Web Hosting

The Newest Way to build eCommerce Solutions

With so much competition in the web hosting industry, there has to be differentiation between providers to attract new customers. Among eCommerce web hosts, offering the ability to design and implement a fully-featured selling website from scratch is a major selling point. These website builders give even an untrained technical user the resources he needs to develop and publish an interesting, functional website for selling products and services.

Avoiding the Messy, Technical Details

Therefore, selecting an eCommerce web hosting provider means clients do not need to worry about any of the messy, technical details of web hosting, the software and the equipment. At the same time, many eCommerce hosting providers offer monthly plans with preset bandwidth limitations and storage limits. To obtain scalability with affordability, most users are moving to a cloud-computing environment.

An Overview of VirtoSoftware

One recently launched piece of software that is easy for a beginner to use but provides a wealth of features is VirtoSoftware. Their newest product titled, “VirtoCommerce,” is a fully hosted eCommerce solution that was developed to take advantage of the Azure Cloud. The program is available for Software as a Service (SaaS) to be fully integrated with the latest utilities including, MVC3, .NET 4.0, WCF, WPF, WWF and Unity. Those familiar with these initials know the importance of integration.

Achieving the Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Status

Also, the product has such a close affiliation with Microsoft that it has earned them “Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Status for ISV Solutions and Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Innovations like the VirtoCommerce online website builder continue to keep the eCommerce hosting industry competition and lead it into the next generation of online technology.

Creating eCommerce Website Solutions

With the new software, users will be able to create their own online eCommerce solution in addition to an entire website that is around their products utilizing the diverse capabilities presented by VirtoCommerce. Although in the final stage of development, a free demo is available on their website. Once additional eCommerce hosting providers take to the cloud, expect to hear more about this and many similar products.

VirtoCommerce looks as if it will revolutionize the world of eCommerce for veterans and novices. With its advanced technology and most importantly, ease of use and navigation, VirtoCommerce is sure to assist thousands of clients with creating their own digital stores chalk full of advanced features.

The Newest Member of the Cloud Security Alliance

Fully-managed web hosting provider, FireHost, recently announced that it has joined the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) as a corporate-level member. The company continues to lead the secure cloud hosting movement. With their new membership, FireHost is joining members whose focus is on creating a trustworthy, secure cloud community aimed at conducting business. At the corporate member level, FireHost will work with the alliance to develop security measures for the cloud settings.

FireHost’s Role

FireHost currently protects mission critical websites in 23 countries that are typically high-targets for cybercriminals. The provider recently announced the first PCI 2.0 compliant public cloud hosting service. This is a major step toward making cloud hosting more reliable and secure.

Information about the Cloud Security Alliance

The Cloud Security Alliance is a not-for-profit group whose objective is to promote best practice usage with regards to security assurance in the cloud computing industry. The organization also educates on the uses of the technology to build security for all forms of computing. The Cloud Security Alliance consists of industry practitioners, associations, corporations and stakeholders.

FireHost’s New Involvement

With their new membership, FireHost will immediately begin contributing to a variety of initiatives within the organization. For example, the newest toolkit for cloud, enterprise and security providers is Governance, Risk Management and Compliance (GRC). Therefore, FireHost will assist the group with developing standards, compliance requirements and best practices in this area.

A Statement from the CEO of FireHost

Founder and CEO of FireHost released a statement expressing the importance of the alignment between FireHost and the sharing of goals for protecting online information. He further recognized that the Cloud Security Alliance has reached many accomplishments such as bringing together the industry around a centralized mission and continuing to develop best practices for all cloud providers.

Furthermore, he recognized FireHost’s deep experience in the virtualized world which is an excellent addition to the alliance. The company is confident they will be an asset to the group and develop new innovations to improve best practices for the cloud computing providers.

One of the biggest issues with cloud computing is the security. Luckily with organizations like the Cloud Security Alliance, innovative technology, standardization and centralization are developed and implemented in the cloud community. With the expertise of FireHost, the cloud computing industry has moved one step closer to a standardized and secure computing environment for all providers and customers.

How to Use Twitter for Business

Twittter is a website that is designed for social networking purposes. Twitter has been around since 2006 and is rated as one of the top five social networking platforms on the Internet. While Facebook comes before Twitter on the top five social networking platforms, there are still millions of Twitter users who “tweet” on a regular basis.
Continue Reading »

Design A Profitable Website

Most people, when creating a website, have one thing in mind and that is, how to make their website profitable. The truth is, the design of your website has everything to do with how profitable it will become. There are many steps to designing a profitable website and most of these steps can be easily followed and are not too hard, even for people who are not familiar with web design in general. When you have decent design for your website, you will receive far more traffic which will lead to a more profitable website in terms of traffic and visitors. For a profitable website, you will need:

• Clean Cut Navigation
• Manage Images
• Decent Content Length
• Use Appropriate Templates

As you can probably tell, these are just a few steps you can take to make sure that your website is more profitable. In fact, it is easy to make the necessary changes so that your web design looks professional and will be ready for lots of traffic and visitors.
For an example on Perfect Landing Page click here.
Clean cut navigation is essential. Visitors to your website should always know where they are going and where to find what they are looking for immediately. Your navigation should never be cluttered or confusing. If you use a simple yet convenient navigation system, all visitors of your website will know exactly how to navigate around your website and will be able to find exactly what they are looking for right away.

It is also important that you manage images on your website. Every website should include some images because it adds to the professional look and feel of a website and images are, of course, important because they tell stories and represent businesses and websites. However, while it is important to include images, images can often cause your website to take longer to load which is frustrating for some visitors. Try to keep your images at a limited number. Never overdo it with too many images anyway because that just looks unprofessional. Use only the most necessary images and your website will look great.

You have to remember to use decent content length for your website. The problem many website owners face is that they have so much content and place it all on one page which most visitors the website will not appreciate. Of course, you want to get your point across and can do so with the content on your website. However, you have to keep it short and to the point. Most visitors are often turned off by content that is extremely long in length. They will usually just stop reading the content after a certain point or may not even bother to read it at all. For must-have content that is kind of long, split it up into sections. You can also make the text look more appealing by using sub-headers, bullet points and lists whenever possible. Visitors to your website will greatly appreciate you taking the time out to highlight important content by using bullet points or numbered lists instead of scattering information all around.

When it comes to the general look of your website, you should use appropriate templates. The template is the basic layout of your website and should always look professional because this is what visitors will see as soon as they enter your website. There are tons of website that offer a collection of free templates as well as cheap and affordable templates. The problem is, in many instances, website owners will use free or really cheap templates for their website but those templates are also being used on many other websites and that just does not look professional to visitors. If they have seen your template on another website, it just ruins it for you. You should take the time to create your own template so that your website will be unique. If you have absolutely no idea how to design a template, you can hire someone to do it for you. Hiring a freelancer to create a template for your website will be simple because there are tons of websites for people looking to hire freelancers and most of them are willing to work for really good prices. There is no excuse for having a crappy template when you have so many options to choose from.

Conclusion

If you want your website to be profitable, follow these steps. This is basic website knowledge that you need to know especially if you want your website to be successful for a long period of time. Navigation, Templates, Content, and Images all play an important role for your website which is why it is so important to utilize them properly with your website.

Remember: always use a creative and unique template, not a template that is being used by thousands of other websites. You should always have informative content on your website but you have to make it more readable to your visitors. They most likely do not want to see a bunch of text put together but would very much prefer to read the content on a page if it is broken down and highlighted into sections using sub-headers and bullet points.

Images make your website look better but too many of those images can actually slow your website down which work against you, not for you. Think wisely when you make the decision to put images on your website. Use images that are not huge in size and will fit well with the content on your website. Last but not least, the navigation is most important and should be utilized on a website correctly. It is fairly easy to set up a navigation system and once you have it set up, you will notice how organized your website looks compared to when you did not have a navigation system. Just about anyone can create a profitable website but it does take time and effort. If you want your website to be profitable, follow these steps to make it more user-friendly.

Managing Multilingual Documents

Vasont Systems recently released enhancements to its XML content management system (CMS) offerings. The new version, Vasont ST2.1, allows users to store multilingual content for retrieval and organization which delivers it to several media channels. The release significantly improves the system’s project management and editorial environments for all users and administrators of the software.

System Enhancements

Vasont ST2.1 was released for licensing and SaaS on July 25^th, 2011 with the following enhancements:

• Preview
• Versions
• Annotations
• Project management and workflow
• Content configuration

Preview

In the new version, users will be able to preview content in a multitude of styles for different reasons. For instance, the preview feature can be used to highlight relevant content for specific departments to indicate the status or identify recently changed content. Also, users have the ability to easily navigate from various types of content to related content in a tree view.

Versions

Version Compare is an internal function that allows users to apply specific formats based on individual preference. This includes change bars to indicate the differences between two versions of content allowing for easy identification of changes made over a specified time period.

Annotations

Annotations allow users to collaborate with others from a popup window. Also, the Annotations Report gives users complete information with regards to the status of selected content. Annotations is one of the best features for communication and reporting.

Project Management and Workflow

For project-level and task-based information, project management and workflow captures and sorts projects for improved tracking capabilities. The permissions given to managers in active workflows have expanded allowing for more flexibility to adjust business processes.

Content Configuration

The collective enhancements to the CMS give administrators access to creating and updating alias attributes much more quickly. Therefore, systematic configurations will be easier and more efficiently implemented.

The enhanced Vasont CMS was designed to improve productivity and effectively control costs allowing for multilingual technical documentation and other business information. The system features a single-source functionality which only stores the content once, increasing efficiency in the overall business process.

Headquartered in Pennsylvania, Vasont Systems provides XML content management software services and features over 60 years of industry experience. Since business is slowly becoming more global, it is important that all companies have systems that are multilingual. The latest version of the Vasont CMS captures a variety of languages to ensure it is easy to use by users across the globe.

Rebel Networks to Partner with OnApp

Rebel Networks, a web hosting provider and American Diversified Holdings Corporation subsidiary recently announced it has partnered with OnApp, a cloud web hosting infrastructure developer. The two companies will provide cloud hosting services to web hosting providers and directly to customers.

Customization of Cloud Services

Rebel Networks plans to customize cloud services for private and public offerings. These services include servers, bandwidth and SAN storage which will be built around OnApp’s innovative cloud hosting administrative software. Rebel stated it will offer web hosts an easy and cost-effective method of launching their own cloud hosting products and services.

Cost of Entering the Cloud Computing Market

In recent presentations given at World Hosting Days and the Tier 1 Summit, OnApp representatives discussed the costs of entering the cloud computing market for web hosting companies. Although the costs are not astronomical when utilizing a pre-packaged platform versus customization, the initial costs are significantly higher than an easy entrance into dedicated or shared hosting.

Targeting Hosting Providers

Rebel Networks appears to be targeting the reseller aspect of its cloud services to web hosting businesses that do not boast the resources to make an initial financial investment in the technology.

 Additional Cloud Products

Currently, Rebel Networks is providing back-end infrastructure to approximately 50 web hosting resellers, many of whom have shown a great deal of interest in offering other cloud-based services. However, these same resellers are not interested in tying their current services into another cloud product.

Press Release from Rebel Networks

In another press released, Rebel Networks confirmed they are in-line to capture thousands of new resellers by providing turn-key cloud solutions based on OnApp software, WHMCS, Windows or Linux and Dell server systems.

Rebel Networks Company Information

As one of the leading providers of outsourced Internet hosting solutions, Rebel Networks has many products including, managed dedicated servers, unmanaged colocation, domain name services, Cloud, shared and reseller hosting. The company has a 100 percent uptime and availability guarantee.

Rebel Networks does not believe in loyalty as a result of contract. Instead, they see the web hosting business as performance-based and a high level of customer service. Monthly plans do not lock customers into a contract so they are able to see the value high quality service and excellent performance.

The partnership between Rebel Networks and OnApp will create an excellent synergy between hardware, software and web hosting solutions. It is clear, both tech-companies will benefit from this newfound relationship.

Up Sells and Addons to Help Grow Your Web Hosting Revenue

Everyone is aware of the current condition of the web hosting market, which has lead to a drastic reduction in revenue for hosting companies. In addition to revenue reduction, greater competition has placed advertising spots at a premium. Have no fear, I have found five products that you can up-sell to your clients to bring revenue back up, allowing you to afford rising advertising cost.

1. Video Conferencing

It is no secret that businesses and individuals are cutting back on travel expenses. There is no better product than video conferencing for keeping businesses in touch. With video conferencing usage growing by 15% year after year, there is no better time to incorporate this product into your web hosting offerings.

While there are hundreds if not even thousands of video conferencing companies to choose from, my preferred provider is Voxwire. They offer private labeling to resellers, allowing them to share in the monthly revenue stream from their clients. If Voxwire and its reseller program doesn’t do it for you, there are other providers like WebEx and GoToMeeting that provide reseller/affiliate programs as well.

2. Merchant Accounts

If you are not helping your clients find a merchant account you are losing out on thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of dollars in revenue each month. Like video conferencing, many merchant account providers offer a referral revenue stream. Companies like www.cdgcommerce.com provide you with up to 30% in referral fees. You never know when you might have a $100k account buying $7.95/month hosting that needs a merchant account for its brick and mortar business or online store. Merchant accounts are effortless to sell and you could make more in commissions each month then what the hosting account is bringing in.

3. Search Engine Optimization / Search Engine Marketing

Everyone wants to increase traffic to their website. If you do not have traffic, you aren’t making money. Let’s face it, the years of “if you build it, they will come” are long gone. You could start off by offering a basic SEO / SEM solution like the I Need Hits reseller program; you could find a freelancer who will work on a flat fee per month; or you can go into a partnership agreement with a marketing agency like eBridge Marketing Solutions. You could even offer all three! When most basic SEO packages start out at $19.95 and the premium agencies charge tens of thousands of dollars, this could lead to a large chunk of change in your pocket each month.

4. Software as a Service (SaaS) Ecommerce Solutions

I know you probably think that every customer wants to do it themselves when it comes to their website. The truth is, the majority DO NOT. The majority of businesses and individuals starting out in ecommerce want a simple and easy solution. They want to be up and selling in 5 minutes. Why do you think eBay has done so well? If you leave your clients to try and figure out ecommerce themselves, there is a good chance they will get frustrated and give up. This is lost revenue for you. If you were partnered with a company like Volusion, TurnKey Commerce or Shopify you could successfully refer them to your ecommerce solutions partner and take up to a whopping 25% of revenue share to the bank. With the average SaaS shopping cart solution starting around $30, you make your $7.50 for life without even having to provide technical support. When you are handing off the customer to the SaaS provider make sure to offer them the great deals you have on merchant accounts so you can add another 30% in profit to your bottom line each month. If you do not, the big boys will be happy to do it for you.

5. Web Design

Just like Search Engine Optimization services, web design can be sold in many forms. You have the turnkey template solution provided by a 3^rd party; these charge you a setup fee plus a monthly fee. This can work out well in the budget hosting market. Then you have the option of bringing in a freelancer to do your client’s projects. The freelancer charges you a one-time fee and you charge the client. Then there is the private partner design studio product option. Here you outsource the design to a design studio like www.studio1337.com for premium design services. Web design runs from just under $100/month for budget design services to anywhere from $1,000.00 to $5,000.00 for premium design services. With the average commission worth 20%, you could add an extra $25.00/month to your bottom line or a nice $250.00 to $1,000.00 one-time commission.

The most important piece of information that every web hosting provider should understand is: YOU HOLD THE POWER. Web hosting companies tend to have massive amounts of clients due to the low price of the service and the size of the market. Use your client base to generate extra revenue for yourself by providing them with the products and services they already need. With these five simple up-sells you can take a $7.95/month account and turn it into a $150.00/month account with very little effort. Just remember, for every product or service you do not offer to your client you’re sending revenue into someone else’s wallet.

DesignContest.com – Perfect Design or your Money Back (100% Guaranteed)!

DesignContest.com is your one stop crowd sourcing shop for all custom graphic designs needs. DesignContest.com designers from all over the world compete for clients business resulting in amazing custom graphics.

Many new and existing business owners competing for visibility in today’s fast-paced market, finding dependable, affordable, and talented graphic designers can be a challenge. Small businesses typically do not have in-house graphic designers and must outsource needs such as logo design, business cards, stationary, print, and websites. It’s important to find a designer that understands their client’s aesthetic, can work within important deadlines and budget, and will provide a design that meets their client’s needs. Finding the perfect designer can be a challenge – that’s where DesignContest.com comes in.

Operating since 2003, DesignContest.com (formerly DesignContest.net) connects its clients with thousands of experienced, talented designers. The client becomes the contest holder, and the community of designers competes for a monetary prize. Instead of the 4 to 6 design options typically provided by a single design firm, the client will have hundreds of different design options to choose from and are given the opportunity to communicate with individual designers and provide feedback every step of the way. All of the contests on DesignContest.com run for one or two weeks, longer if the contest holder wants to see more, at the end of which a single designer is selected as the winner and original files are released.

DesignContest.com streamlines this entire process, making it easier to start a contest and more efficient to provide feedback to designers. Connecting clients with thousands of designers, all at once, makes it easy to get a design they love, within their budget. Every customer is extremely satisfied with the graphic designs they get, process efficiency and cost effectiveness.

100% Money-Back Guarantee assures clients that they only end up with a design that meets their needs.

More info at http://www.designcontest.com/

Protecting your Data when Web Hosting Services Disappear

As a society we increasingly rely on web hosting services to protect our data and provide it when we need it. We always assume the data will upload to an account, blog service or web page. That is because we always accept that the services will be available tomorrow. However, over the past several years there have been numerous examples of providers that have completely disappeared taking gigabytes of data with them.

Here One Minute, Gone the Next

It is safe to say, nothing lasts forever. The web hosting providers we trust with our data can vanish in an instant. If this occurs you must always have a plan which will protect critical information and allow you to easily bounce back.

Web Services that have disappeared

One example of a web service that shut down was GeoCities. Due the emergence of free software blogging and free websites, it is not surprising GeoCities disappeared in 2009 when Yahoo pulled the plug. Unfortunately Yahoo did little to preserve the many sites that were on their servers. Luckily, there were third-party efforts to retrieve and save the contents of those websites.

Another instance of a disappearing web service was Windows Live Spaces which was shut down in March 2011. Luckily Microsoft gave users the option of migrating their content to WordPress. Even more recently, as of May 24, 2011, Yahoo’s MyBlogLog was eliminated by the company. Unlike GeoCities, this time around Yahoo provided tutorials as to how to migrate data from the websites.

Main Indicators of Dying Companies

There are several warning signs you should look for that could indicate the potential for a shut down. First, there is a list of websites and services produced by the Archive Team that are dying. If the site is listed there, it is best to take your data elsewhere or back it up. Also, by reviewing the company’s numbers, some issues could be uncovered. Although financial statements are not always available, following news stories about the company could reveal a great deal of information about their future.

Other Warning Signs

Other signs include the decline in the quality of service, a decrease in third-party support and sudden changes in the terms of service. Basically any strange changes within the company could indicate its downfall. If you notice abrupt changes, it is always best to be proactive and do some digging into the health of the service. Don’t forget to check their customer reviews. Here at Web Hosting Geeks, we have almost 6,000 hosting reviews of the most popular web hosting services.

Companies can be here one second and gone another. Luckily there are many warning signs that could be indicators of a dying web service. Nothing is certain in life and web services are no exception. Therefore, always keep an eye on the company that holds your most sensitive information.

Do-it-yourself Virtualization

ServerBeach Limited is a Vancouver, Canada-based web hosting provider that recently began offering the “optional platform” to technically knowledgeable customers who desire additional control over their servers.

Statement from ServerBeach

The General Manager of ServerBeach released a statement informing the public that many smaller clients had been requesting “do-it-yourself virtualization” and utilize a group of servers however they need. Common uses include running websites or specific applications, backing or storing content or utilizing it for security purposes.

The Problem with Hosting

Customers were aware of the components of the equipment; the company previously did not allow them to open it up in the manner they wanted. However, with the new service, the equipment is open and customers can do exactly what they need to do. Clients have a choice between the Citrix ZenServer or Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisor. Both servers give administrators a centralized control panel to allocate specific services to dedicated servers.

Improving System Management

As a division of Peer 1 Hosting, ServerBeach targets small-to-mid-sized businesses that have the knowledge and experience to be the system’s administrator of their own servers. These new tools of advanced virtualization will allow information technology professionals to improve management and allow for more cost-effective initiatives.

Corporate Objectives

The goal for this new infrastructure is to extend the company’s reach and increase growth within the market. Simultaneously this will escalate competitive pressure on other local and international web hosting providers. In the web hosting industry it typically only takes one innovative idea to spark a slew of changes.

Showcasing the Significance of Virtualization

Since each hosting provider has shifted toward virtualization, this expanded service will showcase the significance of the practice. It is more than likely similar news from other web hosting providers will be announced in the near future.

ServerBeach Company Information

Peer 1 began running ServerBeach from its Toronto, Canada location. At that time the facility was newly built. As the years progressed, ServerBeach services became expanded to Los Angeles, London, San Antonio and Herndon, Virginia.

Virtualization of resources has become a popular new hosting type due to its cost-effectiveness and performance capabilities. The new do-it-yourself service takes the basic idea and expands it to allow customers to basically do whatever they want on the server. Many businesses are limited to unlocking the complete functionality they need from a server. However, ServerBeach’s new product will now allow customers to utilize exactly what they require.

ICANN Defends New Domain Name Procedure

ICANN has been strongly defending the newly approved proposal to introduce thousands of new Internet domain names. The California-based nonprofit was recently attacked by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) in a letter expressing fervent concerns with the new policy. As a result, ICANN has publicly defended the process and policy.

Association of National Advertisers

The ANA consists of major U.S. corporations such as Apple, Home Depot and Verizon who raised many issues with the most critical being that the trademark owners are required to defend their brands as a result of the introduction of so many new domain names and extensions. They indicated that the expense to conduct such a task will be extraordinary.

Opposition of the New System

Furthermore, the association argues that many companies will be compelled to apply for the all new top-level domains related to their business at $185,000 per domain name. Additionally, the ANA claims ICANN is failing to follow its own rules by requiring that its policies are to be adopted through a bottom-up consensus process. Therefore, the organization has called on ICANN to withdraw the proposal or work in conjunction with trademark owners to revise it.

ICANN’s Response

ICANN sent a written response to the ANA that noted Internet stakeholders have had ample time to comment on the new proposal. Also, they stated that many of the suggestions proposed by the ANA were included in the final proposal, approved June 2011.

Statement from the CEO

The CEO of ICANN quantified that the declarations in the statement from ANA were problematic in several ways with the most sever mischaracterizations regarding the ICANN approval process. The domain name process has been developed over six years of implementation planning and policy. There have been a variety of significant actions taken to find equilibrium amongst all vested parties while protecting them.

He additionally stated that ICANN will vigorously defend the model while defending its duty to act in accordance with the established bottom-up process. Additionally, this covers the broad public interest of the entire global Internet community as opposed to the interests of specific parties or groups.

ICANN knew once the process was released to the public and commercial entities that they would be vigorously defending it to ensure its implementation. Although there are only several months until the registration officially opens, there will definitely be additional controversies that are publicly announced.