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Business Web Hosting: Which is Right for You? by Joe Duchesne

March 2, 2005 Reply

Business web hosting is what you need. You have a website you need to put online. When you look around on the internet, there are thousands of choices. How do you choose the right web hosting package for your business?

Reliable web hosting

Business web hosting must be reliable. The last thing you need to worry about is that the provider’s service becomes unavailable for long stretches of time. What kind of uptime guarantee do they provide you with? How long have they been in business?

Hosting support when you need it

What level of support does the company offer you? You may not need 24×7 service but is their support desk open reasonable hours? Beware of companies that only offer email web hosting support. Some of these companies will tell you that they only offer email hosting support in order to keep costs down. What they often don’t say is that they are doing the business part time and can’t possibly be available to answer the phone. When you need help, you may have to wait days to get service.

Ecommerce web hosting

Do you plan to sell online? If so, does the web host have shopping carts available? Are they included for free or are they extra? Get the names of the ecommerce shopping carts they provide, and research their capabilities to be able to determine which one is best for you.

Website response times

Be sure to ask the hosting provider for a list of websites that are hosted on their servers. Enter a few of them into your browser and pay attention to how fast they come up. If all of them take a long time to load, this may indicate that the hosting provider’s servers are overloaded. Doing a ping on the website addresses is another way to measure the time it takes for the server to respond. Keep in mind though, that a ping test will be more of a measure of a bandwidth bottleneck than a server problem.

Web Hosting bandwidth: How much do you get?

How much bandwidth does the web hosting service provide you with every month? If it is only 500mb per month and your website is 50 kilobytes in size, this will only allow 10,000 visitors per month to hit your website. If you expect to need more, make sure you can live with the extra charges the hosting provider will levy. If you website traffic explodes, you may be on the hook for large bandwidth overage charges.

Small business web hosting that is reliable is a vital part of any success your company will experience online. Doing your homework ahead of time will save you lots of grief later on.

About the Author
Joe Duchesne is the president of Yowling.com. Business web hosting is their specialty. Reprint freely as long as you provide a keyword rich clickable link back to yowling.com from this resource box.

Indian Domain Name Registrations

February 14, 2005 Reply

Once available to only a small group, .IN domain names will soon be available to everyone who wants one. Companies, individuals, and organizations in India and abroad will be eligible. Show your pride by using a .IN domain name — the symbol of India’s future!

With India emerging as a global destination for IT outsourcing/off-shoring, Indian organisations should change the domain names of their websites and e-mail IDs to sport .in at the end, just like other countries.

Beginning in early 2005, anyone who wants to register a .IN domain name will be allowed to. Registration will also be open to parties inside and outside of India, without restriction. For the first time, domains will be available at the second level — easy-to-use and easy-to-remember domains such as “mydomain.in”. Registration at the third level will also be open. There will be a variety of popular extensions available, such as mydomain.co.in, myorganization.org.in, and more!

The new era for .IN began with a Sunrise Period. Owners of registered Indian trademarks or service marks who wish to protect their marks were given the opportunity to apply for .IN domain names before the general public. Sunrise applications taken from January 1 to January 21, 2005.Open registration for the general public was launched on February 16, 2005.

Unlimited registrations of indian domains is available in the following zones. Registration is available freely to all parties worldwide, and there are no nexus or other qualifications:

* .in
* co.in
* net.in
* org.in
* firm.in
* gen.in (general)
* ind.in (individuals)

The following zones are reserved for use by qualified organizations in India.

* ac.in (Academic)
* res.in (Indian research institutes)
* gov.in (Indian government)
* mil.in (Indian Military)

For more info visit : http://www.aalphanet.com/IN-domains.htm

Making Your Website Work for You: Attracting Visitors by: Marc S. Grobman

January 26, 2005 Reply

Just building a website is not enough. You need to get people to visit it. And just submitting to the search engines won’t do much. Here is a brief overview of 3 effective strategies to get people to your website: 1) Search Engines, 2) PR and Marketing and 3) Email Newsletters. Here is a quick list of do’s and don’ts for each:

Search Engine DO’s:

DO Optimize Your Web Site:
Make sure your website is built correctly and well organized. Your designer should (but many don’t) include Title Tags and Meta Tags, plus lots of good text content that features key words that your visitors will use to search. Title tags appear on the top of your web browser window and Meta Tags are hidden in the html code. Good website Organization also helps Search engines index you.

DO Get Links TO Your Site:
Good links not only bring traffic – they increase your importance in the eyes of the search engines. Get links anywhere you can: web directories, organizations to which you belong your partners, members or clients. Consider paying for inclusion on sites that will give direct links to your site. A good web designer or Search Engine Optimization company can help you grow these links.

DO Pay Per Click (Google AdWords or Overture):
Join a Pay-Per-Click program to advertise on search results. Get very targeted advertising in front of people who are searching for you. These ads come up like search results when people are entering key words that you pick.

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How to Select a Web Site Host by Mike Snyder

January 21, 2005 Reply

So, you know how to create HTML files (web pages) and want to start a website. You have a domain name but don’t know where to store the files (web host). You find countless web hosting companies offering a wide range of products but you can’t make heads or tails of all the features to decide which plan is right for you.

Does this sound like you?

If so, this article was written for you. Hopefully after reading it, you will have a better understanding of all the terms associated with web hosting and find a hosting company that is right for your business.

File Storage Space

Usually hosting companies sell different packages centered around storage space. Storage space is specified in kilobytes (KB), megabytes (MB), or gigabytes (GB); a megabyte is 1000 kilobytes and a gigabyte is 1000 megabytes.

How much storage space do you need? Well, that depends on what you are planning to do with your website. If you have only a few pages of text and little to no graphics or images, a 25 MB should be more than you will ever need. Most hosting packages start at 25 MB of storage space. When comparing web hosting companies for file storage space, be sure to check their terms and conditions to make sure they do not charge another setup fee for upgrading to a packge with more space.

One way to determine the size of your files in Microsoft Windows, right click the Start button and click Explore. Scroll down and select the file(s) or folder(s) you plan on using for your website. Right click on the selected file(s) or folder(s) and click Properties and you will see the size.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth is the measure of how much data flows through your site. It is usually expressed in GB transfered per month. If you are expecting a lot of hits (millions of page views) to your site you will need to get the most bandwidth you can afford. For new web sites it may take a while to get up to a significant bandwith. If you find you are approaching the bandwith limit, you can always upgrade to a plan with higher bandwidth. Some plans allow you to increase your monthly bandwidth for an additional monthly charge.

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Domain Names Security : How safe is yours ?

January 2, 2005 Reply

The security of domain name registrations is an increasing concern for domain name registrants and registrars. However, there are steps you can take to increase the security of your domain name registrations.
Domain Name Security is often neglected by most organisations. Infact a large number of hacking attempts do not really need to happen at the Web Server level. Most hackers can fairly disrupt your business by simply hijacking your Domain Name.

Most Registrars assign paramount importance to Domain Security. Its important you chosoe the RIGHT Registrar and who has implemented several security measures and safety locks to prevent your Domain Name from getting Hijacked or taken over.

There are basically TWO basic options offered by Registrars :

    Password based Security


All Domain Names have a password based security. All Domain Names belonging to a particular Customer can only be modified through the right Username and Password combination of that customer.

    Domain LOCK

– this is a MUST have for all due to the recently announced TRANSFER Policy by ICANN (Visit : http://www.icann.org/transfers/policy-12jul04.htm)

Several TLD Registries have the ability to create what is known as a Domain LOCK. Most Registrars offers this feature to Customers whereby you may place a LOCK on your Domain Name. Once a Domain Name is locked NO modifications can be made to the Domain by ANYONE. The Domain Name may not even be transferred to another Registrar. The Domain will remain in a LOCKED status until you yourself choose to remove the LOCK. This feature is by far the most powerful feature to ensure that noone can make any changes to your Domain Name without your express approval.
Ok..what should you do now ?

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