http://www.articletrader.com/ Articles at ArticleTrader en-us http://www.articletrader.com/internet/web-hosting/help-with-hosting-for-ecommerce-sites-and-what-is-essential-in-your-ecommerce-hosting.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/web-hosting/help-with-hosting-for-ecommerce-sites-and-what-is-essential-in-your-ecommerce-hosting.html Tue, 13 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500
There are now many hosting services which specialize in hosting for ecommerce, but do they actually offer any more than a normal host would?

As you would guess, most of the answers to these questions are related to the products or services you want to offer, or to feature on your site, and whether you need to accept credit cards.

Most web hosting companies which offer ecommerce features with their hosting packages will have a shopping cart system like osCommerce or Miva Merchant. This is essentially a database, to which you can add your own products. The customer can then browse your site, read about what you are offering, and make a purchase. Some shopping cart systems are very sophisticated and can include affiliate accounts, can generate sales and traffic reports, and can have integrated promotional and email capabilities. The best shopping cart systems make it easy for you to maintain your site and product listings, and to make sales.

This leads on to the next issue. Most customers will use a credit card to buy goods or services online. An ecommerce host will usually offer SSL, (a secure socket layer) which is a web security system designed to protect sensitive data like credit card numbers and names, while it is being transmitted across the Internet, between the customer's browser and the server. The shopping cart system will then make the payment into your merchant account. Customers now expect secure systems like this, before they make a purchase.

The web hosting and ecommerce setup you need depends on your business plans. Not all ecommerce enterprises will need full ecommerce hosting. If you plan to run only Adsense or Clickbank or affiliate links on your site, you definitely don't, and you just need a reliable shared hosting package. If you have an electronic product, consider selling it as a Clickbank merchant. On the other hand, if you have your own products, or are reselling physical goods, then you do need a dedicated web hosting package for ecommerce.

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Read more about web hosting and ecommerce at my ecommerce and web hosting page, and check my recommendations.

Don Break writes about hosting, and how to get the best possible hosting deals.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/web-hosting/help-with-using-windows-to-upload-files-to-your-web-site-using-my-network-places.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/web-hosting/help-with-using-windows-to-upload-files-to-your-web-site-using-my-network-places.html Tue, 06 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500
Using this method, you can use the sorting and display features you are familiar with in Windows, and avoid the cramped display and bizarre quirks many ftp programs suffer from.

If you want to try to use this method because it is more convenient, because you don't like using FTP, or if you are setting up a system that another Windows user or a child can understand instantly, then do this.

From the Start menu in Windows, select My Network Places. (Or, you can select My Computer and click on the My Network Places link.)

Select 'Add a network place'.

A wizard dialog window will pop up. Following the wizard, you will 'Choose another network location'.

You then have to enter the ftp address of your site. This will be something like ftp://www.mygreatsite.com.

You will need to deselect the Log on anonymously check box, as you want to log on with your user name.

Enter your user name, as given to you my your hosting provider.

You will be prompted to enter a name that will be used to identify your site, or accept the default name.

Check the box to open the new network place when you finish. (You can just go back to My Netwok Places later whenever you want to work on your web site files).

You will be prompted to enter your password for your hosting account.

After that, you will be logged on to your host's server, and you will see your remote files, just as you see the files on your hard disk, in a normal window. (You may have to click on a folder called www, or public_html to see them.)

You can then work on your files, drag new files to the server, and so on.

If you prefer to work on files in this familiar way, you have seen that it is the work of a couple of minutes to set up any network place you need.

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Don Break writes about web hosting, and how to choose the best hosting for your needs. Read more about recommended web hosts.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/web-hosting/what-is-important-when-choosing-a-web-hosting-company.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/web-hosting/what-is-important-when-choosing-a-web-hosting-company.html Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0500
The price of hosting has come down steadily over the years, so that excellent hosting packages can now be had for about $5 a month, and sometimes for less if you sign up for a year or more.

But price should not be the only factor you consider when looking for a web host. A web hosting provider may be very cheap, but if they have no uptime guarantees it is a false economy. If surfers or customers can't get to your site 99% of the time, then you lose goodwill, or sales, or perhaps even being indexed or updated by the search engines.

Another factor to consider when choosing your new web hosting provider is the support which is on offer. Look at the page where the hosting service is selling its hosting packages. Do they mention support? Do they offer it by phone or by email? Do they mention response times? Do they have a forum where you can ask presale questions? Even if you don't anticipate it now, you will inevitably have to contact support at some point in the future, often about something critical.

One more factor to look at before you sign up with a new host is the list of features which they offer. Some old fashioned hosts still do not offer basic services like PHP, MySQL, Perl, blogging or forum software, autoresponders, free subdomains, Fantastico, decent statistics, SSH access and so on. If any of these is important to you, check it is offered without further fees before you sign up.

One thing that no host review ever seems to mention is the web interface on offer to maintain your site, add email accounts, check your stats and so on. You will end up using this interface every day, and some hosts still have maintenance systems which are primitive in the extreme. If possible, look at a demo of this before you sign up, particularly for multi site or multi-domain hosting.

Once upon a time the bandwidth and disk space a hosting provider offered were about the only thing customers were concerned about, but now most hosts offer more than adequate provision. If you get to the stage where your shared host's bandwidth is not enough because your site is so successful, you probably need dedicated hosting – but that's another story.

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Don Break writes about web hosting, and how to choose the best hosting for your needs. Read more about top web hosts.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/domains/registering-a-domain-name-made-simple.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/domains/registering-a-domain-name-made-simple.html Tue, 08 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0500
To begin with, select the name you want. Many of the domain registration services, like Godaddy, have various tools which will help you. You enter any domain, and they will tell you if the domain name is taken already or not. If it is still free, you can register it. If it is already registered by another person, then the domain name registration service will offer you varieties of the domain name to think about, or you could try other suffixes, like .net, .info or .biz.

While .com names are still the most familiar and most common, the amount of traffic you will get to your new internet domain depends on your web promotion abilities and will have very little to do with the suffix, so don't be to upset if you can't secure the .com suffix of the domain you would like.

So, you have thought of the internet domain name you want, and it is not already registered by another person or business, what do you do next?

Going to a domain site like Godaddy, and having done the search for the name and checked that it is not already taken, you will be able to click on a 'Proceed to Checkout' button or similar.

Next you will select the period you want to register for – from one to ten years. If you have big plans for the domain name, or want it as an investment, go for a longer registration. If the domain is just for resale, choose a lesser period.

Now, you have to give things like your name and address and email contact details. When you own a company, you should also enter the company name. This information is used for the internet domain registration – the name is recorded as legally yours, for the period you have registered it for. Officially, you become the 'registrant' of the domain name, and no-one else can have it.

Following on with the registration, you should select if your registration is to be a public or a private one. A public registration means that any individual using anything like theWhois lookup service has the ability to look up the domain name and see your name and details. While planning the website you are going to put online, you may decide paying the extra small fee for a private registration which conceals your details will be worthwhile to avoid spam or prying eyes.

After having made your selection, you can enter your credit card or Paypal details, agree to the payment amount, and the domain becomes your own, for the period you have chosen. The best registration services like Godaddy will inform you, using the contact details you registered with, when the time comes to update or renew registration of your domain.

It is just as easy as that to register a domain!

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Ready to get your new domain, or just check if the domain you want is still unregistered? Click here - registration of domains - where we make it easy. Good luck!

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/domains/suggestions-for-selecting-a-great-domain-name.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/domains/suggestions-for-selecting-a-great-domain-name.html Thu, 27 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0500
First, you must accept that the most obvious names – the 'beachfront properties' of the internet – are all already acquired by someone else. Today, it is the case that every dictionary word hasalready been claimed. The reason for that is more and more web users have become well-informed enough to simply type a likely name into the address field of their browser. For example, someone looking for info about coffee, or wishing to get coffee on-line would just enter coffee.com into the URL field. This gives an acceptable result, and is faster than using google. The owners of the site, of course, get huge amounts of traffic to their web properties.

These kinds of names – like fruit.com, resume.com and so on may be open to approaches by their owners, but be prepared to spend hundreds, or millions of dollars. I take it as read you are not in this market, which is ridiculously inflated, but wish to buy a new, relevant name, which fits with your enterprise or theme for your new website.

Doing it this way, there are many smart ways to proceed. Too look at them, I'll use an example. My theme for the new internet site I want to build is collectibles. I do a fast check, and find that all the dot suffixes for the word collectibles itself are gone - .com, .net, info and so on.

One option is to add a relevant adjective, and create a two word name. Things like fine-collectibles.com, discount-collectibles or golden-collectibles.com may be a good fit for your site, and still give users a good indication of what your web site is about. Using free keyword tools like keyworddiscovery you can type in your keyword and actually discover what search terms your audience is using when looking for the subject.

Performing a search, words like country, cat, firefighter and so on are well-used words available to combine with 'collectibles', depending on whether they are in accord with the purpose and focus of the projected web site. Even MyCollectibles has a ring to it (think of myspace.com).

Sometimes, this method of discovering what people want will actually reveal a worthwhile idea for the focus of your new site.

However, if your business or idea has a geographical element, you can use that element with the focus of your site – mystate-collectibles, cheap-mytown-collectibles or similar.

Or, a useful option is adding a one letter prefix. For my subject, this would give me iCollectibles or eCollectibles, or the hyphenated forms, as a good set to investigate. You could also use a given name in combination with the themeof your projected site, depending on how homely you would allow your enterprise to be – marys-collectibles.com.

Another, and completely different option is to buy a domain name with no meaning, and spend some effort on its branding. Words like google, orbitz, expedia and netscape are examples of this. It’s hard to believe, but these were formerly words unknown to any dictionary. Who would not like to own those domains now?

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To read more about finding a suitable domain, and how to profit from domains, read my page about domain names.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/domains/web-domains-and-search-engine-optimization.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/domains/web-domains-and-search-engine-optimization.html Mon, 17 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0500
If it is to make your domain name more valuable for a purchaser with regular traffic to its pages, or for the sake of your profits (for which you also need regular, and hopefully growing levels of traffic), optimization is vital unless you are simply going to promote by pay-per-click.

Firstly, the myths. It is generally agreed among the top SEO commentators that key words in the domain itself have no effect on the results rankings of site pages. The days are long gone where search engine algorithms could be conned by simple tricks like creating a domain called buy-keyword1–keyword2.com. The internal page names, if they include keywords, may have some effect, though this too is doubtful.

So, when selecting your new domain name, you shouldn't be concerned when you find all the top domains are already registered. The search results will show the domain name to those searching, but that is the only possible advantage of keywords in a domain name.

Another myth is that using pay-per-click on your new domain will get it picked up, get the spiders in, and give it a push up in the search engine rankings. This has been shown to be just not the case, and is the result of wishful thinking.

Acquire incoming links from other sites, and the spiders will arrive soon enough.

Include useful content, and the search engines will learn to love you. If you can't think of original content, get a writer who can. The shortcuts to collecting web content – scraping that of others, lifting pages from directories, and all the gray and black hat techniques either don't work or will just set your site up for 1000th place in the listings.

Don't worry about keyword density, just focus your pages on a natural, coherent subject. In fact, do not think about the search engines at all. Your goal should be to give something really dood to your real audience – your human visitors.

Trying to validate your new site to W3C standard is a complete waste of your time. Any search engine would have to exclude 99% of the web from its results if it used this as a ranking technique. Use the time saved to create new pages.

Don't pay to place your new domain in paid directories, or directories selling PR-based links. In the past this worked, but the search engine algorithms no longer give much weight to tricks like this. Just consider – a rich company could buy its way to the top of the listings for every phrase it wanted, if buying links actually worked: and it would eliminate the value of the search engines to their users. This is precisely Google and the other engines want to prevent at all costs.

OK, the search engines can still make errors. Some sites, however good and original their content and however prolific their incoming links, just never get anywhere in the search results. Get another domain and move on.

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Keep reading – see my site for more about registering domain names.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]>