virtualwebhostingplus.com Blog

Don't Let Bad E-Commerce Web Hosting Cost You Business

2006-07-14T00:31-04:00

by Gregg Hall

A reliable web hosting company is crucial especially if you operate a business on the internet offering products for sale the require you to have e-commerce web hosting with shopping carts. Unless you have some mega store it is unlikely that you will need your own servers which could cost you several hundred dollars a month, but you do need e-commerce that is reliable and trustworthy that has a good reputation for uptime. When you are running an online business servers being down is the equivalent of having the doors locked in a brick and mortar business.

One of the great things about web hosting is that you have a myriad of choices ranging from low end shared hosting for less than $10 per month to having high end dedicated servers than run well over $300 per month. Whichever one you choose I still recommend you have someone else do the management of the servers for you unless you are a techno geek.

There are many web hosting companies that offer services with specific e-commerce hosting packages built just for small businesses. Knowing what company to choose is a more difficult decision than trying to find one, not just because of the number of choices of web hosting companies available but because the particular e-commerce web hosting needs vary between different companies. As I mentioned before, it is imperative that you take this aspect of putting your business online very seriously as it can make the difference in success or failure.

One of the key issues that you need to be concerned with when you are looking at e-commerce web hosting packages for your business is how much bandwidth you are allowed. Not having enough bandwidth can hurt your business tremendously especially if you get a good deal of traffic or you sell items that have large downloads as well. The bandwidth is shared by all who are on your server and all the visitors who are on it at any given time so don’t cut yourself short..

Another key issue to look for in e-commerce web hosting is a web hosting company with the fewest “hops” from the internet backbone, hops are basically each server or router that are between the user and the internet backbone, the best of course would be a hosting company that feeds directly from the internet backbone. You should also try to choose a company that has the latest state of the art web server hardware with the most up to date multiple processor servers to avoid any problems.

As mentioned previously reliability is a must as well as redundancy which means they should have more than one backbone provider in case something goes wrong. If you plan on having an online store or large catalogue disk space will definitely be an issue that you will want to address as well. The e-commerce web hosting company you choose should also provide the best security for the online transactions that you will be accepting which at this time is called SSL.

These are the basic e-commerce web hosting features you should have, you may require upgrades such as back end data integration or recurring payment options but those are things you can discuss with the host you choose.

Gregg Hall is an author and internet marketing consultant living in Navarre Florida. For more on inexpensive Web Hosting or other web hosting issues go to http://www.virtualwebhostingplus.com

How to Easily Choose The Right Web Hosting For Your Business?

2006-07-14T00:28-04:00

by Gregg Hall

If you have had made the decision to get online and are looking for business web hosting to get your regular brick and mortar business on the internet, congratulations, it’s about time!
Seriously, if you don’t have a web presence for your business on the internet you are missing out on a lot of business and much of it is free!

With the proliferation of business web hosting companies available to choose from it can be a confusing process to sort through them all but if you just take it a step at a time and first identify the web hosting needs for your business it will be easier. You need to ask yourself questions such as, “Do I need a dedicated server or can I get by with a shared server?” Unless you do a large volume of business on the internet chances are you don’t need a dedicated server, which can cost you anywhere from $150 to $500 a month. Most businesses can get by with just a regular shared server or virtual server and have web hosting expenses under $30 a month. The price will vary from around $10 a month to as much as $50 depending on how much bandwidth and disk space you need.

If all you are doing is basically putting up an informational site or a blog about your business you will not require much space and probably not a shopping cart although I cannot imagine putting a business website up without one.

Don’t deal with any fly by night web hosting companies that are running their hosting out of their bedroom. You want to be able to get 24/7 support in case you have any problems and you want to be sure that they have minimal or nonexistent down time. Remember that if their servers are down so is your business website. Make sure they have a money back guarantee, all of the reputable web hosting providers do. The company should also make it very easy for you to upgrade or downgrade your services and most will offer you a discount if you pay annually or quarterly instead of monthly. This can make a large difference in your annual web hosting expenses so definitely check into it.

The choice of a business web hosting company is not one to be taken lightly. As we move more and more into the progression of total internet business that is sure to come it will become even more crucial to have the right web hosting, it can very well be a life or death decision for your business.

Gregg Hall is an author and internet marketing consultant living in Navarre Florida. For more on inexpensive Web Hosting or other web hosting issues go to http://www.virtualwebhostingplus.com

How To Decide Between Free Web Hosting And Paid Web Hosting For Your Blog

2006-07-14T00:25-04:00

by Gregg Hall

There are many choices for web hosting companies available and for blogging there are many free choices offered as well. The question that comes to mind to me is, “Is free webhosting cheap?” What I mean by that is what is it going to cost me in terms of functionality and accessibility. Let’s take a look at some of the comparisons between free web hosting and paid web hosting.

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last couple of years then you know that blogging has become a formidable force on the internet and has allowed many people to get an online presence that may otherwise have been unable to do so. Many of these people are making their living by blogging and some like Jason Calcanis have become wealthy from it. Jason built a network of blogs over about eighteen months and sold them to AOL for nearly $30 million! That’s a pretty good ROI. Anyway, I digress, back to our discussion on web hosting.

If you have decided that you want to operate a blog your next choice will probably be what blogging platform or software you want to use to accomplish you blogging. Relax, it’s easy. Most of the blogging software out there today is open source which means it’s, you guessed it, free! In this instance free is not a bad thing, I use Wordpress almost exclusively, it is free and has more options that I care to learn or use. There are other blogging software options available, but I won’t go into them here because this article is about web hosting.

As far as web hosting for your blog you can choose free web hosting or paid so let’s take a closer look at our choices. First off, you can choose Blogger which is owned by Google. Blogger is a good program especially for beginning bloggers because it is easy to use, it is web based, and the price is right. It’s free. With that said however, if your intention is to blog professionally and possibly run a large number of blogs with automated content then Blogger is not for you. I have seen Google shut down many blogs because they considered them to be spam. If you want control over your own destiny then you want to use paid web hosting and have your blogs on your own server, or at least a shared server.

Still in the realm of free web hosting you also have a fairly new option from Wordpress who now offers a free web hosting for Wordpress blogs at their .com site as opposed to the .org site where you get the software and plug ins. The problem is that like Google, they are very restrictive with what you can put on your blogs and how you update them.

Another big issue with free web hosting is that you will usually have to display advertising of some sort which “pays” for your web hosting. This is great for the web hosting companies because it gives them tons of virtual real estate out there with their name on it, not so great for you. If you are blogging professionally, and if you are trying to make money for it then you are blogging professionally, you do not want any distractions on your site that leads visitors away from your site unless you are being paid for it like you do when someone clicks on an Adsense ad or affiliate banner.

My recommendation is that you pay for your own hosting because it gives you a wealth of choices, much more storage space, and takes almost all restrictions off of you within reason. There are still some web hosting companies that will not allow you to host gambling or porno blogs but other than that you are pretty open. Paid web hosting is not that expensive. You can get an account that will host as many blogs as most people will want to deal with a few bucks a month. So for the cost of a domain name and your hosting you will probably be around $100 a year. That is a pretty cheap investment for something that enables you to plug into all the ways of earning money on the net.

Gregg Hall is an author and internet marketing consultant living in Navarre Florida. For more on inexpensive Web Hosting or other web hosting issues go to http://www.virtualwebhostingplus.com

What In The World Is Cpanel And Why Do I Want It?

2006-07-13T10:57-04:00

by Gregg Hall

For those not familiar with some of the terminology associated with doing business on the internet and with web hosting in particular, the tem “cpanel” may be unknown. When you get a web hosting package from a company it will come with a control panel to enable you to manage and maintain your domains and their respective files, cpanel is one of these control panel options and in the opinion of most professional internet marketers, it is also the one favored.

One of the most important issues when dealing with managing your domains is the ease with which that is accomplished, cpanel fits the bill for this. As a web based administrative control panel, cpanel makes it easier to manage all of your domain names and files associated with them from a central location. Cpanel also gives you access to important features like website statistics
such as web stats, FTP stats, AWstats, latest visitors, bandwidth usage, and even breaks it down to what country the visitors are in and gives you the functionality of FTP to upload and download files to your sites. The web hosting control panel within cpanel was designed with the end user in mind and is probably the most user friendly on the market today.

From your control panel you can manage functions such as account or site creation, domain redirects, and more. Cpanel also gives you the ability to manage your email addresses and gives you autoresponders and mail forwarding to help you with your business and even includes additional features like spam filitering and webmail so that you can check your email from any computer on the planet.

From your cpanel web hosting control panel you can build and edit web pages and manage your Microsoft Frontpage password plus make changes to the Apache handlers and manage options such as search engine submission. You can also set Cron jobs from there which for those unfamiliar with the term, is a way to set up automated tasks to take place at a particular time schedule.

Another great feature that is possible with cpanel is the ability to activate and use the pre-installed CGI scripts such as forums, chats, shopping arts, and website development tools. One of my favorite features with cpanel is Fantastico which allows for one step installation of Content Management Systems such as Mambo, Joomla, and the ever popular Wordpress blogging platform which I use for the majority of my websites. Having cpanel with the Fantastico enabled makes my life a lot easier and helps me to get my work done much more quickly. I am sure you will find cpanel to be the same for you.

Gregg Hall is an author and internet marketing consultant living in Navarre Florida. For more on inexpensive Web Hosting or other web hosting issues go to http://www.virtualwebhostingplus.com

How To Find Web Hosting That Doesnt Leave You Broke

2006-07-13T10:53-04:00

by Gregg Hall

If you have an online business or maybe even several like I do, web hosting can be a significant expense not to mention the fact that reliable web hosting is absolutely crucial to the success of your business. All it takes is a server going down during a big marketing promotion and your reputation suffers. In this article we will explore some of the things to look for in a quality web hosting company for a fair price.

First off let’s get some basics out of the way for those who may not fully understand what web hosting is. Web hosting is simply the place that your website’s files and documents are located which allows your site to be pulled up on the internet. This is why it is crucial that the web host be reliable, if there server isn’t working neither are you.

When you are looking for web hosting online there are so many to choose from that it can be an overwhelming task to try to hone it down to a handful to consider. You need to keep a few things in mind before you get started however, and the first is don’t just go with the cheapest because of that reason. They are the cheapest web host because they aren’t giving certain features so you need to identify basic features that you need before you start shopping.

Some of the basic features that you will want from your web hosting company will be a choice of programming languages, databases, email addresses, bandwidth allowance, disk space and how many domains you are allowed to host. You will also want to know what kind of server and administration or control panel is offered, basically your choices will be Linux or Windows based servers. I prefer Linux servers with Cpanel installed because I am familiar with it and it makes my job a whole lot easier. Linux systems are usually less expensive than comparable Windows web hosting services plus they will offer the MYSQL and PHP programs that you will need for your online business. Most Linux based programming and databases are free, which is another reason why servers offering Linux are less expensive.

It is nearly impossible to find inexpensive web hosting with a Windows based server due to the fact that it cost the hosting company so much to get it in the first place and like anything else in life, that expense is passed on to the end user. To get a Windows based system at the same price as a Linux one you will probably have to give up many features so bear that in mind as well.

When assessing the reliability of a web hosting company do a little research on them, don’t just take their claims of 99% up time on their sales page as gospel. There are many web hosting companies out there that allow spammers to operate on their servers and they end up causing problems for everyone on that server, especially if you are on a shared server that is also sharing a block of IP addresses. You could end up having your site delisted and banned and have your emails blocked because of something someone else is doing.

One way that I like to check out hosting companies support is to either email them or if they have it enabled, have a live chat with them and ask them all my questions. If you email a web hosting company and it takes them awhile to get back to you when you are a prospective client what kind of service do you think they will give you once they have your money?

Gregg Hall is an author and internet marketing consultant living in Navarre Florida. For more on inexpensive Web Hosting or other web hosting issues go to http://www.virtualwebhostingplus.com

6 Reasons You Need A Website

2006-06-24T15:21-04:00

by Gregg Hall

If you don't have a website, then you might not realize all the great things they can do for you. Maybe you think there wouldn't be any point, because your business is too small – or maybe you don't even have a business! Perhaps you think it'd be a lot of work for little reward. Or maybe you paid big bucks for a site back during the dot-com 'boom' days, only to get nothing but trouble out of it and shut it down a year later.

Whatever your situation is, though, you need a website, and I'm here to tell you why.

1. People Will Look for You Online.

Sooner or later, someone's going to type your name into a search engine. What do you want them to find? Nothing? These are people who want to find you, and if you don't have a website then you're letting them down – they expect you to be online. For many people, you might as well not exist if you can't be found with a search engine. Not having a website is like not bothering to get listed in the phone book. Whether it's customers or old school friends you're hoping for, very few people are going to find you if you aren't online.

2. Websites Cost Next to Nothing.

Once, it cost a lot to run a website – but those days are long gone. There are 'pay as you go' services out there now charging as little as $1 per gigabyte of bandwidth. If you're sensible about the size of your pages, that dollar could last you a whole month, or even longer! If you don't want to pay for design, it's never been simpler to do it yourself, or find free software to do it for you. Really, it's never been cheaper to have a website than it is today.

3. Websites are Great Advertising.

Whatever you're advertising – your services, your products, or just yourself – a website is a great way to do it. Every other kind of advertising going costs a premium, especially if you want to target a specific kind of person, and there's no guarantee that they're paying attention. Websites are like brochures that are free to reproduce, interactive, and quickly distributed to people who are already looking for them. No advertising medium even comes close to the ease-of-use and effectiveness of a website.

4. A Website is a Worldwide Presence.

On the web, it doesn't matter whether someone is next door to you or on the other side of the world – they can see your website just the same as anyone else can, at no extra cost to you or to them. Phone and post both cost enormous amounts long-distance, but a website lets you send information anywhere without any extra effort or expense. You can make friends and contacts in places you've never been and will never go – suddenly, working globally is no more effort than working locally.

5. Your Website Can Make You Money.

There's a lot of money on the web, and it's not hard to get some – the longer you're online for, the bigger your share can get. If you have something to sell, you can sell it worldwide, thanks to credit cards. Doing business online eliminates almost every overhead there is: all you need to do is have the goods. If you've written something useful, you can put it out there with a few ads. You won't get rich overnight, but you can set up a steady trickle of income... and there's no limit to the number of trickles you can set up.

6. Your Website Can Save You Time.

Giving out information takes time, whether it's on the phone, or in brochures, or even if it's just emailing your family. Websites are designed to save you time. All your family and friends can read your online diary (known as a weblog), but you only had to write it once. Customers can see your whole product catalogue without ever needing to talk to you or visit you. This is the power of the web: things on it are written only once, but can be downloaded endlessly – a good website runs itself, and keeps being useful to people for much longer than you'd expect.

Gregg Hall is a business consultant to many online and offline businesses and owns over 400 domains himself. Check out the virtual hosting at http://www.virtualwebhostingplus.com

virtualwebhostingplus.com Blog

Don't Let Bad E-Commerce Web Hosting Cost You Business

About the Author

How to Easily Choose The Right Web Hosting For Your Business?

About the Author

How To Decide Between Free Web Hosting And Paid Web Hosting For Your Blog

About the Author

What In The World Is Cpanel And Why Do I Want It?

About the Author

How To Find Web Hosting That Doesnt Leave You Broke

About the Author

6 Reasons You Need A Website

About the Author