There are still some smart business owners who don’t own their web site name. What does this mean to you? Well, if you aren’t the Registrant (person who registered your web site name), then your web site may be at risk.

Sometimes because of convenience the web developer or your network technician will register your domain name (URL). This creates potential for misuse or “hijacking”. If you have a disagreement with your web developer or your web host it might be difficult to get them to transfer ownership.

It’s like driving a car for your business use- you chose the color, it’s got your logo, and branding all over it. The public sees it and recognizes the car, but it’s not yours. The (registrant) owner could change the locks or they could leave it stranded in a parking lot at a strip club.

It’s illegal for the web owner to impact your business by shutting down your web site, but you’ll have to take it to court.

How can you find out?
The easiest way is to get your information from GoDaddy.com.

At the bottom of the page is a link to Whois site with all the information you need.

At the next window enter your site URL.
Enter the access code on the right side of the page.
Look for the Registrant information.

If it’s not you or your company then you should contact the registrant and have that updated.

After they transfer the registration (it’s not a difficult process) you can add the information for your technician or your web developer (see administrative and technical contacts).

This way, they still can manage your site, but now you own it.

Start with purchasing your name, such as BobSullivan.com. If your name is already taken then try something like AskMarci.com, BobinSeattle.com, BobTheWindowGuy, etc. Now you can start a simple Wordpress web site or redirect the new domain name to your Linkedin profile. Big Dog IT can set up and host a simple to use Wordpress site. If you aren’t ready to start your own site that can come later.

GoDaddy.com
This is a good place to purchase domain names. Best practice is to avoid hosting your domain at the place you buy the name.

With or without your own domain name (BobJones.com) you can post your profile at some of the directory sites listed below (there are many).  Adding your profile to social media sites and business directories is usually free and doesn’t require attending meetings or events. Include a business website and any other domain names that you want to promote.

Prepare a short description and a long one to have on hand so you can paste it right into your profile fields. Also include a small picture of yourself.

Here is a reasonable list of sites to get you started.

Facebook.com
After you create your personal profile you can create a business page on FB.
Facebook Business

BizNik.com
This is a social networking site which features articles and events. BizNik offers many features to help promote your business. Biznik members connect online, and meet in person in many cities.

Twitter.com
You will add your name or biz name after  twitter.com/….
Even if you aren’t ready to start tweeting, save your URL to use later.

Zoominfo.com
Directory

Meetup.com
Join a group- they have in person and online groups

Plaxo.com
Directory

Manta.com
Directory

Spoke.com
Directory

Xing.com
Directory

Bing.com
This is the new MSN live search – top right, Sign In

Google.com
Set up a personal profile at Google – sign in with gmail or create a new account to set up your profile.

Maps.Google.com
Add a review for another business, ask someone to post reviews for you.

local.Yahoo.com
Add a review for another business, ask someone to post reviews for you.

Yelp.com
User reviews for businesses and local search web. There are allegations that Yelp doesn’t offer a way for people to respond to or delete unfair reviews. Google something like how to use Yelp, or problems with Yelp and see what you think.

YouTube.com
Create a profile – google a phrase such as: how to use youtube for your business

Animoto.com
Not social networking or a directory, but I like this site because it’s a great way to create video with images, text, songs, or upload your own audio.  Look at the sample videos for ideas.

If you want to open a paid account enter this Referral Code: yhbpzkqj
Tip: look at the FAQ about image size – then crop & size your images before you start to upload. A FREE 30 second video uses about 15-20 images.
Animoto.com/help/faq

Ning.com
Here you can create your own social network. Start by naming your social network and choosing features (photos, videos, forums, events, etc.). Then customize your social network’s appearance and launch it! People who join your social network will have a customizable profile page and will be able to send messages and connect. Remember though, your content lives on the Ning network in their server.

Another tip in sending your profile out there…do a search for one of your competitors names, someone in your field, or a person you know is active in building their online exposure. Use those directories and sites to post your information.

Web Host

Web host refers to a computer connected to the internet. Web host can also be termed as ‘web server’. The computer that is playing the role of the web server needs to be more powerful than normal PCs and the function of this web server is to serve up websites.

The website content of the user will remain will on this computer, so as the people who are surfing on the internet can get a way to access his/her website.

There can be three main categories in which the web host can be classified based on the economic factor and common features:

1. Free Hosts:

The users who are not professional but are making website only as a hobby then for them free hosting can be a good option. In free hosting space, bandwidth and other features provided are very limited. With free web hosting one can not only make his/her website successful but is also suitable for personal websites or for temporary usage.

Generally free hosting enforces pop-up, text or banner ads. Reliability, best performance and customer support lacks in case of free hosting as well. When a user registers for a free host then the word free host gets added with the user’s domain name that gives an adverse effect in the eye of the visitors.

2. Shared Hosts:

The next type of the web hosting to be discussed is shared hosting. This hosting service is used by many of the web sites .This type of hosting service is Suitable for personal, small and medium businesses. This service can be used by paying $1 to $25 per month. The features provided by this service vary from very limited space/bandwidth to semi-dedicated servers. The users host their website by this type of hosting service and it has its own top level domain facility.

No doubt that shared web hosting is quite better than free hosting but still it does not provide 100% satisfactory services. In case of shared hosting one server is shared by the number of websites so its performance and availability gets affected. More websites usually means less performance. If less number of websites are hosted by one server then it will be more expensive, but in this case there are more chances of reliability. There are many companies allowing customers to host multiple websites with different domains under a single account.

3. Dedicated Hosts:

The next type of hosting is dedicated hosting. This type of hosting is most reliable hosting. In this type of hosting a full server is dedicated to a single customer. Generally this type of hosting is used by large businesses, professionals and very active websites dealing with thousands of visitors daily. The customers having dedicated hosting can have their total control over the server as well as able to create as many websites as they like.

Customers can run their own hosting company on a rented dedicated server. Payment module is mentioned according to specifications and services provided with the server, which varies from $100 up to about $800 dollars per month.

4. Collocated Hosts:

Now the other type of hosting service to be discussed is collocated hosting. This service is very much similar to dedicated hosting. The difference between collocated hosting and dedicated hosting is that in collocated hosting the customer owns the server hardware instead of renting it. In this service the server will be placed in provider’s data center. This service is more expensive than dedicated hosting.

5. Reseller Hosts:

In reseller hosting the providers offers web server storage to their customers, and resells the web server storage to them. Generally providers offer resellers a discount price.

6. Other Hosts:

Including the above type of hosts there are also many other hosts such as email hosts, media hosts, data hosts, etc but these hosts will not be discussed in this article.

Domain Name

Domain name is the name which shows the place where one’s website is located. The actual address of the website is a set of numbers. Each and every web server has its own unique address. Domain name indicates the real addresses of every websites. One can easily remember the domain name of any of the website. Remembering domain name is easier than recalling the IP addresses.

Space / Storage

Space is one of the services provided by the web host. It plays a very important role in the website development. It happens many times that the customer requires more space but the host fails to provide it, so customer should be very careful while choosing the web host. Storage is the amount of web server’s disk space available for customer’s website files, images and databases.

Space can be according to the requirement; it can be as small as 5MB in some free hosts and as big as 300GB for some dedicated servers. Earlier prices of the space were very high but prices reduced significantly during the last few years. The hosting plans offering 3GB of space for around $10 a month can be easily available.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth can be defined as the amount of data transferred from web server to clients’ internet browsers. When ever a person outlook a page the data is transmitted from the server to that person’ PC. If any one is having audio, video and images in his/her website then the bandwidth consumed is more in comparison of the website having only text contents. The bandwidth available in free hosting can be as low as 100MB per month where as in some dedicated servers the bandwidth available is as high as 2000GB a month. The customers who don’t want to pay more for bandwidth can easily find hosting plans offering 75GB of monthly data transfer for less than $10.

Server Type

Generally server means the operating system than runs the web server. Some common types are Windows, Linux and UNIX. Server type refers the server side scripting and database types. The difference between Windows server and Linux/UNIX is that Windows runs ASP and ASP.NET with Access or SQL Server databases where as Linux/UNIX servers usually runs CGI, PHP or JSP with MySQL or Oracle databases. The other difference is that Windows servers are more expensive than Linux/UNIX servers.

Databases

As server type is discussed earlier also, we are able to know that there are different types of databases available. The mostly used is MySQL as it is open source GPL (free) software and can serve a lot of online applications’ requirements such as forums, content management, mailing lists, etc. MySQL, rather its features are limited. MySQL is sufficient for small concern but it is not powerful for the complicated large business sites. Large business requires more powerful databases such as Oracle or SQL Server.

Server Side Scripting

Usually the new comers prefer to use PHP as server side scripting. The reason behind this is that there are hundreds of open source (GPL) PHP scripts that are able to fulfill the webmaster’s requirements. However PHP also has some limitations in features required by advanced websites same as in the case of MySQL, due to this limitation some professional web developers prefer to use ASP.NET or JSP. Some other developers still prefer to use Cold Fusion, CGI, ASP or PERL.

Email

Now the next very important aspect to be talked about is Email. At present no one can move further in this computer world with having his/her Email account. The one who is planning to do any kind of activity through computer such as to run a business or to provide any kind of service, then the first thing he/she need to do is to open an Email account. There are many hosting plans that include the feature of having some email accounts with customer’s domain. The availability of number and size of email accounts totally depends on the hosting plan one opted. Generally this feature is not included in free hosting. Small plans provide only about 10 accounts where as big plans do not have the limited number. Usually those email accounts are web based and accessible through POP3 clients as well.

File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

The other service is FTP. File Transfer Protocol is a usual way of transferring files across the Internet. Most of the webmasters used to upload and download their websites contents through FTP. The process of uploading or downloading is performed by using FTP client software. Webmasters require FTP username and password so as to access their web server. There are any hosts who use to provide more than one FTP account to their customers as per their requirement. Rather FTP is unspecified; it is not advisable as per the security reasons.

Control Panel

Control panel is the service available by many of the web hosting companies to their customers. It is a web based application that helps in managing websites. Some important functions performed by the control panel are that it used to manage email accounts, providing statistics, managing FTP accounts, managing domains and sub-domains and managing databases. The control panel application that is mostly used by the user is cPanel. There are many companies who use to develop their own control panel application.

Uptime

Now after having all the services, the thing of concern which remains is how the user keeps his/her website uptime most of the time. If anyone is having a website with excellent features but it remains down most of the time it will be of no use, as when ever the visitors visit his/her website and found it down then later on they will think twice before visiting it.

In result he/she will suffer the loss of visitors. Uptime is very important feature of web hosts and that is usually measured in percentage. If a server remains down near about 30 minutes a day will have an uptime percentage of about 99.98%, which is acceptable for most small to medium business websites. If any of the business website is not having at least this percentage of uptime then that website is not suitable for a business website. Mission critical sites cannot tolerate frequent outages, thus they may use web monitoring services to notify web administrators immediately when an outage happens.

Price

Finally the factor left is price. In this option also there is a great variability found like for example customer is having option to choose between the prices starting at Free… For most personal, small and medium websites the total amount of cost involved is just $15 per month. Thus its not at all advisable for business website owners to select very cheap plans let say less than $5 because this price can lead to huge cost indirectly afterward.