Top Level Domain Names For Sale

Although acquiring a domain name seems to be a small part of any web promotional strategy, it has a bigger effect. Domain is the online identity of any individual and business. So, it needs to fulfill the requirements it is supposed to carry out. Successful domain name registration is the key to flourishing web ventures. Domain registration firms will offer you numerous names. You have to carefully choose the names that best suit your business. The basic objective behind choosing the most fitting domain name is to garner maximum amount of traffic and stay ahead of business rivals.

Top-level domain names will offer you superior web exposure in the form of better search engine rankings. There is no denying of the fact that top web visitors get to their desired web sites through search engines. Search engines in a way generate massive web traffic. If you want to redirect that vast flow traffic to your website, you need to have a search engine-friendly domain name. The domain names figure prominently in the leading engine listings. If you grab those names, your job of gaining terrific web exposure will get simpler. The IP address and corresponding domain name you want to opt for should complement your purpose – that’s the rule for selecting domain names.

While choosing the domain names, you should also make sure that the names you are planning to go for should reflect your company’s name or the products and services. You should only purchase a domain name when you are confident that it will promote your cause more prominently on the web. The domain names usually are available on contracts. Buying domain name is not an expensive affair. You can own your favorite domain name with a minimum investment. If you are wise in selecting your domain, you will definitely get the maximum result.

Domain Names For Sale provides detailed information on Domain Names For Sale, Business Domain Names For Sale, Cheap Domain Names For Sale, Top Level Domain Names For Sale and more. Domain Names For Sale is affiliated with Free Domain Name Searches.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Steve_Valentino

Domain Names For Sale

A domain name is a distinctive group of characters or numbers that is assigned to an Internet website. If you want to expand your business on the web, you have to buy a suitable domain name. Thus you can develop a worldwide clientele. Potential customers will be able to access you easily. Web visitors are the lifelines of the online businesses. Domain names give them the power to attract more and more visitors. The demand for domain names is always on a high. So is the popularity of domain registration companies.

Whether you own an online shopping mart, mortgage lending service or insurance service, the domain registration companies will offer you relevant names. Those who are selling software and vacation packages can also earn greater exposure by opting for suitable domain names. If you search the Internet extensively, you will also find some domain names that are already listed on major search engines with plum positions. Those sites attract huge amount of traffic on a regular basis. So, it will be easier for you to spread your business on the web with them. You will find various domain names capable of taking your mission further by garnering more and more traffic.

The first step to stay ahead on the web is to find out some exquisite domain names at affordable prices. After all, it’s all about making everyone aware of your online existence. In this era of cutthroat competition, you need to have a relevant and effective domain name to back you up. The domain names should match your objectives so as to flourish on the web. The job is challenging, no doubt. But with a powerful and effective domain name, you will be able to achieve your goal. The personal and business website owners should opt for the best domain names without any delay to seize the initiative.

Domain Names For Sale provides detailed information on Domain Names For Sale, Business Domain Names For Sale, Cheap Domain Names For Sale, Top Level Domain Names For Sale and more. Domain Names For Sale is affiliated with Free Domain Name Searches.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Steve_Valentino

Tracking Your Website Statistics To Improve Your Site's Success

So you've got your new website up and running and you've done some advertising to get people to visit. How do you know whether they're actually coming or not?

Most web hosting plans include some sort of statistics package. This software will tell you all kinds of information about your visitors, not just how many you're getting.

All visitors coming to your website get logged by your web server. They automatically create log files with information like your visitors' origin (their IP address), what browser software they're using, the pages they looked at, how long they stayed on your site, whether they arrived by clicking a link from a search engine and if so, they keywords they used when running the search.

The trouble with these log files is they're practically impossible to make sense out of. They're really just long lists of numbers and words that are very cryptic and hard for the average person to decipher.

Statistics software will take these hard-to-understand logs and convert them into a format that is easy for the average person to understand. Most of them will create both reports and charts to show you what your visitors are doing on your site.

Statistics programs are included with most hosting plans. There are a few different ones available, so it will depend on your host, but they're usually accessed through the control panel for your website.

Three of the most popular stats packages are Analog, AWStats and Webalizer. Part of the reason they're so popular is because they are all free.

What Do You Really Need to Know?

These stats programs give you all kinds of interesting information about your website traffic, but not all of it is really that important.

For example, they will all show you the number of hits your website has received. Hits are a little misleading though - they're not the number of people visiting your site.

Hits are actually requests for files, so every single file that gets requested logs 1 hit. If you home page has 6 images and 2 include files, your stats software will register 9 hits every time that page gets loaded (1 for the page itself, 6 for the images and 2 for the includes).

Some of the more important stats to look at include:

- Number of visits
- Page views (you can use this to see which pages are most popular)
- Popular entry and exit pages
- Referring sites
- Referring keywords, if referred from a search engine

By tracking these stats and tweaking things that are related to them you can improve your site's success with your visitors, whether that means more sales, staying on the site longer, more people signing up for your email newsletter, or anything else.

John Lenaghan writes about e-commerce web site hosting and other website hosting topics on the Hosting Report website. Find out more at http://www.hostingreport.org.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=John_Lenaghan

Russian Spammers Learning English to SPAM Your Inbox

How do Russian Spammers get customers in the Western World? Well unlike many of the illegal aliens here coming from Mexico they are learning English and using this to their advantage to SPAM all of us? While we are busy complaining about illegal aliens closing some 80 hospitals in California due to anchor baby free deliveries and over crowding our Prison Systems, which is where we ought to put these Russian Spammers.

Recently I received this email message addressed to me as a US Business Person; “I offer you the services in advertising in Internet: 1. Bulk e-mail spam. We have many email lists from all world. Sent 1 million email cost - $200.00 and if you order great volumes of dispatches that the price for one million for only $100.00” and they even have a website; more information - http://interneo.ru/eng/mailspam.html .

Of course our Federal Trade Commission is impotent in Enforcing the billions of Viagra SPAM each day and cannot seem to stop these Russian Spammers. Why is it that the FTC constantly sends out press releases on how they are fighting the war in SPAM, and yet the SPAM keeps increasing. It is as if the real International Terrorists are Spammers and Scammers who hire them and yet our Justice Department is unable to fulfill their obligation. Consider this in 2006.

Lance Winslow

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lance_Winslow

Lockspam Free 3.0 Released!

6 August, 2004: Polesoft Inc., home of Professional anti spam software, announced today that Lockspam Free 3.0 (see also Lockspam Pro 3.0 in the end) is now available.

Some features of Lockspam Free 3.0 antispam software:

1. Function with Most POP3 Mail Clients Lockspam Free 3.0 can work with mail clients like Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, Incredimail, Mozilla, Pegasus Mail, The Bat!, Foxmail, i.Scribe and many other mail clients.

2. Support Multi-User Mode Lockspam also support multi-user OS, like Windows XP, install once, works for all.

3. Apply Advanced Filtering Rules Lockspam Free 3.0 has a 6-step filtering process for probable spam messages. Allowed List > Allowed Keywords > Blocked List > Blocked Keywords > Polesoft Security Pack > heuristic Polesoft Anti-spam Engine.

a) User definable Allowed/Blocked Keywords In addition to the sophisticated lists contained in Lockspam Free 3.0 and updated daily.

b) Polesoft Security Pack More and more emails contain viruses. To combat this growing problem Polesoft have made available the Security Pack. The Security Pack contains pattern files of recent virus attachments and those scanned by Anti-Virus products. If any attachment matches the pattern files the message is regarded as spam and sent to the Polesoft Antispam folder.

c) Polesoft Antispam Engine Polesoft Antispam Engine is based on Bayesian filtering and heuristically learns users' preferences and follows their logic in differentiating spam and normal mails.

Polesoft Behavior Pattern Recognition* and Polesoft Beneficiary Black List (BBL)* are core technologies that can be applied and updated only wth registered copy of Lockspam Pro.

4. Automatically Scan Incoming Mails Lockspam Free 3.0 starts to work and deals with incoming mails automatically.

5. Automatically Import Contact Lists Right after installation, Lockspam Import Wizard will fetch all your contact lists from Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express.

6. Automatically Check for Updates Lockspam will check for updates automatically, thus ensuring your mail box is equipped against the latest spam.

7. Free and Frequent Updates For Free users, updates for these services are available:

a) Polesoft Security Pack, which can easily spot and quarantine virus spam.

b) Polesoft heuristic Anti-spam Engine.

For Lockspam Pro users, there are two more available:

a) Daily updated Beneficiary Black List (BBL).

b) New Add-in Installation Packages for Outlook and Outlook Express

8. Weed Out Spam in East Asian Languages Polesoft Anti-spam Engine can easily analyse the content of emails in East Asian languages, as well as English.

9. Training Lockspam Is Easy Lockspam is easy to teach. By Blocking spam and Unblocking innocent mails, Lockspam will learn your preferences and judge mails in line with your logic.

10. Looking for Probable Spam Is Easy

a) Emails identified as spam are stored in the delete folder.

b) Emails identified as probable spam are stored in the Polesoft Antispam folder with [Polesoft Antispam] added to the subject line.

Lockspam Free 3.0 is available in a full featured 14 day evaluation version from the Polesoft site. To learn more about the differences between Lockspam Free version and Lockspam Pro version, please visit Lockspam Version Comparisons http://www.polesoft.com/product_lockspam37.html .

To summarize, Lockspam Free Version 3.0 answers the urgent need for safe anti spam software on the desktop. Lockspam Free 3.0 can update to Lockspam Pro 3.0 ($29.95) and will continue to receive free updates for the lifetime of the product ensuring that your mailbox is always safe from spam.

The CEO of Polesoft, Lytton Liou said, "We hope our patent-pending technology will help to bring back the ease freedom of communicating through the internet without the irritation and timewasting caused by the spammers".

Safety should be the key ingredient regarding spam issue. Polesoft, your safe antispam way.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sophie_Ao

Quickly Eliminate 100% of Your Junk Email

Why do so many people think I need to take Viagra? I guess it’s for the same reason others believe I want to re-finance my home, invest in a new stock and sell my business.

Like you, I routinely receive more junk emails than legitimate ones. Do I look stupid or do they really think I want the latest virus by opening any attachment which accompanies an unsolicited email? Aren’t there laws against spamming and why don’t they work? Perhaps these are questions for other articles. What you need to know now is that I have found a way to keep unwanted emails from ever seeing your inbox.

For the past year I have been using a program called “Boxtrapper”. Until this time I had been relying on various spam filters that used keywords or other factors to determine if an email was spam. The success rate for this type of filtering varied as spammers eventually found ways around the “formula” being used by the filter. For example, the word “Valium” may be flagged as a spam indicator while the misspelled version, “Va Lium”, would get by unnoticed. This is just one of many examples of how spammers manipulate words to beat filtering. The biggest problem is when spammers “spoof” the header information in an email so it’s nearly impossible to trace who sent the message. I have even seen instances of people receiving spam emails that appear to have come from themselves!

When you try to beat the spammers on this level you quickly find yourself running in circles and sadly realizing this is an ineffective way to guard against every spam email. A friend suggested I try “Boxtrapper” because it had eliminated ALL spam from his inbox. Since I have many email accounts, I decided to try it on my personal address and test its effectiveness. Immediately I could see the difference.

The reason “Boxtrapper” is so effective is because of it’s “opt-in” design. Basically, no email can reach you unless the sender has confirmed they are legitimate. Once they have been confirmed, their email address is added to a “whitelist”. I’m sure you’ve heard the term “blacklist”, which is used to filter out names. In this case a whitelist is maintained to show who is allowed to email you.

To better understand how “Boxtrapper” works, I will explain what happens when a legitimate email from a friend comes your way. First, when a friend sends you an email, he will automatically receive an email reply (known as an “auto response”). This email will tell him to simply hit his “Reply” button and resend in order to be added to your list of accepted senders. You can fully customize the auto response message so it reads exactly how you prefer.

For example, this is how my auto response reads:

------------------------------------------------------------

Hello,

Since I get way too much spam, I have enabled a feature on my email account which requires verification that you are the real sender.

To complete this verification, simply reply to this message and leave the subject line intact.

Once you are added to my "whitelist" of accepted senders I will receive your message and you will not have to complete another verification.

--------------------------------------------------------------

You can also enter the email addresses of all your friends, family, and business contacts ahead of time so they never receive the initial auto response. If you subscribe to newsletters or receive monthly statements from your bank you can add their return addresses into your whitelist so you never miss a message. If anyone else happens to email you, all they have to do is reply to the auto response and they are added to your whitelist. At any given time you are able to view a list of emails awaiting verification (known as a “queue”). You can manually allow emails through to your Inbox or wait until they are verified.

Now the big question – what happens to all the spam? Since spammers are not going to verify they received your auto response, all spam email will be caught in your queue of emails awaiting verification and never proceed to your inbox. This means the only emails you are going to receive are those by approved senders. You will soon find that most emails awaiting verification are unsolicited, junk emails.

Since enabling “Boxtrapper” on one of my personal email addresses it has completely eliminated all incoming spam. I know many who use this feature and they are extremely pleased with not having to waste time sorting through and deleting unsolicited emails. While most spam filters use complex formulas to find out if an email is garbage, “Boxtrapper” is able to quickly determine if the sender is real. So, how can you start making this feature work for you?

Because “Boxtrapper” is not sold in stores or a program you can readily download and install on your computer, it’s one of the best kept secrets on the web. This feature is normally bundled with other email services provided by either your Internet Service Provider (ISP) or website host (most likely, the latter). By the way, I don’t have any stock in “Boxtrapper”. For some reason, they never sent me an email asking me to invest.

Copyright 2005 Anthony Vita

Anthony Vita started his own successful web hosting business, Web Feat, Inc, in 1997. Since then, Anthony has been helping businesses and individuals worldwide to achieve an online presence. Contact Anthony today by email: avita@webfeathost.com or the web: http://www.webfeathost.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Anthony_Vita

How To Avoid Spam Robots

Despite the fact that Federal legislation (the CANSPAM act) made it illegal, harvesting email addresses from the web using automated robots remains alive and well.

Spammers who need fresh email addresses release software spider programs that comb the Internet and suck email addresses off Web pages, guest books, and anywhere else you might post your email address.

Once they get your email address, spammers will trade it around like 5th graders with a new pack of Pokemon cards at recess and you can expect the avalanche of email to begin flooding your inbox.

In order to combat this still rampant practice of stealing email addresses from websites and sending people email they don't want, the following tips should help protect you.

** Break It Up **

Obviously the best way to avoid getting picked up by an email harvester is not to post your email anywhere on anyone's website (including your own).

If the only way someone can get your email is if you give it to them, that creates a similar situation to operating with an unlisted phone number.

If telemarketers can't get your phone number, they can't call.

If you must post your email address, post it in a way that a robot won't recognize it as an email address. Instead of posting YOURNAME@YOURDOMAIN.COM, you can put YOURNAME (AT) YOURDOMAIN.COM and then, in parenthesis, put (replace AT with @ to email me).

Though it seems like an extra step for legitimate email, you'll find it a very effective technique.

** Use An Image **

Currently, online spiders (ANY spider, including search engines) cannot read text that appears in a graphic or picture. If you must display an email address on a page, then do it by typing your email address into your favorite graphics program and saving the image as a .gif or .jpg. Then post the image onto your web page so people can see the email, but spiders cannot. This too creates an extra step for people because they must type in your email address, but it's an effective solution if you must display an email address on your own website.

** Use An Email Form **

Another way to cut down on spam originating from your own website is simply not to display an email at all.

Instead, allow customers and prospects to contact you through a form where they fill in fields, click a button, and your website emails you their message.

A note of caution: make sure the form script you use does not keep your email address visible in the form code.

If the form code contains the email address, spam robots can find it even though you don't see it on the page.

** Make It Hard To Guess **

Sometimes you'll get unsolicited email because a spammer guessed your email address.

It's not a far stretch to imagine that someone probably has the email Jim@yourdomain.com, so spammers will do a "dictionary" attack on common usernames.

One way to defeat this is to place a "dot" (.) in your email address, such as Jim.Edwards@yourdomain.com. The dot makes it virtually impossible for spammers to guess your email address.

© Jim Edwards - All Rights reserved

http://www.thenetreporter.com

Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to use fr^e articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website or affiliate links...

Simple "Traffic Machine" brings Thousands of NEW visitors to your website for weeks, even months... without spending a dime on advertising! ==> http://www.turnwordsintotraffic.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jim_Edwards

Spam The Spammer - Will It Work?

Spam is everywhere. It’s the “in-box lunch meat” nobody likes, wants or looks forward too. Unfortunately, many folks enjoy “eating” this product because if they didn’t, there wouldn’t be any. Read on…

The federal government’s ill-conceived CAN-SPAM Act did little more than make a few legislators feel better about themselves. Did this legislation stop spam? No. Did it at least slow down the flow of spam? Nope.

You can’t eliminate a problem by treating the symptoms. If you want to eradicate a problem, you must make its environment one that will not support it.

There’s a new plan recently hatched by some well-intentioned folks at Blue Security that several of my clients have asked about. On the surface, it sounds like a good idea but, in my humble opinion, the model is fatally flawed. Here’s the scoop…

1. You sign up for their "list" which is basically a "do not spam me list" and that gives them the authorization to act on your behalf.

2. You then have to send EACH spam message to them for inclusion on their list.

3. They then send the spammer a "stop order" (which, if they can even find the spammer, will be ignored).

4. They then flood the spammer with basically a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack hoping to bring down the spammer's server.

This all sounds great until you think about it rationally...

1. Spammers use "open relays" and hundreds of addresses to prevent you from finding their originating location.

2. The "stop order" they send is just their way of fulfilling the letter of the law under the CAN-Spam act.

3. The part I have the biggest problem with is they then effectively BECOME A SPAMMER by sending thousands of messages in a Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS). This is the same thing hackers do when they bring down a website by sending so much traffic to a server it basically shuts down.

4. Most spam is sent from your neighbor's PC. I spend a great amount of my time cleaning “bad guys” from client’s computers. There are MILLIONS of "zombie computers" that are infected with auto-dialers and trojans that are being used without the owner's knowledge to send spam. Don’t believe me? Just run Counter Spy on grandma’s PC and tell me what you find!

5. How long do you really think it will be until the spammers turn the tables on Blue Security and initiate their own DDoS attack? It will be interesting to watch.

Other fight-back tactics against spammers have failed in the past. Last year, Lycos Europe rolled out a screensaver that conducted DDoS attacks against known spammers. Within days, however, Lycos buckled under pressure from security groups, which called it vigilantism, and ISPs who worried that attacks originating from their members would make them liable to legal action on the part of spammers.

Spam will NEVER go away until you attack its real source engine. If you don't order anything from a spammer and don't even click on his link to open the message, the monetary incentive for spam is removed. Spammers operate under the same economic rules as the rest of us...supply and demand.

Take away the demand and you eliminate the supply. Simple.

Allan Gunnneson is the CEO of Gunner Web Group (http://www.gunnnerweb.com), a website design and marketing company based in Kansas.

Online reprint rights granted as long as the article is published in its entirety, including links (http://www.gunnerweb.com).

Copyright © Gunner Web Group, 2005

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Allan_Gunneson

Are You A Spam Zombie?

Over the past few years you've all become familiar with the terms spam, spam filter, whitelists, blacklists and a whole myriad of other terminology associated with the problem of spam. You now have to add a new and extremely worrying phrase to that list - spam zombie.

With the net closing in around them spammers are looking for new and more inventive ways to send out their junk email. Spam filters and challenge response systems are becoming progressively more intelligent and blocking more spam each day. What was a spammer to do? The spammers took the next step - infiltrating your PC and using it as a spamming tool.

When most of you think of the word zombie you're reminded of old B movies with groaning zombies chasing the terrified actress through a castle, swamp or whatever low cost setting the movie revolved around. Spam zombies are, however, far more real and far more dangerous.

A spam zombie is when your computer is taken over by a type of virus called a Trojan. Once this Trojan virus is on your computer it sets up an SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) application which allows it to begin sending email directly from your PC to tens of thousands of victims. This all happens invisibly in the background and can be difficult to detect for even the experienced computer user.

How do these Trojans get onto your computer? As in most cases they come from porn, warez or similar sites. One of the first spam zombie trojans to appear became available via a link on sites promising viewers free access to a porno webcam. One click later and the Trojan is installed on your computer ready to send out spam. Phatbot and Proxy-Guzu are two of the more common Trojans used for the purpose of turning your computer into a spam zombie.

How can you check if your computer has become a spam zombie? Make absolutely certain that both your anti-virus and firewall software have current detection signatures and have been completely patched and updated. Working online without taking these necessary security precautions is simply asking for trouble.

Internet Service Providers are under huge pressure to quarantine the IP address of any computer which has been turned into a spam zombie. This is done on the basis that the ISP risks their entire IP range being blacklisted or banned by some spam filtering services or companies.

The very least you owe yourself is to run a full virus and spyware scan on your computer today. You might be unpleasantly surprised at what you'll find lurking there.

This article provided courtesy of Spam-site.com which reviews spam blocker software and other anti spam utilties.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Niall_Roche

Is Your Website Blacklisted?

A blacklist, as the name implies, is a list of people or companies who have met with the disapproval of others. In the online world a blacklist refers to those people who have been marked as responsible for generating spam in a very big way. Blacklists are also known as blocklists.

Blacklists are used to combat spam in a very specific way. When spam is reported to one of the relevant spam fighting organizations the IP address the spam originated from is added to a banned or blacklisted IP addresslist. An IP address is the unique location of you or your website on the internet - think of it as your "home address" online. To put it simply every www.domain.com Internet address has a matching IP address. Any email coming from your website domain also has a corresponding IP address. If your IP address is present on a blacklist then you're potentially wasting your time sending email to customers.

Why are you wasting your time? Modern spam blockers come with the most common blacklists installed and/or allow you to import updated blacklists into your spam blocker. This allows to you block a huge amount of spam but you may also, potentially, block legitimate email. Blacklists are not foolproof.

There are two types of IP address:

Dynamic - changes every time you connect to the Internet. Most commonly used for dialup Internet access. Spammers love these because they're very hard to track and 100% disposable.

Fixed/Static - All websites, most large companies and some individuals use fixed IP addresses. This can cause huge problems if they're reported for spamming.

When an IP address (dynamic or fixed ) is reported for sending spam it's added to a blacklist. There are three different types of blacklists:

Temporary

An IP address placed on a temporary blacklist will have email coming from that IP address blocked for several hours.

After a few hours the offending IP address is removed from the blacklist.

Permanent

When an IP address is added to a permanent blacklist any email server configured to block email from this list will never receive email from that range of IP addresses again.

Comprehensive

This is the most damaging of blacklists. Not only does it block a single IP address it also blocks the IP addresses next to it. For example if the IP address 192.156.66.67 was added to a comprehensive blacklist then all IP addresses close to 192.156.66.67 will also be blocked. This can be a huge problem for those website owners using virtual hosting because if your host has ever appeared on a blacklist then you're also on the same blacklist, by default, because of the shared hosting from the same IP range.

It's important for all website owners to check whether or not they're on a blacklist. You'll need your IP address (available from your webhost) and you can check your blacklist status at: www.mail-abuse.org/cgi-bin/lookup

Blacklists are a necessary evil due to the volume of spam being sent each day but are not an exact science. Take a few moments from your day and ensure that your website or email address is not being blocked.

This article was provided courtesy of Spam-site.com which reviews and tests spam blockers for the business and end user.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Niall_Roche

20 Words That Kill - At Least When It Comes to Spam Filters

Spam, spam, spam. It's terrible not only for those of us on the receiving end, but for those of us who SEND e-mail.

This deluge of irritating junk has unfortunately interfered with legitimate e-zine publishers, because we're caught in the anti-spam crossfire. If you publish any type of e-mail publication, there's a likely chance that your e-zine is NOT reaching a portion of your readers. Why? Their Internet service provider (ISP) or e-mail program uses a spam filter.

These software programs search for words and phrases that are typical of spam and assign each incoming e-mail a "score." If your e-mail has too many of these words and phrases, you receive a high score, and you may be blocked.

TOP 20 "KILLER" WORDS/PHRASES YOU MAY BE USING

While there are other words that will cost you more "points" than these do (e.g. sexual phrases), here are the most common "trigger" words and phrases that you may be using in your e-zine:

amazing
cancel at any time
check or money order
click here
congratulations
dear friend
e-mail marketing
for only ($)
for free
great offer
guarantee
increase sales
order now
promise you
risk free
special promotion
this is not spam
to be removed
unsubscribe
winner
WHAT'S A PUBLISHER TO DO?

You have two choices when it comes to beating the filters. One is to avoid using these words and phrases altogether. I've found that hard to do. For example, in a recent issue, I discussed how to use your e-zine to increase business. Unfortunately the word "increase" cost me a fat 1.4 points in SpamAssassin, one of the most popular filter programs.

Your second choice is to disguise these words and phrases in clever ways by inserting keyboard symbols within them and/or replacing a letter in them with a symbol. The trick is not to make it too cryptic — you want your readers to be able to understand what you're saying. For example, in my e-zine, I use "fr*ee" for free.

While some spam filters pick up on this trick and penalize you for doing it by adding onto your score, I've found that the points this tactic costs you penalize you much less than using the words and phrases themselves. It's not a perfect solution, but it's working for now.

TEST BEFORE YOU SEND

It's a great idea to test how YOUR e-zine stacks up before you send it out. The good news is you can do this for FREE.

Lyris' Content Checker (http://www.lyris.com/contentchecker) tells you how your e-zine ranks in Spam Assassin. All you do is copy your e-zine text and paste it into the box on their site. They'll run your free report and e-mail a copy to you. It usually arrives within minutes.

The report will tell you exactly which words are costing you points. Usually you should only be concerned if your score is over 5 points. If so, you can either delete those words or disguise them, as I mentioned above.

I test each issue of my e-zines in Content Checker before I publish them, and often I'm surprised (and relieved) that my score is low. That makes me a happy publisher. : )

(c) 1999-2002 Alexandria K. Brown

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alexandria K. Brown, "The E-zine Queen," is author of the award-winning manual, "Boost Business With Your Own E-zine." To learn more about her book and sign up for more FREE tips like these, visit her site at http://EzineQueenTutorial.com/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Alexandria_K._Brown

How To Stop Unwanted Email Spam

You can stop unwanted email spam, you can choose to reduce spam email or you can do nothing and continue to be annoyed. Those are your only choices because spam email is not likely to go away.

Every single one of us would love to stop unwanted emails but only a very small percentage of people do anything except complain about spam.

You might remember a couple of years ago they passed a new federal spam law that was supposed to eliminate spam email. So why is spam still around and why is it so difficult to get rid of it?

Email spammers buy lists of email addresses from list brokers, who compile their lists by harvesting email addresses from the Internet. Then they send millions of unwanted email messages to these email addresses with one click of a mouse.

Email spammers make huge amounts of money from these lists and that's why they do it. These email spammers are breaking the federal spam law, The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, in every way possible.

This federal spam law, which became effective January 1, 2004, is next to impossible to enforce. Email spammers make so much money they can afford to outsmart The Federal Trade Commission with sophisticated technology.

Now that you know the origin of spam email and why email spammers are sending this junk you realize that spam is not likely to ever go away. But that doesn't mean you can't do anything about it. Here are a couple of ways to significantly reduce spam that won't cost you a cent.

Don't display your email address in newsgroup postings, chat rooms or in an online service's membership directory. Sometimes email spammers use these sources to harvest email addresses.

Another thing you can do is create two email addresses with one for personal messages and the other for public use, such as in newsgroups or chat rooms.

You can also create an account at a disposable or free email address service. You can then have those emails forwarded to your permanent email address. If the disposable address starts to receive spam, you can turn if off without affecting the permanent address.

You should also create a unique email address because email spammers often use dictionary attacks to sort through possible name combinations at some Internet Service Providers. A common name, like johndoe or thesmiths may get more spam than a unique name like fx721OMe9.

Check your email account to see if it provides a tool to filter out potential spam or a way to channel spam into a bulk email folder. When you're choosing an Internet Service Provider consider what email options they offer.

If you want to end your headaches, you can stop unwanted email spam altogether. All it takes is installing an Internet spam filter. Most are reasonably priced between $25 and $40 depending on where you get it.

Once you install an Internet spam filter you'll wonder why it took you so long because it takes all of the frustration away from your email.

A good Internet spam filter will completely eliminate spam email and that lets you take back control of your Internet message Inbox. You'll have to find something else to get annoyed about because a good Internet spam filter will block 100% of unwanted spam.

Internet spam filters stop unwanted email forever, and after all, isn't that the idea?

Copyright © 2005 Spyware Information.com All Rights Reserved.

This article is provided by http://www.spyware-information.com We offer you the safest, most effective and easy-to-use Internet spam filter available, blocking 100% of unwanted spam at http://www.spyware-information.com/anti-spam-filter.html

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Gary_Gresham

Email Chain Letters - Harmless Fun or Not?

I'm sure I'm not the only person on the planet that remembers getting the occasional chain letter in school.. you know, the kind that was actually written with a pen or pencil on paper that told you either something wonderful would happen or something terrible would happen or both if you did or didn't send out 20 copies within 7 days. Ugh. I still remember my fingers cramping as I tediously re-wrote the letter 20 times and the looks on my friends faces when they realized the note i just passed them was leading them to the same path of wasted paper.

Things have changed a lot since then;

Not just the venue has changed though, now we not only get poems with promises of good luck or threats of doom for not following instructions, we get petitions, promises of rewards from big companies, plea's to call your local government person because of some pending law that will be devastating to someone or something, and suggestions to boycott popular companies because of some alleged injustice they have performed. (Just imagine the phone calls these companies get!)

I get amusing chain letters in my email box occasionally mixed in with some urban legends and Christian Internet hoaxes for variety and before I knew better I'd give a little laugh, a roll of the eyes and pass it on to the 10 required friends with the promise that something good would happen in 10 days (or that I would escape a horrific tragedy)

Oh but then I learned. I learned about SPAM and about how to finally change my email address when it got overwhelming!

Perpetuating email chain letters is not a good idea. I read recently that most Internet service providers prohibit it in their terms of service... hmm... I will have to read those terms to see what else I'm not allowed to do! But it is with good reason that they have these rules.

You know the old 'phrase' I tell 2 friends and they tell 2 friends and they tell 2 friends... yada yada yada... well imagine what happens when you forward that silly email to your 20 friends and they each send it to their 20 friends... well already you've got 420 copies going out to cyberspace and taking up bandwidth and bogging down servers all over the place - especially if your 20 people are co-workers on the same email system!

What else is wrong with it? Well you've just added your name, or at least email address to a long and growing list of which you have no control over. This is like sending out an engraved invitation to spammers and scammers all over the world and suddenly the note from Aunt Joan is burried among 50 emails trying to sell you everything from viagra to stocks and bonds.

So what can you do? Well, the first and most obvious is delete it. But sometimes it's a cute story or a joke or some other reason to smile or chuckle and we all need some of that now and again so you want to forward it? Take these steps to do it safely.

After you've clicked forward go through the email, delete all the email addresses that are hanging on to the mail of all the people that have recieved it with you.

Leave only the portion of the email that you think is funny or cute and take out all the instructions to forward to 10 - 20 - or 50 people and what will happen if you don't

Use the bcc: field for the emails of the people you're going to send it to to keep their emails from being passed on if one of them chooses to forward it.

Finally, while I definately recommend against it, some people are just too superstisious to let a chain letter break. If you MUST continue a chain letter, still follow steps 1 and 3 above and get yourself a disposable email address for this purpose. Belive me, if you've never had to change your email address to get rid of the junk, you don't want to find out how fun it is! Remember, it's not just advising your friends and family and co-workers of the new email, but many of your online accounts use your email address if not for signing in, for getting lost passwords etc. How frustrating to go to get the status of some account and when you realize you can't remember the password the only option is to have it emailed to you and you didn't update the account!

So, get a disposable email address and use it for forwarding chain letters (if you have to) but also for signing up for things on the Internet! Then when the spam hits the fan, you can just delete the account and get a new one.

Lisa Campbell
Newbie Guide to CyberJunk

Other Web Sites:
Parenting an Intense Child
Web and Logo Design at Affordable Prices

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lisa_Campbell

Email Spam Filters

In today's fast-paced world, emails have become perhaps the most widely used mode of communication. Whether it’s personal or professional, the person you may wish to contact is always just an email away. Instant, and extremely user friendly, emails have increasingly become an integral part of day-to-day communication. However, unwanted spam is a major hassle that email lovers face every hour. Every time we access our mail box, it is flooded with mails which are completely unsolicited. These spam mails are not only annoying, they can even contain dangerous viruses. To counter the spam, email spam filters are extensively used.

Email is broadly categorized into Web-based email like Yahoo, Hotmail and Rediffmail, and client-based email like Outlook Express or Eudora. Both types of emails have different setups and require unique spam filters to effectively block spam.

Web based emails usually have free spam filters. These filters may be content-based or work on the basis of a pre-provided blacklist of spammers. Spam filters for client-based email are generally of three types: server side filters, standalone filters, and integrated filters.

Server-side filters check the spam at the ISP location, whereas stand-alone filters reside on the PC and wash out spam from the email as the user receives it. Integrated filter/clients eliminate spam, in a manner similar to web-based anti-spam systems. These types of filters require every new sender to verify their address.

Stand-alone filters are by far the most extensively used spam filters for client-based mails, as they not only offer the best spam removal rates, but also do not require the user to alter or switch the email clients.

Empower your PC with any of the innumerable spam filters now available to enjoy a junk-free email experience.

Spam Filters provides detailed information on Spam Filters, Email Spam Filters, Free Spam Filters, Best Spam Filters and more. Spam Filters is affiliated with Spam Blockers.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Eddie_Tobey

Adsense: How to Make Money With Ads by Google

The chances are that you've seen "Ads by Google" on a variety of websites and perhaps wondered what they were all about. The fact is that you can probably get "Ads by Google" on your own site and if you do, you can look forward to getting paid by Google.

The system is called Google AdSense and it does two things really neatly.

First of all it allows virtually any website owner to make some money without having to do too much - all you do is paste some code that Google gives you into your web pages. This code creates the ads that you see and when someone clicks on one of these ads they go to the advertiser's site. The advertiser is then charged for the click by Google and Google shares the money with you. You don't have to worry about billing a load of different companies or anything else: this is all done for you as part of the AdSense service.

That much is fairly straightforward and good news.

But the really clever thing about AdSense is that the ads you see on your site are relevant to your content - automatically. So if you have a web page about mobile phones you'll see ads about mobile phones on it. If you have a web page about holidays in Tasmania, you'll see ads for holidays in Tasmania on it. Google's technology scans your web page and decides what it is about and then searches its database of well over 175,000 advertisers to find the ads that are most suitable for your page.

By making the ads relevant to your site, Google does you two favors: the ads can enhance the overall experience a visitor to your site gets which means they are likely to return, and because the ads are relevant to your visitor, they are likely to get clicked on.

And when they get clicked on, you make money.

To make most money with Google AdSense you need to develop web pages that are about high value topics. In other words, build content on your site that is likely to attract ads that pay highly when clicked because not all ads are worth the same.

In fact some ads pay many dollars a click whereas others only pay a few cents.

The art of maximizing your AdSense income is to understand how to attract high paying ads onto your pages and then drive a lot of traffic to those pages. Once you've done that you can look forward to getting paid by Google on a regular basis which makes Google AdSense one of the most attractive affiliate programs on the internet today.

William Charlwood
Author: The Definitive Guide to Google AdSense

For more information including a free 5-day course on maximizing your AdSense income visit ProsperitySense.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=William_Charlwood

Guaranteed Web Site Advertising

Paying for web site advertising services is more advantageous than handling your own web site or your company’s promotional concerns. This gives you more time to focus on other essential aspects of your business. Besides, these service providers know all the ins and outs of web site advertising.

There is also a risk in entrusting your website to service providers, especially those offering cheap and sometimes free advertising services. The question is, how do you know you are not paying for senseless hype just for guaranteed web site advertising?

Here are two important things you should consider in choosing an advertising company: where do they list your website, and what are their core services and add-on services.

Since the main goal of website advertising is to deliver targeted traffic to your site, it is beneficial if your site is indexed on major search engines and online directories. The more search engines and directories your site appears on, the better, as this increases probability of attracting more consumers.

Aside from listing your site to major search engines and directories, the advertising company must have guaranteed web site advertising techniques such as link exchanges, pay per click, email marketing, banner ads, press releases, newsletters and blogs.

Exchanging links is one of the most effective and affordable means of driving targeted traffic to your website. This is done by sending other websites (high quality and highly related sites) text or keywords where a link to your website is attached (use keywords that people are most likely to use in the search engines).

Pay per click is another guaranteed web site advertising technique and is becoming very popular nowadays. This allows you to make your own ads, and lets you decide when they should appear. The good thing about this is you only pay when somebody clicks through a link to your site.

Does the advertising company provide high quality content or articles for your website? If it does, then it’s a perfect choice. A very good quality content that is, rich in information and necessary keywords used in major search engines is good way to keep your site users coming back.

Web Site Advertising provides detailed information on Web Site Advertising, Guaranteed Web Site Advertising, Cheap Web Site Advertising, Free Web Site Advertising and more. Web Site Advertising is affiliated with Web Site Promotion Software.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Eddie_Tobey

The Online Business Lottery

The Kentucky Lottery ran a commercial for their $100,000 scratch off game a couple years ago that went something like this:

Monday, guy gets up, buys a lottery ticket, goes to work, wins $100,000.
Tuesday, guy gets up, buys a lottery ticket, goes to work, wins $100,000.
Wednesday, guy gets up, buys a lottery ticket, goes to work, wins $100,000.
Thursday, guy gets up, buys a lottery ticket, goes to work, wins $100,000.
Friday, guy sleeps in.

I sometimes wonder how many of my fellow Kentuckians played that game every day thinking it was their “ticket” to fortune. I think some people are tempted to look at web business the same way:

All you need to do is sign up and the money will pour in, you can quit your job, travel the world, be somebody important.

The reality is far different.

Online business is not like buying a lottery ticket, it is a business. If you run your online business like a business it will quickly make you wealthy. If you treat it like a hobby or some “get rich quick” ploy, you’ll end up broke.

Here’s the steps you need to take to create your own fortune on the internet:

1. Identify a market niche you can reach at a profit.
2. Identify a need within that market niche.
3. Secure a product that will meet that need.
4. Put up a website marketing that product.
5. Market your website.
Now each of those steps does take effort, research and planning. Done properly these steps will dependably make you a full-time income your first year and wealthy in five.

Kevin Bidwell owns http://www.All-In-One-Business.com and has helped 4,953 people start a business from home. Visit now to pick up your own free How to Start a Business from Home guide now.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kevin_Bidwell

How Alan's Website Could Easily Make More Money

My Australian friend, Alan, recently got in touch for advice on how to make more money from his recently set up website. Alan is into natural health treatments, so his simplehealthmaintenance.com website is one that offers natural solutions to health problems.

Alan asked for my advice as to how to monetize the site, knowing that I have had success with Google Adsense.

First off, Alan needs to consider whether sales are his primary objective. If so, the addition of Adsense to the site, whilst bringing in extra income, might reduce potential sales.

Adding Adsense to his site would be a quick & easy way to make money. I suggested a horizontal Adsense link, just below the main navigation bar which runs across his index or home page. This would look natural and looks like part of the website navigation.

Also, the addition of a Google skyscraper unit on the right of his page would add value to the site, and also increase his income, but without detracting from his primary objective of sales.

Now, Alan is an expert on health, but not so good at search engine optimization. His heading for the page of “Simple health treatments by non-invasive electronic acupuncture” may explain what the page is about, but it isn’t going to get him hordes of traffic from the search engines – no-one is looking for either “simple health treatments” or “non-invasive electronic acupuncture”! Zoom along to Overture and check out their keyword selector tool in the resource centre if you want to see just what it is that people are searching for.

I suggested to Alan that he look at which words which people were searching for. Although he is happy to buy traffic for the site, using the pay per click engines (e.g. Adwords & Overture). This makes it easy to get a top search engine ranking for particular words or phrases (known as keywords) but can prove an expensive way of getting traffic.

Improving his “natural” search engine rankings, so that people found his site when typing in the keywords, would reduce Alan’s costs and increase his profit margins considerably.

This is relatively easy to do, and in fact I ran this for Alan myself using Wordtracker. This is a handy piece of software which allows you to look at the supply and demand of particular keywords and spot gaps in the market, also known as niches.

In this case, just one of the keywords which came up as in high demand but low supply was “pain management with acupuncture”. Alan would do well to either use these keywords as part of his homepage or to create a new page with this title and heading, together with suitable webcopy.

By putting these keywords at the beginning and end of a new page of copy, very soon this will start to get ranked well by the search engines and receive visitors who arrive for free!

One other easy suggestion for Alan to implement, since he is also a writer, is to write a couple of articles on the subject of natural healing and acupuncture and to submit them to Article Directory sites, such as Ezine Articles. This is a effective and natural way to get traffic to your site with minimum effort.

Watch out for your profit margins Alan – they’ll be going way up – just as you implement these few simple changes!

For our free course on making money with your own home based internet business, visit how to set up your own online business.

This article was submitted by Jen Carter, writer for the How to Earn a Million Dollars website.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jennifer_Carter

10 Ways to Market Your Website Offline!

So you want to market your website? First of all make sure that you have a good domain name. You want a name that is easy to remember and that says something to those who see it. It doesn’t have to be a full website; it can just be a name that redirects to your company site or any other site.

So now you have a name and you’re ready to market it. There are many ways to market online, however you can market offline with much success. Here are some ideas to get you started:

1. Vehicles – Your vehicle is a billboard that you drive everyday! Have your site on your vehicle. You can do magnetic signs from your company or local print shop, or vinyl letters. Go a step further and leave cards on your own windshield when you park it! People will take them.

2. Mail & Packages - Stamp or write your website on all mail. My site is stamped on every bill or letter that I mail. I also sell on eBay occasionally and I always have my website in RED letters across the box. Many people see that box during the mail process. Be sure to include a business card inside the envelope or package for whoever is receiving it.

3. Clothing - Wear clothes with your website on them. Be a walking billboard for your company. People will ask you questions. Buttons work well too!

4. Flyers & Cards - Use your website on all marketing materials and leave them everywhere you go. I post them on bulletin boards, in laundry mats, grocery stores, and everywhere that I go throughout the day. Keep a roll of tape with you in case there are no push pins. Tape a card to the inside door of bathroom stalls. Sounds silly, but you can bet anyone who sits down will read it!!

5. Checks - Have your website printed on your personal and business checks. You never know who may see it.

6. Auctions - Donate items to auctions and use your website name instead of your name. It will say donated (Your Website) in the program for all to see.

7. Classified Ads - Small inexpensive classified newspaper ads work well, especially if you have a good domain name.

8. Signs - Road signs work well. Keep in mind they may not stay up long before they are taken down, but lots of people may see them while they are up. Just use a few words and your website. Simple is best.

9. Voicemail - Leave your website on your voicemail. If you’re not available to answer the phone, they’ll get a reminder to visit your website.

10. Out of the Box - Think out of the box! Bus benches, shopping carts, sides of barns, restaurant placemats, floats in parades, and anything you can think of that will get people’s attention! Go beyond the ordinary.

Lisa Schulte is a mom of 4 boys who all help with the family business. She loves helping others who wish to Work From Home! http://www.WorkFromHomeToday.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lisa_Schulte

Key Tips for Attracting Visitors to Your Site

Building a website is one thing, publicizing it is other. There are so many WebPages with good quality content, which are never read by the appropriate people because of low rankings and unattractive features.

Utilizing your website as your business tool is simultaneously an art and a science. To learn it, there are a few key tips. Those are very important to look in your site, so that it comes in more views and attracts more visitors.

HomePage: Keep it easy and simple: --

1. Do not put all the information on the home page of your site. It causes confusion in visitor’s mind. Have tips and roots with just enough descriptions, so that visitor finds root of everything they demand.

2. Home page should be looking like the center of the site from where, a visitor can go anywhere in easy steps of clicks.

3. Home page can contain some of the most important products of your business, which are the centralized attraction of you firm or website.

4. Do not overcrowd your homepage with the words; there must be brief content, which is navigating, informative and not too much to read.

5. Few striking lines like- “ most comfortable for beginners” or “Step by step learning guide for novice” are good to put with you products.

Links: --

1. There should be links on your home page so that every visitor finds it very easy to reach directly any section he wants. Never put other sites link with those otherwise your visitor can be diverted from you site.

2. A proper made and attractive sitemap is very necessary for the website; it gives the facility to novice as well as expert users to watch whole details of your site at once. In addition, the site maps are very necessary to be submitted to all main search engines so you get traffic from the search engines as well.

3. Links of other sites are very necessary because those links increases your ranking in search engines. Those links should be put in the lower parts of you pages or with the product details, where the link provides the relevant site.

Content: --

Web Content is the life of Website. Web Content is the most important factor in attracting more visitors to your site. Here are things to look in it: --

1. The competition between the same product websites is chiefly won by the best quality web content. Visitors find it easy to understand and like to use the same site repeatedly. Even such visitors like to tell the site address to their friends and family, so that others also use the facility and it results into permanent visitors of your site.

2. Keywords and links are necessary to increase you ranking,, but it must be looked that your content is not compromising with the quality for other reasons.

3. Content should be brief and effective, it should offer all information in less words. It should not be so brief that it results in a tough to understand content and visitors deflect.

4. It should always be relevant to your website and products.

5. Content should not be describing history, technical details, and greatness of inventors or irrelevant absurd. Visitors come to use the site as shop. They do not like education until the site is a guiding one, E-book site or explanation website.

Search Engine Optimization: --

Even A perfect Website cannot get enough visitors, until it is not related to the big Internet linkage system.

1. Most of the visitors come to your site by the search engines or the ads you provide on others sites.

The biggest number of you visitors is from the search engines.

2. The website should be submitted to all big search engines.

3. The website should contain keyword rich and links rich contain so that it results in higher search engine ranking and attract more visitors.

4. You should decide the keywords by assuming, what your visitors will type, when they will need to find a site like yours one.

5. Links also higher the ranking of your website, so put the relevant links on your pages, which adds more arms in the octopus of your site’s connections. The bigger the octopus, easier it is to reach for the spiders and robots of search engines.

Ads: --

1. Ads are always very important in marketing. Your ads should be appearing on all the relevant main websites, where your visitors have a large probability to go.

2. Ad should have a strong punch line, which appeals the visitor. It should not have wordy outline, but just some lines should be creating fascination and suspense as if you provide some thing very important.

Other tips: -

There are some more things which are important in getting visitors to your website.

1. The URL of the website should be easy to remember and better if it is attractive, so visitors put it on their tong easily.

2. There should be availability to bookmark your website. Once a visitor bookmarks you, you get a permanent customer.

3. Website should be regularly updating, people like to see new things whenever they enters the site again.

4. You should learn and understand the traffic increasing tips and procedures also, and should go to increase traffic.

Those are the main basic tip, which helps you to get visitors to your site and to increase your product’s sell as well as improve you business in this E-age.

Charles Preston is the president of Click Response. Click Response offers small businesses a search engine optimization service that guarantees 1st page ranking at an affordable price.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Charles_G_Preston

Read This Before you Submit to Web Directories

As the number of websites grow everyday, it is becoming increasingly difficult for a new site to attain good rankings on search engines. Since major search engines factor link popularity heavily into their ranking algorithms, building relevant links to your site is perhaps the single most important component of search engine optimization.

For a new site with no or few inbound links, buying text links on more established related sites could provide a boost to your link popularity. But this strategy could prove prohibitively expensive, especially in a highly competitive market where you'd have to buy lots of links to catch up with the competition.

Web directory listing represents a viable alternative to link buying. Apart from driving traffic to your site through direct referrals, web directories provide one-way inbound links to your site, boosting your link popularity and ultimately improving your search rankings.

There are thousands of web directories on the net, with dozens sprouting up every day. Some are general directories; others cater to specific niches. Some are free; others charge inclusion fees. Some are free only if you provide a reciprocal link in return. Many feature both free and paid listings.

The main advantage of a paid listing is the luxury of having your site listed quickly above everyone else's. Free submissions may take several weeks or months for review. If you work on a limited budget, you may want to submit to a handful of paid directories and a few hundred free ones.

Some directories charge inclusion fees that are too high for the listing to be cost effective. When considering a paid listing, look at not only the Google PageRank of the homepage of directory, but also that of the subpage where your link will actually reside. While it may seem like a good deal to have your site listed on a PR5 directory for $15, the offer becomes far less attractive when you find out that the internal page where your link is placed is only PR2.

If you've ever submitted to web directories before, I don't have to convince you that the process is extremely tedious and time-consuming, especially when you submit to a large number of them. Unlike search engines that send out robots to index web pages, web directories rely on more detailed submission forms to gather information about your site. Since each submitted site must be reviewed by a real person, most directories require that submissions are also performed by a real person, as opposed to an automatic script. Many directories use a visual code verification process to prevent automated submissions. Apart from complying with the directory's guidelines, manual submission is the only way to ensure that your site is submitted to the proper category.

Because of the time involved in manually submitting your site and the sheer number of directories on the web, it's important that you know which directories to submit to. Obviously, you'd want to submit to only the high-PR directories and avoid the low-PR ones, right? Not really. Just because a directory has a low PR does not mean that it's not worth submitting to. The directory may be brand new and has not been around long enough to be ranked by Google. In contrast to the more established directories that continually experience a back-log of submissions, newer directories tend to review and list sites more quickly. As the directory becomes more popular, so will your link. So, don't judge a directory solely by its PageRank; rather, base your decision on the overall quality of the directory.

Another important thing to look at is whether or not the directory you submit to is search engine friendly. Search engines like static web pages whose contents stay the same regardless of who visits the page, or when they visit, not dynamic pages that are created on-the-fly. Browse to a couple of categories and look at URL in the navigation bar. If the URL looks like, http://www.godirectory.org/links.php?ax=list⊂=42&cat_id=245, it's probably not search engine friendly. An example of a static, search engine friendly URL is http://www.godirectory.org/dir/713/index.html (notice the ".html" suffix).

Another question to ask is: How easy it is to submit to the directory? How many hoops do you have to jump through to get to the submission form? When you finally get to the form, how many fields does the form have? A directory should ask for pertinent information like your name, email, URL, link title, link description, and keywords, but it should not look like a job application. With the exception of a handful of major directories like DMOZ and Yahoo, you should not have to spend more than 3 to 4 minutes to submit your site.

Another consideration is whether or not the directory has a category specific enough for your site. For optimal SEO benefits from your listing, your link should grouped under a specific category containing sites whose contents are related to yours. Such a grouping makes your listing more relevant in the eyes of the search engines, as well as providing an easier way for visitors to the directory to find your site.

Simply having your site listed on a directory is not enough. Your choice of the link title can determine how much impact your listing will have on your search engine rankings. Ideally, your link title (or "anchor text") should contain the keywords that you want others to search for to get to your site. Since most web directories require a unique link title, however, it may not be possible to select a common phrase like "Free Web Directory" as your link title. This title is likely already taken by another web directory. Simply prefixing the phrase with your domain name, e.g. "GoDirectory.org Free Web Directory", would make the title unique.

Oftentimes, a directory would have several related categories that are suitable for your site. How do you decide which one to submit to? Ideally, you'd want to submit to the category that has the highest PageRank. However, this may not turn out to be the wisest choice as your link may be buried among a zillion other listings. Going with a lower-PR category with fewer competing links may prove to be more beneficial. When choosing from multiple related categories, choose one with a good balance of relevancy, Pagerank, number of competing listings.

In sum, submitting to web directories is a highly effective link building strategy that should be an integral part of any search engine optimization campaign. Manually submitting to a large number of directories is both laborious and time-consuming. Just keep the above points in mind to make the most of your time.

Oudam Em is the webmaster of http://www.UnlimitedTraffic.net, a site that offers a wide range of cost-effective web traffic solutions. Visit his site to use his manual web directory submission service to quickly submit your site to up to 500 search engine friendly web directories.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Oudam_Em

Google PR Fact And Fiction...What Does It Really Mean To Your Site?

Being an administrator of quite a few websites and the goto guy for many of the day to day operations, promoting and editor of many of these sites, I find myself shaking my head at many of the beliefs that webmasters have regarding aspects of their SEO and promoting of their sites.

Here is a thread from one my SEO forums which touches on the misconceptions about the Google PR system:

Member Post - Can anyone help me out here we have a google pr of 3 how do i get this higher i have already over 1000 websites linking to my site whats my next step check out our site? Thanks so much btw this forum is kool

SEO Pro - Don't put too much faith in your PR ranking. Yes it's good when you need to exchange links but don't expect to much from a higher PR. Better results will come from proper marketing and optimization geared towards your target market.

Member Reply - Your pr is also 3 im looking for someone that can pick up my pr to a 4 or a 5

Now disregarding the fact that his reply was condicending at best, he like many is completely off base in his conception of what PR means. So lets take a look at a few facts.

Heres what the pagerank encyclopedia says:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, EHandler: no quick summary. Follow link. (by page A, EHandler: no quick summary. Follow link. (for page B. But, EHandler: no quick summary. Follow link. (Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, EHandler: no quick summary. Follow link. (or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."

_________________

In otherwords you could have some of the most important pages on the net linkwise, and near zero traffic with a high PR... conversely you could have some of the weakest links according to PR and have a volume of traffic to kill for.

Page rank is really misunderstood. It isn't a clear, definative way to view a page as being "at the top" of any given search or even as a traffic benchmark. Take engineseeker.com vs netshoppers.com ; We both have solid PR5s yet engineseeker is ranked 3800 (up280) with an average of a 300/M daily traffic. Netshoppers is at 210,000 (D62,000) with an 8/M. We both have 5s, but there is an obvious difference.

Don't give PR more credit than it's value as a link evaluation...thats about all it is. Shoot for quality backlinks,targeted keyword phrases and PPC if you can afford it, you'll be much happier with the outcome a couple months down the road. You will see your sites PR rise with the quality of the backlinks that you gain. As your links go so does your websites PR.

I really try to post articles that are easy to read and understand with a ton of enjoyability and a hint of credibilty. We all know that he who retires with the highest Alexa ranking wins! or... gets a condo in Florida as a consolation prize. Can I have my condo now? :)

Steven Havill, Sr.
Founding partner of IC Online Services.
Current projects include NetShoppers.com - Shopping Directory, USFree.Net - Progressive Internet Community Portal and Areforever.com...etc We have many projects on the boards along stickits on all the monitors of the ones we just don't have time to get to. If you get a chance stop by to say hello, we are always around to help in any way we can.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Steven_Havill

Free Ways to Promote your Site

1. Submit your site into free search engine submission sites. Make sure that you submit your site to google, yahoo, and msn. One site that submits to search engines is www.submitexpress.com/

2. Submit your site to ffa sites. FFA sites are sites that are made for the purpose of letting people post one way links. One service that submits to ffa sites is blastomatic.com.

3. Join viral marketing sites. Some let you get guaranteed traffic from a certain amount of visitors as long as you visit certain sites. There is also some sites that get you more ads for referring people to join. One example is http://www.adtrackclassifieds.com/?mid=957

4. Another thing to do is to join link exchange sites. These sites let you swap links with other members in an organized, effective and often free way. One example is www.linkmarket.net

5. Another way is to write articles. Since getting many links to your site on the net makes your search engine rankings higher, you can get more links by putting your link in articles you write. The articles can be on any subject, and there are many article directories or other types of websites that accept articles.

6. Another good way is to write press releases. In the press releases you can include news about your webpage such as new features. These are just some of the top ways to generate traffic for your site.

Nahom Kidanemariam is a student and webmaster of http://eduhelper.tripod.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Nahom_Kidanemariam

Pay For Action Adsense – A Fundamental Problem

Ever inventive, Google has been sending out emails to select Adsense publishers regarding a new pay for action program. This is bad news for publishers promoting Adsense.

Pay For Action Adsense – A Fundamental Problem

If you are reading this, you probably know what Adsense is and are using it. If not, it is a program whereby Google allows sites to place ads from the Adwords program on their site. When a visitor to your site clicks one of the ads, you get a cut of the bid price from Google. It is a simple program that surprisingly generates a significant amount of revenue.

Google is now beta testing a new version of Adsense it is calling pay for action. While Google is not providing much information, the program apparently is an attempt to convert Adsense into one giant affiliate program. Instead of paying publishers for clicks on ads, the program will only pay a commission if a person clicks on one of the ads on your site and takes the relevant action on the advertiser’s site. In this case, it appears the action is buying whatever is offered or becoming a lead. In exchange for killing the click revenue aspect of Adsense, you apparently get a cut off the commission for whatever revenue is generated by the advertiser from your traffic.

There are a number of problems with this approach. First, Google offers no explanation of how it will account for sites that list phone numbers for orders, a method used by customers that Google can’t hope to track. Second, Google has offered no indication of how revenues will be generated from sites offering services such as lawyers, doctors and so on. A vast majority of people clicking onto these sites will telephone or email the business, which makes tracking a very difficult game. Admittedly, the program is in beta testing, so Google may come up with solutions for all of these issues. There is, however, a more fundamental problem.

The pay for action program contains one inherent flaw. It eliminates the motivation of the advertiser to have a good, fast site that converts and proper customer service. All indications are the advertisers will be able to use the platform for free and only pay commissions to Google which are split with us, the publishers. If so, what motivation does the advertiser have to improve their site? What motivation does the advertiser have to satisfy customers? In my honest opinion, the answer is very little. Yes, they want to get more sales, but what do they really care if they are getting a bunch of free traffic?

If I told you I would send you 100,000 visitors a day and you had to pay me a commission only on sales, how much would you work to improve the site? Be honest. Perhaps you would work on it for a month or so, but after that human nature would take over. We all know of sites out there that haven’t been touched in years because they have so many affiliates producing tons of traffic that they can just kick back and collect cash.

I fully understand that Google is trying to deal with click fraud, click bots and so on. Perhaps the pay for action program will be the solution when it is ultimately finalized. Perhaps it will be the greatest thing since, well, Google. My experience, however, is that a majority of affiliate programs are iffy at best, otherwise I would be promoting them instead of Adsense!

Again, it is to early to draw any conclusions regarding Google’s move, but people with Adsense ads on their site should take notice. This is a fundamental change that redistributes the risks and benefits of the Adsense program. I bet Yahoo is salivating about the prospects for its Publisher Network if Google goes ahead. Personally, I planned to stay with Adsense for as long as it was offered, but have my doubts now. If I wanted to partner with other sites, I would have done it a long time ago.

Halstatt Pires is with MarketingTitan.com - providing internet marketing services.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Halstatt_Pires

Web Hosting Reseller Plans

Some web hosting companies sell large amounts of hosting space with the understanding that their customer will turn that space into a business. These web hosting reseller plans offer another dynamic in the web hosting industry, because it allows for the existence of other hosting companies and also provides people with business opportunity.

Web hosting reseller plans are perfect for someone such as a web designer or graphic designer who also creates websites. It is often valuable to offer customers the option of using the same person who developed the site to provide the web hosting and also the website management. This option isn’t necessarily less expensive, but it is more convenient. Also keep in mind that these companies or individuals may also offer to manage your site for an extra fee.

You don’t need to be a web designer or graphic designer to utilize the web hosting reseller plans, and it is also an excellent home business opportunity. Find a web hosting reseller plan that seems to deliver the best product at the highest value. You will need to create a business plan that will help you analyze the market and create a fairly unique service. You will also need to figure out how to market your business and also create a website. You can search the Internet or find a book on starting a home business to do your initial research. You can also take a class.

Web hosting reseller plans are the perfect option for someone who wants to buy a large amount of web space to either start their own home business or enhance an already existing business. This seems to be an excellent way to increase your income. This option can also help benefit your customers because it may offer a more affordable option for them.

Web Hosting Plans provides detailed information on Web Hosting Plans, Affordable Web Hosting Plans, Small Business Web Hosting Plans, Web Hosting Reseller Plans and more. Web Hosting Plans is affiliated with Affordable Web Hosting Packages.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Max_Bellamy

Getting Hits To Your Site The Right Way

One tried and proven solution is by writing a small article about your site and submitting it to an S.E.O. and content provider site. People visit these sites every day to discover articles which they can include in their own site. These articles, which can cover all sorts of topics from angling to zoo-keeping, are designed to provide a taste of what your own site contains.

They would usually be about one small part of your own site, but are sufficiently interesting to make a reader click on the link to your site so that they can find out more information, thus leading to a greater number of hits.

They should be relatively short, say 400 to 500 words, so that a reader will not become bored by them. Research has shown that if a visitor to a web site does not have their attention grabbed within about 5 seconds, or less, they will move on.

Some article submission sites, like bookwired.com, will offer, in addition to hosting your article, an article writing service. You provide them with an idea of the style you want, a description of your site and they will provide you with an article.

Some sites will expect you to submit the article to them for hosting, while others will give you the article so that you choose where to submit it. Whatever you choose, copyright of the article always remains with you, and this is acknowledged by a small statement that the content was provided by whoever. There is also usually a link to the article writer, thus ensuring that your site receives a measure of promotion.

Submitting an article is generally a straightforward procedure. You choose the content provider you wish to submit your article to, register with them, and you are then able to submit your article.

If you would like some more information on the subject of site promotion and article submission, visit http://www.bookwired.com

RSS News and events from Bookwired- http://bookwired.com/backend.php

For more information about Article Writing for your site, visit http://bookwired.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Randy_Redhawk

How To Fully Automate Your Website So You Don't Waste Time Working

So you don’t have a way of managing all of the customer responses coming through your inbox? I can relate, please let me share a personal story.

When I first started my online business, I didn’t know what an autoresponder was, and I was intimidated by setting one up on my site. I simply had an HTML form set up that would send e-mail address of people that wanted my newsletter straight to my inbox. I can only imagine the amount of money that I was leaving on the table. I had no way of responding back to my potential customers. When I saw a newsletter signup come into my inbox, I would copy and paste a reply back to them.

The times have changed. Not only is the above situation not acceptable, but there’s no way you can effectively grow your business without an autoresponder.

After all, since you now have your website set up to sell your e-book, you are going to need a way to handle the various types of correspondence being sent to you from potential customers.

Autoresponders are an effective and economical innovation (software program) designed to “respond” to any messages a website receives. Thousands of online businesses use autoresponders to send a confirmation “thank you” notice when anyone registers with their email address on the site. Think of them as an answering machine for your website.

Using an autoresponder is a critical component to having a successful ebook business. Not only do you need to respond to messages and inquiries, you must implement an email sales campaign to promote your ebook. If you were to try to manage the emails yourself, the task will eventually become impractical and extremely time consuming. You could hire someone to answer them, but when your site is receiving several hundred hits a day with an average of 50% registering to receive more information; you would need to hire several people thus making the cost very prohibitive. In business, “time is money and money is time”, and online, and autoresponder is the only solution.

If you do not have an autoresponder, you will lose sales, and lots of them. If you are not using an auto email program to get these non-committals to return to your site, you will not be able to sell your ebook to them. It’s really as simple as that.

How does an autorepsonder work? By utilizing the information you input into the programs, the Autoresponder will automatically answer any email or sign-up your site receives. You can even program a variety of responses and how many times you want to send your customers an email; plus any sales receipts, download information and access, support problems – can all be effectively handled by an autoresponder. Obviously if there is a support situation, you or your webmaster will need to step in and fix the problem, but the autoresponder can easily let the customer know that someone will be emailing them soon to help.

Due to the nature of your business (e-book sales), you will need a variety of email autoresponses depending upon the situation. A typical list of responses for an e-book sales site might include some or all of the following:

1) Thank you response for visiting and signing up;

2) Free newsletter emailed to all sign-ups;

3) Special offer emails to entice purchase;

4) Purchase notification/invoice;

5) Thank you for purchasing;

6) Informing of your newest e-book;

7) Offer free course/bonus for signing up;

8) Notification of problems/complaints received from customers;

9) Notification of feedback received.

Basically the uses of the program are endless, in fact anything that you would want emailed to several customers can be handled through an autoresponder. And just like the almost limitless uses, there are a vast number of autoresponder companies vying to handle your e-business correspondence.

Many sites have free autoresponder programs available which handle minimal email tasks; however because you are trying to sell ebooks, you should look for a system or service that does not limit the capabilities of your emails. Make sure you get unlimited email size plus you will need the ability to send multiple emails to the same person over a period of time. Remember, the reason for sending several emails over a course of time is based on the fact that most customers (about 60% - 70%) do not purchase on their first visit. If they are interested in learning more about your ebook, they will sign up for more information. And this is when you use an autoresponder to send multiple targeted information emails to drive those reluctant customers back to your site for the purchase. You will also want to have the ability to track your emails to assess the effectiveness of such a campaign. We use www.aweber.com and www.getresponse.com is also a good solution.

The messages you will want to send will depend upon the reason for the need to respond. One way you can handle this by having multiple email addresses for your site. Here is a short list of email addresses you will need:

1) support@yoursite.com

2) Yourname@yoursite.com

3) Yourassistant@yoursite.com

4) sales@yoursite.com

If you need additional addresses, do not hesitate to set them up and use them; the more you categorize your customer’s emails, the better you, your webmaster and your autorepsonder program will work. The autoresponder will know the difference between newsletter sign-ups, customer logins, purchases, and so on. This is all configured in the program, as is sending notification emails for receipt of a customer’s inquiry at one of your listed email addresses. Again, you or your webmaster will manually have to answer any inquiries received at a site listed address. Unfortunately at this moment in time, autoresponders cannot read and answer emails. I would imagine that sometime in the not too distance future this will become a possibility. One can always hope!

Now you understand why autoresponders are an important if not critical ingredient in developing a productive, functioning, 24/7 e-book sales site. Using one will help increase your sales, drive those hesitant potential customers back to your site and take care of those everyday tasks associated with having a professional and courteous Internet business. Offering excellent customer service is a significant business building tool, especially for online businesses when a customer assesses you and your site faster than you realize.

About The Author
David Hennebery is the owner and creator of a very successful ebook called ebookprofitmaker. He is regarded as an expert in eBook marketing and selling. To contact him email . Receive 35% ebook discount for reading this article.For more details visit http://www.ebookprofitmaker.com/articleoffer.html

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_Hennebery

Fresh Content

Are you looking for fresh content for your website? It makes sense that if you can get your hands on free content you should be using it.

We live in a sea of information. And information overload is an increasingly common complaint. Part of the complaint arises because we get hit with different headlines that point to the same content. So we waste time on things that have no added value.

When you email your list or put up content on your site, and assuming you want to generate loyalty, it's necessary that you have fresh content others haven't seen a dozen times elsewhere.

If this makes sense to you, here are some ideas you can use to EASILY generate content that is fresh with a minimal amount of time and effort.

First of all, think about a subject in which you are interested. Let's say it's make money online. Now if you're not aware of it, let me put you in the picture. Most people do web searches from Google's home page and stop there. Not at all creative. Not at all digging for information from which to develop original content.

So let's go exploring...

1 - Google has lots of tools besides just web searches. They let you check the news.

http://news.google.com

As of this writing, there are 8,549 news items listed by Google on the word make money online. Bet you could easily do a summary of some of these articles and create your own content. But let's not stop there.

2 - Google also has "groups."

http://groups.google.com

These are folks who like to discuss *your* subject. So now you can go even farther. Look up make money online in their groups. Now this information is potentially gold. Why? Because you can see what it is about make money online that lots of folks are interested in.

Think you might be able to do a little research and come up with a free or even a for-profit report that gives them what they want?

Check out Google's other tools, too. You can even get research info from universities through Google. Start here: http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/

3 - Next method: Do this search (keeping in the punctuation as written):

+make money online +free +filetype:pdf

As of this writing, Google shows 2,210,000 hits for this query. What you get here are free downloads in pdf format about your subject.

Now you can't simply copy and use it as your own information. You have to create your writing in your own words. But there's no law that says you can't summarize what you find in other people's works. To make the point, you could even call your work something like: "Survey Report: Latest from the Make Money Online Front!"

4 - Go to Alexa.com. Do a search on your subject, in this example, make money online. It provides the exact same results as Google because it's powered by Google. So why bother, right? Wrong. Because Alexa *does* provide value added information.

When you do the search, you don't want to click the link that takes you to the listed site. Instead you want to follow the link that says "Site info." When you do this, you'll find a section called: "People who visit this page also visit." This can be very valuable because it potentially shows *what the marketplace is interested in.* This can enable you to tailor your information product to what people want.

These are just some of the easy ways to branch out your explorations and find current information for your website.

One program that helps people start their own internet business with fresh content is the Plugin Profit Site. With this online business you are set up with your own money making website, email marketing newsletter and follow up training in 3 easy steps. For less than $80 you will get your own personal website with an enewsletter for 400 days without writing a single word.

About The Author
Jeff Schuman Team-Schuman.Com contains the best make money online and make money websites available today. If you want to make money check us out here: http://www.team-schuman.com/fresh-content.html

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jeff_Schuman

Server Side Includes (SSI) with ASP

Server Side Includes (SSI) with ASP

People often have identical sections of code spread throughout many ASP pages, typically code at the top of the page (usually referred to as the header) and the lower part of the page (the footer). Similarly, you may have code that performs a certain set of instructions that you are repeating across multiple pages. Consider an example:-

<%
If foobar="yes" then
response.write "YES!"
Else
response.write "NOT YES!"
End if
%>

Ok, ok... it's simple, but imagine that you used this on multiple pages. What's wrong with this picture?

Well... you don't have to think about that long before realising that if you ever wanted to change something about that piece of code, you'd have your work cut out. you would have to change every page... everyone has done this at some stage and luckily most usually take the steps to learn a way around this problem.

If we could save our valuable chunk of code into a file and have that file accessed whenever we needed the code, then we no longer have a problem when it comes to changing things, as we simply update one file. Include files or Server Side Includes (SSI) as they are more commonly known are a powerful way to not only save time when it comes to maintaining and updating a site, but also increase efficiency and speed of that site too!

Ok, lets see how we use an include file... to start with we need to use one of two methods. The first one allows for including files relatively. By that I mean relative to the directory the ASP file that is using the include file resides. The second method includes files virtually. Including files virtually means that the path is taken from the root directory.

Consider that we are going to have a file (/main/somefile.asp) include another file (/includes/someinclude.asp).

To demonstrate, relative inclusion, look at this:-

<%
Response.Write "executing included code now"
%>

<%
Response.write "done executing included code"
%>

And here, we give an example of the other method, virtual inclusion:-

<%
Response.Write "executing included code now"
%>

<%
Response.write "done executing included code"
%>

Note the slight difference between the two methods. With virtual inclusion, you can move the file that calls upon the include file anywhere without affecting the outcome, because the path is always relative to the root. The same cannot be said however for relative inclusion. If you move a file that is using relative inclusion to a different directory, you'll most likely find the relative path is no longer correct.

From the examples above, you may also notice that both methods, when calling the include do so OUTSIDE of the ASP script block. This because #include declarations are not interpreted by ASP. Include files are included before a single line of ASP is processed which means the following WONT work:-

%lt;%
Page=request.form("page")
%>


We were attempting to perform a dynamic include and I would be the first to admit that the above would be very useful indeed if in fact it were possible. I do intend to cover a few methods that work around this set back but I know you will now be itching to get started right away on using include files to even worry about this, so I will cover it in a future article.

I hope that you have found the above informative and hope it inspires you all to write code that's more efficient and more easily maintained.

Rob Collyer, experienced with 20 years programming knowledge and site administrator of www.webforumz.com - Copyright 2003-2004

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Rob_Collyer

3 Reasons Why You Need URL Rewriting Module To Enchance Your Web

URL rewriting are major needs for your sites that produce a dynamic pages like PHP pages with redirection pages inside your index page.

What is APACHE URL Mod Rewrite ?

URL Mod Rewrite is a Apache web server module that can manipulate your URL on fly when a visitors join your URL pages.

A mod rewrite mode is usefull to changes your original URL to all types of the URL you dreamed about.

In this link below you will find some solutions guides to use the mod rewrite scripts :

A Users Guide to URL Rewriting with the Apache Webserver
http://www.engelschall.com/pw/apache/rewriteguide/#ToC1

Why do you need URL mod_rewriting?

#1 URL manipulating

If you want to hide your original URL and what scripts that you used on it. You can use mod rewrite.

#2 Can be usefull for a Content Management System Based on Text. Content Management System has been used by 80% webmasters in the World. Ussualy they used mod rewrite to move the document root to the top level priority.

For an example :

if yout want to changes your URL from :
www.yourdomain.com/e/www

And then by using mod rewrite to change the URL to this :
www.yourdomain.com/

This module was usefull to make your web URLs look more profesional.

#3 Search Engine Optimization.

Search Engine will crawl your site with their bot scripts. By the research shows that most Search Engines were prefer a HTML pages rather than a Dynamic pages.

So that they can increase your link popularity and make they easy to crawl through your site content.

By using mod_rewrite URL manipulation , you can changes your dynamic pages to a html URL address.

For an example :
www.yourdomain.com/index.php?screen=home
You can changes it to this by mod_rewrite:
www.yourdomain.com/index.html

In other words: With mod_rewrite you either shoot yourself in the foot the first time and never use it again or love it for the rest of your life because of its power.

This paper tries to give you a few initial success events to avoid the first case by presenting already invented solutions to you.

About an Author

Handry Teguh is a web designer and articles publishers at http://www.buaya.com. And now his job was an IT Solution Consultant and Implementator in security and storages solutions of Multi Vendors Product like : CA, MICROSOFT, GFI, SYMANTEC, CCTV.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Handry_Teguh

Strengthen Your Website Content With Online Database Access

Website content, as articles, has taken center stage as web publishers scramble to differentiate their online offers. As both the quantity and quality of articles have accelerated, so too have online directories. These directories often resemble mere lists, but they can be powerful content additions that serve to deepen the value of the overall selling proposition by helping users in locating critical, related resources that for the visitor is otherwise much too time consuming.

On today's websites, it is not uncommon to find online databases designed to provide the data-hungry website visitor with more comprehensive database management functions which are far superior to list-style directories. At a minimum, we find web-driven data pages that include search and display functions which facilitate quick and easy manipulation of back-end SQL databases. Many sites also include options to add, edit, delete, print, and even download data directly from the database to the desktop, all enabled with multiple levels of login/password security. While this is not revolutionary, the technical expertise required to build database-driven web pages has been the domain of more sophisticated online publishers who not only owned the back end database outright, but possessed the required expertise to build and maintain such access for their loyal constituents.

But that has all changed. A flurry of new, low-cost desktop tools have entered the scene, leveling the playing field for the budget-strapped internet marketer who, until recently, was limited to throwing in a basic "telephone book" style directory in an attempt to bolster his value proposition.

Three such tool categories warrant a closer look:

Web data extraction tools costing less than $400 enable web content, as "repeating data", to be easily extracted to MS Excel, MS Access, or virtually any SQL database in high volume. This data serves to build, or at least augment the publisher's's new online database. (Ideally, one should first obtain permission from the website owner before scraping large volumes of data).

The next challenge is to manipulate the collected data now resident in multiple files, and often in disparate data formats. Though list processing applications have long been available, lower cost tools now offer powerful merge/purge capabilities without the need to import and export files in the process. Some simple routines and the data is ready to upload to the database on the host web server.

Finally, the publisher builds the web pages which access the database. Perhaps most exciting is the arrival of a wide variety of desktop code generators, many which are open source, that allow a non-programmer to build customized web pages that rival the database search, display, add, edit,delete and download capabilities previously reserved for the more technical publisher. No longer is the web publisher required to know a single SQL command to accomplish this feat. Amazingly, most of these tools generate pure PHP or PERL code. All that remains is to upload the generated code to the host database and the project is complete. The website now houses a "living, breathing" database, to the extent that the publisher desires to maintain fresh data.

One of the more common, and simple applications of database-driven web pages is to build versatile Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) pages. Questions and answers can be queried by category (e.g. pricing, product) or keyword (e.g. sporting goods), while enriching the users support experience.

How can such newfound capabilities be monetized? The possibilities are plenty. Limited datasets can be made freely searchable and viewable for casual visitors, though it's usually wise to request that the user register even if membership is free. The idea is to prime the pump, getting casual users to thirst for more comprehensive database access. Extended and full database access can be reserved only for paid members.

Never has a publisher had such power to build data-rich content that can serve to immediately strengthen his unique selling sales proposition. In the old paradigm, he who owned the data held all the power. Today, data is everywhere for the internet entrepreneur. By applying the latest database tools, any website publisher can now cement the most loyal of customer relationships by ensuring that his customer has a reason to keep coming back.

Web visitors have a difficult enough time sorting out the perceived sameness of online offerings. For the content builder, there are few better methods to establish and lock in immediate credibility with customers than to implement an easily accessible database that underscores the site's overall content theme.

About The Author
David Riewe - Internet Marketer and Publisher - Try his FREE Ezine "The Ultimate Marketing Tips" that that will Make Your Business An Outstanding Success! http://www.riewe.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_Riewe

GooglePage and AdSense Solutions

GooglePage (tm) is free and easy to use. GooglePage offers 41 page skins (templates) and a simple editor to create pages. Simply add text, upload pictures, video, music and files, click “publish” and your page exists on the world wide web. Google offers 100 Mb of space and is coupled to your GMail account. As with all Google services, there are adequate official and non-official help pages and forums for GooglePages.com (or GPC) which is still in testing phase (Beta).

Page Design Techniques

You can combine the Page skins with four different layouts as each page requires.

Example: You might decide that your home page layout should have a left column for navigation, a center column for a short explanation and a right column for pictures all on a grey skin background. Your next page might have much more text and you can decide for the left column navigation but to combine the center and right column into one all on a white background. By shifting between the Change Looks and Layout options you can make each page different from the other. You also have the option of using headers and footers when and where you want.

More Flexibility

If you require more flexibility you can add your own html commands if you are familiar with web design. Simply click the “Edit html” link on the bottom of the GooglePage editor and add whatever you need. If you require any sort of scripting such as Google AdSense tm, you can upload html files and link to them.

Example. You create a page and decide you want to add Google AdSense in the left column. Simply publish the page and view it online in your browser. You can either view the page source or save the file as an html document on your hard-disk. Using a text editor you can then add the AdSense script in the left column and close the file. Go back to your GooglePage editor and upload the xx.htm file from your hard disk. Link to it from existing GooglePage documents and you have a custom page. A small disadvantage at the moment is that you cannot use the GooglePage editor to make changes to the page since the editor will automatically strip out the script. This will change.

Some users of GooglePages have commented that the editor lacks some fundamentals which exist in GoogleBlog. However, it must be remembered that the purpose of GooglePages is a simple way for people to create web pages for free. Plus, GooglePage is still in Beta and like all Google products, under constant review.

How to sign up

You need a Google Mail account (Gmail) to sign up for GooglePage. Currently whatever name you choose for your Gmail account becomes your GooglePage name automatically (Google hints that this will change). For example, if you sign up for a GMial account using John Doe, your free web page will be called johndoe.googlepage.com.

What can you create?

Already users have created clever and artistic personal, business, photo, religious, technical and entertaining web pages. There are also tips in the forums as to how to add AdSense, page counters, video, music and Googlemaps to GooglePage.com. Start today and add yours.

Visit the LifeSav site to see GooglePages in action including the addition of Google AdSense scripts. You can also see AdSense in action in Chinese, Spanish and Russian on the 30-Days site.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Paul_Madrid

Professional Web Site Hosting Services

A businessperson looking for a professional web hosting company and is a novice in web technology will need to choose a web hosting service provider with certain standard services that keep the website up and running. The first thing to look for is whether they provide you with your own chosen domain name. A business website on a subdomain will only take clients away to other professionally maintained websites of your competitors. And if you are expecting regular traffic on your website, go for a company that provides you with a server on your own.

The type of internet connection offered by the company is also equally important. T1 lines or T3 lines are ideal for websites. It is not advisable to go for dial-up connections as they are slow. There are companies that handle your domain registration process and that you have full control over any content on your website. Your website is your window to the world. You cannot afford to have it unavailable to your clients even for a short period of time. Make sure the web hosting service provides you with technical support round the clock and guarantees 99% uptime. You just cannot afford to have your website down.

Email services are provided by most web hosts and are an essential feature of any business website. You need to give free email ids to your employees and services. Most web hosts also set up your site for free and charge only for the upkeep. But you need to go in for a host that will provide you with PHP, CGI/Perl, MS Frontpage and MySql. It is important to have an autoresponder as well.

Go for web programming services and web administration services if you don’t think you can manage it yourself. And choose design templates in tune with your business processes. And choose a server software that is best suited to your needs. Choose a host who gives you Telnet and FTP access for uploading files and for CGI script editing.

If you choose a web host with some of these basic services, you will be able to keep a site that gives your client maximum information about your company.

Professional Web Hosting provides detailed information on Professional Web Hosting, Professional Web Site Hosting, Professional Web Hosting Designs, Professional Web Site Hosting Services and more. Professional Web Hosting is affiliated with Web Hosting Solutions.

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Cheap Canadian Web Hosting

A small business feels the need to go online as a marketing effort or to enter into e-commerce because customers have gone online to purchase their needs. But because of their sizes, small and medium businesses are constrained by tight budgets, or they simply don’t need as many of the features provided by the web hosting companies.

Similarly, an individual, such as freelance writer, may have the need to be online just to publish writings and articles with just enough space at a minimum cost. Some web hosting providers target their niche group of customers with low-cost services. The low-cost advantage is gained by providing minimum disk space on a server. A single server may be crammed by many websites because of less disk space and low cost.

The cheap website providers can be located online, and there are many providers operating from cities such as Ontario and Toronto. A typical cheap plan may have 500 MB disk space, 30 GB data transfer, and limited email accounts. The rates may be as low $1 per month. Some providers give incentives like limited free monthly hosts for referrals to friends and relatives.

The cheap rates come with many limitations. A crammed server may result in less speed, and slow data transfer and page openings. The web host firm may cut costs by providing less frequent customer support, resulting in more downtime in case of operational failure and longer complaint-handling periods. They may also lack technical support to help in developing web pages and modifications.

Other than cheap hosts, there are budget hosts and free hosts. Budget hosts provide services that are better than the cheap hosts, such as support twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and more storage space. There are free hosts who exchange domains for free storage facilities. Free hosts may be beneficial for websites in the early stages and not-for-profit organizations. But they also have the same disadvantages as cheap hosts.

Canadian Web Hosting provides detailed information on Canadian Web Hosting, Cheap Canadian Web Hosting, Canadian E Commerce Web Hosting, Canadian Web Hosting Resellers and more. Canadian Web Hosting is affiliated with Dedicated Internet Hosting.

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Affordable Web Hosting - Finding The Right Web Hosting Provider

Finding the right web hosting at an affordable price can be a daunting task. Most common web hosting providers will promise the world and then bring many headaches. Would you like to see your site down for 24 hours or more and receive next to no help from support regarding the problem? This situation is avoidable by carefully considering a web hosting provider before handing over your money.

The largest problem with affordable web hosting providers is support, many web hosting providers that offer the world but for only $1 or $2 per month are only there to provide the hardware aspect of web hosting, at this price point it is simply not possible for them to offer the kind of technical support that you should expect.

The reason most people don't find the best host that suits their needs is because they fall prey to a seemingly good web hosting plan that they find first before spending the time to research prospective hosts properly. It takes some level of knowledge to find the best web hosting provider for your needs.

In this day and age though it is possible to pay less than $10 per month for web hosting that comes with good technical support and features to cover all your needs.

To be sure you are choosing the right web hosting provider, here are some of the features that the "right" provider should offer:

Comprehensive Web Site Statistics: How many visitors is your site getting? What search terms are they using in search engines to find your site? What sites link to your site? All of these things you need to know if your site is business oriented, comprehensive statistics will help to understand your customer base.

Bandwidth: This is the amount of traffic served from your web site per month usally measured in gigabytes (GB), a host that offers more than 75GB per month should cover most sites needs.

Cpanel: This control panel makes managing your Web Site Hosting very easy.

Disk Space: This is the amount of storage space on the web hosting server to store your web site, it is recommended to get a plan that offers at least 5GB of space to cover your needs well into the future.

Finding the right web hosting provider the first time is not too easy without the correct advice and some good research on your part, but in the long run it will save time and money when you choose the right web hosting provider the first time.

David J. Smith writes about a new hosting company called Hostmonster and other prominent web hosting providers at http://www.webhost-advisor.com.

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BlueHost and Fantastico

BlueHost and Fantastico go so well together that they lend themselves to all sorts of timeless comparisons: Burns and Allen, Astaire and Rogers, Peanut Butter and Jelly or, more relevantly, MySQL and PHP. BlueHost is the web host, Fantastico is the feature; together, they can help you make your website do all sorts of incredible things.

Fantastico (full name: Fantastico DeLuxe) is the leading auto-installer for servers using the cPanel control panel. Blue Host uses the cPanel control panel and therefore BlueHost servers support the Fantastico auto-installer. With Fantastico, you can install scripts onto your Blue Host website even if you’re a total novice -- no setting up of a MySQL database necessary, and no downloading files or changing permissions.

By logging in to your Bluehost cPanel and clicking on the big blue smiley-face Fantastico icon (no kidding), you will be able to instantly install any number of useful scripts onto your website by simply clicking on the script, and then clicking Install.

With Fantastico, you can install multiple instances of scripts in add-on domains, sub-domains, and top-level directories of your BlueHost-hosted website.

When logged in to your Blue Host cPanel, with the Fantastico window opened you can also learn in an instant whenever an update has been released for a script you have installed onto your website.

What do we mean by scripts? Scripts enable you to add functionality, versatility, and interactivity to your Bluehost-hosted websites, right down to your Customer Support Services. Some of the most common and popular Fantastico scripts include:

- Blogs (b2evolution, Nucleus, PMachine Free, WordPress)
- Customer Support (Crafty Syntax Live Help, Help Center Live, osTicket, PHP Support Tickets, Support Logic Helpdesk, Support Services Manager)
- Discussion boards (phpBB2, SMF)
- eCommerce (CubeCart, OS Commerce, Zen Cart)
- FAQs (FAQMasterFlex)
- Image Galleries (4Images Gallery, Coppermine Photo Gallery, Gallery 2.0)
- Mailing Lists (PHPlist)
- Portals/CMA (Drupal, Geeklog, Joomla, Mambo Open Source, PHP-Nuke, phpWCMS, phpWebSite, Post-Nuke, Siteframe, Typo3, Xoops)
- Project Management (dotProject, PHProjekt)
- Site Builders (Templates Express)
- Surveys/Polls (Advanced Poll, phpESP, PHPSurveyor), Wiki (PhpWiki, TikiWiki)
- Miscellaneous (Dew-NewPHPLinks, Moodle, Noah’s Classifieds, Open-Realty, PhpAdsNew, PHPauction, phpCOIN, phpFormGenerator, WebCalendar)

It is important to keep in mind that while BlueHost supports Fantastico, and even has a sizable section on Fantastico in the Bluehost knowledgebase, Blue Host does not offer support for the individual scripts available using Fantastico. Therefore, once you install the scripts onto your Bluehost account, you should make note of the official website associated with each script you’re using so you can refer to it for specific script-related questions, issues, and tips.

Hosting-Review.com is the premier resource on web hosting. Visit http://www.hosting-review.com for comprehensive reviews and rankings of over 50 web hosts, including BlueHost

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Canadian Web Hosting Resellers

Intermediaries or middlemen exist in every business; they act as liaisons between the manufacturer or service provider and the final customer. In most cases, they might not even own many assets that they handle. Middlemen make a profit in the transaction.

The Internet has the potential to eliminate intermediation by offering services directly to the customer; at the same time, it has spawned new types of intermediation services. Web hosting is one such service that has given rise to intermediaries called resellers. Resellers are third parties who buy space from web hosting companies and then resell the space to individuals and small and medium enterprises for a profit.

Generally, large web hosting companies sell multiple accounts. The buyers of multiple accounts may then sell the unutilized accounts to others. The resellers are usually website developers. Since the resellers operate from a parent host, it would be very difficult to identify a reseller. The reseller buys space at a discount and then marks it up, which makes a win-win situation for both reseller and the buyer.

In order to be a reseller, one needs to have multiple domains. As a third party, it is essential that, in addition to the domain account, the reseller needs to have full control over the administrative panel of the client’s websites. It enables the reseller to hide his or her identity as a reseller. The terms and conditions should be executed by the reseller and the buyer.

The advantages of dealing with a reseller is that they provide extra services like web and graphic design, search engine promotion, and managed services. As the resellers are familiar with the configurations, they may be able to provide more support for the client.

The reseller is ideally suited for those businesses operating from homes or individuals because the reseller has fewer clients than the parent; as such, the reseller may be able to provide better services. The businesses must take care to know the features available, and to be familiar with the maintenance and technical support before signing the terms and conditions. For instance, if the reseller doesn’t pay the fees to the parent, the websites will be shut down.

Canadian Web Hosting provides detailed information on Canadian Web Hosting, Cheap Canadian Web Hosting, Canadian E Commerce Web Hosting, Canadian Web Hosting Resellers and more. Canadian Web Hosting is affiliated with Dedicated Internet Hosting.

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Discount Ecommerce Web Hosting

In the present online climate, many business Web sites are being used as online shops and online service providing resources, where the customer or the client would feel equally comfortable browsing in an actual office or shop as surfing the related business Web site.

These Web sites can also take advantage of "shopping cart" functions for online shopping, which means one can shop virtually on the net, satisfying their need by selecting and purchasing the products they want to buy. Traditionally, web hosting refers to the service that keeps a Web site's content online at a specified URL, making the content available to Web surfers. However, now many of these ecommerce applications can be bundled at a low cost in discount ecommerce web hosting packages from hosting providers.

The very role of ecommerce in our life and its influence is nearly beyond measure, and thus, it is imperative that a business keep an online presence. eCommerce is essential for the growth of an online business, especially moving forward. eCommerce web hosting packages are a valuable in that they can create and increase revenue and profitability for an online business. eCommerce even reduces overhead costs and can play a major role in revolutionizing your customer service. And if the eCommerce web hosting can be found at a discounted price, then there is no question about the value of these services.

However, there are certain things that have to be fulfilled if one wants to receive the full potential value of eCommerce web hosting. They are: registration, web hosting, web designing, web promotion through creating links, database solutions and marketing, software development and other add-ons including privacy policies. Web hosting packages with eCommerce solutions at a discount rate can provide the most secure ways for your customers and you to begin trading online, where the business would demand less face time from your end. After all, eCommerce or the flourish of commercial activities through the electronic medium holds the very future of the commercial world.

Discount Web Hosting provides detailed information on Discount Web Hosting, Discount Business Web Hosting, Discount Linux Web Hosting, Discount eCommerce Web Hosting and more. Discount Web Hosting is affiliated with Reliable Low Cost Web Hosting.

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Professional Web Hosting And Ecommerce

In the fast-changing scenario of today’s world, the Internet has become a major tool for commerce. In order to make a mark, it is essential for a business to have a presence on the Web. Having your own web page means thousands of potential customers across the world will have access to your goods and services just at the click of a mouse. And for this purpose, you will have to take the help of a Web server that will store your page and download it to your potential customers on request.

But as owning and operating a Web server is highly expensive and needs technical expertise as well, most businesses find it convenient to hire a host, called the hosting service provider (HSP) that owns the Web server and provides the necessary technologies and services. They collect a rental fee from exchange for their services. There are some free hosting providers that offer you only limited services. You can get many more services from the “paid” class of hosting services. Paid hosting can be shared, dedicated or managed and you can choose the one that suits you best. In the case of shared hosting, several Web sites are shared on one server. Although less expensive, they are incapable of handling large amounts of storage or traffic. In dedicated hosting, a Web site is allotted its own server. Apart from a dedicated server, managed hosting also provides extensive technical support, maintenance and monitoring services.

You will find a number of HSPs offering you various types of packages at various prices. The packages may include a variety of services from personalized email address to your own domain name. The services offered by different HSPs are usually competitive and affordable. All you need to do to spread your business is choose the right one according to your requirements. Remember, to succeed in e-commerce, you have to make your presence felt on the Web.

Professional Hosting provides detailed information on Professional Hosting, Professional Web Hosting, Professional Web Hosting And eCommerce, Professional Business Web Site Hosting and more. Professional Hosting is affiliated with Internet Provider Hosts.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ken_Marlborough

How to Choose a Website Host for Your Business

Website hosts are essential for any website. They are the reason why your website exsists. However, choosing a website host may be a difficult task, because there are so many hosts out there that offer so many different options. This tutorial was written to help you choose a host that is perfect for your website's needs. Lets start with what hosts offer:

Web Space - With Web Space, the more you have, the better! Web Space is like your online hard drive. Website hosts offer many sizes of web space. Most website hosts offer between 1GB and 4GB of space. That is a heck of a lot of space, and most likely, you won't use even half that. If you are setting up an information site, you won't need much web space because .html files are really tiny in size. However, if your website is going to contain video and programs, then you will need a lot of web space.

Bandwidth - Bandwidth is the maximum size of data that can be transfered from your web host's server, to the people surfing your website. However, almost all hosts offer much more bandwidth then you will actually use. Its almost rare for a website to use all of its bandwidth. Look for hosts that offer Bandwidth in giga-bytes(GB). The higher the Bandwidth offered, the better.

E-mail - If you don't know what e-mail is, then please, shut down your computer, and sell it some kid for a hundred dollars. Just kidding! Your web host should offer what's called POP3 E-mail. This is just e-mail that we have grown to know and love, but instead of you@aol.com, its you@yourdomainname.com. You would access the you@yourdomainname.com e-mail address through Microsoft's Outlook Express, or some other type of e-mail program. Most web hosts offer between 10-100 POP3 e-mail addresses, each with its own username and password. This way, you could give all your friends, relatives, or employees their own personalized e-mail address.

E-mail Autoresponders - E-mail autoresponders are a really unique tool. They allow an e-mail address to automatically send a message to anyone that e-mails a certain e-mail address. These are great to have if you have forms on your website, or a shopping cart. You can setup an Autoresponder to e-mail your customers a list of their purchases, or just a "Thanks for Ordering!"mailto:info@yourdomainname.com, E-mail. Look for hosts that offer at least 10 autoresopnders if you plan on using forms and a shopping cart. Some websites even offer Unlimited Autoresponders.

E-mail Forwarders - E-mail forwarders forward an e-mail to your e-mail address. Say your e-mail address is Webmaster@yourdomainname.com, and you want to setup three e-mail address, Info@yourdomainname.com, Help@yourdomainname.com, and Billing@yourdomainname.com. Instead of checking all four e-mail addresses every day, you can get the latter three to forward their messages to the Webmaster@yourdomainname.com e-mail address. This is a real time saver! Look for website hosts that offer 10 to Unlimited E-mail Forwarders.

Subdomains - Subdomains allow you to have many different websites under one domain name. A subdomain's address would be http://subdomain.yourdomainname.com, but "subdomain" can be replaced with whatever you want. You could have http://monkey.yourdomainname.com, or http://help.yourdomainname.com. Each subdomain has its own FTP username and password, or can be accessed through your main username and password. Subdomains are useful because they shorten the urls, and organize your website. You can also allow people to setup their own websites under your subdomains, without having access to your "root" directory, only their subdomain directory.

CGI-BIN/Perl, PHP, and MySQL - These are all powerful programming languages for your website, and allow you to make a lot of things easier. CGI-BIN, Perl, and PHP allow you to setup message boards, form mail, web-based e-mail, banner rotaters, and much more on your website. MySQL is an extremely reliable and fast database system that can be used to better manage the content on your website, or you can use it to store any type of information you want, including pictures. Look for web hosts that offer these for free. Beware of web hosts that charge more for PHP and CGI-BIN. Some web hosts charge for MySQL.

Control Panel - A control panel allows you to take charge of your web hosting account. At the control panel, you should be able to create POP3 E-mail address, Autoresponders, FTP Accounts, Subdomains, and manage MySQL databases. Look for a demo of the Control Panel before you choose your website host. This way, you can see if it is easy to use or not.

Besides offering all of the tools above, a website host should offer you a free domain name with your hosting package. If you have already registered your domain name with a different company like Godaddy.com or Register.com, your website host should offer a free domain name transfer.

As for Price, you shouldn't pay anymore than $20.00 a month for a website host. There are a lot of website hosts that provide you with more than you need for less than $10.00 per month.

Michael Press is an internet entrepreneur and investor. He currently runs PassiveIncomeInfo.com and EquityLoanAdvice.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michael_Press

An Introduction To Professional Web Hosting

Once you decide to run a Web site and do it properly, you require a Web server for storing your data as well as an Internet connection to it. The server will be provided by hosting service providers (HSPs). Different HSPs will offer you different space (amount of data) and bandwidth (Net connection measured usually in MB). You will find different types of Web hosting like virtual web hosting, dedicated hosting; co-locating hosting, shared hosting, and reseller hosting.

Shared and virtual Web hosting means the same thing. By the term shared is meant that several Web sites, running from hundreds to thousands, are hosted on a single Web Server. You will have to decide if the extra time needed for your page to load under this arrangement will drive away your visitors. However, the problem does not seem to be acute if you deal with a professional, serious hosting provider because they monitor the operational parameters of the servers and take necessary steps to maintain the contracted service level.

When HSPs offer their services to a third-party (a reseller which itself becomes a HSP) and the latter offers web-hosting services under its own brand name, it is called reseller web hosting. In most of the cases, they are web designers or web developers as well. Although less expensive, this system has technical support problem which could inconvenience commercial Web sites.

In dedicated web hosting a Web site is allotted its own server. In some cases, although a single web server computer is divided between say three customers, it still remains the best option for important commercial Web sites.

Co-locating hosting is different from dedicated hosting in the sense that in the former, the customer owns the web server computer, giving the customer total control of the Web server along with the security of the data center.

While choosing your option, price should never be the sole factor. You should consider the quality of service on offer as well.

Professional Hosting provides detailed information on Professional Hosting, Professional Web Hosting, Professional Web Hosting And eCommerce, Professional Business Web Site Hosting and more. Professional Hosting is affiliated with Internet Provider Hosts.

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Web Hosting Features

How do I know a good web hosting service from a bad one? What features should I be looking for when choosing a web host? What is bandwidth or transfer? How much storage space do I really need? What tools should they offer me and which ones do I need?

In this article I will attempt to give you the short version of answers to those questions for you to use as a reference. A lot about choosing a web-hosting provider depends on what your website needs and every website has different needs.

First question was “How do I know a good web hosting service from a bad one?” Before doing business with anyone on the web that is going to be as important to your business as a web hosting company, you should do a search on the name of the company and look for criticisms, complaints, etc. Keep in mind no one has 100% satisfied customers and finding just one complaint on the web doesn’t mean that the company is a bad one. However if you find a lot of complaints, I would move on to the next provider.

Now about the bandwidth and transfer question I mentioned above. Bandwidth and transfer are basically the same thing. Some tech guy might know a difference I’m not aware of, but it won’t be much difference. This is the number of times each file in your website is downloaded for the web host’s server to the visitors computer.

In other words, the size of you webpages in kilobytes plus the size of each graphic or other type of file that is served to the users computer is the amount of transfer you are using. If your website will have a lot of graphics, movies, downloads, etc., make sure you choose a web-hosting plan that offers you a lot of bandwidth. The average website doesn’t need more than 2-5 gigabytes of transfer per month.

How much storage space do I need? The storage space is no different than your computer’s hard drive. If the web host offers 100 megabytes of storage space that is just like having a 100-megabyte hard drive. If your files are not more than 100 megabytes then that is plenty of storage. Most web hosting companies offer plenty of storage space, more than the average website will ever use.

The question, “What features should I look for and which tools do I need?” are ones that I can answer together.

What about the web host’s support policy. Do they offer 24/7 tech support? Do you think you will need 24/7 tech support? This is one area that is important for you to consider. The Internet is 24 hours per day. Your website is online 24 hours per day. So it is possible you might need 24/7 tech support.

How do you contact tech support there? Just email? Is there a phone number? Do they use support tickets? Do they have a chatroom or forum for tech support? How accessible your web hosting tech support is will determine how fast things get fixed when you have a problem. See if you can send in a tech support query before signing up. See how fast you get an email back or if they answer the phone when you call them.

Those three important issues, bandwidth, storage space, and tech support are not the only things you need to consider. Do they offer Cpanel or an easy-to-use control panel for managing your website? Can they show you a sample of the control panel before you sign up? If you choose a web host that does not have an easy-to-use control panel are you tech-savvy enough to get around in the root files?

How many databases can be created on your web hosting plan. How many do they allow? Do they offer instant-install or install-on-demand features like picture galleries, content management systems, forums, blogs, or other website enhancements?

These are all questions you need to ask before you sign up with any web hosting service. If they do not give you all that information on the automatic signup page, email them and ask them questions. Their response may be all you need to know about whether to choose them as your web hosting provider or not.

I hope this article has helped you to learn about some of the things you need to consider when choosing a web hosting service. Cheap is not always good. This is your online business. Treat it well and choose a web hosting serviee that makes things easier for you.

D. David Dugan recommends the web hosting solutions offered by DD&C at http://hosting.dugancom.com Hosting popular sites like the article directory http://www.acceleratedtraffic.com is one of their specialties.

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Top Ten Reasons to Choose a Web Hosting Provider

Choosing a web hosting provider is different for everyone. Every website has a specific set of needs and you have to find a web host that provides the needs that are specific to your website.

However, there are certain things to look for when choosing a web-hosting service. In this article I will give you the ten most common things people should be looking for. These are not necessarily in the order of priority, because as I said every website has different needs and your priorities might not be the same as the next website owner.

1. Tech Support: Tech support in any business venture is always important. As a website owner though, the tech support that your web-hosting service provides is going to be crucial to your business. If your website is offline or not working properly it will cost you sales.

If you have been buying traffic to your website and it goes offline, you are still being charged for all of those visits to your website, which they never saw. The money you are spending on your ad campaign, AdWords program or other traffic sources is going right down the drain. You cannot afford to choose a web host that does not respond quickly when you have a problem.

2. Feedback Forums: A web host that provides a forum, message board, or chat room to discuss hosting issues or to get help in is more likely to get a user to use their web-hosting services. The reason behind this is people feel more comfortable with a web host that gives a personal touch and one that cares enough to provide a higher level of service.

3. Room to Grow: If your web-hosting service only offers one package, it’s a bad sign in most cases. What happens as your web business grows and so do your web hosting needs? If they offer upgrades to dedicated servers, larger storage and bandwidth plans, and a lot of other options, then you can feel confident choosing them as your web hosting provider. You don’t plan to stay small and your web host shouldn’t plan for you to stay small either.

4. Storage Space: This is usually only an issue with websites that will be offering users a lot of downloads such as music or software. The average website can get by with about 10 megabytes of storage, but again you want room to grow, plus you can actually use your storage to back up files from your computer. Don’t backup secure documents there, but a lot of your files can be backed up online. You have storage so use it. The more storage space they offer, the better.

5. Bandwidth or Transfer: This is the size of every file visitors to your website download automatically to their computers each time they visit. The average webpage is around 30k and then you add the graphics and other files that are displayed to the user and you get your bandwidth or transfer usage. The average website can get by on less than 10 gigabytes of bandwidth per month. However if you are offering downloads like software, music, and movies, or you are going to be driving a lot of traffic to your website, you may want to choose a plan that offers you more bandwidth. Make sure your webhosting provider has options that give you room to grow here as well.

6. Easy to use Control Panel: Cpanel is one of the most popular control panels for web hosts to offer, but there are others. Ask what type of control panel your web host is offering to provide you with. Again, this need is different for everyone and this is based on your level of expertise. Some advanced users would rather not have or don’t care about control panels because they know how to configure everything in the server by themselves. Less advanced users need to be sure they pick a web hosting service that provides an easier interface so they can feel comfortable making the alterations they need to their website.

7. FrontPage extensions: A lot of people that do not know HTML still use FrontPage or other programs to design their websites with. If you use FrontPage, you need to make sure your web host is set up for FrontPage extensions.

8. Type of Servers: An example of this is websites that will be built using the .NET framework or ASP. For your website you will need to make sure your web host has a windows based server. Most web hosting providers are on Linux or Apache and ASP websites will not function on them. A better choice is to stay away from building a website that requires a windows server in the first place.

9. Added Features: Instant Install is a feature offered by most web hosts these days even if they call it another name. It’s an automated process for installing databases and database driven features you can add to your website like photo galleries, forums, blogs, content management systems, calendars, guestbooks, and more. It’s just as easy to choose a web-hosting provider that gives you these features in case you need them as it is to choose one that doesn’t. Again, room to grow is important.

10. Is your web host a good neighborhood: This one is a little more difficult to explain and find out about but it is important. Some search engines punish websites who are in a bad neighborhood. They do this by banning websites that come from a particular set of IP addresses due to previous problems with websites on those IP addresses. You need to see samples of other websites that are hosted by your web hosting service. If a lot of them are warez websites, porn websites, file sharing websites, or other websites whose activities do not seem to savory, then you may be looking at a bad neighborhood and may want to find another web host.

That’s my top 10 tips for choosing a web hosting service. I hope you find these tips helpful when you look for where to host your next website!

D. David Dugan recommends the web hosting solutions offered by DD&C at http://hosting.dugancom.com Hosting popular sites like the article directory http://www.acceleratedtraffic.com is one of their specialties.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=D._David_Dugan

How To Switch Hosting Providers Without Downtime

To many the idea of moving your web site from one host to another can sometimes seem like a daunting task but the process of moving your site is simple when you know what steps to take and the order to take them in. This article will walk you through the steps required to perform a site move without the downtime.

Firstly there is this one important thing you need to remember, DO NOT TERMINATE YOUR EXISTING HOSTING ACCOUNT until the very last step. You may be very unhappy with your current hosting but it is essential that your current hosting account remains active until you are 100% sure your site is all operational with the new hosting provider.

If you follow the steps below you should be able to transition from one host to another without any downtime to your web site.

Create A New Account

Firstly you need to choose your new hosting provider, once you have chosen that provider sign up for the chosen hosting package and once the new account is setup you can move on to the next step.

Backup All Your Files From Your Old Account

This is a relatively simple process, but can be time consuming depending on the size of your web site. Go to your old hosting account and download all the files via FTP, and backup any databases in use. Remember that you cannot cancel this account yet even though you have backed up all your files.

Upload All Your Files To Your New Account

Once you have backed up your files on your old hosting account, it is time to go to your new hosting account and upload the backups via the new hosts FTP.

Create Your Mail Accounts

To avoid losing any of your email when you later change your domain name server addresses, it is imperative that you now create all the same email accounts that you had with your old hosting provider in your new hosting account. Once this has been done, all email addresses on the new account should match the email address on your old account.

Checking of Your Files and Links

Now it is time to check all the pages of your web sites and verify that all links are working correctly on your new host. To do this you will need to create a temporary URL to the web site. A quick and easy way to do this is to create a sub domain of another URL and point it to your new web site by the way of mirroring. Any good web hosting provider should provide you with the ability to create temporary a URL so you can test your new site.

Changing Your DNS (Domain Name Server)

If you are now certain that your files have all been uploaded correctly and the links within your site are working correctly, you can change your DNS (domain name servers). Your new host should have provided you with their DNS settings. If they have not, contact them and ask what addresses should be used for your domain name. Usually the addresses will look like this, ns1.domainname.com, ns2.domainname.com.

The place to change the DNS addresses is whoever your domain name is registered with. If you registered the domain name through a registrar, you will need to login to their control panel and change the DNS servers there. If it was registered with your old host, you will need to login to their control panel and change the DNS entries there.

Wait For DNS Changes To Propogate

After you have changed your DNS (domain name servers) you will need to wait between 24-48 hours for your domain to propogate across the internet. During this waiting period your site will still be served from your old hosting account, as the DNS propogates your site will be served from your new host. Once the propogation has completed all requests to your domain will be served from you new host.

Cancel Your Old Account

Make sure you wait at least 48 hours for the domain name to propogate, and make sure that your domain name is resolving to your new hosting account before cancelling your old account.

Final Words

By following these steps you should now have successfully transferred your web site from your old host to your new host without any downtime.

David J. Smith writes about a new hosting company called Hostmonster and other prominent web hosting providers at http://www.webhost-advisor.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_J._Smith

Canadian E Commerce Web Hosting

Online purchases in Canada totaled about $8.5 million Canadian dollars in 2004. Most of these items included books and reservations for travel and lodging. Only thirty-six percent of Canadian businesses have a website presence. The adoption for small, medium, and large businesses is slowly increasing at a rate of two to three percentage points. The rapid advances in technology have resulted in consumer confidence in private data protection, increasing the online sales.

E-commerce is a way of doing consumer-oriented business transactions over the Internet. This is actually retailing in the Internet format. Just as in a supermarket, online consumers choose products by navigating the site along the categories of products and make payments online using credit cards. The products are then delivered within a certain period.

Web hosting is one of the links in the e-commerce process. The chain is formed by different links such as websites, shopping processes, credit card processing, and merchant accounts. Websites are hosted by an external provider or perhaps the business itself. The shopping process is actually a shopping cart that allows the selection of products just like placing the products in a supermarket cart. When the customer finalizes the buying process by filling in the credit card form, the credit card is processed to check the validity of the card. The processed information is sent to a merchant, who credits to the account of the business.

The value of web hosting lies in providing the seamless transfer of the process between various links. The web host could also add value by designing the site for the shopping cart and processing the credit card. It could also provide value-added information about the e-commerce process to the clients in order to make the process clear.

The value addition in the chain puts web hosting services at $200 and more. Many web hosting providers have combined with credit card processors to add value. Some of the main issues in deciding on an e-commerce host are bandwidth, security, back-end integration, reliability, and server set up.

Canadian Web Hosting provides detailed information on Canadian Web Hosting, Cheap Canadian Web Hosting, Canadian E Commerce Web Hosting, Canadian Web Hosting Resellers and more. Canadian Web Hosting is affiliated with Dedicated Internet Hosting.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jason_Gluckman

Selecting The Correct Hosting Provider For Your Business

How Important is Hosting For Your Website.

If you are running a business oriented website, keeping that website online 24 hours, 7 days a week, 365 days a year is imperative to the financial success of your online business. The web host you choose is responsible for ensuring that your website remains responsive, stable and online all the time.

Many web hosting providers will provide an estimated uptime for their service that is typically quoted as a percentage, if a host states that they have an uptime of 99%, this means that for every 100 hours that your site is hosted with them, your site can be down for up to 1 hour. Your business's website deserves a hosting provider that offers a 99.9% Uptime Guarantee, anything less is unacceptable.

How Does Downtime Affect Your Online Business Bottom Line.

Now 1 hour downtime does not seem like a long time, at some point in time almost everyone has had a website go down for whatever reason for 1 hour, but we need to put this 1 hour downtime into perspective, this 1 hour is in 100 hours. 100 hours is a little over 4 days, could you live with your site being down for 1 hour every 4 days. To expand upon this further, for one year, your website could be offline for up to 3.65 days.

This downtime can obviously become an expensive, you only need to think how much turnover your business does in a day to see that this downtime can cost a significant amount of money. There is also another downside to this, it also has the potential to lose a new customer, a new customer that may never return to your site due to them inevitably looking elsewhere and buying from your competitor while your site is offline.

Consider Your Website's Requirements.

Initially you will need to talk with your website designer and discuss what is exactly required from your hosting provider. You will also need to consider if you need such features as unlimited email accounts, auto-responders, or any other features that you may require. Only after considering all of these different features will you be able to make an informed decision on the hosting account you will purchase.

Shop Around For The Best Deal

It goes without saying that you should shop around for the best possible deal you can find. Regardless of your budget you should not need to spend more money than is necessary to get the job of hosting your website done. But also remember to not box yourself in to a hosting plan that does not allow your site to grow in the pursuit of the almighty dollar. Be sure to allow for a good amount of bandwidth to allow for your sites growth in popularity, also allow for more storage to allow your site to grow as required.

David J. Smith reviews ANHosting and many other prominent web hosting providers at Webhost-Advisor

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_J._Smith

Shared Hosting vs Dedicated Server

Are you at a crossroads now, deciding which type of hosting best suits your needs? This is definitely an important decision as it will affect how your business will run on the webspace in the future. So, before you start submitting a ticket to the support department or calling the sales department of any hosting provider to ask regarding your confusion, take a look at the guidelines and tips which I'm about to introduce to you.

First of all, ask yourself, which type of web busineses are you planning to get involved in? Next, I'll show you the advantages, disadvantages and features offered to you by both shared hosting and dedicated server hosting. Before I proceed further, let's refresh your mind with the definition of both types of hosting. Shared hosting, as most of you should be well-versed, is hosting where a lot of websites share the same resources in one server. Resources here simply mean the total webspace, the memory, the processor speed, as well as the bandwidth.

Dedicated server on the other hand, give you the freedom of being alone. Alone means you are the sole owner of the server. You can do whatever you want and no other sites share the resources with you. It sure comes with a price as dedicated server is way more expensive than shared hosting. However, if you believe that the advantages which I shall be listing in a short while are the advantages you long to have, then it's wise to conclude that these advantages can outweigh the expensive price (but still affordable) of dedicated server.

Facing the challenges in the world of sharing!
Here's a simple analogy; renting a room on your own or finding a roommate to share the room with you. Simply, that's the problem or risks you might be facing when you opt for shared hosting. Shared hosting is just like you rent a room with a few other roommates. Won't it be congested to share in a small room? However, there is a reason why people choose to find roommates. Price is the main concern. Same goes to hosting industry.

Shared hosting is cheaper and more affordable compared to dedicated hosting. Nowadays, you can find shared hosting with the price of USD4 to USD15 per month. Therefore, if you think that price is an issue and you are still green in hosting world and your online business has yet to achieve heavy traffic, the best solution is to go for shared hosting first. Consequently, you have to bear the drawbacks of shared hosting but if you choose a reliable and experienced hosting provider (probably in a hosting industry for around 3-4 years), the provider will ensure the most minimal drawbacks for its clients. In shared hosting environment, you will encounter certain disadvantages as follows:

Sharing Same IP
Having the same IP address in shared hosting is the main concern when other sites in the server is actually being blacklisted for unethical activities such as spamming or generating illegal script. Since, you share the same server, it's obvious you will share the same IP address. So, when other sites are blacklisted, those sharing the same IP with them will also unfortunately share the same fate - being banned alltogether by search engine. You will be the victim of crime which you don't commit.

However, there are times where you can buy yourself a dedicated IP but this usually is not needed unless you are getting yourself an SSL certificate. In cases such as this one, it depends on your hosting provider on how they deal with clients who do illegal and unapproved activities. Usually, a reliable and responsible host will suspend those sites which perform spamming in order to rescue other sites who are innocent. In short, to get yourself a shared hosting, get to know how your provider deal with those sites which are hosted in the same server as you.

Slow Server Response Time
Using the same analogy as above, if you and your roommates want to use the bathroom, you have to queue up, correct? Hence, it will slow down your daily work. Same goes to shared hosting. If one of your neighbours have heavy daily traffic, it will consume most of the bandwidth and when things get tighten up, you will feel the slow response time such as difficulty accessing your website. This is because server will respond to the requested file in order of the queue. If one of the visitor happens to request it later and is on a long queue, that visitor will experience slow response time and might eventually end up leaving your website.

Server Crashes Regularly
The factor to server crashes more often than usual, is the fact that certain scripts are generated and it can overload a server's resources. If webhosting provider does not monitor the server's activity, those poorly-written CGI script can give you more headache than relief. Hence, it's vital for host provider to monitor the server regularly to prevent server from crashes and to protect your site from being affected. You as a client, please do take the initiative to question your providers on how they take precautions for cases like this one. A well-knowledgable and reliable host provider will be able to answer your question to your satisfaction.

Despite aforementioned bad points, a lot of websites also use this shared hosting solution and if a proper provider is chosen, you can be assured that such incidents will barely happen.

Dedicated Hosting - A world of your own
What makes people opt for dedicated hosting instead of shared hosting? Again, the most important criterion is money. If you can afford a costly solution like this, go ahead. However, don't just simply go ahead without weighing the pros and cons of dedicated hosting. Even if you have money, and you are just a small medium enterprise, think twice for investing in dedicated hosting. Reason is because dedicated hosting is mainly for large and busy sites such as portal, search engine, online content provider, heavy traffic forums and etc. In addition, dedicated hosting usually requires more technical-savvy specialist to monitor it. Listed below are some of the advantages why dedicated hosting is a popular option:

You are the boss!
Here, it means you have more control of everything. You can install whatever applications and scripts you want. You can do script testing and if anything were to happen, no one else to blame but yourself. You will have the ability to customise the hardware and softwares installed on your server, which you cannot find this priviledge if you are under shared hosting.

No more limitation in bandwidth usage
Compare to shared hosting, you might get yourself a "warning letter" from your hosting provider if you exceed the maximum bandwidth allocated to you. With dedicated hosting, you have the amount of bandwidth of a server. Hence, downloading and uploading any materials from your site will not be a problem if you have a lot of daily visitors performing such activity.

More Secured
Having a dedicated server is in fact more secured compared to shared hosting. This is because dedicated server will be provided its own firewall. Therefore, the information stored in dedicated server is less vulnerable to attacks by hackers or any malicious codes. In addition, hosting provider will usually provide backup for you with added fee, but, in terms of security, it's actually worth it.

Better Performance
Since dedicated hosting means only you alone are hosted in that server, the response time of the server to requested files will be so much faster compared to shared hosting. Visitors who browse your website will feel happy because your pages will appear on their browser fast enough to satisfy them. Fast loading time will always brighten anyone's day!

Generally, choosing which type of hosting solely depends on your needs. So, to make a wise decision, do more researches and evaluations as well as consult those highly technical savvy people. Remember that a good and smart decision will determine your online storefronts' success. Cheers!

Copyright SY Ho @ Exabytes.com
Author: SY Ho, Online Marketing Executive
Web Site: Exabytes.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sy_Ho

Windows vs. Linux - Which Is Better?

For basic HTML web sites, there is no apparent difference.

As you may have guessed, Windows and Linux accounts are differentiated by the operating system platform that the server runs on.

Windows is a Windows 2000 (or the new Windows server 2003), which are both very much like the Microsoft Windows 98, XP, etc...Except, web server versions are more specialized for hosting web sites and server applications that standard PC operating systems.

Linux is an alternative operating system platform originally developed from open source code and Unix (not from a software corporate giant, like Microsoft). It is not very popular in the Desktop PC market, but has become huge in the server arena with versions like RedHat, Debian, CentOS and others.

Q: I have a Windows PC, does this mean I need Windows web hosting? A: No - That does not matter.

So, which one is better for a basic website?

Performance-wise, it is hard to tell any difference at all. With Linux, you tend to get more "bang for the buck", since there are not the extensive licensing fees as are associated with a Microsoft product. You will notice that in web hosting plans, the Linux accounts typically cost a little less than the Windows hosting accounts.

For the beginning webmaster or hobbyist, Linux seems to be a good starting place due to it's affordability and versatility. You may find it interesting that about 2/3 of all web sites are hosted on Linux platform. About 1/4 are Windows driven.

For the advanced web developer, the opposing platforms represent different flavors of technology associated to each. For example, Microsoft developers can use "Access Database" and "ASP Script"- while Linux developers can use "MOD_PERL" and "MYSQL Database" (with HostNed, PHP, CGI and Perl are supported on both platforms). All of this garble is simply different technologies for driving dynamic and very complex sites (like auction sites or shopping malls).

Whichever one you choose, it is not a big deal. Both Linux and Windows are excellent server platforms that can be a very fast and reliable vessel to serve up your website to the world!

Contributed by Dan Wright, Owner/GM of HostNed.com - Affordable web hosting for personal and small business websites.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dan_Wright

Cheap Web Hosting Information

Cheap web hosting is so common these days there is no reason for the typical web owner to pay more than $1-$10 monthly for full featured web hosting. You do need to do a little homework to confirm the host you decide to go with has the value, reliability, support and features you need to accomplish your online goals. These are the most important things to consider when deciding on a cheap monthly web host.

Disk Space

How much space will you be needing depends on what type of site you have. If your site has a lot of images or multi media on it you will use a lot more disk space than a text based site. So if you are going to create an online photo gallery, entertainment or an e-commerce website with lot’s of product images, you’ll want to be aware of how much disk space the package allows. There are good packages out on the web for as low as $1.95 per month, which offer 100 MB of disk space. This could easily support hundreds of images.

Data Transfer

Data transfer is the amount of bytes transferred from your site to visitors while browsing. This is also known as "traffic" or "bandwidth". For most web sites you will not need much bandwidth. Most websites need less than 2GB of data transfer monthly. For example a web site getting 2000 visitors a month transferring pages with lots of images uses about 1.4 GB of data transfer monthly. If you intend to have a lot of downloads of software, audio or video, then you may end up using a lot more bandwidth, maybe 50 GB. Adult sites typically use a lot of bandwidth. Sites like mp3.com require an enormous amount of bandwidth, but for the average site - a low level will be enough in almost all cases. There are packages for as low as $6.95 that offer a whopping 250GB data transfer, more than enough for most websites.

Add On Domains

Say you launch a site that is really successful, you're getting plenty of traffic and sales and are making money. You may want to replicate the idea within that niche. An "Add On Domain" would allow you to host multiple sites on the same account. All you would do is purchase another domain name, and upload your files to a different folder within your account with the same hosting company. This is great for affiliate marketers because you wont need to pay for another hosting account if you suddenly get any idea for a profitable niche and want to quickly get a website up and running. Many cheap hosting companies offer this great feature.

Scripting

Depending on who is developing your site, script support is something you may need to consider. Many low cost hosts will support either ASP or PHP, but probably not both. A little planning is necessary to avoid problems, potentially big problems down the road! Make sure you check with whomever is developing the dynamic content for your website before you sign up with any host. What you'll want to know from the developer is what language they use for scripting dynamic content (usually ASP or PHP) and what kind of database they are using (MS Access, SQL, MySql etc..). Then decide on a host based on this. Believe me, this will prevent changing web hosting companies after the project is under way.

Email

Nothing looks more unprofessional than a web site with an email address mapping to "soandso@aol.com" or "soandso@yahoo.com ". Most good web hosts offer email setup, which allows you to create an email, which matches the domain name. Even if you're a small company you definitely will need this to look professional. Look for ease of set up regarding this feature; most hosts allow you to create this once your control panel is established. The number of e-mail accounts varies between Low-cost hosts. If you have multi-departments in your organization for example, customer service, product sales or technical support, you may want to consider a host, which includes multi-email accounts. There web packages that offer 2500 email boxes for around 6.95 per month. Probably more than you’ll ever need.

Support

Make sure there is at least email support to report any issues that arise. I've found many low cost hosts with excellent e mail support for as little as $1.95 per month.

Find out about the cheapest high quality web hosting packages available on the web today. Cheap Web Hosting Information

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kerry_Mott

Canadian Web Hosting

The Internet is a different medium from others like print and TV, which allow limited participation for users and no empowerment at all. The Internet allows any individual to broadcast his or her opinion and conduct transactions with another entity. A website is a page stored in a drive that can be accessed through the Internet. An individual or entity can use one’s own dedicated website or use other sites for promotion.

Web hosting is a term that describes a process in which a company rents space in its drive to host the web pages of its clients. The dotcom burst was preceded by a mad rush to start websites for any sort of business without strong fundamentals. The dotcom v.2 has matured with the upgrade of user-friendly technology and e-commerce. This is illustrated by the number of registrations in Canada after 2002.

The Canadian web hosting market is dominated by number of players providing a host of services such as domain name registration, disk space, and bandwidth. Besides, they provide email accounts, data transfer, mySQL database, and other applications. The web hosts could be parent hosts, resellers, free hosts, and cheap hosts.

To host a site, the companies charge fees starting at $5 CAD/month and domains for $10 CAD/year. The services usually come in plans with many features. The services include support twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, reliability features as a money-back guarantee, and guaranteed uptime.

A web hosting service is to be decided based on the purpose of website. A website for individual purpose may not certain e-commerce features; businesses may need multiple email accounts, and risk-management services such as spam, virus protection, and data backup.

A good host can be decided by the speed of other customers’ websites and the number of complaints vs. benefits. Although it is cheap to host from anywhere, it is better to have a host server from the region where the customers are located so that the there are no delays in downloads and page visits.

Canadian Web Hosting provides detailed information on Canadian Web Hosting, Cheap Canadian Web Hosting, Canadian E Commerce Web Hosting, Canadian Web Hosting Resellers and more. Canadian Web Hosting is affiliated with Dedicated Internet Hosting.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jason_Gluckman

Secure FTP Hosting

The secure transport of some of the most important documents in many top financial organizations, health care departments, corporate houses, and of course for individuals has, of late, become a cause of serious concern that needs to be addressed. These transactions may involve monetary payments through credit cards, bank transfers and so on. The documents that are transferred daily consist of billions of dollars of transactions through banking institutions, share certificates and sensitive personal and financial data, besides a variety of long e-books, texts, audio-visual data, music, photos, images and graphics. And their encryptions may not sometimes be secure enough to resist the online breaches.

The importance of Secure FTP Hosting cannot be overemphasized, as the hackers are working hard overtime to breach the security of the IT infrastructure. It is therefore imperative that the privacy of customers’ accounts should be strictly maintained, so that no one should be able to access the files of another user. There may, of course, be exceptions. If someone wants to share files among multiple users, they can be simply told to login with the same username and passwords. In such a situation the site administrator can maintain a master FTP account allowing full access to all files and folders.

If you ever have any questions about secure FTP hosting, you should contact an FTP security expert in your company. Security is an ongoing duty for anybody who works with large numbers of computers. Also, stay up to date on the latest security threats issued by the various Internet security companies in the industry.

FTP Hosting provides detailed information on FTP hosting, free FTP hosting, FTP server hosting, FTP site hosting and more. FTP Hosting is affiliated with Dedicated Hosting Servers.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Damian_Sofsian

Professional Business Web Site Hosting

The relationship between a business and a Web host resembles that of a tenant and landlord. The tenant decorates and operates his/her store but leaves the duty of maintenance to the landlord. Similarly, a business builds its own Web site but the Web host maintains the network of web servers. Businesses prefer Web hosts as it means no huge investment, nor any technical headache.

Shared servers in which your Web site shares a server with many other sites might suit small businesses because of the low costs involved. But for large and important businesses, the system is unlikely to prove convenient because of the long time required to load a page. The visitors could find the wait too long and move away.

A dedicated server, allotted solely to you may be expensive but still a much better option. In this case, Webmasters can exercise full control over the back end of the server, including choice of operating systems.

You must consider four things before choosing the right Web hosting package: size of the site, volume of business, number of email accounts and importance of the site. You will need more disk space if your site contains more pages and files. The number of people that visits your Web site will determine the amount of data transfer needed by you. You will probably like a separate email for each employee and few other addresses linking sales, information and things like that. Finally, the Web site IS important for your business. With it, you will increase your visibility and reach your potential customers all across the world.

Many Web hosts are eminently affordable with price below $8. They also offer your business solid support service, high site availability and best performance. From them, you can get large Web space and bandwidth at cheap rates. Some also offer shopping cart, online marketing packages, and e-commerce ready hosting. Now, the choice is yours.

Professional Hosting provides detailed information on Professional Hosting, Professional Web Hosting, Professional Web Hosting And eCommerce, Professional Business Web Site Hosting and more. Professional Hosting is affiliated with Internet Provider Hosts.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ken_Marlborough

Get the Best Web Hosting - Dealing with Web Hosting Review Sites and More

Choosing a web hosting company can be bewildering. You type 'web hosting' in a search engine and you are presented with literally millions of web sites. Some are actual web hosting sites but most are probably 'review' sites and other 'best web hosting companies' type of listings. There are so many of these review / directory sites because many web hosting companies pay a commission to the site owner if they get a sale from someone coming from that site.

This does not mean that you should disregard review sites. They can be very helpful.

Firstly, there are definitely some genuine review sites out there that are not driven by commission.

Secondly, most (but certainly not all) review site owners do not list companies with bad reputations. Consistently bad web hosting companies quickly get a reputation on the net among webmasters; and nothing makes someone disregard a web hosting review site more, than seeing a known 'problem' company with a high rating. Review site owners need credibility to continue making commissions !

Thirdly, web hosting companies that can afford to pay high commissions to review sites usually must be doing well to afford to pay those commissions. Cheap web hosting companies; or ones that are losing a lot of customers, typically cannot pay those commissions since they are pretty high due to all the competition in the marketplace.

I will explain how simple it is to see if a web hosting company has a good or bad reputation among those 'in the know':

First, look at a bunch of review sites and note down the companies which are consistently in the top 10 and offer the features you want and are in your price range. Then bring up Google or any other search engine and type in the name of the first web hosting provider on your list as well as the word 'forums'. This will bring up any mentions of that web hosting company among internet message boards; where unlike review sites, most information is just people's honest opinions. You will typically find messages posted on webmaster and other specialty sites where the users usually know what they are talking about. Although finding positive posts about the particular web hosting company you are interested in is the best outcome - its also true that no news is good news. If people are not posting messages about that web hosting company...then at least you know they don't have a bad rep. Compared to happy customers posting positive messages, people are much more likely to post negative messages if they are disappointed in the service they received; since pissed off people like to vent !

Read through a bunch of these messages, and you'll get a good idea of the reputation the web hosting company has. Do that for all the companies on your list; and you can feel confident that you are in a position to pick a web hosting company that really does have a good reputation.

About the Author

Doug Bane is owner and webmaster of the Top 5 Low Cost Web Hosting Companies, Leading Ecommerce Web Hosting Companies and the Top 6 Small Business Web Hosting Companies.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Doug_Bane

What Is Web Hosting Uptime And What Does It Mean For You

When you begin to look for a company to host your website, other than the amount of space and bandwidth that is offered, a company will usually promote their web hosting uptime. Most web hosting companies offer an uptime guarantee to promote how well their service is.

Web hosting uptime is a measurement of the time a computer server has been running, the longer the web hosting uptime the better the service (usually). Uptime is important to not only web hosting companies, but to any person or company that has a website, because if a website is down it could hurt a personal company’s reputation as well as the reputation of the web hosting uptime guarantee. Web hosting companies strive for a 99.9% uptime, which means that there would be less then 2 minutes of downtime a day.

Factors that impact a web hosting uptime are sometime unavoidable, but many companies strive to prevent downtime. Downtime can be classified in three ways: planned downtime which is caused when a server is updated or upgraded, semi-planned downtime which is caused when software companies find a security breach and a patch must be put into place, and the worst is unplanned downtime which can be caused by an overloaded server, a software/hardware malfunction, or malicious software.

Uptime guarantees made by web hosting companies are based off of past information. Web hosting uptime can be monitored and maintained a few ways. There are services that provide 24/7 monitoring. Large web hosting companies have their own departments that monitor their servers. A loss in web hosting uptime can be prevented by having a redundant server to fall back on incase the primary server goes down. For a planned single server change this method may be practical for a larger company, but the costs implied for an additional server in a smaller company or providing this for multiple servers in larger companies can be impractical. Unplanned downtime would also keep this method from working well.

Some niceties that many websites provide is a friendly downtime message that will still allow the user know that the site is only temporarily down. Larger web hosting companies are able to provide a quicker return to normalcy to maintain their uptime guarantee, because they have staff readily available to respond to a downtime error quickly. Smaller companies may experience a longer downtime.

For consumers, researching web hosting uptime can prevent a package from being purchased from a web host that has a lot of downtime. There are websites that track a company’s web hosting uptime and provide reviews on the company freely for review. Other places to look for information are on forums either provided by the web hosting company or on web hosting review forums.

If your website does experience downtime you can contact the technical support or customer service department to see when your site will be restored. Understand that no web hosting company can have a 100% uptime guarantee. If your website experiences too much downtime switching to a different company with a higher and better web hosting uptime may be your only option.

Does your web require good server uptime? Sign up for Marble Host, a web hosting company which offers 99.9% uptime hosting.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bedrich_Omacka

Webhosting Tips

Webhosting is a business that provides servers or computers for your website to actually reside in. It allows users all over the world to be able to access your website. There are a number of ways you can avail of webhosting. One of the methods is to do webhosting on your own. This method allows you to have total control over your website and be able to avail of all hosting services you require. The biggest drawback for this hosting method is it is very expensive and very difficult. It requires a lot of technical skills to do web hosting.

Unless you have the money and technical skills required, it is highly recommended that you avail of hosting services provided by reputable hosting providers rather than doing it on your own. But if you are determined, you can host your websites on a desktop computer. The disadvantage in doing this though is that all files and accounts on your personal computer can be exposed to security risks such as hackers. In order to prevent this you need to install costly software called firewall. Aside from that, the amount of time you need for webhosting leaves you little time to attend to other business.

Another webhosting option is availing of free hosting. Free hosting can be good if your website is a personal one. Also, if the webhosting features are secondary considerations for you. The disadvantages in using free webhosting are the fact that you cannot avail of customer service, a number of selling banners on your site, uptime is not guaranteed and others. If you are into business, it is a huge disadvantage to have no uptime guarantee considering the fact that you are relying on the business site to generate sales or provide necessary info about your product/s.

Paid webhosting is another viable option. But you need to consider the webhosting costs before you sign the dotted line. You also need to know beforehand what features are you exactly looking for to prevent paying for costs of features that you do not really need.

Webhosting services could cost you for as low as $10 to as high as $5,000 a month. The cost will depend on the disk space, data transfer, features you add and whether or not you require a dedicated server. Dedicated server refers to webhosting a single company's web site only. Dedicated servers cater to large companies with complex features in their websites. That would justify their huge monthly charges of $5,000. Payment schemes for paid webhosting are monthly, semi-annually, annually or once every 2 years.

Small companies can avail of shared servers' services so as to minimize the costs. $5,000 a month webhosting fee is definitely way too much for individuals or small to medium-sized companies. Shared servers serve the same purpose and are much more affordable.

Most paid webhosting service has money back no questions asked guarantee. They also assure you of 99% uptime. In cases where they were not able to maintain a 99% uptime, some reputable webhosting service will reimburse you an amount equal to the number of downtime minutes.

Webhosting can be a simple or complicated process depending on the kind of features your website requires. Whether you opt for a free or paid webhosting service, the decision would boil down to personal preference and necessity.

Discover webhosting tips before you choose your web host - http://www.webhosting-tips-now.info

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tony_Newton

Discount Web Hosting

Web Hosting is one of the revolutionary breakthroughs that has been brought to us by the advent of this age of cyber technology. Now you can learn, play, interact, make friends, draw, and compose music on the net. Therefore, one can understand the significance of the cyber technology that has become a crucial and important part of our daily lives. With the passage of time, there has been major growth regarding the number of websites, i.e. esoteric subject or business oriented pages arranged in a clear lucid, logical and sequential way. Therefore, the jobs and work that were dependant upon the physical presence of the customer in an office or a service centre have now been reduced to a mere push of a button – web sites.

However, the actual meaning of web hosting is creating a web site and making it available on the internet. It sounds simple, however, it requires the application of certain computer languages through which the actual intended texts and pictorial representations are written and drawn on the page respectively. Web hosting can be done, only after the proposed page is ready, the page may or may not be hosted at a particular price. Websites with multiple numbers of pages or websites which are business oriented ones are hosted at a particular range of prices. Obviously, for that there has to be a registered domain name to run the related website. However, one has to be very keen and careful on choosing of the optimization potentials of the website.

There are a number of providers who offer discounts on the price for web hosting. In the age of the world wide web, availing discount offers on web hosting can prove to be a lucrative. If you want to showcase and open an online shop for your products and services, availing discounts on domain prices can be an immense beneficial proposition.

Discount Web Hosting provides detailed information on Discount Web Hosting, Discount Business Web Hosting, Discount Linux Web Hosting, Discount eCommerce Web Hosting and more. Discount Web Hosting is affiliated with Reliable Low Cost Web Hosting.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Max_Bellamy

Discount Linux Web Hosting

Web hosting is one of the revolutionary breakthroughs that have been brought to us by the advent the age of cyber technology. There are a number of providers who offer discounts on the price of web hosting. In the age of the world wide web, availing discount offers on web hosting can prove to be lucrative. If you want to showcase and open an online shop for your products and services, availing discounts on domain prices can be an immense beneficial proposition. For that one needs a good and advanced computer operating system to avoid all the hazards that might pounce upon your valuable work space. Therefore, the first and foremost priority that should be looked after is the operating system, that can render maximum support and assist in ascertaining the maximum output from the whole program.

There are many web hosting providers who deliver quality operating systems to look after, and assure the proficiency of your business. Among those the most trustworthy are those who provide a Linux operating system. For the past few years it can be noted that there is a gradual shift from Microsoft Windows to Linux. This is just not because of the sole reason that Linux has a more sound marketing strategy, but for the fact that it has a certain number of advantages that is unsurpassable in many respects. One of them is the danger of becoming infected with a virus. Linux can never be infected with any virus. Getting Linux based web hosting can be an immense benefit to the concerned person or individual who wants to set up his or her own business on the web.

Discount Web Hosting provides detailed information on Discount Web Hosting, Discount Business Web Hosting, Discount Linux Web Hosting, Discount eCommerce Web Hosting and more. Discount Web Hosting is affiliated with Reliable Low Cost Web Hosting.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Max_Bellamy

Professional Web Hosting

Web hosting is an Internet service whereby you are provided online storage space for images, data and other user information that you would like to share with other surfers. The idea is that you can host a web site without investing your time in technicalities. That is taken care of by web hosts, the companies which provide you with storage space, either in their own servers or by allotting a server for you. They also sometimes host a server at a remote location and take care of it for you.

Free hosting services are very often inferior to professional web hosting services, as the former comes with little accountability. If you don’t let a professional handle your web space, you might end up with a shabby looking website that nobody ever visits because it is also filled with irrelevant advertisements put up by your web host. This will in turn reduce your client base as free web hosting with a sub-domain name does not carry credibility.

The advantage of professional web hosting is that you get your own chosen domain name and full authority over any content, graphics and advertisement that are published on it. Professional web hosting service providers give you support round the clock also offer a number of services that make web site management very easy. With more disk space, it also can handle more Internet traffic.

While choosing a web host, you should go for one that gives you basic features at a reasonable price. Choose a host that has a decent customer base and a track record of customer satisfaction. Some of the important features that you cannot avoid include 24-hour technical support, a minimum of 20MB space, ability to use your own domain name, email creation and hosting and hit history. You should be choosing a professional web hosting service that gives you SSL Encryption access and also free server access through FTP.

Professional Web Hosting provides detailed information on Professional Web Hosting, Professional Web Site Hosting, Professional Web Hosting Designs, Professional Web Site Hosting Services and more. Professional Web Hosting is affiliated with Web Hosting Solutions.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Eric_Morris

Linux Hosting vs. Windows Hosting

If you’re an amateur to the web world specially web hosting then there are many decisions you have to make. Hosting provides the concrete base on which every E-business works as well as blooms. There are numerous choices available in the market but it’s the Linux and Windows hosting which heads the list. Everyone has their own knowledge bag according to which they govern their business but which is profitable to you may not be profitable for someone else. That’s why majority of the people are in trouble waters while choosing the hosting server for their business. Let’s delve into each hosting and get the clear picture. The usual cost involved in running a server generally doesn’t affect the cost of complete web hosting package. Windows Hosting is owned and developed by Microsoft whereas Linux is an open source and free too. The crux is that using Windows Hosting can be more expensive at times but it has its own benefits too.

According to the common myth people assume that because their computer runs Windows they too have to buy Windows hosting package. But this myth is absolutely wrong. You can normally access your web account through FTP or a control panel and both the servers support these methods. But the major difference lies in the FTP commands that are somewhat different in Linux and Windows. In short, occasionally when you try to get your FTP program to do something it returns an error message. Still, this won't happen very often. Linux and Windows Hosting provide same features that include PHP, mySQL, POP3 and many more. The major difference arises when you want to create your site using Access, Windows Streaming Media, ASP, .NET environment, FrontPage or any other Microsoft technologies. Then you’re bound to use a Windows as your hosting server. However, in Linux there is a limited support for these technologies and what all are available are very expensive. That’s why it’s wise to think twice before selecting a hosting server as shifting from one server to another can be very hard.

The next points to argue are the reliability and stability of the servers. Windows is far more insecure in comparison to Linux. Windows is widely used operating system for home PC's but not Linux. However, Linux is equally insecure as whooping number of successful hack attempts have been made on it till now. Thus, in the end we can say that the security of both the servers usually depends upon the competency of the system administrators. Herein, if you’re security minded then you’ll choose the best and secured hosting company irrespective of the chosen server. Now discussing the performance there isn’t much difference between the two. Linux is faster than Windows as Linux is loaded with extendable implementation. Whereas Windows tries to provide “'all in one” package which isn’t fruitful at times. There isn’t much difference between both the servers but in terms of performance Linux outshines Windows.

Thus, if you’re hunting for the server for your E-business then think before you jump on any conclusion and don’t leave any stone unturned.

Vivek Gupta is the PR officer at Hosterio Web Hosting, which provides reseller web hosting and Domain name registration services.

Website - http://www.hosterio.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Vivek_Gupta

Can Social Bookmarking Help Me?

You have probably heard a lot about social bookmarking lately. As a matter of fact, you can spend hundreds of dollars right now just to find out what it's all about. Well, not here. I am giving you this information. I did the research and found this to be a super way to get more traffic to your site. The best news is, it's 100% FREE.

What is Social Bookmarking?

It's a public list of your favorites. Not all your favorites, just the favorites you want to share with others. You can add any website to your public list and retrieve it from any computer. (This is done on someone else's server, not your computer)

When you list a site in your bookmark list, anyone looking for that same type of information can do a search at the bookmark site and find the sites that you have bookmarked. It is like a search engine without all the trash.

When you do a search in a search engine, you get all the sites that have something to do with the keywords you typed into the search box. It is easy to get a bunch of garbage sites that are loaded up with keywords but have poor content on the actual site.

The great thing about social bookmarking sites is the only sites you will find there are sites that other people have looked at and decided were worth saving for future reference. Real people have decided to save (bookmark) the sites, not robots. Real people also monitor the sites so if trash does get added, it is soon deleted.

The more people who bookmark a site, the more popular it becomes. As an example, lets say you are selling widgets for a really great price. You bookmark your home page on many public bookmarking sites. When someone is looking for a widget, they do a search at the bookmarking site and your bookmark comes up. They go look at your site and decide your prices are so good, they might want to come back later when they need another widget. So they add your site to their bookmarks for future reference.

When someone goes to one of these sites and types widgets into the search box, your site listing will come up in the search. If many people have bookmarked your site, you will be listed high in the search results. It's kind of like a voting system. If you site is good enough to bookmark, other people will want to see what all the fuss is about.

Unlike search engines where all you have to do is good seo, the sites you will find in the Social Bookmarking sites are quality sites that other people enjoyed enough to save. You don't really have to have a good site to get listed in the search engines.

How do you get started?

Do a search for social bookmarking, many sites will come up. Go to each site and register for an account. It's FREE! Once you have your account set up, start listing your site. Make sure you add proper tags to your listing.

Tags are the same as keywords with a twist. These sites will tell you what the most popular searches are on their site. You choose the tags that will work with your site or page and are also part of the popular list. Many of the sites will also offer a spot to write a small description of the site you are bookmarking. Add a description that uses some of your tag words for added benefit.

Building popularity

As with anything that is worth doing, this will take you a while to get it all set up and running smooth but the end result will be very well worth your effort.

Start with one bookmarking site and one page from your site. (Start with your squeeze page and build your newsletter list) Set up your account with the bookmarking site and add your page to the bookmarks. Make sure you use the best tags and description you can. (Check the popularity list on the site) Doing this in itself will help you get more traffic. Now you can go one step further and work both sides of the system.

Add a link to your site that will lead back to the bookmarking site that has your page bookmarked. Ask your visitors to bookmark your site on the social bookmarking site.

My example is below Bookmark my site at Blinklist.com and access it from any computer, anytime. Create a link to the bookmarking site so your visitors only have to click.

You want to make sure the page opens in a new window so when your visitors are done setting up their account, they will still have your page handy to bookmark.

Next Page

Now move on to the next page. You will want to offer a different bookmarking site on each page. Why? So you can get as many bookmarks on as many sites as possible. Use the same information in the example above but change the social bookmarking site you are promoting.

Won't this look odd to your visitors? No. Most people will ignore the suggestion once they have bookmarked your site. They won't even notice that you have changed the name of the link. They will see, Bookmark my site, and think, "I already did that", and they will move on.

Final Note:

Don't SPAM the sites. Make sure what you are listing is relevant and useful. You don't want to bring traffic to a page that has nothing but links, you will probably get banned form the bookmarking site. Only bookmark your pages that have actual content. Ask yourself if you would truly add this page to your own favorites list? If your answer is no then don't list it.

By Margaret Albright
Margaret Albright is dedicated to helping you build a profitable online business without breaking the bank. For a list of Social Bookmarking sites, go to http://www.knowitallaffiliates.com/thelist.htm Free Website Help!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Margaret_Albright

Apollo Web Hosting review

$13.96 /month

5000 MB Storage

150 GB Transfer

4 Websites

200 Email Addresses

Dedicated IP

Spam/Virus Filter

Design Tools

Shopping Cart

4 Websites Included



Apollo Web Hosting

Apollo Hosting is excellent for personal and small business and ecommerce sites, shared Hosting offers a secure, reliable and affordable way to get your website up and running in only 10 minutes! All the tools you need to build your site, set up an online store, promote and track it are included free. All with a 30 day money back guarantee.

Apollo Hosting has been in business since 1999 serving over 30,000 customers worldwide!

Our corporate offices are located in the high-tech city of Austin, Texas. We are a privately owned company that has shown a profit since we first began in November of 1999. Continued commitment to providing the most powerful Web Hosting tools & the best customer support is key to our ongoing success.




Apollo Hosting was one of the first companies to offer 24/7/365 Live Technical Support Chat and toll-free phone support. Technical Support is completely local; we do not outsource personnel.

Our Total Solutions Hosting which gives you all the tools you need to create a powerful presence on the Internet. Our commitment is to our customers. Offering products and services that no other Hosting company is offering continues a tradition of Apollo Hosting paving the way in the Web Hosting industry.

We are proud members of the Better Business Bureau Online and have strategic alliances with industry leaders such as Microsoft, RedHat Linux, MIVA Small Business, SWSoft, Overture, Cisco & Genuity.

Why Apollo

1: Four Superfast Teir1 Connections



Apollo Hosting maintain four Tier 1 Backbone connection ensuring fast, reliable connectivity. Furthermore our servers are custom-built machines designed for a 24x7 web serving environment. We have a historical 99.9% server uptime. More

2: Lots of Guarantees! Price Freeze, Uptime, & 30 Day Money Back



Apollo stands by its service, and we provide a number of guarantees to back it up. Once you sign up, your rates will not change with our Price Freeze Guarantee. Your site will stay up with our 99.9% Uptime Guarantee. See our SLA for more details. We are so sure that you will love Hosting with Apollo Hosting, that we back up all of our Hosting plans with a 30 day money back guarantee. If you are in any way dissatisfied within your first 30 days of service, we will refund your money*. What's more our 'No Risk Guarantee' means we give refunds on your unused Hosting, after charging you for months already used, should you want to cancel prepaid service.*

3: Live Support 24x7, 365 days a Year - Since 1999



Someone is always available to answer your questions. Chat with our technical support representatives LIVE ONLINE anytime - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year! We also offer toll free support line 7 days a week so if you prefer speaking to someone.

Our tech support is housed in-house, unlike many companies who contract tech support overseas. We're proud to support our local community.

4: Get Traffic Tool Box



Apollo's Get Traffic Tool Box is a suite of software provided directly over the internet designed to optimize and promote your site. Featuring search engine submission, banner impressions, a newsletter, and much more, this is an indispensable tool for promoting your online business.

5: Award Winning Industry Leader



Apollo Hosting has been a member of the Better Business Bureau Online since 1999 and hasn't received one complaint. We have also received several industry awards for the quality and value of our Hosting solutions.

6: MailBoxCop Spam/Virus Filtering Software



Don't rely on your Hosting company to decide for you what should be filtered, and risk losing important email! MailBoxCop gives you access to your own online quarantine where you can view Spam/Virus email that has been filtered. This innovative filter is constantly updated to stay ahead of the most recent threats.

7: Up to 7 Months Free Hosting



We offer large discounts for pre-payments. So if you want to only be billed every 2 years, we will give you a 30% discount, or 7 months free Hosting. We also offer generous discounts for quarterly, semi-annually, and annual payments.

8: Miva Premier Partner & FrontPage Certified



Apollo Hosting has been a partner of Miva Corporation for 3 years and have been awarded the title of 'Premier Partner'. This means that we are trained to support Miva Ecommerce products and our technicians are available anytime day or night to help you with your Miva storefront. After rigorous testing of our servers, Microsoft recognized us as a 'Certified Microsoft® FrontPage® Service Provider'. We have custom configured servers which are optimized to support FrontPage Server Extensions.

9: Feature Packed Plans & Multiple Websites



All Apollo Hosting plans and solutions come fully loaded with a whole host of value-added features and powerful programming tools. From multiple websites on one account, Miva Merchant ($695 Value), MailBoxCop Spam/Virus filtering, and lots of emails to MySQL databases and support for PHP, ASP, Perl and more, Apollo Hosting's plans are feature packed. And with our state-of-the-art Control Panel, all these tools are always right at your fingertips.

10: Upgrade Easily As Your Business Grows



Apollo Hosting grows as your website grows. We offer 3 types of Hosting to meet the needs of a site as it expands. Start at just $6.96 per month and upgrade as your business expands. Most upgrades can be made in less than a day, with no upgrade fees. Many Hosting companies offering a limited selection of plans or only 1 plan can't meet the needs of sites that outgrow their resources. At Apollo, we have the flexibility to provide you Hosting long after other companies offerings would be exhausted.

Data Center

Fast, Reliable Internet Connections

Apollo Hosting customers have direct fiber optic connections with Frontier GlobalCenter, Qwest Communications, and Genuity, a division of GTE. These tier 1 providers service such giants as Yahoo!, Netscape®, Ebay®, and USA TODAY. With these three carriers, our router has up to 150,000 possible routes to send each packet of data. Because your site will actually be on a backbone, you will be provided with one of the fastest, most reliable connections available.

We are also connected to Qwest® Communication's OC192 line which provides us with redundancy and increased routes to Europe, Latin America and Asia.

Industry analysts claim that telecom circuit failure is to blame for nearly 70% of all server downtime over 10 hours. Because of our unique Internet connection, we do not need to connect to the Internet via a telecom circuit as most of our competitors do. Instead, we have independent cables which run from our NOC directly to the FGC and Qwest points of presence. No matter what our client's bandwidth needs are, we have the scalability to meet them.

In early October 1999, we added connectivity from Level 3 Communications®. Level 3 was described in USA Today as "a dream team with a dream network." With the fundamental change in communication technology at hand, they are the first to build an international end to end communications network, based entirely on IP technology. To implement this new technology, Level 3 plans to construct local networks in 50 cities across the United States, all interconnected by an intercity or long distance network that will extend nearly 16,000 miles.

Reliable Connection

Yahoo! also connects directly using Frontier GlobalCenter. If you can reach Yahoo!, you can reach our network. Frontier GlobalCenter's ground-breaking 460 Gbps network runs Border Gateway Protocol to 25 other major carriers through over 25 high-speed private peering arrangements, providing the fastest, most efficient and most reliable network available today

Dedicated Connection

Some web providers operate an additional dial-up Internet service which slows down their connection to the Internet. We are not Internet Access providers - our scalable bandwidth lines are entirely dedicated to Web Hosting!

Fast, Reliable Servers

Our servers are custom-built machines designed for a 24/7 web serving environment. All of our servers are equipped with dual redundant 450-watt power supplies, hot swap Fujitsu drives and force-filtered cooling systems. Our Network Operations Center (NOC) is equipped with standby machines, industry-leading Liebert uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs) and a temperature-controlled environment, all located in a secure, monitored facility.

Force Filtered Cooling

All the drives, motherboards, and power supplies in our NOC are in cases with a positive pressure filtered-air environment. Two large fans pull filtered air into the protective case, and the components within are cooled by fans which circulate this purified air. The constant introduction of clean air into the case creates a positive pressure environment ensuring that dust and particles remain out.

Hot Swap Fujitsu Drives

The drives and drive bays of our servers are all constructed from high-grade aluminum, and rest in a Shock Mounted Drive Cage, which adds to the durability of the hardware. We back up our servers nightly. If the industrial grade drive were to fail, all we would have to do is copy the backup (never more than 24 hours old) onto a standby machine which is already on-line. The site would be up and running within a matter of minutes.

Redundant Hot Swap Power Supplies

Each server has dual-redundant hot swap power supplies. If one of these power supplies were to fail, the server would not go down because each power supply is capable of running the server by itself, indefinitely. Meanwhile, alarms would alert our technicians to the problem; they would restore redundancy with one of our spares and then service the failed supply unit. During all this, sites on our network would never be down.

Standby Servers

We keep spares on-line of all CPU configurations. If the server were to experience a hardware failure we would literally turn a key, grab the handle on the drive, pull it out, and insert it into an identical standby CPU. We would reboot the second machine and the server would be up and running again in a matter of minutes.

list of the tools :

1.) Shopping Cart

The heart of any business website, a shopping cart is how your customers browse and request to purchase your products. Ease-of-use is a key element in a user's shopping cart experience. Our plans provide a variety of solutions to meet your shopping cart needs.

2.) Secure Servers

Trust is an integral part of any business' shopping experience. Provide your customers the security they expect when submitting their credit card information online. Our Shared Hosting Plans offer free shared SSL. VPS or Shared customers may optionally purchase a personal SSL Certificate.

3.) Merchant Account

Once your online transactions are secure, you will need a merchant account and payment gateway to charge your customers. Apollo Hosting partners with 2 respected merchant service providers, PayQuake and E-Commerce Exchange.

4.) Marketing

Your store needs customers to thrive. The Get Traffic Tool Box will help you in driving those customers to your site. The Get Traffic Tool Box covers most aspects of online marketing, from newsletters to banner impressions, search engine optimization to submissions.

5.) 5 Step Guide

Our 5 Steps to Ecommerce guide is a quick, easy-to-use tutorial on the basics of selling on the web. It covers everything from shopping carts to SSL. It will provide a road map for your ecommerce endeavors.

Ecommerce & Business Hosting For the Novice Or The Expert

Apollo Hosting makes ecommerce Web Hosting easy. Whether you’re a seasoned player in the world of ecommerce or just starting out, we have the right business Web Hosting plans for you. We provide a reliable ecommerce Hosting solution that adapts to the growing needs of your business. We offer a comprehensive range of tools in our business Web Hosting plans, like the Miva Merchant shopping cart, that make selling on the web a breeze! Our affordable ecommerce Hosting rates allow you to save more money and invest this capital in your business where you need it most.

Selling On The Web Made Easy

Apollo’s ecommerce Hosting solution with the Miva Merchant shopping cart is the perfect ecommerce answer for businesses of all sizes. The Miva Merchant shopping cart is easy to deploy on your existing web site. The user-friendly administrative interface of our ecommerce Hosting tools give you full control over your online store, making it easy to manage and maximize the ROI on your online business. Get ecommerce savvy with Apollo Hosting and start selling on the web today.

visit Apollo Web Hosting

Easy CGI Web Hosting review

$ 9.95 /month

6 GB Disk Space

150 GB Monthly Data Transfer

500 POP3 Email Accounts

50 MySQL Databases

Unlimited FTP Accounts

Your own private cgi-bin



Easy CGI Web Hosting

Basic Hosting is the perfect plan for small to medium Web Sites that require moderate web space and basic database connectivity. Most scripting languages are supported. A perfect plan for most Web Sites!

Easy CGI was founded after running a successful regional Internet Service Provider since 1994, giving over 10 years of real world experience in the industry. Since it's inception in 1998, Easy CGI has grown into a globally competive Web Hosting Provider. EasyCGI Web Hosting Features

EasyCGI has several Hosting plan Basic, Intermediate and Advance plan. Basic plan starting at only $7.96 per month offer a very generous 6,000 MB (6GB) of disk space, 150GB of data transfer and you can also add 500 POP3 email accounts.

Basic Hosting is the perfect plan for small to medium Web Sites that require moderate web space and basic database connectivity. Most scripting languages are supported.

Easy CGI Hosting Control Panel - The Easy CGI Hosting Control Panel allows you to administer every aspect of your account 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Waiting on hold to perform administrative functions with your account is a thing of the past - The Easy CGI Control Panel allows you to do everything in real time.

The Website/Domain management section allows customers to administer their web sites, email accounts, databases, domain contacts and more. User Services allows clients to view and administer their user information, billing options and account features. The Hosting Control Panel allows you to see exactly what step your domain registration or transfer is on.

Secure SSL Certificate - Secure your Web Site with strongest possible security for international electronic communications with a Secure SSL Certificate from Easy CGI! With this certificates, any information passed to and from your Web Site can be highly encrypted making it impossible for someone to intercept the information being transferred. EasyCGI certificates are perfect for protecting E-Commerce transactions, crucial information that must be on the web, or anything else you can think of that you want to ensure it's safety against unwanted viewers. First year - $149.95.

Customer Service

EasyCGI customer support is availble by e-mail or by toll free number. Their email support is considered quite good. You can try email contact by using the address mail@easycgi. It's toll free phone support is 1-866-327-9244. Phone support is available from Monday - Friday 9AM to 5PM EST.

Data Center

Many Hosting companies outsource their technology needs or keep their servers in a remote location. At Easy CGI maintain own Data Center located in the same facility as their corporate headquarters. Extensive system monitoring allows support staff to quickly assess and resolve problems that may occur.

visit Easy CGI Web Hosting

Lunarpages.com Web Hosting review

$ 6.95 /month

Host 10 Sites on 1 Account!

FREE Domain Name For Life

UNLIMITED MySQL Databases

Up To 5000 Megabytes Storage

400 Gigabytes Data Transfer

E-Commerce


Microsoft® Frontpage® Compatible

Spam Protection



Lunarpages.com Web Hosting

Lunarpages is dedicated to taking your Web Hosting needs to the next level. Because our focus is foremost on providing you with high quality service and accountability, you can depend on us to always be there for you.

Background:

Lunarpages was founded in the summer of 2000 when Add2Net Corporation expanded its Hosting offerings to include shared Hosting. For the previous 3 years, Add2Net had been successfully providing large scale managed and unmanaged Hosting services. Our customer service and rock solid Hosting platforms created our customer base and encouraged us to grow. The Lunarpages brand is the culmination of years of exceptional service and experience. We proudly offer our never ending dedication to you, our customer.

Please visit Add2Net.com to find out more about the Team and Company backing up this top rated service.

Reliability:

Lunarpages offers industry leading infrastructure built with the best equipment, including: Dell, Sun and Cisco Network Devices. Our state of the art datacenter, located in Los Angeles, California, provides the highest level of security, safety, redundancy, reliability, scalability and technology. Our BGP4 routed gigabit fiber network is multi-homed with over 150 carriers, such as, Mzima Networks, Level3, NTT/Verio, Global Crossing, Genuity, SBC, Microsoft/MSN, AOL/TimeWarner, Japan Telecom, Hurricane Electric and Savvis.

The best equipment is only part of our approach. To make sure of complete customer satisfaction, Lunarpages has also implemented our proprietary Active Response Protocol . Our Active Response Protocol not only monitors the system for attacks and outages, it continuously benchmarks the system for web, ftp, and email performance - 24 hours a day, 365 days a year - and our expert staff addresses the issue before it is a problem. Our protocols and infrastructure ensures that your business stays on line!

Price and Cost Effectiveness

Lunarpages offers decent pricing on their web-Hosting plans. For a mere $7.95 a month, you receive up to 5000 MB of space and 400 GB of traffic. Also, free domain name for life. They also offer a $22.95 web-Hosting package, which has double the amount of features. But for most users, the $7.95 is sufficient enough. They also offer a descent amount of basic features here. In addition, you also get unlimited toll free support with all Web Hosting plans, which isn’t common in most Web Hosting companies. Among the many options available, they also offer the options to purchase ASP and JSP on the Linux platform.

Lunarpages Data Center

Lunarpages uses Dell Power Edge 2650 servers, with their data center located in downtown Los Angeles. Their latest servers are quad Xeon 2.4 GHz Xeon processors, with 6 GB of memory and three 70 GB Raid Disk Drive. Compared to other Web Hosting companies, they dominate over any other server offered by any Web Hosting company. They currently use state of the art net infrastructure equipment and plan to offer many new features in the future such as load balancing. Furthermore, they are connected to premium Tier-1 Backbone providers and are multi-home with Level3, Genuity and Cable and Wireless. As a result, you will get above average Web Hosting performance and reliability that other providers normally charge a premium for. They also constantly add servers onto their data center, meaning they are growing rapidly.

Lunarpages Customer Relations

Customer support at Lunarpages is superior and they are very responsive to your questions. Even e-mail support questions always get answered in a timely manner. This is very different from any other Web Hosting company out there. Accounts are usually setup the same day after they verify the order with you over the phone within thirty minutes to one hour. It is essential that a working phone number be inputted into the system in order for your account to be setup immediately. They also offer a live chat system that enables you to chat with other Lunarpages customers and staffs. Furthermore, they have a help desk system which enables you to view common question customer asks.

Cpanel Control Panel

Lunarpages currently utilizes the latest version of the CPanel 5 control panel. The features are pretty much the same to other CPanel, such as mailbox modification, password changes, ftp login modifications, statistical information, and so on. CPanel doesn’t offer any web-building tool, but for Web Hosting administration it offers the user an easy and intuitive interface along with powerfully packed features.

 

Lunarpages ranks #1 with major Web Hosting accreditation companies.

Everyone here at Lunarpages is proud of the fact that we are continuously acknowledged as the premier Hosting choice for webmasters seeking a quality host with the industry's best uptime & best customer service. We have worked hard for the past 5 years to maintain our reputation as the world's most affordable Web Hosting provider and we are committed to making sure that our service levels continue to meet and exceed the expectations of even our most demanding clients.

HostAZ

#1 Overall Web Hosting Award

Lunarpages.com is a certified winner of the Top 10 Web Hosting Gold Award. 2005. Lunarpages has proven to be a highly efficient organization with top quality service, they really take care of their customers. Lunarpages has justly retained our #1 rating for a long time now & we do not foresee another host beating them in service or reliability anytime in the near future.

WebHost Magazine

Lunarpages receives Web Hosting Magazines highest level of recommendation.

Web Hosting Reviews

2 Year Consecutive Award Winning Host

WebHostingReviews.com has been reviewing a multitude of Web Hosting companies since 1999. For the past 2 years, we've tested Lunarpages and have given recognition to them for their outstanding server uptime and prompt technical support team. Today there are so many Hosting companies out there, that finding the right one can be a headache in itself. Fortunately, Lunarpages is an honest company run by people who know exactly what they're doing.

WebsiteMaven

"Lunarpages benefits from a history of exceptional service and experience in the Hosting industry. Lunarpages has an exceptionally good rating for service and support and is a clear favorite among Web Hosting forum users and pundits."

Hosting Review

Most Reliable Web Host Award

"Lunarpages Named Most Reliable Host by Hosting-Review.com Lunarpages is one of the premier Web Hosting providers in the market today. When it comes to reliability, Lunarpages is second to none. Their data center supplies the highest level of security, safety, redundancy, reliability, scalability and technology, and their expert staff proactively takes care of problems before they happen. Coupled with their strong customer support, Lunarpages' award-winning reliability makes them an excellent Web Hosting top pick."

RateMyHost.com

#1 Web Host

"Best Uptime, Best Features, Best Customer Service & Best Value for your dollar! Lunarpages is a terrific company plain & simple & they have been treating their customers right for several years. LP is our top pick!"

Customer Quotes

Way back in 1995, I was one of the first customers of a company which considered itself to be the very first company specializing in Web Hosting. My site was fairly simple, and everything worked, so I kept my site with them even after they were bought out and raised their prices.

Big mistake!

A few months ago I happened upon a web page reviewing Web Hosting companies and learned I was overpaying by quite a bit, so I decided it was time to move.

A little research led me to Lunarpages. Now I'm saving over $200/year and getting more features and better service than I dreamed possible. And through Lunarpages I can improve my own skills by experimenting with cutting-edge web technology, because Lunar Pages accounts -- even the inexpensive Standard Plan I have -- include high-end features like MySQL, PHP, ASP, and other alphabet-soup that I've only read about but now have the opportunity to use.

And there's actually a real person available by phone. Really. I've called a couple of times, for what I thought were kind of minor problems. Not only did I get through to a technician almost instantly, without a wait, my questions were answered immediately and I wasn't made to feel like an idiot --even when the problem was in the "wetware" between my ears. (In other words, I screwed something up, and the support tech was just that: supportive!)

That they have real, live people available by phone, at no additional charge, is evidence of how well they manage their service, and how easy it is to use. There's just no way they could offer live support like this if there were frequent problems or the service wasn't straightforward and simple to use.

There's also a genuine community of users online at LunarForums.com where fellow subscribers, as well as tech support folks, share their experience with each other. People with absolutely no 'net experience are made welcome, and I've never seen a single case of someone being told to "rtfm" (read the "fine" manual, or documentation -- a common, rude, 'net response to basic questions). The Forums aren't just available to subscribers, they're open to all. People considering Lunarpages can see the type of questions current subscribers ask and the type of answers they get, as well as ask their own questions -- *before* subscribing themselves!

I'm so pleased with Lunarpages that I mention them on the first page of my own web site, even though they don't have a referral program (at least, not that I know of). The service is just so good that I want to let others know about it.

Not affiliated with Lunarpages in any way other than being a *very* satisfied customer.

 

I've always found the time to make a phone call or write an email of complaint when the service or product I have received has been poor, but rare is the time any of us, I think, stop to write a letter of thank you for superior service.

So, I just wanted to let you know that your service is by far the best I've worked with in my life, and I'm not just talking about webhosts. I have never had my questions answered so clearly, quickly, and courteously by any company or service provider I've dealt with. The email correspondences have been concise, easy to understand but not condescending, and polite. My phone contact was expedient, thorough, and patient as I repeatedly asked for clarification.

As an educator currently working specifically on team efficiency and effectiveness, I am simply amazed at the fact that EVERYONE I've interacted with from Lunarpages has been so consistently excellent. And, if there is parent company you'd like to see this, let me know and I'll be happy to give them a copy.

 

As always; your sales, service and technology proved to be fantastic once again. Don was very helpful in guiding me through an IT issue and it is comforting to know that I have people like Don, Chris, Chad and others at Lunarpages on my side. I am in business to do what I do best and Lunarpages makes me feel as though I have a trustworthy business partner on my side. I happen to be in the technology business and the Lunarpages team is critical to my success. I recommend these guys to anyone else who is in the IT field and also to friends and family who are not. Friends and family members of mine who need to benefit from web site services for their single business or personal usage are always more than satisfied. Lunarpages is more than just a Web Hosting company, they are a full service internet technology organization. They truly provide simple solutions for technology needs at very affordable prices. My company will has benefited from Lunarpages products and services and will continue to do so for years to come.

Visit Lunarpages.com Web Hosting

Website Source Web Hosting review

Website Source Web Hosting

Founded in 1998 and a 100% U.S. based Web Hosting provider, Website Source has received many Hosting awards and honors from distinguished review panels. This experience gives Website Source customers the peace of mind that their websites are being managed by veteran professionals. The corporate office is located in Austin, Texas and Website Source provides an expert team of Web Hosting technical support personnel who supports many thousands of businesses and individuals around the world. Website Source offers everything you need to start, maintain, and grow your online business.

Website Source operates many separate divisions such as shared Hosting, business Hosting, vps Hosting, dedicated and reseller Hosting.

Choosing a website Hosting provider is one of the most important decisions a webmaster can make. One word can be used to describe Website Source Hosting services - Quality. Let's explore the reasons...

More and more businesses are taking advantage of foreign outsourcing as a primary source of their customer service. Website Source, on the other hand, is a 100% U.S. based Hosting company located in Austin, Texas and proud to have all customer support in-house (no outsourcing). Since its inception in 1998, Website Source has worked to provide the most efficient, value-driven business Hosting plans and industry-leading customer service. The Corporate Offices were increased by nearly 200% in early June 2004 to allocate space for additional staff member