If you’ve ever bought anything online you’ll know that you simply have to trust the site. You’re using it to Protect your Personal Data and credit card details secure. The internet is a notoriously unsafe domain, so internet security is understandably a big issue with private consumers. The general public has become much warier in using sites they perceive as risky. Due to the number of high-profile reports of sensitive data being accessed or misused from well-known sites.

The potential loss of sales revenue due to lack of trust could be huge given the size. And continued growth of the online shopping market, particularly in the UK. The online retail association IMRG estimates that 865m deliveries of online purchases will be made in the UK during 2014.

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While much of this activity will be done on a pc, research by Millennial Media and com. Score found that mobile shopping is also growing fast, with 51% of retail activity occurring on mobile devices during 2013. So, for all businesses who use e-commerce, online security must be seen to be trustworthy to capture a piece of the increasingly valuable online market.

Making E-commerce Sites Secure – SSL Certificates

The most widely used and trusted security protocol is known as SSL, which is short for Secure Socket Layer. This piece of technology encrypts the connection between the consumer’s web browser and the e-commerce site’s web server. The encryption process ensures that data transferred between the two remains private and protected from the ever-increasing risk of threats such as Malware viruses and direct hacker attacks. Once installed consumers will be able to see that the site has SSL in place as a padlock icon will be visible in the address bar and the web address may also be highlighted in green.

In order to apply, the SSL protocol it needs to be enabled on the website’s server. To do this an SSL Certificate must be bought which identifies the site. The software must then be installed on the site’s server. Retailers can buy SSL certificates from a number of sources with each provider offering different features and pricing to match individual business needs.

There’s no doubt e-commerce is here to stay and those with SSL Certificates will be in the best position to reap the most from their e-commerce activities.

Roughly 9 out of 10 people own a personal computer. While most of those computers statistically run the Windows operating system, several are using macOS, and a few others are using systems you’ve probably never heard of.

The variances that exist between operating systems complicate the process of choosing an operating system which is what brings us to why we’ve written this post.

Our team wants to go over a handful of the elements that should influence your OS decision. By weighing each of them, we’re confident you’ll be able to pick a system that allows you to get the most out of your PC usage, budget, and more.

Curious to learn what you need to mull over before committing to an OS? If so, keep reading to satiate your need to know!

Computer Skills

How good are you with computers? Are you a whizz that can do just about anything with your machine? Do you struggle to find an internet browser?

Your computer skills, or more specifically, your skills on a particular operating system should influence the OS you select when choosing an operating system.

For example, if you don’t acclimate quickly to technology and have only ever used Windows systems, you should probably stick with Windows. The same would be true for whatever other OS you’re familiar with.

On the flip side, if you’re a computer savant, even if you haven’t used a particular operating system before, it may be that you can quickly acclimate to it.

Budget

How much money do you have to invest in an operating system? After all, the ones that you know and love aren’t free.

Take Windows for example. Windows might seem like it’s free because it comes pre-installed on your computer. Part of your computer’s price tag, however, includes the price of Windows. That means that if you wanted to upgrade your Windows OS to a later version, doing so would likely set you back hundreds of dollars.

Believe it or not, some operating systems are free. Linux, for example, is an open-source OS. The means that members of the computing community all take the time to donate their skills to its improvement and share their additions with the world so others may continue their work.

You can learn more about Linux systems here.

Malleability

You tinkerers out there may want to work in an operating system that you can easily make modifications to. As you may already know, some operating systems enable that end better than others.

Take mobile phones for example. An iPhone is much more closed off than an Android phone which you can do tons of things with, especially if you go through the simple process of obtaining root access. iPhones don’t even give you the option of obtaining root access which makes it so hackers need to exploit iOS to gain additional system permissions.

macOS is much less malleable than Windows and Windows less so than some flavors of Linux.

Ethics

Most people aren’t asking themselves ethical questions when choosing an operating system. You might be the exception to that rule and if so, may want to opt for free, open-source systems as a means of powering your computer.

As we alluded to earlier, free, open-source operating system lovers that enjoy supporting non-profits should flock towards Linux systems. Linux comes in several varietals that are made to accommodate users of different computer skills, interfaces, settings preferences, and more.

Our team is a big fan of Ubuntu but feel free to explore this list of other Linux flavors.

Use Cases

What do you want to use your computer for? If your primary use cases are web browsing and document processing, the world is your oyster.

If you’re trying to be a gamer, your options will be much more limited.

Looking at gaming specifically, several of the best games are only designed to work on Windows systems. That’s because the vast majority of the world uses Windows so developers see developing games for other OS’ as being cost-prohibitive.

Granted, you could discover more about virtual machines to learn how to run Windows games on Mac systems and vice versa. As a general rule though, if you’re finding that your OS doesn’t support your most common use cases natively, you should move on.

Hardware

The type of personal computer you have will have an impact on which PC operating system you can use. Take macOS for instance. Did you know that it’s against Apple’s TOS for you to install macOS on a non-Apple machine? Of course, people do it anyway. If you’re worried about legal implications though, that conversation could be a non-starter.

Alternatively, consider a very weak piece of computer hardware. It may be that the newest version of Windows runs too slow on it. That may inspire you to install a stripped-down version with Linux on it.

The bottom line, the beefier your machine, the more apt it will be to work with different operating systems.

Choosing an Operating System Doesn’t Mean Life or Death

Going through the choosing an operating system process can be stressful. The good news is that your decision doesn’t have life or death implications.

If you try out a Windows operating system and find that you don’t like it, you can simply overwrite your install with Linux or other viable options.

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That fact should empower you to sample different operating system choices to hopefully stumble on the one you can’t live without. Which operating system ends up inspiring those feelings in you may very well catch you by surprise.

For more information on all things media, lifestyle, and more, explore additional content on our blog!

Ah yes, the domain name. An incredibly important factor in determining the success of your website. The domain name is the URL of your website, which anybody is able to type into their web browser in order to visit your site.

There are a number of different opinions as to what makes a great and catchy domain name. However, I’ve found that even if one person’s opinion is different from the other; they can both still be right. Like a lot of what I’m about to explain, really depends on the type of your website, what it’s about, and the type of audience you’re looking to attract.

So here are a few different aspects of a domain name that brought out various people’s opinions and queries and how you should apply them to your own selection of domain name.

Number of Letters

I’ve often thought that the fewer letters there are in a domain name, the better. Which is true to some extent. Think of all the popular websites out there. There is one trend that’s quite hard to miss. Many of them contain 7-9 letters in total, spread across two words.

For example Facebook, YouTube, BlogSpot, TechCrunch, Alibaba, etc.

There’s a good reason for this logic, too. All of these websites are easy to remember. They’re all under 10 letters and consist of two words, which generally makes it very easy for them to… roll of the tongue if you like. There’s only one problem with this; most of the 8 letters, 2-word names are gone, so it can be quite hard to find one. Although, more than 10 letters is not necessarily a bad thing. More letters can mean better keywords…

Keywords

It’s one thing having a domain name that’s easy to remember, but it’s a very good idea to include good keywords within your domain. The top websites in the world that have names that are slightly strange, with no popular keywords such as Alibaba, most likely had quite a comfy budget for marketing and advertisement. Therefore, they were probably more concerned with the branding of their domain, rather than including keywords to help it rank well.

I should elaborate; Including keywords within a domain helps with your ranking in search engines, simply because users will be searching the terms that are included within the URL. This is why many websites can easily get away with extra letters in their domain. They’re able to include popular keywords, that are also easy to remember.

Branding

Perhaps a good option for those who have a large budget for marketing, or maybe just really want to push their own brand into the world. Most websites that have a unique brand name, will sell their own products which they’ve obviously created, and are looking to set themselves apart by branding their products.

So again, it depends on what you’re website is for. Focusing on branding would be a good option if this aspect is important to your business and you have set a good budget for getting your name out there. If not, either of the other two options is perfect.

Overall, it really depends on your long-term goals as to which aspect you decide to focus on. Be prepared to lay down the cash if you go down the branding route. A short domain will generally be remembered a lot better by people, but then one with better keywords will be able to rank more easily in search engines.

So there’s a little bit of info to help you when selecting your next famous domain name. Make sure you give me some credit when you’re a millionaire because of it!