3 Top Mistakes Why Your Web Hosting Service Didn't Take Off

Web hosting services are hot in the market at the moment due to the current internet boom. Many deem starting such web hosting services to be a goldmine as the number of Web 2.0 websites, internet marketing forums, and blogs is on the rise.
When it comes to business, everything looks good upon first look. As they punch in the numbers on the calculator and come up with immediate pricing schemes that suit their income goals, many will it to be too good to be true.
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However, out of the 10 people actively working on launching their own web hosting, 8 fail within the first month. You might wonder what could cause such a phenomenon. Here are the top 3 mistakes many starter entrepreneurs make in the web hosting business.

#1 Failing to Come Up With a Web Hosting Business Plan

A web hosting business plan is not just a business plan. The technical aspect of the business requires solid knowledge of what it takes to compete against the big companies out there. If you offer modest features for a high price, you'll find customers shying away from your website in a jiffy.

Knowing what a business entails means that you'll provide the best service level within your budget range. Your web hosting business plan should be a balance between rock solid technical features and an affordable competitive price.

#2 Failing to Understand Web 2.0 Dynamics

Everyone's obsessed with Web 2.0. The term has become a wide umbrella in which everything cool and trendy falls under. The majority of customers perceive Web 2.0 in terms of design, therefore; your company's website should reflect such a thing. Why you may ask? It is simply because anything that does not go with their idea of Web 2.0 will seem to be obsolete.

To ensure your web hosting company's survival, you must go with the flow. Obtain a Web 2.0 look; facilitate Web 2.0 applications and features in your hosting plan.

#3 Failing To Present Relevant Bonuses

Who wants 1000 free templates without any beginner help on how to install them on your website? Why would your customer need free flash setups when everyone's going for simple CSS?

Presenting relevant, easy to operate bonuses is the key to keep your customers coming back to your website. Another branch of this mistake is failing to recognize that advertising is hot at the moment. Everyone's looking to invest in Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing credits. Why not offer free Google and Yahoo credits as a bonus? This will definitely lure a customer or two.

Even better, you can present your customers with free easy to use templates that are Adsense ready or come with coded sponsor spots. This will save your customers the hassle of surfing the web for hours to find such templates.

Ideally, a starter web hosting company should seek to compete with the better offers out there. Keeping your eye on the market's needs, trends, and prices will keep you in the game for years and years to come

Domain Name Registration

In order for people to view a website, they need to enter its address, also known as its domain name or URL The characters typed into the address bar are normally a phrase that indicates something about the site be it a description, business or site name or a word that indicates the same things. The domain names offered at no cost by web hosting companies and those offered by companies which specialize in cheap domain names have a big difference between them. The domain names offered at no charge by hosting companies are not usually new domains but are in the form of a third level on their own domain names.

The free web hosting company's domain name is part of the address for a new third level domain, so you will need to type that in as well. A third level domain name is that the name is long and often tricky to recall which can be a big problem with them. Of course buying your own unique name will make the domain shorter and easier to remember. Finding a low cost one is easily possible as there are many cheap domain name companies all competing for business.

The range in price for cheap domain names varies from free to approximately seven dollars. However, if a free domain name is worth anything then it will usually be included in the price of web hosting, so in effect the customer is still paying for it. Paying for a domain name usually means that you can get it without a bundles web hosting package. You can pay anything from one dollar up for a paid for domain name.

The method of registration for a domain name makes no distinction between prices paid for the domains, so a cheap domain name is just as effective. Making sure that the domain name required is still available is usually the first thing to do. The customer must enter the name they are looking for into a certain text box and then decide on and select the extension chosen. The page will then tell them is the domain name is taken or not, if it is then they can purchase it, if not they will have to decide on a different name. Suggested alternatives will often be offered if the desired domain name is already in use.

Crooked companies sometimes make using cheap domain names a bad idea - if a person uses a crooked company then they may never actually receive their domain name. The company will tell the customer that the domain will not be active immediately and that they will have to wait for some time. Unfortunately after waiting a few days the domain is still not active, and it is no use emailing an unscrupulous company as they won't do anything.

A good first step to making sure that a person hasn't found a fraudulent company is to check with the better Business Bureau and find out if the cheap domain name company is registered. The organization that makes sure registered businesses are operating legitimately is the Better Business Bureau. Checking for traditional land based contact information such as an address and telephone number is a good second step to ensure that the cheap domain name company is not fake. Another place to check is message boards that are dedicated to webmasters, ask if anyone knows if the company has a good or bad reputation.

If no one has ever dealt with the company you may want to get alternative suggestions for a reputable company. But, if a cheap domain name company is reputable then there is not other reason the avoid getting a discounted domain name with them. A legitimate and reputable cheap domain name company is an excellent find and should be taken advantage of, the domain will work the same way no matter what was paid for it.

Acceptance of Search Engines –Steps

Your website represents your entity. You have prepared the website after going through a hectic thought discovery process and naturally you have great expectations from your website in terms of monetary benefits and acceptance of people. All these become evident when you find that huge numbers of visitors are thronging your site every day. Such volume of visitors may be generated by referrals, the search engines or simply direct visits. Among the three ways of getting visitors, search engine plays a dominant role in obtaining maximum number of visitors. In the case of your website being a new one, the only option is a search engine. Here we must accept the supremacy of Google, which is the most efficient of all search engines in the market commanding as the main source of nearly half of all the visits made in websites.
There are critical situations to understand in ranking process in the placement table. With the change in the nature of algorithm, the sites which rank at one time among top 10 goes somewhere out of the top 2 or 5 pages. The scenario turns different and somewhat risky when a site completely misses the SERPs and looses the visitors due to its non-presence. Such situation needs immediate assistance and can be cured well before it becomes evident for your website. The efficient and worthy search engine optimization needs time and patience to show results but , at the same time, by following it accordingly you will eliminate the chances of being hit by Google's updates and algorithm changes.Mentioned below are some fundamentals to get a high ranking position in Google and in other search engines as well.
No Spam: Google along with all search engines hate spam and your site may become a victim of penalization for the same. It is wise to avoid this totally. Spam means excess of anything being doing on-page as per Google. Refrain from the excessive usage of keywords in content, HTML comments, long tail Alt Tags, Alt tag on very tiny images and others.
It is better to remain to the most suitable title, Meta description and use as little keywords in keywords Meta as required. Use the proper Alt tag, which provide good description along with keyword and avoid filling it up only with keywords.
Content Standard: Offer your visitors the content with good quality, which provides some usefulness to them and not crowded only with variety of keywords Refrain from using carbon copy of contents as this is not going to serve your purpose at all. Only an original content combined with the flow of useful information will be able to hold your visitors to your website and you can expect repeated visits from them. Repeatedly visited website has better chances to acquire the top place for a considerable period of time.
Link Building: Link has an important role to play in the matter of establishment and high ranking in the SERPs. With the volume of incoming traffic of links, the website gains more popularity and simultaneously enjoys more trust from the search engines. Several means and ways are there to obtain links. Two major ways are Directory submission and Article submission, which are preferred to obtain the incoming links. Links of similar industries can only be exchanged for any useful results. The process of link exchange is taken up in order to provide benefit to the visitors of your site. That is why the importance should be given only to links of similar industry type for information, services and products having likewise qualities

Hosting Services

Hosting Services
Having decided that a website would be a good decision for any business to have especially in the new e-commerce world we all live in, you then have to find a domain name which is your web address or your URL address. The next step would be to find a Web Designer who is going to design a wonderful site that is going to generate you lots and lots of business. The web designer would usually provide Hosting Services; I think this is recommended as if things go wrong due to a software update a web designer are best placed to quickly get your site back up and running again.
I have outline below some of the key terminology that is used.
Disk Space: This is the amount of ' space' you can use on the server.
Your Domain Name: Domain names are disappearing fast. Don't wait to secure your name - even if you are not ready to create a Web site today, your name will be registered, and parked, ready to use at a later date.

A virtually hosted site is accessed using your domain name e.g. www.yourcompany.co.uk
FTP: FTP or File Transfer Protocol is the standard way to upload files/your web site to a server. It is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Microsoft FrontPage Extensions: A series of programs supplied on the server that serves your website, to allow active content to run. These allow sophisticated programs to be built to be included within your website.
PHP Support: PHP, or Hypertext Preprocessor, is an open source, server-side, HTML embedded scripting language used to create dynamic Web pages. (Similar to ASP and Cold Fusion, PHP is executed on the server).
MySQL Database: The most popular Open Source SQL (Structured Query Language),database management system. MySQL Server was originally developed to handle large databases much faster than existing solutions. MySQL Server today offers a rich and useful set of functions. Its connectivity, speed, and security make MySQL Server highly suited for accessing databases on the Internet.
ASP/ASP.NET Support: Active Server Pages - a specification for a dynamically created Web page with a .ASP extension, that utilizes ActiveX scripting -- usually VB Script or Jscript code.
Microsoft Access Database:
A Microsoft software product that is primarily a data management tool (database software).

Microsoft SQL Server Database: A relational database management system (RDBMS) which is part of Microsoft's BackOffice family of servers. SQL Server was designed for client/server use and is accessed by applications using SQL.
UNIX/Linux Server: Unix has become a widely used multiuser general-purpose operating system around the world.

Linux, is a Unix-like operating system that was designed to provide PC users a free, or very low-cost, operating system comparable to the traditional (and usually more expensive), Unix systems.
Microsoft Windows 2003 Server: Windows 2003 Server is a multipurpose operating system capable of handling a diverse set of server roles.
Site Backups: The servers are backed up daily.
Data Transfer per month: In general, any outward bound traffic from a web site, with the exception of e-mail, is considered to be data transfer. For example, each time a web page, image, midi file, quicktime video, etc. is loaded, data transfer is generated.

SSL Secure Server: Secured Sockets Layer is a protocol that transmits your communications, over the Internet, in an encrypted form.
Linux and Windows plans support Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) with your own certificate, if required, for a customised shopping cart. Just purchase an SSL certificate from any Internet certificate authority (such as Thawte) and we will install it on your web site.

SSL secure credit card capture: Secured Sockets Layer is a protocol that transmits your communications over the Internet in an encrypted form.
A capture page is provided with the Shopping cart system.
Email storage per mailbox: You can have web generated email associated with your domain name, storing 20MB of mail/data per mail box.
POP3 mailboxes: The number of individually named web generated email mail boxes - e.g info@yourdomain.co.uk
Email forwarding: You can forward your web generated email to an alternative email address, when/if required.
Catch-all mail box: A domain e-mail box collects all mail for all users into a single mailbox. You collect this mail with any standard e-mail program, or you can use a mail server to collect and distribute the e-mail to individual users at your end. If you need help choosing or setting up a mail server

Worst Mistakes To Avoid In Website Construction

Website design and construction is one of the core business activities that can make or break your business. A well-designed website will always attract more number of customers to your website by bringing in high quality traffic and volume to your website with greater revenue potential.

On the other hand, poor website construction can ruin all your efforts of promoting your business online. It can put your business reputation at stake and spoil all your future business prospects if you neglect this important aspect.

Top 5 mistakes to avoid in website construction

-Bad colour schemes

One of the most important things to avoid in website construction is to have a bad combination of colour schemes and background which can be simply distracting to the users.

Never use too loud and dark colours that feel like screaming at the visitors and creates confusion in their minds. It is preferable to have dark coloured text with a light background for creating a better visual effect.

-Poor quality content

t is a really a big turn-off to have a content that is so difficult to read and understand with lack of clarity. If the sentences are clubbed together and paragraphs are too long, then it can easily drive away your visitors.

Instead, create a content which carries more useful information for the visitors in an interactive manner. Make it more readable and keep the sentences short so that it is easy for them to read and follow.

-Spelling mistakes and grammatical errors

It is necessary to avoid bad spelling mistakes and punctuation errors in your website construction. It leaves a bad impression on the minds of the visitor and reflects carelessness on your part for overlooking such minute details which can make a lot of difference to your business.

Always spell-check the entire content and if you find any grammatical mistakes or punctuation errors, make sure you correct them accordingly during website construction.

-Badly designed layout

It is definitely annoying to find a website that is filled with so much of unnecessary details leaving little space for the user to breathe! In other words, it is sure to cause lot of distraction to the user while trying to digest too much of available information.

Never go overboard with website construction by designing pages that have no spaces left between the text and the graphics.

-Poor navigation facilities

The main aim of website construction is to provide easy search and navigation facilities to the visitor while browning your website. But what is the use if this purpose gets defeated with lot of error pages, too many broken links and ads repeatedly popping up in between?

The visitor is sure to lose his patience and get distracted by these things and go on to some other site. If you do not want this to happen, then you need to pay attention to website construction with good and easy navigation facilities Also, keep a check on the links to see that they work with regular maintenance.

Web Hosting – What You Need to Know

Web hosting is a service that lets an individual or organization makes their website accessible in the World Wide Web. This service is made available by companies called web hosting providers. The web host has a server—where your website is run, which is connected to the internet, this way; anyone who has internet access can be connected to your website.

There are mainly two types of web hosting, free and paid hosting service. Under paid hosting service, there are several types, which will be discussed later on in the article.

Free web hosting enables the user to modify the content of his website by uploading the simplest kind of features in which capabilities are only limited to a certain degree. The web hosting provider makes money by advertisements displayed on the website. This type of web hosting doesn’t appear too professional since the site is under a sub domain or a directory, meaning, the website name is followed or preceded by the web hosting provider. This type of web hosting is advantageous for people who are newbie’s in the Internet and needing just a small site to get started especially with the upload tools that are very easy to use.

Paid web hosting, on the other hand, provides more space and more features but you will be required to pay the web hosting provider fees to maintain your website. An advantage for this type is that the ads that appear on your website are those that you prefer and the revenue from it goes to you. You also get to have your own domain name.

The different types of paid web hosting are the following:

• Shared web hosting – wherein you share the same server and all other resources like software with other people. You only manage the design and content of your site.

• Virtual Private Servers – here the idea is that a server is divided into small servers to enable the user to have their own. This is a cheaper alternative to dedicated servers and more expensive than shared web hosting.

• Dedicated Server – this is not too popular for the common companies as it entails a lot of money. The owner gets full control over it. This is ideal for high-traffic websites.

• Colocation web hosting – the individual purchases a server and passes it to the web hosting company for them to provide space, connection, and power. You must have your own administrator to check on your server.

Other web hosting companies provide specific hosting and these would include blog hosting, video hosting, image hosting, and file hosting among others.

When choosing a web hosting provider, consider the following:

• Your needs – what type of hosting do you need, how much memory, bandwidth, etc.

• How reliable is the web hosting company? Can they guarantee that your website is always up and running?

• Development – in the future, can this company still provide for what you need? Do they have the latest technology?

Is Free Web Hosting A Viable Option?

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. 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 subdomain 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