The first thing you’d want to consider when planning to operate multiple websites is whether or not you’ll have them all hosted by a single web hosting company. There are plenty of hosting packages that allow you to put up several sites under a single account, while almost all web hosting companies permit the creation of multiple accounts, with each account pertaining to one site.

If you are satisfied with the company hosting your existing website, it would work well to your advantage to have your other sites hosted by that same company since you already know the kind of service and support that it offers. If you’re in luck, they might also extend discounts to customers with multiple sites, and that will mean less expense on your part if you choose to go with them again for your other web sites.

But then again, if you get the services of another hosting company, you will have the chance to make quality comparisons. In the event that you encounter issues with them, you will have a ready alternative. It’s a good thing to not put all your eggs in one basket, as the saying goes.

Another good thing about employing the services of another host is that your sites will be provided different IP addresses. If your web sites fall under a common niche and you plan to get them linked together, ranking higher in search engines will be more attainable with different IP addresses.

Links coming from other sites are very important if you want higher ranking for your web site. If search engines detect that links emanate from sites belonging to the same IP address, it is a sign that all the sites concerned are being operated by one person. This will work to your disadvantage as the value of your links will be deemed less.

If you decide to put your sites under the hosting of one company, you have three options to choose from: have one account for each site, have all your sites hosted under a reseller account, or go with a dedicated server. The first type, having one account for each site, is basic and pretty much self-explanatory, so we’ll move on to the less simple options.

Let’s take a look at reseller accounts. Acting as a reseller web host, you are, in effect, playing the role of an agent for your host – a middleman that links them and the end user. What this means is that you can sort of set up your own web hosting outfit that is actually hosted by the company. There is no need to resell this hosting as you can utilize the hosting services for your sites, in effect “reselling” the hosting to yourself. What’s good about a reseller account is that your websites are housed together, and there is only one point of contact in case technical issues arise.

Dedicated hosting, on the other hand, enables you to have total control of the web server. You’ll have the ability to install any application and make use of your preferred operating system. You are also free to play around with such resources as memory and storage space and distribute them well between your sites.

The main drawback in having dedicated hosting is that the task of server maintenance is left to you. In some cases, you will also have to be concerned with complex technical matters. If you happen to be the technically challenged type and you are clueless about how to properly run a web server, you will fare better going for a managed dedicated server. This way, your hosting company can give you a hand when it comes to technicalities. Dedicated servers, naturally, cost a lot more than your other options. You might want to ensure that you have solid, good earning websites that get regular, massive traffic so that you don’t get messed up by budget problems in the course of running your sites.

Do you need to host multiple websites? Take a look at the best options for best reseller hosting and best dedicated web hosting in our best web hosting section

For starters, a general rule of thumb is to not use splash pages. Splash pages are those pages you see first when you visit a website. They are usually made up of very attractive images and welcoming text that try to entice visitors to click further to enter the site. In reality, however, splash pages are nothing more than a grand doorway with no real objective. You should not give your precious visitors reason to go for the “back” button and move on to another site. Forget about splash pages. Present your site’s value up front so that they get hooked right away to what you have in store for them.

Next basic advice – go easy on your banner ads. Even those people who don’t know much about web sites and the web on the whole have learned to ignore banner ads, so it will just be a big waste of valuable web site space if you use this kind of ads in excess. It is best, instead, to just pile up your pages with valuable content and sprinkle pertinent affiliate links into your articles. This will make your visitors feel more like wanting to make a purchase than just being pushed to buy.

Another aspect of your site that you need to be very particular about is its navigation menu. It is always best to provide a straightforward and user-friendly navigational feature on your web site, something that even a non-savvy surfer will be able to use conveniently. Steer clear of complex Flash-based or multi-leveled drop down menus. If your visitors get confused finding their way around your site, they will simply leave.

Adding audio to your site is another source of annoyance for your visitors. If you want people to spend much time browsing your site and going over your content, you have to be certain that they are not irritated by some looped audio playing on the background. In case the audio is essential to the theme of your web site, you must ensure that your visitors have a way of controlling the sound volume.

Finally, the most important thing to keep in mind when setting up your web site is to have it hosted by a reliable provider. Make sure that you’ve done the necessary research before picking a web host for your site. Look around for reviews posted by other web masters and web site owners, and come up with a shortlist of providers from which you will make your final choice. Heeding the above mentioned recommendations will make life easier for you once you’ve decided to establish an online business through your own web site.

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1. Price

Almost always, price will be your foremost concern. You may be very excited to get your site up and running, but if your operational funds are limited you will need to carefully look around for the right service provider to match your meager resources.

2. Bandwidth

You want to ask yourself how much traffic allowance is afforded by inexpensive web hosting plans. A number of really cheap plans are more generous with the allowance they offer than the more pricey ones, while others have less. You have to ensure that you pick a plan flexible enough to accommodate your site’s traffic growth as you wouldn’t want to be scampering for an upgrade once your site starts getting more and more visitors. Be aware that there are always web hosting providers that allow modest traffic with no extra charge.

3. Storage

Your next concern will have to do with storage space. You wouldn’t want to get tied up to a plan that will not have room for the volume you intend your site to have. This is where comparing statistics helps. With proper research, you can always find affordable plans having huge capacity for storage.

4. Uptime

When doing your research, it is also imperative to look at a web hosting provider’s service record. Do they suffer from frequent downtimes? This should be a key consideration as nothing turns off visitors more than having to always encounter unavailable pages. This is one of the most common reasons for lost traffic. Web hosts need some time to do maintenance stuff, so a bit of downtime is natural, but make sure that these outages don’t occur too often.

5. Additional Features

Your ability to review your site’s traffic statistics is another vital concern. You should go with a provider that has this feature. Information pertaining to traffic statistics is a must-have as it helps in doing targeted advertising, and aids you in analyzing traffic quality. There are many affordable plans that offer user-friendly statistic reporting programs that provide users with pertinent data for more effective site management.

Other Important Things to Consider

Other web hosting plan features you may want to consider availing include domain name registration and renewal. There are cheap web hosting providers that have these as part of their packages. This means one less chore to worry, so you definitely have to grab it if it’s offered.

There are a lot of reputable web hosting companies that offer their services cheap. For very affordable monthly fees, you can get yourself great unlimited web hosting service that is guaranteed, as well as be able to put up unlimited sites on the host’s servers. In most cases, you won’t even have to worry about any setup fees.

Searching for affordable web hosting plans will surely yield plenty of options to choose from. Always remember to make comparisons and be very particular with your site’s growth potential. Traffic can only increase in the course of time, and you want to make sure that your affordable web host will be able to handle the surge, and remain reliable in the long run.

Trying to find an affordable web hosting plan? Take a look in our best web hosting section to find out who we think is the best value web hosting.

First and foremost, free web hosts are abundant online and can be rather useful in many circumstances. Because very little disk space and bandwidth are provided, free web hosts are not recommended for online businesses that aim to draw high volumes of traffic. Similarly, free web hosts place advertisements on their clients’ sites in order to generate revenue from providing free hosting and do not offer any additional features like multiple emails or technical support. Basically, these services are best for those with smaller, personal websites and those who are merely experimenting with web development.

The most popular paid >online web hosting services use shared servers, which means one server is used to host a group of individual websites that generally have nothing to do with one another. The benefits of using shared web services lie in saving money by sharing disk space and bandwidth with other website owners; though, there is always the risk of high traffic on another site causing delays and lagging on other sites on the server.

Dedicated web hosting means only one website is assigned to a server, which offers maximum storage space and bandwidth as well as eliminates lagging due to other sites’ traffic. While more expensive than shared web hosts, most dedicated web hosts come with unlimited databases and emails, advanced security and all kinds of design tools.

If your website requires the services of a dedicated web host, there are two kinds to choose from, managed and unmanaged. A managed server means the web host performs administrative and maintenance functions on your behalf and is the better choice for those who are not very technically inclined. On the other hand, more experienced web developers can choose an unmanaged server which gives them full administrative control and responsibility for the website’s technical aspects.

Looking for a web hosting plan online? Find out who is currently the best web host for your needs

Well, it has been a long time and is well overdue, but a new top level domain registrar is being released and is currently all the craze in the domain world. As of April 1st, people can register domains for their brands and trademarks. Additionally, you can begin to pre-order .co domains.

.Co domains are predicted to be the one the most dominant domain registrars over the next 10 years, and is even being called the .co era. While trademark owners hurry to snap up their branded .co domains, many domain traders are also beginning to pre-order .co domains in hopes of scooping up premier domains while the .co registrar is in it’s infancy.

The .co domain registry has presented a huge opportunity for businesses and internet entrepreneurs who can once again find the perfect memorable and unique domain without having to settle for something else.

Any user who wants to pre-order a .co domain can already do so at Godaddy. Godaddy has an automated ordering system that will try and scoop up your .co domain the instant it becomes available. CO domains will be first come first serve until July 20th, at which point, all domains are fair game!

So if you are looking for cheap .CO domains, you still have a few months to wait, but get ready for the flood gates to open, because when they do, there will be quite the gold rush for bran new quality top level domains.

At this price you can usually find a good shared web hosting plan with unlimited storage, bandwidth and emails.

Users who are paying more than this price range are usually in need of special or advanced web hosting services that you don’t get with a typical shared hosting plan.

Users who pay less than this for web hosting run the risk  of getting bad customer service, flaky web hosting, and possibly even getting scammed.

Looking for a good web hosting plan at a good, reasonable price? Find out what web host offers the best value hosting.

.CO domains are the newest up-and-coming top level domain registrar. It has been a long time since there has been a quality recognizable top level domain extension release. CO is a multi purpose registrar that stand for “company”, “corporation”, “commerce”, “communication” and much more, making .CO domains the most versatile global top level domain, maybe ever

The current downfall of .co domains is that they aren’t always exactly cheap. The .CO domain registrar is rolling out the extension in various phases to allow trademark owners and others priority access to their domains.

What does this mean for you? Well, if you want a cheap .co domain, it may not happen just yet. Right now it will cost anywhere from $280-$300 USD to register a .co domain.

Don’t fret though, after July 2010, the price of .co domains will become much lower in price when they drop to about $30/year, or maybe even cheaper once they are available on a first come, first serve basis.

For now, anyone wishing to pay a little extra and get first dibbs on a .co domain can do so by ordering in the pre-registration phase for about $300 at Godaddy

One very useful service that good web hosts offer is the monitoring and recording of downtime, which is when your website becomes unavailable to the public. They understand that lots of downtime directly results in loss of sales and therefore make a strong effort to reduce downtime and increase productivity.

Web hosts also offer similar services to web designers and a little bit more. In fact, web designers usually work on behalf of web hosts, doing part of the work and handing the rest over to its partner company. Since web design tools and features are usually included in web hosting services, it generally makes more sense to stick with a web host for all your web design needs.

Most web hosts offer a wide variety of templates and customization tools to personalize your website on your own, or with assistance. This kind of flexibility is valuable to small business owners who don’t have a lot of money to pay web designers for the time it takes them to tweak websites to their personal preferences, as well as their clients’ preferences.

If a web designer offers a discount or free web hosting service in their quotation, you should ask for all the features included in the hosting service and then check out how much it would cost for a web host with a similar package. In many cases, designers increase their own rates in order to accommodate the price of a hosting service.

Another invaluable feature most web hosts offer is the ability to upgrade to better bandwidth, more space, and other such technical upgrades, which is something most people would normally hire a web designer to do as it takes additional web design to properly upgrade any website.

In many cases, web hosting services can eliminate the need for web designers by providing you with all the tools you need to initiate the development of your website, as well as provide you with the option to expand if and when necessary. Having total control over these aspects and cutting out the middlemen are great ways to saving a lot of money.

Want to save some money and find your own web hosting package? Find a web host that is right for you in our best web hosting section

It is common to assume that a high quality, reliable web hosting service would cost a fair bit of money, like $40 or even more dollars per month. While you certainly can find a lot of great web hosts at this price range, you can find similar advanced services such as unlimited databases, SQL and ASP.Net at much lower prices if you remain patient and dig a little deeper.

There are a few things to look for when browsing cheaper web hosting services that will ensure you are really getting your money’s worth. First and foremost, downtime can be very expensive to your online business, making it important for clients to be able to contact technical support by phone as well as email. Any quality web host will have this kind of support available.

It’s crucial to take a close look at the amount of disk space that is actually included in the monthly rate. In most cases, the less disk space being used, the cheaper the rate, though make sure you’re not going to exceed the limit as additional space can be extremely expensive. It is beneficial to consider not only the current needs of your website but also its potential future needs, especially in terms of growth. Web hosts that offer unlimited disk space are generally the safest route. The same is true in terms of bandwidth.

Some other things any good web host would offer are tools and templates to design and maintain your site on your own. Without these tools, you are subject to hiring a web designer to develop your website or even perform simple maintenance, all of which could end up costing more than going with a slightly better web host.

Start off by searching for cheap web hosting services in general, and then begin narrowing them down by considering all of the above. At first, the results are overwhelming, though by focusing on quality of quantity, any website developer is bound to make the most cost-effective decision possible.

Looking for cost-effective web hosting? Check out who we think is the current best value web hosting

With so many different web hosting services available that range so widely in price and capability, it can be really difficult figuring out which service to use for your website. Since having a good web host is so crucial to the success of any website, it can be extremely beneficial to incorporate web hosting services reviews in your search for the right one.

If you’ve ever tried searching for web hosting services, you probably understand just how hard it can be to sort through all the different packages, prices, and promises that appear before you. Instead, search for reviews on web hosts, which will provide you with a generous listing of review sites that cover just about any web hosting service worth mentioning.

While browsing reviews, it’s also important to question the quality of the review site. For example, a good review site will focus on rating aspects such as amount of downtime, amount of disk space and bandwidth, quality of customer service and technical support, features, design tools and administrative services included. An honest review of any web host will include all of this information as well as a personal review of the overall service.

Without hard data included in the review, it will be somewhat impossible to determine whether or not a hosting service can accommodate the needs of your particular site regardless of how much a reviewer recommends it. Also beware of review sites that may be commissioned by web hosting companies specifically to draw more customers for them. These reviews are generally exaggerated and are sometimes just as misleading as the average advertisement.

Basically, reviews are only meant to accommodate your search for a good hosting service and shouldn’t be solely relied on. It is always beneficial to know as much as possible about what you require and can afford before searching for advice from anyone else.

Looking for reliable, honest web hosting reviews? Check out our web host reviews section.