Buying A Domain Name And Web Hosting

You are ready to start your own web business. How do you register a domain? What can you do with your domain name once you have one? What about web hosting?

Let’s answer the easier question regarding what to do with your domain name. Obviously, you can use your new domain name to set up a web site. Fortunately, you can do a number of things with your domain once you register it. Have you thought about selling it? You can forward it to your main domain. You can even leave it parked just gathering dust waiting for you to decide what to do with it.

Make sure the domain register allows you to use the domain management features. With these features you should be able to access and update all aspects of your domain from your nameservers including your MX records (mail), to your privacy settings and contact information.

How do I go about registering my domain name? You have to decide which domain registry you want to use and how much you want to pay for this service. Quite honestly, if you are paying more that $10 to register your name, you are paying way too much. There are many solid companies that can register your name for under $10. Now you have chosen the domain registry you want to use.

First step, make sure your domain name has not been registered by someone else by doing a “whois” search. I know, you are scratching your head and wondering what is a “whois”? The good domain registration sites maintain a whois database. Fortunately, they also have an easy way for you to check by just typing in the domain name and it will search the whois database and let you know whether it is available.

If the name is available, the search will let you know. Many of the domain registration websites will offer suggestions to you if that name is already taken. Word of caution. Think about your domain name and how it may be used in your business to drive traffic to your website. This is not to be taken litely.

Your name is available so now you can proceed with the checkout through the domain registration site. At this point, more than likely you are probably done! However may take up to 4 to 8 hours for dot”com” and dot”net” domains to become active and about 24-48 hours for other domain extensions. This is referred as our domain name is “live”.

So now you got a domain name and you want to set up a website. You need a site that provides web hosting. One again you have to decide how much you want to spend. Keep in mind that many of the domain registration sites offer low cost web hosting that is solid and reliable.

What programming language are you going to use for our website? Will you be using FrontPage? If so you will need a web host that has FrontPage extensions. Are you using HTML or an open source editor? Then a Linux based server will work for you.

Here are a few suggestions to watch for. Web hosting is normally charged monthly with some sites offering discounts for paid in advance service for 6 months or 12 months. Check the refund policy to see what happens if you cancel before the prepaid period is up.

Does your host provider support PHP 5? With PHP 5 support, you can program using the latest version of this server-side scripting language. There are free templates available that take advantage of existing applications and add-on’s written in PHP 5. Check to see if you can run both PHP 4 and PHP 5 simultaneously on the same site.

Don’t forget site administration. What type of administration interface is available? Can you easily make the changes to your site you need. Can you manage and maintain cgi apps, library versions, Perl, and Ruby on Rails from within the site administration area? Site administration is suppose to help you not frustrate you in getting around and doing things.

The hardest part about getting a domain name registered is making sure no one else has registered it. You may think your domain name is unique until you go to register it and find that not only is the dot”com” taken but also the dot”net”, dot”org”, dot”biz” and all the other extensions. You also can assume from that, you may be on to something that is desired on the web.

Buying a domain name and paying monthly for web hosting does not have to break the bank. You can pay a lot of money or you can actually pay less and still get a solid product. Have fun!

Internet Market Tips With The Power Of cPanel

ePanel is a control panel for your website and allows you to set up and manage your web account through a graphical interface instead of having to use command line. This means that you can make changes to your website without having to learn to use a command line environment. There are a variety of control panels out there, most offering a graphical interface and granting access to email management, FTP, subdomain administration, website statistics, etc. With a control panel, you can add/remove email accounts or view disk usage and statistics for your site by clicking on a shortcut and entering the appropriate information.

cPanel is the leading control panel on the market today. The two other big players in the control panel arena are Plesk and Ensim.

Ensim offers a variety of features and four levels of administration: appliance owner, reseller, site owner and user account owner. Ensim is the second most used control panel and compares well with cPanel, but its interface can sometimes be difficult to navigate and can be confusing to the users.

Plesk is reputed to be very stable, which is a desirable feature if you have important information which requires extreme stability. Plesk also provides more support for automation and has a large variety of plug-ins to increase its available features. On the down side, like Ensim, Plesk’s user interface is harder to use than that of cPanel. It also does not contain as many features as cPanel.

With its stylish design, user-friendly interface and rich features, cPanel remains one of the most popular control panels on the market. It’s easy to navigate with the icon-based menu and it provides all the tools necessary to manage your website.

Below is a selection of the features available in cPanel:

Mail
* Add and remove email accounts
* Set up email forwarding, mailing lists and auto-responders
* Web mail allows you to read and compose emails anywhere in the world

FTP Manager
* Set up FTP accounts
* Set up anonymous FTP access
* FTP session control

File Manager
The File Manager basically replaces an FTP program and allows you to upload files to and download files from your website. It is a stand-alone file management program with a graphical interface.

Backup
You can backup and restore your website at a click.

Sub-domains
cPanel allows you to create and manage sub-domains. Sub-domains can be used for many different purposes, including hosting friends or clients.

Raw Log Manager
You can choose how raw logs are stored on your account.

Raw Access Log
You can download the raw access logs for any domain in your account. This information is useful for tracking user movements.

Error Log
The error log displays all the “404 File does not exist” errors so you can find out what files are missing from your website.

MySQL Databases
If you use MySQL databases for your website, you will have the ability to manage all your databases with this option.

Agora Shopping Cart
You can install Agora Shopping Cart on your website. This is a powerful shopping cart system which will allow you to start your own ecommerce website.
There are many more useful features available in cPanel. With such a rich variety of features, it’s no wonder that cPanel is the most used control panel. So make sure that your hosting company offers cPanel before signing up. For more information about cPanel, visit www.frontierpowerhosting

10 Web Hosting Tips to Consider When Selecting a New Host

The following are the tips one must keep in mind while choosing a new web host: -

1) One must make sure that the new web host plan offers the storage capabilities to handle all of the current website storage requirements. If the size of the website is 50MB, then one must check for the plan that offers at least that much space or more. In case one is not able to make estimates about the space required then he/she must ask his/her current host. Also this information can be found on control panel.

2) One must also check how does his/her current web host determine the amount of storage used for? It is necessary to check what one’s current and new host includes in the plan’s storage amount also one should check are one’s emails and log files counted towards his/her total storage, or the web files only?

3) Its necessary to know what operating system does one’s current hosting plan use? Windows or Unix? Mostly it makes no difference but in some cases it can make the difference between a working website and a broken website. In case one’s site is currently on a Windows server and the website uses ASP scripting, then its difficult to make things work well on a Unix server, as ASP is a Windows based programming language. So one should check immediately whether his/her hosting plan is on a Unix or Windows server.

4) Also its important to check if one’s your site currently use FrontPage? Before switching to new host one should check if the new host supports FrontPage and the prevailing version.

5) Another important issue to take care is the amount of bandwidth offered by the new host. One should check if the new hosting plan offers the same amount of bandwidth that the current host offers. This should be checked in advance to avoid unexpected high bills afterwards.

6) Make sure if the new web hosting plan gives the same amount of email accounts, auto responders and mail forwards that the current host provides.

7) Its necessary to check if one’s site uses a shopping cart that the current hosting plan provides? It is essential to have a suitable shopping cart replacement in case one desires to move the cart to the new host. So one must check that as well.

If one is using any scripts on his/her website, its important to check if one’s new hosting plan supports all of one’s scripts. One must make sure in advance if there is any need to make any modifications to scripts to get them working on the new server.

9) Don’t forget to set up the existing email accounts on the new server before transferring domain name to the new server.

10) In case user is just a beginner and even don’t know how to upload files, its necessary to check with the provider if he can do that with no extra charges. There are some hosts who offer such facility free of cost yet some don’t offer this facility because of liability issues.

It’s necessary to double check if the site looks and functions properly on the new server after completing the uploading process. Preview facility is provided in the form of preview link to see how the site looks and some hosts provide this facility before the domain name is transferred over. In case this preview facility is not available with the host, still there is a method to preview the site. One can modify his/her host’s file to preview the site. The host file tells the computer where to go to look for sites that are listed in that file and this works with any version of Windows. Here the file location can change but the file name remains the same. Below is the way to modify the host’s file:

The file HOSTS should be in the c: windowssystem32driversetc One can find a file named HOSTS.SAM (as in SAMPLE). That is OK; one can modify the HOSTS.SAM file as well and do a SAVE AS HOSTS.

In both the cases one should double click on the HOSTS file to open it. Thereafter one will be prompted by Windows to select an Application (Program) to use to VIEW the file.

Now scroll the list and select Notepad and then one should click on the OK button. The NOTEPAD program will now open, displaying the file HOSTS.

So, in order to tell computer that www.yourwebsite.com is at the address (replaced with the real IP) 12.345.678.90 one should add the following entry to the bottom of the hosts file:

12.345.678.90 www.yourdomain.com (As in the example).

Now one should click on FILE, slide down and click on SAVE AS. Then in the Save As one should type field, select ALL FILES. After completing that click on save. One warning will come which should be ignored i.e. the file already exists but that’s ok, then just one has to click YES.

Now one should close Notepad, by clicking on FILE, slide down to EXIT, and click.

Now when one will open the web browser, or try to ping the site, the system will go to the IP address one typed in the HOSTS file.

One should not forget to undo this when testing is finished else the computer will always want to go to that IP address whenever one want to go to that site.

After being satisfied with the site looks and functions, one can go to his/her registrar (where the domain name is registered) and modify the nameservers associated with one’s domain name to his/her new web host’s nameservers. In case one does not know his/her new host’s name servers, should confirm with them. However most hosts have that information listed somewhere on their website or in the email one first get after signing up for an account.

After the completion of domain nameserver modification it will take around 24-48 hours and the site will be displayed on the new server.

One must check his/her domain name and should see if the nameservers added are listed. If yes, the website transfer is complete to new web host. And after the confirmation is received one can cancel the old web hosting account.