Web Hosting - Made Easy

If you have never set-up a website, or been a webmaster, you may expect that you need a lot of technical knowledge to do this. In fact you would be wrong because easy website hosting is now available to anyone wanting to set-up their own website or blog. You need both a domain name and a hosting account so there will be cost involved. You might be able to get one or other of these free by using a single supplier but if you want a premium domain (e.g. a.com) it will probably be cheaper to buy them from separate suppliers. Proceed as follows: Select you Domain Name: The extension you need will depend on the purpose of your site. If you are looking for an international audience then a .org or .net might be appropriate or .com if there is a commercial element. In this case cheapestsitehosting.com is a good place to start looking. Search for a local registration site if you go for your local extension e.g. .co.uk or .de. Look for the cheapest site to register the name (but don’t do so yet). Chose your Website Hosting Provider: There is a lot of choice here with varying levels of service. Unless a hosting provider has been recommended to you I would recommend selecting one of the big names who have a good reputation for their support services. If any problems do arise you can then be confident that you will be able to get support. Website hosting companies often also offer domain registration services and you can do this as part of the sign-up process with them. This is certainly the easiest way to go but it may not be the cheapest. The alternative is to register your domain name first with another company and, later, enter the DNS information provided by your hosting company. This is easy, it just adds another step to the setup process. If you proceed on this basis you should register your domain name first, so that you have the information when setting up your hosting account. Set-up Hosting Account: On your hosting company’s website you will need to choose your package and the period you will pay in advance. The “monthly” cost is lower the further in advance you pay. You then enter your contact and payment information. You should pay by credit card or PayPal as this makes it easier to get a refund should you need to cancel later. If you registered your domain name elsewhere the hosting company will advise you of their nameserver(s). You then need to login to the site where you registered your domain and enter these. If you purchased your domain from the hosting company you do not need to worry about this. Creating your Site/Blog:: Your hosting company will give you access to your Cpanel through which you control everything including your email and FTP accounts. To get started quickly open “Fantastico De Luxe” which is in the Software/Services section. This will enable you to quickly set-up WordPress, the very popular software for creating websites and blogs. WordPress in free and there are so many themes and plugins to choose from that you can effectively make it do what you want without any technical knowledge. To install it in your root directory (i.e. your home page will be at yourdomain.xxx) select WordPress in the left hand column of Fantastico. Click “New Installation” on the next page then complete the simple form leaving the “Install in Directory” box blank. The data entered on this page can be changed later and you will no doubt want to do so once you see what it is used for. Finish the installation and you will then get a page containing your database and login details.

Web Designing - Outsourcing a Web Designer

If I were to ask you if you can give me a name of a company that wouldn’t be willing to have an online website, would you be able to give me? I’m sure you’d find a hard time looking for one because almost all companies would like to break into the online scene. Businesses have recognized the need for having a website to be able to market and promote their product to a much bigger audience. Not to mention, having a website is an easy way to reach the international market as well. However, to be able to make a website, you need to employ a web designing company or a web designer to make it from you and this where the analysis will start. You have the option to get a web designer on board your company to do the job for you or simply outsource a website designing company to do the project. Well, some people would answer that they’d prefer having their own web designer but what they don’t realize is that they are really not making more money by simply having a web programmer in the company. Thus, the first thing you will need to think about whether to outsource or not is the practicality. Ask yourself, will you be making more money if you employ a web designer? Chances are you are not. When you outsource a web programming agency or a designer, you don’t have to worry about other things like the time you’ll be searching for one for your company. You simply just look for a website designing company or a designer, talk to them, assign them the project and pay for their services. The only time you will be giving them is when you need to communicate what you wanted with the project and when you need to approve drafts. Outsourcing a web programming company or a website designer is very practical as you don’t have to waste time and effort. The next thing to think about whether to outsource a website programming company or not is the cost. By hiring a designer to work for you in the company will just be added cost. You have to pay his salary and give him benefits just like any other employee. As opposed to just outsourcing a company or a designer, you can just pay them for the project and that’s it. You don’t have to pay for anything else. On the other hand, the main benefit of having a web designer on board your company is that you can monitor his work step by step. If you have a company outsourced, you won’t be able to do this and you’ll just see drafts of the website they are making. Having your own designer will also allow you to communicate more effectively with what you want to be done. The choice of whether to outsource a web designing company or web designer is really up to you. There are pros and cons to every decision and you and your company must weigh out which factors are most important to you.

Web Designing - What is CMS

When you have an online business or if you intend to get one, you already know that the success of your website will drastically depend upon your site’s popularity. So just how does a website obtain popularity you might ask? You can get more traffic by writing great content. Content is king when it comes to web design! A movement involving fresh, educational, and quality content is definitely in demand by a large number of online companies, businesses, organizations and individuals. However, the problem is in managing the content and also the design aspects regarding your website design. To accomplish this, you need to opt for a CMS-based website. Content Management Systems (CMS) make it a lot easier to manage the content on your site. It is easy to handle all your content very quickly and do so with no need of employing a programmer or perhaps a webmaster. Style components can be re-structured considering all you actually have to do is adjust the particular templates. One of the biggest reasons for utilizing a CMS is the fact that it helps you to save time. Rather than running to ones FTP program to help you add any kind of content, you are able to simply logon to the user interface and publish all your website content there. Web design and style adjustments can certainly be made in the same manner since you can alter one template in order to bring up-to-date your pages of content. Securing all your data and content is actually less difficult also. Considering that information and details will be saved in the database, preserving the essential information is straightforward. All you will have to do is actually export the information if you want added safety measures. Some people like to have “layers” of security and a CMS helps to make that an easier task. If you want to duplicate any templates or data to an alternative site, you may simply add the exported data files. You will also have the publishing abilities that a CMS offers. Publishing articles and other content was formerly executed manually with static sites. With a CMS, it’s possible to know what exactly is being published, specify the time frame for content to be published, and you may even immediately do away with outdated articles and other content. Plus if you want to bring extra features into your website, it’s easy to accomplish as well. With the massive number of CMS lovers these days, free plugins and extensions are being made each day. The most renowned platforms are usually WordPress, Joomla, as well as Drupal. Each platform features internet sites that offer easy-to-follow plugins and extensions you may use to make publishing more streamlined and easier, enabling you to get more traffic, plus help you to increase your revenue. Numerous plugins can be obtained 100 % free plus the ones that are being sold seem to be fairly low-priced. It’s also a lot easier to improve style and design components by way of CMS tools. As opposed to running through lots of HTML code, one can merely improve many elements concerning a website with the help of templates. You actually may modify a header, footer, sidebar, and incorporate widgets really quickly. There are even plugins and extensions that help you to change the web design elements by way of aiming and clicking on different web templates. In summary, content management systems (CMS) present many amazing and convenient benefits to online marketers, businesses, organizations and individuals. Content publishing and web design are able to be completed much faster and easier once you have a content management system. Furthermore, common CMS systems have a solid community which tends to make CMS much more attractive. You will also have the ability to locate plugins to help you generate income from your site, join social sites, make it possible for targeted traffic to connect, and a lot more. The issue now is exactly what CMS to utilize. Each and every system has their pluses and minuses. They likewise have totally different features as well as modification possibilities. The simplest way in making an obvious decision is to experiment with various platforms and then judge those that suit you better. Also you can pay a visit to message boards to see comments and consult with many other website owners to check out exactly how they’re using a particular content management system. Examine their style and design factors and also talk to site owners having websites which are similar to what you are going for.

Website Hosting Providers

Below are areas you should think about when choosing a website hosting provider. Thinking through what you need at the outset and matching it to the appropriate provider will be time well spent. Minimum upfront payment period Whilst most website hosting providers quote a monthly fee this is often just for comparison purposes and you actually have to pay 6/12 months in advance as a minimum. Others offer various options, obviously being cheaper the more you pay in advance. If you do not want to (or cannot afford to) pay in advance you need a website hosting provider who allows monthly payments. Length of commitment If you are happy to pay in advance you need to check the Terms and Conditions to establish your rights to cancel and get a refund. The best providers do not lock you in at all. If you pay monthly it is reasonable to expect to be able to terminate at a months notice. Can you change your mind? A money back guarantee features in the packages of some website hosting providers who will give a full refund on request within a specified number of days of signing up. Whilst this should not be a major factor in choosing a provider it does at least show their confidence in their service and you might find out how good their support is during this period. How many domains are you allowed? The lead-in packages often only allow one domain to be hosted. This may be fine but it is worth looking at the costs for multiple (or unlimited) domains, as once you get started you may well discover a need for another domain. Is there a free domain? Website hosting providers sometimes include a domain in their package. Check if it is always free or just for an introductory period. It is likely that the free domain will use one of the less popular extensions (it will not be.com) so it may not be the best option for your new site. How much bandwidth are you allowed? In case your site attracts a lot of traffic it is safest to have unlimited bandwidth then you never have to worry about this. However where limits apply they are unlikely to be an issue for a new site in the foreseeable future. What is the limit on disk space? Much the same applies as for bandwidth (above). How good is the provider’s infrastructure? Loading time is important both to provide a good experience to users of your site and because Google are now taking this into account in the search results. You can have your site monitored by third parties once operational but at the outset you can only go by existing user feedback. This should not be an issue with any of the top website hosting providers. Your website hosting provider should also provide a guarantee on percentage uptime which should be around 99.9%. Do you want Linux or Microsoft hosting? Many website hosting providers offer both Linux and Microsoft hosting. There is no connection between this and your PC operating system and I recommend that you go for Linux unless you have a specific reason not to do so. Linux powers the majority of websites, including major sites like Google, and there is a wealth of free software, tools, forums etc. dedicated to it. Many people now use WordPress to build their websites or blogs and about 95% of these installations are on Linux as it is easy and straightforward. The exception would be where your website developers specify the need to use Microsoft based hosting. Does the provider use Cpanel? The following should be available: * set-up and control multiple email accounts on your domain, preferably with a webmail service. * setup multiple FTP accounts * access to and control of databases * tools to backup the site (and databases) * It is also good to see support for Fantastico – which makes it very easy to install WordPress. How good is the support? In many ways this is the most important question. The best service in the world is no good if you cannot get help from your website hosting provider. Look for the support options to include a toll free phone number. It is also worth searching the web to see feedback from real users.

web hosting and designing practices

We have been constantly surprised to find many of our website design clients not using the power of social media marketing. Social media or Web 2.0 is the concept of using Twitter, Facebook, Digg, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, etc. to market yourself and your products. There is a lot of work involved when you decide to add web 2.0 marketing to your arsenal of sales tools. One very important goal should be to customize your social media sites with your current company branding whenever possible. If your visitors are directed to these various sites and see a confusing branding message, you are likely to lose a certain amount of respect, whether that be communicated to you or not. A consistent branding message is very important to your ongoing success. So, before you decide to “dive in” to the Web 2.0 world, you should prepare yourself in advance. You will need to know which site can be customized, how to customize them and the time/costs it may take to do so. Most professional website designers will have a full suite of services to offer that include social media branding. However, if you ask your designer to provide such a service and they are not able to do it, you should consider contacting another source. Another important thing to consider is “who will be updating your sites” ongoing. It is important to convey a consistent marketing message. If you have someone on your staff who knows how to “tweet” and update a Facebook FAN page (business page) then we recommend you give this responsibility to them to manage. If you allow anyone on your team to post social media updates, you will quickly lose control of your marketing message and run the risk of driving customers away. Before you decide to launch your new website product consider the time and effort it will take to work with social media. As a basic “rule of thumb” (and from our years of experience) you should try to keep the number of social media sites to the minimum when you first get started. We suggest Twitter, Facebook and YouTube as a good starting point. There are dozens of Web 2.0 sites for you to consider; whenever possible, you want to keep your “social media name” as consistent as possible. Remember, many social media sites restrict your user name to a maximum of 14 characters. Here is a great link to use to “search the most popular Web 2.0 sites” When you decide to “brand” your social media sites, you will most certainly be including some sort of “company logo” and customized background image. We use Photoshop to create files for our clients and charge a set rate to do so for them. You should certainly include this “cost” as part of your overall website design plan.