Category: General

Many websites are hosted on a shared web hosting server.  The main reason is the cost.  A shared web hosting server costs a great deal less than a dedicated server.  The number of sites on a shared web hosting server can be anywhere from 1500 to 2000 sites.  The number of sites on the shared web hosting server will vary due to availability of disk space, allowed bandwidth per site and overall speed.  Although shared web hosting is reliable and has minimal problems, there are advantages to host your site(s) on a dedicated server.

A dedicated server for your web hosting allows you to have a server solely dedicated to your site(s).  In addition, a dedicated server will allow you complete authority to control and administer your server.  When and if you decide on a dedicated server for your web hosting, you should have a fair understanding of dedicated servers.  Although most dedicated server web hosting providers will provide technical support, you will find it a lot easier if you have the technical expertise to manage the server yourself.  However, if you find that you will not be able to manage your server by yourself, opt for a managed dedicated server hosting.  This option is especially for those who want to have dedicated web hosting but do not have the required expertise to manage it.  This service allows you to have an entire server managed by a specialized hosting company.  The cost of a managed dedicated server is quite expensive.  Therefore, if you think that you can run and manage your website server by yourself, you should opt for an unmanaged dedicated server web hosting rather than a managed dedicated server.

You should consider a dedicated server web hosting when you find that the traffic to your site has increased substantially and your site is taking too much time to load.  An analysis of the traffic to your site will tell you whether you should go to a dedicated server.  The main thing to understand is that when you have many users working concurrently on your website, you should replace your shared web hosting with a dedicated server web hosting.

Since a dedicated server web hosting does not share its server with other websites (like shared web hosting), you will find that you have a lot more command over your server operation and its bandwidth.  One of the advantageous features of dedicated server web hosting is that it can also be remotely configured and operated.  The only obstacle is the cost.  You are required to pay a lot more for your dedicated server web hosting as compared to your shared web hosting.  Nevertheless, the facilities more than compensate for the cost.

When you choose a dedicated server web hosting provider, you should keep in mind that it should provide you good network stability, reliable operation, and the ease of operation of sophisticated applications.  A dedicated server web hosting provider can be the perfect solution for anyone who is serious about his online presence.

One of the things that seems to put people off using the WordPress software on their own site (as opposed to the hosted WordPress blog site) is the technical side of the process involving WordPress templates and themes.  There’s a lot of talk about code, PHP, CSS and plenty of other confusing abbreviations that don’t mean a lot to many people!  This is unfortunate, as a WordPress blog can make such a big impact on web pages, and can even be used as a standalone website once you get your domain name and hosting sorted out.

Understanding the way WordPress works, installing the software, and figuring out how the templates fit in to themes does require a bit of techie know-how.   It is not as hard as it first appears though, and thankfully, for those of us who are a bit technically challenged, there are some excellent guides and resources that can help make the process a whole lot smoother.

The WordPress templates are the backbone of the themes used to build the WordPress blog pages.  Themes come in all manner of styles and designs, and can be customized by altering the layouts, installing WordPress plugins and by adding or changing the templates.  WordPress templates are basically just a bunch of files that together make up the themes for your WordPress blog site.  Generally, a default set of templates for WordPress themes would include some of these essential files:

    index.php – this is the main template file for your WordPress blog
    header.php – the header template
    footer.php – the footer template
    page.php – for creating WordPress pages
    single.php – for creating WordPress posts
    sidebar.php – the WordPress blog page navigation
    style.css – the stylesheet that makes up the layout for your WordPress blog.

These are just the basics; there are many more WordPress templates that can be added to customize your blog; for example, links, search forms, archive posts and WordPress blog comments.

Another confusing aspect for some people is the mention of template tags.  Again, these are not as difficult to understand as they first seem.  They are basically just bits of code to help the WordPress templates to perform their job properly.  The tags within the templates contain the instructions to make your WordPress blog a cleverly designed set of pages!

One of the great things about WordPress templates is that you can customize them to design individual blog pages as well as post pages.  The pre-defined templates will usually apply to all the pages on your WordPress blog, but you can add, remove or change the other template files to create unique items on each page.

If you consider the WordPress templates as the mechanics of the themes, you can hopefully begin to understand how they work together to create a WordPress blog.

With over 50 million registered domain names, it’s tough to find a good done that’s still available. Unfortunately the domain name industry is full of opportunistic “traders” who buy and sell domain names without any intention of even using it themselves. Because of this, the majority of the registered domain names don’t even have a website to go with it!

This can be quite frustrating as you seek out a domain name for yourself to build a website for. But at the end of the day in a first-come first-served world, we must try and find another way to find that great domain name.

There are several tools that can be very handy when it comes to looking for a domain name. I discuss these tools in another article. Here we will discuss what makes a good domain name.

To brand or not to brand?

Brading is a key element in traditional “offline” marketing. Having a unique, catchy name does wonders for any business. However when it comes to an online presence, you might just be better off with a domain name that is rich in keywords.

Search engines primarily work on keywords as you may know. You enter a search term or “keywords” and the search engine produces results based on their formulas and the websites they believe to be the best fit for your search.

Now, there are many Search Engine Optimisation techniques that can be used by anyone on any site. The same techniques could be applied to a lot of sites, so my question is what could possibly be the 1 thing that is unique and could separate one site from the other? Of course, domain names!

I prefer to have keywords in the domain names that I own because this is what could give me the edge over competitors. Of course it’s not so important if your website is a personal one and you are not looking to make any money from it. But if you are selling something or wanting to make money off your website, I would strongly recommend using keywords in your domain names. Just to prove it, go to Google.com and search for “domain name”. You will see in the results that any occurrence of the words “domain” or “name” is actually in bold. So Google is definitely looking out for your search terms and highlighting them for you.

On the other hand, branding is still a strong concept online as well. If you find that catchy name (such as….hmmm Google?) and market it well, then you could be well on your way to word-of-mouth fame in no time!

If your business name is available, register it. You can always register keyword rich domain names to draw the traffic, and redirect them to your business name domain.

Hyphens or no hyphens?

Another common topic of discussion is whether to use hyphens in your domain names. I own mixtures of both hyphenated and non-hyphenated names. There is nothing wrong with hyphens. In fact, for search engines you are helping them by separating words that could be read differently. Here is one example: mikesmithstables.com

This domain could belong to a horse trainer “Mike Smith”, as a website for his racing stables, or it could also be read as “Mike Smith’s Tables”. So there is definitely nothing wrong with hyphenation, as it would actually help to distinguish where the words end in the above example. The only small problem you will run into is word of mouth advertising where people will have to call out the hyphens. But believe me, you want all your traffic to come from search engines because it’s free and the volumes are enormous.

What about using abbreviations?

If your preferred name was something like flowerstoyou.com but it was taken, but you see flowers2you.com is available, should you take it? There are several common abbreviations or variations of certain words that are almost commonly accepted, particularly in cyberspace. Thanks also SMS messaging, we are no used to the use of “2″ instead of “to”, “4″ instead of “for” etc. Whether you choose to use such variations in your domain name is totally up 2 u (ok I was trying to be funny..).

Don’t forget however that word of mouth advertising will always require the person making the recommendation to remind people of the substitute.

Have you heard the term “domain name dispute”? Or, are you familiar with the domain name dispute? If not yet, then it’s not a big problem though. This article will provide you some facts about the domain name dispute for you to better comprehend what the nature of this thing is and why does it surface, so you better read on.

What is a domain name dispute?

This is a common query that needs to be answered. Well, the domain name dispute is said to surface over domain names that may have been formerly held or over domain names that may be the same to a trademark or service over which you have the authority.  Aside from this, there are some domain name disputes studies which show that oftentimes the domain name dispute arise over domain names that were formerly held and were not properly renewed and paid for. But how come that such domain name disputes arise? One reason for that is perhaps due to incorrect e-mail addresses or let us says other mistakes and miscommunications. So once the domain name becomes accessible, another domain name consumer may legitimately own it regardless of whether you used to own it or not.

In terms of handling these domain name disputes, it is interesting to know that all of these disputes may be handled through the ICANN’s Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy or UDRP. All of those official registrars are absolutely bound by these policies. And speaking of the UDRP, it is commonly noted that this process sets forth all the regulations for handling the domain name disputes including the negotiation and court moves.

Under the UDRP, all the registrars in the top-level domain names such as .com, .net, and .org are subject to follow the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy. Under this matter, some types of trademark-based domain name disputes should be resolved by agreement, court move, or arbitration prior to the registrars’ suspension and transfer of the domain names. Besides, the domain name disputes are also alleged to surface from abusive domain name registrations that may be addressed by accelerated administrative procedures that the owner of trademark rights performs through filling a complaint with an accepted domain name dispute resolution service contributor.

The dispute service providers, as organizations permitted by the ICANN, thus holds the responsibility to arbitrate the disputes. And in case of a domain name during a dispute, it is important to know that the domain names cannot be cancelled, suspended or even transferred during a domain name dispute.

What is a domain name transfer? Is this an ordinary process of transferring just like those regular transfer processes? These are just two of so many questions that surround the domain name transfer. So you want to know the answer? Then, you read on.

Essentially, a domain name transfer is made possible when the current domain name holder or registrant wishes to make some adjustments on the domain name companies that provide the domain name services. So, a domain name transfer is a process that can only be made possible with the effort of the domain name registrant of with the administrative contact who is listed on the recent domain name registration record.

A domain name transfer can in fact refer to two detach and unique domain name transactions. One of those is a registrant domain name transfer, and the other one is the registrar domain name transfer.

In terms of the registrant domain name transfer, it is considered that this kind of domain name transfer takes place when the current registrant of a domain name wanted to transfer all the domain name rights to a third party. It is only the domain name registrant or the administrative contact who are allowed to perform the registrant domain name transfer process.

For conducting the registrant domain name transfer, most of the registrars only require a user name and password for the process. Besides, it is found out that there are also some registrar companies who require a notarized form or other formal recognition documents, but these are just depending on the certain county that the registrants resides in. It is commonly noted that they require such documents for the domain name transfer process to prove that the registrant is the actual domain name holder. So in all instances, the holder contacts their current registrar companies and then requests for the domain name transfer to the new third party.

In the place of the second transaction which is the registrar domain name transfer, it is noted that this takes place when the current domain name registrant wishes to switch domain name registrar companies. Along with that, the registrant may wish to adjust companies for the reason that they are unsatisfied with the level of customer service that the companies provide or for any other reason.

And in conducting the registrar domain name transfer, a registrant or the administrative contact should then perform the request through the new registrar company. After which, a holder or the administrative contact must reply to the old registrar companies via e-mail which asks for authentication of the registrar domain name transfer. So upon the completion of the registrar domain name transfer, the holder can log in to the new account at the new registrar web site.

One of the most crucial decisions you will make regarding your business’ web presence is which the best windows email server hosting plan is for you. Making a decision about you email servers hosing may seem trivial compared to everything else you have to deal with, but the truth is that you will rarely be as frustrated as you will when you have email problems. Additionally, if you have a strong web presence, then you will likely do a great deal of your communication via email, so it is important to make sure your email server hosting service is reliable. Here, then, are some tips on what makes for the best windows email server hosting plan and where you can find it.

First of all, you have to figure out what it means to have the best windows email server hosting plan. There are a few factors you should consider, including the secure server capabilities of your host, the server speed, and the reliability.

Security

The best windows email server hosting plans are going to be able to provide you with a secure server. Such a server can do everything from protect you from spam to filter out viruses. Be sure to ask about the secure server because the best windows email server hosting plans will have good ones for you.

Speed

You certainly don’t want to have to wait for important emails, so a fast server is a necessity from the best windows email server hosting plans. If you are a busy company, you will find that emails can often fly in and out of your box fast and furiously. So if you have a hosting company that has slow servers, you could end up getting delayed on answers to clients and information getting to and from others within your own company even.

Reliability

There is nothing more frustrating than having your email go down. In order to save yourself such frustration, you should find an email server hosting company that can provide you with good reliability. In fact, the best windows email server hosting plans should include reliability of at least 99%, and in most cases you should look for something even higher than that. You want your primary form of communication to be available, so make sure you are using a reliable server host.

Other services

There are other services you should look for from the best windows email server hosting plan. You should insist on unlimited email aliases, auto-responder capabilities, and even some sort of access to your administration features. The more control you have over your email’s hosting, the better off you are going to be. Additionally, look for something that offers no restriction on the size of files you can exchange. This is especially important if you are going to be sending files across to clients or colleagues.

Choosing the best windows email server hosting plan is an important step in your business. Once you understand what features you should look for, you can more accurately compare companies with one another and come up with a way to get everything you want in one package. Keep communication up and you will have a more successful business and to do that you need the right email host.

So you have this really great idea to start a blog on a particular niche. And perhaps, maybe you even want to make some revenue off of AdSense, Clicksor, or other contextual advertising. Super. You’ve wrote your heart out and posted some blog content. Great! No problems there. But what do you do to keep the content fresh and insightful? Are you feeling that the content you offer on your blog just “lacks”? Is your blog boring? Maybe you can’t even pinpoint what exactly is “lacking”, but you just feel it. Possibly, you just do not have the time to put forth to writing 1000 word articles every couple days. If this is you, it is time you look into using other people’s articles!

“WHAT?” you say. No, I am not suggesting you steal or copy others articles. However, I am suggesting that you utilize websites that offer free web content on your particular niche. There are many free web content sites or ‘article directories’ that offer free articles for you to use on your blog or website. You are able to use these articles totally free without a problem. The only thing you are required is to give credit to the author who wrote the article. Fair enough?

Now you ask, “Why would I want to use someone else’s articles? How lame is that?!” It’s actually not lame at all. Think about it. There are thousands of other people offering new, unique insight on exactly what you are writing about. You will find that people offer a different point of view or perspective on the particular subject. A different perspective or a new idea can be very refreshing for your blog. To even go further, find those articles that offer new thoughts and respond to the author’s thoughts.

Consider the benefits of using free content articles for your blog or website:

• When you use other quality articles, you are offering your visitor with useful content, and in effect, your visitor comes back for more.
• Using free web content will allow you to keep your blog fresh and updated on a daily basis with valuable information.
• Other people’s articles can inspire new thoughts and ideas for your blog.

How do you find quality free web content for your blog? When you find an article that you would like to put on your website, make sure you are permitted to actually use it. You can usually find that information right on the article page or the website’s terms of service. When you are positive that you can use the article, read it over to make sure it is even applicable to your website. Do run it through a spell check to make sure that level of quality is portrayed in the article. If there are a bunch of errors, do not change the errors because that would violate the terms for the article. Instead, move on to finding another article. So do some searching and reading. Find that interesting web content and post that interesting web content for your readers! Delight your readers with something interesting and exciting!

Link building is not difficult, you have to google search to get information on how people have started with link building, there are many sites that offer for you to earn revenue by linking their site to your blog.

A little bit of research can help you get to the point of earning good money through link building. Andy Hagans and Patrick Gavin just started with http://www.linkbuildingblog.com on text link ads. The blog will help you to understand the techniques of link building. They have done some hard work but it is worth reading through their blog, the way they have established link building and their confidence about link building.

If you want to know more about link building then www.swapw.blogspot.com, talks about the link train.com and that is the similar thing to what we have been talking in this article. Well in this blog he uses words as Alexa trains, technorati trains, link trains, viral link trains etc…which again talks about linking. Well technorati is a term used for a link, it is either linking to one other blog or other site. This is also just an experiment to understand if the linking helps in getting visitors and earns reputation for the blog itself.

It is essential to also understand other Blogs and know how other Bloggers are earning a potential income from nothing. Research is the best thing to understand and know the other Bloggers as well, it is important to establish a rapport or communication so that you are able to learn some things that you do not know in Blogging.

One other thing in Link building is to establish good linking sites and learn from those sites and than may be take permission from the owner of the site for link building, I am sure a polite language can always give you an earning potential in the Blogging industry. There are people who do not have patience, and want to find their way in earning good money but they fail because of the impatience and ignorance in researching more about what they want to do and how they would like to achieve certain things as Bloggers.

Today there are tons of Bloggers who are into the business of Blogging and they are doing pretty good I have to say, but it is just through learning, establishing and link building that you find your way in this business. Link Building is fun, because this is a way of getting to know what other blogs or sites are doing and you also come to know the improvement methods for yourself so that you can keep changing your styles as in with the flow like other Bloggers do.

Driving traffic to your website is important. But it is likewise important to ensure that your web design makes your visitors stay. After all, what is the use of spending thousands of dollars and wasting lots of effort and time in creating a unique product, securing top rankings on search engines and creating a hundred page site if your visitors don’t stay once they found your page?

There are a lot of factors to consider in creating a successful site. First of all, your site should be easy to navigate. Don’t make your visitors click on ten links and scroll down each page just to find what they are looking for. All pages on the site must not be five clicks away from the homepage. Visitors will enjoy surfing your site if it is easy for them to find the information that they want.

Second of all, your site must load fast. This is often one of the biggest problems on the Internet. Some sites take more than twenty minutes to load and some visitors don’t have the time and patience to wait for a long time. As a result they click away from your site. One of the best ways to make your site load fast is to use more text and fewer graphics. Keep in mind that not all visitors have fast connection so you have to design your site the way everyone can view it quickly.

Third of all, always remember your purpose in designing your website. Ask yourself, do visitors say wow when they see your site and then click away? Or do they stay and surf your site for a while? Does your site sell or just impress people?

It does not really matter is your visitors are impressed by your graphics and animations. What you have to keep in mind is your purpose. If you want your site to sell you have to design it in such a way that your visitors get interested in your offer and are encouraged to buy.

Fourth of all, use the right colors. Color is a very important to your website. When they are used correctly they can highlight important points and add clarity and impact to your message. But when they are used incorrectly, it can confuse your visitors and compromise your message.

Keep in mind that current trends play a big role in color schemes. A good strategy is to design your site in such a way that if a color change has to be made, it can be done so easily.

If you are able to follow this tips you will not only attract many visitors but you will also encourage them to stay for a while and maybe you can turn them into paying customers.

One of the most confusing decisions someone new to web hosting will have to make is which platform their server should be on. There are a number of different choices out there but the main two are Linux and Windows web servers. There are also a lot of sources of information about hosting, but the majority of them are tainted by the author’s biased personal opinion unfortunately confusing the issue. Having just put in some solid hours researching the topic I have come to the conclusion that in general it quite probably does not matter which server you use. For the majority of people it will be far more important to choose a really good web host than to worry about the server-type that they implement.

Microsoft developed and owns the Windows operating system. Linux is open source and generally free. This means it can often be more expensive to set up and run a Windows server. However, this fact doesn’t really affect you unless you are actually setting up a server for yourself and if you’re reading this article then I’m guessing that it’s safe to assume you’re not. This article is going to offer information for those trying to decide which hosting company to go with. The cost involved in running a server does not affect the cost of a web-hosting package as much as you may think. Despite the general opinion that Windows servers are more expensive to run, buying a Windows hosting package can often turn out to be just as cheap or even cheaper than an equivalent Linux hosting package.

Some people naturally assume that because their PC runs Windows they need to buy a Windows hosting package. This isn’t true. Access to your web account will most likely be through FTP or a control panel and both servers support these methods. The main difference is that some of the FTP commands are slightly different between Linux and Windows and some FTP programs will be designed with one or the other in mind. This means you may occasionally find that when you try and get your FTP program to do something it returns an error message, but it won’t happen very often.

Your choice of server platforms should be dictated by the use to which you intend to put it. The majority of web features run fine on both platforms including PHP, mySQL, POP3 etc. If you intend to create your site using ASP, FrontPage, the .NET environment, Windows Streaming Media, Access, MSSQL, or any of the other Microsoft proprietary technologies then you probably need to use a Windows host. There is limited support for a number of these technologies in Linux, but they can be expensive and are usually lacking in features. It is probably worth considering the fact that if you use server specific technologies and then change hosts you’ll have a much harder time of it than if you use technologies that can be run on any system. Having it run generic technologies removes the need to focus on specifics and allows you to focus on the quality of service itself.

The reliability and stability of the different platforms have been the topic of many long arguments. The main reason that Windows is seen as being insecure is that it is the most widely used operating system for home PC’s. People spend more time looking for flaws in the most common system. With Linux being the most common server type, it has a surprising number of successful hack attempts made on it. In the end the security of both platforms comes down to the competency of the system administrators. If you are security minded then you’ll do better to make sure that the hosting company is reputable and highly skilled than to worry about the server they use.

In terms of performance there’s not a huge difference between the two servers. Linux reportedly performs faster because Windows (as usual) attempts to offer an ‘all in one’ package instead of the extendable Linux implementation. You’ll generally not notice a difference but if performance is of utmost importance to you then maybe this will influence your decision.

I’ve come to the conclusion that unless you are specifically using features that are unique to one platform or another your time will be much better spent looking for a really good quality host than a really good quality server. Developers are constantly improving both Linux and Windows so they should be fairly close in terms of features, security, and reliability for a long time. It’s the people implementing them that you should be basing your decision on.