WOO-HOO - A SOLID YEAR OF NEWSLETTERS!

We're happy to say, we're back and published for 12 straight months. We're even happier that customers are reading our newsletters and are happy to field feedback. If you have any comments or suggestions about the newsletter, please let us know. If you'd like to see something covered here, we'll do what we can to help out.

And, now, back to our regular programming...

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SENDING IMAGES VIA E-MAIL - HOW DO I REDUCE THE SIZE OF MY ATTACHMENTS?

Finally, your message goes. However, you find out the next time you get to your computer that the message bounced. Your spanking new images were too big and your message got rejected. So much for sharing your photos.

There are some ways to reduce your frustration. There are things you can do to reduce the size of your images before you e-mail them.

CHECK THE SIZE OF IMAGES BEFORE YOU SEND

By "size" we don't mean how many kilobytes your image is--though that's a related characteristic. We mean how tall and how wide is it? The smaller the dimensions of your image, the fewer kilobytes will be required to display it.

But how big is big enough and how small is too small? We're glad you asked.

If the images you're sending are for display on the recipient's screen, a maximum of 500 pixels for either the width or height is probably plenty. Most users have screen resolutions of between 800 x 600 and 1024 x 768 pixels. A 500 x 500 pixel image will take up between a half and a third of the recipient's screen. That's pretty big!

What if the images are for printing by the recipient? Well, we're not as glad you asked that question because the answer is more complicated. The answer is related to the next section as well as this one: height and width. In short, you have to ensure the image you're sending has the correct dimensions and an adequate print resolution--usually expressed as "dots-per-inch" or "dpi."

CHECK THE PRINT RESOLUTION OF YOUR IMAGES

What's a "DPI?"

For those of you rolling your eyes about another "techie term," "dpi," we'll give you a quick explanation and then move on. For those with their eyes already glazed, you can skip this section if you like.

"DPI" or "dots-per-inch" relates to how many dots are printed in an inch on a page. Ignoring the print or display medium, generally more dots per inch equates to better print quality. The important thing to remember, though, is that there are limits.

For example, increasing the DPI of a print image from 72 to 150 will result in significant improvement in print quality. The increase in quality from 150 to 300 DPI may be indecernable, except on the most sophisticated commercial print equipment. Even printing at 300 DPI on some of the new high-end colour printers with resolutions in the 2880 DPI range may not produce any discernable difference over the same image at 150 DPI.

The tricky bit to remember is that your 500 x 500 pixel image can be almost any DPI--72 DPI, 150 DPI, 300 DPI, or even 1200 DPI. However, if you're working with relatively new software and / or a relatively new digital camera, the software that comes bundled with it will normally be "smart" enough to help you out. Many software programs--particularly those coming with new digital cameras--have built-in functions for exporting for e-mail, screen display, or printing.

For more information on "DPI" and what it means, the following two URLs provide good information:

• Debunking the DPI Myth
• How Can You Have Dots-per-inch if You Don't Have Inches?

How Do I Know What DPI I Have?

If you don't have software that helps you export images for screen, printing, and so on and you're not familiar with graphics or image editing programs, this can be a bit daunting at first. Moreover, there are so many programs out there we can't tell you "do this, that, and the other thing and you'll be okay."

With that said, you may have to hunt for the information but it will be there. For example, in Microsoft's Paint program that comes with Windows there is no menu item that suggests it will report the DPI of an image. However, if you hunt through the menu items, you'll discover a sub-menu item called "Attributes" (under the "Image" menu item). Selecting "Attributes" reports the DPI of the image and allows you to change it.

Other programs might call the same or a similar function "Properties." Or you might look for a menu item titled "Resolution," "Resize," or "Resample."

What DPI Do I Need?

Images for display on a computer screen need a "print resolution" of 72 "dpi." Anything more is wasteful.

Images destined for someone's printer normally need no more resolution than 150 dpi. Again, more resolution than 150 dpi is not needed. Only if the images you're sending are destined for printing on an offset press (a big commerical print machine) or some other fancy-schmancy equipment will greater resolution be required. Even for commercial printing 200 dpi is often sufficient.

Here are some rules-of-thumb you can use:

• 72 dpi - good for sending images via e-mail and for display on computer screens
• 96 dpi - some cameras produce images with this dpi; however, this dpi can safely be reduced for display on a computer screen.
• 150 dpi - great for colour prints on the vast majority of colour printers
• 200 dpi - produces great colour output on some commercial print equipment
• 300 dpi - great for printing the vast majority of black and white images on a monochrome laser printer

CHECK THE IMAGE FORMAT YOU'RE USING

Most current software programs that accompany digital cameras or available for editing and processing images will produce JPEG images. The JPEG format is designed to produce good quality images for transmission over the Internet. Consequently, JPEG is generally the format of choice. It will generally produce a good quality image with fewer "bits" (usually reported as kilobytes) than other formats.

Here are some rules of thumb for various image formats:

• JPEG (".jpg") - Generally the best format for transferring photos over the internet
• GIF (".gif") - Frequently used for "line-art" on the Internet but not nearly as good for photographs. This format is limited to a maximum of 256 colours.
• PNG (".png") - This format was meant to replace the JPEG format but never caught on, due partly to inconsistent implementation by various browser publishers. This format is becoming much more popular and may eventually overtake the JPEG format in popularity. This is a good format to use for transferring photographs.
• TIFF (".tif") - This format is frequently used on PCs and is a great format for print. However, it requires lots of resouces (i.e. the files can be HUGE).
• BMP (".bmp") - This format is used frequently on PCs as well and is good for print. However, like TIFFs it produces large files not suitable for transmission over the Internet.
• PSD (".psd") - This is a proprietary format Adobe uses for its "Photoshop" program. Most current image editing programs will read and export to this format. However, like the TIFF and BMP formats, files are very large and not suitable for transmission over the Internet.

There are hundreds of other formats available but generally none of them is good at compressing images for transmission over the Internet.

COMPRESS YOUR FILES

If you're already using JPEGs, GIFs, or PNGs, there's not much sense in compressing your images for attachment to an e-mail. Your images are already compressed significantly if you're using one of the three formats we've mentioned.

However, if you need to use another format like TIFF, BMP, or PSD, you can compress your images to save resources. There are a number of compression programs available for download but one of the most popular is "Winzip." The following URL is for the Winzip site:

http://www.winzip.com/

The only potential downside (aside from the small amount of time it takes to compress file) is that the recipient has to have a program on their end for de-compressing ("unzipping") the files. Compressing and decompressing files is pretty standard nowadays and most modern operating systems support this function natively (i.e. it's built-in).

Thanks to Rob, one of our trusty technical tipsters, for suggesting this topic!

THROUGHPUT, BANDWIDTH, TRAFFIC - WHAT IS IT AND HOW MUCH DOES MY WEBSITE HAVE?

In conjunction with "can your servers handle my bandwidth?" we often field the question, "how much bandwidth will I need?" Of course, there's no way to tell a customer how much bandwidth they'll need--unless they already know how many site visitors they have in a month, which pages are the most popular, and how big each of those pages is. And if the customer already has that information, the chances are they already know how much bandwidth they use and need.

For those of you with websites but who don't know about bandwidth and how to estimate it, here's a quick overview.

CHECK THE SIZE OF YOUR SITE

If you've got a PC or Mac and you've developed your own website, this is easy to estimate. Simply select the folder containing your website and have a look at its properties. In Windows, simply right-click on the folder containing your website and then select "Properties" from the drop-down menu. One of the properties reported will be size of files contained in the folder.

Say, for example, you find your website is 10 megabytes in size. That's all the images, HTML, PHP, or other files, and anything else you've made available online.

An overly-simplified way to estimate the bandwidth required for your site would be to estimate the number of people who visit your site in a month and then multiply the total size of your website by that number. So, if 100 people visit your site in a month and load every single page into their browser and download every single file, you would need 1,000 megabytes of bandwidth (one gigabyte).

This isn't a very accurate way to estimate how much bandwidth you'll use because it's extremely unlikely that every visitor to your site will access absolutely every file you have online. However, it might be a "safe" way to estimate bandwidth if you think you know how many visitors you'll have--give or take. We say "safe" because it's not likely you'll exceed your estimate--again provided you're accurate with the number of site visitors.

If you want to be more accurate, you could have a look at individual files, guess which ones will be loaded the most regularly and frequently, and then estimate the number of site visitors you'll have. Say, for example, you have a 35 kilobyte home page and another 10 or so sub-pages of around 30 kilobytes each. On top of that, let's say you've got a 5 megabyte audio file you think will get loaded by everyone who comes to the site.

If 100 people visit your site and load all the pages and files you think will get loaded, you'd need approximately 533.5 megabytes of bandwidth (One page at 35 kilobytes loaded 100 times is 3,500 kilobytes. Ten pages of 30 kilobytes each loaded 100 times equals 30,000 kilobytes. One file of 5 mebabytes (5,000 kilobytes) loaded 100 times is equal to 500 megabytes (500,000 kilobytes).

Here's a handy-dandy list that shows the relationship between various "bytes:"

• 1 bit - the smallest unit of data measurement
• 1 byte - equals 8 bits
• 1 kilobyte - (2¹⁰ bits) equals 1,024 bytes
• 1 megabyte - (2¹⁰ kilobytes or 2¹⁰⁰ bits) equals 1,024 kilobytes
• 1 gigabyte - (2¹⁰ megabytes or 2^1,000 bits) equals 1,024 megabytes
• 1 terabyte - (2¹⁰ megabytes or 2^10,000 bits) eqauls 1,024 gigabytes

Confusion sometimes results when the above measurements are converted to decimal expressions of what's being measured. For example, most hard disk drive manufacturers express their drive capacities as "30 gigabytes," "40 gigabytes," "100 gigabytes," and so on. Usually, that means 30,000 megabytes, 40,000 megabytes, and 100,000 megabytes respectively, not 30,720 megabytes, 40,960 megabytes, or 102,400 megabytes.

But whether you include the last 24 kilobytes or megabytes in your calculation is proabaly not going to seriously affect your calculations. It's pretty safe to assume 1,000 kilobytes are in each megabyte and there are 1,000 megabytes in each gigabyte.

ESTIMATE THE NUMBER OF SITE VISITORS

Estimating the number of site visitors is pretty much a guess if you've got a new site. However, it's probably better to try estimating the number of site visitors than not.

If your site is something you're doing for yourself and you're not doing any advertising, your site probably isn't going to get a lot of traffic. Maybe some friends and family will visit from time to time and maybe you'll get the odd visit from someone who shares some of the same interests as you. In this case, 50 visits per month is probably quite generous.

On the other hand, if your site covers a very popular topic and you're someone who's widely associated with the topic, traffic could be signficant. Or, if you already run a "brick-and-mortar" store with a good customer base and you've advertised your website, you could get significant traffic. Traffic to sites like this might see 100 to 500 individual visits per month. A site with a known international target audience may get 1,000 site visits per month or more.

COMPILE SITE STATS

Of course, the best way to determine site visits and bandwidth is to run your site for a while and see what's happening. Islandnet.com offers the use of three web statistics packages--Webalizer, Analog, and WebStatz. Webalizer is one of the most popular web statistics packages used on the Internet. Analog is a text-based reporting program where you can have your statistics e-mailed to you. WebStatz is our own program and is designed to be thorough and easy-to-understand.

If your site is new and you have no idea what kind of traffic you'll see, you may want to simply put the site online with the least expensive hosting package offered and then review your statiistics daily. Whether you're using Webalizer, Analog, or WebStaz, you can generate daily reports.

If traffic is obviously going to be an issue, you can change your hosting package to one that makes sense given the site visits your site generates. We have a package calculator you can use to figure out which plan makes the most sense, given a level of traffic and other resources you may need. Click here to go to the package calculator now.

THINGS TO REMEMBER ABOUT ISLANDNET.COM AND BANDWIDTH

First, if you "run out" of bandwidth (i.e. you exceed the limit allowed with the package you've chosen), we don't shut your site off. In other words, your site won't stop working because you've exceeded the bandwidth allowance for your account. Instead, a charge will be added to your monthly invoice to cover the excess bandwidth. If the excess is a few megabytes or so, the charge likely won't be very much. If the excess is several gigabytes, the added cost may be significant. So it's worthwhile watching your bandwidth if you've got significant traffic to your site.

Second, you can automatically shut down your site if you don't want to exceed your bandwidth quota. We've added quota functionality to ".htaccess" files on our system. By editing your ".htaccess" file you can limit the amount of bandwidth your site uses. For more information on the ".htaccess" file, click here. For specific information about limiting bandwidth use with the ".htaccess" file, click here. This functionality is not turned on by default. You must add a ".htaccess" file to your site and you must put the appropriate text lines in the file.

Third, we do not monitor customer bandwidth with a view to contacting customers if they exceed their limits. We monitor bandwidth in order to charge an appropriate amount to their monthly invoice. In extraordinary instances, we may contact customers to make sure their site is not under attack or using excessive bandwidth because of a defective script.