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Blogs need traffic to survive. Traffic can bring advertising revenue, new leads, sales, and a host of other benefits. That’s why so many bloggers work hard to come up with excellent, appealing blog content and to promote it aggressively to get as many hits as possible.

We all strive to publish those posts that go viral. These are the posts that catch fire and earn thousands of ReTweets and Facebook shares and hit the front page of a site like ReddIt. Granted, having a post go viral is something like catching lightning in a bottle, but if you keep trying and keep doing the right things, it can happen for you.

Of course, when it does happen, you want to be prepared. When blog posts go viral, the traffic tends to come in surges. Your viral post might get thousands of hits in a matter of minutes, and that puts a heavy strain on your web host. If you don’t have the right hosting in place, your website will crash, and your viral post will die before it has a chance to reach its full potential.

Why Your Hosting Matters

If you plan on aggressively promoting your blog and you want to get as much traffic as possible, you’d better make sure you have a good web host. Your hosting is absolutely an integral element to your viral marketing success.

Here’s why:

• Viral success is hard to come by—Like I said earlier, having a post go viral is like catching lightning in a bottle. It might not happen often, and you can never be totally sure when it will happen. So, you have to make the most of these opportunities whenever they arise. Having a solid web host will help.
• If your site is down, most visitors won’t come back—If you have a post suddenly spread like wildfire but then your website crashes, it will be one big FAIL. If a visitor arrives to a site that’s down, the chances of him or her returning are very, very slim.
• If your site crashes, you need a host that offers fast service—In the event that your site does crash, your choice of hosting provider will really matter. You have to make sure you have a hosting service that will be available to give you customer support to help you get your site back up as quickly as possible.

Choosing the Right Web Host for Blog Marketing

So, with all that in mind, how can you make sure you choose the right web host to support your viral marketing efforts? Here are some tips to help you out.

• Avoid free hosting services—With free hosting, you get what you pay for, which means your hosting will be very limited. The simple truth is that most free hosting services are not setup to accommodate large spikes in traffic.
• Find a hosting company with excellent customer service—Make sure you choose a hosting company with a sterling reputation for providing excellent customer service. 24/7 customer support and fast response times are absolutely essential.
• Consider dedicated hosting—With the typical shared hosting plan, your website is sharing a server with hundreds of other websites. So if your site sees a big bump in traffic, the already-taxed server may not be able to handle it. With dedicated hosting, you get your own dedicated server, which better positions your website for traffic spikes.

Are you confident that your website would stay up if you had a blog post go viral? Share your thoughts by commenting below.

The post Can Your Web Host Handle Traffic from a Viral Blog Post? appeared first on Web Hosting Directory: Hosting Reviews, Articles and Hosting Guides.

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As a web entrepreneur, you need to stay on top of the latest industry trends and information. Whether you resell website hosting, buy and sell domains, provide consulting services or operate as an Internet marketer, it’s important to keep your costs down so you can maximize profits.

One way to do that is to have a clear understanding of how many websites you really need. In this post we’ll take a look at what’s on your web server from a business perspective and how you can maximize your return on investment.

How Many Domains Do You Currently Own?

The first step is to understand what you actually have on hand. How many domain names are currently in your portfolio? Of those, how many of them are actual websites vs. registered domain names?

With the proliferation of one-click ordering from services such as Hostgator and GoDaddy, it’s easier than ever to order $10 domains as quickly as you can think of them. I often do this, thinking the domain name I came up with will be a great website or an opportunity to flip later for a profit. But over time these purchases can add up considerably.

For example, with over 30 domains in my account my annual domain costs are over $300. While I purchased some of those names on behalf of clients, most of them are for my personal use. After conducting an audit of what was actually in use vs. simply “out there”, I realized an opportunity to realize significant savings just by letting some of my unused domains expire.

Turn Off Auto-Renew

One of the best things you can do whenever you register a new domain name is turn off the Auto-Renew feature offered by your domain name provider. While this feature is critical for your income-producing websites, it isn’t necessary for domain names you are simply holding over time in your portfolio.

Turning off the auto-renew feature for unused domain names will force you to consider whether or not a given domain is really worth holding on to for another year. If you’ve already held onto a cool name for a year perhaps it’s time to put it up for sale or let it go on the expiration date.

Market Research Always Beats Impulse Purchases

When it comes to setting up a website or reserving a domain name, it’s always best to first research what the market wants and then tailor your domain names accordingly. If you do think of a snappy two-word domain name (most of them are already taken), do some keyword research before you pull the trigger on that Buy Now button.

If people are currently searching the keywords featured in your domain name, you probably have a winner. Just be sure you have a follow up plan to actually use the domain, or face the fact that you are incurring what may be an unnecessary expense.

Website ROI

Now that you know how many domains are in your portfolio, how many are actual websites? How many are income producers? How many require regular maintenance? What are their usage stats? How many are collecting dust on your server? What does all of this really cost you in hosting, management fees and your own time? What sort of return do you need to make to justify the investment?

When you reach this point, a decision grid can help you objectively evaluate all of your sites. This is a spreadsheet listing all of your domains and their associated criteria. Assign a value to each entry, and then add up the points to ascertain each site’s relative value to you from a business perspective.

This will give you a broad yet useful quantitative measure to decide whether or not it makes sense to continue supporting a given website.

Keep Your Emotions In Check

The best part about creating a decision grid is that it helps you focus purely on the business aspects of your various websites. No matter how cool you think a site is, if it’s draining cash, it’s draining cash. Of course you can keep it even if it costs money, but at least you’ll know where your profits lie without letting your emotions get in the way.

Make Your Decision

Once you’ve gathered all of your information and conducted a thorough analysis you’ll be able to decide which websites you really need and which ones you can let go. And by keeping your emotions in check you’ll make the best decision for your business.

The post How Many Websites Do You Really Need? appeared first on Web Hosting Directory: Hosting Reviews, Articles and Hosting Guides.

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When you are starting a new website, there are a lot of decisions to make. In addition to web design and content, one of the single most important things you will need to decide on is who is going to host your website. The success of your entire project is going to depend on having a good host, so it is worthwhile to take a little time to research and to learn what you can about your web hosting options. It is also a good idea to learn about and dispel some of the myths that surround the world of website hosting.

There are a number of different myths about website hosting companies and taking the time to explore the facts and understand the fictions is a great first step in choosing the right hosting company for your site. Here are five hosting myths to be aware of to get you started on your research:

Any web hosting company will work just fine

If you want your website to be successful, the web hosting company has to be reliable. You don’t want your pages to load slowly, connections to be dropped or your site to be down when customers come to visit. Choosing a reliable hosting company that can handle traffic and that has a plan to avoid down time is important to making sure your site can actually be reached by customers or clients.

Using a free web hosting company is a great way to save money

With a free website hosting company, the reliability you get is equal to what you pay for. Your site may not be up all the time and the free host may not have an obligation to you to make sure things work well. You may also be limited in what domain names you can choose with a free web host, which means that you won’t necessarily be able to pick the appropriate web address for your business. Finally, free web hosting companies may have advertising or other issues that make your site look less professional to visitors.

You should always host your website with the company you register your domain name with

While you can host your website with the company that you get your domain name from, you don’t have to. In fact, there is really no reason to assume that these two things have to be linked. Instead, you are better off looking at price, quality, reputation and a host of other factors when choosing both a registration company and a web host and picking the best company in each category.

Data does not need to be backed up

No matter how good your web host is, you want to have your data and information backed up. Ultimately, it is your responsibility to safeguard your data and you are the one who will suffer the most of data is lost that has not been properly baked up.

Account specs are pretty much the same from host to host

Different web hosts offer different specifications and features and there can be a big difference in what you are paying. Pay attention to both bandwidth and disc space that you get with web hosts you are considering and be sure to choose a host that offers you enough of each. In many cases, it is ideal if your bandwidth and disc space are unlimited.

The post 5 Web Hosting Myths You Need to Know appeared first on Web Hosting Directory: Hosting Reviews, Articles and Hosting Guides.

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Recently I decided to switch Web hosting companies (again — I don’t seem to have much luck with them). I agonized over the decision. One of my concerns at the time was that I’d heard hosting overseas could hurt your SEO efforts. So I wanted to stick to hosting companies in the U.S. where I’m located. There was one problem. Only one company I found would allow me to customize my package to the degree that I wanted to. And that company was in Canada (given, not technically “overseas” but still international hosting).

I did some further research and found that feedback about the SEO pitfalls of hosting overseas varied greatly. There really wasn’t much agreement about how bad it could potentially be for rankings. I decided to give it a try and see what happened. And I’m happy to say my sites have seen no ill effects whatsoever from hosting in another country and some have even improved their rankings.

While hosting in another country clearly isn’t guaranteed to tank your search engine rankings, there are some legitimate concerns to keep in mind. There are also things you can do to minimize any potential risk. Let’s talk about both of those things.

Potential Problems with Overseas Hosts

Here are two of the biggest reasons why people worry that overseas hosting might hurt their rankings.

1. If you host your website in a country other than where your target visitors are, your site will load more slowly; Google takes loading times into consideration in site rankings. In my case there wasn’t much difference between hosting in Toronto or Texas, but for longer distances it could be a problem. You might overcome that by optimizing the site for speed in other ways.
2. Search engines may factor the location into rankings based on your site’s IP address. (Note that this is especially true if you use a general TLD — .com, .net, etc. — as country-specific TLDs can counteract this affect when targeting a local audience.)

How to Avoid Ranking Drops with Overseas Hosts

Keep your search rankings high, even with overseas hosting. – Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

Even if overseas hosting might slightly affect your search engine rankings negatively, there are some things you can do to overcome that.

1. Choose your geographic target in Google’s Webmaster Tools if you have a general TLD. You might have a bigger chance that your IP address will play a role if your site doesn’t tell search engines of its geographic target in other ways. This is one way you can do that for Google.
2. Include a physical address on your website. These are increasingly considered when showing results targeted to a search engine user’s location.
3. Build incoming links from sites in your target country to emphasize the fact that you’re targeting that country’s audience.
4. Make sure support is available when you need them (different time zones and language barriers can cause problems). This way you can quickly address speed and downtime issues with your host before they have a chance to negatively impact your site.
5. Make sure your domain name is country-specific when appropriate, even if hosting the site elsewhere. Using a ccTLD is another way to tell search engines where your target visitors are located, regardless of where your site’s servers are based.

Remember that “overseas” hosting is relative. The concern is when you host overseas from where your target audience is more than overseas based on your own location. For example, if you live in the U.S. but target a U.K. audience, an overseas U.K. host might actually be your better option.

Have you hosted websites overseas? What challenges did it pose? What benefits did you get out of it? Did you notice any negative impact on your search engine rankings? Why do you think that happened (or didn’t)? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

The post Will an Overseas Host Hurt Your Site’s Rankings? appeared first on Web Hosting Directory: Hosting Reviews, Articles and Hosting Guides.

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Are you looking for your first Web hosting company for your business, or maybe looking to move from an older shared hosting account? Moving to a new host can be a hassle, so you’ll want to find one that can grow with your business and hosting needs.

That’s where hosts like KnownHost.com come in. They offer a wide range of managed hosting options so you can continually get the resources you need as those needs increase. And you can spend more of your own time focused on your business, letting KnownHost’s experts help you take care of the technical side of things.

Features

Here are some of the features of KnownHost’s managed hosting packages.

Control Panel:With VPS and dedicated servers you can manage your accounts using cPanel, Plesk, or DirectAdmin.

Uptime:KnownHost guarantees a network uptime of 99.9%.

Support:KnownHost.com offers 365/24/7 support to customers through its forums, Helpdesk, and email. There doesn’t appear to be a published phone number for technical support.

KnownHost Pros

KnownHost offers a variety of hosting solutions which makes them ideal for growing businesses. You can start out on a shared plan or managed VPS, and later move to a hybrid server or dedicated server as your resource needs increase. They even handle these transfers and upgrades for you with no downtime for your websites.

The company is U.S.-based and they use three datacenters — in Texas, New Jersey, and California. They offer some of the more affordable VPS packages on the market, yet they provide the software you would expect — Virtuozzo, cPanel, Plesk, DirectAdmin, etc.

As for support, the company prides itself on proactive measures to keep servers running smoothly (and I can tell you from experience with other hosts that this is extremely important). That means you won’t suffer with slow sites or downtime due to poor server maintenance. WebHosting-Directory.org’s owner has personal experience with KnownHost.com, and he has been very satisfied with their customer support.

KnownHost Cons

The biggest downside I’ve come across with KnownHost.com is that they don’t advertise a technical support phone number or live chat. Personally I don’t like waiting for emails or forum posts for basic support inquiries from my hosting companies, and I prefer to speak to a live person. But if you’re alright with that, the 24/7 support that they do offer will probably satisfy most needs.

The only other downside I’ve come across is minor, and only applies to those customers looking to start with a shared hosting plan. While the company does offer shared hosting solutions, it’s not easy to find this information on the website. For example, while VPS, hybrid, and dedicated server information can be found right in the main navigation, you have to dig down to the bottom of the home page to see a mention of shared hosting accounts. And even then the information is hidden until you click the “Read more” link there. I can understand that shared hosting isn’t their primary service. But it would be nice to see this information advertised in a slightly clearer way for those looking for it.

In Conclusion

KnownHost is a definite contender for anyone who needs a VPS or dedicated server. With those, and hybrid, options available, they’re sure to have a managed hosting package that can meet all of your resource usage needs.

*Information in this review was valid at the time of writing – December 2012.

Disclaimer:This post contains affiliate links. The author is not directly compensated by the inclusion of these links, and earns the same regardless of writing a positive or negative review. Web Hosting Directory prides itself on providing objective information and hosting reviews to help readers choose the best hosting provider for their needs.

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When you are starting your own website, the first decision you are going to need to make is your domain name. Your domain name is the name that customers are going to use to find you. It needs to be memorable, relevant to your business or service and right for your company.  Making a mistake in choosing a domain name can get your website off to a bad start, and you should always do a little research and think carefully about the decision on the domain so you can make the right choice.

There are a lot of things to think about when selecting the domain for your site, but here are a few simple tips that can get you on the right path to picking the perfect domain:

• Keep your domain name simple. While you might be tempted to use puns, add numbers of double letters, or use other fancy language, you want your domain name to be as simple and straightforward as possible. This will make it easier to remember and easier for people to type in.
• Keep it short and sweet. The total length of your domain name can be as long as 67 characters. However, you do not want to make your domain name long since people will have a harder time remembering it and a harder time finding you when searching the website.
• Get advice. When you are thinking about a domain name, you may want to ask for some advice. Customers, marketing experts, friends and family can all give insight into what they think would be a good domain name. You might get some ideas you never thought of and find the perfect domain name, or they might give you some key feedback on why a domain you are considering won’t work.
• Consider the extension. The extension is the three letters at the end of the address (.com, .net, .org and so on). Because .com is the most widely used and most popular extension, many people will automatically assume that a website has a .com address. This means that you may be better off picking a .com. Although the first choice domain name you want may be taken when picking a .com, it is still better in most cases to pick a different domain name. Otherwise, if you kept that preferred name and just switched to .net, someone might be directed to the other .com website if they paid attention only to the first part of your name and put in the wrong extension.
• Avoid any copyright concerns.  You don’t want to choose a domain name that is copyrighted, trademarked or that belongs to another company. This could result in intellectual property litigation and annoying hassles if the company who owns the copyright decides that they want you to stop using their name.
• Pick a domain that is relevant to your business. If you want to use your company or brand name, for example, customers would be more easily able to find you. You could also pick something that describes what you do or that helps people to find your particular type of business. Picking a relevant domain name that has a direct connection to your business is far better than picking an unrelated domain name, no matter how clever, because this would make it harder for people to find you or to know what you do.

By following these basic tips, you can pick the right domain name that is memorable, that helps customers find you on the website, and that can help your business to grow.

The post Simple Tips for Choosing the Best Domain appeared first on Web Hosting Directory: Hosting Reviews, Articles and Hosting Guides.

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Whether you’re preparing to launch your first website or you’re interested in changing hosts (due to problems or growth greater than your existing plan can handle), it’s important to compare Web hosting companies. Never simply sign up because an offer looks too good to be true. You should always know your options.

While Web hosting companies and hosting plans can look similar on the surface, many factors are varied from technical support to resource allocation. And not all hosting plans can accommodate the same kinds of sites.

To help you pick the right Web hosting company for your website’s needs, here are five things you should do.

1. Look at both positive and negative reviews.

You can find negative reviews of almost any Web host. So don’t let some negative feedback worry you too much. It’s more important to see what people are complaining about and then decide how important that factor is to you. Also look for positive reviews (and not solely from review sites profiting by referring you to hosting companies). Decide what things are most important to you — maybe knowledgeable and speedy tech support — and look for companies that do those things well.

2. Browse the support forums for a better picture.

Test their tech support before becoming a customer. – Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

When looking at a host’s website, go beyond the package details and sales information. Look at how information is provided for existing customers too. The knowledgebase, support forums, and online documentation can tell you a lot about how much a company cares about its customers.

3. Contact each company you’re considering.

Come up with a list of questions for each hosting package you’re considering (things that aren’t well-documented on their site for example). Call them. See how long you have to wait before a support representative answers the phone. See how well they can answer your questions. Also make sure you talk to the support department — not just the sales department. Some companies are known for being responsive to get your business, but they’re harder to get a hold of once they have your money.

4. Know your requirements.

It’s vital that you know what you need before looking at hosts. Don’t see “unlimited” offers and assume that company can handle your high traffic website for example. While some features are “unlimited” there are limits on other things (like CPU usage). You’ll reach those limits long before you use large amounts of the supposedly unlimited resources. For a single new blog, those oversold unlimited plans can be fine. But if you have an established site, know exactly what resource requirements you have before switching to a new hosting company. Only then can you compare apples to apples when looking at things like features and rates.

5. See how many sites are on their servers.

If you’re considering shared hosting, do some further research. Find sites that are already hosted with each company (maybe from someone who referred them to you). Do an IP lookup for that site to get the IP address of the server the site is hosted on. Then do a reverse IP lookup online to see all of the sites hosted on that server. Compare the number to other hosts you’re considering. Some oversellers put obscene numbers of sites on shared servers and are known for more frequent downtime as a result.

Choosing a Web hosting company doesn’t have to be difficult. But moving your sites isn’t something you likely want to do on a frequent basis, so you should make those decisions carefully. Never fall for the sales hype without digging deeper into each offer. Find out what each host’s strengths and weaknesses are by seeing what others have to say about them. No Web hosting company is perfect. But with a bit of planning and careful choosing, you may be able to find the one that’s perfect for you.

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When comparing shared hosting options, what do you look for? Do you want open access to support whenever you need it? Do you want to be able to host an unlimited number of small sites without setting up different accounts? Do you want one-click installations of your favorite CMS or blogging platform? You can get all of that and more if you know where to look. One such option is WebHostingHub.com, which is associated with InMotion Hosting. Learn more about them below.

Features

Here are some key features of hosting packages offered by WebHostingHub.com:

Control Panel: Your control panel with WebHostingHub.com accounts is cPanel.

Uptime: In an answer to their community questions, a WebHostingHub.com representative notes that third party reporting shows 99.98% uptime for their servers. There is no uptime guarantee however.

Support: WebHostingHub.com offers 24/7 support via phone, live chat, and email in addition to offering a thorough online knowledgebase and community where you can review past customer questions or ask your own.

† The $4.95 per month rate requires a three-year up front payment. Two-year and one-year plans are also available at a higher per-month cost.

WebHostingHub.com Pros

WebHostingHub.com targets DIY webmasters and bloggers. They say their goal is “to provide you with a no hassle, no strings attached hosting service at a great price with above par support.” For the most part, that seems to be the case.

For example, WebHostingHub.com offers a wide array of support options for hosting customers. You can contact them 24/7 via phone, email, or live chat for example. And 24/7 phone support is something I consider a must-have in a hosting provider. They also have an online support center that offers a wide array of tutorials on everything from transferring domain names to managing the email accounts you host. You can even access a customer community to review past questions or ask your own of other customers and support staff.

As for the “no hassle” and “great price” parts of their mission, WebHostingHub.com also seems to deliver. While their prices aren’t the lowest you’ll find for shared hosting (starting at $4.95 per month for new customers), their prices are very low for the level of access you get to their support staff. That’s something I consider well worth the cost.

To make your life easier as a site owner, WebHostingHub.com offers one-click installations of popular content management systems like WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. So again, they live up to their mission, making it easy for the DIY crowd to get a website online quickly and easily.

Now we have to cover a topic I know some readers are torn on — “unlimited” resources. Some consider this a pro, and others a con. Essentially certain resources are deemed “unlimited,” but others (generally tucked into a host’s TOS) are limited. So you’re never actually able to use any resource to an unlimited level. That would be physically and technically impossible.

On the plus side, if you have several small sites that you’d like to run and you don’t expect them to be resource-intensive, a shared host with these “unlimited” site offerings could be good for you. You won’t be limited by the number of domains you happen to tie to the account. While I now use dedicated resources for my own large network of sites and blogs, I actually started out with a similar “unlimited” hosting account, and it served me well for years.

WebHostingHub.com Cons

Now we have to look at the other side of “unlimited” shared hosting. In this case that includes websites you can host, bandwidth, and disk space. For some readers this is automatically a no-go because offering “unlimited” resources generally means the host is overselling the resources of the server.

That’s done so a host can maximize revenue per server, because not all customers on each server will use all of the resources otherwise allotted to them. In this case, the TOS don’t mention specific limits on things like CPU. But they do note that “scripts should complete execution in 1-2 seconds at most” and that “database queries must also complete quickly, and databases should not be larger than is appropriate in a shared environment.” Personally I’d like to see some specifics here in the terms. People should know exactly what they’re getting before they pay any host.

I do take issue somewhat with one part of the company’s stated mission. That’s where they claim there are no strings attached. I know this is a matter of opinion, but I consider anything other than offering month-to-month services to have strings attached in the hosting industry. With WebHostingHub.com it appears that you have to order hosting for 1, 2, or 3 years at a time. When you don’t know the exact limits of an account, you have to pay for a year or more up front, and the company reserves the right to cancel that account without a refund if they claim you violated those non-specific terms, that’s a problem.

They do offer a 90-day money back guarantee. But in those same terms, they also say the opposite:

“Company may (but is not obligated to) refund to You all pre-paid fees for basic hosting services for the full months remaining after effectiveness of cancellation….”

You can’t have it both ways, so I’d like to see their TOS edited to reflect a single policy upon cancellation. You should also note that when you request the cancellation of your account, the hosting company doesn’t consider that request to be effective until 30 days after its received, at the earliest.

My final issue with WebHostingHub.com has to do with the way they advertise their prices — or more specifically, the way they don’t advertise their prices. It’s bad form to try to sign customers up for something before you tell them how much it costs. Yet I couldn’t find detailed hosting pricing information without clicking the “get started” button, which takes you to a sign-up page. Before that, all you can see is the price of their 3-year plan mentioned on the homepage (without any mention that it requires a 3-year commitment — not even in fine print on that page). Even on the sign-up page, prices only appear after a form to collect customer information.

The pricing issue gets even worse. The fact that your price will go up after the first year (or first order period) is tucked away in the fine print below the section where you choose your package and enter your payment details. Again, this should be much more transparent. I also noticed that the company opts you into a backup service which adds $12 per year to your order. Under no circumstances is it okay to opt customers into an add-on service. Customers should be able to opt into a premium service if they want it. They should never be forced to opt out.

In Conclusion

WebHostingHub.com might be worth considering if you’re looking for an “unlimited” shared hosting account and easy setups for your new sites. That said, I’d love to see the company make some improvements to their own website moving forward to increase transparency on their pricing before pushing people to an order page and more specifically address resource limitations and the discrepancy regarding their refund policy in their TOS.

Note: Information in this review was valid at the time of writing — December 2012. Prices may have since changed. Please visit the hosting company’s website for the most current information on pricing and features.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. The author is not directly compensated by the inclusion of these links, and earns the same regardless of writing a positive or negative review. Web Hosting Directory prides itself on providing objective information and hosting reviews to help readers choose the best hosting provider for their needs.

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When it comes to choosing the right Web hosting company, one of the biggest considerations is technical support. You don’t want to be left with your sites offline for hours or even days while you try to reach your host’s support department. That’s why 24/7 support is so important.

Even more important are the support options available to you. The more the better. Sometimes you need to speak with a person directly to get a quick answer to a question. At other times you’ll be too busy for a call or live chat session, so you want to know that you can send an email and get good support that way too. InMotion Hosting is a great example of a host that covers all the bases in the support department.

Features

Here are some of the features of KnownHost’s managed hosting packages.

Control Panel: InMotion Hosting accounts use the cPanel control panel.

Uptime: InMotion Hosting offers 99.9% uptime on its servers.

Support: InMotion Hosting offers an impressive array of technical support options, including 24/7 phone, email, and live chat support.

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Sign Up For Hosting

After you register your domain name, the first step to get your website live is to signup with a hosting company. Many domain registration companies also offer hosting packages, but sometimes it’s good to keep them separate. For example, I register all my domains with GoDaddy but host with MidPhase. Most of my websites are WordPress blogs, and for the money and service MidPhase is great. But it all depends on what you need your hosting provider to do.

Set Your Name Servers

Once your hosting is in place you can login and set your name servers. Name servers, also called DNS or “Domain Name Servers” are programs that translate names from one form into another. Website addresses are actually numeric, and name servers translate them into words that humans can better remember and understand, such as directoryjournal.com.

Get An Email Host

You’ll also need to setup an email account for your website. This is often accomplished through your hosting provider, but can also be done through a webmail service such as Gmail or Yahoo. The only drawback with using webmail services is that you have to use their website address. By setting up your own email hosting, you can have an email address that maps back to your domain name, such as john@greatsite.com. Hosting companies also provide turnkey email services which provide total control over your email including email forwarding, list management, email filters, anti-virus protection and autoresponders.

Setup Auto-Renew On Your Domain

Most website hosting companies provide a domain name “Auto-Renew” feature that automatically renews your domain name on its expiration date. This is critical for ongoing website management, especially if your website produces income. This also avoids the embarrassment of “losing” an existing site to someone else who picks up the domain name after the expiration grace period. If, however, you have only reserved a domain name and have not implemented a website yet, you may want to turn off the auto-renew feature to save money.

Domain Lock

Lock status is a code that can be set by your domain name registration company and is a best practice. This prevents unauthorized, unwanted or accidental changes to your domain name. That way you are virtually guaranteed that no changes can be made to your domain without your authorization.

URL Forwarding

Also known as a redirect, URL forwarding is a common technique for making a web page available under a different URL. This is often done for marketing purposes. For example, if the URL to your landing page is www.greatsite.com/products/buytoday, you could setup a forwarded URL to that same page by redirecting another domain name that you also own and that is easier to remember, such as www.greatbuystoday.com.

Domain Transfer

At some point you may want to sell or transfer ownership of your website to someone else. This is done through your registrar’s domain transfer service. Once your domain has been registered for a minimum of 60 days you can initiate a domain transfer. This ensures that the parties involved in the transaction provide the appropriate information needed to make sure the transfer is conducted smoothly and in a timely manner.

Over To You

Most domain registrars have a “domain management” section of their website that you can access once you are logged in to your account. After you have registered your domain name, play around with each of these features and get to know how they work. You’ll be an expert in no time.

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