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Choosing a Web Hosting Service and What’s in a
Domain Name
I actually was going to give you a different document on tips this week than
this one, but in my researches this week, I was quickly reminded about a couple
of things that I should have mentioned by now.
First we will discuss domain names. What prompted me to “back track”
slightly was after having spent numerous grueling hours researching other web
sites, I was reminded again how important a domain name is and also what
not to do when it comes to selecting and using one.
A Domain Name is what you choose as a name that appears in your URL
(Uniform Resource Locator). An example of one URL would be, http://www.laughmaine.com,
where LaughMaine is my domain name. So, a URL or Uniform Resource Locator
is broken down this way:
http (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) ://www (World Wide Web) Your
Domain Name followed by .com, net, org, biz or whatever.
As more and more domain names are being used up, it is becoming that much
harder to find the one you would like. This means many times we have to become
quite creative to find a proper domain name. Are domain names
important to you, search engines and Internet Users? ABSOLUTELY!!
It’s important to you because it is a reflection of you and your business and
just as importantly it should say something or describe your business as well.
For example: I am selling ball caps online and I have chosen a domain name of
“Toms”. My URL would be http://www.toms.com. What does that tell anyone?
Absolutely nothing, unless of course they might think it was the Tom’s food
company. A more fitting domain name might be CustomCaps and if that weren’t
available maybe a few variations would be, KustomKaps or BallCaps or something
of the sort.
It’s important to the search engines because they like to place sites well that
have domain names that tell what the site is about. In fact, what happens is
your domain name becomes an all-important “keyword”. When users go
online, they use the search keyword or key phrase “ball caps” more often
than they would “tom”. It would only make sense to use a descriptive domain
name.
Which brings us to the user-friendly part of your domain name. Internet
users are lazy and loath having to do more to get what they want. Typing long
URLs into a search tool is too time consuming. The shortest and most
descriptive name for your business is the best. Spend time searching for a
good name. It will reap dividends for you in the end. I know, I have learned the
hard way.
And going along with all of what we have discussed so far in this session, I
would like to talk about what it is like trying to do business with other online
accounts. This also has direct ramifications to the common Internet User as
well. In my travels I have come across some of the weirdest and absolutely
exasperating domain names. I would like to take a moment to explain to you a few
simple guidelines to follow.
Keep your name short and descriptive. If you already have your existing
business name, logic would say go ahead and incorporate it into your domain name
if possible. You should realize though that it is not imperative that you do
this. Some real creativeness on your part might land you a great name that will
work with what you do for business. Let’s use this for an example. The Pleasant
River Motel has a web site already but let’s say they wanted to create a new one
and were debating what to use for a domain name. After many debates and
some creative thinking, they decided to go with MaineMotels.com. Think about
that for a moment. If I were contemplating a trip to Maine and was looking for a
motel to stay at while I was there, what would I be more apt to type in for
search words – Pleasant River Motel or Maine motels? If you owned the domain “MaineMotels.com”,
your chances of being found before many other motels in Maine jumps drastically.
Some people just don’t get it. The other day I came across a web site that had
something like this for a domain name (I will not use the actual one for obvious
reasons). www.campinthewoodsbytherivermyfatheralwaysloved.com
Who is going to want to type that into a search tool every time? Who could
remember it? Camp in the woods might work or camp by the river as well. Long
names are business zappers. Users hate them and other web masters learn to
dislike them as well. We will learn later on the importance of “linking”
sites of similar businesses together. I can attest from experience that I would
not like linking up with campinthewoodsbytherivermyfatheralwaysloved.com – an
exaggeration but I think you get my point.
One of my online business names is “Kent On 6 Productions Shopping Networks” but
my domain name is “kenton6”. For me at the time, the name was clever and not
realizing the importance of domain names, I stuck with it. I reasoned that no
one knew what Amazon.com was or even Ebay. Someday the world will know “kenton6”
– right!
One more point about domain names before we move on. When you are
purchasing your name, shop around for good prices. Not all companies that
sell domain names charge the same price. It is usually an annual price and
ranges all over the place. Most simple domain name purchases run about $12.00 a
year. There are companies that package promotional gimmicks together with a
domain purchase so make sure you know and understand what you’re getting. If I
designed somebody’s site, probably my price would include domain name
purchase and hosting costs as well. If I maintained their site, again, my
price would probably include the monthly hosting cost.
Web hosting services are quite abundant and you should be educated about
what is in one. Prices will be all over the board and will vary by what is being
offered. If you are hiring a professional web designer, they usually have a
package plan that will include design and hosting fees together for a specified
amount of time.
Depending upon what you will be doing with your web site, there are some very
important things that matter. I would like to tell you about some basic things
that you need to know about your service. At my web hosting business our prices
begin at $3.95 per month and go up from there. Many people would do just fine
with a “starter package” but as your business grows and your demands become
more, you have the ability to “up-grade” your service. One important thing to
realize is that our service is a do-it-yourself kind of web hosting. You
have to know what you are doing and do any transferring of files etc. yourself
or your web designer.
There are basics though and let’s cover them. The first is how much space you
have to store your web site files on. Some services begin at 50 Megabytes or
smaller and go up from there. How much is that you might ask? Well, look at it
this way. Earlier I told you that each of your pages on your site should be
limited to 50 kilobytes or less. If you never went over the 50kb size you could
in theory have 100 pages on your site. If you choose a plan that starts low,
make sure you can expand as you need to.
Another item to consider is email addresses. Services and packages can
range from none to unlimited. Think about how many you might need. You would
need them for helping you organize and track traffic and inquiries on your site.
Examples of some email addresses might be: webmaster@customcaps.com, info@customcaps.com,
photos@customcaps.com. Each of these addresses affords you the chance to receive
email from your users and you can much more easily sort out and keep track of
who is sending mail and for what they are sending it. If you have employees, you
may want each of them to have their own email address. These are things to
consider.
Bandwidth usage is an important factor to consider. I will try to explain
what bandwidth is without getting too technical. When you go online and begin
searching the web for something, each time you land on somebody’s web site you
are going to use a certain amount of his or her bandwidth. If, for
example, you landed on www.customcaps.com home page and it opened in your
browser window, you used some bandwidth. How much? If that was all that
you did and if www.customcaps.com home page is 38kb in size, then 38kb of
bandwidth was used. If custom caps had 10 pages and the total file size of
all 10 pages were 480kb, then 480kb of bandwidth was used if you opened every
one of my pages.
If you went to my site every day for 30 days and opened all of my pages, over 14
megabytes of bandwidth would be used. Sounds simple enough right! So, if
you take a hosting package that gives you a bandwidth of 300MB per month is that
enough?
Initially it should be plenty but again it depends on what you are doing with
your site. For example: As a “free” service to my customers, I provide
them with mp3 music downloads of some of the songs that I sing. One 3-minute
song can be up to 4MB in size. It wouldn’t take me long to chew up my desired
bandwidth.
Lack of bandwidth can also slow down the speed of users trying to access
your web site. A lot of people using your site at one time chewing up
bandwidth can slow your site to a crawl and that wouldn’t be good. My advice
is purchasing a package that is ample for your immediate projected needs with
the option to upgrade, as it becomes necessary.
Make sure the hosting service you select is reputable. Find out how often
their server is down for maintenance and if they back up their files. With most
web hosting services, the files that you create are held on the hosting
company’s server and you want assurances that if their server crashes your files
won’t be lost.
For those of you who do your own designing, make sure a hosting service
provides the compatibility issues necessary for the software that you use to
design with. If you use Microsoft Front Page to create your website, you have to
make sure that your hosting service supports Front Page Extensions.
These are only some of the issues around domain names and web hosting
services. A professional web designer should know all this and more but ask
what you are getting for your dollar and don’t be afraid to go look at other
places and other designers – it’s your dollar that is being spent.
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