Domain Hosting News and Questions

Robert Goodwin asked:




Define Your Website Goals

Whether your website is a corporate website, an ecommerce website, a niche social media site or a totally new online business concept, you should put your website goals on paper.

Website goals should clearly state the purpose of your website and what the website should accomplish when someone visits your website.

The goals of an ecommerce website is different from a corporate website. One is a self-service purchase of products or services while the other will be more informational based.

You will some very specific goals for your website and they should be written down.

Create a Site Map

A site map can be as simple as an outline of the main pages your website will have and sub-pages you will have.

A typical small business site map will look like something like this:

Home

About Us

History Mission Statement Our Founder

Our Services & Products



Frequently Asked Questions



What Our Clients Are Saying



Request a Quote



Contact Us



Special Website Features

Special website features are capabilities your website will have beyond a standard website page. Special features typically include:

Form Pages – Sending form information by email and database capture. Newsletter Subscription – Automatic signup by visitors for email newsletters. Autoresponders – Automatic sending out of one or more emails in response to a request for more information, series of tips, online course, etc. Photo Gallery -  Slide show or thumbnails of product images. Shopping Cart – Ability to allow users to purchase products or services online. Flash Presentation – Audio and Video presentation to be downloaded or viewed within a website page. Registration and Login – Ability for customers or prospective customers to register and receive access to website pages and information not available to the general public. CMS (Content Management System) – Ability for you and your staff to update website pages, delete and add pages to the website through an Administration page. Knowledge Base – Support for products using a database and content management to offer many topics with support information for each. Survey – Series of questions which captures survey responses into a database. Trouble Ticket – System for customers to contact your support team to resolve issues, track responses and issue resolution. Online Operator (Chat) – System for chatting with potential customers and customers who have questions in real time. Project or Job Status – System for allowing customers to check on the current status of their job or project.

Approaches to Building Your Website

Even if you have a small website project, you should look for an expert to help you build your website. A website designer can save you both time and money, and help you with the many technical issues that you will encounter along the way.

Rent or Own? – There are some online website building sites that let you “rent” space on their server and create your own website using their software. This approach should only be used to build a quick website presence or to create a “prototype” of your website. Renting “Gotchas” – While the low monthly fees of a do-it-yourself website building website vendor are tempting, keep in mind you never really own your website. Later, when you decide to move your website or add more complex features to your website, you will find a rented website to be a major headache. Content Management – You should have a content management system for several reasons. Google likes content rich websites, and having an easy-to-use CMS will encourage you to add more content your website frequently, and free you from having a webmaster make update for you. Branding – Your website should reflect your branding. Make sure your logo and corporate color scheme is used in your website so all your marketing materials look like they belong to the same design family. Website Requirements – Before you hire a website designer, put all your website requirements on paper so there are few if any assumptions made about your website. For more complicated websites, be sure to put together a RFP (Request For Proposal) and ask several website design companies to give you a proposal. RFP – A Request For Proposal, if properly detailed, can help ensure you will have a proper response by several different website design companies so you can choose between several approaches to creating your website. Website Proposals – Evaluate all proposals to make sure the proposal fits your RFP or website requirements. Be wary of proposals that are extremely low or extremely high. Talk to the different vendors who respond to your RFP so you can get an idea of how well they communicate and what it will be like to work with them.

Get It In Writing

Be sure to have a formal agreement with your website designer and make sure you understand the agreement before you sign on the dotted line.

Out Clause – Make sure you have a way out of the agreement in case there are problems or you find your vendor delaying the project or not delivering what the proposal calls for. Website Ownership – Ideally, you should own all the website project files, graphics, website code and files upon completion of the website, but sometimes this is not spelled out in agreements. Hosting – Be careful if the website vendor is providing hosting. In the event you part company with your website designer, you will need full access to the hosting account in case you want to move the website to another hosting company in the future. Additional Charges – Your agreement should spell out how additional project requests are to be handled so you do not have unexpected charges after the fact. Time Line – Your website proposal should include a project plan and at least a simple week by week time line so you will know how long the project will take. Project Management – Who will be responsible for managing the project? Your website design company should do this, but if you hire a freelance resource you may be assuming some project management.

Building your website can be very challenging when you consider all the small pieces of the puzzle that have to fit together to make the project complete.

Working with a website design professional will make the process go faster and more smoothly, so you can focus on what you do best—running your company.

Lastly, if you have a large website project or one with many website features and custom programming, consider creating your website in phases. Focus on getting a basic website up and running in the first phase, then use one or more future phases to add additional features.



Web Hosting and Domain Registration

Greg Greenamyer asked:




A winning domain name can put you miles ahead of your competition. After all, that’s the purpose of your website, right? Unfortunately most business owners and webmasters don’t realize choosing the right domain name can be crucial to the websites success.

Good domain names have several things in common. They are descriptive of the websites content; they are easy to remember and easy to spell. Being descriptive of the websites content is the most important because this is how you will attract existing traffic to your website. If your website or business is in the shoe business, shoe better be in your domain name if you want to succeed.

Your domain name is your location on the internet. It’s your piece of virtual real estate that you can develop however you see fit. Your domain name separates you from the 120 million or so websites on the internet today. Choosing a winning domain name is the equivalent to choosing a good location for an offline business.

In order to be competitive an offline business must have a location that has existing traffic counts that will support their venture. The same is true for your website. Good domain names have the potential to capture existing traffic on the internet. That’s right “existing traffic” people already seeking the product or services you provide!

Traffic is the most sought after commodity on the internet. You can develop the website of all websites but without traffic who cares, no one will ever see it. Every website on the internet must have traffic to succeed and better yet, targeted traffic.

A winning domain name can deliver existing targeted traffic to your website from day one! When it comes to choosing the right domain name the vast majority of people, even professional webmasters, do not understand this concept. Good domain names have the potential to deliver targeted traffic to your website.

Existing traffic will come from two major sources, direct navigation or “type in traffic”, and the major search engines. Approximately 10 to 15% of all internet searches are done via direct navigation. Direct navigation is when a person types a domain name directly into the address bar bypassing the traditional search engines. If you are looking for shoes you would type in shoes.com and be taken to that website.

The major benefit of a winning domain name is having the potential to take the existing direct navigation traffic, and leverage it into mass amounts of targeted traffic, using proper search engine and website optimization practices. This in turn increases your search engine ranking.

The search engines consider many factors when ranking a page; the domain name is one of those factors. A good domain name is the foundation of a good website. Once you have the solid foundation, you develop a highly optimized website that enables you to leverage the traffic into profits.

For those that continue to think choosing the right domain name has no importance, why is the domain name industry booming? Major news stories on the domain name industry have recently been published in the New York Times, CNN Money, Fox Business and the Christian Science Monitor. Major sales over $4 million have already taken place in 2008. Major corporations are purchasing domain names. Don’t discount the importance of choosing a good domain name when developing your website, your competition may understand the value!



cheap web hosting

Steve Johnson asked:




Transferring a domain name away from fasthosts to your new ISP/Registar is usually a fairly simply process. Below you will find a simple step by step domain name transfer guide to help you with your transfer from Fasthosts.

Uk Domain Name Transfer (.co.uk, .org.uk, .me.uk, .ltd.uk)

Fasthosts domain management and tansfers are done through UKREG, go to: http://www.ukeg.com

1. To transfer a Fasthosts domain away from UKreg, you’ll first need to check if it was initially registered at UKreg or if it was transferred into UKreg from elsewhere.

2. Click on the ‘Members Login’ link at the top of the page.

3. Go to UKreg and select ‘Configure Domains’.

4. Select the domain you’d like to move and choose ‘Change IPS Tag’.

5. The IPS tag for (your new ISP) enter it here.

6. If the domain was transferred into UKreg you must also send a fax, on headed notepaper or company letterhead if registered to your company, to UKreg providing the following information:

The new IPS tag name

The username and password for your UKreg account

The domain name

The support fax number for UKreg is 0870 888 3555.

Next, go to will need to contact you new ISP to complete the transfer.

gTLD Domain Name Transfer (.com, .net, .org, .info, .biz)

Go to: http://www.ukreg.com

1. Log into your UKreg account.

2. Select ‘Configure Your Domains’ in the middle of the page.

3. Select the domain you wish to unlock by clicking on the domain registration link.

4. Click on ‘Change your renewal settings’

5. Click ‘Transfer options’. This does not apply to .eu domains.

6. Click ‘Unlock (yourdomainname) now’.

7. Update your contact details, making sure the email address you use is active.

8. Copy the Auth Code details.

You will now need to contact new ISP to complete the transfer. Some ISP’s will complete the transfer request on your behalf and some have a domain management system where you can do the transfer yourself.

When transferring a gTLD domain name from one Registry to another, one year registration will be added to your domain name automatically. For this reason some ISP’s/Registrar’s charge for transfers and some don’t! so make sure before you check before you start the process.

Transfers usually take between 3-7 days depending on the Registry. However, this should not effect any services provided by your ISP during the transfer process.

Please note: If you have not requested the transfer within 7 days Fasthosts/UKREG automatically reinstate the Registar-Lock on your domain name.



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