Domain Registration & Web Hosting Guide

Create a Website for Business or Fun

2009-10-10T23:30:00.000-07:00

Knowing how to make a website is essential if you want to make a website, either for business or just for fun. There are many sites online that will explain to you how to do so, but few of them offer a good solution for a beginner. They all seem to need some form of pre-knowledge of many of the factors involved, and they make it look a lot easier than it actually is.

Sure, anybody can create a website that looks passable, but how do you make a website work for you to make money or to get visitors? These are the two reasons for anybody making a website. No matter who you are, or what the site is to be used for, it will meet one of these two criteria.

First it must get visitors: otherwise there is no point in having one. Even if you just want the site to run your hobby, or keep in contact with your family (better with Facebook!), people have to visit. If you also want to make money from it, then you still need visitors, but you have to persuade them to buy. That means keeping in touch with them: you have to collect the names and email addresses of your visitors and then keep in touch with them, making them special offers, providing information, until they eventually buy.

It takes the average person 7 – 8 exposures to your product before they decide to buy it. That’s what advertising is all about: to get these exposures until the prospect finally makes a purchase. However, back to the website.

Most sites that show you how to make a website don’t tell you that once you create a website you have to make it work. It’s like buying a car. You don’t just buy a car, sit in it, and it takes you to where you want to go like a cab does. You have to learn how to drive it. Once you have learned, then you can drive it. However a website is not like that even. Why Not? Because it doesn’t come with all the bits and pieces needed to make it work. These are extras!

Here are the things you need to make your website work to make money for you:

A Web Host The host provides you with the web space for your site. That’s just like a large directory on which you can place your files, such as your web pages, graphics files, products and so on. Your host also provides the means by which you can connect to the World Wide Web.

A Domain Name Your domain name is the name of your website: the bit that comes after http://www. You need it before you can create a website and put it on the web. You can choose from those still available, and then register them with the DNS (Domain Name Service). Your domain name will cost you around $10 a year – you never own it, you just hire it with first refusal every year, though you can pay for it for some years in advance. You will also need keyword software to enable you to choose the best domain name for your site.

Site Building Software You will need an HTML text editor. HTML is the language used to make a website what it is, and most HTML editors offer wysiwyg functionality, so you don’t have to know HTML, and just type in what you want. However, if you want to link to other pages on your site or to other websites, or if you want to add graphics and anything else other than plain text, you will need to know some HTML.

Email Service You will need an eMail service with your site. Nobody will buy from you if you are using a free eMail service to run your website!

Email Autoresponders Unless you want to be writing and sending eMails manually all your life you will need software that can do it for you. An autoresponder can send an email to people requesting information, take orders, deliver orders for electronically deliverable goods, send invoices and receipts, thank you notes and acknowledgements, and also parts of weekly or monthly courses you might provide to your subscribers, who will hopefully become customers.

Shopping Cart If you are selling goods, even eBooks or software, you will have to provide a means for a customer to order them. You will also need a product catalogue if you sell more than one item.

Payment Processor You will require a means of accepting credit and debit card payments. If you can’t do that, then shut up shop now and don’t even start.

Traffic Analysis You will need software to analyze your traffic and find out what your most popular pages are, what keywords bring most visitors and what pages most visitors leave from without buying. You can them improve these pages to keep visitors on your website where you want them.

Other Software Other software or tasks needed to create a website that works properly include Search Engine Optimization, to make sure your web pages are listed as high as possible on Google and other search engines and once you become more advanced, audio and video software to jazz up your website, graphics software, a blog to market your website and a lot more.

All of these are essentials that you will have to purchase and will have to learn how to use when you set out to create a website. It is possible to get free versions with your cheaper websites and hosting services, but some of these can lack the functionality to make them look really professional and persuade people to buy from you or continue to visit your site.

If that all frightens you then you are right to be scared, because you are going to have to learn how to use them all. However, there is an answer that can allow you to avoid all these, because there are systems online that offer you a website with all of these extras integrated with it. Some are truly integrated with the site so that all you need do is to add the text, while others offer all of these components for you to use to make a website, but you have to learn how each is used separately.

While the latter offers you more latitude in your website design and functionality, the former allows you to create a website from scratch without knowing the first thing about the subject. With these, you can make a website by choosing templates and filling in the blanks. A bit like painting by numbers really!

Important Things to Look for in a Web-host

2009-10-10T23:03:00.000-07:00

Finding a new web-host can be a challenge, especially if you are new to having a website or blog.

However, there are 10 Things to Look for in a Web-host, and these 10 tips will ensure you get the best host to meet your needs.

■Price is important. You do not want to spend a lot of money for hosting that is mediocre, nor do you want to spend money if a free host will fit your needs.

■How much storage is the host offering? You’d be surprised at how hosts offer so many different amounts of storage space. Find a good balance between storage and the other features, to get your money’s worth of the hosting.

■What are the privacy and other policies that you must follow? Are you forbidden from using your site for commercial uses? Or no adult content? What constitutes adult content? Do you have to use the host’s version of WordPress or TypePad, or can you update your own copy as needed?

■Security of your site on the servers is just as important as price. Make sure the host you are evaluating has a clear security plan outlined. How secure are the servers? What about your email?

■Customer service is another important factor in choosing a web-host. Are the representatives friendly and knowledgeable? Can you call for support? Or is support only offered via email? How long does it take to get a response from customer service?

■How reliable is the host? Do their servers crash all of the time? How often and how long are outages? Do you get a refund for the time the servers are down?

■What do other customers say about this host? Are the reviews mainly favorable on their website, but forums tell a different story? Getting honest information about the quality of service is important.

■Going back to price, does the host charge one flat fee for the month or year, or do they charge different prices from month to month? If you like stability, go for the host that charges one flat fee for the month, quarterly or annually, versus a host that changes the prices from month-to-month.

■What are the bandwidth limits of the host? Will your site be taken offline once you hit the bandwidth limit, or will you be charged a fee? How much is the fee? Do you think you’ll go over the limit? If so, look at a host with higher bandwidth limits.

■Are there add-ons available that can make your web-hosting experience a good one? For example, some hosts feature free web templates, multiple email addresses, plug-ins for shopping carts, and more. Does your host offer that?

I hope these 10 important tips help you find a good web-host. If you have any suggestions, let’s hear it in the comments!

Choosing Good Domain Name

2009-10-05T12:57:00.000-07:00

Before you rush out and choose your domain name or name your website, you might want to consider the following points:

1. Your Domain Name Should Be Your Website Name
Naming your site after your domain may seem obvious to some of you, but you'll be surprised to learn that not every website is named after the domain name even when the webmaster owns that domain name.

Naming a site after its domain name is important, for the simple reason that when people think of your website, they'll think of it by name. If your name is also your URL, they'll automatically know where to go. For example, when people think of thefreecountry.com, they don't have to wonder what URL to type into their browser to get there. The name of the site is also the URL.

Imagine if your business (or website) is called "Acme", but somebody else holds that domain name. Instead, you have some obscure domain name called, say, "mybusiness.com". What happens when your customers, recalling that Acme has a product they want, type "www.acme.com"? They'll wind up at your competitor's website. One lost sale.

In the modern world of the Internet, where people automatically turn to the Web for information, it pays to have a domain name that reflects your site or business. There are just fewer things for your customers or visitors to remember. Moreover, you don't seriously think that they'll try to memorise an unrelated URL just because you want them to, do you? The only people who'll memorise it are you and your competitors who want to compare your prices.

What if you cannot get the domain name of your choice? It really depends on how committed you are to that particular name. If you have an existing brand name that you're known for, you'll probably not want to ditch that name just because you couldn't get the domain name. After all, it took you a lot of time and money to establish that name. If so, you might simply want to try to buy over the domain name from the current owner. Check up the "whois" information for the domain, and contact that person listed to see if they're willing to sell it. You probably should be aware that they are likely to want to charge a higher fee than you'll normally get when buying new domains (assuming they want to sell it in the first place).

On the other hand, if you're just starting out, you might prefer the cheaper alternative of trying to obtain a domain name first, and then naming your website (or business) after the domain that you've acquired. So if you've acquired, say, the domain name "acme.com", then your website and business might be named "Acme" or "acme.com". I know this seems a bit like putting the cart before the horse, but that's the reality if you don't want to lose out on the Internet.

2. Generic Names Or Brand Name Domains?
I know that a number of people seem to think that your domain name really must be some generic name like "cars.com" if you are selling cars. Witness, for example, how much money those generic names are being sold for. But seriously, if you were looking for a car, you'll probably already have some brands in mind, and you're more like to try out things like generalmotors.com or toyota.com rather than just cars.com.

For that reason, I personally feel that a domain name that matches your brand name is very important. The very name that you use to advertise your product is the name that you will want for your domain, because that is the first thing that people will try in their browser. It is also the easiest thing for them to remember, and whatever that is easily remembered, will be more likely to be tried out than the obscure domain name.

3. Long or Short Domain Names?
Domain names can be of any length up to 67 characters. You don't have to settle for an obscure domain name like avab.com when what you mean is AcmeVideosAndBooks.com.

Having said that, there appears to be some disagreement about whether a long or short domain name is better.

Some argue that shorter domain names are easier to remember, easier to type and far less susceptible to mistakes: for example, "getit.com" is easier to remember and less prone to typos than "connecttomywebsiteandobtainit.com".

Others argue that a longer domain name is usually easier on the human memory - for example, "gaepw.com" is a sequence of unrelated letters that is difficult to remember and type correctly, whereas if we expand it to its long form, "GetAnEconomicallyPricedWebsite.com", we are more likely to remember the domain name.

Some of these arguments are actually academic. It's increasingly difficult to get short meaningful domain names. I have not checked, but I'm fairly certain that names like "getit.com" and "good.com" have long been sold. If you manage to get a short domain name though, the key is to make sure it's a meaningful combination of characters and not the obscure "gaepw.com" in my contrived example above.

Long domain names that have your site keywords in them also have an advantage in that they fare better in a number of search engines. The latter give preference to keywords that are also found in your domain names. So, for example, if you have a site on free C++ compilers with a domain name like freecpluspluscompilers.com, it might fare better in a search for "free C++ compilers" than my other site, thefreecountry.com.

Which would I go for? I'd go for the shorter name if I can get a meaningful one, but I'm not averse to longer names. However, I would probably avoid extremely long names verging on 67 characters. Aside from the obvious problem that people might not be able to remember such a long name, it would also be a chore typing it and trying to fit it as a title on your web page.

4. Hyphenated Names?
Should you get a hyphenated name? There are a few things to consider here:

a. Disadvantage: It's easy to forget the hyphens when typing a name. Many users are used to typing things like freecpluspluscompilers.com but not free-c-plus-plus-compilers.com. They'll probably leave out the hyphens and wind up at your competitor's site.

b. Disadvantage: When people recommend your site to their friends verbally, having hyphens in your domain name leads to more potential errors than when the name does not contain hyphens. For example, how do you think your visitors will refer to your site if it is named "acme-books-and-videos.com"? They might say, "I visited Acme Book and Videos dot com yesterday. It was fabulous." Their friends, remembering that comment later, might type into their browsers "acmebooksandvideos.com". Oops.

c. Disadvantage: It's a pain in the neck to type. Enough said.

d. Advantage: Search engines can distinguish your keywords better and thus return your site more prominently in search results for those keywords occurring in your domain name.

e. Advantage: The non-hyphenated form may no longer be available. At least this way, you still get the domain name you want.

Personally, I prefer to avoid hyphenated names if I can, but I guess it really depends on your domain name and your situation.

5. Plurals, "The", and "My" Forms of the Domain Name
Very often, if you can't get the domain name you want, the domain name registrar will suggest alternate forms of the name you typed. For example, if you wanted website.com, and it was taken (of course it is), it might suggest forms like:

thewebsite.com
mywebsite.com
websites.com

and the like, if they were not already taken as well. The question is, should you take them?

My personal opinion is that if you take the "the..." and "my..." forms of the domain name, you must always remember to promote your site with the full form of the name. Otherwise, people are likely to forget to affix the necessary "the" or "my". For that reason, I always advertise my sites as "thesitewizard.com" and "thefreecountry.com" in their full domain name forms, rather than just "Free Country" or "Site Wizard" (without the article).

On the other hand, I would not take the plural form of the domain name (eg, websites.com) if I cannot also get "website.com", since the chance of the visitor failing to type the "s" in the name is very great. Think about the famous name tussle between etoys.com and etoy.com. Many people wanting to go to etoys.com were apparently going to etoy.com instead. If it happened to them, it can happen to you too.

6. COM, ORG, NET, etc?
One common question I encounter is from people who can't get the ".com" domain of their choice, but find the ".net", ".org" or other country-specific top level domains (TLDs) available (like .de, .nu, .sg, etc). Should they try for these?

The answer is not as straightforward as you might think. If your website or business caters to the local community, such as a pizza delivery business or recruitment agency or the like, then it makes sense to get a country-specific domain. You actually benefit from having such a local domain because the people in your country know that they're dealing with a local entity, which is what they want. After all, if they stay in (say) the United Kingdom, they're not likely to want to try to order pizza from pizzaparlour.com, which suggests a US or an international site. You'll have better luck calling it pizzaparlour.co.uk, ie, with a UK domain.

What if yours is a site or business that can benefit from an international audience? There are actually many schools of thought on this. I'll just mention a few common ones.

The first school of thought goes on the premise that it is better to have a domain name of your choice "myperfectdomain" even if it has a TLD of ".net", ".org" or some other country specific extension, than to wind up choosing an obscure domain name for the simple reason you can't get your first choice. Thus they would settle for domain names like "myperfectdomain.de" or "myperfectdomain.net" or whatever. Against this is the argument that if you get a country specific domain, people might think that your business only caters to that country.

Another school of thought finds that ".net" and ".org" extensions are actually quite acceptable domain names. For some, the ".org" extension actually describes the non-profit nature of their organisation. So, for example, the famous Apache web server can be found at "apache.org".

Others settle for the ".com" extension and no less. As grounds for their arguments, they cite the browser algorithms used to locate a website when a user simply types a name like "acme" into the browser. Apparently, the browser searches for a domain name "acme.com" before attempting "acme.net", etc. As such, people who do that will be delivered to your competitor's site if you do not also own the ".com" extension. Indeed, even if people do not rely on their browser to complete their typing, many simply assume a ".com" extension when they type a domain name, so if your business is "Acme", they'll just assume your domain name is "acme.com" rather than "acme.net" or some other such name.

As you can see, there are actually good grounds for accepting any of the above views. My personal footnote to the above arguments is that if you get a domain name with an extension other than ".com", make sure that you promote your business or website with the full domain name. For example, if your domain name is "dogandcatfood.net", make sure that when you advertise your site or business, call it "dogandcatfood.net" not "dogandcatfood". Otherwise people will assume a ".com" extension and travel to the wrong place.

7. In Conclusion...
In case the forest got lost in the trees (or the reverse) in my arguments here, let me reiterate the main point of this article: get that domain name before you start your site or business.

Don't make the mistake of attempting to retrofit your domain name to your business or website. thefreecountry.com did not originally start out with that name, and I encountered a huge hassle (and lost visitors) as a result of the URL changes. Don't make that mistake too.