Tips On Domain Name Registration

Having a website will give you or your business an online presence on the world wide web. The first step in creating your own website would be to register a domain name. A domain name should be chosen well for such can determine the website's success and effectiveness including the traffic to be generated by your website. There are certain considerations to bear in mind when registering a domain name.

The extension of your domain name is one important consideration. Common would be .com but other extension like .net, .org, etc. are also being used. A .com for your chosen domain name would be better than the other extensions especially for a business website. With a domain for example like http://shoes.net, you may be sharing traffic with http://shoes.com.

It would be for the best if you don't register your domain name with your host. Splitting them up from the start would help you avoid headaches in the future should you reach a decision of parting ways with your web host. Registering your domain name with a reputable company would generally have a charge of between a dollar to ten dollars depending on length of time being signed up for and the extension used.

As much as possible a shorter domain name would be much easier to remember than a long one. It should be easy to spell especially for your customers who should be able to spell it right the first time. Browsers don't like remembering and typing long domain names. There are likely more typing errors, the longer the name.

Also, do not use copyrights and trademarks of other companies on your domain name so do your research to avoid getting involved with legal battles. While others may not ask for damages under such conditions the worse that they would do would be to take back your domain name.

A good domain name is hard to come by. If you have a great idea for a domain name, you could always reserve it in advance. Domain names come cheap these days. Having a good domain name makes it much easier for you to resell in the future should you decide to.

If possible your domain name should be your business name. Having a different domain name and a business name would be difficult to market and difficult for customers who have to take note of two different names.

Protect you domain from hijack by ensuring that your name and contact info is registered as the technical contact of the domain name and in Whois as the owner of the domain name and website.

Read More

Choosing Between Free or Paid Web Hosting

There are a number of things to consider when choosing between a free or paid web hosting service.  Setting aside cost for a moment, lets look at some factors that will help you make an informative decision.

The very first thing you must consider is the intent or purpose of your website.  Are you looking for a convenient way to share photos of family and friends?  Or, are you considering something a little more complex such as adding multiple pages with different content on each?  How about a website to promote a product or business?

The purpose of your website will act as a key component in determining which type of web hosting service is best suited for you.  For example, if your website will be used primarily for personal postings, your file sizes aren’t very large and you don’t expect a lot of traffic, you won’t require a lot of disk space or bandwidth for your hosting. 

If this is the case, a free web hosting service may meet your needs.  Free web hosting services are also useful if you’re inexperienced in creating web pages.  This type of service can provide an excellent opportunity for you to learn and practice your html skills.  You could even use a free service as a test site before uploading your web pages to your live website.

Keep in mind that most free web hosting services provide limited features compared to paid web hosting services, but normally offer enough disk space and bandwidth to host a small website.  To help offset costs, though, most free providers will place advertisements on your web pages.

With paid hosting, you’ll find a variety of available plans to choose from.  These plans allow more disk space and bandwidth, and usually include a number of other features such as free domain names, free sub-domains and unlimited email accounts.  Some of the more advanced common features are a CGI-Bin, MySQL databases and Microsoft FrontPage extensions.

Compared to free web hosting, you’ll also find that the services provided by paid web hosting companies are much more reliable, not to mention offering a higher level of customer support.

Cost wise, there is no charge to register for a free web hosting service, although you may be required to purchase your own domain name.  For a basic paid service, you can expect to pay anywhere from $5 to $10 per month – a very small price for the improved service, support and features you receive.

Read More

Web Hosting For Internet Marketers

Anybody researching the internet for web hosting services will find an abundance of hosting providers to choose from along with a multitude of plans available.  You’ll also discover that the majority of providers will offer many of the same plan features.  However, there are some hosting companies that offer additional tools directed towards internet marketers and the home business industry.

Even for experienced internet marketers, with the variety of companies and plans available, it’s not always easy to determine which web hosting service will best meet his or her specific business needs.  With so many options, how do you know which hosting provider is best suited for you and your business?

One thing for certain is that whatever you decide, do not make the mistake of basing your decision on the price of hosting alone.  One thing that has been substantiated time and time again is the old adage “you get what you pay for.”  Well, this also applies to web hosting!

If you’re an internet marketer or own an internet home business, listed below are some common features you should be looking for in a web hosting package.  Of course, it will be easy to find providers that offer more that what’s listed here (e.g. 1,000 MB of disk space, unlimited sub-domains, unlimited emails, etc), not to mention a number of additional features, so keep in mind that these benchmarks only represent a few of the minimum requirements:

-  300+ MB of Disk Space
-  10 GB or more of Monthly Bandwidth
-  50+ Email Accounts
-  20+ Sub-domains
-  CGI-Bin
-  3+ MySQL Databases

In addition to these common features, there are some web hosting companies that cater to internet marketers and home business entrepreneurs by offering useful marketing tools as part of their hosting package.  As you probably know, having access to in-demand marketing tools is a key ingredient in becoming successful on the internet.  Some of the tools I’m referring to include:

-  Unlimited Follow-up Autoresponders
-  Resalable E-Book Collections
-  FFA Leads
-  Lead Capture Systems
-  Ad Tracking
-  Shopping Carts
-  Scripts
-  Affiliate Programs and Commissions

These tools are a great benefit to both new and experienced internet marketers.  But, in addition to the tools, another very important difference I’ve found with these types of providers is their exceptional level of customer support.  Whether it’s assisting with the installation of a script, a problem copying files to the server, or responding to a general question, the support staff tend to be very knowledgeable and can be contacted around the clock either via telephone, live chat or email.

Compared to some web hosting services, you may notice the cost of these plans to be slightly higher because of the extra marketing tools and the quality of customer support provided.  However, with the growing popularity of internet marketing and the ever increasing number of new home businesses popping up on the internet, these providers can definitely give you an advantage over your competition.  And, if you choose a provider that offers an affiliate program, you could even end up with free web hosting and a profit to boot!

Read More

Free Hosting – Increase Your Online Business Opportunities

Free web hosting is a service that stores your website and offers to delivers its web pages to the Internet for free. Thus, free hosting for your website actually offers you to increase your online business opportunities. Just as you want to get your website hosted in Internet, similarly there are customers out there who want to know more about your company. Free hosting suggests web hosting services that are free, and are usually advertisement-supported and of limited functionality.
Features of free web hosting

Free web hosts will start by providing you a sub domain [http://yourname.example.com] or a directory [http://www.example.com/yourname]. Since free hosts allow the use of separately purchased domains so they do not operate as domain name registrar. The free hosts are advantageous because they have a basic package for free and also enhanced packages [obviously with more features] that you have to purchase with a cost. This allows the users to try the services for an initial trial and then upgrade it in their websites, if needed.

The free hosts provide the following extra features:

 File transfer via FTP
 Allows some of the scheduled processes like cronjobs
 A web based control panel
 Free email accounts for subdomains and domain hosted
 Scripting languages like ASP and PHP
 Allows relational databases

When you are searching for a free web host, you should make sure that the hosts have an excellent track record. You should enquire into the storage facilities allowed by the host and see how much the free host can provide you with web control panels and password protected directories for your website.

Methods of free web hosting

There are a few methods of giving out free web hosting to people by web hosts, which are as follows:

- Instant activation – these hosts usually give very little storage space and bandwidth allowances. They require the user’s web page to display their banner ads, or pop-ups, text link ads or the user’s files to be uploaded through a web-based file manager.

- Post for hosting – this is more popular as it allows one to register at Web shots forum, which usually has lots of banner or popup Ads – and post there for Free web hosting. One has to stay active and meet certain requirements almost every month/week to keep up their level of web hosting.

- Posting in forums – some of the free hosts allow posting in a forum. It requires users to either reach a certain amount of posts before getting a free hosting account or be an active contributor in the forum. These forum-based free hosting factors often work on a system of points where posts points to a user and are basically used as credits towards getting a hosting account.

Limitations of free web hosting

But free hosting has the following limitations:

- Prevents hot linking of files
- Fails to provide any type of uptime guarantee
- Do not allow file types like MP3, MPEG and others
- Provides very small bandwidth per month as compared to paid hosting
- Allows very limited size of hosted files

Read More

Tips On FrontPage Web Site Hosting For You

FrontPage is one of the most common web design software. This software will help you to create small web sites without learning HTML. The only thing you have to do is to design a layout and FrontPage will automatically make the coding for you. After finishing the site, you can instantly transfer the site to a server by clicking the button "Publish site". However, before publishing a FrontPage site, you need to find FrontPage web site hosting.

First, you should find a server with Microsoft FrontPage, available to potential customers. Depending on the web hosting company, you may find a plan with other scripting languages included, like PHP, CGI and ASP. For some extra money, you may gain access to MySQL or Access databases. In addition, FrontPage web site hosting servers give access to customers to modify their sites with a set of programs that contain many useful tools. With just a few clicks, customers can make changes in all their pages, simultaneously.

FrontPage web site hosting advantages

On FrontPage web site hosting servers you can find thousands of java scripts, images, templates and ready to run solutions. You can add and position images in your pages with drag and drop technique and you can format the text without learning cascading style sheets. All these things can save you lot of time if you are a beginner in web design.

FrontPage package has also included Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting. This means that you can add lots of ready to run vb-scripts to your site, without knowing how they were created. Another useful tool is the online coding. On the UNIX servers, you can change the files of your site only on your PC, and then you upload them on server. Nevertheless, on FrontPage web site hosting servers you can edit the files directly by coding in a window. After you finish editing the files, you may browse them in Design View, simulation different screen resolution or browsers.

Disadvantages of the FrontPage web site hosting

FrontPage web site hosting includes lots of useful tool for webmasters. However, after you create a site using these tools you will not be able to move your site on other type of server, unless you start coding all your pages. Servers with FrontPage, have Microsoft Windows as operating system, while more then 95 percent of web hosting servers use UNIX. This will make harder to install additional modules to your site if they were not design for Windows.

Even if you host your site on a server with Microsoft FrontPage installed, you may need to manually code your pages in order to make them accessible in other browsers like Fire Fox, Opera, Netscape, etc. Anyway, 90 percent of the visitors use Internet Explorer, so this problem will not affect very much your daily traffic.

Read More

Web Hosting Features

How do I know a good web hosting service from a bad one? What features should I be looking for when choosing a web host? What is bandwidth or transfer? How much storage space do I really need? What tools should they offer me and which ones do I need?

In this article I will attempt to give you the short version of answers to those questions for you to use as a reference. A lot about choosing a web-hosting provider depends on what your website needs and every website has different needs.

First question was “How do I know a good web hosting service from a bad one?” Before doing business with anyone on the web that is going to be as important to your business as a web hosting company, you should do a search on the name of the company and look for criticisms, complaints, etc. Keep in mind no one has 100% satisfied customers and finding just one complaint on the web doesn’t mean that the company is a bad one. However if you find a lot of complaints, I would move on to the next provider.

Now about the bandwidth and transfer question I mentioned above. Bandwidth and transfer are basically the same thing. Some tech guy might know a difference I’m not aware of, but it won’t be much difference. This is the number of times each file in your website is downloaded for the web host’s server to the visitors computer.

In other words, the size of you webpages in kilobytes plus the size of each graphic or other type of file that is served to the users computer is the amount of transfer you are using. If your website will have a lot of graphics, movies, downloads, etc., make sure you choose a web-hosting plan that offers you a lot of bandwidth. The average website doesn’t need more than 2-5 gigabytes of transfer per month.

How much storage space do I need? The storage space is no different than your computer’s hard drive. If the web host offers 100 megabytes of storage space that is just like having a 100-megabyte hard drive. If your files are not more than 100 megabytes then that is plenty of storage. Most web hosting companies offer plenty of storage space, more than the average website will ever use.

The question, “What features should I look for and which tools do I need?” are ones that I can answer together.

What about the web host’s support policy. Do they offer 24/7 tech support? Do you think you will need 24/7 tech support? This is one area that is important for you to consider. The Internet is 24 hours per day. Your website is online 24 hours per day. So it is possible you might need 24/7 tech support.

How do you contact tech support there? Just email? Is there a phone number? Do they use support tickets? Do they have a chatroom or forum for tech support? How accessible your web hosting tech support is will determine how fast things get fixed when you have a problem. See if you can send in a tech support query before signing up. See how fast you get an email back or if they answer the phone when you call them.

Those three important issues, bandwidth, storage space, and tech support are not the only things you need to consider. Do they offer Cpanel or an easy-to-use control panel for managing your website? Can they show you a sample of the control panel before you sign up? If you choose a web host that does not have an easy-to-use control panel are you tech-savvy enough to get around in the root files?

How many databases can be created on your web hosting plan. How many do they allow? Do they offer instant-install or install-on-demand features like picture galleries, content management systems, forums, blogs, or other website enhancements?

These are all questions you need to ask before you sign up with any web hosting service. If they do not give you all that information on the automatic signup page, email them and ask them questions. Their response may be all you need to know about whether to choose them as your web hosting provider or not.

I hope this article has helped you to learn about some of the things you need to consider when choosing a web hosting service. Cheap is not always good. This is your online business. Treat it well and choose a web hosting serviee that makes things easier for you.

Read More

Choosing Internet Hosting Sites

If you are considering placing your business storefront on the Internet, then you will have quite a bit of work ahead of your in choosing Internet hosting sites that can be trusted.  Many of the larger, and well-known Internet hosting companies are no longer in business because their success has opened the door to larger businesses buying their services for their own use.

When choosing Internet hosting sites, it will be a good idea to create a maxtrix of all of the services that they offer.  Keep track of how many different servers they offer, for the different price ranges that they currently have in their databases.  There are email servers that your business can use to store the email addresses of all of your customers. 

It would be a good idea to check out the privacy policies of the Internet hosting services when choosing Internet hosting sites.  If these people have a stated policy that they collect information, then that means that they are financially benefiting from the success of your business.  They take your customer email addresses and sell those addresses to marketing companies.

There are other factors to consider when choosing Internet hosting sites.  Some of these companies make it easy for you to do business.  They offer all-in-one packages that are primarily arranged to fit the needs of small business.  Some of these all-in-one packages might seem a bit pricey at times, but when you consider what you are getting for your money, they beat many other Internet hosting sites offerings hands down.

These Internet hosting sites features not only the basic Internet web page creation tools, but other tools that small businesses can use to grow with, such as software you can use to follow-up with prospective clients, encrypted software to enable you to operate a confidential financial transaction where credit card information can not be divulged, and marketing tools that will drive web traffic to your business website.

All of the long range goals of your company should be in place on the Internet services site that you are considering.  When choosing Internet hosting sites, make sure that they have an adequate amount of servers and Internet speed connections to allow your customers to access your business website without delays.  Any glitches that you experience when you are accessing the storefront that you have designed using the software that your Internet hosting site furnishes will be the same glitches that your customers will experience when they come to your web store.

When choosing Internet hosting sites, consider whether the Internet hosting site offers any Internet marketing software.  These free tools, which you actually pay for through your monthly membership fees, can help you grow your business in areas that you might not have considered.  Any Internet hosting site that is not concerned in the least, with how you operate your business, and market your business, will certainly not be concerned in how your business can grow.

This uncaring Internet hosting site is certainly not the right one when choosing Internet hosting sites for your business to use.  There are numerous Internet hosting sites to choose from and with more research you can find the one that is right for you.

Read More