Web Hosting

Is VPS Hosting Actually Cheaper Than Shared Hosting?

Shared web hosting plans have long been renowned for being the cheapest type of web hosting available. However, many people don’t realize that this is not an entirely true statement, as the billing structure and various other factors associated with the shared hosting environment can often cause it to be more expensive than VPS hosting plans.

VPS hosting is known as being the steppingstone between the shared hosting and dedicated hosting environments, giving you cheap access to a server partition that is only used by your network of websites at any given time. VPS hosting has a number of advantages over shared hosting, and in reality, it can actually be cheaper than shared hosting when purchased from certain web hosting providers. The following information outlines the major advantages of VPS hosting over shared hosting, and explains why it is possible to purchase a VPS hosting plan for less than shared hosting plan.

Monthly Billing Versus Annual Billing

Most VPS hosting providers allow their customers to pay on a monthly basis, only paying for the month they are about use in advance. On the other hand, shared web hosting providers require their customers to pay for a year in advance, which even at the low cost of five dollars per month, can equal as much as $60 plus setup fees. A VPS hosting plan that only costs $10-$20 per month can be paid for on a monthly basis, and the setup cost is therefore only $10-$20 per month plus any setup fees. Although the monthly cost of the VPS hosting plan may be more than shared hosting plan, the cost of setting up an purchasing a plan is actually less expensive.

Advantages of VPS Hosting Over Shared Hosting

Unlike shared hosting, VPS (virtual private server) hosting gives you much more flexibility, freedom, and overall control over the software configuration and administration of your server partition. With a shared hosting plan, you are required to share a single Web server with dozens or even hundreds of other webmasters simultaneously. This can create problems when other websites within your IP range that are hosted on your web server become liable for nefarious activity. In fact, there have been many cases in which legitimate websites have been taken off-line for hours or even days at a time because of illegitimate activity being performed by unrelated webmasters on their shared Web server. This risk is completely eliminated with VPS hosting, and the web hosting account owner also has the ability to install new software and web applications on their Web server.

Additional Cost Benefits of VPS Hosting Over Shared Hosting

Since VPS hosting plans are known for having less server downtime, and generally offer higher performance than shared hosting plans, it is possible to save money in the long run by eliminating the loss of sales due to slow page loads and server hardware/software issues. VPS hosting plans are more powerful, which means you can boost productivity and enhance the capabilities and functionality of your website through the use of proprietary server-side web applications that are specifically designed to automate and simplify administrative tasks.

Mambo Web Hosting: The Industry’s Leading Content Management System

Whether you’re a novice or advanced guru when it comes to using a content management system, Mambo offers benefits and features for web designers of all experience levels.  Mambo is an increasingly popular and excellent web design tool serving as a content management system that allows web designers to create online content and manage websites by using a basic web interface.   Mambo is so easy to install and use that the average person with absolutely no experience can publish a personal website with virtually no assistance.  Mambo is exclusively based on PHP and MySQL scripting language, and the installation requirements are minimal and easy to install within minutes.

What is Mambo Hosting?

Many in the web hosting industry consider Mambo among one of the few most free powerful content management systems available when compared to others in today’s market.  With Mambo’s easy-to-use interface and fully-loaded user friendly features, the prestigious accolades are rightfully deserved.

In fact, Mambo is an award winning content management system used to maintain a vast spectrum of website applications including personal websites, governmental portals, inner-office intranets and extranets, -commerce ventures, nonprofit organizations, educational institutes, religious affiliations, as well as complex corporate systems.   Mambo’s “power in simplicity” makes a favorite content management system in both the non-profit and profit sector.

The Advantages of Mambo

There are numerous advantages of Mambo which makes it so favorable among web designers.   The content management systems’ features such as improve performance by page caching on busy sites, advancement in template techniques, and supporting a fairly robust API.  In addition, Mambo can support RSS feeds, and make the task easier of automating tasks such as static web pages.

The advanced interface options include printable pages, e-commerce features, photo galleries, news flashes, blogs, visitor forums, online survey polls, calendars search features, and international languages.

Other advantages include:

• Established 8 years ago, with over 7 million downloads
• Free
• Easy Installation
• Flexibility
• Affordable
• Ability to customize
• Open Source

Finding a Web Host to Support Mambo

Although the CMS’ ease of use and vast features it offers are in large part why it’s so popular, the problem arises when trying to secure a web host that supports Mambo because it’s written in PHP programming language.   If the web host provider does not support PHP applications, then you’re out of luck trying to install Mambo.

Web hosting packages and services such as Linux and Windows IIS, Mac OS X, and FreeBSD, however, do support both scripting languages to support the Mambo content management system.   Furthermore, Mambo offers a free tutorial to navigate through its features and design abilities.   Keep in mind if you plan to utilize Mambo as your primary content management system, before consider purchasing a reliable web hosting service make sure that it fully supports Mambo.

When considering a reliable and powerful content management system to maintain your website, Mambo is one of the industry’s top picks for its loaded and easy to use features.

Little Known Truths about Domain Privacy

You’ve finally decided to join the rest of cyberspace and set-up a website to begin your e-Commerce venture.  Even though you’ve prepared detailed marketing plans, and a budget analysis to track online inventory, the one thing you neglected to spend some serious time considering is choosing a creative website domain name.  In addition, it’s just as important to take proactive security measures to prevent solicitors to track your every online move following the crumbs of your domain name.

Domain Privacy 101

Regardless of how much time you’ve spent coming up with a domain name for your website, chances are that it’s already been snatched by someone else with a similar related business.  It’s always a wise decision to jot down several domain names that would be appropriate for your website just in case the preferred options are taken.  Fact:  First options are rarely available!

Competitors are notorious for purchasing related domain names simply for their own personal gains in hopes of tricking potential customers into thinking that they are actually shopping from your website.   So, always be careful of competitors’ ploys just to make a few extra bucks.

Another issue that many newbie’s registering website domains fails to realize is that their personal contact is displayed for the entire cyber world to see when your associated domain contact information that’s connected with the domain account is viewable in the WHOIS database.  Remember that domain privacy is a feature that may be added on at the time of sign-up for any domain including: com., net, org., info, biz, etc.

Consider privacy protection as a knight in shining amour for those wishing to keep their WHOIS contact information private from potential identity thieves and cyber hackers.  The way it works is that specific details of your domain account are substituted with generic information, preventing your personal contact details from being revealed in the WHOIS public database for solicited purposes.

Personal Domain Security in the Home

In today’s Google-ish world, with just a few mouse clicks it’s virtually possible to knock on someone’s front door across the globe.  WHOIS search works much the same way as it generates personal names, physical addresses, and occasionally phone numbers based on personal web domain names.  Many individuals are acquiring a private domain registration to prevent annoying telemarketers and other unsolicited material.  The same is also true for entrepreneurs working from home.

Private domain registration is typically used in households in lieu of businesses ventures.  The greatest advantage of private domain registration is to protect your family’s or home-based business’ identity.  After the initial registration process of setting-up the domain name, essential personalized data is replaced with “proxy” domain register information.

Whether protecting your personal assets in the office or at home, domain privacy is a security vital tool to prevent cyber hackers from wrecking havoc on your business affairs!

Enticing Traffic to Boost Online Sales

Enticing visitors to your online business website is not as easy as the seasoned gurus make it appear.  Even novice entrepreneurs know in order to derive potential sales, it’s essential to attract and hold visitors’ attention on your site’s landing page for at least five seconds to be considered successful.  Often it’s impossible to get visitors to take your website seriously because of the glaring points of friction.  Friction points are features, applications or just plain annoying aspects found on a website.  So, what’s the secret to eliminating friction on your landing page and maintaining an engaging site?

Interrogating Online Forms

Online fill-in forms are an increasingly popular friction faux pas that many visitors encounter.  Often, in order to be eligible to sign-up even for a free routine newsletter or trial offer, visitors are greeted with a pop-up online form that must be complete before a visitor many continue viewing the website’s content.  These forms generally require visitors to thoroughly complete an online form with personal contact information, and oftentimes, credit card information is solicited.  Needless to say such information is not easily garnered.   Instead of causing unnecessary friction to obtain sale lead information for mailing list, consider placing opt-in links to subscribe to newsletters and free trial offers.

Instructions:  Clear as Mud

If you provide confusing and misguided instructions to users in regards of downloading, accessing, or purchasing a product or service from your website, then chances are you won’t close the deal.  Unless instructions are clearly presented in simple-to-follow steps, many visitors will become frustrated and navigate to the nearest competitor with a few clicks of their mouse.  Try to list instructions as clearly as possible without going overboard on the technicalities.  Utilize your web host server’s features to offer support to customers in a timely and efficient manner to answer questions and address concerns.  While e-mail addresses and telephone numbers are helpful, many customers prefer troubleshooting via online discussion threads and live chat support features.  Check with your web host service to inquire about support options.

Pop-ups are Turn-offs

For entrepreneurs wanting to test the market for a new product or service, free web hosting is often the most logical choice; however, if you opt to use a free web hosting service, beware of the consequences. Your website visitors will soon discover sponsors exchange their support in the form of pop-up advertisements promoting selected products and services while viewing free web-hosted websites.  While on the surface, the perks of free web hosting sounds too good to be true; the trade off is that your website visitors are bombarded with annoying pop-up advertisements; thus turning off potential sale leads.  Keep in mind that many visitors will navigate away from the website at the first signs of pop-ups.

Alleviating Friction Points

If you notice a decline in your conversion rates, then there are several proactive steps to take in order to boost sales:

• Provide potential customers with a large scale image of individual products and packaging.
• Offer a pull-down menu with the popular versions already pre-loaded.
• Insert a field in online forms with an optional request for e-mail addresses.
• Display a conspicuous “Download Here” button.
• Offer a link to a free pop-up blocker.

4 Crucial Aspects to Consider When Choosing a Web Hosting Plan

With new web hosting businesses being born every day, and the web hosting industry (one of most competitive industries in the world) expanding at a rapid rate, it is becoming increasingly difficult to sift through the mountains of advertising material and sales pages effectively. Fortunately, if you use the right set of criteria in the proper order of operations, choosing the right web hosting plan or provider can still be a relatively simple process.

Knowing which aspects of web hosting plans are most important can help you save time when comparing the most essential attributes and features of each plan. The following four crucial aspects should be considered when examining any prospect of a web hosting provider or plan.

Web Hosting Platform

First and foremost, it is important to decide whether you need access to a web server that utilizes the Linux/UNIX operating system or the Windows operating system. This decision should be based on your individual website needs and the development technology you use(d) to design and create your web pages. Websites that are developed using Microsoft technologies such as ASP and VB will require access to a Windows server to function, while the majority of other open-source programming technologies such as PHP, Python, and Perl can function optimally on Linux-based operating systems.

Web Hosting Features

After deciding which web hosting platform would be most suitable, it’s best to begin comparing the most essential features between each plan. Some of the most important features to compare include the amount of disk space, bandwidth, databases, e-mail accounts, and domains allowed with each plan. As mentioned, it is also important to consider which programming languages and platforms the web hosting plan is compatible with. It is also important to look for features such as uptime and money back guarantees, as well as server redundancy and scheduled server backups.

Plan Affordability

After establishing your web hosting needs and narrowing the list of prospective plans, it’s time to begin comparing the prices of each plan. Unfortunately, the majority of novice webmasters choose to carry out these steps in the opposite order, choosing a plan based on price rather than establishing their server needs and comparing features and platforms first. If you want to ensure optimal performance and the highest rate of success for your websites, then you should never choose a web hosting provider based on price alone. Only begin comparing the prices of similarly sized plans after you have narrowed your list based on the two aforementioned aspects.

Customer Service and Support

Most people overlook the importance of having access to responsive, friendly, and knowledgeable customer service. That is, until something malfunctions and suddenly your websites are off-line or all of the pages are loading slowly. When this happens, you’ll need access to 24-hour support that is competent enough to handle any administrative tasks, regardless of what time of day or night it is. Thus, it is best to test the responsiveness of each web hosting provider’s customer support staff by calling them at random times and seeing how long it takes, and in which way they answer all of your inquiries.

The Advantages of Purchasing Used Domain Names

Building a successful website is often a long and drawn out process that requires many steps, and a significant amount of diligence and persistence. Unfortunately, many of the attributes that make a website successful take a long time to create, especially those that are associated with search engine optimization. Every website online is represented by a domain name, which is often indexed in major search engines, having a history and authoritative stance of its own. By purchasing a used domain name you can take advantage of all of the work done by the previous site owner. The following information outlines the main benefits of purchasing used domain names for building your websites.

Page Rank and Domain Authority

Search engines use patented algorithms to efficiently gather, index, and rank information on the Internet. Google, in particular, utilizes a power stance system known as page rank, which gives each domain name a certain amount of authority based on a number of factors. One of the factors that affects a website’s page rank is the amount of links on the Internet that point to pages on the website, which are also known as backlinks, or incoming links. Many times, when a domain name is sold at auction or on an expired domain name vendor site, the domain name will still retain some of the backlinks and all of its page rank. By purchasing one of these domains, you can eliminate most of the work involved with establishing authority for your domain, which will allows you to rank highly in the SERPs (search engine result pages) for practically any term or keyword with less effort.

Established Reputations

Building your new website on a domain name that already has an established reputation may create an instant flow of traffic from previous website visitors that are returning in hopes of finding the website they last visited. Even though these visitors are expecting to see a completely different website, if your new site is relevant to the same niche or topic that the previous successful site that utilized that domain name was relevant to, it is possible to instantly build a small amount of residual traffic based on the success of the previous site. The previous site may have also caused the domain name to rank well for popular key words or phrases, which can bring instant traffic to your site via the search engines. Since your domain name will essentially be the brand of your website, purchasing a used domain name that already has an established reputation is the best way to quickly build a popular brand for your new site.

Obtainable Experience

Used domain names give you the opportunity to instantly obtain experience in the eyes of your site visitors and the search engines, without putting forth a lot of effort or taking a lot of risks. Surprisingly, it is possible to find used domain names for as little as $20, with the average used domain name being sold for anywhere between $20-$100. Purchasing a well-established .com domain name that has been used for successful website for the past several years can give your website an instant boost in traffic and overall popularity.

Where is Google Headed?

A main topic in web communities is should SEO’s be focusing on where Google is heading in the future? The answer is yes. Wasting time on ascertaining short-term holes in Google’s search engine algorithm is not smart. Just as soon as you figure it out, the algorithm will change again. Therefore, most publishers focus on the direction Google I heading. One idea publishers should be aware of is the transition of Google into an answer engine.

The Answer Engine

For web publishers this can be a major issue. An answer engine is one that answers any questions or inquiries directly from Google properties. For instance, if you are looking for a definition and input “definition baseball” into the search bar, an answer engine would have the definition immediately available from their database at the top of the page. This indicates all subsequent websites below the answer will have less traffic.

Unlimited Resources

Since Google is such a large corporation, it has resources everywhere. From searching for flights to finding dinner reservations, Google is connected to all of these databases; they are the internet. This technology advancement is fantastic for Google, excellent for the user and not good for web publishers and internet marketers. With Google providing the answers, there is no need for the visitor to click on any other website.

Review Sites

Google has slowly been headed in this direction for many years. In 2010, Google furthered this process by making inroads for commercial searches like mortgage rates. Their most recent advancement is the aggregation of reviews on various topics from review sites.

The Savior: Brand Loyalty

Unfortunately the days of being an affiliate with no branding strategy is coming to an end. Affiliates will never disappear completely but there will be less of them because of the extra competition with Google itself. A final word to the wise, create or build a branding strategy now to prepare for the Google takeover.

Locking Your Online Business Using Website Encryption

For business owners leaving the doors to their stores wide open without proper security measures in place is no different than online business owners leaving their websites vulnerable to looters and thieves.

If You Build It, They Will Steal

The act of stealing website content is becoming such an issue that it’s now commonly referred to as “website hijacking.”  This increasingly sinister phenomenon is most detrimental to e-commerce website and other online business ventures.

As a business owner with an online venture to ensure that your website is protected against outside elements, encryption is the solution.  Encryption allows you to “lock up” the essential components of your website that you may not even realize are exposed to cyber thieves.

Typically, there are three main reasons website content is hijacked:

• To harvest e-mail addresses for spam purposes
• To copy design and layout content and code
• To reveal and/or steal payment method links to be circumvented/stolen

Harvesting E-mail Addresses

It’s a global consensus that spam is excruciatingly annoying.  It’s even more of a nuisance when spam bots stealthily invade your website with the intentions to seek information, steal e-mail addresses and destroy your company’s reputation simply by storing hijacked e-mailed addresses in a database with malicious intent to flood customers with spam.

While many tech savvy customers are able to distinguish between spam scams and legit e-mail messages; unfortunately, for many others, they unknowingly fall prey to costly scams.  Each year millions of dollars are embezzled when cyber criminals steal customers’ credit card information and identities are snatched by manipulative spam e-mails forwarded to e-mail addresses obtained by website hijacking.

Spam is not only an issue for customers, but it’s an even greater headache for business owners.  Spam is also responsible for:

• Loss of productivity for your staff;
• Loss of valuable server resources;
• Loss of revenue when important e-mails get lost in the shuffle.

Copying Design and Layout

Setting up your web host account and website requires many resources including time and money.  Although it takes days, if not weeks to complete the initial setup, however, you may be surprised to learn that it takes less than five minutes for your website content and source code to be hijacked with just a few simple mouse clicks.

Online entrepreneurs soon discover the answer if they don’t “lock up” the doors to their website’s content.  Open HTML source code is easily accessible with a few clicks, and the process of hijacking is as simple as copying, and pasting.  Often Java Scripts are installed to thwart potential cyber thieves from lifting code as the scripts block code from being viewed; however it’s only the first step as it doesn’t protect from software based queries.

Pocketing Payment

Not only can a thief steal credit card information from customers; thus tarnishing your reputation, hackers can also alter your source code diverting payments to their own accounts, leaving you a responsibility to provide products or services to your customer without receiving payment.  Encryption is a definite necessity in any online business venture, especially when protecting customers’ credit card information

“The Lock”

By using available software tools to encrypt website code prevents information from being hijacked.  Encryption is extremely effective against all  types of informational breaches, including software queries and spam bots. The idea being, even if thieves access the source, the code will be indecipherable.

Basic HTML encryption tools are readily available online for free.  For novices, encrypting may sound complicated, however, it’s relatively quite simple.  Once you find an online HTML encryption tool, simply copy your existing code into the tool and it generates a secure encrypted code within minutes.

How to Find the Cheapest Domain Names

Purchasing domain names becomes an everyday task for the busy online entrepreneur, whose ultimate goal is to continually expand their network of websites and raise their overall monthly residual income. In a sense, domain speculation and registration is a science of sorts, requiring industry knowledge, persistence, patience, and dedication. Although most of the attractive .com,.org, and .net domains have been purchased, it is still possible to obtain valuable domains using the right techniques. However, if your goal is to increase the overall number of websites, rather than find particular domains that are high in value, you may want to consider the following information about finding the cheapest domain names.

Signing up for Domain Reseller Clubs

One of the best ways to get an extremely low price on each domain name when buying in bulk is enrolling in a domain reseller club, which provides access to wholesale prices that are unparalleled in the domain registration industry. As a webmaster and online entrepreneur, an intense focus should be placed on saving money in every possible way. Being that domain name registration quickly becomes a routine investment for a online business owner, it is important to get the lowest price possible for bulk domain registration. If you know the minimum amount of domains that you will be purchasing within a single month on average, then you can easily sign up for a domain reseller plan that will be profitable and ideal for your situation. Domain reseller clubs sometimes charge sign-up fees, so it is important to decide whether or not these fees will negate the cost-saving benefits of receiving each domain at the lowest price possible.

Purchasing Cheap TLDs

The abbreviation TLD, or top-level domain, is simply a term used to describe a domain name extension, or the letters that follow the dot after the main domain name. For example, in the website www.examplesite.com, the TLD is “.com”. Although the registration cost for each type of TLD will vary depending on the domain registrar, overall there are some TLDs are cheaper than others. The .info,.biz,.me,.tv, and .cc TLDs are particularly known for being cheaper alternatives to the main TLD such as .com,.org,.net. Surprisingly, .info domains have the potential to rank just as highly in the search engines as a the aforementioned conventional TLDs. A .info domain can be registered for as little as $0.79 per year, however the average yearly cost of registration for a. info domain is about one dollar.

Comparing Domain Registrars

Another way to gain access to the cheapest domain names is by comparing various domain registrars and their prices. Although the majority of domain registrars offer domain name registration services at similar prices, there are some that are much more affordable than others. For example, one domain registrar may offer .com domains for $10 per year of registration, while another may offer .com domains for $6- $7 per year of registration. Look for a domain registrar that will provide discounts and free domains when you purchase domain TLD’s of the same domain at once.

A Detailed Look at Reseller Web Hosting

Everyone who wants a website on the internet needs to have a web host. The large number of potential customers has made web hosting a very profitable business. However, launching your own hosting company is normally very difficult. To set up a hosting company from scratch you would need to purchase your own servers and maintain them. A simpler option has evolved in reseller web hosting.

Reseller Hosting

There is a much easier way of offering hosting services to your customers. The easiest way of doing this is to sign up for a reseller hosting account. Reseller accounts can host multiple domains and websites on a single server.

By registering a reseller hosting account it is possible to sell hosting space without owning servers yourself. It is also possible to make money from this method and it’s much easier than setting up your own hosting company.

Reseller Control Panel

Most reseller hosting accounts include an internet based control panel. This makes it very easy to create new accounts and make adjustments to the settings of your hosting account. The most popular control panel used for reseller hosting is WHM as this integrates nicely with cPanel.

The reseller control panel is slightly more complicated than a basic hosting control panel. The business reseller control panel needs to be used to create new users, suspend accounts, back up all the sites on the server and install new updated services.

Finding Reseller Hosting Accounts

If you are interested in a reseller hosting account then you will need to take your time and choose carefully. Your reseller hosting account will be part of your business. This means that you will need to make ensure that it offers everything you need for the lowest price possible.

Important things to look out for include the following:

• Reliability – It’s essential that you can offer a reliable service to your customers. Look out for a service with an uptime guarantee.
• Cost – It is possible to find reseller hosting packages in a variety of different price brackets.  Choose one which offers everything you need.  Avoid the very cheap services on eBay though because these are normally very unreliable.
• Automation – Some of the better hosting accounts allow you to automate the process of signing up new customers.  This is very useful since your customers do not need to wait to use their account. WHMCS can be used with WHM hosting packages; this is worth looking for from your reseller hosting company because a separate license is very expensive.

Reseller hosting accounts can be utilized as a good way of starting a hosting business from scratch. When your business expands it’s then possible to purchase your own hardware and servers so you can continue to offer more services.

Understanding the Benefits of CMS

Creating static websites and changing the content can be difficult and time consuming. A Content Management System or CMS can be used to make this much easier. CMS systems have become increasingly popular because they make it very simple to adjust the contents on your site without needing to change the code or other settings, nor do they require that the webmaster possess coding related knowledge.

What is a CMS?

A CMS is also known as a Content Management System. This is a very popular piece of software which can be installed on your website. Common examples include Joomla, Microsoft SharePoint, WordPress.

Change Content Without Changing Code

CMS are very useful for websites because it makes it possible for anyone to edit the content. Not everyone who wants a website will be able to edit the code themselves. By using a CMS it’s possible to allow anyone to easily change the information on the website

Fast

Simply changing a small spelling error or piece of information would normally involve changing the website offline and then uploading the files again via FTP This is very time consuming. It’s much faster and easier if you change the details utilizing a CMS package, as there is no need to re-upload the site files once again.

You may also perform modifications without waiting for a web developer to make the changes you request at additional fees.

Cheaper

Designing a CMS might initially be slightly more expensive than a static website. However, actually maintaining it will be much cheaper. You will not require any special skills to maintain the website.

Better Control

Another reason why CMS software is very popular is because it gives people much better control over websites. It’s easy to write content and then save this as a draft. Additionally it possible to control who can write and who can approve content. It also ensures that all content is approved before being posted on your website.

Growth and Expansion

CMS makes it simple to keep track of all the pages on your website regardless of how many you add. This means that you can minimize the risk of any errors affecting your website.