Online Marketing

Internet Marketing is the best way to brand or promote your products or services. It helps you to make a strong impact of your business on Internet. This is the main reason why it has surmounted all types of traditional marketing techniques and is very fruitful. Not only it has more reach across the various sections but is also very cost effective program. Advantages of web marketing have made this acceptable for all businesses that are looking to have some online influence.

Internet Marketing Strategies

Search Engine Optimization
Does your website needs SEO to get listed in the top pages of your websites. This is best solution to get traffic to your website from best and relevant search queries called “keywords “. We only use while hat and legitimate methods to promote in search engines by SEO.

Search Engine Marketing
Our SEM Service will gives you option of selecting right kind of marketing strategy required to be implemented on your website. These include Search Engine Optimization, Pay per Click Services, Affiliate Marketing, web 2.0 marketing etc. You can get superlative explicit method to be run for you to get preferred results.

Pay Per Click (PPC)
Pay Per Click services can be very fruitful for you if you are looking to get instant traffic to your website. All of the three PPC services (Google, Yahoo & MSN), Google Adword is major drivers in potential visitor as well as in popularity.

Link Building
Search engines consign plenty of credence to the backward links to any web site. It is important for your website to have appropriate titles, keywords, description and few links from other so as to get on the top pages of search engine results. A successful link building campaign can lead to sustainable search engine rankings, targeted traffic, lots of sales and gradual enhancement in the GPR of website.

Social Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing can be very useful and inexpensive if managed properly. We properly utilize these all so that our website is easily connected with the online community or website with more branding awareness. Social Media Marketing Blogging, bookmarking websites, Video Submission, article submission, press releases and more utilization of social networks. This is the best way to get publicity from social media sites and get supplementary traffic apart from from search engine.

Online Marketing

CodeIgniter 1.7.3 Released

Version 1.7.3 is a security maintenance release, including a previously patched file Upload class, and a new security fix to prevent possible directory traversal in certain circumstances (back ported from a fix made to CodeIgniter 2.0 at BitBucket). There are no other significant changes.

CodeIgniter 1.7.3 Released

Joomla! 1.6 Has Arrived!

Joomla!® 1.6.0 is now available for immediate download.

This new version of Joomla includes more power, more control, and more options than ever before.

Rebuilt from the ground up in much of the application, this latest Joomla release will delight the casual site builder while helping small, medium, and enterprise businesses succeed in delivering web sites, intranets and applications to their respective markets.

Delivering power through simplicity, Joomla 1.6 ensures its place as the popular CMS of its kind. Joomla 1.6 delivers new features to end-users and site administrators including:

* Finer access controls for viewing and editing content with configurable user groups and viewing levels
* A user-defined category structure, from simple one-level to complex multi-level categories
* Installation improvements allowing for multiple extension installations in one package, updatable with a single click
* Expanded language support for easy production of multi-lingual sites
* Start and end publishing times for modules with more control over where they display,
* Fresh new templates and semantic markup to please the eye as well as the search engines
* More creative control through template styles
* Hundreds of additional features, streamlining workflow and productivity

With Joomla 1.6 developers will build extensions faster through all phases of design, deployment and updates.

Advanced and rich API’s will provide new opportunities to integrate, compete and expand into existing and new markets.

Style improvements give graphic designers more control and more flexibility to create the perfect effect for any web site and audience. Designers can now override virtually all output from the Joomla Administrator giving rise to new opportunities for functional, accessible or even mobile-friendly Administrator areas. Individual Administrator templates can be assigned to individual users allowing web masters to address any special needs.

To learn more, or to get started building your own Joomla 1.6 web site visit joomla.org/16 and download one of the world’s most popular free Open Source content management systems.

Joomla! 1.6 Has Arrived!

Get Linked to LinkedIn

One of the most powerful, and proven business strategies of all time is the system of networking and building relationships.

Building and maintaining a successful business is not something that can be done alone. There are many different elements that have to come together when growing a business, and those different elements will require you to seek outside help most of the time.

Networking also becomes of major importance when you want to generate new business. In order for people to buy your service or products, they first need to know they exist.

By building a strong and diverse network you make it more likely for people who may need to use your service to be able to find you.

If people who are within your network have actually used your company or service before, they may even recommend you to the people in their network, thus giving you a potential for new customers.
Networking Online

Our business generation is extremely lucky in that we have the Internet to aid us in our networking campaigns. We now have access to potential colleagues and customers from all over the world, and all just a mouse click away.

There are some very good websites that are designed specifically for bringing business professionals together in the name of networking. The biggest, best and most successful is LinkedIn.
What is LinkedIn?

Although primarily LinkedIn is a business-networking site, it is actually much more than that. There is a search function that can help you reconnect with old friends or colleagues that may have moved on.

If you are looking for new business then you can advertise your service within your profile, so that anyone who happens to be looking for your type of service can find you.

Lastly there is a great question and answer section that allows you to ask a specific business question. Fellow professionals who wish to pass on advice and help will then answer that question. This part of LinkedIn alone is a hidden goldmine because you could brand yourself as the expert in your niche.

This feature has been responsible for the birth of many successful partnerships.
Get Involved or Get Left Behind

I don’t think anyone can really put together a valid argument against the importance of networking as part of your marketing strategy. A little over two years ago I stated otherwise, but I swallow the humble pill right here, right now, because back then I was burned out, and overwhelmed with the sheer amount of social networking sites.

Today, most people who are researching a business, or looking for a specific type of professional will be looking for them online. That is why your business can no longer get away with ignoring sites such as LinkedIn.

If your business does not have a profile, you can bet that some of your strongest and most dangerous competitors will.

As the online community gravitates even more toward social and business networking, it will soon become impossible to do business successfully without some form of networking strategy.

LinkedIn makes the whole process easy, even if you have little or no experience building a profile online. Millions of people are using the site to actively network with fellow professionals. Are you?

Get Linked to LinkedIn

Why You Should Build an Amazon Associate Store

For a newcomer, many aspects of internet marketing are mysterious. How to make money with AdWords? What is search engine optimization, is it a WordPress plugin? What’s the difference between affiliate marketing and article marketing?

A combination of these questions and more crossed my head in the journey to understanding Internet marketing. I wrapped my head around most of them now, but one area of Internet marketing didn’t make much sense to me until very recently: Amazon Associate marketing.

Amazon Associates program pays a tiny commission compared to other affiliate programs. How does anyone make anything worthwhile with this? Why even bother? Not only that, but you can actually read discussions online about how worthless Amazon Associate program is.

This was my attitude toward Amazon Associates program until one day — for some reason — I decided to give it a try. I’m not talking about putting a link in the end of my blog post or a widget in the sidebar. I think people who do this are the ones complaining about Amazon associates program.

I built an Amazon store.
How does an Amazon store make money, you say?

What do you mean? It just makes loads of money–why do you need to know how?

Just kidding–that’s not really my answer and I hate answers like this. Knowing how it makes money and knowing what value it contributes to the web is important. Without this knowledge you will be imitating others who may not be doing the good and profitable thing.

There are two popular types of Amazon stores:

* the community store
* the niche store

Amazon store on a community site

If you have a website with a passionate community about Chihuahuas, or a certain gadget, or any hobby, you can add an Amazon store to it. The store helps in two ways. If it is search engine optimized, it will bring additional traffic and exposure to your community website. At the same time, your loyal community will find value in the related products that you display in your Amazon store.
Amazon store catering to micro-niche topics

You can create a micro-niche Amazon store even if you don’t have a community website–and Amazon.com and the people of the web will appreciate it when you do this. Basically, what you’re doing is helping Amazon categorize and group their products in a way that caters to eccentric niches.

For example, Amazon.com does not have a “robotics kit” category for people whose hobby is building robots. Someone who understands this can create a niche store to collect all the relevant products from Amazon’s selection and list them in categories that enthusiasts understand. A search engine optimized niche store like this will be useful and will get significant traffic.
Why Amazon niche store is a worthwhile affiliate tactic

Now back to the question of profitability–can Amazon Associate program be profitable?

Yes. However, the focused nature of the store means that only a certain small group of people will be interested in it. The amount of money you make from a single store probably won’t make you rich. You will have to build a second and third store.

The good news is that building a search engine optimized Amazon Associate store is easy if you use the right tools. For example, with WordPress and the right plugins and some practice, you can build an Amazon store in a few minutes–literally.

So, go ahead–explore this affiliate marketing territory. You may like it more than other niches. Remember that Amazon is a trusted brand. By associating with them, you won’t have to do any hard selling. And whether your users purchase the products you recommend or purchase other products, Amazon will still credit you for the sale!

Why You Should Build an Amazon Associate Store

Facebook Secrets You Didn’t Know

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last few years then you will be well aware of the Internet powerhouse that is “Facebook.”

The social network site that let’s you connect with friends, share photos, videos and play games with people all around the world.

In a very short space of time Facebook has gone from being a new and unheard of website, to total world domination. How many people do you know that do not have a Facebook profile?

My guess is that virtually everybody you know will use the site in one capacity or another. This has created some amazing opportunities for the savvy businessperson. You can use the site to generate huge amounts of new business.

Whilst many marketing “experts” will suggest that you simply mass add people to your friends lists and then spam them with CPA offers, there are some much more useful and effective ways of using the site, if you understand the secrets of Facebook.
Here are just a few of them:

Create a Community

By creating a group or fan page that is targeted to a specific niche, you will bring together a community of likeminded people. People who will all have an interest in the subject, and offers that may come their way from time to time.

Something that is often overlooked is how powerful content syndication can be using Facebook. By sharing interesting and informative information with people within your group you will find that those people begin sharing your content with their friends, and that is how viral marketing begins.

So think community, think quality content, and you could find yourself getting worldwide coverage sooner than you think.

Create an App

A very underused feature on Facebook amongst marketers is the mighty app. It is actually fairly easy to create your own Facebook application, and it doesn’t have to be particularly flashy or technical either to be effective.

A simple application that gives “daily sales tips”, or “daily dating advice” in text form, can actually be a very quick and easy way of creating a very large following for your business. If you like the idea of community, such applications can become very popular and go viral very quickly, giving you and your brand massive coverage. If you are not confident in putting an app together yourself then a freelance programmer should be able to do one for you fairly cheaply.

Think Keywords

It is very rare that I ever see anyone talking about the power of keywords and Facebook.

The site has a huge PR and is loved by Google, thus being spidered hundreds, if not thousands of times a day. If your group, app or fan page is keyword rich (rich, not stuffed) then you have a good chance of showing up somewhere in the SERPS for them.

This is of course dependant on proper keyword research, however with proper homework it is very possible.

With a little creativity, and a little out the box thinking, Facebook can be a great vehicle for generating interest and traffic to your site.

Let’s connect on Facebook today. You can hook up with me by adding me as a friend.
Are you using Facebook for business, or pleasure?

Facebook Secrets You Didn’t Know

15 Ways To Improve Your Website In 15 Minutes

Does your website need a makeover? These tips can help you get it in optimal working order in no time.

Organize Navigation

If visitors don’t have a quick, easy way to find what they’re looking for when they come to your site, they’re not going to stick around. Make sure they can navigate with a minimum of hassle.

Fix Your Links

Good navigation is useless if the links don’t lead where they’re supposed to. Every time you update or add a link, test it to make sure it behaves the way it should.

Fix or Add Page Titles

Website pages have content, so make sure the heading in the browser title bar reflects that. Don’t leave your homepage titled simply “Hompage;” put your site or business name there instead.

Clean Up the Header

A cluttered or jumbled header can turn visitors off before they even glance at the rest of the site. Streamline your header text and images in order to make the best first impression possible.

Cut Down on Graphics

The days of using animated GIFs to catch people’s attention are over. Simplify your site by removing unnecessary graphics and images. This will give the site a cleaner look and allow for faster loading on slower connections.

Consolidate Information

People who browse the Internet tend to skim rather than read. Organizing your site’s information into shorter paragraphs and bulleted lists under bold headers assures that visitors won’t miss something important.

Consider Columns

Many sites now use column layouts to divide site content and navigation links. These layouts look cleaner and are easier to browse than straight pages of text.

Switch to Style Sheets

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) offer much more in the way of style customization than HTML. With CSS you can make small tweaks or site-wide style changes from one place rather than having to individually update each page.

Add a Bio

First-time visitors may not know who you are or what your site is about, especially if they navigated in from a search engine. Having a prominent “About Us” page gives them a quick way to find out if your site has what they’re looking for.

Add a Contact Form

Providing only your e-mail address is an invitation for spam. A formal contact form gives visitors an easy way to get in touch with you. Your web hosting service may offer a form building tool to make this easier.

Add an FAQ

To make sure visitors don’t inundate your e-mail with common questions, add a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section to address the most likely concerns that may pop up while browsing your site.

Update Your Blog

New blog posts are the fastest way to add dynamic content to your site, which in turn can signal search engine robots to crawl it. This works to improve visibility and draw new people to your site.

Assure Security

When selling merchandise or offering any kind of members-only services, make sure that your security certificate is up-to-date. An expired certificate can turn away potential customers.

Check Your Work

After making any changes, it’s important to do a test view of your site in common browsers and at common screen resolutions, since these can affect how your site displays to visitors. Free web developer tools are available to help with this step.

Assure Hosting Reliability

In order for people to see your site, it needs to be up and running as much as possible. Make sure you have reliable web hosting with enough bandwidth to support maximum uptime for the size and type of site that you run. Check out some web hosting comparison to be sure that you are getting quality service.

15 Ways To Improve Your Website In 15 Minutes

Search Engine Ranking Factors Cheatsheet

At the end it all comes down to one thing – Targeted Traffic! But how you get there can be quite different and in my personal experience proper Search Engine Optimization is one of the simplest ways to get your own UNFAIR SHARE of the visitors.

Problem is – there are just as many experts as there are opinions on what need to be done in order to rank well and win the page rank war. And if you start to listen to them one-by-one you will soon start running in circles.

Luckily, guys at SEOMoz have compiled a Search Engine Ranking Factors Cheat sheet that combines the answers from quite a few industry recognized SEO experts and presented it in a simple to understand and follow format. Bookmark and print it!

Search Engine Ranking Factors Cheatsheet

CSS Framework - Blueprint

Blueprint is a CSS framework, which aims to cut down on your development time. It gives you a solid foundation to build your project on top of, with an easy-to-use grid, sensible typography, useful plugins, and even a stylesheet for printing.

What does Blueprint have to offer?

* A CSS reset that eliminates the discrepancies across browsers.
* A solid grid that can support the most complex of layouts.
* Typography based on expert principles that predate the web.
* Form styles for great looking user interfaces.
* Print styles for making any webpage ready for paper.
* Plugins for buttons, tabs and sprites.
* Tools, editors, and templates for every step in your workflow.

CSS Framework - Blueprint

Powerful CSS-Techniques For Effective Coding

Sometimes being a web-developer is just damn hard. Particularly coding is often responsible for slowing down our workflow, reducing the quality of our work and sleepless nights with pizza and coffee laying around the laptop. Reason: with a number of incompatibility issues and quite creative rendering engines it sometimes takes too much time to find a workaround for some problem without addressing browsers with quirky hacks. And that’s where ready-to-use solutions developed by other designers come in handy.

One year ago we’ve published the post with 53 CSS-Techniques You Couldn’t Live Without where we provided references to the most useful CSS-techniques which are often used in almost every project. Over the last year we’ve been observing what’s happening with the CSS-based web-development, and we collected most useful CSS-techniques we’ve stumbled upon — for us and for our readers.

In this post we present 50 new CSS-techniques, ideas and ready-to-use solutions for effective coding. You definitely know some of them, but definitely not all of them. Some technique is missing? Let us know in the comments to this post.

Powerful CSS-Techniques For Effective Coding

How to Optimize Your Website For Google Instant to Improve Search Engine Traffic?

Google recently announces ‘Google instant‘ interface designed with new search engine algorithm to improve the user experience as well as deliver faster search results based on the user input, Search results will popping based on predictive keywords when the user start typing in google search engine without hitting enter button.

According to google, Its own Classic search (Old interface) does takes 9 seconds average for each search results based on user input, but google Instant algorithm does saves 2-5 seconds per search.

But many of the webmasters who experience the dropout in their search engine traffic due to google instant. Search engine journal suggests some quick tips to improve search engine rankings and traffic with google instant. Here they are…

1. Prefix product name or brand name along with your post (or) page title

Always start post or page title with targeted keyword (At least with in first 3 words) such as product or brand name, which will attract the lots of search engine user traffic (Most of the internet users are using search phrase with product or brand name as search keyword) and ensure more probabilities to get your site listed under first page google instant search results.

2. Use your sense when writing post or page title with user perspective

Always name your post or page title with sense and user perspective. Lets say, You are writing a post about nokia C2 mobile phone review. Before to writing the post title, analyze the google instant search results about how users interacted previously with search terms by typing some related keywords for your post with google instant.

The above screenshot is popping up some search results for the keyword ‘Nokia C2 Review‘ which is based on the most previous search keywords used by the google search engine users related to the keyword of ‘Nokia C2 Review‘ Google search suggestions are indicated some most searched and relevant search keywords of the you have written. So, better to include such keywords with your post or page title will increase the probabilities of your site listed under google instant search results.

3. Target the geo specific audiences with relevant multi-phrase keywords

Instead of using competitive keywords, Better to target your content with geo specific audiences by adding relevant multi-phrase keywords (by including city names in post or page title) which will greatly improves search engine traffic. Probably these keywords are not more competitive keywords than other common keywords.

4. Attract visitors with relevant images and videos with brand name

Attracting more visitors with brand name and multimedia content is easier job than any other. Google Instant prefers multimedia content search results when you are using brand name along with well optimized (relevant) images. But to getting listed under Google instant multimedia search results based on domain reputation and aging is key factor.

How to Optimize Your Website For Google Instant to Improve Search Engine Traffic?

Optimize Your Website or Blog to Perform Well With Google Local Search Results

Every webmaster knows that, Driving targeted traffic to your site globally through google search results is not an easy task. But do you know driving traffic to your website or blog through local search results through google is fairly simple than global traffic? Now a days google prefers more localized search results which ensures great opportunity for small and medium businesses. If you have a business such as restaurants or hotels which targets your local audiences, Don’t miss these steps to optimize your website or blog to rank well in Google local search results.

Know How Google Local Search Results Works

Lets say when the user searches through google with the phrase “samsung service centers in chennai“, In the search results page, Highlighted search results (above the fold) are localized search results based on user search phrase. Similar to that anyone can able to optimize their website to promote their business through Google Local search results. List your website and ranking well with Google local search results is much easier, If you follow these tips as specified below to optimize your website or blog to rank well with google local search results.

Useful optimization tips to rank well in google local search results

Before to follow these tips, claim your google local listings through this link at no cost. Once you added and verified you business, its a time to follow below specified optimization tips to rank well in google local search results.

* Add images with google local listing will be eye catching and attractive and users are tend to click the search results
* On page optimization is the key to success in google local listing. Ensure that, you must add name of city in meta title along with key terms of your business
* Submit your website or blog to other local listings directories which related to your business
* Make sure that include your complete address along with zip code in website or blog contact page or wherever its applicable
* Do not forget to add your business location in google maps including with your localized phone number
* Use more local variations in your website content and in anchor texts. (But do not spam)

If you follow these steps, Certainly your website or blog performs well in google local search results and you will get more targeted users which ensures more business or leads than ever before.

Optimize Your Website or Blog to Perform Well With Google Local Search Results

20 Open Source PHP Content Management Systems(CMS)

Content Management System, or CMS is an application used to manage news easily so that users can publish, edit and delete articles from the back-end admin system. HTML and other scripting language are not necessary to operate a CMS, though having them will add more advantages.

Since we had looked into 22 open source PHP frameworks, i decided to do a roundup of 20 Open Source PHP Content Management Systems so that readers who don’t have strong PHP knowledge can easily create their website using free and open source CMS.
1. Wordpress

Wordpress is a powerful yet easy to use content management system. Initially it was designed as a blogging platform. However, it slowly become popular and can be customized into a powerful CMS with some tricks and plugins. I had wrote an article about Wordpress SEO plugins and also talked about things that you should know about Wordpress 2.8.

2. Drupal

Drupal is a free and open source modular framework and Content Management System (CMS) written in PHP. It is used as a back-end system for many different types of websites, ranging from small personal blogs to large corporate and political sites.


3. Joomla

Joomla is an award-winning content management system (CMS), which enables you to build Web sites and powerful online applications. Many aspects, including its ease-of-use and extensibility, have made Joomla the most popular Web site software available. Best of all, Joomla is an open source solution that is freely available to everyone.


4. Frog CMS

Frog CMS simplifies content management by offering an elegant user interface, flexible templating per page, simple user management and permissions, as well as the tools necessary for file management.

5. SilverStripe

SilverStripe is a PHP CMS built with Sapphire framework, and it uses MVC design pattern. you can view example sites that built with SilverStripe from the official webpage.

6. Mambo

Mambo is a full-featured, award-winning content management system that can be used for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications. Although some Mambo sites had already migrated to Joomla, but i think i should include Mambo as it is still a great CMS.

7. TYPOlight

TYPOlight is a PHP 5 CMS and it has a lot of features such as live update, cross-browser CSS framework generator(IE7 compatible), templated based front end output, use Ajax and Web 2.0 technologies. You should check out the main page for more info.

8. Concrete5

Concrete5 is an open source content management system with simple administaror interface. You can edit a web page live by using the editing toolbar provided after you log in as administrator.

9. Textpattern

Textpattern is yet another very popular content management system. It requires PHP 4 to run and has a lot of plugins that you can use for various customizations.

10. Symphony

Symphony is a CMS that uses XML/XSLT as its templating language. Symphony lets you customize anything you like, from the website’s URL structure to your publishing environment. For a non programmer, this CMS might be complicated to learn.

11. MODx

MODx is both a PHP application framework and content management system. MODx is the first free PHP CMS to offer an API that fully supports Web 2.0 Ajax technology. It is SEO friendly CMS, and allows you to configure the meta content for each page.

12. Habari Project

Habari is a highly recommended open source blogging platform. It is being written specifically for modern web hosting environment, and uses modern object oriented programming techniques.

13. CMS Made Simple

CMS Made Simple is highly customizable and there are a lot of Modules for you to download. The Documentation is pretty complete and easy to follow.

14. ImpressCMS

ImpressCMS is a community developed Content Management System. It is highly scalable and is extremely useful for managing online communities.

15. Exponent CMS

Exponent uses an intuitive and flexible content editing system that allows website pages to be edited on the page as it is displayed. You can download modules and themes from the official website too!

16. MiaCMS

MiaCMS is a fork of the Mambo CMS. It has a powerful and extensible third party entension system, and also a flexible site theming capabilities. MiaCMS supports OpenID and can consider to be a stable and mature CMS.

17. Jojo CMS

Jojo is a search engine friendly CMS. You will have SEO friendly URL to your article, and Jojo will handle www/non-www domains for you. Beside SEO friendly, Jojo also lets you extend the functionality by adding product databases, blogs, image galleries or whatever takes your fancy.

18. TYPO3

TYPO3 is a free Open Source content management system for enterprise purposes on the web and in intranets. It offers full flexibility and extendability while featuring an accomplished set of ready-made interfaces, functions and modules.

19. Elxis CMS

Elxis CMS comes with a lot of features such as Search Engine Friendly URL, strong security, adjustable member list and complete user profiles. Its automated tasks, modern design, AJAX technology and multi-lingual interface helps you be more productive.

20. Chyrp

Chyrp is a lightweight blogging platform and it uses Twig as the templating engine. The documentation is quite complete and you can download a lot of useful modules from the main site.

20 Open Source PHP Content Management Systems(CMS)

Open-source Server-side Web Application Frameworks

PHP

Being a Web scripting language from the get-go, there are countless PHP frameworks to choose from. I'll concentrate on three, and list some others that I'm at least aware of.

Drupal is the big daddy of PHP frameworks, or is it a CMS? You decide. This extremely popular (insert your one word description here) "system" has features galore, and a whole network of developers have grown up devoted to working with it. In my neck of the woods at least, being a skilled Drupal developer is gold.

CodeIgniter is definitely up my alley. It's light weight, fast, and stays out of your way. There are any number of class modules to choose from, and you can discard what you don't need to lighten the load even more. After seeing a presentation at the DC PHP Developers group a few months back I was intrigued and took a closer look at the package. The presentation, from two developers at Forum One, showcased the work they did on the CARMA Web site, and in particular the database backend that drives the mapping of global power plant emissions. PPT slides are available if you're interested. Plus, if Rasmus endorses CodeIgniter, I'm all ears.

CakePHP is another popular MVC application framework. Conceptually, it's similar to Ruby on Rails.

Other PHP frameworks include:
Zend Framework The Horde Project Symfony WASP Yellow Duck

And there are more. I'm not writing a book here folks!
Python

If PHP is more specific to Web development (some people consider it little more than a templating language), then Python, like Perl, is more general purpose. In terms of Web frameworks, there is one standout, with a loyal—some might say rabid—following.

Django, first developed at Lawrence Journal-World (I lived in Lawrence, Kansas for many years!), and released to the public under a BSD license in 2005, has since become the Web application framework of choice in the Python community. Django, like everything Python, is based on the DRY principle, and everything is an object. You begin your project by defining a set of data models (which are Python classes of course), and build from there. The number of features are only limited by everything Python has to offer, which is a lot: an embedded HTTP server, friendly URLs based on regular expressions, an ORM connection to your database, page caching, input validation and sanitizing, tools to prevent XSS and CSRF attacks, authentication and sessions, RSS feeds, and much more.

CherryPy is another option for the Python developer. Like Django, it has a built-in HTTP server, or you can connect it to any WSGI compliant server (such as Apache 2). It has tools for caching, encoding, sessions, authorization, and lots more. Once again, anything Python can do...
Perl

The Swiss Army knife of scripting languages. Perl has a long history and a large user base. Where PHP tends to be monolithic, Perl, like Python, is built from a core language with a countless number of callable modules (aka CPAN). Like many other programmers, this is the language I started out with developing dynamic Web pages back in the days of CGI. Then mod_perl came along, and we have Mason and many other templating solutions. Whatever happened to eperl I wonder?

If Perl rules your world and you're shopping for a Web application framework, then look no further that Catalyst. Like Django, the feature-set is only limited by what's available in the form of CPAN modules. In other words, go nuts. Given the opportunity to work with this framework, I would jump right in.

There are no other viable Perl frameworks for developing Web applications. At least that I'm aware of. Drop me a note if you disagree.
Ruby

The Ruby language itself I am not that familiar with, many people like to compare it to Python. You be the judge. But when it comes to Web application frameworks, if you haven't heard of Rails then you've had your head in a bucket of sand.

Open-source Server-side Web Application Frameworks

CodeIgniter in 2011: Reactor, Core, & UserVoice

EllisLab, Inc. is formally announcing CodeIgniter Reactor, a community driven branch of CodeIgniter that will enable faster adoption of the best community submitted code to the CodeIgniter open source PHP framework. CodeIgniter Reactor will be available the first quarter of 2011. A second branch, CodeIgniter Core, will be maintained by EllisLab and incorporate the best of Reactor at a slower, more enterprise-friendly pace.

CodeIgniter Reactor and Core will both focus on the foundational goal of providing incredible power through a simple and elegant toolset while offering a low barrier to entry, a very small footprint, and comprehensive documentation.

CodeIgniter Reactor will be maintained by EllisLab, but more importantly will be guided by six volunteer Reactor Engineers, a talented and diverse group who will have everything needed to make Reactor a true community effort.

The Reactor Engineers will have write access to CodeIgniter Reactor, and will freely contribute code and documentation from both themselves and the community at large. To prevent feature creep or overwhelming changes to CodeIgniter that would cause instability or require constant updating of existing applications, the Reactor Engineers will debate inclusions based on an agreed upon philosophy for the framework, freely consulting with EllisLab when they deem it necessary. Rather than control the feature set and workflow, EllisLab will contribute to Reactor in the same way that the Reactor Engineers do and make themselves available for general oversight.

CodeIgniter Core will be exclusively maintained by EllisLab and honor the tradition of being purposefully slow, suspicious of additional features, and hyper critical of incoming code. CodeIngiter Core ensures that there will always be a real world tested branch that can be used with confidence on risk-averse projects, such as enterprise level web applications, large scale corporate development, and government institutions. EllisLab will pull the best of Reactor into Core over time.

EllisLab is confident in the Reactor Engineers, the CodeIgniter community in general, and the process itself, and therefore will be championing CodeIgniter Reactor as the branch of choice for the majority of projects.

This significant change in approach also requires a significant shift in how the community contributes new ideas. EllisLab is pleased to launch http://codeigniter.uservoice.com, the new official location for CodeIgniter feature requests and idea sharing where the community can start contributing ideas for CodeIgniter Reactor’s development immediately. The old CodeIgniter Feature Request forum has been closed.

In the coming weeks, the Reactor Engineers and EllisLab will be making decisions together that will put these ideas into practice. Some time in early 2011, the finalized plan created by the Reactor Engineers and EllisLab along with the resources created to facilitate the development of CodeIgniter Reactor will be released, as will the branch itself.

CodeIgniter in 2011: Reactor, Core, & UserVoice

PHP 5.3.5 and 5.2.17 Released!

The PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.3.5 and 5.2.17.

This release resolves a critical issue, reported as PHP bug #53632 and CVE-2010-4645, where conversions from string to double might cause the PHP interpreter to hang on systems using x87 FPU registers.

The problem is known to only affect x86 32-bit PHP processes, regardless of whether the system hosting PHP is 32-bit or 64-bit. You can test whether your system is affected by running this script from the command line.

All users of PHP are strongly advised to update to these versions immediately.

PHP 5.3.5 and 5.2.17 Released!

PHP New Version Released

PHP 5.2.16 Released!

The PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.2.16. This release marks the end of support for PHP 5.2. All users of PHP 5.2 are encouraged to upgrade to PHP 5.3.

This release focuses on addressing a regression in open_basedir implementation introduced in 5.2.15 in addition to fixing a crash inside PDO::pgsql on data retrieval when the server is down. All users who have upgraded to 5.2.15 and are utilizing open_basedir are strongly encouraged to upgrade to 5.2.16 or 5.3.4.

To prepare for upgrading to PHP 5.3, now that PHP 5.2's support ended, a migration guide available on http://php.net/migration53, details the changes between PHP 5.2 and PHP 5.3.

For a full list of changes in PHP 5.2.16 see the ChangeLog at http://www.php.net/ChangeLog-5.php#5.2.16.

PHP New Version Released