Wednesday, November 19th, 2008
It's always best to plan out what you need to do before you do anything.
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.
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 development, free, small business website | No Comments »
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 small business website | No Comments »
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 small business website | No Comments »
Thursday, October 23rd, 2008
Using The Wrong Web Hosting Service Will Kill You | Gwizz IT by John Bear
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 | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 15th, 2008
This is some good advice from WebHostingGeek. They are 4 simple things to check before you give anyone any money. “Cheap” doesn’t always mean it will cost you the least amount of money.
How to prepare yourself towards budget web hosting plans By: WebHostingGeek
Many people would prefer to opt for a budget web hosting plan. But one must be prepared to handle its own consequences. A budget web hosting plan comes with a small risk which every customer who buys such plans should be made aware of. Many budget web hosting providers have their own secret way of doing business and this is reflected on their over all performance of the company. Hence, it is very important for a customer to find out the various types of facilities and benefits involved with the web hosting package which he intends to purchase. With regard to budget web hosting, you must be aware of certain tactics which budget web hosting providers use. Before you sign up, you must know what your web host is about and how it operates. Following are certain insights that you should be aware of:
1) About those budget web hosting companies that have no experience:
There are many budget web hosts on the website that may not be in the market for too long. In other words, they may have little or no experience at all. It may so happen that you might land up in purchasing a web hosting service that is brand new and inexperienced. I would not prefer this step. In fact, find a web host that has many years experience and they are proud of their service and growth involved as a web hosting company. So, go for budget web hosting providers which are experienced holders.
Posted in web host | No Comments »
Saturday, August 2nd, 2008
I started working for a large corporation in 1986, where I learned how to use a dumb terminal on a main frame computer. The computer was in one of those air conditioned rooms that you see in the movies. When personal computers came along, my mind was blown. I bought a 28.8 modem and hooked up to a BBS, a bulletin board system, in about 1989.
The Internet was just a myth to us back then, a place for academics and government workers. My wife bought an “Internet Starter Kit” for Christmas in 1992. I sent me first email that day and my life was changed forever. I soon learned about FTP and Gopher and MOOs. When the web came along in about 1993, I learned HTML. My first web host gave us 200k of space on the server. Yes, that’s “k”, not “MB”. I serve images bigger than that now.
I put my own web server on line on June 24, 1994 and it’s been on line ever since, except for that time that the hard drive quit while I was out of town for a week, but that’s another story. I’ve been designing, building, and hosting web sites ever since.
I got a “day job” as a web developer for Vivendi Universal Games, a video game company in 1998. We built promotional sites for the games we sold. I learned about marketing from that job. They hired developers that we a lot better than I was, but I turned out to be better at project management. I’ve been a project manager ever since, working with technical people, creative people and managers. I learned what it took and how to make things happen on the web.
When Vivendi laid off 40% of the company in one day, including all of my department, I started to work for Intermix, the company that created MySpace and sold it to FOX. I worked on other sites for them, including some pretty spammy, sleazy sites, I’m sorry about that. I learned how to work with an online community, with email lists, and the finer points of advertising. I learned the right way and the wrong way to do things.
I worked for FOX for a while, before they started to reorganize everything and all of the people I worked with left for greener pastures. I went to work for ePublishing, who does high end (read: “unneccesarily expensive”) sites for publishing companies. The clients are people who had old school print news companies and were desperately trying to make the switch to online. I learned how to deal with difficult clients and unreasonable decisions. We cranked out some great sites in spite of it all.
In the meantime, back when I was starting out in 1994, I built a site for a friend who owned a company so that I could say that I had built a companies web site. I got the domain name “survivor.com” for that site. When the TV show hit in 2000, my poor little servers didn’t stand a chance under all of the traffic. I learned about buying web hosting.
When I learned about SEO and AdSense, about 4 or 5 years ago, I started to optimize the site. It was on the third or fourth page for search results and I was making about $1200 a month. All that traffic was from people typing in “survivor.com”, thinking that was the official site.
I actually bought an eBook about “making your millions on line with AdSense”. It cost $75. I was afraid to buy it, but after I read it, I started started doing the things in the book, trying various changes to improve the search results ranking as well as the click through rates. I soon got on the first page of the search results and I started making $2500 a month. After the first year of working on it, I was making $3500+ a month. Interest in the show has since waned, but I made $35,000 in one year, all from AdSense at a dime or so a click .
Now, I write about how to put your small business on the web, and market it effectively for free or really cheap. By “small business”, I mean five people or less. Car repair shops, restaurants, contractors, wedding flowers, or real estate agents.
While I can do everything it takes to get your site on line, I’m best at coaching you on how to get it done yourself. I want to give you the knowledge and power to get the best deal on the most effective web site that you possibly can. I know the tricks and the tips on how to get it the way you want and get it for not very much money. You can hire me or read my site. I’ll be here for you. Thanks for spending your time here.
-conrad walton
Posted in small business website | No Comments »
