Friday, April 9th, 2010
I am working on converting a client’s site to WordPress. We’ve got it almost ready to go. We’re moving it from one hosting service to another. In order to make the change to the new web host, we have to make a DNS change.
The problem is that the current hosting company controls the DNS. We have to give them a one day notice to make the change. Instead of going live Friday night, we have to wait until Monday.
The moral of the story is that if you own your own domain name, you need to understand the technical issues involved and you need to know enough that you have control of it.
Maybe you don’t like keys and you’re not a locksmith, but you have a key to the front door of your house, right? Maybe you’re not a mechanic, but you like to drive your car, don’t you?
King of My Castle, Master Of My Domain Name
Here’s an overview of how it all works, in simple language.
A web server is just a computer that responds to requests for web pages.
It can also be referred to as a “web host”. You rent space on a web hosting company’s servers to put your web site on.
Each web server/computer has an IP address. That’s a technical number that uniquely identifies it among all the computers in the universe.
Every computer on the Internet has an IP address assigned to it. You may not know this, but your computer has an IP address associated with it.
IP addresses are the actual way that computers, servers, talk to each other on the Internet. It is the language of the Internet for computers.
Problem is that humans don’t remember those IP addresses very easily. We developed domain names to be easier for people to read and remember.
Domain names are just a convenience for people.
The next problem is tying the domain name to the IP address. We need something like a phone book. I know I want Joe’s Pizza, but what is their phone number?
Let’s look it up in the phone book. If the phone book says it’s 555-1234, then everyone calls 555-1234. If Joe’s Pizza were to move and get a new phone number, then the phone book would have to change to reflect that, right? If they change the phone book so it says that it’s 555-5678, then everyone calls 555-5678.
That’s easy, right?
Well, the system that manages these pointers or associations with domain names and IP addresses is called a DNS, domain name server. The “name server” is actually a computer, a server, that will tell you what IP address is associated with what domain name. You can ask it where is “www.walton.com” and it will tell you it’s at “76.246.231.1″, which happens to be the IP address of my web server/computer.
It’s just like a phone book for web sites.
How DNS Works
What happens is that you type in a domain name into your web browser, IE or Firefox or whatever. When you press enter, your computer tries to figure out what IP address that domain name is located at. It asks a DNS. It gets the IP address back from the DNS, then it goes and asks the server, computer at that DNS for the web page. It’s a two step process. Once it gets the IP address, it remembers it for a while, so it doesn’t have to ask again for a while.
From all of this, you see the whoever owns the DNS, owns the world, or at least your web site. It’s all about control.
Log into where you registered your domain name and see if there is a place to make changes to the DNS. If you have a hosting company manage it for you, see if there’s a place in the admin pages to make changes.
You don’t have to know all the details about how to do it, but you should have access to it.
I’m a nice guy and I’ve registered domain names for clients in my own name just to save them the technical difficulties. They just wanted to pay me and have it done with. That’s fine. I’ll do everything I can for my clients.
I’ve heard of other people having trouble with having access and control.
I know it’s a convenience/knowledge vs access/control issue. I know you just don’t want to deal with it. But you should at least know how to do it.
The more you rely on other people, the less control you have.
You should at least be able to log in and make changes yourself if you want to.
If you can’t do that, then you don’t have control of your domain name or your web site.
Posted in DNS |
Saturday, April 3rd, 2010
Everyone on Etsy wants more traffic. You can get more traffic from search engines if you optimize your site. That’s called SEO, “search engine optimization”, by all the cool kids.
Etsy published the “Etsy Guide to SEO”.
SEO is generally divided into “on site” factors and “off site” factors. In their book, they detail the things that you can do to your Etsy shop and products pages, all of them “on site”.
What they don’t tell you about are the “off site” techniques. “Off site” is everything that is not on your site. It generally refers to building links from other sites to your site, which is the biggest factor in SEO.
They only devote one page to link building ideas and only one paragraph to any task that is not on the Etsy site. They want to keep all of your attention focused on their Etsy site and not necessarily the absolute best ways to get traffic.
Let’s gaze off into the distance and see if we can build some inbound links another way, without anything to do with Etsy.
Before you do anything else, you need to define your keywords. I’ve written a few posts about that and cover it in the SEO book.
When you have your keywords picked, we’re going to create a new website, for FREE, and build a bunch of links ourselves. It’s way easier than you think. Really. Watch closely.
Pick your top 3 keywords.
You’re going to create a new web site for FREE. It will have some limitations, so you can’t do everything that you might want to do, but it will do enough to make this technique work and it’s free.
Go to http://www.wordpress.com and follow their instructions, using the top three keywords as your user ID. If your keywords are “handmade glass jewelry”, then create the site as “handmadeglassjewelry”.
That will give you a site with a domain name of “handmadeglassjewelry.wordpress.com”. You get SEO value for having the keywords in the domain name, even if it’s got the “wordpress.com” in there too.
They have some instructions there about how to create posts and pages, so when you figure out how to write a new post, write a new post about one of your products. Use all of the keywords that you can think of when describing it. Put in a photo. Write naturally, like you were writing so that I could read it. I have some WordPress Tutorial Videos that might be helpful.
Put in a link to your product page on Etsy. In the “edit” page, put in the name of your product and select that text. There’s a “link” button at the top. Click that. Copy and paste in the URL to your product page. Insert that into the copy on the page. You’ve just created a link to your product page.
Write a new post for every one of your products. Write naturally, but use your keywords. Put a link, or maybe two, from each post to each product page.
When you are done, you’ll have a web site, with your main keywords in the domain name, and links to every one of your product pages.
As you publish new products on Etsy, write a new post for each one on your web site. As your products sell, leave the posts and links. The search traffic will build up over time.
If you start to love this stuff, write other posts about the subject of your products, and not your products specifically. Your site will get some SEO just from the related content. Your site gives your Etsy shop a bunch of SEO.
As your SEO rankings start to build and you start see some results, consider creating your very own site that you fully control, instead of the wordpress.com free version. You’ll be able to do more things with it and you will have complete control over it.
**cough** I can build one for you… **cough**.
The more pages you have on a site, the more links you have, and the more links you can point at your Etsy shop, and the more search traffic you’ll get from the search engines.
There are many other SEO things that you can do, but this is free, easy, and effective. Call it the “low hanging fruit”.
Feel the power.
Posted in SEO, featured |
Saturday, March 27th, 2010
I’m sure that you’ve downloaded and read my free book on SEO, The Care And Feeding Of Search Engines, A Simple Guide To SEO. In it, I discuss a strategy to beat your competition by looking at who links to them and getting those same links yourself.
I’d like to explain how it works.
The basic steps are:
- Find out who is beating you in the search engines now.
- Find out who is linking to those sites.
- Find out how to get those same links to your own site.
Step One
I’m going to assume that you know what your keywords are. You can repeat this step for each of your keywords if you have multiples, but I’ll describe the process for only one keyword in this article.
Do a search for your keyword. Note the top 10 results. Write down (or copy and paste) each URL in the top 10 results. These are your competitors that you will try to beat.
Step Two
Go to Yahoo’s Site Explorer at https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/. You don’t have to log in unless you are working on your own sites. Up at the top of the page, there’s an input field with a button to “Explore URL”. Don’t put it in the “My Sites” input.
You have a list of 10 URLs from step one. Put in the first URL and hit the “Explore URL” button. This will return a list of all of the pages of the site you are exploring.
Remember that this is just what Yahoo has in it’s index and may or may not be accurate. It seems to be more accurate than the information that Google gives you, but it’s not perfect. It is not absolute truth, only a reasonable facsimile.
The first response is a list of all of the pages that exist on the site you are exploring. Keep in mind that this is according to Yahoo, not absolute truth.
Click on the button to the right of pages that says “inlinks”. This will display all links, from all places, to only the URL you are exploring.
I prefer to limit the number of links displayed to “Except from this domain”. That will not show you any links from any page at the domain name of the site you are exploring.
There’s some nuance here because technically, “www.walton.com” is a different site than “shops.walton.com”. Same domain name, but different sites. I really want to know how well the entire domain is doing, so I don’t care about what subdomain, (that’s the “www” vs. “shops” in my example) that links are pointing at. I want to exclude them all. I only want to see links from other people’s sites, not links from the site I’m exploring.
I also want to know how many links go to the “Entire Site”. There may be links to specific pages or blog posts or special pages. Most links go to the home page, but not all. I want to see all links to any page on this entire site.
You should have changed the first drop down menu to “Except from this domain” and the second drop down to “Entire site.” When you make those changes, it should refresh and display according to the new settings.
This will give you a list of up to 1,000 places that link to the site at the URL you put in.
Step Three
Look at them. Ponder them. Click through to the next page and the next page. Click on some of the links.
This is the hard part. You’ll have to be part Sherlock Holmes to figure this out. Your goal is to figure out who is linking to this site and then find out how you can get them to link to you to.
Some questions you might ask while reviewing this list are:
- Are there a lot of links from the same site?
- Are the sites that link here related to the same keyword?
- Are there links from sites that obviously have nothing to do with the keyword?
- Are there any blogs that you can leave comments on?
- Are their any forums that you can leave comments on?
- Is the owner of this site (your competition) leaving comments on other’s sites?
- Are there links from directories or places that you can formally request links from?
- Are their links from article sites?
- Are there links that you can easily reproduce?
If you see a bunch of links from comments on other sites, then you know that you have to target those sites for your own comments.
If there are directories, you need to ask to be added to those directories too.
If there are links from article sites, then you need to write some articles.
A good, healthy set of links should be from random sites that are related to the keyword, but are just genuinely honest links because the other person liked what this site had to say.
If you write good content and people read it, they will link to your site too. Leave a comment on their site and build a relationship with them. They’ll check out your site and probably link to it.
If you are doing the social media thing, people should be twittering and facebooking your content. If this site is doing that, has great content and is social, then you’re even, because you have great content and you’re social too, right?
If that’s the case, get to know the sites that are linking to your competitors. Leave comments and get to know the people behind those sites. Reach out, be nice, be helpful, and get to know people, specifically the people that are linking to your competitors.
The Balance
The balance that you have to strike here is between being completely nice and goodhearted, innocently out to help make the world be a better place, and on the other hand, being a money grubbing, greedy pig.
You need to help make the world be a better place. I’m going to assume that when you sell your product to someone that makes the world a better place, or why are you selling it?
Leading with the kind heart and the helpful hand, you need to keep in the back of your mind the target of your competition. Yes, you should be nice, but you should also target those specific people that are helping your competition.
Rinse. Repeat.
Once you review the lists of links for each of the 10 URLs for this keyword, you should spend time, (every day!), working on getting links from each of those places. You have up to a thousand URLs for each of 10 keywords, so you have ten thousand places to get links from.
Start at the top and work your way down. When you get to the bottom, repeat.
Do that until you have so many quality links that your site is listed above your competition in the search engine results pages. Build the links, then build more links.
By that time, the world will be a much better place, because they’ve been buying your products instead of your competition’s, and you will have more money to increase your business even more.
What could be better than that?
If you have any questions, please leave a comment. Thanks!
Posted in SEO |
Thursday, February 25th, 2010
Here are the top 5 factors, out of 24, that are important for SEO on a page. These were ranked by their panel of experts (people smarter than me.) Click through to read the whole list. The whole site is filled with great information.
1. Keyword Use Anywhere in the Title Tag
66% very high importance
8% moderate consensus
2. Keyword Use as the First Word(s) of the Title Tag
63% high importance
11.3% light consensus
3. Keyword Use in the Root Domain Name (e.g. keyword.com)
60% high importance
11.2% light consensus
4. Keyword Use Anywhere in the H1 Headline Tag
49% moderate importance
10.2% light consensus
5. Keyword Use in Internal Link Anchor Text on the Page
47% moderate importance
13% moderate contention
One tip to take away from this is when you are using WordPress and the “All in one SEO” plug in, the default for all of the titles is: “%blog_title% | %post_title%”. Change that to “%post_title% | %blog_title%” to get those keywords closer to the beginning of the title.
Read the entire article at:
http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#on-page-keyword-specific-ranking-factors
Posted in SEO |
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010
To sell stuff on the Internet effectively, you need a web site.
The web site is the truck of the tree, the thing that holds it all together, the thing that you hang everything else on, the things that everything else grows out of. Which metaphor do you like the best there?
After you get your keywords, before all that other stuff I wrote about for SEO, you need to get a domain name and build yourself a web site. This is not a definitive post on how to do this, but more of an overview of the process.
Here’s what I wrote:
This will all boil down to “keywords”. You need to decide what keywords you want to be found for. The more general the keyword, the more results will match it, which means more competition for that keyword. You want to be as specific as you possibly can, to narrow the results enough that you can beat your competition, but wide enough that you can actually get some traffic. It’s a balancing act.
Read the entire article at:
http://www.walton.com/2010/02/14/sell-handmade-stuff-on-the-internet-seo-part-one.html
The web site is the trunk of the tree, the thing that holds it all together, the thing that you hang everything else on, the things that everything else grows out of. Which metaphor do you like the best there?
You need to have, or should try to have, your best keyword in the domain name. For Deborah, she original had “mermaid’s purse”, but I added “sea glass” to it, because that’s what she’s selling. Her domain name is “mermaidspurseseaglass.com”.
Don’t use dashes. I’m not sure why, but no one likes them and Google will give you points off for them. I guess that spammers liked using them and they got a bad reputation.
There’s a link in my right sidebar that will take you to a page that will allow you to check if a domain name is available or not.
Domain Name Look Up
The steps to building a web site are:
1. Register a domain name.
I suggest GoDaddy for domain name registration. (NOT for web hosting!) Check on to make sure the domain name you want is available at the page above, then go here to register it. You have to point the domain name at the web host server to make it all work. Again, the details of how to do this are beyond the scope of this article.
2. Rent some web hosting space.
This is the subject of much debate, but I like PowWeb. There are many web hosts out there and they have pretty much become a commodity. I also host sites and if you want us to host your site, we have better customer support than the big guys.
3. Install your web site.
Under that number 3, I’m going to tell you that using WordPress is the absolute best way to build a web site today. I’ve been building them since 1994, for large companies and small. Today, I only use WordPress.
Steps to using WordPress:
1. Install WordPress.
Usually the web host has an option to do this for you with a click of a button. There are many “how to” guides out there for this. If you read this post and ask me to do it for you, I’ll do it for free. No strings. Just mention the secret word “penguins” in your email. (My personal addiction.)
2. Pick a “Theme”.
There are a bunch of free themes and some “premium” themes that cost money. If you want a custom theme, I can build you one. This topic has more depth to it than I can address here, but pick a theme and install it.
3. Write pages.
Create the static pages that you want on your web site. These will be the normal “contact us”, “about us”, and other stuff that stays the same.
4. Write posts.
You need to blog. Yes, you do. I’ll talk more about what to say and why later, but for now, make sure this is set up.
That is a quick overview of how to set up a web site. I have 15 years of experience to pour out into a long, rambling post about the details of each step, but I’ll save that for another day. Today, you should just know that this is the overview of steps you need to take.
Posted in sell on internet |
Sunday, February 14th, 2010
Getting a domain name and a web host are not the first things you do to get your stuff sold on the Internet.
The most important, and first, thing for you to do is to figure out a strategy for SEO, search engine optimization. Going through the exercise will get you thinking about your site and how it fits into your overall business model.
What is the goal of your site? I asked that of a potential new client last week and it stopped him. He didn’t really know and said he’d have to think about it. I assume that the goal of your site is to sell stuff. That means that people have to find it through search engines. It might be to only add credibility when you talk to people in other sales venues. It might be to make yourself feel good about yourself because you have a place to tell the world whatever it is in your head.
If you want to sell stuff, who will you sell it to? What will they be searching for when they find you? What are you selling? Exactly? How specific is your product?
This will all boil down to “keywords”. You need to decide what keywords you want to be found for. The more general the keyword, the more results will match it, which means more competition for that keyword. You want to be as specific as you possibly can, to narrow the results enough that you can beat your competition, but wide enough that you can actually get some traffic. It’s a balancing act.
It's a balancing act.
Let’s do some research and find out what keywords you want to target on your site. Google has an advertising program for you to spend money on ads with them. In order to find the best keywords to target your ads, they built a tool named, wait for it…, the Keyword Tool. Let’s go there now. If you don’t have an AdWords account, you should get one. It’s free.
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordTool
Put in a keyword that makes sense for your site. Take a guess, if nothing else. Do a search for related keywords. You can sort the results by clicking on the column headers. We want to see how many searches for a keyword there are, on average, for a month.
Look at the “additional keywords to consider” at the bottom of the page. Look at the number of searches for these. Are there any that are relevant? Feel free to slice and dice these results, adding keywords to search for and sorting on the results, until you get a feel for what the best keyword(s) are for your site.
Make a list of the top 5 to 10 keywords. You’ll know which ones seem to mean the most in your niche. Write down the number of monthly searches for each one.
We want to compare the number of searches for each keyword, per month, with the number of competitors out there with web sites for those searches. Do a normal Google search for each of your top 5-10 keywords. Look at the number of total pages out there that use that phrase. At the top of the page, it will say, to the right, “Results 1-10 of about NNNNNNNN”. Write down that number of other pages next to that keyword.
You now have a list of keywords, the number of searches per month and the number of other pages that contain that keyword. If anything jumps out at you, you might have a good idea which keywords to target. If nothing jumps out, do the math. Divide the number of pages by the number of searches. This gives you a ratio. Compare the ratios. Pick the top 3-5 keywords that you think you have the best chance of beating, that is, the most searches compared to the least number of pages for that search.
Does that make sense? You’re trying to find out what keywords you want to try to rank for. Everything else we do for SEO depends on picking these keywords well. You can always readjust later, but pick good ones to start with.
Now that you have your list of keywords, we’ll move on to what to do with them in the next part.
Posted in sell on internet |
Monday, August 17th, 2009
To sell stuff on the Internet effectively, you need a web site.
The web site is the truck of the tree, the thing that holds it all together, the thing that you hang everything else on, the things that everything else grows out of. Which metaphor do you like the best there?
After you get your keywords, before all that other stuff I wrote about for SEO, you need to get a domain name and build yourself a web site. This is not a definitive post on how to do this, but more of an overview of the process.
Here’s what I wrote:
This will all boil down to “keywords”. You need to decide what keywords you want to be found for. The more general the keyword, the more results will match it, which means more competition for that keyword. You want to be as specific as you possibly can, to narrow the results enough that you can beat your competition, but wide enough that you can actually get some traffic. It’s a balancing act.
Read the entire article at:
http://www.walton.com/2009/08/07/how-to-make-stuff-at-home-and-sell-it-on-the-internet-seo-part-one.html
The web site is the truck of the tree, the thing that holds it all together, the thing that you hang everything else on, the things that everything else grows out of. Which metaphor do you like the best there?
You need to have, or should try to have, your best keyword in the domain name. For Deborah, she original had “mermaid’s purse”, but I added “sea glass” to it, because that’s what she’s selling. Her domain name is “mermaidspurseseaglass.com”.
Don’t use dashes. I’m not sure why, but no one likes them and Google will give you points off for them. I guess that spammers liked using them and they got a bad reputation.
There’s a link in my right sidebar that will take you to a page that will allow you to check if a domain name is available or not.
Domain Name Look Up
The steps to building a web site are:
1. Register a domain name.
I suggest GoDaddy for domain name registration. (NOT for web hosting!) Check on to make sure the domain name you want is available at the page above, then go here to register it. You have to point the domain name at the web host server to make it all work. Again, the details of how to do this are beyond the scope of this article.
2. Rent some web hosting space.
This is the subject of much debate, but I like PowWeb. There are many web hosts out there and they have pretty much become a commodity. I also host sites and if you want us to host your site, we have better customer support than the big guys.
3. Install your web site.
Under that number 3, I’m going to tell you that using WordPress is the absolute best way to build a web site today. I’ve been building them since 1994, for large companies and small. Today, I only use WordPress.
Steps to using WordPress:
1. Install WordPress.
Usually the web host has an option to do this for you with a click of a button. There are many “how to” guides out there for this. If you read this post and ask me to do it for you, I’ll do it for free. No strings. Just mention the secret word “penguins” in your email. (My personal addiction.)
2. Pick a “Theme”.
There are a bunch of free themes and some “premium” themes that cost money. If you want a custom theme, I can build you one. This topic has more depth to it than I can address here, but pick a theme and install it.
3. Write pages.
Create the static pages that you want on your web site. These will be the normal “contact us”, “about us”, and other stuff that stays the same.
4. Write posts.
You need to blog. Yes, you do. I’ll talk more about what to say and why later, but for now, make sure this is set up.
That is a quick overview of how to set up a web site. I have 15 years of experience to pour out into a long, rambling post about the details of each step, but I’ll save that for another day. Today, you should just know that this is the overview of steps you need to take.
Posted in sell on internet |
Friday, August 7th, 2009
Getting a domain name and a web host are not the first things you do to get your stuff sold on the Internet.
The most important, and first, thing for you to do is to figure out a strategy for SEO, search engine optimization. Going through the exercise will get you thinking about your site and how it fits into your overall business model.
What is the goal of your site? I asked that of a potential new client last week and it stopped him. He didn’t really know and said he’d have to think about it. I assume that the goal of your site is to sell stuff. That means that people have to find it through search engines. It might be to only add credibility when you talk to people in other sales venues. It might be to make yourself feel good about yourself because you have a place to tell the world whatever it is in your head.
If you want to sell stuff, who will you sell it to? What will they be searching for when they find you? What are you selling? Exactly? How specific is your product?
This will all boil down to “keywords”. You need to decide what keywords you want to be found for. The more general the keyword, the more results will match it, which means more competition for that keyword. You want to be as specific as you possibly can, to narrow the results enough that you can beat your competition, but wide enough that you can actually get some traffic. It’s a balancing act.
It's a balancing act.
Let’s do some research and find out what keywords you want to target on your site. Google has an advertising program for you to spend money on ads with them. In order to find the best keywords to target your ads, they built a tool named, wait for it…, the Keyword Tool. Let’s go there now. If you don’t have an AdWords account, you should get one. It’s free.
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordTool
Put in a keyword that makes sense for your site. Take a guess, if nothing else. Do a search for related keywords. You can sort the results by clicking on the column headers. We want to see how many searches for a keyword there are, on average, for a month.
Look at the “additional keywords to consider” at the bottom of the page. Look at the number of searches for these. Are there any that are relevant? Feel free to slice and dice these results, adding keywords to search for and sorting on the results, until you get a feel for what the best keyword(s) are for your site.
Make a list of the top 5 to 10 keywords. You’ll know which ones seem to mean the most in your niche. Write down the number of monthly searches for each one.
We want to compare the number of searches for each keyword, per month, with the number of competitors out there with web sites for those searches. Do a normal Google search for each of your top 5-10 keywords. Look at the number of total pages out there that use that phrase. At the top of the page, it will say, to the right, “Results 1-10 of about NNNNNNNN”. Write down that number of other pages next to that keyword.
You now have a list of keywords, the number of searches per month and the number of other pages that contain that keyword. If anything jumps out at you, you might have a good idea which keywords to target. If nothing jumps out, do the math. Divide the number of pages by the number of searches. This gives you a ratio. Compare the ratios. Pick the top 3-5 keywords that you think you have the best chance of beating, that is, the most searches compared to the least number of pages for that search.
Does that make sense? You’re trying to find out what keywords you want to try to rank for. Everything else we do for SEO depends on picking these keywords well. You can always readjust later, but pick good ones to start with.
Now that you have your list of keywords, we’ll move on to what to do with them in the next part.
Posted in sell on internet |
Monday, January 5th, 2009
In the recent debate on how evil Network Solutions is, I neglected to give you the non-evil alternatives.
JumpDomain Whois
The easiest thing to do is go to an old registrar that quit answering my emails so I moved all of my domain names away from them. They had non-existant customer support, so I’m sure they won’t mind us using their tools.
https://domains.jumpdomain.com/whois/whois.cgi
Go to the URL above and put in your domain name. Hit Submit Query. It will also return all of the DNS info. Bookmark that page. I use it all the time. It’s by far the easiest and fastest way to look up available domain names without getting into trouble.
Whois?
First, if you are a Mac user (and I won’t get into that religious debate now), if you go into your utilities folder, there is an application called “Network Utility”. If you open that up, you’ll see all of the tools listed across the top. Click on “Whois”.
You can type in the domain name you want to check on and click on the “Whois” button. It will return all of the DNS info for that domain name or it will say “No match for…” the domain name you are looking for.
Terminal Whois on a Mac
If you are brave, you can open the Terminal application and type in “whois” followed by the domain name. That will also give you the DNS info.
Posted in DNS |
Sunday, December 28th, 2008
I really appreciate comments. I really do. I love the interaction with people who use this site. Most of all, I love being right and crushing the opposition.
Network Solutions is waiting for you to search for an available domain name using their site.
I wrote a post titled
Network Solutions Sucks. I must admit that I have strong feelings about Network Solutions or NetSol, as it’s also called. I am deeply biased with a loathing that permeates my entire being.
With that as background, I got a comment or two from Jack Carlson, who, again, I really appreciate for commenting. He defended NetSol and I had to question if I was right about their practices or not. I know what happened to me and a client of mine. Maybe they saw the error of their ways and changed their practices. I needed to reevaluate.
I checked Wikipedia (and since it’s on the Internet, it must be right of course,) and they also had references that all seem to check out. I think this section below is probably true. It matches my experiences and my client’s. Please click through and read the whole thing.
What do you think? Have you ever had a good or a bad experience with NetSol? Please leave a comment and we’ll all battle it out in the never ending search for the truth.
Network Solutions – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Controversy over domain name front running
There is evidence that there are parties subscribing to this information which are buying some of these domains within milliseconds of them being de-registered.
On January 8, 2008 Domain Name Wire published a story alleging that Network Solutions practices domain name front running.[18] “If you try to register a domain at Network Solutions, but decide not to register it, you won’t be able to register it anywhere else,” the article says.[18] “Network Solutions registers the domain in its company name with the words ‘This Domain is available at NetworkSolutions.com’.”[18] Circle ID reported on January 8, 2008 that Jonathon Nevett, Vice President of Policy at Network Solutions and one of the seven members of the ICANN community who was consulted by the ICANN committee looking at domain tasting abuse,[19] had offered a response to the news story stating Network Solution’s policy.[20] The policy was “a security measure to protect our customers,” said Nevett.[20] “When a customer searches for an available domain name at our website, but decides not to purchase the name immediately after conducting the search,” Nevett added, “after the search ends, we will put the domain name on reserve.”[20] Nevett said that if the domain was “not purchased within 4 days, it will be released back to the registry and will be generally available for registration.”[18]
Posted in web host |
Tuesday, December 9th, 2008
My wife went through the draft with her pen and marked it all up. Anything that she didn’t understand is being rewritten. Some of my organization wasn’t clear, so I’m making that a little clearer. We want to make Web Site Starter Kit the best it can be, which means clear, concise communication.
They haven’t quite released WordPress 2.7 yet, so I’m still rocking the RC1 version of it. They say they will release the final version tomorrow. A few more screenshots today and it should be good to go.
Web Site Starter Kit should be released by the end of the week.
Posted in web site build |
Sunday, November 23rd, 2008
A lot of times, a developer will register your domain name for you as a service and charge you the fee every year to renew it. That’s great if they are honorable people and there are no problems.
The real owner of any domain name is the Administrative Contact in the whois record
The real owner of any domain name is the “Administrative Contact” in the “whois” record. They are the person or business that has the legal ownership. You can go to court and prove ownership with this.
If your developer is listed as that admin contact, then they are the legal owner. Again, this is nice that they are helping you out, but be aware that you are vulnerable to having your domain name held hostage, or worse, stolen from you.
This is the “whois” that I use. It’s from an old registrar that I no longer use because they quit responding to all communication from me. They were horrible. But, I still use their whois look up because they are no flashing ads or captchas to slow me down. I’ll share their secret look up page with you.
Check who owns your domain name here.
If you are not listed for your domain name, take steps to change that or have it changed. Make sure that your email address is also listed. If someone hijacks your email account, they can have your password sent to them, log in and change the admin contact to themselves and steal your domain name.
Send me email if you want any help with checking on this.
Posted in web host |
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008
No matter what kind of web site you are creating, no matter what size or what content, it’s always best to plan out what you need to do before you do anything.
I always start with a planning document. It can be formal or informal. It just needs to have all of the information you need in a way that makes sense to you.
It's always best to plan out what you need to do before you do anything.
Start out with the technical, web hosting issues. What is the domain name? Where will it be hosted? Are there any other technical requirements like SQL or PHP? You may not know all of these right now, but be aware of them. They might cause problems later if you don’t plan for them now.
Once you have a handle on the technical issues, which will take way more time to explore, the next step is a site map. This might be called the site architecture or site plan. There are various names for it.
You need to have a list of every page on the site and a description of the content for every page. You also need to know the relationships of each page, which will be defined with the menus.
Most sites have a list of things that are exactly the same on each page, so we call this the template. These things would be the header and footer, the sidebars, and the logo. Whatever else you might have can be put into the template.
If your site has nothing common on each page, then you’re better off creating them individually. You still need to make the site map.
You can make this list as a text outline or as a graphic with little boxes and lines running between them. Use whatever tools you have that make sense to you.
Posted in web site build |
Monday, November 17th, 2008
I just got a new domain name. I actually bought it and had to transfer it to my own registrar.
In order to transfer domain names these days, you have to log into your account, get a couple of codes, a transaction code and a security code, from your domain name registrar and make the request to transfer. The codes are emailed to you so they can confirm that you have access to the email account listed in your registration.
Usually the transfer of a domain name is pretty straight forward, as long as you jump through the hoops they set up for you.
Then you have to go to the other registrar, and get an EPP code from them. That one is emailed to you as the current owner of the domain name.
That works if you are the owner that you are transferring from. If you are getting the domain from another person, then they have to get that EPP code and send it to you. You have to put the EPP code into your account and that will complete the transfer request.
Then, the fun part is waiting for the other registrar to get around to sending you the actual domain name.
If you are trying to get a domain name out of Network Solutions, you have to make a phone call and talk to their high pressure salesman, support person. After they try to sell you on staying, they will finally allow the transfer. If there is any way possible to not have anything to do with Network Solutions, stay as far away from them as possible.
Usually the transfer of a domain name is pretty straight forward, as long as you jump through the hops they set up for you. The hassle is actually for your own good. (I sound like my mother.) It it supposed to make it harder for bad guys to steal domain names away from you.
The latest scam that I heard of is if they get your email account log in, which is sometimes not that hard to do (Sarah Palin), then they can have your registrar send your password as a forgotten password. With your email account and your registrar password, they initiate the transfer, send the codes, approve the transfer, and wait for your domain name. Then you get an email asking you for $2000 to get your domain name back.
Keep your email account secure. Use obscure passwords, like my email password is w958hd)… Ha! Did you really think I would give you my password?
Posted in web site build |
Saturday, November 1st, 2008
There are a ton of web hosting companies out there. You will probably not get the traffic that requires some huge, bullet proof servers and bandwidth. You’ll be fine with a shared server and a lot of bandwidth.
Small business web hosting has become so easy and common that it’s a commodity these days. You want to look for price first, but the determining factor now are reliability, customer service and ease of use.
Reliability
When I first started to publish a fan site at survivor.com, I was getting a huge amount of traffic. I bought space at PowWeb, who I use now, and was fairly happy with them for the most part. They advertised “unlimited bandwidth”, so we were cool with the huge traffic spike every Thursday night.
Customer Service
That is, until it all stopped. One day, they decided that I had too many connections within a specific time, so they just turned it off. I had no site. I was furious. Of course, I found this out after I got home from work and their office was closed. I was screwed.
When I did contact them, they pointed out some fine print in that “unlimited bandwidth” section of the terms and conditions. They could shut me off any old time they wanted to with no warning. I was still furious.
Ease of Use
I shopped around and decided it was time to get a dedicated server with a specified amount of bandwidth. I was making good enough money to pay for it and it seemed like it was time to take the plunge. I had a 30 day satisfaction guarantee. I signed the year long contract and had the server set up. I found that the interface was horrible. I couldn’t manage the domain names the way I wanted to set them up. I didn’t have access to the MySQL settings. There were all sorts of little nuisances that I didn’t have with the shared server.
I was shocked at how hard it was to manage this thing. I couldn’t do half the things that I could with the shared server. I canceled the contract and asked for my money back. It took them 60 days to get that back to me.
I’m sure that there are better dedicated servers out there, just like there are worse shared servers. The key is to get in and play around with whatever you buy. Make sure that you can do what to do with it and that it’s easy. They have gotten much better today, so you shouldn’t have any problems, but you might.
After that fiasco, I went back to PowWeb, since I had paid for a year of their service. It seems that as soon as I decided that, they changed their terms of service and were promoting the amount of bandwidth they include. They no longer can decide arbitrarily, but they have a specified amount of bandwidth you can use. They tell you how much you’ve used and when you might run out.
I feel much better about being told that I have a “Monthly limit: 15400.00 GB” than it being “Unlimited”. That makes me a little nervous. (I just checked and they are advertising “Unlimited” again. Hmmmm…) Since I went back to them, they’ve given me absolutely no trouble at all. They’ve been 100% reliable. I’ve been able to do everything I need to. I’ve recommended them to clients who are also happy with them.
I would recommend PowWeb 100%.
There are other good, cheap hosts out there. I have nothing against any of them. Check them out. Make sure you can do what you want and that they give you a money back guarantee.
DO NOT DO ANY BUSINESS WITH NETWORK SOLUTIONS!.
Posted in web site build |
Saturday, November 1st, 2008
DO NOT USE NETWORK SOLUTIONS FOR ANYTHING, EVER!
Registering a domain name is pretty cheap and easy. There are a couple pitfalls that could kill you if you’re not careful, but if you watch out for them, it’ll all be fine.
First, you should understand how the whole DNS thing works. You don’t need to, but it helps to know what you’re doing.
Manage Your Own Domain Name
You might have a technical guy handling all of this computery stuff for you, and that’s cool, but you need to make sure that you have the domain name registered in your name, on your account. You need to have control over the domain name registration as much as you need to have the key to the front door of your house. You need to have the userID and password to the account that manages the domain name.
I’ve heard of people having their developer manage it for them, then running into a conflict with the developer some how and the domain name gets held for ransom. You don’t need to do much with the domain name registration, but when you need to make that one critical change to move to a new web host or a new developer, then you need the keys to that kingdom.
If you set up the registration account, then make sure that your email is the one on file with them. When you share the password with the developer, so he can manage it for you, he’s able to change the password. The only way to protect yourself from that is if you can hit that “Forget your password” link and have the new password emailed to you. Make sure you own everything. Don’t let anyone else help you out with this one. Do it yourself.
Make Sure You Can Transfer It
The other area where you can be vulnerable is with the ability to transfer your domain name to another registrar. The reason that Network Solutions is so evil is that they make you actually call them and listen to a sales pitch before they will release your domain name for transfer. It should be a simple process of logging in, asking for the transfer, responding to some emails and being on your way. It should take 5 minutes to transfer.
My nightmare experience was with JumpDomain. They were great in the old days. They were the cheapest that I could find and the admin interface was powerful adn easy to use. I registered probably 100 domain names with them over the years that I was with them. I recommended them to friends also. (Sorry!)
The trick to transfers is that the registrar has to approve it. They have to send you a code for each domain name. This rule was put in place to prevent unauthorized transfers by bad guys. I appreciate that, but the system better work.
Then, one dark and stormy night, I had a problem with one of the domain names. I opened a help desk ticket on it, asking them to fix the error on their end. No answer. I opened another ticket. No answer. Waited and waited. Sent email. I looked up their WHOIS contact info and sent emails. No response. Over all, I waited a couple months for any kind of response. I did some research and decided to move them all to GoDaddy. I had about 40 names to move at that point.
I finally did some research and found that they were using Enom for their registration. I emailled, then called Enom and explained the situation. They finally emailed me the codes and I was able to transfer them to GoDaddy. Total time to transfer: 3 months.
I learned that prices change and you should always shop around instead of just renewing every year. I learned that the registrar can kill you if they want to, so pick wisely. Admin interfaces can improve, so get the easy to use interface. If you don’t like it, transfer to somewhere else.
GoDaddy seems to be the best and the cheapest, right now. That may change in the next month or two. Network Solutions is horrible. Never, ever, use them. Enom was helpful to me, but they have had some questionable stories told about them. Ask a friend. Ask on line. Ask in forums. Ask me.
Shop around and don’t get bit.
Posted in web site build |
Saturday, November 1st, 2008
So you think you need a web site for your small business. You’re right. If you don’t have one by now, you’re behind the curve. If you have one that sucks, you need to make it better.
Don’t worry, we’ll walk you through the steps to get one up and running. The overview of the process contains the following steps:
1. Register a domain name.
2. Find a web hosting company.
3. Set up the domain name to point at the web host.
4. Design the web site.
5. Develop the web site.
6. Post them to the web host.
7. Maintain it.
There are a lot of companies out there promising to do it all for you for cheap, but be careful of who you give your money to and what you get stuck with. There are deals and there are dangers.
The first rule of web site development is DO NOT DO ANY BUSINESS WITH NETWORK SOLUTIONS!. They are evil. They will suck you into a black hole of fees and never let you go. They are the La Brea tar pits of the Internet.
Each of the steps above has it’s own page dedicated to it and they are many other resources out there on the web for information about each subject.
Posted in web site build |
Saturday, November 1st, 2008
The Internet is a bunch of computers that all send little packets of data back and forth between each other. The computer that you are reading this on is one of them.
Each computer must have some sort of identifier so that it knows where to send the data to and so that other computer knows where to send it back to. These identifiers are called “IP Addresses”. IP stands for “Internet Protocol”. The address itself looks like this: 63.74.159.145. I’m sure you’ve seen something like that somewhere before.
But when you want a web page, you don’t tell your web browser to go get data from an IP address. You use a “domain name”, like “www.google.com” or “www.walton.com”. That domain name needs to be “resolved”. It’s got to be translated into an IP address so the data knows where to go. That all happens behind the scenes.
I’ll go through all the steps that happen so you’ll know what you need to do to get your own domain name set up without being taken advantage up by low life registrars. More about them later.
When you type in a domain name into your browser and hit enter, your computer goes and asks another server, called a “DNS” or “Domain Name Server” what the IP address is for that domain name. When your computer knows the IP address, it sends off the request and receives that answer back. In this case, the request is for a file that creates the web page in your browser.
Before I go farther, two terms you need to know are “client” and “server”. Each is a computer that can talk to other computers. The difference is that a “client” sends a request, while a “server” responds to requests. One asks and the other answers. Any computer can be either, or both, a client and a server.
Web pages are only one type of request, but probably the most common type. There are time servers that only respond with the time. There are Instant Message servers that sit between two people and send IMs to each of them as they are received. DNS responds to domain names with IP addresses.
So how does that DNS know what IP address is correct? From the “Root Servers”, of course! (No, they don’t serve roots.) There are 13 root servers that contain all of the information for each domain name that has been registered. Yes, they are pretty critical.
When a request for a domain name is received by a root server, it only knows which DNS to go ask for the IP address. DNS servers (Yes, the S is redundant, but who wants to call them “DN servers”?) are also called “name servers”.
Too many technical names? I think I got them all out so I can stop now.
The DNS are located all over. Anyone can have one. I have one here. Anyone can provide the service for you if you really wanted. Now, the DNS manages the relationship between the domain name and the IP address. Root servers know which DNS to ask and the DNS knows the IP. There are local DNS for each computer that needs to look up stuff. There are DNS that have authority over specific domain names.
The root servers get their information from “domain name registrars”. (That’s not really a technical name, so it doesn’t count.) You’ll hear people talking about their “registrar”. GoDaddy.com is one. Networksolutions.com is also one, but they are evil, so NEVER, EVER use them for anything. Did I mention that before?
A registrar will charge you some money per year to register your name. They usually provide a web interface so that you can manage what the name servers are for that domain name. They might provide the DNS for you and they’ll let you manage that too. The strength of that interface and what it will allow you to do is very important.
So, to review, you type in a domain name into your web browser. Your web browser asks the local DNS what the IP address is. If the local DNS doesn’t know, it asks the Root Server, which then tells it which DNS has authority for that name. Your local DNS then asks the DNS with authority, which then responds with the correct IP address. The web browser then sends off the web page request to the proper web server to get the web page.
All of that happens in the blink of an eye, which is a technical term for “under 200 milliseconds”.
Posted in DNS |
Tuesday, October 28th, 2008
They will grab any name you search for. I’ve had a client go look for names for a new site we were building. They had some ideas and wanted to check them out. 2 days later, they came back and said that the one they wanted was available, but was now taken.
We're Waiting...
I asked her where she looked for them and she told me she used Network Solutions to search. As I checked into it, I found that Network Solutions had registered the name and would gladly give us the registration IF we registered with them.
That means that we had to pay $36 a year to register instead of $8 at GoDaddy, who we wanted to use. It cost us $28 more just because she used Network Solutions to search for available domain names.
In the past, I used a great small service for registration. They were great until they quit responding to emails and their help desk. I’ll tell that horror story in another post, but they did have a nice, easy to use “whois”, the tool you can use to look up domain name registrations. There’s no captcha. No advertising. There’s just the form.
If you want to look up domain names, use this WHOIS form.
Posted in web site build |
Wednesday, October 15th, 2008
Don’t register your domain name with Network Solutions. Use any other registrar. Not only do they charge you 4 times what most other registrars charge, moving your domain name to another registrar is almost impossible.
We had a client who had a name registered at Network Solutions. I showed them the difference in cost and customer support, so they wanted to move to GoDaddy.
La Brea tar Pits, Where You Get Sucked In And Never Get Out
First, they needed to submit a request. Then the request had to be approved. You have to actually call them to have the transfer approved. In this call, they try very hard to get you to stay. This isn’t a technical call or a call to protect you from someone stealing your name, it’s a sales call, a hard ball sales call.
When they finally do approve your request, it’s 5 days later, after multiple emails and a sales call.
Customer service is another issue, but this one is more subjective. They generally are not helpful and it takes twice as long to get things figured out with their support.
Bottom line, no matter what, don’t register your domain name with Network Solutions.
Posted in web site build |
