The CaymanHost Web Hosting Directory

We are pleased to announce the addition of another great hosting service to our portfolio at the CaymanHost. Third Sphere are a company focusing on the customer who requires not only good quality business hosting, but also a suite of webmaster tools to help them promote their business in the most effective manner.

The company bring this all together in their service packages aimed squarely at the online business user and marketer. If you are looking for a business in a box solution , this is one company you may well wish to take a look at. Offering a host of scripts in their "automation station" to help you establish an online presence quickly and easily, Third Sphere also promise lightning fast loading of your website and 99.7% uptime guaranteed.

If you already have a site but are still struggling to establish your online presence, you might like to take a look at this company and the marketing, website design and promotional tools they are offering, which include a snap in scripts center, web design center, snap in ebook center, web traffic center and the aforementioned automation station. Moving an existing domain to Third Sphere is quick and easy, so if you are having problems with your existing hosting provider or are planning on using some new domains, they could be worth adding to your shortlist.

Please go and have a look around at the company website to see the full range of features from which you will benefit as a customer.

We should also add, that as web hosting affiliate programs go, they offer one of the best, paying recurring monthly commissions on all sales (meaning residual income for you) and you don’t have to be a customer of theirs to sign up. If you’re involved in selling hosting online already, this would be a great additional income stream to start tapping into.

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This brief article outlines the importance of using robots.txt files and good sitemaps to help search engines index your website or blog properly.

Having built your website you are probably waiting for that flood of visitors to start arriving but this won’t happen overnight. There is a great deal you can do to improve your chances of good search engine rankings but the whole field of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can be very complicated and is rarely an exact science. The information is out there if you are prepared to do your research but for many people, time is the biggest limiting factor when it comes to SEO and there is a lot of information to wade through.

There are however a couple of very simple steps that anyone can take to help the Search engines find and index your site correctly. Both will take only a couple of minutes to implement and will repay you well if you take the trouble to complete them.

Firstly, you should ensure that you have a robots.txt file in the root of your domain (the place where your site’s homepage resides) and that it is valid and functioning correctly. The simplest way to do this is to go to one of the many online robots.txt generator and validator sites, where all you will have to do is type in your website address and a couple of options and they will generate the appropriate file for you. We recommend Yellowpipe Robots.txt Generator which will also enable you to choose to banish the robots you don’t want visiting your site, such as known email harvesting bots. There are plenty of other online services available if you search for them. This method ensures an error free robots.txt file which you can then upload to your server. It’s that simple and the search engine spiders will then be aware of exactly where to visit on your site.

The next task on your list is to set up sitemaps, which have become steadily more important in recent times. You may well already have a Google sitemap on your site and if you do, it will probably be called sitemap.xml. Sitemaps also reside in the root of your domain and make it much easier for engines to find and index your content.

There are plenty of ways to set up a Google sitemap and it’s probably the most important one, but it won’t hurt you to have more sitemaps either. The easiest way for you to do this is to use the excellent services at AutoMapIt Automatic Sitemap Service who will not only create six sitemaps automatically for you, but upload them to your server too if you wish. If you prefer to upload the files yourself, you can do so. This is a free service, although you can upgrade at very reasonable cost and benefit from some even more valuable services. Setting up the free sitemap generation is simple and quick and will give you a far greater chance of being fully and properly indexed. Certainly worth a few minutes of your time.

As we said at the outset, these are very basic SEO steps, but nonetheless a good starting point for any webmaster.

Technorati Tags: Free sitemap generator , Sitemaps , Google sitemap , Robots.txt validator , Robots.txt generator , SEO , Building sitemaps , How to build sitemaps , Making a sitemap , Webmaster tools

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Before launching into this review it should be pointed out that Site Build It (or SBI ) and SiteSell.com , do not conform to the conventional notion of web hosting as most of the companies represented on these pages. Their services are aimed fairly and squarely at small business and internet marketers and indeed anyone looking to build quality static websites with the minimum of fuss and the maximum return on investment.

Site Build It and their web hosting company SiteSell.com are another Canadian company, the brainchild of CEO Ken Evoy, who have been in business since 1997 and in a nutshell, have grown their reputation by helping a great number of people turn their own ideas into very successful online businesses. The whole philosophy of Site Build It is really to enable people to get an online business set up as quickly and painlessly as possible without the need to know too much about all the technical barriers and "under the hood" workings of their sites and web hosting.

This makes them a very attractive proposition for those who want to concentrate on developing content rich sites but don’t want the distractions of having to learn too much about hosting, web design, marketing and promotion. As we pointed out in our opening paragraph, this is not your normal hosting review. So, let’s look at what this means for the end user in a little more detail.

SiteBuildIt is a controlled environment and this is a very important distinction. Unlike traditional hosting, you cannot upload anything you like to a server because you are working within a controlled FTP environment. There is no access to things like cgi-bin and php files, simply the facility to upload specific file types to certain folders designated for the purpose. Basically the SBI system handles all of the hosting aspects for you and also takes care of things like submissions to search engines and ongoing SEO. The company’s proud claim is that their methods and systems will ensure success and traffic and there are plenty of testimonials to support their claims.

Web hosting design and marketing made simple - Purists may well feel that SBI and SiteSell are therefore not for serious webmasters but this is strongly refuted in the company’s comprehensive onsite presentations and they do have a point. There is no denying that their customers have produced some top percentile websites (based on Alexa traffic rankings). The website presentation is detailed and if you have time to watch their 30 minute video it gives you a good idea of just what the systems can do, and indeed why so many people are attracted to the company. If you have no marketing or technical experience, which let’s face it, accounts for a large number of people, you would probably find SBI and SiteSell a good place to start as a fledgling website owner.

It is important to point out that despite the controlled hosting environment Site Build It is not a generic template type deal, very far from it. You choose your own domain name(s) just as you would with any other hosting service, and build your sites around them. You are the webmaster in control of the websites you build. You don’t need to know any HTML as their site building software does everything, but, if you are familiar with web authoring you can freely design/edit your own pages via any HTML editor and Photoshop. You will have the ability to blog, you will have RSS capability and E-Zine and Newsletter facilities and most of the tools you would normally expect to be using in building an online presence. You will also find things such as automated keyword research, autoresponders, mailing lists, link exchange tools and comprehensive traffic and stats reporting. The attraction is in the automation of many of the hard tasks associated with marketing and promoting a site, In short, if you have a great idea but are intimidated by technology this company could well be the answer to your problems. Even if you already have some website building experience but have had little success, you are also in the company’s target market.

In terms of cost, SBI is not really that much more expensive than a good quality shared hosting program, in fact it equates to about a dollar per day and you are getting a lot for your money. This is why we stated at the outset that this is more than just a hosting company and is probably the closest thing you will find to a "business in a box". You bring the idea and SBI enables you to convert that idea into an online business. This approach has certainly worked for many people, as to whether it is for you why not take a look at the company’s presentations to help you decide.

As a hosting company we could find very few complaints about reliability, nor customer and technical support although to be fair, we are not reviewing your regular host as we have made clear already. Users have access to a helpful forum area as well as normal company support via telephone and email. Ultimately, if you have been trying to decide on a hosting plan and have read this review, it may well change your thinking a little. There is no doubt that SBI and SiteSell , while certainly not a guarantee of success, do offer all the tools to get your own hosted website off the ground with a minimum of fuss.

In conclusion, if you want reliable hosting but also like the idea of a lot of automation of "the geek stuff" SBI is worth investigating further. As with all things, there are some limitations which will make the company a non starter for a few webmasters but these are probably in a minority. They ARE different but if you are just starting out in the online world or are frustrated by a lack of success, SBI could be just what the doctor ordered.

Technorati Tags: Site Build It Review , Web hosting review , Create a website , Web site design , Web site template , Web site marketing , SEO services , Web site builder , Increase web site traffic , Blogging , Hosting Reviews , Product Reviews , SEO , Web Design , Website Promotion

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