The iCashDomains Center

Personal Computers, Servers Or ISP?

You need a server to host your site so that it can be viewed over the internet. This server can either be an Internet Service Provider or of your own. Most websites are hosted by an Internet Service Provider because they can provide powerful server hardware, high speed connections and reliable server support.

Most providers have very fast connections to the Internet such as a full T3 fiber-optic (45 Megabytes per second) connections which is about 1000 high speed (56 Kilobytes per second) modems combined.

For those who are looking to set up their own servers and host their own websites, a personal computer is often not powerful enough to do the job. As the name suggests, a personal computer can hardly handle multiple visitors to your website- servers are needed to handle these visitors simultaneously.

Getting Your Web Hosting

There are thousands of companies that offer web hosting for your website. Which to choose and what to look out for? With the multitude of features and terms in each hosting plan, it can be puzzling for those who are just starting out. The golden rule in choosing your website: Nothing beats reliable web hosting. Many web hosting plans offer more space, more benefits than others. The decision to your web hosting should be based on reliability. We have seen too many disappointed website owners who chose benefits and space over reliability.

Leslie Boey works in an Australian Web Design and Internet Marketing company (Australian Seo and Web Designs Services). His life revolves around websites; providing full-time and freelance seo services to US and Australian businesses. Email: maintenance@definiteweb.com

A lot of people design their business websites to make direct sales. That’s great, but in some cases such an approach is not appropriate.

For example a small service-oriented business like a landscaping company or computer repair service is more likely to use a website as a prospecting tool. Likewise, many network marketers are using their websites to build their contact list or promote some type of free e-zine.

If you are using the web to gather leads for your business, it is crucial that your site is a very clear representation of what you have to offer a prospective customer. This will save you loads of time and frustration in the long run, and will result in higher backend conversions.

It’s best to seek a business relationship only with those people who want specifically what you have to offer.

There may be hundreds of people selling the same product or service as you. But it’s a safe bet that you are not 100% identical to all of your competitors.

Perhaps you charge slightly more or slightly less for a particular product. Or maybe you have a radically different approach to rendering a given service.

Give your prospects as much information as possible about how you operate, what you charge, how they can expect to be treated, what you are unwilling to do in terms of scope of service, etc. Ideally, you want to capture clients who are a great fit for your individual business philosophy.

If you are intentionally vague with your promotional copy, you might end up doing business with people who don’t like you or your methods of operation. Of course this is going to happen, but you can eliminate some of the headaches associated with poor-fit clients by pre-qualifying your audience.

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Tim Whiston is a full-time entrepreneur and internet marketer. He publishes a monthly ezine, has written multiple e-books, and assists small businesses in his local area with the development of a web presence.

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Internet plays an important role in online fax. Online fax requires Internet or a service provider to translate an electronic document to and from a fax. In these days there are several hosts that enable you to use Internet to receive or send faxes. Some providers offer these services free of cost while others charge some fee. Some web hosts let you send/receive e-mail with Internet only whereas some require you to install some special software on your computer.

Service providers offer a special fax number to receive faxes online. Internet faxing doesn’t require fax machines. Online fax requires Internet access and an email account. Whenever a fax is sent to the subscriber’s number, service provider accepts the fax and turns it into a file that is easily forwarded to subscriber’s email address.

Subscriber has to create an email to send an Internet fax. Fax content should be written in the body of electronic mail and the destination fax number should be entered in the ‘To’ field along with @ and the internet service name. You have to click ’send’ button after filling all columns. It will send email to Internet Fax service and the service provider forward it to the recipient. Afterwards recipient receives fax via fax machine or Computer.

It is very easy to send or receive faxes via Internet because your fax number is always active that enables you to receive faxes anytime. Actually in Internet fax, faxes are sent and receive as files that can be printed later on as per users’ choice. Major advantage of online fax is that the subscriber doesn’t require being familiar with fax machines. With a little knowledge of email, subscriber can easily send or receive faxes online.

Subscriber should always consider an Internet fax service that provides secure website. Generally Internet service providers offer these services between US$10-20 per month.

Author owns a website on Online Fax. Website provides useful information about online fax, Internet fax and it also offer some tips on how to send fax from Internet. You can also visit his website on cheap online fax

So you want to have a website of your own? You worked overtime to design and code that beautiful website. Or might be you hired a web designer. But now comes the time to upload this to a web server, so that the world can find your amazing site. So you do a search for webhosting, and are bomabarded with a million people trying to sell you the web hosting. So what choices do you have? How do you separate the grain from the chaff? Let us begin by seeing what choices you have.

Free web hosting with Tripod/Lycos/Geocities or similar sites: Pros:

Totally free.

Cons:

Large, Irritating ads on your website.

No support for PHP, MySql etc.

Generally no support for FTP.

Control panel is limited.

Go for this if you have a very basic/personal website. Not at all recommended for professional websites.

Professional webhosting. Pros:

Very reliable.

Quick support.

Feature packed.

Cons:

Generally very costly.

Go for this if your budget can afford it or you have a very demanding website.

Budget webhosting: They try to balance free and professional webhsoting.

Pros:

Cheap yet somewhat reliable.

Cons:

Some features may be missing.

Might be plagued with downtime, server crashes etc.

Go for this if you can accept your site being down.

Regular evaluation of your website’s performance is important as it will help to ensure a good experience for your visitors. If your website is slow to download or not working properly, your visitors are more likely to go to another site than they are to tell you about it.

Slow performance can be caused by a few different factors. The processing speed of your server, your site’s bandwidth, poor coding or database structure and using images or other media that are too large can all contribute to the problem.

Any one of these factors can be a problem but if you’re dealing with a combination of them, it can be a critical problem. You – or someone on your behalf – must keep track of your site’s performance and make sure any problems get fixed quickly and effectively.

Poor website performance can cause large losses in sales if you’re running an ecommerce site. Fortunately, there are several tools available for monitoring your website on an ongoing basis.

There are remote monitoring services that will do a comprehensive analysis of your website. The analysis will check things like your content mix, bandwidth, server speed, page loading times, server downtime and more.

These tests can help you to pinpoint any problems and get them fixed, before you start to lose visitors. Most of these monitoring services have multiple contact options available – telephone, email, pager, etc. – to let you know when there’s a problem.

You’ll also get real-time reporting, as well as historical data, of your site’s performance and availability. In most cases, these monitoring services can be set up quickly and you will start seeing data immediately.

You won’t need a lot of special training to use them because the reports are generated by specialized software. You may need to get your webmaster (or someone else with the technical skills) to install them for you, but once they’re up and running, they require little or no maintenance.

Planning Ahead for Increased Traffic

One of the more valuable features of these monitoring & testing services is the ability to stress test your site under heavy load.

Most websites will work fine when the number of visitors is relatively low, but if you get a sudden spike in traffic you might start to see problems. And if you don’t know there’s a problem until the spike happens, you’ll lose a lot of those additional visitors.

A good monitoring service will be able to simulate a large number of visitors, and test your website’s response under heavy load. This will help you to ensure your site is scalable for those times when the traffic increases.

If you’re running a small business website on a shared server, these services can be invaluable. If you’re a “name brand” like Amazon or Yahoo, people will come back if your site isn’t responding. The average small business can’t afford to hope those people come back.

Don’t subscribe to get rich quick schemes.

There are thousands of sites out there trying to get you to part with your money, and inferring that you will immediately start reaping the rewards. Don’t be fooled by compelling one page sales letters, often with copies of bank statements, and invariably concluding with free gifts worth hundreds of dollars. Often the letters are sprinkled with testimonials and attempt to close the sale by offering only a limited number left remaining for sale, or you are warned of an imminent price increase. Check some of them out. Make a note of the price and the suggested uplift date. Does it really happen. Check out some of the reference sites. Are they really sites of substance, in which you would place the utmost faith in their recommendations. Yes, you can make money, but is usually after the passage of time, and not without a good deal of effort.

Don’t pay for information on How-to.

There are thousands of publications offering, at a cost, to teach you how to bring about search engine optimization, rank highly with search engines or become an affiliate guru.

Keep your money in your pocket and seek similar advice for free. Let me start you off by pointing you at some free publications which will get you on your way, and all of which are available to download from our web site. Brad Callen’s “Search Engine Optimization Made Easy” is a useful read. To emphasise my point about rogue web traders, I did a Google Advanced Search for exact matches to the title. At the top of the first page, ranking No1 out of 26,400 was a site offering to sell you this free book for $29.95.

Ken Evoy’s Affiliate Masters Course is an excellent free read. Whilst one of its aims is to educate the reader about affiliate schemes, much of the content relates to pretty much any web site.

You might also want to download another good free read, “The Netwriting Masters Course.”

Don’t pay over the odds for domain registration.

There are thousands of sites offering to register domain names. Do find a site that not only provides search facilities to see if your chosen domain name is already registered, but also provides alternative suggestions if it is. Don’t pay more than $10.00 as an annual registration fee. Let me stress that we are not affiliates of the company we use. We last paid $8.95 for a dot com at Godaddy.com. We liked the access to nameservers so that we could activate the transfer of the domain name to a host of our choice. Do not subscribe to hosting at this site.

Do get yourself a suitable domain host.

There are some very important points here. To ensure minimum of downtime from your host do not join any of the free hosting sites. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Choose a site that offers to host an unlimited number of web sites for you. The fist host we selected still has a maximum of two sites before they start to increase the annual fee. You should possibly consider one that offers an unlimited number of autoresponders, if you feel that you may need this facility in the future. Although not the site we have recommended on our web site, you might find that Hostgator.com compares favourably with anything else. Make sure that you are comparing like with like when it comes to number of domains, web space, band width etc.

Don’t buy links or email addresses.

Don’t buy links and more importantly do not purchase from web sites offering you tens of thousands of email addresses. Whilst it can be a pain, you must build up your own links, and your own opt-in list of email addresses. To assist with link building, particularly with keeping track of where you are in a link relationship we use a truly excellent piece of software, outlined on our web site. Not only does it generate the link pages but it handles the sending of emails from templates.

Do carry out search engine optimization.

Your site will go nowhere unless you have carried out the basics. By this I mean searching for and using keywords, developing a link strategy, writing and submitting articles, and promoting your site in other ways. For keywords use the “Tour” at wordtracker .com and then try it for free. For SEO read Brad Cullen’s free e-book available on our web site. For tuition on how to write articles, go to Joe Robson’s site at adcopywriting.com. Joe has had many years of copywriting experience, and his advice is free.

Do get good article submission software.

For our experiences do a Google Advanced Search for the exact phrase “Articles to Directories in the Newbie World” and select a site to read about our experiences. We found disappointing submission companies, mediocre software and again came across the heavy sell, one pagers with free gifts. This prompted us to design our own. We have now made the decision to share it with others, and we are currently preparing it for commercial use.

Get easy-to-use web design software.

Nearly all web design software writes the HTML code for you. Some packages are very cheap with, reflecting functionality. Others are very expensive, but with considerably longer learning curves. Nearly all require the purchase of some extra software for search engine optimization. We have recently carried out an in-depth review of a web design package which led us gently by the hand through SEO, and optimized each page for us. Feel free to visit the review at the web site shown below.

© Paul Lewis 2006. All rights reserved.

Reprints welcomed with article and resource box unedited.

You can see the authors first web site, with an in-depth review of the product that created it, at www.reviewxsitepro.com.

Paul is also CEO of Demovision, a company specializing in talking heads. You can see examples if you go to the “Contact Us” page at www.reviewxsitepro.com/xsitepro.html/contact_us.html. You will need Internet Explorer to view.

Many small business entrepreneurs are starting businesses on the Internet without ever having any experience with the World Wide Web other than surfing through web sites or sending and receiving email.

At first this may seem to be a problem, how do you start a business when you know nothing about it? This can be a huge problem in the traditional sense of starting a small business, but when you are talking about the Internet, you can teach yourself how the Internet works.

The first step is to search the web for web sites that you consider your competition. Do not start with the big money sites, such as those operated by big chain stores or multi-national companies; I am talking about the mom and pop type stores. Find those web sites that have been built and are being worked by home business entrepreneurs. In Google, Yahoo, MSN, or any other search engine type in some keywords for the type of business you are interested in. When you the results show up, click on a few sites and begin your research.

To get started, get a sheet of paper and pen, while on the sites note the following:

• How is the web site laid out?

• Are the menu items on the top of the page, to the side, either right or left?

• Is there an introduction type message, explaining the purpose of the web site?

• What colors are being used?

• What type of font, and font size?

• Do they have banner advertising?

• Do they use textual advertising such as Yahoo, or Ad sense?

• How much information is on the home page?

• How many pages does the web site contain?

• Is the site filled with links? If so, where do the links lead?

• Do they use a blog, or a message board?

• Do they have a link directory?

• Do they have a place to exchange links?

• Do they sell advertising themselves?

• Do they offer a free newsletter?

• Do they collect email addresses?

When you have completed your research, place the results in a spreadsheet, organized by columns. When you are done, you should be able to see some commonalities between the sites. The conclusion is this; you should consider those commonalities for your own site design. It is very possible that they exist because they are considered the best practices for web site design. You will save a huge amount of time incorporating these designs into your site without having to go through a trial and error process.

Peter Engelbrecht is President of Diagonal Street Business Services and operates the web site http://www.BestBusinesses4u.com. The site provides stay at home moms and dads with practical home-based business ideas.

Get What You Pay For

Why bother paying for hosting when there are plenty of companies offering free hosting? Well, in web hosting, when you pay nothing, you often end up with nothing.

Most free web hosts offer limited services. Even though they are not charging you to host your website, they still need to make money. The most common way to do this to place advertising on your site. You probably will have no control over what kind of ads show up. You won’t be consulted when those decisions are made.

Sometimes free hosts will place restrictions on the content you place on your site. For example, you may not be allowed to sell things or have certain types of content, such as videos or music. Worst of all, your web site could disappear overnight. New companies offering free hosting pop up almost everyday, but they also vanish with astonishing regularity. When your hosting company vanishes, your web site goes with it.

Do You Need A High-Priced Web Host?

You’ll need to use a reliable web host if you are serious about having a web site. Prices range considerably — some companies offer rates as low as $2 a month, while others charge over $100. The highest rates don’t always translate into the best service. Some of the lower-priced hosts offer a reliable, stable environment that allows your website to be accessed around the clock for years.

Generally speaking, though, the more you pay the more you get. Higher rates should bring you services such as more storage space, more bandwidth to handle Internet traffic, and extras such as databases, email accounts, mass mailers, and the ability to add custom scripts. Higher rates can also mean better technical support, in the unlikely event you have problems with your website.

What is a Web Server?

When you’re ready to make your move, it helps to understand some of the technical details about the service you’re buying. Every host has dedicated computers known as servers, which connect to the internet and “serve” pages any time they are requested. So, whenever anyone wants to see a certain web page by clicking on a link, the request is sent to the particular server where that web page is stored. The server responds by sending HTML data across the internet, and eventually back to the person who requested it.

A web server must have fast connections to be able to serve pages quickly. For the greatest speed and reliability, try to find a host that has multiple high-speed connections, as well as reliable back-up power supplies in case of power outages.

Remember, you are trying to build a business, so you’d better be prepared to pay to keep the other business in business. Otherwise you may both soon be out of business.

Visit Hosting Solutions to learn more. Ron King is a full-time researcher, writer, and web developer with a Website Here.

Copyright 2005 Ron King. This article may be reprinted if the resource box is left intact.

In software development, testing is a key word. Everything that gets developed gets put in front of the testers and used in every possible way. They send back bugs to the developers, who start fixing them, and on it goes until the deadline hits and the product has to ship.

For websites, though, things just aren’t done this way. Many websites are always under development, and have typically only been tested by the person who designed them, and perhaps a random friend or two. Not only are bugs and problems not fixed, but most of them are never even found. What I’m telling you, though, is that websites aren’t immune from user testing: in fact, they can give you the advantage you need out there.

Finding Problems

Let’s say there was a problem with your site that was stopping many people from looking at one section of it. You get by fine, because you designed it, but to everyone else it’s just not obvious at all. How would you know about this problem? You might just assume that the section is less popular than the rest – maybe you’d even remove it or rework it, not realising that the problem lay in a simple layout mistake you’d made.

When you test, you’re testing for two things: firstly, outright bugs (things that are broken), and secondly, usability issues. The first are easy to catch on your own, but the second are considerably more difficult. Having designed your website, you’re unlikely to be able to see it the way a first-time visitor would: just because you know that clicking an article author’s name sends them an email doesn’t mean that anyone else is expecting it.

User Testing on a Budget

The chances are that you’re not a big company that can afford to pay lots of people to test your site for hours on end. What you have to rely on, then, is pretty much your family and friends. If you do it right, though, they can be the best testers of all.

First of all, you have to sit with them while they use the site, but make it clear that you can’t say anything at all – sitting next to them explaining how things work obviously defeats the point, as your other visitors won’t have you there, will they? You’ve got to make sure that their interaction is entirely limited to using the site as a normal visitor would.

The best thing to do is write them a list of common tasks that you’d expect users of your site to want to do – for example, if you’re running a webmail site, you could ask people to log in, send an email and copy it to your address. You should observe how they interact with the site, and especially note anything they have trouble with or do wrongly.

Reacting to User Tests

Once you’ve watched someone try to accomplish things on your site, there’s one key question you should ask them: “how would you expect to have done that thing?” Make a note of people’s responses – if even two or three people say the same thing, you really ought to do it that way. Consistency is one of the most important aspects of web design: if you want your site to be easy to use, then you have to stick to what visitors expect, not try to show them how it can be done better.

Split Testing

A powerful way of testing whether changes to your site improve it or make it worse is to do split testing. Split testing is when you create two subtly different versions of your site and test each one with an equal number of people. You then gauge their reactions to see which design worked better. It can be surprising just how effective this technique is: the most subtle of changes can make a big difference.

Feedback Forms

Finally, you have to remember that your site’s testing doesn’t end when it goes live. Every visitor to your site is, effectively, testing it for you. Make sure you offer them every opportunity to leave feedback, letting you know if they ran into any issues or found anything hard to find or use.

The Domain Name Game

The Widgets Corporation decides to start a Web site and naturally wants to name it Widgets.Com. But much to the consternation of its management, it discovers there already is a Widgets.com. Someone else has registered the “domain name” and Widgets is stuck. It happens every day as the battle for the best domain names grows. But what in fact is a domain name and what are the issues surrounding their use? Domain names are simply the addresses of the Internet. Without the domain name, a computer would have no idea where to look for a Web page, and e-mail routers would not be able to send e-mail. Domain names are divided into hierarchies. The top-level of the hierarchy appears after the last dot in the domain name. In “microsoft.com”, the top level domain name is .com. The .com name is the most common top-level domain name, and is used to indicate that the domain name is owned by a commercial enterprise. The disputes that arise over domain names involve “second level” domain names directly to the left of the top-level domain name. For instance, in the address “www.microsoft.com,” the second-level domain name is “Microsoft.” Two identical second-level domain names cannot coexist under the same top-level domain. For example, even though both the Delta Faucet Company and Delta Airlines would like the “delta.com” domain name, only one Delta company can have delta.com. Unfortunately for both Delta Faucet Company and Delta Airlines, that Delta company is Delta Financial of Woodbury, New York. Instead of using delta.com, Delta Airlines uses deltaairlines.com, while Delta Faucet Company uses deltafaucet.com. In order to register a second-level domain name under a top-level domain, a request must be made to the organization that has the power to assign names for that top-level domain. Prior to December 1999, a company called Network Solutions Inc. (“NSI”) was almost solely responsible for the registration of second level domain names for the most popular top-level domains, including .com, .net and .org. As of December 1999, the ability to register.com, .net and .org domain names was spread out among many registrars. These registrars are accredited by The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (or “ICANN”), a non-profit corporation formed specifically to control Internet domain name management and similar functions. NSI continues to assign domain names, but now they are just one of many domain name registrars. All of these registrars assign names on a first-come, first-served basis, and do not do any checking before assigning a new domain name. Because of the increasing popularity of the Internet, companies have realized that having a domain name that is the same as their company name or the name of one of their products can be an extremely valuable part of establishing an Internet presence. When a company finds that the domain name corresponding to their corporate name or product trademark is owned by someone else, the company can either choose a different name or fight to get the domain name back from its current owners. When a dispute over a domain name occurs, the parties can always turn to the courts. While courts and judges have the authority to award control and ownership over domain names, the judicial process is notoriously slow. Consequently, many parties have avoided the courts and turned to the domain name dispute policies of the domain name registrars. In response to intense lobbying from trademark owners and famous individuals, Congress passed the Anticyber-squatting Consumer Protection Act in November of 1999. This act made it easier for individuals and companies to take over domain names that are confusingly similar to their names or valid trademarks. To do so, however, they must establish that the domain name holder acted in bad faith. One portion of this Act related to famous individuals. This portion allows individuals to file a civil action against anyone who registers their name as a second level domain name for the purpose of selling the domain name for a profit. The more general portion of the statute protects companies against persons who, in bad faith, register a domain name that is the same or confusingly similar to an existing trademark.

Submitted by HostingChecker.com – for help on all your hosting needs. http://www.hostingchecker.com

Article may be republished if this portion is not removed.