Relayblogger

by lee brooker

Doing web hosting comparison is a very important part of developing your business on the web. Its no good just picking the first one that turns up I your browser window and committing to that one!

For example if you do not do a web hosting comparison then you will not know what is fully required and needed not only from the web host itself but from your own point of view regarding your business.

Say you do not hold web hosting comparisons high on your list of priorities, and you chose a company who goes bust in a few months, a year down the line when your getting well established?

That’s right its going to ruin you. Webhosting comparisons are very important. If you were going to buy a car, generally you do not walk up to the nearest one for sale to you and buy it there and then do you. You look around, COMPARE prices and models, history etc.

A good website hosting comparison will pay you and your business dividends if done with the right amount of importance.

When doing a web hosting comparison drill into the range of services and tools as much as possible. Don’t just find what you are looking for and finish there. Chances are there are more to discover within the package you are leaning towards, and im not just talking good things either. Restriction may be applicable which could limit your functionality in the future.

But on the other hand there may be added tools within your desired plan that unlock parts of your business that you never considered. Like added forum software or guestbook’s. Ok you may not be thinking along those lines right now but they are there if you need to go that way in the future.

Much better to just have them at the ready than having to go through all the hassle of looking g into changing your hosting all over again!

So do a good in depth webhosting comparison, you will be glad you did.
About the Author
Discover Why I Will Only Ever Use This Hosting http://hubpages.com/hub/reliable_web_hosting_service With The Professional Web Site Builder Free

by lee brooker

When looking for a website hosting provider it is easy to get caught in the problem of getting the cheapest around. Don’t do this.

A good way of making sure you get a good deal when you branch out as a new comer, is to see what the others are doing. That’s right, it can be that easy! Look around you, where do you work? Do they have a website? If so go to your companies website online and see if there is a part at the bottom of the page that says “hosted by…”

Large businesses tend to have a department within their company that are dedicated to the online side of the business, so when they source a website hosting provider, you can bet it’s a good one.

Do some research and although this may take a little time on your behalf it will be worth it in the long run. If you are getting serious about online marketing, then do not over look the foundations of your business.

Another good tip is to look past the sales page! Its easy as a newcomer to be dazzled and impressed by a good sales page. That’s why they are there!

Look for testimonials, if the company you are thinking of purchasing from does not provide previous customer testimonials then, move on.

All in all think flexibility. If you are new then go for a month by month basis package, that way you are not committed to the website hosting provider for a whole year if you decide its not the package for you or your business is growing faster than you expected!
About the Author
Discover Why I Will Only Ever Use This Hosting http://hubpages.com/hub/reliable_web_hosting_service With The Professional Web Site Builder Free

by Cliff Posey

Finding an affordable web site hosting plan is a must for new businesses or established businesses that are on a budget. Of course, as with most things, this is much easier said than done. There are tons of hosting companies out there that claim to offer free or cheap web site hosting, but many of them have hidden fees or low quality services. A supposedly affordable web site hosting plan can quickly turn into a costly nightmare if you aren’t careful.

This is why it is essential that you do your homework and research a number of hosting companies before making any final decisions.

Comparing Costs:

If you are looking for cheap web site hosting, then you will obviously need to compare the costs that are charged by different hosting companies. Specific costs to look at when searching for an affordable web site hosting plan include site set up fees, monthly or annual maintenance fees, and any other fees that may be associated with the plan. It should be noted that some hosting companies offer free set-up. If you can find a web host who is offering this in addition to low monthly hosting fees, you will of course be much better with this host versus another who makes you pay for the same service. Features Things to compare in addition to the cost when looking for cheap web site hosting services include the amount of storage space received with the plan, the programming languages supported by the web host, and the amount of customer support offered. Some hosting companies will offer all of these features in their basic or most affordable web site hosting plan, and others will not. You will also want to take a look at the other services offered by the web hosting companies that you are considering. Some cheap web site hosting companies provide additional services such as domain name registration and web building tools. If you haven’t purchased a domain name yet or if you need help building your website, you may want to check to see if these services can be combined with the company’s most affordable web hosting plan. This could save you an enormous amount of money.

Other Considerations:

If you have found a cheap web site hosting plan that has all of the features you need to build your web site, there are still a few other things that will need to be taken into consideration before you sign on the dotted line–the most important being reliability. Some hosting companies who offer an affordable web hosting plan have one major downfall: they aren’t always reliable. Because you need the web site to work when people try to access it, reliability is going to be a must. This is why you should always ask hosting companies about downtime before signing up for cheap web site hosting. Last, but not least, you need to make sure that you will have all of the support you need if you choose the most affordable web hosting plan that is being offered to you. Specific things to ask about include technical support response time and customer service representative availability

About the author: Cliff Posey, owner of CRP Marketing, owns and operates http://webbusinesstoolsonline.com. Cliff Posey has also operated several other successful web businesses including Love Song Cards and Radio Career Consultants. The content in this article was developed from his experience in these businesses and his continual research into further business improvements.

Get a domain name.

I’ve previously written about getting a domain name. The main two recommended patterns for domain names seems to be; get a name that describes your site, or a pronounceable word that means nothing at all.

Here is a Google search for domain name registrars.

Get a web host.

Choosing the right web host is almost like a lottery these days. There are tons of hosts to choose from and it is hard to find out the terms for most of the ones I’ve looked at. If you decide to let your web host manage your domain name registration make sure it is you who actually own the domain.

Here is a Google search for web hosts.

Update DNS servers.

Now that you have a domain name and a web host it is time to tell the world where your site is. DNS servers are a bit like the yellow pages for the web. When a user enters an address in the browser it uses DNS to look up a numeric address that the computer can understand. It can take up to 48 hours for the DNS change to propagate all over the Internet so when you have recently updated your DNS entries you might end up at different sites depending on where you are when you look for a domain. You manage DNS settings from your domain name registrar account.

Write for 48 hours.

The two days it takes for DNS to propagate are perfect to write your initial content. If you are going to blog about a specific subject I would recommend that you write ten posts that you can publish right a way. That way your index page will be fully populated since most blogs show ten posts up front. It is also a good practice to write a couple of extra posts that can be published when you don’t have the time or inspiration write.

Time to get the blog up and running

By using the Google tools for webmasters you can submit your site to the Google indexer so it will find it a little bit faster. You can also tell Google that content on http://yourdomain.com is the same as content on http://www.yourdomain.com, otherwise Google will classify all your content as duplicates and that is a bad thing according to all SEO experts online.

I use Wordpress as my blog tool so further on all my recommendations will be based on that. It is included in Fantastico, a web site configuration tool that exists on most LAMP based web hosts.

Go to your Fantastico control panel and install Wordpress. If you do this before the DNS information has propagated the site will look weird and some things will not work at all.

Get a good looking theme. There are lots of free themes at Wordpress. There is some debate of how important the look and fell of a site is for a steady user base. I think the most important thing is that you should feel comfortable with it. Time spent on content is usually better than time spent on your theme.

Since the spamming business seems to grow faster than anything else; activate the Aksimet plugin. You have to get a free API key from Wordpress.

Feed readers can check your site quite often so to save some bandwidth and get some nice statistics go to Feedburner and create an account. Feedburner has an excellent article on how to get the Feedburner plugin to work.

If you intend to make it on the social networks then theShare-this plugin will enable your readers, or your self, to easily submit your posts to a variety of them. I’m not sure if it is a good idea in the long run, but you will get some readers by self submitting articles to Digg.

If your content makes sense even after a couple of months it can be a good idea to configure your permalink structure. I use ‘/index.php/%category%/%postname%/’ on all my blogs. The default configuration just adds the post id number to the URL and if you use a predefined one with dates in it your posts might look old in a while.

Lets earn some money

, but there are other alternatives that looks and works almost the same. BidVertiser is one of them. The Adsense Delux plug-in makes it simpler to incorporate ads, not only adsense, into your posts.

You should set up a merchant account at PayPal since many offers to make money online offers payment to PayPal. That way you don’t have to pay for checks or wire transfer of money to your domestic bank.

There are several ways other than plain advertising to make money from your blog. Both Bloggerwave and PayPerPost offer payment for reviews. You can also sign up as a publisher for an affiliate network. Affiliate networks gathers advertisers and lets web site owners publish links and/or banner ads to the advertisers. The site owner can get paid depending on the readers actions, such as clicking a link, signing up for a newsletter or buying something from the advertisers store.

Bring on the readers

If you are curious about how many readers you have, what they read and where they are from, you can fulfill your curiosity with Google Analytics It is a free web site statistics package that keep track of more stuff than I could imagine before I saw it. Don’t fall in the trap and check your Google Adsense and Analytics statistics every 30 minutes. Make it a habit to check them once a day and leave it at that. You should put all your effort in producing high quality content.

Good luck!

This post has been submitted to the following blog carnivals:

• Your Potential. Our Passion. Blogging.
• Bootstrapper
• successpart2.com
• Blog Carnival Make Money Blogging 101

When you have your domain name you need somewhere to host your web pages. If you have a decent internet connection you could host it at home, but if you’re reading this you are probably not experienced enough to do that. Even if you know what you are doing the up time is probably better for a professional web host than it is for your private broadband connection.

Here is a Google search for web hosts.

Make sure you read through each web hosts terms before signing up. Usually you get what you pay for. If it looks cheap it probably is.

The web host I use, manufrog.se is really inexpensive, so inexpensive I thought they would end up in the cheap bucket, but I’m very happy with them so far.

A service that I have come to appreciate lately from web hosts is the ability to automatically install software on the web server. Try to find out what software is available when you compare hosts. It will save you a lot of time if most of what you need is already there. I see no reason why you should have to learn HTML and PHP if all you want to do is to blog about your fish tank.