure to use a constantly updated anti-virus software product such as http://mcafee.com or http://symantec.com or http://f-prot.com or http://kaspersky.com .  We have anti virus protection in place on our mail servers, but to be extra safe it is a good idea to have local protection on your computer for virus prevention and scanning, in case a virus slips by our anti virus system or in case you get a virus through some means other than email such as file transfer from another computer that is infected, or in case our virus scanner is offline for some reason.

We recommend the free http://www.radiance.m6.net/ adult web site blocking software, to protect your children when they surf the web, or to prevent your employees from viewing adult web sites.

It is a good idea to have a firewall program and a spyware removal program as well.  Most of the anti virus programs now have firewall programs and spyware removal programs in their product lines.  Windows XP now has a built in firewall that works very well, and Microsoft now has a free spyware program called Windows Defender.  Searching http://google.com for firewall or spyware will bring up the latest commercial offerings.

Unfortunately it is not possible to tag all spam as spam, as some of the spammers have learned to bypass the rules that are used in the content based junkmail filters.  But expect 90% to 95% of spam messages making it to your mailbox to be identified as spam, particularly if your spam rule threshold is set to 3.0 or lower, once you've listed all your contacts' email addresses and /or domain names in your allowed sender list.

Note:  It would be best for you to set your email program to receive and send email in plain text format only, not in html (web page) format, as most html formatted messages will be spam tagged - since most spam contains html formatted messages and this is one of the rules that helps to identify a lot of spam.  If you have a need to receive messages in html format - just make sure to put all the incoming html format email addresses in your allowed sender list and those messages should not be identified as spam.  (Another reason is that way all the people you are sending email to who also use spam filters, will most likely get your message whether *they have listed you in their allowed sender list* in their system or not.)

Some of the programs can cut out 100 percent of spam by requiring all senders who are not yet on the allowed senders list in the program, to respond the first time they send a message, confirming that they are a real person sending you a real email message, such as:

http://home2.ca.com/DRHM/servlet/ControllerServlet?Action=DisplayProductDetailsPage&SiteID=caconsum&Locale=en_US&Env=BASE&productID=50708500

This can be annoying to your contacts though, but is an effective way to cut out spam altogether if you can operate this way and if you don't mind using the allowed sender list on any automated email addresses you might get valid mail from such as from web sites that send you account information automatically (pay pal, etc.)

Yet you may be able to achieve the same results without buying such a product -- by creating an autoresponder  for an email address that you advertise publicly and/or on your web site (that can be harvested by spammers,) that tells legitimate senders what your real email address is, and all they have to do is then send the mail again to your real email address and update their records.  As most spammers do not receive or read responses to their spams as they would not have the time to read responses to their millions of spams - so mostly only  legitimate senders will find out about your real email address.

http://spamcop.net/  is a web site that can help you deal with spam messages that make it through our filter and spam tagging system.  Please use spamcop to report all your spam messages to -- when you sign up there for a free or paid spam reporting account, you will be provided an email address to send your email messages to.  It is imperative that you first find out how to see the "full header info" version of the spam message.  In Eudora email program, open the message and click on the "Blah Blah Blah" button.  In MS Outlook, open the spam message and go to view-options.  In MS Outlook Express, go to file-properties-detail for the message when it is highlighted (doesn't have to be opened just highlighted.)  Once you see the entire email message including the "full header info" which is where the real spammer mailserver information is hidden, copy all of the message including the full header, and paste it into a new email message, and send that off (no subject required) to your spamcop reporting email address.  You will get a response email back with a URL you click on where you then send the report off to various system administrators who will get the spam report by email. 

We use a virus scanner which should block most email messages that have virus attachments.  Do not open an attachment ever if you do not recognize the sender.  Your friends' and associates' email program can be infected with a virus so be very careful about any email attachment even if it is sent from someone you know.  Even though we have a virus scanner running on the mailserver - it is still recommended to run your own anti virus system such as mcafee.com or symantec.com or kaspersky.com or f-secure.com on your computer.

We require our customers to not use a real email "catch all" / "default" email address.  Catch all or default email addresses are the setting in our email control panel where any message not addressed to an email address you have designated goes to a catch all email address.  One of the reasons we do not use default email forwarding by default is because a lot of spam is sent to false email addresses on domain names, and that will cause a lot of overhead resource utilization on the mailservers, not to mention it will result in your having to deal with more spam.  So our default setting in your email preferences in the email control panel uses a "black hole" email account.  Email messages sent to email addresses that do not exist on our mailserver get sent to an email account we have that receives the messages but that drops the messages and does not send back a bounce notice.  Unfortunately spammers can harvest email addresses from the public whois databases as well because they are public.  So you may want to use an email address you don't check often such as a free email account, hotmail or other such account, on your domain name record.

If your catchall is not setup as a "spamtrap" account, let us know and we will set up your catchall address.

Most email programs have a content based rules feature where you can set your own content based rules to move spam messages that contain particular content.  If there are words that are used in spam messages that make it through our Spam Assassin system such as "weight loss," you can add your own rules for those offending messages and in doing so you have used an additional measure of spam protection.  It is important to know that if you add a rule using only one word - make sure to add a space at the end of it when creating the rule, otherwise all words that contain the letters that make up that word will be marked as junk mail.  For example, if you create a rule to identify as junk mail any message with 'teen' in the subject or body of the message - a message containing the word nineteen would also be marked, but if you put a space before the teen ' teen' in your definition, only words starting with teen would be identified, with the exception of a subject line starting with "teen".  The same would be true for cases where you would want to put a space after the word used in the spam rule if it is a part of a word used in the middle or beginning of a valid word.  With phrases such as 'weight loss' you will not have this problem.

What some people do is they will create email forwarding alias addresses on their domain such as xyzgolf@mydomainname.com .  They will use this email address only when they post their personal information as a registered user of xyzgolfequipment.com (as a fictitious example) .  That way if they check their message headers and see the full header info, they can tell if XYZ Golf has sold their email address to other companies if spam starts coming in to that address.  They can then remove that forwarding address and block spam that would have come to that address.  A simpler method might be to create a forwarding address called public@mydomainname.com and use it for all such public postings of membership and online information, allowing you to get mail from the places you supply that email address but if spam starts coming in to that address you can simply remove the email forwarding alias and create a new one being more careful the 2nd time with where you post the new address.

There is a service that allows you to create temporary email addresses, which you use when you register on suspect web sites that may be selling your email address, which you set to forward to your real email address, then you change the temporary address periodically which results in less spam.  http://www.spamgourmet.com/

A similar strategy to the above email forwarding alias strategy for public email addresses, would be to do the same thing but making it a pop account instead of a forwarding, called public@mydomainname.com for example, where all your publicly registered email goes.  You can then assume much of what is in that account is spam and check the account less often then your regular business or personal email address(es), thus saving you the interruptions of spam and opt-in mailings.

No Spam Rule number 1:  Don't ever buy anything from a spammer.  (If there are no sweets for the ants - they go away.  If you provide sweets - count on many more ants.)  If a spamvertised product or service looks like a good idea, search for the same type of product  or service on Yahoo or a search engine rather than buying the spammer's product or service.  Most likely you'll be doing business with a much more reputable and trustworthy business as well.

No Spam Rule number 2:  Don't put your email address(es) on your web pages, instead use forms that send you the results by email to your email address.  This is because most spammer marketing lists get email addresses from "spiders" which are software programs that search the internet and harvest email addresses (text with the @ sign in it.)  To see an example of what the spammer spiders can harvest, go to a search engine and search for your email address.  Alternatively you can create graphics of your email addresses, and not have a hyperlink to your mailto: email address but display the email address in graphic form which cannot be harvested by spam harvester programs from web pages.

No Spam Rule number 3:  If you are getting a lot of spam messages, change your email address.  Create an autoresponder message that informs people that your email address has changed, providing the new address.  On your web site instead of using an email address, use a form that emails you the results.  The result will be that most of the spammers have used bogus return addresses and will not know or have the time to deal with your email address change, while your real contacts will be able to update their knowledge of your email address and also resend their message to the proper address.  Remember to update any mailing lists you want to remain on.

Some states are now requiring that spam by law include ADV: as the first part of the subject.  You will find that most spammers don't do this but you can setup a rule in your email program to delete messages with ADV in the subject line just to delete the few messages that do.  Likewise, you can setup additional rules based on content that you know will be spam such as "viagra," etc.

Note: We recommend not replying to "Remove me from this list" addresses, as this only confirms that your e-mail address is active and directs more unwanted e-mail to your account. And be wary of clicking a URL embedded in an unsolicited message, as this may reveal your address to that Web site.  Spammers and spammer services use this as a trick to put you on the A list that they can sell for a higher price to spammers.

To keep up with the fight against spam, check out http://www.cauce.org .

Avoid the following practices:

· Posting to an on-line service or any Internet bulletin board.

· Posting in a usenet newsgroup or mailing list.

· Spending time in chat rooms or an online service that displays your address.

· Including yourself in an unprotected online service's member directory 

· Remove yourself from any unprotected member directory you may be published on.

· Open a second e-mail account, a free one on any of a number of free email services available, one that you can use as an address for newsgroup and listserv publications or for posting on bulletin boards.

We recommend the Medium High security setting if you use Internet Explorer.  This can be set at tools - internet options - privacy.  This will allow you to use cookies but puts limitations on cookies such as information gathered i.e. your email address.  If you do want to visit a "questionable" web site that may try to harvest your personal information for placing in a spam database, first set your security setting to the highest.  Then after you visit you can set it back to Medium High.

Make sure to use a firewall program on your computer.  Windows XP now comes with a firewall.

We also highly recommend installing a spyware program on your computer as well, as not all spyware programs are caught by anti virus programs - they are considered different infections.  Microsoft has a free spyware program called Windows Defender, available for download from their web site.

http://www.elsop.com/wrc/nospam.htm has a lot of anti spam links and information.

(Spam™ is a registered trademark of the Hormel Corporation.  While the word "spam" is also a commonly used slang for unsolicited e-mail.)

Google.com Search Term Suggestion Tool (this doesn't show the per click rate of the search term on google - you can get that info at google.com though.)  (Use a shotgun search word to see many of the niches that are searched on - for instance - if you want to advertise relationship counseling - just search with this tool "relationship" then decide which niche terms to use in your search engine pay per click advertising based on which ones have a good hit/cost ratio.)

  Search Engine Marketing

Our recommended rule number one with search engine advertising/marketing - "think niche."  Niche products and services are generally cheaper to advertise in pay per click search engines then shotgun approach products and services because there will generally be less companies competing for position in your search terms if you niche.  You may even find yourself redoing your business plan completely based around the concept that niche marketing is more feasible on the internet, and arrange your entire business around a niche or niches, and specializing as a result.  Even if you are able to get high ranks in free search engine listings, your chances will probably be better with a niche search term since there conceivably will be less listings to compete with.

(A marketing niche is a specialization as compared to taking on a broad market - taking on a specialty market within the broader market.  Examples of niches would be "crystal chess set" instead of "chess set."  You'll most likely be able to be more competitive in the crystal chess set niche with a small business budget then trying to keep position in the overall chess set market on the Internet marketplace.  You *can also* find out though - using the pay per click advertising keyword estimate tools, that the overall chess set market *might* be the one for you to advertise in if it doesn't have very many advertisers.)

Also - city or locality can be another sort of niche when it comes to search engine listings.  If you do business locally, make sure to include your city and surrounding city names, and regional localities, with your search engine search phrases as that will drop the number of competitors sharing your search engine keywords and phrases way down.  The major search engines now also have geographic targeting, where your ad only displays in geographical locations that you specify.  This can give you a lot of bang for the buck -- you don't have to pay for clicks that don't convert to customers from outside your target market.  If you find you can't compete on a National scale, if a top search engine listing is costing you beyond your budget, you can narrow your market geographically, which will also narrow your cost. 

The major search engines have other targeting filters such as day of week and time of day your ad appears, and even age and sex in some cases.

Another sort of niche is to use the less popular major search engines.  If you incurred a $500 cost from Google, and $250 from Yahoo, Live may only have cost $100.  If the total cost of $850 for pay per click advertising for one month is outside of your budget, you could pause your Google and Yahoo campaigns and just go with Live.  Going under the logic that some advertising is better than no advertising.

Rule Number Two:  Use Unpopular Keywords for Your Product or Service no Matter What Your Budget.  Another approach which can be used with broad market products and services is to use "marginalized" search engine phrases in pay per click advertising.  What this means is using the search phrases that are less expensive for your product or service - they will bring in many less hits, but the per click cost is less, and so no matter what your budget you should be able to afford paying for clicks on some marginalized search phrases which should bring in some business at least, which is better than nothing.  These should be used no matter what your budget large or small as they are cost effective.  These would be search phrases that you might ordinarily not think of off the top of your head at first.  You can try different phrases at the search engine to see what its cost is and how many hits it gets on your search phrase to find out which ones are low cost "marginal" keywords for your product or service.  And Google and Overture have tools now to find these marginalized keywords.  You can even used misspellings for less commonly used keywords.

It is worth it to use http://Google.com, http://Yahoo.com search engines, and possibly  http://search.live.com .  Those are the top three search engines in order of popularity.  But - pay per click search engine advertising is best utilized if you are marketing a niche product or service - not one that has tons of competition, because pay per click advertising is very expensive in competitive markets and very affordable in niche or specialty fields.  Example:  "life insurance" could be $10 per click - while "dog sweaters" could be 10 cents per click.  You can select a maximum monthly budget at these two pay per click search engines so you don't go beyond what you can afford each month for internet advertising.

Some search engines allow free listings, although there is no guarantee of results as there is with pay per click:

http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl

https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit

http://search.live.com/docs/submit.aspx

Google (perhaps Overture also we didn't check) now has a "conversion tracking" where you can even find out how many orders came from your pay per click advertising and which search keywords produce orders and which ones don't!

Here is a link to Google's pay per click advertising tips.

It is a good idea to place a robots.txt file in the root directory of your web site so that search engines will stay out of private areas of your site -- just copy ours and place it first onto your local computer then copy the file to your root directory -- we have blocked search engine access on our site to /images and to /_private among others - remove directories you do not have from the file.  Add additional lines just like these two in your robots.txt file for any other directories you want to prevent the public from searching on search engines.

If you are having trouble with another company that is using your business or trade name in search engine phrases - you can trademark a name for much less than you might think, and the process is easy to do -- http://www.uspto.gov/web/menu/tmebc/ .

Here is a tutorial on how to maximize non pay per click search engine results:

The battle for high search engine rankings rages on! The engines themselves continually make changes which makes our jobs, as Web site owners, much more difficult. But, one thing has always remained the same... Keywords. Search engines still read text. That text still has to be relevant to the site. Keywords are text and must be placed strategically throughout your site. Those keywords within the text are still the determining factor on how high you go up the search engine ladder.  While many engines now place no relevancy whatsoever on the keyword META tag itself, there are still plenty of places - legal ones - to insert keywords in order to boost your rankings.  Keep this list handy when writing copy for your site pages. It will help you get the biggest bang for your search engine buck.

1. In your URL.

Putting a keyword or keyphrase within your URL (domain name) counts for major points!

2. In your page link names.

Rather than using a link in your navigation bar like "services", add a keyword to that page link. If you are a marketing consultant, you could put "marketingservices" instead.

3. In links throughout the copy.

This uses the same principle as above. Instead of writing a paragraph about your testimonials and linking to a page named "testimonials", create a link to a page named "marketing successes" (or some other powerful keyphrase).

4. In the "title" and "description" tags.  The title and description tags are still widely read and used by engines. Be sure both are enticing and contain keywords because some engines use them interchangeably.

5. In the copy itself.

The "optimal" copy length for search engine compatibility is between 250 - 350 words. Why? Because that gives you enough room to use the keyphrases repeatedly and still make sense! You should have about a 3% ratio of copy to keywords.

6. In ALT tags.

ALT tags are those little bits of copy that pop up when you hold your mouse over a graphic or picture. Search engines read those - because they consist of text. Use keywords in the descriptions you assign to the images on each page. WARNING: Be VERY sure that the description in the ALT tag goes with the image.  Otherwise you could be banned for "keyword stuffing."  Last little trick ... get one or two heavyweight keywords or phrases in all 6 places above. It's hard to do, but the results are tremendous! 

Another tip regarding using free search engine listings (as compared to pay per click listings) -- apparently the more web sites that link to your site the better - it gives more credit to the validity of your site being listed nearer the top of the findings for some of the search engines.  There should be more detailed info regarding these sorts of methods and strategies for optimizing free search engine results on the internet.

We do not know anything about the author of this article http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20041122.html , as we found the link from a hyperlink on another web page, but we think he is on to something as he explains what could be major changes taking place in economic history because of the Internet.  And his mention of niche marketing agrees with what we believe to be the case.

Interested in securing your local computer from hackers?  The first thing to do, using Windows, if you are not connected to a local area network (your computer is connected to the Net but is standalone), is to turn off the check mark for "share files with other computers on the network" in your network control panel - file and printer sharing button area.  If you are on a LAN, (local area network), most likely your file sharing will be enabled, but make sure that you right click your mouse button on all your hard drives, and assign a password to access each drive.  If others on your LAN don't need to access your drives or printers connected to your computer, you can disable the check mark for file sharing.  Passwords containing letters in mixed upper and lower case, numbers, and characters are the hardest passwords to crack.

The second thing to do -- particularly if you have a high speed dedicated connection to the Internet such as DSL, ISDN, or Cable Modem -- is to obtain firewall software to run on the computer in your local office that is physically connected to the Net, either by DSL, cable modem, regular phone line modem, etc.  There are several brands -  Windows XP comes with it's own built in firewall.  Hackers usually like to illicitly use dedicated IP high speed connected computers to wage their attacks from.  Don't forget to get a spyware removal program as well.

There are also internet sharing network hubs available inexpensively, which are designed to let your entire network at home or at the office, share one internet connection, which act as hardware firewalls and that may negate the need for a software firewall on your computer - check with your local computer hardware shop to be sure or check the Internet for info.  Some of these devices double as network hubs so you only need one place to plug your network computers into rather than two, such as the Linksys (now Cisco) broadband firewall/gateway boxes.  They are around $150.  Firewalls can be software or hardware based.  Even if you have a Linksys/Cisco firewall/gateway - you may still want the double protection of a software firewall (i.e. Armor 2 Net) although it will probably not be needed.

Windows XP has its own built in firewall system which is an option to use and will spare you the cost of purchasing firewall software.  It has been known to be difficult to work with in terms of connectivity problems some cases including wireless cases, so keep that in mind - you may be better off disabling it and getting third party firewall software.

Make sure to update your computer with your software vendors' (Microsoft or Apple...) security and service patches as soon as they become available.  You can subscribe to lists at the vendor's web site to be emailed when patches and updates are released to the public.  Hackers read these email alerts as well to find out about vulnerabilities they can target, so don't delay when a patch is available!

We recommend http://www.stopzilla.com for blocking web site "pop up" ads.  This can be a good security measure as well in case there are pop up web pages out there that might install a virus on your system.  Internet explorer now includes a popup ad blocker.

Shrink the physical size (not the visual size) of your web site graphics to boost your web site's viewing speed:  http://www.webopt.com or http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopel/main.html  (among others.)  Adobe Photoshop has the save for the web feature built in as well, which makes optimizing graphics for the web easy, but it is more expensive and is targeted for advanced graphics users.

Need photos for your web site?  Try http://www.istockphoto.com/ (free), or http://www.corbis.com - ($3 each).  There are other stock photo sites, some free some for a fee, if you search a search engine for stock photos.  There is an online interactive graphic making web site located at http://www.pixelsite.com that charges a subscription fee but is quite handy for making web site buttons and customized clip art with your own text.

If you have a large web site and you need to make global changes to your underlying html code (which can be done within frontpage but painfully slow), we recommend Search and Replace software, $25, by Funduc Software.  If only a few changes need to be made, FrontPage has a search and replace feature of its own which is slower than Funduc's Search and Replace utility but is fine for small web sites.  Notepad, other text editors, and word processing programs will allow search and replace one page at a time.

http://www.morningstar.com has a lot of investment information.

Traveling?  Check out http://www.sidestep.com .

Need an affordable but full featured voice mail system?  Check out http://freedomvoice.com .

If you are a "weatherbug" - you'll like this free Weather Bug program that shows the temperature for your zip code in realtime, and that alerts you to NWS weather alerts and warnings.  When you double click on it you can see the detailed weather report and forecast for your area, and you can navigate to weather reports and forecasts in other cities.

Web Site Design Tips -- Might as well have fun while you learn.  Vincent Flanders' site and book "Web Pages That Suck" teach through bad design examples.

FTP software - Modern browsers now allow you to FTP right from your browser, using ftp://xyz.com.not *or * ftp://xyzco@xyz.com.net * or ftp://xyzco:password@xyz.com.net (it may work with or without the userid and @ sign and/or passwsord first - if you get an error message saying anonymous connection not allowed, you must use the userid for the account followed by the @ sign as shown in the above example.  The disadvantage of using Internet Explorer as your FTP program is it wastes time calculating how much time it will take to transfer the files.  Sometimes if this itself takes too long, you may experience a time out disconnect.

If you prefer a standalone FTP program, there are many available at http://www.tucows.com for download.  When using an FTP Program, or when using web site design software that has a built in FTP function, make sure to *disable PASV mode (firewall friendly mode) and to use port 21 .*  Those are usually the default FTP settings but not in all cases such as with Macromedia Dreamweaver.  We recommend CUTE FTP for Windows and Fetch for Macintosh.