The Web Hosting Blog

How to start a blog. Blogging 101 – Make, Write, Promote!

admin — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 22:51:38 +0000

Each day blogging is becoming more and more popular because of the social connections it creates between the reader and the author. If you ever wanted to start your own blog, this article is for you. I will cover the fundamental steps to starting a blog. The aim of this article is to turn a total newbie into a blogging machine!

Blogging Prerequisites

Before we start diving into the finer points of blogging, you first need to have a blank blog ready to go to follow along with.

Get your free blog - If you are looking for a free blogging service, I suggest you check out www.wordpress.com

Start a professional blog - If you are looking to make a blog for your business or plan to make money off your blog in the future, I suggest you start with a paid blogging solution as this will save your time, money, and frustration in the end.

For a good blogging host, take a look at ReadySetConnect. Once you sign up, you can run the auto-installation program that will setup your blog for you. There are multiple blogging platforms you can choose from, but I suggest you pick WordPress as all my examples in this tutorial will be for a WordPress blog.

Keep in mind the above suggestions are not your only solutions for getting your blog online. I am merely suggesting the ones I think will be easiest for someone new to blogging.

Picking The Right Design For Your Blog

Once your blog is setup, you will notice it starts out with a very ugly, default template design. Luckily, these blogging platforms make it simple to change the look of your blog.

Don’t know a thing about web design?

Don’t worry! There are literally thousands and thousands of pre-designed wordpress templates free for download. You can easily find some real professional looking web designs very quickly.

First, find the theme you like. Here is the WP theme database. Or you can search google for other wordpress theme sites. There are endless amounts of them.

Now, installing the theme can be a little tricky but is easy to do once you have done it once. Instead of writing out the install process, check out this tutorial on how to install the theme you want to use.

Writing to Your Blog

Now that you have your design up, it’s time to start writing to your blog. There are two ways you can write to your blog – a post, or a page. A post is similar to a journal entry, while a page is good for things like contact info, author bio, etc. The post is what you should be using for your daily entries to your blog.

Top Tips For Blog Writing

Do not write long paragraphs. No one likes to read long things on the internet. Use no more than a few sentences per paragraph. Use lists as often as you can. <—this format is a list.
Add images to your posts – It’s good to have at least 1 image per post to keep them interesting. All text is boring, and gives people head aches!
Always Add Tags - It’s a good idea to always add tags to your posts. Some sites will categorize your post based on your tags. Tags are also a good way to add keywords to your posts. Just make sure the tags relate to your post!
Post Daily - You don’t have to do this, but if you post daily you will get a lot more traffic over time.
Always use header titles for breaking up your posts - Headers will make your posts easier to read, as well as add some search engine ranking benefits to your posts.

Promoting Your Blog and Getting Traffic To It

Traffic building is probably the most annoying part of blogging in my opinion. It is also the most labor intensive part of blogging for a lot of people.

Social bookmarking

This seems to work well with blogging sites. Here is a good site that will bookmark your sites to about 100 different social bookmarking sites. You do have to sign up for each site before hand, but it is definitely worth it. It will take less than an hour to sign up for all of them.

Guest blogging

Guest blogging is a great way to get traffic. Basically what you are doing is writing a blog post for someone else’s blog. Simply search google for blogs related to your niche. For instance, I run a web hosting blog so If I wanted to find another web hosting blog to possibly guest post on, I would search google for ‘web hosting blog’.

Keep in mind that not all blogs will allow you to guest post. Simply keep looking until you find one that accepts guest writing.

Commenting on other related blogs

This is another good source of traffic. Simply find blogs related to yours and comment on them. Add your blog URL to the comment (most blog software have an option for this when commenting). Always write quality comments. The best way to get traffic from other blogs is to write solid comments. The reader will think to him/herself that if this guy writes great comments like this, his blog must be awesome.

Writing vs Promoting your Blog

It is often difficult to partition your time for your blogging activities. I think the best portion of writing to promoting is 25/75. If you write one post a day, spend the rest of the day promoting your post, as well as promoting your main URL. It is a good idea to always link build and traffic build to particular posts on your blog, as well as your blog root URL – www.yourblog.com.

Have any questions? Feel free to ask them via comments. I will try my best to clear things up for you! Good luck blogging, and most of all KEEP AT IT!

Creating an internet marketing plan for your website and business.

Dan — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 23:10:30 +0000

For todays post I am shifting from web hosting a little bit. I want to talk about internet marketing – specifically how to develop a marketing plan for your website and business. The hardest internet marketing concept for me to grasp was how to properly link to your website and how to funnel targeted traffic to your sales pages. I hope that after you are done reading this post, you will have a better understanding of how to market your website and how to properly funnel traffic to the different areas throughout your network of websites, articles, and social bookmarks to make a sale.

Since the success of your website mostly depends on your internet marketing efforts, you should have a well developed plan or blue print on how to market your business products and services.

Most important tip: No one likes websites that sell things

The truth is, driving traffic to a website that is made solely to sell things(a business website) is quite difficult to do. It is even harder to get people to link to a website that sells things – after all, most products are not link worthy/interesting to write about. Unless of course the site linking to you gets something in exchange (affiliate sale).

So how do you get people to buy your products online?

What I have found to be the best way to drive traffic to your business website(or sales pages), is to make a ‘buffer website’. It is important that your buffer website has no sales pitch what so ever. A good buffer website is a website(blog, forum, wiki, etc) that is a hub for free, useful information and freebies.

I am going to use my web hosting business for example, since after all this is a web hosting blog. You may have noticed that this blog is full of free information and tools. You will find very little sales propaganda through the pages of my blog. However, my blog is setup to funnel traffic to my business website where I make the sale. When the user reads my free info I provided, it develops a level of trust and bond with the reader. Therefore, when I forward them to my sales pages, they are more willing to buy from me since I am seen as a ‘friend’ to them – after all, I just provided them with some useful information they didn’t know before.

I wrote an article awhile back on how a blog can drive sales to your business website. You should check it out for a better understanding of buffer sites.

OK. Now to the point – the marketing plan.

Below is a bubble map of how you should setup your websites in order to make the sale. This setup will work for almost every niche on the internet.

The arrows represent where you want to flow your traffic and link building efforts to.

Article Marketing

Write useful but incompletely articles. Word the articles so that they have to visit the site in the resource box of your article to get the finished information. For instance, if I were to write an article about green web hosting, I would say something like ‘green web hosting is somewhat new so there are few companies in the industry. The green web hosting market is completely untapped yada yada yada’. Then in the resource box you would say something like ‘[link]Check out my post about how to turn your web hosting company into a lean, mean, green machine![/link]‘.

You have just provided them with useful information – the green web hosting market is completely untapped. However, you have not said HOW to tap the market. In your resource box, they will know that in order to find out how to go green, they have to read another article that is on your blog or website.

Mini sites like Squidoo and Blogger

What I like to do is setup a couple mini sites that cover similar topics of my info and sales website. If we use web hosting as an example again, I would have my sales website(sells web hosting), my info/buffer site(useful info on web hosting), and a mini site(web hosting company reviews). I would setup the flow of traffic so that the mini sites send the traffic to my info site, and from there you go for the sales page.

Social Bookmarking

With social bookmarking you definitely want to avoid sales pitches at all cost. If you flow traffic directly from the SB to your sales site, I guarantee you that your visitor will leave within seconds. People on social websites are not looking to buy stuff(directly) but looking to be social and read and learn. To convert these people into sales, you need to send them straight to your info website first.

Forum Marketing

Forum marketing is a great way for instant visitors. It is possible to make sales directly from a forum board, but only in certain situations. You can probably get instant sales by posting ads within the forum where it is allowed. In most cases however, It is a good idea to setup your signature to flow the traffic to your info site first.

Word of Mouth

Word of mouth will generate much more quickly for a free and useful web site. A user will forward a friend to a website – ‘hey man I found this great webpage on how to market a website…check it out at http://whatever.com/’

Your Mailing List

You want to build up your list as much as you can from both your sales website and info website. Every time someone buys from you, add them to your mailing list. Every time someone is sent to your info website, try and capture their contact info to add them to your mailing list. Your mailing list is your friend. Be nice to your friend. Don’t send nothing but advertisements to your mailing list. Send them like 5 useful emails that direct them to your info website and on your 6th email, you can slip in a product or two.

The Complete Marketing Plan

By now you should have a general idea of how to flow traffic to your sales pages. However, in order to complete your marketing plan, you need to experiment. As I said before, this strategy will work in almost every niche around, but you need to practice. Figure out which traffic generation sources work the best for your niche and focus on those. Social bookmarking sucks for some people, while other people swear by it. It is just a matter of the niche you are in, and what the buying trends are. Just keep practicing!

Web Hosting Jargon – DNS Propagation

admin — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 00:25:42 +0000

Computer technology has evolved exponentially over the years, and all of the new technology requires new terminology so that geeks have an idea what other geeks are talking about. Some hosting terms are acronyms, others are initialisms, and a few are combinations of everyday speech with a little twist. Today we’re going to look at the meaning of DNS and DNS propagation.

DNS – DNS is short for Domain Name System, which is a fancy term for the link between the website you enter into your web browser (http://www.readysetconnect.com) and the actual machine that stores the website’s files. We discussed a portion of the intermediate step in our article on Name Servers, but today we’re going to go a little deeper.

All modern technology revolves around the two digits 0 and 1 in the form of binary code. Binary code can very often be deciphered by humans in simple terms, but trying to read or write in binary is near impossible. Saying “hello” would look like: 01101000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111. No one wants to read that, so our computers convert the digits to human-readable text. This makes our lives easier. The same process occurs when dealing with computer-to-computer communication.

All devices connected to the internet or some form of computer network are identified by a number called an IP address. For example, the IP of the computer you’re reading this article on is more than likely 127.0.0.1. But like binary, who wants to remember randomly and sometimes frequently-changing numbers just to visit a website? No one does, so the domain name system was created. DNS is the system that associates human-readable text (website addresses) with the number-based IP address of the remote computer. Instead of having to remember 209.85.171.100 when you want to visit Google, all you need to remember is Google.com. That’s much easier.

DNS Propagation – In our article on Name Servers we discussed the idea of a name server being equivalent to the listings of a telephone book. The name server is the machine that associates the name you remember and the address of the destination. DNS propagation is simply the time it takes for the new records of the name server and remote IP addresses to update on all computers. Thinking of our telephone book analogy, your friend may move to a new address, and it only takes you a minute to update your own phone book. While you may know the new address immediately, you will have to wait for the next round of phone books to ship from the phone company. This could be next week or, if the latest book just came out, as much as a year or two away. Fortunately, it only takes several hours for the changes to update for all computers on the internet, but the process is not instantaneous. Under normal conditions, it can take anywhere from 0 – 24 hours for all computers to be pointing to the same machine. So while you may be seeing that awesome new website you just posted, your friend down the street may have to wait a little while for his computer to update.

Web Hosting Jargon – Name Server

Dan — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 23:42:49 +0000

Ever feel like you’re talking to someone from a foreign country when all you want is a little help with your website? This series explains what some of the web hosting industry’s technical terms mean, so the next time you contact tech support you’ll feel like you’re talking to someone who lives a little closer to home. Today we’re going to look at the job of a name server.

Name Server – The internet is made up of millions of computers located all around the world. Life would be much easier if these computers all talked to each other and knew exactly what you intended when you click a link on a website or enter a web address. Due to the internet’s technical nature, this perfect world doesn’t exist, so some of the busy work is left up to you, the user.

Whenever you type in an internet address such as http://blog.readysetconnect.com, your computer has no idea what remote machine it has to connect to. There are millions out there, but where should it go? How should it get there? The solution to this problem is the real-world equivalent of a telephone book. Given a name, you can search a telephone book to find a person’s phone number, and in many cases their home address as well. The listing in the phone book and the concept of a name server are synonymous. The name server’s job is to point the user (or in this case, the computer) to the destination where the website can be found. If someone moves or changes his or her phone number, the entry in the telephone book must be updated.

So what does a name server do?

The name server acts as the link between the user’s computer and the remote destination in that it tells the computer where it needs to go. Your job, when setting up a website, is to enter the name server into the phone book. Normally this is accomplished at the domain registrar website (the place you used to register your domain). The registrar will give you the option to configure anywhere from one to four or more name servers. Usually you will enter two, however more adds redundancy. After you update the name server, it can take anywhere from 0 – 24 hours for the registry to update. Once everything is online, your computer will know where to go when accessing your website, assuming the name server is configured correctly. That’s usually something you don’t have to worry about, and your web host will be able to help you if you have any problems.

For more information on DNS propagation, check out this post.

The definition of web hosting – technical and layman definition

Dan — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 23:32:30 +0000

We’re going back to the basics today by defining what web hosting actually is. It’s actually quite hard to find a good definition of web hosting so I’m going to give you my technical definition. I will also give a couple good definitions that the layman can understand.

Every time someone asks me what it is that I do, I always have a hard time explaining to them what web hosting actually is. I always say something similar to:

ME: “I provide people with hard drive space on my web servers so that they can have their website online and viewable by other people.”

And almost always the persons’ response is “so you build websites or something?”

Then I will continue to go on for another couple minutes trying to find the best way to explain it to them until they eventually understand.

Help from other people to define web hosting

It was becoming apparent to me, that I was simply unable to provide a good explanation to the layman as to what web hosting really was. I guess my explanations have become tainted by years of working in the web hosting industry – too much jargon and I was assuming too much when describing to the person my job.

So I decided to get some help at www.webhostingtalk.com and I got some great definitions that are much easier to understand than mine.

“Providing websites a home to live.”
“Space for your sites on the internet.”
“A business that allows customers to operate their own website without having to have their own computer running 24/7″
“I have a computer that displays websites online. Customers pay to put their site on my computer so that their sites display online.”

It’s funny to me that there are so many ways to describe web hosting, some ways a lot more efficient than others. I think the above 4 definitions are the easiest to understand regardless of the persons background with website development/internet.

Got a better definition for web hosting?

Please share your definition with us. I am always looking for different ways to define my field of expertise that is simple for newbies to understand.

The Importance of Scripting Languages – Sample PHP Tutorials

Dan — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 22:38:24 +0000

Whether you spend your day working fulltime as a web server administrator, or you like to host a simple website on a spare computer in your basement, one of the best ways to increase your productivity and develop very useful tools is to write programs called scripts. Scripts are normally short, high-level computer programs that are easy to write and let you accomplish a wide range of objectives, from automating tedious tasks to increasing interaction between different programs on your computer.

Determining the best scripting language for you may depend on what languages are available on your given system. Some languages are very easy and let you accomplish many things with one line of code, whereas others are more verbose, yet more powerful. The language you choose is entirely up to you, and I recommend exploring several different languages before you start to dig in on one.

Over the next few weeks we’re going to cover many tutorials on different types of scripts you can write. We’ll provide the sample code in different languages like PHP and Ruby, so you can get a good idea on how each language works. Below are a few, short scripts written in PHP that let you easily add some cool functionality to your website. If your server or computer has PHP functionality, simply copy this code into a file with a “.php” extension to test it out!

Add a Random Quote to Your Website

This sample code will read in a random quote from iheartquotes.com, and print that quote on your website. To change the type of quote, go to http://www.iheartquotes.com and select a category name. Update the section of the code that reads $src = “albert_enstein”; by replacing albert_einstein with your new category, and then updating the line that reads “A random quote from Albert Einstein

”; with your category’s name.


";
echo nl2br(file_get_contents("http://www.iheartquotes.com/api/v1/random?source=$src"));
?>

Quickly Count the Lines of a File

This sample code will read a file and count the number of lines. This code works with text files on your computer, or with web pages. Simply change the Web Hosting Blog address to point to either a text file on the internet or on your computer.

Although short, these two scripts show how easy it can be to add a lot of functionality to your set of tools with relatively little code. We will post in-depth code samples in the coming weeks.

No related posts.

Hosting your website off your home PC. Is a personal web server a good idea?

Dan — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 00:54:07 +0000

I’m willing to bet that when you started your first website you got the idea, at least once, to save money by hosting your website on your home PC and internet connection. Starting a personal web server to host your website of your home computer has always been an interesting idea to me…but is it a good idea?

Be prepared to learn a lot!
If you really want to go through with starting a web server on your own you better be prepared to learn a lot and also spend a lot of time testing. In all honesty, if you know nothing about web servers I highly suggest you give up and go with a cheap but reputable web hosting service.

A headache and a half!
When I first setup a personal web server at my house it took me roughly 2 weeks to figure everything out like installing Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, configuring PHP to work with MySQL, etc. I cannot tell you how many times during those 2 weeks I was tempted to throw my server out the window and say to hell with it.

Your ISP might not be equipped to host a website from.

Even if you have the fastest DSL or cable connection you might not have enough power to host your own website. When running a web server, download speed is not important at all. The main factor to serving out fast web pages is your connections’ upload speed. The fact is that cable and DSL usually have crappy upload speed and throughput. Not only that but some ISPs even have clauses in their terms of service that customers are not allowed to host websites from their home connection.

The cost of leaving your computer on 24 hours a day.

Even though I stopped using my home server a long time ago, I still leave on my personal computer 24 hours a day. I have calculated that leaving one computer on 24 hours a day costs roughly $20/month (depending on your computer specs). So if you are used to leaving your computer running 12 hours a day, you will be pumping out an extra $10/m just to host it yourself.

Other factors may hinder you -

If you are behind a router you will find it even more difficult to setup a web server. Another thing that doesn’t come with a home web server is an experienced server administrator. You risk getting your computer hacked into if you don’t work on security.

The fact is: it’s cheaper to go with a professional web hosting service.

Let’s do some simple calculations here. Plan to spend atleast 40 hours working to get your server setup and configured properly. We take 40 hours x $7 (minimum wage) – $280. Now lets add in the extra $10/m it will cost to pay for the extra electricity being used by your computer that is now on 24/7.

So to run your own web server from home you are looking at paying $10/m + $280 for the time you spent figuring it all out.

Now lets use a plan from my web hosting company as an example:

For $6.95/m you get a web hosting plan that can provide way more than your personal computer could – 15GB disk space, 200GB bandwidth, and support for any scripting languages you could need. Not to mention your home computer won’t be able to stand up to a professionals’ hardware.

As you can see, hosting your website from a home web server is actually quite difficult to do. It takes a lot of skill and experience to configure the required services that a web server needs. Not only is it difficult to do, but it also costs more money to do it yourself. A cheap web hosting service can provide you a better service for a cheaper rate than you could do with your own setup.

LOL @ Free reseller hosting plans and free dedicated server requests

Dan — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 03:32:10 +0000

While most of my experience is the paid web hosting sector, lately I have been reading up on free web hosting because of the free hosting company I started – 0bones.com. Now I thought that some requests for paid hosting plans were ridiculous, but if you want a real laugh, keep an eye on the hosting request forums at freewebspace.net

Free reseller hosting plans – I feel sorry for your customers!

When I first saw a request for a free reseller plan I almost died laughing. The guy wanted a reseller plan with something like 50GB disk space and 100GB of data transfer for free. Not only that, but he wanted to be able to provide his clients with shell access(say goodbye to that server!).

How could anyone feel safe knowing that their whole reseller business relies on the whims of the free hosting service that is providing it. I’m all for people trying to make some money off of selling something they got for free, but this is just over the line. Why?

Paid reseller plans are hard enough to offer – paid reseller plans are highly resource intensive…especially when the reseller starts adding more and more accounts to his reseller plan. Now, imagine being crammed onto a server with hundreds of free reseller plans on it.

Want to hear something even funnier? The guy asking for that ridiculous free reseller plan actually got a couple offers. While there were some strings attached, the plan was free none the less. I thought to myself…no way this is viable. 2 months later I checked out the company that offered him it and sure enough I was met with the ‘This page is not found’ error (the company went out of business).

Onto the idea of a free dedicated server.

Contrary to what you might think, a free dedicated server is actually more realistic than free reseller plans. In fact, I have provided many clients with free dedicated servers in the past and our trade off was very successful. I was able to procure many new customers by sponsoring large communities with dedicated servers. That being said, if you have nothing to offer the provider giving you the free server (traffic, branding, etc.) than forget about the idea of getting it free.

I remember seeing someone request a free dedicated server awhile back to host a bunch of game servers on. Needless to say, no one offered him anything. Why? Because what does the server provider get out of it? Maybe a few extra hits of untargeted traffic worth maybe $1 a month at max.

While the idea of getting a free reseller plan is just absurd (and a bad idea), the possibility of getting a free dedicated server is much greater. You just have to be able to provide the company giving you the free server something in return. Remember the saying – ‘nothing is free in this world’. Well it especially proves true with web hosting. No one gives away resources that cost money unless they profit from it somehow.

Phone support: do you require a web host to provide toll free tech support?

Dan — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 00:19:48 +0000

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

I am interested in what you all think about web hosting and toll free phone tech support. I grew up in the age of information technology where email and text messaging are the ‘in’ thing. In my opinion, voice to voice communication is slowly losing its popularity due to the ease of sending an email or text message.

Do you require a web hosting provider to offer phone support?

I created this post to get a poll of what people think about the importance of providing phone support. I am still drawn 50/50 whether phone support is required these days – especially for internet based operations like a web hosting business.

I can think of some PROS from both the customer and company perspective:

Phone support is quick – Phone support provides instant communication between the client and support technician (unless you get put on hold!). No need to wait for email replies.
Easier to explain yourself – It is certainly much easier to express yourself/problem over the phone. Sometimes type can’t get the proper message across.
More personal – Phone support is more personal which makes a tech more willing to go the extra mile to help you/less willing to disappoint you. It also helps develop a personal relationship between the client and company.
Customer retention – its harder to leave a personalized website hosting service compared to a web hosting company that has no idea that you exist.

There are some CONS – but mostly for the web hosting service provider.

Increases hosting plan price – Phone support is more costly than your standard email/ticking support options. This leads to higher hosting plan prices.
No records – There is no record of what is being said on the phone. While with support tickets you can go back and look at the text to get the information you need instead of having to re-ask the person over the phone.
Ties up the support technician - The support tech must give you 100% of his/her attention while on the phone. This means he/she is unavailable to help other customers. Email/ticketing allows the support tech to knock out multiple problems at the same time.
Language barriers – It can be hard to understand the person you are talking to if they are speaking to you in a 2nd language. Also accents can make it hard to understand what is being said.
Technical Jargon – try saying a URL like this over the phone http://0bones.com/discussion.php?d=10010300000000000011

I can also see phone support being more crucial for different types of web hosting services.

For example, I would never sign up for a dedicated hosting service that does not offer phone support. There is nothing worse than sitting behind your computer waiting for a support technician to reply to your email as to why your server is down. Shared and reseller hosting services, in my opinion, are less likely to require phone technical support because most of the issues that arise are routine and can be fixed with a mouse click or two.

While there are certainly many PROS to offering phone support for your web hosting business, there are equally just as many CONS that weigh evenly.

Please help me make up my mind with your votes and comments!

Free webmaster tools – website speed test, keyword checker, keyword density, & PageRank checker

Dan — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 03:08:21 +0000

I have added some webmaster related tools to The Web Hosting Blog that I think you will find useful throughout your day-to-day life as a webmaster. There are currently 5 tools available but will be releasing more as soon as I find suitable scripts for various website tasks. Included so far are:

Website Speed Tester – Check the download speeds of websites. Great for comparing connection speeds of web hosting providers on your list of selections.
Google PageRank and Alexa Rank Checker – a tool great for checking a website’s Google Page Rank and Alexa Rank. Perfect solution for if you are on a computer that don’t have the tool bars installed.
Keyword Density Checker – Check a page for the amount of times certain keywords appear. Great for proper keyword density placement.
Keyword Suggestion Tool – Great for finding some alternative keywords for your website. Remember it is good to have a wide range of keywords related to your niche to get optimal traffic from the search engines!
Search Engine Placement Checker – Finding your placement in search engines is a time consuming, annoying process. Use this script to automatically search for your placement in the top 100 results of popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

These webmaster tools are completely free for you to use. If you like them, please bookmark us and come back!