Saturday 2 October 2010

Hosting Options

The best way to recieve large numbers of customers is through online promotion. You obtain worldwide publicity with unlimited access for your firm, services or products you're selling. The internet is the number one information and shopping resource for most individuals. When you need to launch your website, you simply need a domain name and a n internet website hosting. And then your exposure is unlimited.

A domain name is the internet address your users will come to when they click to go to your site. These can be bought through a domain name registrar, or through your hosting provider, more often than not for around ten dollars per year. In terms of start-up costs and PR costs, this is great value for money, considering the numbers of individuals you will have access to.

Once you have your domain name sorted you need to acquire a web hosting service, or sometimes called internet website hosting. This service, often renewed on an annual or monthly basis, will store your web pages,images,plugins etc for you. Most hosting companies provide domain registration services so you can get a domain name through them. They usually also provide Email services and other functions.

Most hosting companies such as Hostgator provide different setups to meet every individuals needs. They usually are broken down in to 4 types of packages.

Starter Packages
A company like Hostgator has different start up packages for the different level of users. These include hatchling plans $4.95 month,  a Baby plan $7.95 month and a Business plan starting at $12,95 a month.

Reseller Hosting
These plans start at $24.95 per month and is for more serious users, especially people that want to sell there websites

VPS Hosting
These are virtual private servers that you can hire from your hosting provider. These packages start from $19.95 a month.

Dedicated servers
These are powerful dedicated servers that you can use that no one else has access to. aimed at the more experienced users, these packages start from $174 a month.

All the different hosting companies have these packages, so you can shop around, but I have used Hostgator for a few years now, and I highly rate them.
Ive never had any issues, and there support is second to none.

Sunday 12 September 2010

Cpanel Web Hosting

Today I am going to discuss with you what Cpanel is and its benefits to the user. Cpanel is a control panel that is UNIX based, that gives you a graphical interface to work with. It has tools that aid you in creating your website. Most of the hosting providers use cpanel, and Hostgator is no exception. With cpanel it makes it easy for the user to see all the tools needed to create that first website.

The Cpanel is broken down in to different categories.

• Special Offers: This category shows all the special offers hostgator are providing. This includes items such as website templates, or quality designed shopping cart for your website.
• Links: These are links to various offers or information including live chat support, or billing.
• Preferences: This category includes video tutorials, information about your account, changing your password and so on.
• SEO tools: This category helps you with optimising your website through different techniques. It includes a link building directory, SEO consultation, and a broken link report tool.
• Files: This is where all your website information is held in the file manager and this is where you will upload information such as a new theme for your website, or a new plug-in.
• Mail: You can have numerous email accounts with hostgator and this is where you add, delete accounts. You can add your mailing lists here, send out mass emails, and use auto responders to send the mail for you.
• Logs: This category is a log analyzer, providing stats off your website, for example the amount of visitors you receive daily.
• Security: You can password protect certain directories here, and various other things for your website.
• Domains: This shows you what domain names you have, and you can also add sub domains of your domain names here. There is also a section for parking your domain names.
• Database: This is where the databases off all your websites are stored, although you might think it’s complicated to add a database, it’s fairly straight forward, when you use another future of the cpanel further down called fantastico.
• Software: This is what the majority of people use with cpanel, they install fantastico, which helps in the installation of wordpress on to your site, and it also creates the database for you.
• Advanced: In here you can perform certain tasks on your site such as cron jobs (automated tasks), and other options such as network tools, or index manager.

So that basically is the structure of your cpanel, it might look daunting at first, but in reality it’s straight forward after a few go’s. Most people tend to use only a few categories anyway, they want there website up and running, so they will install fantastico, from the software category. Then they will probably use the file manager to upload various things to the site, themes, plugins, graphics etc.

I hope this helps you in deciding to build your first website, and I personally think that hostgator is perfect for the beginner, because of this cpanel. And there live chat support is second to none.

Thursday 26 August 2010

Host your own webpage - Steps needed

The internet is a huge place with millions and millions of web pages floating around, and maybe you think I want to do that but you’re not sure what the process is. I will try and explain the steps you need to take for that first big step into the www.

Just like in real life you need somewhere to live, so the same thing applies on the internet. So the first thing you would need is a domain name to use as an address for your new webpage. The domain name should be relevant to what you’re trying to achieve with your site, so the name should describe what you’re going to do really.

Now that you have your address, you need to build that house, and the most important thing you have to have is a good hosting provider. This is the backbone of your house, as they provide the server which will hold your domain name.

Then to finish of your house of www. You will need a platform in your house which you can build your WebPages. The most commonly used platform for you to host your own webpage is wordpress. It’s a free platform, easy to use, and it has hundreds of add ons, to enhance your site.

So that’s all you need to put your little piece of real estate on the big wide web, a domain name, a good hosting provider, and a platform such as wordpress.

I would like to point out that choosing a hosting provider you need to look at someone that is reliable, that has good live support,(the best ones have 24 hour support), they have fantastico as part of there program, because fantastico installs wordpress for you instantly, without having to deal with databases and such.

I hope my little guide helps you take that first step to host your own webpage, and join the many millions of users that already do.

Host your own webpage - Its not that hard

If you would like to host your own webpage , there are a few obstacles in your way to achieving this, which I shall try to explain here.

Before you do anything you would need to think is my webpage going to be for a business, or is it just for fun? If you just want to put up a simple site to show your friends and family, then you could just use a simple platform like blogger, which is free and very easy to set up. If however you want to make your site look a bit more professional, than you would need more than a free platform like blogger.

First thing you would need is a domain name, preferably something that is related to what your webpage will be about. There are hundreds of domain name registrars out there, for you to choose the name that best suits your page. Unfortunately all the best domain names are taken, but something specific to you or your business should still be available.

Once you get that domain name for your webpage, what you will need to do next is point its name servers to your host. Now you’re thinking what’s a host? Well hosting providers have big servers, so that they can host thousands of sites on there servers, which makes it easier for you and me to put up a webpage. So you point the name server of your domain name so that it points to the hosting company, and you’re nearly ready to go.

The hosting company provides the server that will host your webpage, but your just using there space on the server, so you need a platform on which to put your webpage. The most common platform used is wordpress, which is a free platform that has literally hundreds of different options that you can use to enhance your webpage.

So that’s it choose a domain name, point it to your hosting provider, pick a platform that you can put your webpage on such as wordpress, then you’re good to go. I should point out that there is hundreds of hosting providers out there, that you can choose from. They average from around $7-$10 per month. You need to be looking for a company that has good 24 hour live chat support, a good interface which should have fantastico, which makes installing your domain name on to wordpress a breeze.

Host your own webpage - Things you will need

If you would like to put a website on to the internet then you will need a hosting provider. There are a few steps involved in creating your own website; first off you will need to buy a domain name. Once you have a name for your site, there is literally hundreds of sites you can choose to register your domain name, you will need to set the DNS settings so that your domain name points to your new host.

When deciding on a hosting provider to host your own webpage , you need to take into account things such as how reliable is your host. Do they give 24 hour support; most of the top companies give live 24 hour support. Obviously you would like a cheap host, but you pay for what you get, but you can expect to pay between $7 to $10 per month.

Other things to take into consideration are how many domain names you can host on 1 account, can you have an email address associated with the account. Reputable companies also allow bulk email sending, if you decided to set up an email list.

Another important feature I think people need when deciding to host your own webpage, is the hosting interface. You need an interface that is user friendly, so that you can navigate your way around with ease.

A good point to remember also is when you choose your host, make sure that it has fantastico as one of its features, because fantastico supports wordpress, which is the most widely used platform for building your website.

Clicking on fantastico in your host once your domain name has been added, automatically sets up your basic website for you to build, very useful feature indeed. So that’s it basically, buy a domain name from a registrar, and change the dns so that it points to your new hosting company. Install wordpress through your host, using fantastico. And start building whatever you want.

Monday 18 January 2010

Cpanel - Your Information Panel



This is what your cpanel will look like in  Hostgators web hosting. It lists all the different categories off things you will need to maintain a website. most people never get round to using all the different options within the cpanel, but they are there just incase.
Ill give you a rundown off all the different categories, so that you can get a feel of its functionality.

Partners
This basically is partner programs that you can use in conjunction with hostgator. For example you could add a shopping cart to your blog, by using one of hostgator partners, or you could use one of there partner companies web page templates, but these programs cost more money, so people tend to stay away from these. There is many free website templates available, just do a search on Google and you will see.

Hostgator Links
This category is an important feature of hostgator, because this is where you get live help if you ever need it. there open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, really friendly, and very knowledgeable, so they will sort out any problems you may have. Believe me its worth the small monthly fee just for this service alone.
Other options in this category include your billing, hostgator add ons, for example you can get a $50 credit towards Google adwords in this category.

Preferences
This is a good place to learn how to use hostgator, with video tutorials, a getting started wizard, and options like changing your password, or contact info.

Mail
As a beginner you probably will not use this category much, maybe to set up an email account for your website, but this is geared mainly towards email marketeers, who create lists of thousands of people on a database, then send out offers to them.

Files
I think this is probably your most important category, because this is where you will upload your files to hostgator, for example if you are using wordpress, then you need to upload your files to hostgator, so that they can be managed. You can upload your theme for your website, all the plugins you require, and the images, for your site. You will need a ftp (file transfer protocol) client to help you in getting your files from your hard drive, up to hostgator.

 
Ive included a picture of the file manager as this is where you will manage everything related to uploading your files to hostgator. It might seem a bit daunting right now, but its really not to bad to understand, and dont forget, you have the live chat if you ever get stuck.

Logs
This is the place where you can check your website stats, for example how many visitors you get , how much bandwith you are using on your host, for example a site dedicated to say photography will use lots of images, so it will use more bandwith. and depending on your package which I mentioned in my first post, you will have certain amounts of bandwith per package, so its important to check first, which package suits your needs.

Security
Ive never used this as its more to do with having hostgator on a network, say for example on a college network, so the administrator can protect certain files.

domains
In my first post I mentioned about domain names, you could just use a blogger like I am right now, so you dont need a domain name. But a lot of people use a hosting package so that they can buy a domain name, and redirect it to there hosting account. Domain names add a lot more weight in Googles eyes, so its a good idea to buy one. Its quite easy to redirect to your host, and there is also the option of adding sub domains.
a subdomain is a addon of your main domain, for example, say you redirected, mydomain.com to your host account, you could make many different subdomains of that name. site.mydomain.com, buy.mydomain.com, and so on. The beauty of sub domains is that they are free, and you can add as many as 1000, in a typical account, so your only buying 1 main domain name.