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Archive for 'Website Owner'

Overcome Your Fear Of Switching Web Hosts

Sunday, October 25th, 2009 at 8:31 pm  
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This is intended to be a hold-your-hand guide, to assist even the least intrepid website owner to get over their needless fear of switching to another web host or web hosting package.

It is important to realize that by sticking to your old web host you may be losing out on better deals, more up time and superior back-up and support. All that translates into more income and after all that is why you have a website. Surveys conducted among website owners show that website owners are paying up to ten times more for their current web host than they would for a cheaper and better web host, just because they fear the switching over process. They believe that changing web hosts will be complicated, have direct cost implications and could even lead to the loss or at least the corruption of their website or group of sites. This article intends to help you get over your baseless worries.

If you, as a website owner, started out on the internet by going to a famous branded name for web hosting and you have stuck with it because you think that if they are big and well-known they must give you value for money, then you should reconsider. The odds are that you are paying a premium for the name without necessarily getting the reciprocal service. Do not choose your host because the name makes you feel comfortable, or for that matter because you think it’s a good deal. Rather look at what you are getting and compare the offerings from other web hosting companies. Here is a rule of thumb. You can easily find adequate space for your site requirements, with all the bells and whistles, for under $10 per month, not taking into account handsome discounts for paying quarterly or annually. Another point to watch is the free domain name carrot that web hosts love to dangle. This is not so important, as you will learn later in this article.

Now that we have established that you should look at the benefits rather than the brand name or the bottom line cost, the rule-of-thumb notwithstanding, let us run through the points that you need to check out when investigating alternative hosting companies and their packages.

First, let’s look at capacity. You don’t really need more than 100 megs of space even if you are planning to build a large community or make uploaded albums part of the mix. It is really not necessary to opt for anything above that for the average or even an above-average website. By resisting the temptation to go for more space you could find yourself switching to a superior host for the same or less money.

Second, I mentioned support earlier and that is something you should look at carefully. You should be able to get answers to your queries in 24 hours or less by email. The very best hosts have live chat facilities available during business hours. It is well worth it, for your peace of mind, especially during the switchover process, to opt for a host that has a reputation for good support. Also check before signing up that the web hosting firm has a contactable physical address and phone numbers. Go ahead and test the support system by phoning them, live chatting to them and emailing them.

Thirdly, look at the number of email Pop3 emails your web host can offer. You should be able to get at least 10 and rest assured you will need these in time, as your business grows. Remember, if staff and family use email addresses related to your site, this is a form of advertising for your website. Also your host should offer web-based emails so you can check your email anywhere.

Finally, have a good look at the control panel which the new host is providing. See if there is a demo so you can try it out and get the feel of how user-friendly it is. A plus factor here is FTP access. Ideally you should have 24-hour FTP access so you can make modifications whenever you like. Also look out for a site builder, bulletin boards or chat rooms so you can interact with your visitors using the host’s services. Also check to see if the new host will be able to handle such popular features as PHP, ASP, CGI, Java scripts, Perl scripting or whatever else you have.

Once you have decided to move to a new host, timing becomes paramount. Make sure you cancel your subscription to your existing host before the end of the billing cycle. If you cancel too late you will end up paying for a month’s hosting you will not be using. Forget about refunds from your old host. You will not get one for periods of less than a month. I also recommend at least a week’s overlap when you will effectively have two hosts, the old and the new. You will use this time to ensure that everything works correctly on the new host and that all the files and email accounts are present.

Right, so you have signed up with the new host. Now you must save the files created for the site on your computer so they can be stored and backed-up. If you created the site yourself with a website builder like FrontPage or Dreamweaver you will probably have those files already. If, however, you used a web-based builder then you should download every page of the site along with their dependent files to a folder on the computer. This is easier than it sounds. You can either use an FTP tool to accomplish this or you can use the File>Save As method, which works as follows. Open your web browser (it can be Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer or Mozilla) then find the file button on the tool bar. Now go to the first page of the website. Once it has loaded, click on “File” then “Save As” and save this and all dependent files to a folder. Do this with each page until everything is saved. Now back this up to a disk.

The next step is to see that any other files on the outgoing web host are backed up. For example, if you have been using web-based mail then forward the emails to an “off-network” email address, or even archive emails to the computer’s hard drive. Remember that once you switch to your new host, all emails at the outgoing host will be deleted.

Now that you have control over the contents of your website, you need to upload all of the files to the new host’s servers. They will provide you with the FTP details required and this is where online and live support is invaluable. Once this is done you should create an email accounts to match each email account from the outgoing web host. This is essential so that there are no bouncing emails later when the switch goes through. This is the point at which you can change the domain name’s main servers, and for this the new host should supply all the information. There will also probably be subsidiary servers.

If you have registered your own domain name then the registrar should have a management area. If your domain name is registered through the outgoing host then you should ensure you have access to change this. It will take a day or two for the name server change to propagate so the domain name points to the new servers. Use the week when you have access to the old host and the new one to make any modifications.

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How To Prevent Comment Spam With Google’s No Follow Attribute

Sunday, October 25th, 2009 at 3:45 pm  
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Putting up and maintaining a weblog of your own could be done for free or built into your paid domain site. Either way, whatever you put up on your blog becomes accessible to practically anyone on the World Wide Web. Your blog has the potential to gain many regular followers and once-in-a-while visitors, given that you deliver content that is relevant and interesting, making it an excellent medium for advertisement or promoting products, services, or other websites relevant to its general area of discussion. Thus, it is a reason for companies paying blog owners to publish their ads on their blog sites.

What happens, though, if a certain company or enterprising individual tries to get onto your blog through the comments page with an active link to their site? That’s what’s called comment spam, and a business enterprise can be the least of your worries when it comes to this underhanded way of getting Google search ranks up. Enterprising entities do this not merely to promote the site to those who access that particular comments page, but more importantly to increase their ranking in search pages to that the site will stay on top of the search return page.

Another version of comment spamming involves a website owner who only copies the content of his or her site from a different website that ranks high on the Google search page. That way, this dishonest site owner doesn’t have to work as hard, to promote the site and gain a considerable following. The good news is that, finding out if one’s site content has been copied, has become very easy, as copy detection programs can be found online. Now, let’s go back to the links problem.

Fortunately for blogs and sites that allow trackbacks and comments from others, Google has announced their development of a way to decrease the occurrence of comment spam. It’s a feature known as the “nofollow” attribute, which allows site owners to add an additional attribute in the form rel=”follow” to any href code active link. This added part of a href link commands Google spiders to disregard a link that leads outside of the host site. The objective of this new development is to keep those who abuse open Internet sites from reaping the benefits of their misdeed.

While distressed blog owners may rejoice at this good news, some may opt to weigh the pros and cons of this new feature. To a business owner, a positive implication of using the no follow attribute is that, he or she will be able to avoid freeloaders trying to ride on his own site’s Google ranking. Google’s new tag can offer you an increased control on the effect of a link posted in your site by someone else without your prior permission. This has the potential to increase the possibility of that someone moving on to trying other possibilities that will increase traffic for their website. When issuing comment spam loses its benefit, then the spammer can hopefully try other things that are potentially laden with honesty, for a change.

Also, the new development will help strengthen the notion that bloggers and site moderators must make an effort to ensure that links that lead to their site will not disappoint, and their content are beneficial to the users of that particular site hosting the link. In addition, site owners must try to focus on outstanding and read-worthy content that will have enough impact to the online community that other sites will want to provide a link to their site by their own choice.

Perhaps the only Internet users who will find this new attribute disadvantageous are those who have become accustomed to using comment spam as a means to promote their own site. However, it should instead be a challenge for them in putting up worthwhile content for their site, such that Internet users will be searching for their site by name, and not clicking on its link by accident. For best results, have the service add the nofollow attribute to links that other users themselves created, such as those within their comment, and the link attached to the name of user who wrote the comment. Other areas where the attribute can be used include visitor statistic sections, guestbooks, and referrer lists.

Among the first weblog software creators that signed up for this service are LiveJournal, Blogger, WordPress, Flickr, and MSN Spaces. Users of these blog services and others need not do anything themselves. The free blog host only needs to keep the attribute version updated to ensure its full effect.

This concept of having better control over outgoing links isn’t all new, however. Forward-thinking programmers have been able to devise ways to prevent search engine spiders from detecting outgoing links for quite a while. Yet this new Google tag gives power to the common website owner over his or her site’s outgoing links.
Some may have doubts on the effectiveness of this new service. One notion is that this will not be fully efficient unless it becomes a default option for bloggers and webmasters. Perhaps it also does not help that there are skeptics, not to mention dishonest users that will try to get past this obstacle and even devise a tougher-to-beat approach to comment spamming and link campaigns.

In addition, those who do gain in search engine ranking through referral links by those who really, wholeheartedly support their site have the most to lose. The possibility of search page rankings being a thing of the past presents itself in this scenario. Then again, it would not hurt to pose a challenge to those whose sites and products have yet to gain popularity. Perhaps businesses need to make a habit of improving, and have faith that those Internet users, who know exactly what they are looking for on the web, will find them eventually and be satisfied with what they have to offer. Besides, the really great ideas are the one that stand the test of time.

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