Web Design

Site registration is a mess in itself, and when you are finished with the mess you expect your worries to end. You want that your business should reach new destinations now, appeal to people and markets worldwide. However, a piece of reality is that registration is similar to you purchasing an empty plot, with the house construction still left. The sales and value of the house in upon the architectural structure; if the structure is built with intelligence, it is bound to last for years and give you unmatched profits. However, a fussy construction might bring your house down within a year.

Let me introduce you to the concept of web designing. Your web design can redefine the outlook of your website. Suppose your site is about electronics and service. Your web page design should contain pictures of all the products. Effects along with that could give an even better look. Special offers section, pre- and post-services section and other things that your store offers should also be included. Now imagine the same site which has no pictures, no layout, no services, and no links. How will it even tempt a customer to come to it again?

So, the first step you need to take is to judge your personal capabilities. If you can come up with a great web page design, then its best that you save the money, and use the web design software and start the work. On the other hand, you can hire the services of a web design company. The web design company will use advanced web design software and provide you with the best web designer in the market to make your site more than perfect. If you render the services of a web designer, then you don’t have to worry about the layout design. He will just ask you all the things you want to put on the site and then come up with the right outlook for your site.

If you are about to launch an e-commerce site, then your preferences should be a little different. As you will not only need an excellent layout, but along with that you will need ad blogs, credit card support, features such as shopping carts and others to provide your customers with all the facilities that are present. Hence it is preferable that when you are going to run an e-commerce site, you render the services of web designers. Overall, a professional web design can boost your sales, attract customers and I can give you proof of various businesses that have reached new heights and attracted customers worldwide after advance web design. It’s now your time to make the right decision and gain profits that you could only dream about before.

Hosting reliability and uptime

Hosting uptime refers to the percentage of time the host is accessible via the internet. Many providers state that they aim for at least 99.9% uptime (roughly equivalent to 45 minutes of downtime a month, or less), but there may be server restarts and planned (or unplanned) maintenance in any hosting environment, which may or may not be considered part of the official uptime promise.

Many providers tie uptime and accessibility into their own service level agreement (SLA). SLAs sometimes include refunds or reduced costs if performance goals are notmet

How To Find A Perfect Web Host

Take into consideration that there is no perfect web hosting plan out there. We can back that up with the flat out knowledge that any one hosting plan does not fit every requirement, budget and web site, therefore it can’t be perfect. You can however find the perfect web host, that is, at least a perfect web host for YOU.

First do a little smart investigating as to exactly what you need from your hosting provider. Are you looking for cheap web hosting and have a small budget? Does your webhosting provider need to have a datacenter near you and have the ability to let you get your hands on a dedicated or collocated server? Well cheap web space is everywhere, you can find that easy enough, but finding the perfect mesh of the extras beyond just a server plugged into the wall and then into the backbone, is what will get your problems taken care of before you even knew you had them.

Taking price out of the picture for now, since cheap hosting is really available from any web host out there these days, let’s focus on the web site itself. What will you be doing with your site that makes unlimited data storage and transfer a necessity? Is your blog popular enough to require terabytes of bandwidth? Will your company web site be able to stand with one hundred other sites on a shared hosting account, sharing the drive and IP address, and connection for that matter? Your best web hosting plans will not always be the ones with sky-high limits, or no limits on your web site hosting, but will keep their web space and yours at a maintainable level in a catered-to environment.

Once you have determined what your web site will do for you, ask yourself, or your developer HOW it will do those things. Will you need ASP hosting on a Windows or modified Linux server? While most business web hosting accounts are beefy enough to handle hundreds or thousands of simultaneous visitors, will your database or cart that accompanied your ecommerce web hosting be able to take that much pressure? Simultaneous activity is one of the weak points in a cheap host and its ability to deliver reliable website hosting service.

With all your pieces of this hosting puzzle collected, now you can focus on finding the most affordable web hosting that can also accommodate your other needs. Never try to find the cheapest host and buy a plan blind, because you always get what you pay for. Select your web hosting service based on your needs, and then choose a provider and plan that fill those needs. You will be happy with your results and wont end up with glorified ftp hosting from some guy’s basement for $1.25 a month. Good luck!

Webhosting

Free Webhosting;-Free hosting is the most basic web hosting service. Banners ads are common on this type of website hosting (for example Geocities or Angelfire). There are a few free web site hosting providers in existence today that provide excellent options but that is the exception to the rule. Most free hosting plans do not provide users with MySQL databases, multiple e-mail accounts, or the ability to run any scripting language. The type of domain one receives in free web hosting is typically a sub-domain (yoursite.webhost.com) or a directory (www.webhost.com/~yoursite). Our recommendation is to avoid these kinds of web host services. Put a small investment in for cheap web hosting and get your own site, in the long run you will be happier and more satisfied.
Dedicated Web Hosting;-Dedicated hosting is a good option for someone who wants more storage and bandwidth and control over the server. The advantages of having dedicated hosting are: unlimited databases and email addresses as well as unlimited bandwidth. Generally, a dedicated server plan offers the user with a monthly bandwidth of 500 GB to 1 TB. Also important to know that there are two types of dedicated web hosting plans: managed and unmanaged. Managed hosting is hosting that is still controlled by the hosting company. In unmanaged dedicated web hosting, the user is the server administrator, permitting the user the greatest amount of control and flexibility. Unfortunately, unmanaged hosting is complicated and takes more time than a managed hosting solution.

This is a quick summary of the plethora of web hosting companies. Yes, we admit, it is a daunting task to find the best web hosting service for your needs. First know that the function of the website usually determines the type of web host. Then, the features, support, reliability, and control decide the pricing of a hosting account. At Web Hosting Search, you can browse the site and lDifferent Types of Web Hosting

There are many different types of web hosting companies available in the market today. Choosing a web hosting provider depends on what type of website you want to have: hobby, blog, or ecommerce site. As a result, there are different flavors of hosting providers. Some of the most common web site hosting types are: shared, free, and dedicated hosting. Free web hosting services for example, place ads on the user's web pages and can be cumbersome and annoying for visitors. The other web hosting plans offer great support, options, and bandwidth but charge a monthly fee.
Shared Web Hosting

Shared hosting is the most popular web hosting plan, basic. Shared web site hosting permits more than one site to be hosted on the same server. Here, the web hosts provide the system administration and the server maintenance. Benefits of a shared hosting site are programming features such as ASP, PHP, MySQL, large bandwidth, and multiple e-mail address capability. Compared to free web hosting, shared web hosting allows a user to have their own domain name. Shared hosting is a way for a hosting company to offer affordable web hosting to their clients while having more users on one server and thus less overhead costs.earn more about hosting, buy a hosting plan, and get your website online.

GOOGLE WEB HOSTING

Google Web Hosting: Pages.google.com has now shifted to sites.google.com .. The new Google web hosting page allows you to create rich web pages easily, collect all your information in one place, and control who can view and edit your site. Like all google application Google web hosting is easy to use and a great web hosting option for anyone looking for a very simple web page.

If you are looking to create a professional web site for your business, blog, church, or other website you may want to consider some other cheap (but great alternatives). Although Google web hosting features many great tools you really are limited with what you can do. I would suggest purchasing web hosting from on of the providers on our Top 10 Hosting List . These Google web hosting alternatives cost less than $5 per month but will give you unlimited bandwidth, unlimited disk space, and something that Google will not give you A FREE DOMAIN NAME for Life!

Again, if you are looking to create you own personal website just for you, Google web hosting would be a great free option; however, if you are looking to create a professional image for your site on the web you should choose one of the web hosting providers listed below. Google web hosting will allow you to create your own site but fails to provide you with the resources that other hosts can bring. For example, it is nearly impossible to install wordpress or any other CMS on a Google Web Hosting server.. Also for a professional appearance on the web you should have your own custom domain name.. You can get this free with the purchase of web hosting but not with a free account from Google Sites.

What is web hosting? What do I need to consider?

What is web hosting?

Web hosting (sometimes referred to as 'web space') is a service which allows you to upload your own files and site to a server in a data center. Once uploaded, your website can be seen by anyone who is connected to the Internet.

What do I need to consider?

For a business website, you need to ensure you use a reliable host so that your site is always available for potential customers to view it. You also need to ensure that it is speedy so that your site doesn't take a long time to load (how the site is designed also impacts this). You need enough storage space for all your files and a monthly bandwidth allowance that will not stop people viewing your site. Hosting accounts also come with a number of e-mailboxes as well as scripting tools which your site may require.

Web Domain Name

It is important to know how to buy web domain name if you are a business person and would like to put up your business over the internet or if you are into internet marketing. You domain name is important because it is what people will remember and notice first regarding your business or organization. Also, it will depend upon the domain name if you will easily get organic search engine traffic. If your business belongs to a very competitive market, then getting the right domain name could mean success or failure for your business endeavor.

Registering and buying a domain name is very easy and quite fast. A lot of web hosting sites also offer domain name registration. Before you get started, think about the domain name you want really carefully. Do not go for a name just because it sounds cute or just because it is the only one available or it is the first thing that comes to mind. Read on and you will see why having the right domain name and taking the time to think about it is essential.

First off, take note that if you have sufficient budget, you can afford to brand yourself properly whatever domain name you decide to use. Just take Google and Yahoo for example. Those names are not popular and Google does not even exist in the dictionary, but look at them now. They are the top force to reckon with when it comes to the online business. Their success is not due to their name, although it helps that is can be easily remembered, but their success is largely due to an excellent brand internet marketing strategy and thousands and even millions of dollars to implement it.

Now, you want to have a focus so your mission, goals and objectives will be all synchronized. You should know your target market or your niche. Know your main product or the main service you are offering. If you have the information in mind, type it on Google Keyword Tool. This tool will reveal what internet users use as keywords in relation to your product, service or target market. Look at the most common used keywords and incorporate it in your domain name so your site will be easily researchable.

After making sure you have the right domain name for your website, you are then ready to register. A lot of web users are using NampCheap.com when registering their domain names nowadays because their fee includes privacy for the domain name owners. This is important because if you really want to do serious business over the internet, you need to cover your tracks. If your website gets recognized, your competition will most likely seek you out and find out how your other sites are doing. The better your tracks are covered the more secure you and your business will be. You do not want your ideas ripped off by the competition right?

If you are putting up a website for business purposes, always go for a .com as your first option as it is given search engine priority. If your domain name is available in other extensions such as .net, .org or .biz, buy it also if you can to keep the competition at bay.

5 Web Hosting Tips for '08

Are you planning your web hosting needs for 2008? Maybe you are ready to buy a web hosting plan for a new blog site or that online video family website you're planning? Then it's a great time for you or your company to consider the following tips for a successful year of hosting! By following these simple steps, you can not only save money, but also ensure that your website has its most successful year ever.

Tip #1: Upgrade to an Annual Plan - If you are happy with your hosting provider, consider moving to an annual payment basis. By doing this, you can benefit from a lower prorated monthly rate. If you are looking to transfer to a new web host, you might also wish to consider an annual plan as they often come with no set-up fee. Even better, consider the discount of adding a 2nd year onto that annual hosting plan; sometimes adding the 2nd annual time period results in very little extra cost since you get a web hosting discount on the first year as well. For example, HostMonster offers a 1 year hosting plan which works out to $7.95/month, and a two-year price of $5.95/month.

Tip #2: The Internet economy continues to grow and global Internet traffic is predicted to continue its steady usage increase during 2008. Is your company website ready for an increase in traffic during 2008? With monthly fees for dedicated servers coming down rapidly over the past year, your business may wish to consider moving to a dedicated environment which will offer more capacity for servicing your online customers. You can review 2008 dedicated server specials at our Dedicated Server Showcase. At the very least, be sure that your current plan has adequate bandwidth allowances. Even the shared space now offers close to unlimited bandwidth (considering what the average website actually uses). Take a look at HostMonster - they provide unlimited GB of monthly bandwidth for as low as $5.95/month. Just like a cell phone, if your current website is experiencing traffic overage charges, then it is time to consider a larger hosting package.

Tip #3: Check out your Hosting Service Agreements. These agreements contain the "legal terms" of your hosting contract and may be changed from time to time. The 'New Year' is a good time to review the latest documents surrounding the relationship between you and your web host. For some customers, you may find that you are on a high-end SLA and could lower your monthly service fee by accepting say a 99.8% uptime guarantee vs. a 99.9% standard.

Best Hosting Review Winner
Host Unlimited Websites at this Top Ranked Hosting Provider


Tip #4: Secure a support domain for your company. Many companies are now providing technical support and service follow-up online. With Internet access still growing on a worldwide basis, you may wish to consider reserving the domain name for a potential service/support site. For example, usxmodeltrains.com might wish to reserve usxtrainsupport.com. Also, think about registering some of the new top levels domains including .info and .biz - these can be useful in driving more traffic to your website. Most web hosting companies now offer to purchase a free domain for you as long as you purchase their annual web hosting account.

Tip #5: Watch for software upgrades! Each year, many providers of web design and server software launch new versions. For instance, is your web host delivering the latest Windows or ASP.NET versions? Also, make sure your company is using the latest design software to maximize your site visitor's experiences. By checking to see if your provider has the latest server versions, you can verify their technical knowledge, ensure maximum website uptime, and create a website that is more competitive vs. your peers in terms of website interactivity and features.

By following these simple tips, your business can maximize it's online efforts in 2008 by ensuring a stable hosting environment while gaining better knowledge about your web host.

Looking to give the gift of web hosting - Learn more in our web hosting gift guide.
Want more tips, check out our 2007 web hosting tip sheet: click here.

5 Web Hosting Tips for '07

Are you planning your web hosting needs for 2007? Maybe you are ready to buy a web hosting plan for a new blog site or that online video family website you're planning? Then it's a great time for you or your company to consider the following tips for a successful year of hosting! By following these simple steps, you can not only save money, but also ensure that your website has its most successful year ever.

Tip #1: Upgrade to an Annual Plan - If you are happy with your hosting provider, consider moving to an annual payment basis. By doing this, you can benefit from a lower prorated monthly rate. If you are looking to transfer to a new web host, you might also wish to consider an annual plan as they often come with no set-up fee. Even better, consider the discount of adding a 2nd year onto that annual hosting plan; sometimes adding the 2nd annual time period results in very little extra cost since you get a web hosting discount on the first year as well. For example, HostMonster offers a 1 year hosting plan which works out to $6.95/month, and a two-year price of $4.95/month.

Tip #2: The economy is growing and Internet usage continues to increase. Is your company website ready for an increase in traffic during 2007? With monthly fees for dedicated servers coming down rapidly over the past year, your business may wish to consider moving to a dedicated environment which will offer more capacity for servicing your online customers. At least be sure that your current plan has adequate bandwidth allowances. Even the shared space now offers close to unlimited bandwidth (considering what the average website actually uses). Take a look at HostMonster - they provide 999GB of monthly bandwidth for as low as $4.95/month. Just like a cell phone, if your current website is experiencing traffic overage charges, then it is time to consider a larger hosting package.

Tip #3: Check out your Hosting Service Agreements. These agreements contain the "legal terms" of your hosting contract and may be changed from time to time. The 'New Year' is a good time to review the latest documents surrounding the relationship between you and your web host. For some customers, you may find that you are on a high-end SLA and could lower your monthly service fee by accepting say a 99.8% uptime guarantee vs. a 99.9% standard.

IXWebHosting
Unlimited Web Space + Unlimited Traffic Web Hosting - $3.95/mo.


Tip #4: Secure a support domain for your company. Many companies are now providing technical support and service follow-up online. With Internet access still growing on a worldwide basis, you may wish to consider reserving the domain name for a potential service/support site. For example, usxmodeltrains.com might wish to reserve usxtrainsupport.com. Also, think about registering some of the new top levels domains including .info and .biz - these can be useful in driving more traffic to your website. Most web hosting companies now offer to purchase a free domain for you as long as you purchase their annual web hosting account.

Tip #5: Watch for software upgrades! Each year, many providers of web design and server software launch new versions. For instance, is your web host delivering the latest Windows or ASP.NET versions? Also, make sure your company is using the latest design software to maximize your site visitor's experiences. By checking to see if your provider has the latest server versions, you can verify their technical knowledge, ensure maximum website uptime, and create a website that is more competitive vs. your peers in terms of website interactivity and features.

By following these simple tips, your business can maximize it's online efforts in 2007 by ensuring a stable hosting environment while gaining better knowledge about your web host.

Looking to give the gift of web hosting - Learn more in our web hosting gift guide.
Want more tips, check out our 2006 web hosting tip sheet: click here.

Hosting reliability and uptime

Hosting uptime refers to the percentage of time the host is accessible via the internet. Many providers state that they aim for at least 99.9% uptime (roughly equivalent to 45 minutes of downtime a month, or less), but there may be server restarts and planned (or unplanned) maintenance in any hosting environment, which may or may not be considered part of the official uptime promise.

Many providers tie uptime and accessibility into their own service level agreement (SLA). SLAs sometimes include refunds or reduced costs if performance goals are not met.

OBTAINING HOSTING

Web hosting is often provided as part of a general Internet access plan; there are many free and paid providers offering these services.

A customer needs to evaluate the requirements of the application to choose what kind of hosting to use. Such considerations include database server software, scripting software, and operating system. Most hosting providers provide Linux-based web hosting which offers a wide range of different software. A typical configuration for a Linux server is the LAMP platform: Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP/Perl/Python. The webhosting client may want to have other services, such as email for their business domain, databases or multi-media services for streaming media. A customer may also choose Windows as the hosting platform. The customer still can choose from PHP, Perl, and Python but may also use ASP .Net or Classic ASP.

Web hosting packages often include a Web Content Management System, so the end-user doesn't have to worry about the more technical aspects. These Web Content Management systems are great for the average user, but for those who want more control over their website design, this feature may not be adequate.

Most modern desktop operating systems (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X) are also capable of running web server software, and thus can be used to host basic websites.

One may also search the Internet to find active webhosting message boards and forums that may provide feedback on what type of webhosting company may suit his/her needs.

Web Configuration and Statistics

Now that your web site is up and running you want to know how many people are visiting your site and how they are finding it. Most web hosts give you access to this information (and a lot more) in the form of web statistics.

All visits to your site are logged by the server software. Log files contain information about the origin of the visitor (their IP address), the type of browser they were using, which pages they viewed, how long they stayed, whether or not they arrived from a search engine and if so, what keywords they used to locate your site. All very useful information.

The trouble is, raw log files are scary to look at and impossible to make any sense of. They are long lists of numbers and cryptic words that can only reveal their secrets with the aid of a statistics program. There are a few stats programs to choose from. They take the raw server logs and parse them into readable (and sometimes colourful) charts that are fairly easy to interpret.

Most web hosts will include a stats program as part of their hosting package. You should be able to access it through the control panel which is used to make various settings on your account. Some of the popular web stat programs are AWStats, Analog, and WebAlizer. All three of these programs are free.

Stats programs divide the information of the log files into useful categories. A summary of the data may be included at the top of the readout and tell you information such as ‘unique visitors’, ‘number of hits’, and ‘number of pages’.

Not all this information is important. The number of hits, for example, simply counts the total number of requests for any individual part of your site including graphics, script files and any other files that are part of a page. If your home page has 4 pictures and 2 other files the hit count is increased by 7 each time someone views that page.

The number of page views is important because it tells you which pages are popular. This allows you to fine-tune your site by dropping or modifying unpopular pages and making sure that popular pages link to areas that you want to promote.

Popular entry and exit pages are also worth tweaking. Visitors will not always arrive at your site through the home page, especially if they’ve found your site through a search engine. Make sure that popular entry pages contain relevant information and adjust exit pages to be more appealing. Exit pages should provide one last chance for them to buy or bookmark your site for future reference.

Referring sites show you where people are coming from. If they have found you from a search engine you will also see what keywords they used to find your site. This information tells you which keywords are important for optimizing your site. You can then design new content based on these keywords to attract even more visitors in the future.

Rather than rely on the stats produced by your server, you can hire a third party service to monitor your web site. These services range from basic ‘counter’ that usually offer less information than your server does, to comprehensive client-side stats collection.

Stats services can be useful if you need more precise information about your visitors. For example, visitors from a large organization may all appear to be the same because they all have the same IP address. Stat services can break down IP addresses into individual users.

These services can be useful for more precise monitoring of your website and for targeting specific niches. Most site owners, however, will find enough useful information in their server’s statistics.