The use of Data Base Writes for Pennsylvania (PA) Website Design

Many times when clients come to us for website design theyask for contact forms.  They expect thatthe information collected on the form will be emailed to them, and that theycan use these emails for lead generation, order fulfillment, and other businessprocesses.  This is a relativelyinexpensive part of website development, but one which has cost us headaches inthe past due to problems, not with the contact form or website, but with theemail server. 

In many cases company websites are hosted using a sharedhosting package or on a VPS where a hosting company manages the server andmakes periodic maintenance changes to the server. Problems with email serverscan occur.  These can include codingerrors, server moves that result in unsuccessful email delivery, problems wherethe mail server stops running for one reason or another, or problems wheremessages pile up in a queue and are not sent. There can also be problems on the receiving end of the email.  In short, email is not a reliable method forcapturing any mission critical information.

As a resolution to this issue many Pennsylvania (PA) websitedesign companies recommend adding a database to the server and writing theinformation captured on forms to this database. In many cases, a MYSQL database is available with a Linux hostingpackage, and can be easily activated or installed. The real expense comes in programming acontrol consul for the client to view and categorize their contactmessages.  However even this expense isrelatively small - perhaps a two day programming project - and should beconsidered rather than risk loosing mission critical information.  In addition, data collected from the websitecan be categorized according to the lead page source, so that the client candiscern which contact forms are working better than others.

Despite the expense, it is the recommendation of thisPennsylvania (PA) Website Design company that rather than loose any informationthat could be detrimental to your company through email, it is important forcompanies to consider the slight additional expense of writing information to adatabase rather than relying on email.

Bio: Jim McCrossin owns and operates PAWebsiteDesign.com asubdivision of Boomtown Internet Group, and is always interested in helpingcompanies find the best economic solution to their Pennsylvania (PA) website designneeds.