Domain Name Registrars and How They Work

DNS for DummiesIn the history of domain name registrars, a company called Network Solutions had the sole authorization to register domain names. Network Solutions was the only true domain name registrar. Now, things have changed! The domain name market is wide open for competition. There are several dozens of domain name registrars today.

What is a Domain Name Registrar?

A domain name registrar is a company that is allowed to directly access and modify the database of domain names that have been registered up to the current date. The database itself is maintained by a non-profit organization called Internic. Domain name registration and the industry itself are monitored by ICANN, an organization that is responsible for certifying companies as registrars and handling domain names, IP addresses, and domain name extensions.

A domain name registrar is required to pay a fee to Network Solutions for every registered domain name. This is a fixed fee for everyone. Then, the registrar can decide what to charge clients that register with them for purpose of profits and promotion.

Where the rates were once fixed at $70 per every two-year period, now companies may charge whatever they wish. Some charge by the year; others offer many types of domain name packages ranging from one to even ten years in duration.

Benefits of Registering with an Accredited Domain Name Registrar

There are several main benefits of registering your Internet domain name with an accredited domain name registrar. One, you’ll often find cheaper domain name registration prices because the registrar is buying domain names directly. Some companies are able to offer domain name registration for as low as $8.95 per year or better. Then, there are others who offer a free year or two with the purchase of Web hosting.

Two, you’ll know that you are registering your domain name with a reputable company. There are many "resellers" of domain names that are fly-by-night companies, and you might not be able to find them when it’s time to renew your domain name for the next term!

Three, you can benefit from the registrar accreditation itself. This reveals that the domain name registrar has been accredited by a federal government agency and is being monitored directly by Internic. By simply checking with these two agencies along with the Better Business Bureau, you can have peace of mind that you are buying from a real registrar, not a scam artist.

Use these tips to find a reputable domain name registrar. This will not only secure your domain name… it might also secure your entire online business for future years!

Candice Pardue, Corporate brochure writer located at http://www.webmastercourse.com/writing-services/ Go to http://webmastercourse.com/subscribe/ for a free 7-Lesson Web Beginner’s Minicourse and learn web design from start to finish. This one’s for beginners… Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Candice_Pardue

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What In The World Is Cpanel And Why Do I Want It?

What In The World Is Cpanel And Why Do I Want It? by Gregg Hall

Cpanel User Guide And TutorialFor those not familiar with some of the terminology associated with doing business on the internet, and with web hosting in particular, the term “cpanel” may be unknown. When you get a web hosting package from a company it will come with a control panel to enable you to manage and maintain your domains and their respective files. Cpanel is one of these control panel options, and, in the opinion of most professional internet marketers, it is also the one most favored.

One of the most important issues when dealing with managing your domains is the ease with which it can be accomplished. Cpanel fits the bill for this. As a web based administrative control panel, cpanel makes it easier to manage all of your domain names and files associated with them from a central location. Cpanel also gives you access to important features like website statistics - web stats, FTP stats, AWstats, latest visitors, bandwidth usage, and even breaks the information down to what country the visitors are in, their operating systems, browsers, plus details of all search terms and engines used to find your sites. It also and gives you the functionality of FTP to upload and download files to your sites. The web hosting control panel within cpanel was designed with the end user in mind and is probably the most user friendly on the market today. If you are a new user, you will thank Cpanel’s simplicity over and over.

From your control panel you can manage functions such as account or site creation, domain redirects, and more. Cpanel also gives you the ability to manage your email addresses and gives you autoresponders and mail forwarding to help you with your business and even includes additional features like spam filtering and webmail so that you can check your email from any computer on the planet.

From your cpanel web hosting control panel you can build and edit web pages and manage your Microsoft Frontpage password plus make changes to the Apache handlers and manage options such as search engine submission. You can also set Cron jobs from there which for those unfamiliar with the term, is a way to set up automated tasks to take place at a particular time/frequency schedule.

Another great feature that is possible with cpanel is the ability to activate and use the pre-installed CGI scripts such as forums, chats, shopping arts, and website development tools. One of my favorite features with cpanel is Fantastico which allows for one step installation of Content Management Systems such as Mambo, Joomla, and the ever popular Wordpress blogging platform which I use for the majority of my websites. Having cpanel with the Fantastico enabled makes my life a lot easier and helps me to get my work done much more quickly. I am sure you will find cpanel to be the same for you.

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Gregg Hall is an author and internet marketing consultant living in Navarre Florida. For more on inexpensive Web Hosting or other web hosting issues go to http://www.virtualwebhostingplus.com

Article Source: ArticleSnatch - Article Directory

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UK Domain Name Alternatives

UK Domain Name Alternative by Clare Lawrence

DNS for DummiesIf you’ve tried to register a domain name recently, you’ve noticed; all the really good .com names are gone. Try it. Choose any animal, any generic medication, any sport, any mode of transportation, even emotions or silly names. You have very little chance of finding any of them free in the .com listings.

Fortunately, for businesses that do business primarily within the United Kingdom, Central Nic offers the alternative of the uk.com domain extension. You might think that this isn’t an alternative for you, that no one looks at the uk.com names.

But the truth is, the uk.com name is starting to be accepted by the British public as an alternative to .com. Better yet, more people who are looking to do business primarily with British businesses are using the .uk.com name to find British businesses. This is really good news for you.

Some of the advantages of getting just the right domain name are:

Search Engine Placement

Search engine listings today frequently have millions of hits per search. The higher you are in this listing, the better your chances of drawing the right customers to your site. Most people who’ve done anything with search engine optimization know that careful use of your keyword and inbound links to your page affect your placement. But did you know that if you have your primary keyword in your domain name, it can improve your rankings?

Your Business Name as Your Domain Name

With the benefits of instant recognition and a bump in the search engines for anyone searching for your business specifically, using your business name as your domain name has a remarkably positive effect. Your business name should be the first .uk.com domain name you look for.

With both this and the simple keyword, though, you should act quickly; the competition is increasing as businesses and other customers realize the value of these names. If you’re a professional – a doctor, lawyer, writer, or anyone with aspirations to celebrity – you should register your own name as well, both to preserve your rights to the domain name and to protect yourself from what someone else might put on the site with your name. Cyber squatting, or taking someone’s name or business name to resell back to them at a handsome profit, is an increasing problem.

If at all possible, buy both your business name and your keyword for domain names, and talk to your host about having both URLs point to the same business website.

People Remember You

One of the best advantages to using a simple but memorable domain name for your website is that people remember you. What good does it do to advertise on the radio if no one remembers the URL listed on the site? Same for billboards, television, newspaper, and often even direct mail.

If you’re fortunate enough to find your keyword open, register it as quickly as you can. If you wait, someone else is likely to register it before you get a chance.

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Clare Lawrence is CEO of Discount Domains Ltd – A leading UK provider of UK Domains

Article Source: www.articlepeak.com

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Top 5 SEO Mistakes

Trafficseeker Standard EditionSearch engine optimization is one of the best tools that most Web business owners can utilize in order to be able to make the most out of their business online. Unfortunately, not a lot of website or Web business owners know enough about SEO and what it can do to help them and their business.If they are able to utilize SEO properly, then they will be able to increase their website traffic, and at the same time improve their sales, giving website owners the advantage over their competition online. Since not all of these Web business owners possess the knowledge of what search engine optimization is all about, and its possible benefits to their online business, they sometimes commit a few mistakes in their attempts to utilize such a program for their advantage.

One of the mistakes that Web business owners often commit is that they spend too much time on the design of their website, and not enough time on the content. Keep in mind that the content of your website is more important than the design, which is why people who invest too much money on site designs primarily instead of focusing on its content will only end up wasting it since this will only bring in a few people to visit their website. Instead, try to invest in copywriting initially, and only spend money on the site design later on.

Web business owners sometimes forget the importance of great content, and how they should create fresh content. Doing so will greatly benefit their online business since search engines will reward websites that offer fresh content to their visitors, regardless of its format. Some Web business owners tend to overlook this aspect, and they do not implement this in their websites, causing their website to not generate the desired amount of traffic. However, online business owners should not do this if they are only aiming to improve their search engine ranking. One way that they can improve their SEO ranking is by posting blogs or forums that its visitors can use and interact with other users, making them come back for more later on, thereby increasing the generated traffic. This is only possible, however, if the owners add a blog that contains something that can interest their site’s visitors.

This is where our third mistake comes in. There are some Web business owners who do not bother to offer something unique, especially in their site’s content. If you are able to properly optimize your site by offering something unique and interesting to your targeted market, then your site can greatly benefit from the improvement in search engine results since people will be linking to your site through different mediums such as blogs and forums, creating more inbound links later on.

Another mistake that online business owners commit is their use of inappropriate keyword phrases. It is important to remember that in order to be able to optimize the search engine result of your website, you need to make sure that you pick the appropriate keyword phrases, especially if you are only a small or mid-sized company. You should use the keywords that your potential customers may use in their search in the Web, and such keywords should be used in specific areas of your webpage.

Lastly, Web business owners sometimes do not label their links and images descriptively, making it very difficult for their visitors to know what they are being directed to. Being descriptive as possible not only helps visitors, but it can also help online businesses, especially those trying to market a particular product since Web business owners can use their main keywords and phrases in their link and image labeling, making it easier for them to direct potential customers to their site.

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Vanessa Arellano Doctor
http://jump2top.com
Source: http://www.a1articles.com/article_174088_62.html

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Search Engine Visibility - Fundamental Site Optimization

Search Engine OptimizationSearch engine optimisation (SEO) has become big business due to the increased technical expertise required to properly carry out and deliver real measurable improvements. With constant movement of the goalposts it’s testing for even the best SEO experts to stay up to speed. There are however several basic level points we can all keep in mind should the cost of hiring professionals be unrealistic.Analyzing your website has to be a good starting point. Web logs and other forms of statistical information can give early indication where errors may exist within your website. Determining where search bots are struggling will allow you to focus on fixing errors which might otherwise nullify other SEO efforts. Googlebot activity for instance, is well worth spending time to understand. Reports will indicate if pages are running slow and as such perhaps search engines are abandoning the site. If search engines are struggling then its safe to assume regular visitors will also be experiencing slow loading of pages and possibly leaving prematurely.

Sitemaps are another fairly easy way to make it obvious where all your pages are. Combined with the use of robots.txt you can let search engines also learn what’s best left un-indexed. Sitemaps are often presented as a summary page (or pages) within the site displaying links to everything that’s worthy of listing. Google also offers a means to upload XML formatted files whereby you can push the list at Google instead of waiting for the next scheduled visit.

It’s always worth considering how your site actually appears to search engines. To give you something of a feel for how well your pages perform it’s perhaps worth setting yourself up with Mozilla Firefox (if you haven’t already) as this nifty little browser allows you to easily turn off both images and JavaScript. If you find your pages are pretty messed up (as is sometimes the case) it may be that you should consider a design that has a better textual structure with less dependency upon graphics and JavaScript. While it’s not the greatest sin in web design, overuse of graphics as a means of navigation can prove deadly for search engines and full site indexing. As a minimum, a text only set of links mirroring your main structure can be nestled at the bottom of the page. This will at least give search engines something to work with. A good alternative is to use CSS as a method to retain a classy design while also offering linking text. Where images are used it’s always a good idea to remember to use ALT tags. As search engines effectively ignore images, so the ALT tag offers a little bit of something they can latch onto.

Flash animation is another area similar to graphics that offers nothing to search engines. To the user however, they can be massively attractive and provide an area from where a stream of information can be delivered. The best is to use flash in moderation, striking a balance between engaging the user while satisfying the engines. Just like graphical navigation anything important communicated to the user through flash should perhaps be subtly repeated in the regular text somewhere.

It’s often said but nevertheless it’s amazing how many people still ignore the basic meta tags. There’s plenty of information around which will help anyone get a quick understanding of how best to fill out the title, description and keyword meta tags. While meta tags are important they are only a minor aspect of any one page. It’s imperative that meta tags properly mirror the content of a page but of greater importance is that the content has an array of words and phrases that are relevant to the niche in which you are trying to compete. Don’t go searching Google for words you think you should be listed under if your pages doesn’t have them within the content.

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Paul Coupe is lead designer / developer with Zoom Online.
Zoom Online - Providing total online solutions. www.zoom-online.co.uk/
Contact: paul@zoom-online.co.uk

Source: http://www.a1articles.com/article_174634_62.html

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Helpful Domain Name Tools

The Domain Name Handbook; High Stakes and Strategies in Cyberspace

One of the hardest things about getting a domain name is coming up with one. If you haven’t tried it, you will be amazed. So many names are already taken. This wasn’t always the case. In the early 1990s, people rushed to create websites and online ventures. And as they did, opportunists started buying up domain names. They were hoping that they could speculate in internet real estate. For many in those early days, their work paid off.

Fast forward to the present. You will definitely see how good domain names are becoming ever more scarce. So, with that in mind, let’s take a look at some tools that may help you. LoudSign (http://loudsign.com/) - LoudSign incorporates a domain name search tool on the front page. Type in the name that you want and click on search. Most likely, it will be taken. Now, on the second page you will see a small link under the search button labeled “Try Smart Search.” If you click this, it will bring up many more options. Some of those options are: add popular prefixes, add popular suffixes, view choices with dashes, and view choices with related keywords.

Random Words (http://unique-name.perceptus.ca/random-word.php) - Sometimes coming up a word is simply way too hard. When that’s the case, try this word to get your mental juices flowing. WordConstructor (http://www.wordconstructor.com) - When you want to make a word from a common one, then this tool hits the spot. RhymeZone (http://www.rhymezone.com/) - Rhyming a name makes for a memorable one. This little tool helps you find rhyming words for the one you input. It can also find antonyms and synonyms. Noemata Name Generator (http://noemata.net/nbng/) - When you want a unique name that requires branding, this tool can help. Random Domain Generator (http://blog.outer-court.com/domaingenerator/) - Here is another tool to help you generate away. Dislexicon (http://www.robobunny.com/cgi-bin/dislexicon) - A nice tool that puts a prefix or suffix on names to generate new ones. If you are lucky, you will find a great name quick. Just remember, the shorter and more memorable the name, the better. Try to go after names that sound similar to something very familiar. And, if at all possible, go after names that contain keywords around your website. Happy searching. ———————————-

Paul McGillivary has been a technologist for 15 years. In that time, Paul has experienced thousands of technology problems, challenges, and products. He brings this experience to bear in the articles that he presents. Paul is also the owner of Loud Sign Internet Services. Loud Sign provides domain name register services for individuals and businesses. If you need a domain for your website, LoudSign can help you cheaply and quickly hone in on a good domain name. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Paul_McGillivary

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Earn Money By Blogging

Blogging For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))Blogging is hot these days and everyone knows it. What everyone doesn’t know is how to change their blog from a hobby into a profession. In this article you’ll learn what it takes to create a successful blog that will keep bringing in a steady revenue stream for you month after month. For the purposes of this article I’ll assume you already have a blog up and running, either on a free host site like Blogger or on your own web space. If you don’t already have a blog, head over to Blogger.com or Wordpress.com and sign up. You can also download Wordpress from Wordpress.org and install it on your own web space. Some hosting companies already have Wordpress all set up and ready to install with just a few clicks so you may not even have to download it.

So, you’ve got a blog and you’re wondering what to do now. Or maybe you have a blog and have some idea what needs to be done to monetize it but you’re not sure exactly where to start. Well, first, if you don’t already have it you’re going to need traffic. More traffic isn’t necessarily better. What you want isn’t massive hits to your site, though that’s always nice for an ego boost. The thing you’re looking for is targeted traffic–traffic that is interested specifically in what you have to say rather than a random visitor from the web who has never even heard of the topic you’re writing about. There are a few ways to get the targeted traffic you’re looking for and we’ll start out with the easiest: commenting.

Commenting on other blogs will allow you to draw some of their readers to your site. If they like what they see, it’s a good bet they’ll be back to read more of your blog so it’s important that you’re commenting in blogs that are in the same niche as your own. If you run a blog on automotive widgets then you certainly don’t want to be trying to attract traffic from blogs about knitting. When commenting, try to leave a comment that is meaningful and shows that you actually read what was written; don’t just post “Nice blog.” and expect anyone to come and read yours.

Another way to get traffic to your site is through signatures in forum posts. If you’re already a member of one or more forums in your blog’s niche then all you have to do is add your blog’s URL to your forum signature and make some posts. Once again, don’t spam, make meaningful on topic posts in the forum and the traffic will come. The other forum members will see that you know what you’re talking about and they’ll eventually see your link and come to see what else you have to say.

Now you have a blog and you’re getting some targeted traffic, what do you do now? Now you monetize it. AdSense is by far the most common way to do this and, depending on your blog’s topic and traffic, this can be quite lucrative. If you don’t already have an AdSense account, head over to google.com/adsense and sign up. They’ll look your blog over and within 24-48 hours they’ll accept you as long as your blog isn’t adult in nature, full of hate speech or illegal in some way. Once you’re approved, sign into your AdSense account and choose the type of ad you want to display (banner, square, etc) and the AdSense website will generate the code for you. Copy the code and insert it on your website where you want the ad to appear and you’re good to go.

Assuming you’re getting targeted traffic that is interested in your topic it shouldn’t be long before you begin to see money showing up in your AdSense account. If you follow these simple guidelines to get targeted traffic to your blog and AdSense to monetize it you’ll be making a tidy sum of cash in no time - well, maybe not in no time but at least you should be making some money from your blog if you keep working at it!

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Art Farrel has been making his living online since 2002. He has recently begun writing articles with the intention of helping everyone achieve the success in online marketing that they wish for. Did you find those tips on blogging useful? You can learn a lot more about how blogging can help you earn money at http://www.BloggingFortune.com Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Art_Farrell

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Web 2.0 Success Using Blogs

Clear Blogging: How People Blogging Are Changing the World and How You Can Join ThemThe rise and rise of blogging as part of the web 2.0 phenomenon has taken the Internet by storm. Savvy web marketers are now using blogs as an additional weapon to generate leads, add credibility and improve their search engine rankings. Here are six reasons why you should consider blogging.

Blogging is great fun! Yes, blogging can be great fun. Just open you posting window and go for it without the restrictions of corporate style guides and other impediments to creativity. Got something to say? Just say it. The other fun aspect of blogging is that people can post comments about your blog posts. You posts plus reader comments all become valuable food for the search engines .

Blogging is dirt cheap. The most powerful blogging systems are free. Wordpress seems to be the blogging standard and now comes standard with many cheap web hosting packages. For less than $100 per year anyone can get their own domain with blogging included. I wouldn’t use one of the free blogging services unless you are really desperate. You can’t be sure if they will always remain free and your posts will be building up someone else’s asset rather than your own. (Caymanhost Ed’s note - not sure we entirely agree: a free Wordpress or Blogger blog is often a good way to get started - if you decide it’s for you you can always move your blog later - if it doesn’t work out, you’ve not wasted any money. Both will soon see you appearing in search engines if you post regularly too - there are some very highly ranked Wordpress.com blogs as well as Blogger.com - Google owns Blogger remember. Eventually however, you will want to host your own blog as the author says. If you already have a hosting account, fair enough, you may as well host your blog there, but if you don’t and don’t feel ready for the move, blog for free as a starting point).

Blogging is fast and easy. If you can use notepad you can blog. The user interface is very intuitive and allows you to add and edit, text, pictures, videos, whatever you want. Want to change the look and layout of your blog? There’s literally hundreds of themes available that take less than a minute to upload and install.

Blogging gives you products and services personality. People like to do business with people they like. By blogging you show your target market that there is a real person behind the company you represent. By reading you blog posts thet get an idea of what you’re all about - warts and all. The personal aspect of blogging is one of it’s most powerful characteristics.

Your blog becomes another Internet asset. Some blog sites get thousands and thousands of readers each day. This traffic can be converted to hard, cold cash through Google Adsense advertising, affiliate programs and straight advertising space sale. Once you blog increases it’s Google PageRank, you also get the benefit of linking out from your blog site to other web sites you want to promote.

Search engines just love blogs. It is said in many SEO forums that Google staff are great bloggers and subsequently Google spiders and indexes blogs more frequently that normal web sites. This may just be a rumour, but I have found it to be true in my case. If you blog every day there’s a good chance Google and the other major search engines will spider your blog every day looking for that new content. Convinced? Give blogging a try. There’s stacks of free resources listed in article directories like this one that will help you get into blogging.

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John Hacking is Marketing Manager for a Brisbane web site design company and Product Manager for a Brisbane SEO firm. He has just started an Australian SEO blog. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=John_Hacking

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How To Choose a Web Host For Your Website

Web hosting is a service you must subscribe to in order to get your website onto the internet. Paying for web hosting is like renting a small amount of space on a big commercial computer that "serves up" your website to web surfers. Hence, the name "web server" (which is the hardware part of web hosting). Lucky for you, web hosting has never been cheaper.

Domains and Hosting Together?

Many domain name companies will offer you hosting when you buy your domain through them. This is generally an expensive option, and a bad idea because you’ll be getting few features compared to what you’re paying for. Few people who are serious about web hosting get it from the same place they get their domains. There is one exception that I can think of, but you should generally avoid getting hosting and your domain name from the same source.

Where Should You Start?

Well, that all depends on what your website is going to need, based on your goals: How many visitors do you expect to have? Are you going to have lots of large graphics on the site? Do you have a lot of articles or products that you want to put in a database? Each host you look at will offer you different combinations of features at different price points, and finding the one that’s right for you can be very confusing. Here’s some things to consider:

Storage: The more Megabytes (MB) or Gigabytes (GB) of storage you have, the more you can put on your website. For most websites, this number can be very small without it being much of a concern. You only really need to worry if you’re planning to put very large files of data on your site, like a gallery of digital photos or if you want people to download ebooks from you, for example. In these cases you’d want more than the average storage.

Bandwidth per month (as expressed in Gigabytes) is a limit on how much data your website can transfer each month. For small websites, you don’t need to worry too much. But as you get more visitors that download pictures, ebooks, software, or other files, the amount of bandwidth you need will increase sharply. And you will be charged a premium amount for any bandwidth over what your original contract allowed. So it’s good to get more bandwidth than less if the price isn’t much more.

What about MySQL Databases?

MySQL is a program that comes on most servers that allows you to run any program that requires a database to operate. You will normally only need one MySQL database, so don’t pay more to get extra. (This may have been true at the time of writing but most hosts will now offer multiple MySQL databases - in actual fact you will often find yourself needing more than one, particularly if you intend to have several blogs for example, each will normally require a database to itself - so look for as many as possible if blogging or a CMS are a part of your future plans)

It’s worth noting that your host may offer some other kind of SQL instead of MySQL (for example, PostgreSQL). You should usually avoid anything other than MySQL, because MySQL has become the industry standard; all programs work flawlessly with it.

What about things like PHP, Perl, ASP, JSP, or ColdFusion?

These are all scripting languages, used to write your website. No need to know how they work, but you should make sure your host offers whichever ones that any software you plan to use requires. If you don’t have specific requirements, then you should be fine with just Perl and PHP.

How About Subdomains?

Subdomains allow you to split your website into more sections than just "www.yoursite.com." For example, if you wanted people to be able to go to ’shop.yourdomain.com’ and ’news.yourdomain.com.’ You don’t really need these, though, as doing the same thing with subfolders is usually just as effective. What are subfolders? Any extension after a forward slash– "/" following your main domain name. In the following URL, http://www.yoursite.com/subdomain-folder, "subdomain-folder" is a subdomain folder! (Of course, you can name it whatever you want.)

FTP accounts:

An FTP (File Transfer Protocol) account is what you’ll use to upload your website to your host. You’ll always get one of these, so don’t be concerned about that. It’s just a program designed to transfer your website files and graphics from your home computer to your web host’s web server.

POP3 accounts:

POP stands for ’Post Office Protocol’, which is just fancy-speak for "email." The more POP3 accounts you get, the more email addresses you can have. For example, if you want to have sales@yourdomain.com for new customers and support@yourdomain.com for existing ones, quotes@yourdomain.com for product price quotes, etc.

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Did you know that there is really only one feature that you really need in a web host? Without this one feature (which is rare), you are wasting your money and your precious time. Discover cheap web hosting that has this rare feature and all the latest whiz-bang technical doo-dads, too. Check out http://www.honestysellsbest.com for other tips that will help you succeed in the shortest time possible. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Chuck_Brown

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Windows Versus Linux Hosting

With the two Windows and Linux hosting, the decision whether to launch the website using Windows based or Linux based web hosting plan is a difficult decision to make especially for the first time users. Which would be the most ideal plan? Without any kind of technical background most people are under the impression that since their personal computer is Windows based the ideal one would be the Windows based hosting plan.

The difference between the two – Linux Hosting and Windows web hosting - is not known to many. With cost being an important consideration, some people are of the opinion that the Windows based plan would be highly expensive as compared to a Linux package. But this is not true, as with a little bit of survey one may be able to find a Windows web hosting package that may be equivalent to the Linux package or even less in terms of pricing.

The changes in technology over the years, has resulted in the packages being simplified. The gap as regards the differences in the use of Windows based hosting package and the Linux based web hosting package has only narrowed over the years and today there are hardly any differences that exist between the two. Linux, although has been in the web hosting industry for longer than Windows and has a whole lot more experience to its account.

Therefore, the decision regarding which web hosting package has absolutely no relevance to the operating system that is being used on your system. Some differences that do exist between the Windows web hosting plan and the Linux web hosting are elaborated below so as to facilitate decision-making.

Form Your Opinion According To…

The Features That You Need To Use: Most of the web features do not differentiate between the two packages and run equally well on both. It would be advisable to use the Windows hosting plans in case you decide to make your website using the Microsoft proprietary technologies. The Linux web hosting plan may not be very suitable for it as it does not offer much support to these technologies.

Speed: As regards performance it is extremely difficult to differentiate between the two. When speed becomes a major criterion in deciding which web hosting packages, then it is seen that Linux is faster as Windows offers the “all in one” plan which brings down the speed marginally.

Security: The question regarding which of the two web hosting plans is more reliable has been a question of debate for a very long time now. Windows, being a popularly used operating system for most home PCs has come under close scrutiny and so it proves to be one negative point for Windows. Linux is the commonly used type of server and therefore it has been hacked on more number of times. But even if security is the important factor under consideration it is the hosting company that should be closely scrutinized for its skill levels rather than trying to analyze the merits and demerits of the server that they use.

Reliability: Linux has been a favorite with the online servers due to its high reliability factor. It has quite a few features of the Windows and Unix operating systems. A 99.9% rate of reliability makes it one that would not give way and not crash leaving you in the middle of nowhere. Windows may have been used a little less as it cannot really match up with Linux in case of the reliability factor.

Thus, the decision regarding which web hosting platform one would use is in no way connected to the operating system on your PC. The decision ultimately depends on the features and the service that one is looking at. Thus, one should concentrate on making the website one that truly projects your image and then go through the pros and cons of the two web hosting plans- Windows and the Linux web hosting plan- and make the final decision on the basis of what you are looking for in a web hosting plan.

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The author Brandon Plett, is creator and owner of http://www.webhostguide.org Visit us for information on web hosting and web hosting companies.

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