Web hosting tips for small businesses

So you want to have a website for your small business? Great! An online presence can be a great way to attract more customers, increase your revenue, and improve your credibility. Creating a website and registering a unique domain name (a .com, .net, .org or something fancier like .tv or .nu) is easy to do nowadays, but it doesn’t mean that everyone does it right. Here are some good steps to follow when choosing a paid web host for your small business website.

1. Determine your needs.

A good question to ask yourself is what you want to accomplish with your small business website? If you want to set up a website to simply inform people about your business – a site which might consist of a company background story, resumes, a portfolio/gallery of previous work or examples, and contact information – and do not intend to sell your product on your website, then chances are good that you probably won’t need 200gb of space; look into a smaller or an economy webhosting package. If you are looking to build an e-commerce website, a website where you sell your product online, then a decent amount of space might be required; it would depend on how many items you offer in your store and how large your shopping cart script is.

When considering your web hosting needs, also be sure to consider your domain name, if you haven’t already. Do you need to register a domain name along with your web hosting package, or do you already have a domain name registered elsewhere? Some hosts do offer free domain name registration with a hosting package, but be careful: I’ve seen hosts charge upwards of $20 for a .com, .net., or .org domain name registration when it can cost as little as $10 or so if you go to a different domain name registrar.

2. Do your homework so you don’t have to put up with an inadequate web host later.

There are a ton of web hosts out there, so take your time and do some research. Choose a few suitable web hosts based on your needs and compare and contrast them. Try a Google search for the web hosts in question, or read over some web hosting forums, blogs, and websites for customer feedback, ratings, and reviews. Red flags to look for would include server downtime, poor customer support/response time, incorrect contact information, and tons of “special offers.”

3. Don’t let a great deal cloud your judgment.

As with almost anything you purchase, you get what you pay for. Dramatic price-reductions and dollar-off coupons are great, but be weary: Unbelievable prices and offers (i.e. a hosting package with “unlimited” everything: space, bandwidth, email accounts…) might be offered by a host to attract new customers because too many of their old customers were disgruntled with their service and moved to different hosts! A cheap host might not be the best host.

4. Review and ask questions before purchasing.

When you think you are ready to register with a chosen web host, review the host’s website one last time as well as the information you’ve gathered about them. Make sure you understand what’s in your hosting package, how often a payment needs to be made (typically monthly, quarterly, bi-annual, or annual payment options are offered for web hosting), the hosting terms and conditions, etc. If anything is unclear, ask questions! Many hosting companies have a FAQ section and a place to submit questions and feedback before you make your purchase, or you could re-visit some of the forums, blogs, and websites you came across when you were doing your homework.

Fanlistings

Just a thought: How, I wonder, can some people own so many fanlistings and manage to update them all on a timely basis?

I see some collectives that have 40 or more (one collective I just looked at had 82 owned fanlistings!) and think to myself, WOW… Hell, I have a lot of free time and enjoy working on websites, but I couldn’t even manage updating and maintaining 40++ sites. I think the most fanlistings I owned at one point in time was 30, and I ended up closing a lot of them because of lack of interest/activity and a few were removed. Recently, I mentioned that 9 of the fanlistings I owned were removed after getting “3 strikes” over a one-year time period. I felt bad, considering a lot of them were several years old and I put time into them, but hey- sometimes there are other obligations in life to deal with. (Speaking of, there’s yet another reason why Burned-Bridges has been on hiatus so long…)

OMG! B-B.net is alive?!

Aside from the content, which really needs to be revised, a new layout for Burned-Bridges is looking finished- finally! Something would have been up by now, but I wasn’t satisfied with anything I came up with. This layout I just finished working on is the third complete prototype layout for the site, which I have been working on re-vamping for about two years (and hardly getting anywhere.)

I’ll briefly talk you through some of the ideas that I had. I would post screenshots, but I didn’t take any along the way.

When I first started working on a new layout for the site, I knew I wanted to have a graphic background because – when properly used – they look nice. I had a horizontal striped background that looked very much like the Victoria’s Secret shopping bags (you know, the pink striped ones…), and I was trying to build something around that look. The colour scheme was two slightly different shades of pink, white, and black. I was trying to work with rounded vector shapes, but I scrapped the idea when it wasn’t turning out the way I envisioned.

Next, I tried using one of the Colourlovers patterns I made as a background: an ornate pattern based off of one of the palettes I made. Let me tell you- that site has been a lifesaver. Even when I lose inspiration when it comes to making graphics and coding layouts, the colour themes are still there to work with. So, based on what I had in mind (light, feminine, and elegant), I chose one of my favourite palettes and went from there. Long story short, I loved the palette and everything came together nicely, after I changed around the navigation numerous times and worked on it slowly over a period of time, but today I was sick of the colour palette and changed it yet again. The colour scheme is very similar to the one I just posted on this site, but for now I don’t care. The orange and pinks remind me of sherbert, which is surely appropriate for the summer. Plus- if I get tired of the layout here, it is a hell of a lot easier to change than the one for Burned-Bridges, which I have been slaving over forever.

Like I said, the damn content is the only thing getting in the way of posting that layout right now. I don’t want to have ancient content sitting there, so that is going to require a little bit more time and effort… unfortunately. I also want to experiment with rounded div corners and see if I can get them to work for me.

And I really want to host some new sites, now that I am trying to get the domain back up and established again. If you or anyone you know is in need of reliable hosting (hell, I’ve had B-B.net for 7 years and plan on riding it out a few years longer before I get sick of it), please comment and contact me for details!

Godaddy raised their prices?

Damn… I just went to GoDaddy.com to check out a domain promotion I just found out about ($1.19 domain registration by using the code 99DOMAIN at checkout; limit of one per account, and I dunno if it still works), and I actually found that their prices went up considerably from what they have been over the past years. If you look at the comparison chart they have on their website, you can see that .net is $12.99, .org is $14.99, and .com is $10.69. New .com registrations are currently $9.99 and they often run other specials such as $0.99 .info domains for the first year and $1.99 domains with the purchase of another service. Granted, these prices are still lower than a lot of their competitors, as they have indicated in their chart, but still – why such a price jump in only a few months time? Do economy woes have the number of domain registrations down? Are they looking to pay the web designer for the new website design?

The last time I checked their prices was in July when I renewed this domain. At that time (and for years before then, as I mentioned) .com, .net, and .org domains were all priced at $9.99 for a renewal or new registration – unless a promotion was in effect to lower the price. Their domain name registrations were priced that way since 2001 when I first registered Burned-Bridges.net and I have receipts to prove it. Quite frankly, I would have never registered multiple domains with them or recommended them to countless people if their prices weren’t that great, but they were. $9.99 is a steal, but I honestly don’t think I have actually paid that since the first time I registered Burned-Bridges. With promo codes, I have paid around $6.50 to $8 for domain renewals and new registrations. Maybe that is why they increased the price; so, with promo codes, they would actually make $9.99 or thereabout?

If you are thinking about registering a domain with GoDaddy.com, I would probably still recommend them even though their prices have unfortunately increased, and I would strongly urge you to search for “GoDaddy.com promo codes” on the internet – or use the one on the banner above. Their domains come packaged with a bunch of features that a first-time domain owner might find useful. For example, they offer free hosting (with their advertisements on the page) when you buy a domain. Someone looking to cut costs might use that feature, but I never bothered because I register my hosting space elsewhere and don’t want advertisements without a choice to remove them.

By the way, promo codes aren’t just available for GoDaddy.com. I would strongly recommend searching for promo codes before purchasing from any site. Who doesn’t want to save a buck or two? Well, maybe the rich bastard bathing in Benjamins in his Jacuzzi in his multi-million-billion dollar mansion doesn’t care about a single G. Washington, but I do and it only adds up over time.