How to set up your Blogger custom domain with GoDaddy

This post is originally from my other blog, Glamumous. I decided to reproduce it here so you readers can easily find other information linked to this subject. I used GoDaddy to register my domain name, as this company seemed the cheapest dot.com domain provider, and also because they supply a free email address and basic hosting account with each domain, which has come in rather handy.

However, I'd read quite a few complaints about using GoDaddy for custom domains with Blogger hosting, so I was rather careful to make sure I did everything correctly!

Please do note that you can only link your site as http://yoursite.com or http://www.yoursite.com. Not both. It just doesn't work that way. My advice is to use the www prefix, and if you can make a simple redirect page in your host root, as I'll explain later.

I followed Blogger's advice to the letter, and everything works fine. Here are the basics of their tutorial, or you can read the whole thing yourself on this page.

Buy your chosen domain name and create your account.

Once your domain has been registered, log in to your control panel, and choose to "manage domains".

Click on the area marked Total DNS Control, and then on Total DNS Control And MX Records.

Look for a record prefixed "WWW". If there isn't one, add a new CNAME record; if there is one, you'll need to edit this record instead.

Insert these settings exactly as they are described! For the "Name" type "www" (as in www.yoursite.com). For the Host Name, you need to enter "ghs.google.com". Don't change or enter anything else except for these two functions. If this is a new CNAME, click "add". If you are editing an existing CNAME, click "update" and "continue".

Before you link this domain to your Blogspot blog, you may well want to check that all the settings are correct. To do this, you'll need to "ping" your new domain and ensure the host points to ghs.google.com.

If you're a Windows user, this is quite simple to do using the "command" feature. Windows 98 and ME have a "command prompt" program in the start menu; Windows XP has the "run..." feature, which brings up a box; simply type in CMD, hit enter and you'll get your command prompt.

Then all you need to do is enter the following:

ping www.yourdomainname.com

substituting yourdomain.com for your domain name and suffix. Hit enter, and see what happens. It should look something like this:

Pinging ghs.1.google.com [72.14.207.121] with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 72.14.207.121: bytes=32 time=85ms TTL=247 Reply from 72.14.207.121: bytes=32 time=89ms TTL=247 Reply from 72.14.207.121: bytes=32 time=86ms TTL=247 Reply from 72.14.207.121: bytes=32 time=86ms TTL=247 Ping statistics for 72.14.207.121: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 85ms, Maximum = 89ms, Average = 86ms

Notice that the ping recognises that my site is hosted with ghs.1.google.com. This means that I can (and indeed, have) followed the next step in telling Blogspot my new domain name. If you don't notice the host is registered as Google, wait a little longer before following the next step.

Log in to your Blogger control panel. In the settings section, click on the publishing tab. Near the top of this page, you'll notice "publish to a custom domain". This is what you want to do.

When prompted, enter the domain name you have directed to the ghs.google.com host, including the www prefix! Continue, and you should see that your new settings have been saved.

View your blog to ensure everything works and looks okay. Don't worry if at first you get a "404 file not found" page: it can take a few days for DNS settings to propogate across the whole internet. You can always switch back to Blogspot hosting and try again in a day or two. When this does work okay, you'll see your blog exactly how it is normally seen, with the exception that your new domain name is in the address bar. Blogger takes care of all the inter-blog links, page titles and such for you, and even redirects traffic from your old name.blogspot.com address to your new www.yoursite.com address! This is great as it means it's unlikely you'll lose traffic or page ranking stats.

Now here's the awkward part: as I mentioned earlier, you can only have http://www.yourblog.com or http://yourblog.com. Not both. Blogger/Google simply haven't recognised that this may be important, and only offer the function of linking one address to your blog. But in a strange way, this is good: you don't have to worry about having two seperate blogs listed in Technorati, for example.

I advised that you use the www prefix for a good reason. Many domain providers offer a single page (often called a "holding page") with each domain name. This will show when you type http://yourblog.com, even though www.yourblog.com will link to your Blogger blog.

So make use of it!

If you are able to edit the HTML, you could create a redirect page to automatically redirect visitors to your www address. That way, you won't lose any visitors at all. To make the page redirect to your www address, you need to insert this code between the head tags, substituting "mysite.com" for your domain name. You can do this using an HTML editor (I prefer Notepad).

The part content="0; means that there is no pause before the browser is redirected. You can change this to "5" for example, to give a 5 second pause if you also want to include an explanation for the redirect in the body of the page. It is also a good idea to include a hyperlink to your www address in the body of the page, just in case the visitor's browser doesn't recognise the redirect command.

BLOGGER TO GODADDY FTP Publishing: Instructions

Originally I was hosting my blogs at blogspot. I decided, wow, I'm really into this blogging thing. I had posted 196 posts at my thaipulse.blogspot.com blog and my girlfriend had put 130 at her trythaifood.blogspot.com blog. I had another 150 posts at 2 of my other blogs there.

I thought - wow, this is serious. I need to move these things OFF Blogger and get them to their own domain for better monetization down the road - and more control over everything. Also, if I ever wanted to sell the blogs - much easier if hosted at my own domain, difficult if at Blogger because you don't own anything.

The next step I chose - and I should have eliminated this step - was to move them to Blogger's "Custom Domain" choice in Settings tab and Publishing link of Blogger's program to manage your blogs.

So, I moved them. All 5 of them.

This was a rather insidious process as I had to do some domain name switching and it was all hocus pocus really. The site stayed hosted at Blogger. I only bought the domain name and told Blogger to tell the DNS that I was hosting my blogs at my site - when actually they were all on-site at Blogger as they always were. Someone could now find my site by going to my subdomain on the domain I owned (example: http://trythaifood.thaipulse.com).


Hosting at their Custom Domains solution seems ok at first glance, until you want to look at getting a sitemap for your domain and also when you start considering that all those links pointing to the blogspot domain - like trythaifood.blogspot.com - everyone that linked to there wouldn't change their links because they still work. So, even though the proper domain name for her site was trythaifood.thaipulse.com - the search engine sees links to trythaifood.blogspot.com and thinks that site is still valid too.

I then created a sitemap for two of my sites listing out every html
file I had in one huge list - realizing only later that an xml or txt
sitemap cannot be added to your Custom Domain at Blogger because you
don't have access to the root level domain to drop a file in there! When I tried to do a sitemap for the sites and place it in my directory at trythaifood.thaipulse.com - it wasn't found... Apparently Google's webmaster tools can't read the directory because it's virtual. If that makes sense.

I then added the ATOM feed as my site map as some of you might know - we can do this for our blogs - no need to make a huge sitemap of every single file. Just copy the link url to your ATOM FEED from your blog's home page - and you can paste that in as your sitemap in Google Webmaster Tools. For instance, mine was: http://thaipulse.blogspot.com/atom.xml

However, that solves next to nothing as it only gives Google your last 10 posts at your blog. The other 186 of mine - were not registered by using the feed as the sitemap! BLAST IT!

AUGGGHHH!


To me, having a valid sitemap is everything. It means Google KNOWS which pages to index, so there's no excuse for not indexing them. I really like to have one as it makes me feel better about the whole Google spider process even though I still don't trust it.


I then decided - I'm going to move everything to my domain - physically put them there in subdomains and use the FTP function Google has to publish all my posts by FTP to my domain.

This way - nothing resides on Google (photos do I believe), but pages - that count for the search engines reside on my domain in my subfolder where they should be.

Moving to FTP takes some skill - not for the process which is fairly easy, but for the after-effects because now you are stuck with a classic template - of which there are about 15 maybe, but you don't have the easy widget functionality to put Google Adsense and all the other cool widgets all over your blog. It's cut and paste into the code time -and if you're NOT competent with code - don't move to FTP publishing - please.


So, moving on...

I killed the previous DNS magic that told people my site was hosted at my domain when really it was at Blogger and I moved all my blogs by FTP to my domain.

Now I have a valid sitemap for each blog - and all pages are listed. In the end I know this was the right move.

I've yet to move this blogsimply.blogspot.com blog though!


Ok, steps for moving to FTP from Blogger to Godaddy.

1. Create subdomains at Godaddy by logging into your hosting account. Choose Domain management. Choose OPEN control panel.

2. Choose Settings tab.

3. Choose Domain management. Create subdomains for each blog you want to put at that domain. For me- I had a whole site hosted at www.thaipulse.com so I put my blogs in these subdomains:

trythaifood.thaipulse.com
blog.thaipulse.com
kosamui.thaipulse.com
shrimprecipes.thaipulse.com
thairestaurants.thaipulse.com

don't list out the whole url - just add a subdomain like "trythaifood"

That's it.

4. Exit out of there because you're done. Nothing else to do in Godaddy because by default they point your subdomain to a folder on your path - they create the folder for you on your ftp path.


5. Login to Blogger's dashboard.

6. In the Template Tab go to HTML settings. Check the box for expand widget templates. Copy all of the template with Control and C and then paste that into a Notepad file and save it someplace with the name: blog-name-code-backup.txt.

Do that for each blog all at once so you don't forget and skip that. You'll lose the way your blog was originally if you don't save this complete template.

After you copy and save each template's code - scroll to the bottom of the page and choose "CLASSIC TEMPLATE".

This will change your template to a boring classic template - but you can pick from 14 other boring ones that are better than this one later.

7. Go back to your blog's SETTINGS tab, and Publishing link. If you need to set blog readers to "anybody" or "Everbody" then do so or FTP publishing won't work.

8. Choose FTP publishing.

9. Fill out the FTP publishing form carefully.

10. Your godaddy FTP server is just your domain name.

thaipulse.com was mine, don't put anything else - just this format.

Dealing with managed web hosting service

Managed hosting service can be considered as an upgraded version of web hosting. The managed hosting provider takes the responsibility of hosting the clients website in a well managed way. The managed hosting provider offers customized solution than other pre-packaged basic web hosting solutions. The fee charged for such a good quality service is obviously a bit high when compared to an ordinary type of web hosting service. The uptime guarantee of the managed hosting network service is close to 100 per cent. The managed hosting service also includes a managed disaster recovery and backup, security and network service. It also monitors all your firm’s computer systems.

A managed hosting vendor provides load balancing solution to firms who have large volume of online traffic. Through the concept of load balancing solution, the managed hosting vendor improves the performance of the network by efficiently distributing the site traffic. If the balance on the server load is maintained, then the fault tolerance and clustering factors can be prevented easily. A managed hosting provides dedicated servers that are custom built to the firm’s specifications or configurations with multiple servers. The managed hosting service also deals with firewalls and crucial security arrangements. All unauthorized access to the servers as well as from it is prevented by the managed hosting service. In other words the message that leave or enter the server or the business network, will have to pass through this managed hosting firewall and those messages which don’t pass the security, gets blocked. Managed hosting vendors also offer backup facility. It provides reliable and consistent data protection and recovery too.

A managed hosting vendor can also help business firms to change their network and systems, undertake up gradation, add options and also extend solutions. Firms can also enjoy the benefit of port monitoring package which is provided by the managed hosting vendor. This port monitoring service allows business clients to configure the host system in order to monitor the client’s server and also its ports. It is the client’s responsibility to deal with the configuration and maintenance issues. All the alerts are sent directly to the clients firm. There is also a managed hosting up gradation package which allows a firm to upgrade the port monitoring service.

In a managed hosting environment, your web hosting provider owns the equipment, licenses software and is also responsible for nearly all aspects of the solution, excluding customer-specific application. These days, the words, “managed hosting” has got a new meaning for itself because more and more providers use it to describe different aspects of their services. Before anyone makes a final decision to select a website hosting provider, he should enquire and verify the web hosting services and its reliability. This is applicable to even those website hosting providers who claim to have experience in managed dedicated servers and e-commerce web hosting service. If a website is dealing with highly sensitive confidential information, then in that case, a dedicated web hosting environment is the right choice. Mostly, companies who opt for dedicated web hosting service, will usually decide to go for a managed web hosting solution because the hosting company will handle most of the task associated with managing the dedicated host.

How to register your domain

When you launch a new website you must register a unique domain name with an authorized registrar. When the internet was first starting, all domain names and IP addresses were registered through one organization, Internic. Eventually Network Solutions took over the role as "keeper" of the internet domain names. Today, there are hundreds of websites where you can register your domain name but Network Solutions still maintains the main database of domain names. Some websites charge as little as $2.95 per year for your domain name while others charge as much as $35 per year for the exact same service. Some even offer one year free if you register your domain name with them and host your website on their servers. Why pay $35 when you can register your domain name for much less at another website?

So why does Network Solutions charge $35 a year if they are the keeper of the database and their resellers charge a fraction or even nothing? Who knows and who cares! Register your domain with one of the cheaper providers and you'll be fine. A word caution - be care that you choose to host your website. Getting a free year of your domain name isn't worth it if your webhost is unreliable and your website is down more than it's up.

You pay for your domain name on a yearly basis. It's a separate charge from your webhosting bill. When you register your domain name choose the autorenewal option if it's available. This way your domain name will not expire if you forget to renew it. If your domain name expires, it's free for anyone else to register so you need to stay on top of when it's expiring. Also registering your domain name for a 3 to 5 year term will often save you money. For example, godaddy.com charges $8.95 a year for your domain name but only $7.25 a year if you register for a 5 year term.

When you register your domain you can create different contact names. The three contacts are Administrator, Technical and Billing. Most of the time the same person is all 3 contacts. If you web designer registers your domain name for you, make sure you are designated as the Administrative contact. This gives you control over the domain name and you must be notified if someone is trying to make changes to your record. If you aren't one of the contacts then someone can transfer ownership of the domain name without your permission.

To see a record of your domain name, go to www.networksolutions.com and use their WHOIS utility which is located in the bottom left corner of their home page. Simply enter your domain name and click Search. You'll see the complete record of your domain name, where it's registered and where your website is hosted. For a complete video of how to use WHOIS, visit www.valiss.com/video/whois/whois.html.

When you register your domain name you'll have to the option of making it a private registration. I highly recommend paying the additional fee to make your information private. If you leave your registration public anyone can look up your domain information which includes your home or business address and your email address. Many spammers scan public domain registration records to find valid email addresses to spam.

I always use a yahoo or hotmail email account when registering my domains. This way if spammers to find my email address, I can just get a new "throwaway" email address and I won't receive spam at my primary email address.

Always make sure your domain record remains locked. Locking your domain name is a feature implemented a few years ago. When you want to transfer your domain name to a different registrar you must unlock it. Once it's unlocked the new registrar can "pull" your domain name from your current registrar. Once the transfer is complete, the domain name will be locked to prevent anyone else from "pulling" your domain away from you

An Introduction to Web Hosting

If you are planning ahead to prosper your business through web hosting services, then the selection of a reliable and reputed web hosting provider is of top most importance.

If you are planning ahead to prosper your business through web hosting services, then the selection of a reliable and reputed web hosting provider is of top most importance.
The overall fate of your website depends on the efficiency of the web host. So take all possible measures to execute an unprejudiced comparison of the services offered by several web hosting companies in the market.

The web hosting market is on a great high. With the escalating hosting service demands the price quotes of the web hosting providers also fluctuate remarkably. However, it cannot be denied that a cheap web hosting solution may appear pleasant and worthwhile in the very beginning but in the long run, you might end up paying almost double its actual worth. Whenever you find yourself hooked to such low-priced web hosting services, always look upon web hosting review sites for the accurate evaluation. These review sites specialize in carrying out the exact evaluation of the hosting services conferred by several companies in the market.

Not only this, they also provide rankings to all web hosts on the basis of the data gathered from user surveys. Additionally, such sites will further bestow you with more relevant information pertaining to current handy packages accessible in the market. One of the most superlative ways to access a domain name without a hassle is through the free domain registration facility made available by various web hosting companies of Delhi.

The long list of top ranked web hosting companies includes Blue Host, Lunar Pages, Start Logic, etc. In general, the ranking of a web hosting company is determined on the basis of its reputation, prices and other hosting plan features offered to the customers including setup, bandwidth and disk space.

So, these are few crucial guidelines that should not be overlooked if you want to be guarded from poor web hosting providers.

The cheapest web hosting examined

There are several hosting websites that can be found on the internet search engines to facilitate any personal web hosting need. These providers facilitate the upload of your web content and make it very affordable to create a personal site.

As a standard you will be supplied with free web hosting tools that will allow you to edit and improve your site easily. Even with the cheapest web hosting you will get a hosting package that will give you a pretty big hard drive space and lots of free email accounts. In addition you will find that you will get a fairly big bandwidth allowance which you will in all likelihood not need to use up.

Many people who chose the cheapest plans on the net just want to upgrade from an unreliable free web hosting provider that had more down time than uptime. These customers will find that many of the cheapest web hosting providers on the net actually are very professionally run businesses which provide a high uptime for your site and respond quickly and knowledgeably to any support queries you may have. The level of support is good enough for hosting small e-commerce sites or online communities. Once they get bigger you will have to upgrade your hosting of course.

On these plans which you will find at www.cheap-webhosting.in you will get a feature rich programming environment which will give you the liberty needed to design complex programs with programming languages such as PHP, Ruby, Perl, or Python. Many successful blogs or web businesses and online communities have developed on the cheapest web hosting plans and I received feedback from many webmasters who have built up sites with traffic in excess of 100,000 unique visitors every month.

The web hosting companies that were researched to find the cheapest web hosting all share an excellent customer reputation and have a flawless track record in the web communities. Most hosts are based in the US and offer their customers support 24/7 via email, live chat and in many cases an online forum.

The Benefits of Affordable Web Hosting

Have you taken a look at some of the web hosting packages these days? They are packed with a ton of disk space, bandwidth and unlimited emails. Who needs all that stuff? If you are looking to establish a personal website or a start-up business website, you won’t need some gargantuan plan. You need an affordable web hosting plan that is realistic in regards to the disk space and bandwidth while fitting within the miniscule budget you set aside just for this purpose.

There is no need to pay for what you don’t plan to use. With an affordable web hosting plan, you get what you need to start with and then re-evaluate as your website grows. Keeping your eye on growth is a handy but you also have to be realistic. Affordable web hosting allows you to do that. By starting out with just the basics, you can always broaden your services as needed, at least that is if you choose an affordable web hosting plan which can grow with you.

The problem is, most people who want to establish a web presence have no idea on exactly how much bandwidth and disk space they need. Therefore, they are dazzled by these plans which offer them a plethora of space. But is the price for all of that worth it? If you never reach that fifty gig capacity, why are you paying for it?

Many affordable web hosting plans will give you the option of upgrading as needed. Of course, as you add another layer of services to your present website, the price will go up a bit in proportion to what you added to the plan. If you are getting what you are paying for, your money will be well spent. The optimal web hosting plans will be ala carte where you can pick and choose what services you want. Of course, ala carte is not offered. Therefore, you choose the most viable web hosting plan that will suit your needs and pocketbook.

If you do not anticipate heavy traffic levels to your website or won’t use up an astronomical amount of drive space, your affordable web hosting could detour into a shared hosting plan. This is where several entities co-exist on the same server sharing bandwidth and hard drive space. The web hosting company can then offer you lower prices because several entities paying on the same thing such as hardware and maintenance is shared across the board with the other server members.

So how do you know if that affordable web hosting company is on the up and up? You can look up on WHOIS to see who owns the domain of your web hosting company’s website. From there, you can gather information such as where they are headquartered and their phone number. You can also use that information to search on the Better Business Bureau to check for any complaints – both resolved and unresolved. All of these tools can help you narrow down an affordable web hosting provider.

Domain name | Website hosting | Domain name registration

Domain name | Website hosting | Domain name registration

If you are planning to buy Internet domain name for your online business, there are few things that should be kept in mind during and after the procedure of domain name registration. The foremost thing that has to be thought about in the entire process is to select a domain name for your online business. This may sound very easy at this point of time, but with the proliferation in online business, thinking of a unique domain name that reflects the purpose of your website is a very difficult task. It involves a lot of brainstorming sessions along with an in-depth search over the entire thing.

You can discuss about the domain name with your friends and family members and finally choose the one that best suits your requirements. Your domain name should be the one that is short, simple, reflects the purpose of your business and easy to remember by the users. It is not necessary for your domain name to be the one similar to your company name, until the name of your business is popular enough to be known like brand name. Once you have thought about a suitable domain name, you can move further for domain name check to see if the domain name that you are thinking about has not already been taken by anyone else. Once you have verified that your domain name is unique, do not delay the process at all and go for your domain name registration. These services are mainly provided by the website hosting providers only along with other services, but you can also get them done through separate service providers who only register domain name. Do not forget to check if your registrar is a certified ICANN registrar for domain names. This is because; only ICANN registrar is the one that certifies businesses which have the right processes and technology. Besides, this gives you a platform to complaint with ICANN in case your service provider fouls you.

You can also consider domain name transfer, if you are not satisfied with the previous one. However, if you are also willing to change your domain name registrar as well, make sure that it is at least 60 days old; otherwise ICANN registrar will not allow it. However, if you want to renew it with your previous registrar only, wait for at least 45 days, otherwise the amount paid for renewal will not add one more year to your previous date of expiry and instead, the money submitted will go waste.

It is better to do a thorough search before selecting a web host or a registrar because, you will have to be associated with them for the coming few years. You can read reviews, talk to people over the discussion forums and ask for their experiences with particular web host or registrar. This way, you will know both their pros and cons and select the best domain name registrar or website hosting provider that will ensure the success of your online business

6 Important Rules in Website Design and Hosting

When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally to serve its purpose. Here are seven important rules of thumb to observe to make sure your website performs well.

1) Do not use splash pages

Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like "welcome" or "click here to enter". In fact, they are just that -- pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the "back" button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.

2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements

Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, provide more valueable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.

3) Have a simple and clear navigation

You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors don't know how to navigate, they will leave your site.

4) Have a clear indication of where the user is

When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don't confuse your visitors because confusion means "abandon ship"!

5) Avoid using audio on your site

If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they're not annoyed by some audio looping on and on on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it -- volume or muting controls would work fine.

6) The most important - Host only with a Reliable Hosting Provider.

Before Chosing a Web Hosting provider, read its reviews and always check the top 10 hosting providers. A good resource to research hosting providers is at Top10DedicatedHosting.com

Understanding "Plesk" Based Control Panel For Web Hosting

Plesk control panel is worldwide popular among top hosting providers for shared, virtual and dedicated hosting. Plesk can be considered as a web site control panel that facilitates installation and managing of necessary tools for the windows web hosting. It is ideal for a dedicated server. Plesk control panel is perfect for a window based web hosting. It includes all the required tools that a user requires to operate his or her internet activity. Plesk is the most reliable and stable control panel that is available for windows based web hosting.

A Plesk based control panel, simplifies the management and administration of websites. A Plesk control panel allows you to create sub domains, manage sites of dynamic content with new site builder, manage dedicated IPS, create standard or frame- forwarding domains, manage SSL certificate for domains. You will also be able to create and manage email, email groups and auto responders. Plesk control also gives you the benefit of managing web sites files by using File Manager or managing site by means of Frontpage web- Admin. With the help of Plesk, you can also monitor the bandwidth usage of a website.

Plesk based control panel system provides hosting automation facility. Plesk control panel reduces operating costs and resources by automating a large number of tasks. Plesk has basically four levels of login and these level login have their own responsibilities and role play. They are explained as follows:

1) Administrator: This is considered to be the highest server level login and it allows web hosting administrators to set up and manage the system items. With the help of Plesk , one can centrally manage the multiple servers with the master level login.

2) Client: This is the second level login account through which the users get domain creation rights from the system administrator.

3) Domain owner: This is a third level type of domain owner account. Here predetermined permission is granted for single domain administration.

4) Mail user : It is the fourth level of individual mail account. It allows the user to log into their own private access and manage passwords, spam filters, be able to deal with anti-virus settings etc.



Plesk is actually made for professional hosting service providers. Plesk control panel can be considered as an efficient server management software. Plesk is designed in such a way as a result, it provides great stability and it is the most secured type of control panel that is available. Plesk has the capability of supporting thousands of accounts per server, thus making more profits. The existing security features of Plesk control panel has improved and it contains new security measures too. Plesk control panel users can enjoy more benefits with regard to Parallel Business Automation. He customized based system provided within the Plesk control panel can easily integrate applications such as Ecommerce, chat and Bulletin Board too. With so much of new enhancements, the Plesk based control panel can efficiently manage through features like auto-component updater, migration manager and a web-based installation facility.

Reseller Hosting - Good or Bad?

Let's talk about the difference between reseller web hosting and a regular providers. It's important to know the differences between someone who is reselling web hosting and an actual web host company because what's at stake is your small business, realty or church/Christian web site. In order to let you decide the pros and cons of using a cheap reseller web hosting account as your provider, we have listed some of the differences below:

A reseller of web hosting space does NOT own or manage the servers, links, networks and DNS that holds your precious web site. Huh? That's right. They simply purchase a chunk of space from the parent web hosting and sell it out as his own for a profit. Conversely, actual web hosting companies actually own the machines and manages them from start to finish. Bottom line here is that a reseller is simply a middleman. Therefore, online small business and other who use them should contemplate this before buying:

1) A reseller may set their own prices on shared web hosting, virtual private servers and dedicated web hosting packages that may or may not be a lower price than the parent web host. 2) If your site crashes or the server goes down, they cannot help you, but has to go through to the actual web hosting provider to "fix" the issue. In this scenario you will have to trust that the company is actually communicating the problem accurately.

Although a reseller web host may provide you with what you are looking for, the question remains: Why not buy affordable web hosting directly from the source? On my sites I'd rather do that since I know I am dealing directly with the folks who can help my web site. How about you?

So let me ask you a question? Can you tell the difference between a web hosting company that resells and one that is the real McCoy? Here are some things you can do to check if your web host is the former:

1) Google "WhoIs" and check out the domain of the suspected reseller site.

2) One telltale sign is that the name servers do not match the listed domain name. Find this out by checking any domain registrar.

3) Google the company online and see what you find about web host reselling. By the way, a great way to find reliable web hosting is to search out online web hosting reviews

4) And here's a novel approach: Speak to the sales department directly about the reselling issue.

Overall, the decision on whether or not you want to use a reseller web hosting service comes down to looking at several factors like price, reliability and web hosting options like what kind of control panel features they offer.

Tips for Starting a Web Hosting Reseller Business

Opening a web hosting reseller business is one of the wisest ways to build or expand your internet based business. However, do not take this step just by deciding overnight and getting into the web hosting reseller market, the very next morning. Whenever you start a new web hosting reseller business or any type of business, you must be aware of the inside and the outside of it. The various points that you should work on, before you start a web hosting reseller business is as follows:

1) Market research and planning:
The first important point to be considered in a business is that you must do a proper market research. Planning is also one of the primary factors for the success towards your new web hosting reseller business. There is little scope for people who start their business without setting specific goals and objectives. People who just jump into a business with lack of research and pre-planning and research are the two main keys towards building a long term, successful and profitable web hosting reseller business.

2) Competition research:
If you want to get ahead in your web hosting reseller business, then in that case, you need to know who your competitors are and their other choice of service. Get to know which competitors are more successful and which are the ones who have achieved least success in their business. This information will act as a feedback and it will guide you to decide what to do and what to avoid with regard to your own web hosting reseller business. The web hosting reseller business contains a great deal of competition. Hence, it is very essential for you to realize the scope and quality of the competition that is involved in a web hosting reseller business.

3) Have a market plan :
You can develop a successful business plan for your new web hosting reseller business by collecting the required information from your initial research. Also, you need to be aware of the fact that just by having a sound business plan does not mean that you will definitely achieve success in your web hosting reseller business. Writing a business plan will only act as a guide and it will help you tackle the challenges and obstacles that come on your way towards starting your web hosting reseller business.

4) Researching the market through other resources:
Market research is considered as the top most priority towards succeeding in any industry. One of the practical ways of getting feedback about the web hosting reseller business is through variety of forums. These forums contain participants who consist of professional web hosting provider’s sellers and other internet professional. As you participate in forums, you get the opportunity to interact directly with owners and employees of other business who usually face similar challenges while building your own web hosting reseller business. Information got through these forums is priceless.

Market research is time consuming but in the long run, it will save your time and money too. The information that you collect for your market research will assist you in managing the present market trend and your competitors. If you are able to understand the state of the market place and your competitors, you will then begin to enjoy a long term success. This success in your business will come about through the information that you have collected about the state of the market towards web hosting reseller business.

Is Free Web Hosting A Viable Option?

Is free web page hosting ever a good choice? A look at the free web hosting market and how free hosting services have changed in recent times and whether it is a viable option for you.

Free web hosting is something that many people choose when first starting out online for one reason and one reason only - the price. But is free web page hosting worth it, in either the short or long term?The rise of free web hosting services in recent years proves that there is without doubt huge demand for no cost hosting and there has been no shortage of companies and marketers keen to tap into what is seen as such a lucrative market.The first companies offering free hosting were able to do so by using advertising revenues to offset their costs and usually, to turn free hosting into a profitable venture for themselves.For you, the consumer, such a tempting offer was hard to resist. The reality of building a site on a free hosting account however, often turned into a rather frustrating and sometimes worthless end user experience.The early pioneers were often hastily set up and after they had raked in the money, users often found themselves high and dry when the free hosting provider went offline overnight, never to return. The fact that users were not out of pocket may have cushioned the blow, but all the work customers had done was invariably lost, along with the time invested.For those who signed up with a more stable free hosting company, the downside was usually the ads that they were forced to run on their websites, over which they had no control. These were usually not remotely relevant to the content of the site, and usually so intrusive that visitors would be scared away pretty quickly. Add to this the fact that free web hosting users were usually stuck with a sub domain name and found it almost impossible to achieve any kind of worthwhile results in the search engines results pages, and free web page hosting started to look far less appealing.Many free web hosting services also left a lot to be desired in the reliability stakes with sites often being offline and unavailable to internet users. This was annoying for many, but to anyone trying to run some kind of online business it was disastrous.Because of all these things, you will doubtless have read in many places that free hosting is really not worth the price you pay, particularly if your site has any commercial aspirations.I would not disagree with this even today, because anyone operating a business online usually needs far more than most free web hosting plans can offer. However, the choices in 2008 are far greater than they have been in the past. Several free hosting providers now offer PHP and MySQL and some pretty decent storage and bandwidth numbers. There are even services that give cPanel access and the ability to host your own domain name. For many people, particularly those on a very tight budget, perhaps free hosting is still worth a look. If you are just looking to host a non commercial website, or perhaps just a place to host marketing squeeze pages and the like, free hosting might well be a viable choice.As with most things, if you get them for free, there is usually a trade off, but the free web hosting industry has certainly improved in recent times and consumer choices are more wide ranging than they once were.

eCommerce Web Hosting

Ok, you have a website and desire to find ecommerce web hosting? Let's look at what you need to have in order to be successful. There are myriads of so called ecommerce web hosting sites out there, but here are the bottom line requirements and features needed:
Shopping Carts

Make sure whatever web hosting you go with has a variety off FREE shopping carts that you can download. We suggest finding a web host that uses Fantastico, because it comes ready with a variety of click click shopping cart installations including such types as osCommerce and Agora Shopping Cart.

SSL

SSL will give the ability of your eCommerce web hosting site to take credit card payments securely online. This is not only important for you, but also for your potential customers as they want to have confidence while shopping online on your site. A good web host will certainly provide for SSL

Disk space and bandwidth

You are going to want to look for as much of the above as possible. I had the unfortunate experience of have a site where I began getting a ton of traffice (with potential buyers), but my site kept going down because I exceeded my quota of disk space and bandwidth. Therefore, look for a ecommer web hosting site that offers unlimited bandwidth and you'll save yourself some pain.

Finally, there are other considerations to look at when shopping around for ecommerce web hosting:

Reliability:

The place where you're hosting your site needs to be reliable. That is, their servers need to be able to guarantee at least 99.5% uptime for its servers. You need to know your customers can always find your site whenever they want. It's a horrible thing to have customers trying to click on your site, but not being able to.

Price

You are in an online business to make money not lose it. There are many affordable web hosting companies out there that offer ecommerce hosting for less than seven dollars per month. These types of shared web hosting plans can easily handle small and medium sized online businesses.

FTP

If you have an online small business there are times where you will need to upload files or affiliate links. Having FTP access will make all this possible and easy to do.

Support

I cannot tell you how important this is, especially if you're not a tech geek. Whatever ecommerce web hosting company you decide on, you will inevitably run into an issue you cannot solve on your own. With good tech support, you have tons of back-up help if you ever need.

Overall, as you shop around for ecommerce web hosting research the above areas about all of them, and choose one that fits your needs. So remember, don't let the price of the hosting or its basic features be the only things you investigate before signing up with your new ecommerce host.

Website Hosting Companies. Understanding How Hosting Providers Work

Website Hosting - How To Select A Web Host Provider That Wants You To Succeed

As with a lot of purchases, your first urge when choosing website hosting is to go with the cheapest. After all they are all similar, so why should you pay more?

There are a number of objective standards which separates one website hosting company from some others, and money is only one of them. And it should be made clear that the cost should not be the most crucial one.

Choosing a website hosting company based on price alone is equivalent to selecting a builder or electrician on price alone. Certainly, they might maintain or fix your house cheaper, but will your house be safe?

The first consideration is power. Will the website hosting company have the capability to provide and deliver adequate performance? Most web hosting companies advertise that they are able to provide massive bandwidth and hundreds of dedicated servers, and they are usually telling the truth.

However, there is a big difference between existing capacity and usable capacity. Think of it this way; If a website hosting provider has thousands of websites with millions of visitors per day, the usable free capacity would be much lower. Here is a simple example; A delivery truck may have the capacity to carry 8,000 lbs. But not if it is already carrying 7,999lbs!

The experts would advise you ask about available capacity, and have the hosting company back up their proof with reliable numbers. And of course, if you cannot read the data they provide, find somebody to help you do so.

Next, and a very close second, is dependability. A lot of power is worthless if it is cut or goes down often.

Power outages are actually a normal part of business. Even Microsoft, yahoo and google go down on occasions. The difference is, with decent website hosting companies, it seldom happens and a decent provider would have failover plans, which means if their system does go down it is either up once again instantaneously, or you never see the drop because a backup system sets in automatically.

A good rule of thumb is to grill the website hosting company closely about their up time. Most quality hosting providers will say they run at 99.5%, or higher. However, like the infamous on-time estimates of airlines, those figures can sometimes be considered shady by adjusting the definition of up time.

When it comes to website hosting, what should really matter is whether your visitors will be able to reach your site at any time, 24 hours a days should they want to.

Again, the experts would suggest to find out what back up systems, both human and technical the hosting provider has in place to address failures of all sorts. It is a fact that servers can go down, networks do fail, hard disks could become defective and data lose is an absolute fact, and believe me, these conditions can dramatically mean the difference between success and failure for any website owner.

The result is your website becomes unavailable, which is not good for business. As far as a quality website hosting company, the hosting provider must be equipped to deal with any eventuality and have your website up again as quickly as possible.

Last, but not least, is website hosting security.

With the continuing prevalence of computer viruses and the dreaded Spam problems, you need to guarantee the website hosting company you choose has an array of techniques for addressing them. This basically means the hosting provider has excellent technical plans in place and experienced staff available 24 hours a day who are well-educated in addressing with those problems.

There is a very old saying that goes: one ounce of prevention is worth at least one pound of cure, and when it comes to your website, it is vital you understand the meaning.

All these website issues are paramount to locating a website hosting provider that can deliver the best services you need.

Subsequently, once those criteria are fulfilled by a number of prospects, then you are able to begin narrowing down the hosting companies by price.

Finding The Right Hosting Plan With Web Hosting Reviews

Reviews on products have long been relied on to help people make wise shopping choices and in today's environment of ecommerce, reviews are relied on more than ever. Since so much is purchased online without being able to "handle the merchandise" first, people can learn about the quality of a product from the experience of others. This is also true when it comes to intangible services, and many web entrepreneurs rely on hosting reviews to help them choose the best web hosting provider.

There are many different choices in web server hosting services and it seems that there are brand new web hosting companies cropping up every single day. This often makes it very difficult to choose a domain web hosting provider because the different plans that are offered can seem complicated and can easily be confusing, especially to someone who is new to the internet and does not know much about how to choose a web hosting plan. This is when reviews about hosting can be especially beneficial.


Web server hosting reviews can help people who are new to internet businesses and websites to make sense of the many different hosting options and packages that are available. The comparisons from the reviews on the different hosting companies can often make it easier to quickly size up the offerings.

One of the primary things that should be covered in good reviews of hosting services is the reliability, or the uptime, of the various web server hosting companies. High quality hosting providers will have a guaranteed 100% uptime because they have redundant servers in secondary locations to assure that access to the sites, which are being hosted, is uninterrupted, even in the case of equipment failure or some type of emergency or disaster. In general, the medium and low cost hosting services will have an uptime of 99% plus, while free webhosting services can be less reliable.

Another important aspect of web server hosting that should be checked out thoroughly through web reviews is the quality and responsiveness of the customer service and technical support department. If your website stops working properly or if you run into problems configuring a script that you need to run, then you want to be sure that you are going to get a fast response to your problem.

It is also important to know if the hosting company has support 24 hours a day, and if their clients, who are not experienced in the technical aspects of web site hosting, will be treated with a professional attitude.

While reviews about hosting services, such as free webhosting, low cost web hosting and dedicated server hosting, can be very helpful to determine the quality and reliability of a hosting service, people must also be aware that reviews can be skewed to favor a certain company and can be misleading. This is because there are many affiliates who will promote a particular web server hosting provider and write glowing reviews about the company, hoping that the review helps them to earn a commission.

With this in mind, it is very wise to spend a little extra time and look for at least a few different web hosting reviews in order to get a balanced and full picture of the various web hosting plan companies. With information from a range of reviews, it should be possible for even a person who is new to hosting to choose a plan that is easy on the budget, yet will still provide all of the needed services.

Affordable Website Hosting

So how can you find affordable website hosting? More people nowadays are seeking to get hold of low cost/affordable website hosting. Bear in mind, nowadays it's not very hard to find affordable website hosting for your internet site, because there are literally hundreds if not thousands of hosting companies today.

The first and arguably the most crucial step as you attempt to find the right affordable website hosting company is to shop around. Comparing companies is always a beneficial method to save money, and detecting a good service for your web hosting needs is no exception. Online searches are in all probability your best bet for finding those great deals on web hosting, but do not give in to the temptation to just pick a company from a list of hits and sign on the dotted line. Rather, take time to compare the services, prices and reports of several companies. Finding the service provider that provides the best bottom-line price for web hosting may not be the provider that saves you the most money.


There are many steps you are able to take to help minimize costs. A few call for some effort on your part whilst others are merely subject of common sense. Regardless of what your specific needs are, you will probable find that there are companies out there providing affordable website hosting with those needs in mind.

Here are a few useful tips and information to aid you find the most beneficial and most affordable website hosting companies speedily. In past times, getting hold of a good affordable website hosting company was rather simple: all that was involved was to merely read the website of Web hosting providers and check which one was the best.

Although set up fees and monthly maintenance fees are pretty straightforward, you ought besides anticipate additional fees that could be charged by a particular provider. Depending upon your needs, you may find yourself paying unnecessary fcosts for a service you supposed to be provided in the monthly fee. There's no substitute for cautiously viewing your choices as you look for an affordable website hosting company.
Nowadays however, with all the competition and self declaration, it's harder to determine which Website hosting companies are the best without sampling them all beforehand. Bear in mind, there are two dissimilar factors you must decide in advance for your personal situation before you make the right decision on your affordable website hosting company.

First off, you need to ascertain how much traffic you'll be getting to your website. Believe it or not, there really are some hosting companies that will set a limitation on the amount of traffic to which your website can receive in order for your site to be hosted on their server. Nevertheless, good affordable website hosting companies won't do this. Be sure the company you're considering has no such limitations.

Good affordable website hosting companies will allow for adequate space so you can get as much traffic as you want to your website. Likewise, good hosting companies will enable you to be able to set up pictures or images and even videos on your website. These are something that a few affordable website hosting companies might not permit, and so do check if this is something you will be wanting to do with your website.

You had better look for a company that provides a web hosting software package specifically to cope with your needs. You could be paying a significantly higher monthly fee for a plan that plainly oversteps the needs of your company. If you don't require a larger space, don't buy a larger space. But with an eye to the future, acknowledge the company's standpoint on upgrading an account afterwards whenever you need additional space.

In addition to the points raised above, be sure you know what type of customer service the company has ahead of you getting involved with them. For this, just read reviews by actual customers who have had experience with that company. Do make certain that they offer 24/7 customer service just in case something breaks down with your server.

Lastly, know the company. Whilst it's an advantageous thing to look for the most competitive bottom-line cost, the best set up deal and a plan that fits your needs, it will not do you any good whenever you're perpetually out of commission because of down time. Each time you find yourself without the web hosting service, you are running the risk of losing orders, customers and your own reputation - altogether possibly annihilating to a business. Even if you genuinely want to minimise costs with a web hosting package, saving a few bucks is likely not worth the reputation of your own business. Hopefully these tips will aid you in finding the right affordable hosting company for you.

5 Points Considers While Hosting E-commerce Website

Hosting websites needs proper analysis because of several factors affect the performance of the website at the browsing stage.

You need to purchase shopping card by two modes first one is hosting on the server and another one is renting the server. Buying of shopping card is based on your budget. Here are the different options for hosting website with security.


The e-commerce website normally not need database server to manage the databases. You need to select suitable web-hosting plan to get the database site to make e-commerce website functioning. The database is the most essential things in the e-commerce website because with the database entire process has been perform so it is most important for you to handle the database properly to run the e-commerce application smoothly.

1. In e-commerce application, you need knowledgeable database administrator to manage the database with different administrative tools. It needs good knowledge of application and management of data on the database server.

2. The administrator can perform the functions like optimizing tables and specific database. It also provides general maintenance to handle the day to day task. It is one of the most crucial tasks for you to run the e-commerce applications.

3. If your e-commerce application needs proper security and management of database than some web hosting company prefer to manage their database through dedicated server. It is more secured than the shared server.

4. The dedicated server hosting provides greater capacity and reliability amongst the other servers. The major advantages to get the dedicated server are you do not want to purchase or maintain your own equipments so that overhead cost can get decline.

5. Finally, the ecommerce hosting needs proper security against the possible threats from hackers. It needs SSL security to get proper security against the e-commerce transactions.

Finding the best hostings

The Web Hosting industry has become extremely competitive. With more and more people setting up either personal, or business web pages the hosting companies have been forced to compete for your business more than ever before.
There are many, many choices when it comes to Web Hosting companies. Let's take a look at some of the things you will want to consider when choosing a web host.
Disk space: How much will you need? The disk space is how much space your account takes up on their server. This is similar to how much space a folder takes up on your hard drive. If you are just running one or two small sites most any plan will give you more than enough space for your needs. Many hosting companies are now offering unlimited disc space.
Bandwidth: What this means basically is how many times a file can be viewed. As an example, if you have a 2 MB file and 200 MB of bandwidth, then the file can be viewed 200 times. Again, many companies claim to offer unlimited data transfer. Read the fine print, there can be stipulations.
Support / Service: Support and service are crucial to your hosting experience, especially if you are a new webmaster. You may find that this is one of the single most important things to consider.
Extra Features: Most web hosting companies offer essentially the same basic features, although some Web hosts will offer some features which may or may not be exclusive to them. They all put a price on these extra features so a good rule of thumb is, if you don't need it, don't buy it.
Most web hosting providers have some sort of plan comparison page that will list the features like space and bandwidth as well all the little the extra things you may or may not need. When you browse a web hosts site, check these things out and try to get an idea of what they offer, whether or not you need it, and how much it will cost.

This covers just the very basic things you should consider when shopping for a web host. Do your research and make your comparisons before choosing a specific web host.

how to get cheap hosting with all your needs

As a webmaster you are always looking to keep your hosting costs as low as possible. You want to find a cheap host but you also want to find a host that is reliable and that offer the service and functionality that you need for your sites.

Different types of sites require different functionality. These varying requirements can sometimes mean the features you need can end up being expensive. Certain types of sites such as web proxy sites, image hosts and streaming video sites can use a lot of bandwidth and some require a lot of processing power. Other types of sites such as those made up of a few flat HTML files will not need such a powerful server.

You first need to consider the types of sites you are looking to host. Are there going to be any special requirements for your sites such as databases, streaming video or server side programming languages such as PHP.

There are lot of hosts that provide many features as standard such as a control panel, MySQL databases, PHP, email addresses, add on domains and various single click install scripts. Other features usually vary with cost such as disk space and bandwidth.

If you want to find a cheaper host then you need to optimise your site requirements with what different web hosting companies provide. For example if you have a site with half a dozen pages containing some text and a few pictures then you are not going to have a very demanding site. You could get a basic hosting package with none of the bells and whistles to keep your cost down.

Usually webmasters have more than one site that needs to be hosted. With certain hosting packages you can host multiple websites which means you can save money on multiple hosting accounts and keep all your sites in one place. You can do this by using a reseller hosting account that allows you to host multiple separate sites on a single hosting account. These are usually hosting accounts that come with management software such as Web Hosting Manager. WHM usually makes a hosting account more expensive so if you do not need to keep each site completely separate you can instead get a hosting package that allows multiple add on domains. This will save you even more money as you will not need to have WHM, which the host has to pay for a license to use.

About features of webhosting services

web hosting service is an Internet based service offering online arrangements to store data, descriptions through Web. As the Internet continues to grow, increased competition, new marketing methods and ensuring excellent quality service to customers are all obstacles that business owners must face in order to turn a profit. There are numbers of different companies offering web hosting services. Some provide free web hosting service and some charges a fee.

It is also very important to find that what kind of hosting service is best for you. Web hosting is a cutthroat business. When looking for a web host for your small business, keep in mind the following as these features can make running your business a little easier. There are different types of web hosting services: shared web hosting, paid web hosting, free web hosting, clustered web hosting, and reseller web hosting, file web hosting and dedicated web hosting. This has drawbacks like reducing speed and making information more accessible to tampering.

Free web hosting is free of cost. On the average the cost of the website should not any longer than per megabytes the low cost web hosting companies must provide the maximum bandwidth with minimum time. You can open account with the help of free services or blogger and no experience is needed for such hosting service. But on the other hand, you have to pay monthly fee for using paid hosting service. The major types of web hosting services are free web hosting, dedicated web hosting, and shared hosting, collocation web host and reseller web hosting. You can set-up your domain by using your own domain name. In shared web hosting service, your website is located on the same server with hundreds of other users.

If a user anticipates lot of visitors to his site, then he needs a service provider that can handle the traffic without any pester. A person using dedicated web hosting service has full control on its server. Small business web hosting service is becoming very popular now a day. It is important to check what the fees for the service. Reseller service allows users to resell the service to others. File hosting service is used for hosting large files.

The choice of the web hosting service will somehow decide the future of his online business. This makes all the difference for your business. Web hosting services are helpful, safe, convenient and reasonably priced. You don't have to pay much for such services. Most of the web hosting companies are offering user friendly website designs and editing tools like FrontPage, PHP. In collocation web service a person will own physical space to maintain a server.

GoDaddy Review & GoDaddy Features and Benefits

  Features : 
 Godaddy.com offers exciting windows & linux hosting plans for as low as $4.99 per month only. They are one of the leading windows hosting provider with Control Panel. They have Shared Hosting, Dedicated Servers and Virtual Dedicated and Dedicated Plans, Reseller Plans in their portfolio.

Benifits :

Go Daddy  is a one stop shop for all of your web hosting needs. From registering your domain name to hosting your individual or business presence on the Internet, GoDaddy has it all. On top of it all they have superb 24/7 customer service! The support you will receive will astound you!

VISIT GoDaddy Now for More Info or to Purchase Web Hosting Services!

Here are just a few of the features you can expect from GoDaddy:

• Domain name registration
• Domain transfer
• Bulk transfer
• Bulk registration
• Registrations such as private registration, business registration, deluxe registration, protected registration, certified domains
• Sell your domains
• Web hosting
• WordPress hosting
• Grid hosting
• Blog/Podcast hosting
• Offers dedicated servers, virtual servers
• Dedicated IP
• Web site analytics
• E-mail
• Site builders
• SSL certificates

GoDaddy is a great option for all of your needs. They work with many platforms and the support is very knowledgeable in everything that you could possibly need.

Click Here To Visit Go.Daddy.com Today!