Finding A Host For Your Website
A very important step in establishing online business is having one’s own website. Web designing today is not as hard as it used be, with the availability of html editors and point and click soft-wares. Anyone can create a website without knowledge of html. But one should remember that designing a website is just the beginning and not the end of online business. He should be able to showcase his site to hundreds of thousands of visitors in order to earn a decent income. Simply hosting a site on a server without getting targeted visitors is like building a supermarket in an island where there are no people.
It is extremely important to find a web hosting company which helps one not just to park his site but to get targeted visitors. Due to stiff competition the cost of web hosting (uploading web-pages to a server where anyone can see) has come down. There are many which offer free web-hosting. If you want to check just type free web-hosting in a search engine and search. It will display pages after pages of companies offering free web-hosting.
Those who offer free hosting do so only to entice people to upgrade the account to a paid one. They display their own ads sometimes so prominently that visitors coming to the site think that the page has only ads and no content and will leave that site in a hurry. There will never be any guarantee that such a site does not go off-line as the host is not under any obligation.
The band width (amount of data transferred from an account) will be limited. If one starts getting more visitors they will only see this message-“this account has exceeded the bandwidth. If you are the owner please contact the administrator and upgrade your account”.
Free accounts will be getting only limited space. If one tries to upload more pages he will again get an error message-“you have exceeded the allotted space. Please upgrade your account if you want more space”.
Those with free account may not be allowed to have their own forums or manage their own newsletters, both of which are important for running a successful online business, unless they upgrade their account. If they get a free forum it will be full of ads and visitors will be distracted. It is necessary to maintain an opt-in list so that one can contact his prospective customers and auto-responders to send regular messages automatically. Free accounts may not be allowed to install and run special scripts-for example to take regular back-up of the files. Hence there is no point in depending on so called free hosting.
When someone tries to find paid web-hosting he will be bewildered by the various packages offered by different companies. Without any technical knowledge he will not be able to understand the head or tail of the different packages and choose the most suitable one for him. He is tempted to start with the most basic to start his online business. Then the nightmare begins.
He wants to have his own domain name which is extremely important for establishing his presence on the web only to find out that his company either does not have domain registration service or he has to pay extra for it. Many things mentioned for free web-hosting also apply for the basic package in varying degrees. But it is always “if you want that please select premium package; if you want this please select platinum package” and so on. He continues to pay for his web-hosting but does not get any income from the site. Before he selects the “right package” he will be so fed up that he may give up his online venture.
In order to get targeted visitors one should add the correct keywords to the meta-tag section of his webpage. How does one know the key words people use to search for information? If the web host does not provide him with this vital information he will have to use separate software and pay for it. He has to ensure that his pages are search engine friendly (search engine optimization) so that he gets good ranking from them. For this he will have to make use of third party service and pay for it. Without good ranking the pages will not be displayed at the top and may not be noticed by other people.
It one is updating his site regularly he needs to inform his visitors what is new on the site. For this he has to make use of a technology called RSS (really simple syndication). If his web host does not offer any help he has to learn how to create RSS file himself and upload it. Search engines require sitemaps to know what a site contains. The site maps are required in different formats for different search engines. If one does not have the site map in the correct format for a specific search engine it may not show his pages in the search result. If his host does not create the required sitemaps, he will have to learn how to create different sitemaps for search engines and upload them or make use of some other service.
As you can see running an online business is not very simple. It is not possible for every one to master all the technical knowledge needed to take care of every aspect of online business. Hence it is extremely important to find a reliable web-host who provides all the technical help and shortens your learning curve. Your success in online business hinges on hosting your website with a very reliable hosting company who gives every possible help for you to succeed. Please visit my site for specific information on the best web-hosting companies.
Arun Kumar Suri is a pediatrician by profession. His website Family Life and Home Based Business is dedicated to various family issues with particular attention to child and adolescent health. The articles on the site look at the common problems in a family from different angles. It stresses the need to lead a balanced life giving equal importance to materialistic and spiritual aspects of life. The site urges mothers to work at home so that they can take proper care of their children and provides adequate information on how to start an online business. You can visit his website at http://www.homebusinessandfamilylife.com/
Tags: free web hosting, hosting a website, reliable web hosting, web hosting
