Tuesday, May 18th, 2010
I’ve recently updated some existing web sites to use WordPress for a couple different clients. They just wanted me to make some changes to their site.
They had no idea that WordPress would allow them to update their own site themselves. They thought that a web site is just a web site. Only web developers could make changes to them. They had no control of their own site.
The old school way of building a web site, the way I did it since 1994, is to manually write out static HTML files and put them on a web server. Each page lived on it’s own, like having a bunch of pieces of paper laid out on the living room floor. You have to change each one individually.
Smart people got the idea to develop a “Content Management System”, CMS, to take care of the hard, repetitive stuff. There are now many of them. Drupal and Joomla are the primary competitors to WordPress these days.
The idea of a CMS is that some of the elements on a web page are the same from page to page. Generally there’s a header, a sidebar, and a footer, with the content in the middle somewhere. The content changes, but the template stays the same.
If you had an automated system that would just add the same header to every page, then you only have to update the header in one place, one time. If you can have a system that manages the static stuff and lets you play with the changing stuff, life would be easier.
Using WordPress allows me to build that template, all the hard stuff, the common stuff, as a web developer, then allows my clients to manage all the stuff in the middle, the content.
I haven’t built a web site without using WordPress in years.
Why WordPress? Control.
In any CMS, there are “admin” pages, a section of the site that is password protected. Those pages control the images, the posts, the pages, the content of the site to be updated easily.
Want a new page? Log into the admin and add a new page. Want to write a blog post? Log in and write a new post. Find a typo that someone else did? Log in and fix it. Add an image and put it in your blog post.
WordPress puts the control of the content back in your hands. You don’t need a web developer to write HTML every time you want to change something. You don’t need to know how an internal combustion engine works to drive a car. You just drive.
WordPress takes all of the technical, hard stuff and handles it for you. You just create the web site. Type some stuff. Click a button. It’s a piece of pie.
You do need to know how to move the shift lever and turn on the engine. You need to know how to turn the steering wheel. The level of technical knowledge required is like driving a car.
If you are still paying someone else to update your web site, or if you don’t have a web site yet, now is the time to use WordPress. It’s cheap. It’s easy. It’s available.
Take control. The road is waiting.
If you use WordPress, what do you think about it? If you don’t, why not? Leave a comment.
Posted in Wordpress |
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 |
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 |
Sunday, December 6th, 2009
This article, excerpted below, lists 13 reasons why you should NOT have a free wordpress.com web site.
All of them are valid.
The biggest cost of WordPress is the time it takes you to create a site and make it what you want it to be. The biggest downside to using a free service is lack of control.
I suggest that you try out a free site, (after all, it’s free), and learn the ropes.
When you are ready for a “real” web site, then get your own web host and install WordPress. You can point everything on the free site at the new site.
With your very own web site, you have complete control of everything! Sell stuff! Publish what you want. Make it professional and compete with other businesses. Rock the world.
Final thoughts.
13 reasons why you should NOT have a free wordpress.com web site.
If you already have a free WordPress site, and it is your only blog/website, I suggest one of two things. 1) Buy a domain, install wordpress and start fresh. You can always direct people to your new blog from your old blog, or 2) Export all your content from your free site into a paid site, then you’ll have everything in one place. The sooner you do this the better in my opinion.
That said, blogging communities are great and should not be ignored. Having a free blog within a blogging community however, is very different than having a website all your own. Of all the free blogging communities around, I like Tumblr the best. Here is a list of some of the most popular blogging communities.
WordPress is a blog application found at WordPress.org
Wordpress is free to use. It’s called open source.
Wordpress is awesome. Smart people use it.
Wordpress.com is a place to be part of a blogging community.
A free WordPress blog doesn’t make sense as your only blog.
A free WordPress blog is a great way to learn the ropes.
Read the entire article at:
http://www.socialmediatherapy.com/2009/07/03/a-free-wordpress-blog-can-really-cost-you/
Posted in Wordpress |
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 12th, 2009
I ran into an old friend recently. The usual questions were asked about what’s happened in the 20 years since we’ve seen each other. Yes, I do web sites.
They said they were about to update their web site. Their spouse had created it and they wanted to add some features and update the look. I suggested that they use WordPress. I sounded like the fan boy that I am.
They were pleasant, but said they already had hosting with GoDaddy and they would just use the web blog application that they provided as part of the hosting package. They had heard of WordPress and that it was good, but they would use what they had.
I continued on about how cool WordPress is. They were very nice, but had decided that they didn’t want to pay anything extra when they already had a blogging application included in their hosting package.
I checked it out on my own GoDaddy account. It sucked! It had a tenth of the functionality and the interface was horrible.
Did I mention that it's free?
I told them again that they should use WordPress. I told them that it is free. You can install it anywhere. It’s got features, and blah blah blah, and IT’S FREE!
Oh. That’s quite different. It’s free you say? You don’t have to buy it?
No! It’s FREE. You can download it, install it, pick a theme, put in some plug ins and have a complete, professional web site FOR FREE.
They said they would check it out. They thanked me profusely. Told me that I had motivated them to get going on their web site.
I have no idea if they will do anything on it at all, but I guess I was shocked that not everyone has the same understanding and knowledge and beliefs that I do. Silly me.
People seem to think that to get cool software, you have to spend money. If you don’t spend money, then you can have cool software. People can’t wrap their heads around the whole “open source” thing.
If you happen to not be aware, WordPress is free. There is no cost. You can download it and install it on any web server that’s running MySQL and Apache (which is almost every web server these days). You can control all aspects of it. You can build your own theme if you want. You can do anything with it.
Did I mention that it’s free?
Posted in Wordpress |
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 |
Wednesday, December 10th, 2008
Everyone knows that the economy is in trouble. How should you react as a small business owner? How are you going to pay the rent next month? Which employee are you going to let go? How will you keep your current clients? Don’t panic.
The easiest and quickest budget item fora small business to cut back on is marketing. There’s no immediate affect felt, so you think it might be safe to cut, but nothing could be worse for your business. The Harvard Business Review said:
It is well documented that brands that increase (marketing) during a recession, when competitors are cutting back, can improve market share and return on investment at lower cost than during good economic times.
The best time to take advantage of your place in the market is in an economic downturn. Because other people are quick to cut marketing, you will have the perfect opportunity to reach even more prospective customers. In a downturn, aggressive PR and Communications strategy is the solution.
Building or updating your web site is one of the cheapest and easiest ways to reach those prospective customers. Now is the time to put some time into reviewing your web site. Does it say everything it needs to say about your small business? Can you add features that allow more customer involvement or at least feedback? Maybe it’s time to have a professional review your site and give you suggestions on how it can be improved.
Now is the time to spend more on advertising, not less.
Posted in marketing |
Sunday, November 23rd, 2008
Here are the advantages of having a “managed web host”. They are in fact true and good reasons. If you require 100% uptime, hardware replaced within 30 minutes, the best support, and remote backups, then yes, you need managed web hosting.
If you want a Ferrari, then buy a Ferrari, but know that it's a Ferrari.
However, know that it comes at a cost. If you can handle having periodic issues so that you have 99.9% uptime instead, then normal web hosting is much cheaper. If you want a Ferrari, then buy a Ferrari, but know that it’s a Ferrari.
Advantages of Managed Web Hosting | What It Is
The reasons why to opt a managed web hosting account compare to unmanaged cheaper web hosting service are as follows:
No Downtime: Your online website works as official brand of your company presence over the internet thus it’s a must for you to make your site alive 24*7 hrs for the world wide web visitors so that they can access your website without any such issues like downtime. Major online web hosting providers gives you 99.9% uptime guarantee while the fact is this that its too insufficient to the practical need for better presence in front of your customers thus you need a web hosting company which can ensure you 100% optimal uptime as there are a lot of managed web hosting providers which offer 100% uptime in real due to their multi-home bandwidth network lines.
When you are a newbie webmaster even it’s a must for you to ensure that your web hosting provider gives you 100% uptime guarantee in this manner you can cut off a lot of hassles and frustration sort of unwanted things in your daily business role with your website.
Better Equipments: There are a lot of managed web hosting providers over the internet world which gives you 30 minutes or even 15 minutes hardware replacement guarantee sort of unmatchable performance for your website as when your hardware by chance goes failed this is a must as nobody knows what’s going on when as everybody just know either the past of the presence nothing can be predicated for future reference point of view when you are dealing practically over any such technical things as web servers.
Better Support: When you go to search any web hosting company you shall check their Support SLA things to let you know that how good they are to the support needs as there are a lot of managed web hosting providers which offer you maximum 30 minutes guaranteed response over your any trouble with your website so it’s always better to keep your eyes on their detailed SLA agreement too so you can secure yourself that you are working with the best supporting team for your web hosting needs.
Remote backups: Proper planning for backups shall be always carried when you host your website anywhere on internet and if you have a properly planned remote backup that makes you 200% more secure to what you are doing on internet.
Read the entire article at Advantages of Managed Web Hosting | What It Is
Posted in web host |
Thursday, November 20th, 2008
This is one of those questions that will get a complicated technical formula from the web development engineers, but it’s really not that hard.
If you have to ask, then you don’t need very much.
Don't be seduced by the flashing neon signs screaming *unlimited* at you.
If you are just starting out, you probably won’t have much traffic. Sorry, but it’s true. You can calculate the page files sizes and multiply by the page views you get a day or a month, but you won’t be able to do that without knowing how many people hit your site. If you have no history, then you can’t calculate, but it won’t be very much at all for a while.
Start out with the cheapest, least amount of space and bandwidth. Don’t be seduced by the flashing neon signs screaming “unlimited” at you. Don’t upgrade until you have to.
You will be surprised by just how little bandwidth you really need. If the average page is 100k, which is not unreasonable, then 100,000 pages a month is one gig. That’s over 3,000 page views a day. Do you have that many? If you have 10,000 views a day, then you’ll want 3 or 4 gig. I think “unlimited” bandwidth would probably cover that.
I really, really mean that you shouldn’t get more than you really need and you probably don’t need as much as you think you do. Really. Don’t do it.
Much more important is the reliability of the company. Do they answer emails quickly? Put in a support ticket and see how long it takes them to answer. Ask the sales people technical questions about redundancy and latency. See how long it takes to answer and does the answer make sense to you. Just tell them that you were told to ask about “redundancy and latency” and please explain what that means. If you are happy with the answer, then great. If you have no idea what this technical jargon they give you means or it takes them 3 days to answer you, then move along and find another web host company.
Posted in web host |
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008
1. Shared – This is a server that is shared by multiple web sites. You get to put your web sites on there, along with everyone else.
This is a server that is shared by multiple web sites.
You share the hard drive space and you share the bandwidth. You have privacy. Everyone can only see their own files. Upside – these are the cheapest out there, maybe $5 to $30 a month. Downside – if someone else uses a lot of bandwidth or has CPU intensive scripts, then your site might be affected. You usually have less bandwidth on a shared server.
This is your own personal piece of hardware that you drive down to the hosting company
2. Collocated – This is your own personal piece of hardware that you drive down to the hosting company and they put it on their rack and plug it into their bandwidth. Upside – you can do anything you want and have complete control over the entire machine. All you are really paying for is the bandwidth. Downside – all you are paying for is the bandwidth. You have to back it up. You have to fix any problems. You have to manage the whole thing your self. If a hard drive fails, you have to buy a new one and replace it your self. You own the machine.
You get the entire machine, usually with more access to it than with a shared server.
3. Unmanaged Dedicated – This is their machine that you are renting from them. They give you file space and bandwidth. You get the entire machine, usually with more access to it than with a shared server. Upside – you get huge bandwidth and all of the CPU. You can run a lot of traffic through one of these. They can handle probably 500,000 page views a day. You want one of these if you have a huge site with a lot of traffic. Downside – they are expensive. They might be $200-$500 a month. You want a Ferrari, you pay for a Ferrari.
The hosting company will all monitor the server for you and fix things if they go wrong.
4. Managed Dedicated – These are the as Unmanaged Dedicated servers, except the hosting company will all monitor the server for you and fix things if they go wrong. If you have a large commercial site that MUST be up all the time, then you want one of these babies. Upside – these can handle anything, all the time. Downside – you guessed it, much more expensive.
If your site has little traffic, you won’t need the power of a dedicated server. If you are not a geek, then you probably don’t need to collocate your own server. If you are not running a huge commercial site, you probably don’t need a dedicated server.
I use these guys and they give me enough bandwidth and customer service to make me happy. I don’t promote anyone else, just Powweb.
Posted in web host |
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008
I’ve put up a link under my short bio over there on the right. Put up a new head shot while I was there. If you click on the button, it’ll pop up a window and you can ask me anything you want to know about small business web sites. I’ll answer it as soon as I can. I want to build some traffic to the site, so I thought I’d put that possibility out there for you.
If you have any questions about small business web sites, web hosts, HTML, design, development, management, WordPress, or anything at all, go ahead and send me the question. We’ll see just how much I really do know. You can also leave a comment below, if you want to do it that way. Either way should work.
Thanks!
Posted in web site build |
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 |
Tuesday, November 18th, 2008
I don’t know how you can be sure about your web host without going out and trying them all, which I’m not going to do.
I’ve been through a few web hosts. Some have been good. Some have been bad. Price is usually not the issue that makes one “bad”. The problems that you’ll have with web hosts have to do with service, both technical and customer support.
Find out what unlimited bandwidth really means by reading the fine print.
I own a very popular web site,
survivor.com. I would get huge spikes in my traffic on Thursday nights, when the show was on. One host saw the spike and extrapolated that out over a month and decided that I would be in violation of my bandwidth for the month, since every day was Thursday night, so they shut me down.
No warning. No email. I came home from work one day and checked my days stats. I had no traffic. Poof. Just like magic, it all went away.
I emailed them and got a notice that I was in violation. I begged and promised and they turned me back on again. I bought a second account and linked things back and forth to balance out the load. What a load it was.
So, look for reasonable terms of service. Find out what “unlimited bandwidth” really means by reading the fine print. Ask around and see if they have good customer service. Do they answer emails quickly? Getting along with them is key. You hope it’s like a good friendship and that you’re not dating a psycho who’s going to steal your car.
Oh, and my personal recommendation? That would be the web host that I use now, Powweb. There’s a button over there on the right that you can click and sign up with. If you use my button, I get a commission. I could have a lot of other affiliate links over there, but I only have the one. They are the only one I’d recommend. They advertise “unlimited bandwidth” and it’s not, but it’s probably more bandwidth than you’ll ever need. I like them.
Posted in web host |
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 |
Tuesday, October 28th, 2008
How to explain “URLs” so anybody can understand them – easyDNS Blog
One of our tech support guys just had a conversation with somebody who wanted “to register the URL http://example.com/something.html”, where example.com was already registered, the person couldn’t understand why he couldn’t have that URL with “something.html” after it.
We’ve heard variations of this one a lot. Like somebody who knows “xyz.zz” is taken “but can I register “www.xyz.zz?”, no, you can’t.
The easiest way to explain a URL such as this one: http://www.example.com/something.html
Is to think of it as HOW, then WHERE and finally WHAT:
| http:// |
« how? |
The method we are going to use to retrieve or “get to” the document described by the URL. Common ones are “http” (Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol), you may also see “ftp://” or “mailto:” |
| www.example.com |
« where? |
This is the hostname of the server, somewhere on the internet, which is holding the document we actually want |
| /something.html |
« what? |
Finally, after we know what server we are looking for and how we’re going to retrieve the document from it, we now specify exactly which document we want off of the remote server. |
Understand those three components and you basically have URLs down cold.
Your web browser (firefox, safari, IE, Opera) is all about “how”, what protocols to use to pull all these documents over the web to your desktop.
The web host is the “what” machine. It sits on a server and serves document after document to remote web browsers who send it requests.
Something has to bridge the browser to the web host/server and that’s the “where”, that’s where DNS and domains come in, and that’s primarily what we do here at easyDNS. We tell web browsers (and other client applications) the “where” aspect of retrieving and transmitting documents (the “whats”) across the internet. We do this via “DNS lookups” …about a quarter billion times a day.
Read the entire article at How to explain “URLs” so anybody can understand them – easyDNS Blog
Posted in web site build |
Thursday, October 23rd, 2008
Using The Wrong Web Hosting Service Will Kill You | Gwizz IT by John Bear
Picking the right web hosting will be one of the most important decisions you will ever make with your online business. Why? Because the web server you choose will really make or break your online business.
It Could Kill You
Today I am going to discuss two types of servers; Virtual Web Hosting and Virtual Private Servers.
Lately, Virtual Web Hosting has been the only way to go when choosing a web server. One of the reasons that Virtual Web Hosting became so popular was because they supported the necessary files and allowed you to have more freedom than other conventional web hosting accounts. But now you can have more freedom than ever before with Virtual Private Servers. Moreover, Virtual Private Servers should not be confused with Virtual Hosts, because they are completely different types of accounts.
Before we go any further I’d like to explain what the difference is between a Virtual Host and a Virtual Private Server, so that you can really fully understand. In this article I will also go over the advantages and disadvantages of both types of servers, to help you decide which is right for you and your business. Let’s start off with Virtual Hosting.
Virtual Hosting
Virtual Hosting is also known as Shared Web Hosting, where you are sharing the physical server and a single set of software applications with other users. Virtual Hosting has been extremely popular in the past for its fast deployment, strong resources, and most importantly for having a very reasonable price. Another advantage to Virtual Hosting is that you have a powerful, reliable, and professionally managed server without having to have advanced technical skills, making it ideal for an individual, small business, or even a beginner.
Posted in web host |
