Welcome to the March 2005 issue of the CyberArtisans monthly newsletter!

Our goal is to present information that will be useful to you as a website owner and as a user of the web. If these newsletters are not useful to you, please forward this to a friend who will find it useful. To unsubscribe, follow the directions at the bottom of this email.

This Month's Topics
Private Client Areas and Surveys
New Newsletter Service
Finding Good Service Businesses

Private Client Areas and Surveys

What do private client areas and surveys have in common? They both use databases. Yes, databases have a reputation for being expensive, but it doesn't have to be so. Setting up a private client area where every client has his/her own username and password is easy, and it takes just a simple database to make it work. By giving each client a separate username/password combination, you can easily "change the locks" if there is a security problem without having an impact on other clients.

If you want, we can build in pages that allow you or your office manager to change username/password combinations instantly. You can also have a page listing all current users.

You can experiment with a sample private area here: http://www.cyberartisans.com/demos/.

A survey can also benefit from a simple database. Set up the survey form on the web page, pipe everything from the survey form into the database, and download the results at your leisure. No need to copy data from email to a database or spreadsheet -- it's already there in a form that can be massaged or exported as you wish.

New Newsletter Service

With this issue we are starting a new newsletter mailing service. It is run by Constant Contact (http://www.constantcontact.com) and it is admittedly a bit of an experiment for us. A number of our clients have expressed an interest in starting an email newsletter, so we are offering our newsletter as the guineau pig to test out this service. In the next couple of issues we will tell you how it works, what we like and what we don't. We will also try adding images and maybe even try one of their templates. Stay tuned.

Finding Good Service Businesses

Do any of these scenarios sound familiar?

• You flip a light switch, get a flash and all goes dark. Changing bulbs doesn't help. It's the main light in the dining room and you are expecting a crowd the next weekend. You need an electrician. No, wait, you need a good electrician, and you need one who will show up. How do you find one?
• Your kid had an accident in the family car. You call your insurance agent and get the phone menu run-around. This isn't the first time this agent has been difficult to reach. You've had it, but how do you find a good agent?
• You are planning an addition to your house. You want a good architect but you know nothing about architects. How do you tell a good one from the rest of the pack?

If you find yourself in such a situation, we have a list of vetted professionals we can refer to you. These folks are all members of the Newton chapter of BNI -- Business Networking International -- and we know all of them personally. In fact, we've used many of them for our own emergencies and can vouch for the quality of their service.

Jonathan Spencer
CyberArtisans Web Developers

http://www.cyberartisans.com/
617-965-4110