Information Sells

HOW TO BUILD A WEB SITE FOR YOUR BUSINESS - PART 4

Web domain registrars are in a low-price competition with each other. The basic service they offer - registering your domain name - is not the sort of thing that builds high margin, repeat traffic. So, to keep the cost of domain registration low while still turning a profit, registrars will try to upsell other web services to new clients.

There is nothing shady or unethical about this. In fact, the upsells probably subsidize the extremely low cost we currently pay for domain registration. The problem is, registrars are usually not very good web hosts or email providers.  The all-in-one packages they offer will hobble your business.

When you take the first step to getting a web site - be aware of the difference between a web host (the company that rents you server space for your web site) and the domain registrar (the company that makes sure your domain name is unique).

To get the job done right, these will be two different companies, doing two different jobs. It is a little bit more work for you at the start, but it will save you hours of work, and possibly hundreds of dollars, to get it right from the start.

REGISTRARS

GoDaddy.com is an excellent choice for registering your domain name. They offer low prices and reliable service. They will also offer you email accounts, web hosting, blogs, various privacy options for your domain registration, etc. Stay away from all the add ons. Just buy the $6.95 domain registration and move on to selecting a web host.

WEB HOSTING

There is an acronym for the services you want in a web host: LAMP. That stands for

• Linux
• Apache
• MySQL
• PHP

That configuration is ideal for most web sites because it gives you access to low cost/no cost server operating systems (Linux and Apache) to keep expenses down, while still offering database capabilities. So many web applications, like WordPress and Joomla, require PHP and MySQL that you are tying your hands behind your back if you host your site on servers that do not use them.

While there are hundreds of low cost web hosting companies around, BlueHost or HostGator have very good reputations. Both offer Linux servers with PHP and MySQL, both have Fantastico for one click installation of complicated programs like bulletin boards, blogs, and shopping carts, and both offer unlimited domains on one low priced account.

Don’t get wrong footed when you start out. Your investment in GoDaddy’s limited web and email programs will either hamstring your service or go to waste. As soon as your business begins to grow, you will dump them like a pair of old shoes.

OTHER POSTS IN THIS SERIES:

1. How To Build A Web Site For Your Business Part 1
2. Add On Domains and Parked Domains
3. Fantastic Fantastico

Photo by Sammis Co Released un Creative Commons License

Many business owners begin blogging by opening an account at WordPress.com. While there are advantages to using WordPress.com as a hosting service, they don’t compare to the benefits of hosting your own blog on your own site.

Worry about complicated installation instructions and bewildering Linux commands stops many people from taking advantage of Open Source software such as WordPress. But there is no reason to hold back. It’s a snap to install WordPress on your web site if you have CPanel and Fantastico, which come as standard features in most Linux hosting plans. Although WordPress says that a normal, manual installation takes only five minutes, with Fantastico it takes about one minute. You don’t need any skills or network saavy.

This short video will demonstrate how easy it is to add a WordPress blog to your web site. Click the start button to begin watching.

Sorry - Technical Difficulties With Video - It will be reposted soon

If your hosting company doesn’t offer Fantastico, switch to a different web host! I’ve used BlueHost for the last 3 years and can recommend them highly. A quick web search will turn up many other Fantastico enabled web hosts.

How To Build A Web Site For Your Business - Part 3

The average low cost web site is hosted on a Linux server. Whether you personally use - or even know the first thing about - Linux is unimportant. Choosing a Linux plan like BlueHost’s is a good idea. Linux is a very stable server platform and it is free (unlike Unix and Microsoft server software). That’s one of the reasons Linux plans can be so inexpensive.

Linux has another advantage in web hosting. The web master’s (that’s you) connection to the server is usually a simple, graphical interface called CPanel. CPanel has a point and click structure that allows you to configure email accounts, upload files, add domains, and perform similar administrative tasks.

One of CPanel’s hidden gems is Fantastico De Luxe, which can be found under Software/Services.

Fantastico in CPanel Software/Services

Fantastico is a collection of One Click instllation scripts that will give you access to some of the most popular open source applications on the internet. For instance, among its many offerings, Fantastico includes WordPress, Joomla, Simple Machine Forums, and OS Commerce. All can be added to your web site by simply pointing and clicking. If you’ve ever tried to install any of these programs manually, you’ll appreciate what a dream one click installation is!

If your business web site requires anything beyond the most basic HTML pages, be sure you web hosting company offers CPanel with Fantastico. Anything else is just too much work.

How To Build A Web Site For Your Business - Part 2

Domains can be linked together in many ways

Not too long ago, when web storage space was still measured in MB instead of GB, each web site required its own web hosting plan. The plan might have cost anywhere from free to pretty darned expensive. But, whatever you paid, One Domain = One Account.

Now storage capacity is measured in terabytes and the cost is trivial. Hosting companies no longer compete by offering 100 MB of storage, or 500 MB, or even 5 GB. Instead, they offer unlimited domains.

This is a very good thing for internet entrepreneurs.

With a good hosting company, like BlueHost or HostGator, you can add as many domains as you need under just one account, for as little as $7.00 per month. (That sort of low rate will require a multi-year contract. If you are signing up for only one year, expect to pay about $10.00 per month.)

Of course, before you can point your new Add-on and Parked domains to your web hosting account, you’ll need to register them with a domain registrar like GoDaddy.com. This is an additional and entirely separate step. It is accomplished through the registrar, not the web host. Once that’s taken care of, you are ready to start.

What Are The Different Domains Types?

There are three different types of domains

• Subdomains
• Add-on Domains
• Parked Domains

Each offers something different, and each one may be useful to an internet retailer. Here’s a breakdown.

Subdomains

Subdomains are a section of your original domain. If, for instance, your domain is called mywebsite.com, a subdomain’s URL would be subdomain.mywebsite.com

Subdomains are organized as folders under the root structure of you domain. If you look at your site with some sort of file manager, the subdomain will appear to be just another folder.

So why use a subdomain at all? Say you’ve added a forum and you want its name to be prominently featured and easy to remember. Promote the bulletin board to a subdomain. The subdomain would still be associated with your regular URL, but users would find it by typing in a URL such as forums.mywebsite.com

Most hosting plans offer unlimited subdomains.

Add-On Domains

An Add On Domain is a totally separate web site, complete with its own URL and files, hosted under the same account as the original domain. When sites like BlueHost offer Unlimited Domains, they are saying you can have as many different web sites or blogs as you can manage for just one monthly fee, instead of paying for a new hosting plan for each site. This can add up to a considerable savings, especially for people running something like BANS sites. You could have 5, 10, or 100 small affiliate-income generating sites for $7.00/month - total.

Parked Domains

Finally, Parked Domain point to an existing site. For instance - suppose people regularly mistype the URL for your web site. Maybe your business is called “Clover City Sells” and, when you say it, people hear “Clover City Sales” instead.

If even 5 visitors out of 100 mistype your URL and - instead of seeing your web site - see a page that says “Web Site Not Found,” it could be terrible for your business. What’s the solution? Register the second domain (clovercitysales) and park it. The parked domain’s visitors will automatically land on the CloverCitySells web site.

With a parked domain, two different domains (URLs) lead to one web site.

Again, the ability to host unlimited parked domains can be a real money saver. You can register common misspellings of your domain or you can register other domain extensions (like .net or .biz) to prevent competitors from grabbing them. The only extra expense is the few dollars per year you’ll spend on the domain registration. You won’t even need to spend time creating a web page to redirect your visitors.

Photo by ~Dezz~ Used under Creative Commons License

The Web

Before we go any farther, let’s get a few definitions out of the way.

Domain Name

The Domain Name, as you probably know, is the name of your web site. For instance, Ghost Leg Media’s domain is ghostleg.com.

URL

URL stands for Universal Resource Locator. Just as your street, city, and state address on an envelope tells the post office where to deliver your mail, the URL defines your address on the internet. You’ll usually see the URL written out as something like http://www.ghostleg.com/blog/ In other words, it’s that name you type in your browser’s address bar.

Protocol

You’ll run across the word “protocol” a lot when you discuss computers. A protocol is just the way one computer communicates with another. The Internet Protocol, for instance, is the way computers communicate on the internet, and that’s really all we need to know about that.

IP Address

In geek speak, IP stands for “Internet Protocol.” Your web site’s true IP address isn’t the domain name. It’s a series of numbers, like “72.14.207.99″ That’s the IP address for Google. Whether you type 72.14.207.99 or www.google.com into your browser’s address bar, you should be taken to the same place. A complex system known as Domain Name Servers (usually abbreviated as DNS) translates the human-readable name (like google.com) into the computer-readable numerical IP address (72.14.207.99).

Registrar

SInce the internet requires every domain name to be unique, there needs to be some sort of central system to keep track of domains and to parcel out new ones. This service is performed by Registrars. When you want to buy a domain name, you go to a registrar like GoDaddy.com or Register.com or NetworkSolutions.com. They are accredited by ICANN to issue new domain names. By and large, all accredited Registrars offer roughly equivalent services. There is no benefit to using an expensive registrar.

Web Host

The server that hosts all your web pages is called a web host. That server may be in your broom closet or in Katmandu. It does not need to have the same operating system as your computer. Your computer will not be connected to it except when you are either viewing web pages in your browser or uploading pages via FTP.

FTP

Wait a minute - ft who now? FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and it is just a series of commands that lets one computer (the web server) know that another computer (yours) would like to send it some data (files). Like pretty much everything else on the web, you don’t need to worry about knowing the technical details of how it works. You just need to know where to find an FTP program and what the ftp address is of your web site.

Name Servers

One of your first tasks after registering a domain and contracting for web hosting is pointing the Name Servers to your web host’s computers. Your web host will tell you the correct Name Server addresses ( which will usually look something like NS1.bluehost.com) You then take this information to your registrar and enter it into the Name Server form somewhere in your My Account area at your registrar’s site.  Most web hosting companies have two or more name servers (as a precaution in case one is down). So you’ll probably have an NS2.whoever.com or NS3.whoever.com address as well as an NS1.whoever.com addreess.

Putting It All Together

As you can see, none of this technical sounding stuff really requires any technical knowledge. IT administrators all over the world are sweating the small stuff so we don’t have to. Once you learn a few simple terms, you are ready to perform all the administrative tasks that precede going live with your new site.

Web Photo by ecstaticist, Licensed under Creative Commons