htaccess files are optional configuration files used in Apache web servers that can be used to control the directories they are placed in and also the sub directories.

If your host allows .htaccess files, you may want to read the below articles and use the powerful techniques explained.

http://perishablepress.com/press/2006/01/10/stupid-htaccess-tricks/

http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/apache-htaccess.html

Try searching for .htaccess and there are tons of articles you will come across.

Believe me, you will be surprised at the numerous tricks that can be done using .htaccess files.

The default behavior of websites is that if you dont have index.html, index.php or a similar index page, then it just displays a list of files in the directory on the website.

There are some hosting companies that disable this for security reasons, which is good. But in some cases, you just want to give the list of files to visitors for download or viewing.

Here are 2 very good and easy scripts that I have found to be useful with this.

1 – PHP Directory listing from Evoluted.net:
This is a very straight forward and simple directory script written in PHP. You can see it in action on their website too.

2 – Relay Ajax file manager:
This script requires MySQL installed on the server. This indexes all the files in the directory and its subdirectories in MySQL. This provides search feature, optional uploading, access restriction, users, virtual directory support. Also, this has a good ajax interface.

Many may not know about this wonderful website. I dont remember how I came across this one either. The site is:
http://opensourcecms.com/

This site has demo installations of various open source packages/applications. Before we try installing any on our own site, we get to try out these packages on this website.

Here are some categories:

• Portals (Drupal, Joomla, Mambo etc)
• Blogs (Wordpress, Lifetype etc)
• E-Commerce (osCommerce, Zen cart etc)
• Groupware
• Forums
• e-Learning
• Image galleries
• Wiki

Ofcourse, you will have to deal with some ads. But they are not so distracting.

I have noticed that nowadays many websites use ajax to show enlarged images. When you click on an image, instead of the image opening in a new browser window, it opens using animation and zoom. This can be used to view multiple images on a website like a gallery.

Started searching for this. I did know about lightbox javascript library. But the one that impressed me finally is called prettyPhoto. This is a lightbox clone using jQuery. jQuery is a very powerful javascript library that I am very familiar with. I love this because of its simpilcity and because of all the plugins available to extend this.

Here is the link to the prettyPhoto library.
http://www.no-margin-for-errors.com/projects/prettyPhoto/

It is very simple to add to your website. You can see this working on my website below: (Try clicking an image on the website)
http://macpup.org/

I had never heard of a free application for providing live support / live chat on a website.

One of my friends (Eric) mentioned this the other day. It is called Crafty Syntax and I am posting the link below:
http://www.craftysyntax.com/

You can use this to add live support to your website free of charge.

Also, if your site is run on Drupal, then you can refer to the below page to see how Crafty Syntax can be integrated into Drupal.
http://drupal.org/node/248920

As always, I am excited seeing free and open source. But if you want to support them, you can always donate.

Once when I was asked by a friend to do their shopping site, I suggested ready made paid solutions like Godaddy.com, Amazon or even sell it through ebay. There are packages available from Godaddy and from few other websites that are paid and that give you the complete shopping cart funtionality.

But I always liked free.

Recently, I came to know from my friend about the package osCommerce. I knew about this, but had never really appreciated it. This friend mentioned that he purchased a template that is integrated with osCommerce for $160.

I started searching for osCommerce templates on google. I found many free ones. One of the template that really attracted me is called the GG9 – Free lightbox osCommerce template. It is available from the below link:
http://www.badeziner.com/2008/07/12/gg9-free-lightbox-oscommerce-template/

Actually, if you want to build a shopping site, I would recommend the following solutions:

Fully paid and payment integrated:
- Godaddy (shopping cart is available from $9 to $42 at the time of this post)
- Amazon (Search for webstore from amazon and you will find). Here is the link:
http://webstore.amazon.com/

Free solution:
- Find a good osCommerce template for free. This usually comes with the osCommerce package that is also free.

If you just want to sell stuff and dont really need a website or personalized solution:
- Amazon.com: Open an account and start selling
- Ebay.com: This is a bidding site. But you can sell products at a standard price.

Here is the link to osCommerce:
http://www.oscommerce.com/

We started finding videos on youtube and creating playlists out of them. But when playing from Youtube, the videos do not play in fullscreen continuously.

Searching on the web, I came across this code:

This is the embed link that you get from Youtube for your playlist. Put this code in an HTML page and playing this in fullscreen would play the videos continously in fullscreen. Just a tip to remember.

The trick to center a div in IE.

• Body selector: text-align: center;
• Div/Container: margin: 0 auto;
• Div/Container: text-align: left; on the container to counter the center align for body

I saw this google product that can be very helpful for businesses and creating products.

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#

You can see what people are searching, what regions are searching for a particular search term. You can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, and time frames.

The below page lists some ways in which you can use the data from Google insights:

http://www.google.com/support/insights//bin/answer.py?answer=96693

Some of them are:

* Choosing advertising messages
* Examining seasonality
* Creating brand associations
* Entering new markets

One interesting study I came across recently was stating that, when comparing linux and ubuntu using the google search trends, they found that the linux searches are decreasing and Ubuntu is increasing. Ubuntu might soon overtake Linux in search trends. This is showing the marketing behind Ubuntu. Now the world is beginning to think that Linux is Ubuntu instead of the fact that Ubuntu is just a flavor (very successful) of Linux.