Sunday, June 5, 2011

Web Hosting for Startups

By Gregory Trune


If you want to set up your own website, be it for business purposes or communicating to the world, there are a number of things that first time web site owners should be aware. The modern market place is such that it is infeasible for a firm not to have a presence on the internet. There are so many benefits that come with having a proper structure in place and having strong sales, promotional and marketing channels available which makes them necessary for any startup site. Of course, many new sites or firms do not have a large budget for such items and they need to create their website in a way that promotes efficiency and is extremely cost-effective.

There is no doubt that the website of a firm has a large part to play in generating interest in potential customers, announcing the power of the company to the world, generate traffic to the site and place itself firmly in front of a specialized market. Of course, if your firm is only based on the internet then it is imperative that there is a priority to place your website on the internet.

For a startup firm, there are a huge amount of companies that offer web hosting facilities. These services have been created with the startup firm in mind and will be adapted to suit their needs specifically. The web hosting firms will usually offer the advice of the SEO experts to ensure that customers are armed with good techniques to drive more custom to their store.

The process that startups should undertake for Web Hosting:

Hosting a website for the first time in the internet may be a little cumbersome. Here are some simple steps following which one can easily go with the process of choosing and selecting a web hosting company to host the website for a new company or an individual.

First browse the internet and ask for the free quotes from the various Web Hosting companies offering Web Hosting services for the startups.

* Choose the one that best meets your budget and your requirements. Undertake a full search of what they offer, what their background is and if there are any other features. Compare this to some of the other sites you have seen.

Apply online - fill up the online form and provide it with all the required information like Name, Address, Country, Credit Card details etc.

After applying, wait for the approval which may take a day or two.

* Wait for the official confirmation and having a hosting account set up for you and then go about hosting your very own website on the World Wide Web.

What goes into a Startup package provided by Web Hosts?

There is a growing number of firms who provide startup packages with the new website owners in mind. These new owners may be businesses or they may bloggers. The new owners don't usually have high demands or expectations but they also usually have a limited budget. These are the key factors that the web hosting companies keep in mind when they offer startup packages.

What should be in the typical Startup package provide by Web Hosts:

Here are some of the general features that you must look for in any startup Web Hosting package. However the below mentioned features may differ slightly from company to company:

* Web Management system - Any reasonable web management system should have at least 20MB to 50MB of disk storage space available, with regards to data transfer per month10GB should be offered and various FTP access should be offered. These can include full FTP Access and Anonymous FTP. This is in addition to Static IP Address and Secure Server (SSL) Transaction Encryption facilities.

* Email Features - Every web hosting package should feature email facilities. The majority of packages for startup firms have roughly 10 email accounts, which are commonly POP/Web accounts. There should also be the facility for email aliases and forwarding, the opportunity to have PGP Email Encryption, Personal SMTP Mail Server and lastly be equipped to provide an auto response facility within the email.

E-Commerce - A standard Web Hosting service for startups includes PHP4 Server-side Scripting, SSH - Secure Shell, Server Side Includes (SSI) and Password Protected Directories.

Technical Support - Many companies provide 24-hour Trouble Ticket Support and 99.9% Uptime guaranteed per year

Website Monitoring - It includes the Daily Data Backups, Downloadable Raw Access Logs and Wusage 7.0 Graphical Statistics

* Additional Software - Other software that may make up the package can include the ability to have a web based control panel and an extended level of support for FrontPage Extensions.

* Hardware & Network - There are many products that can come with these startup packages with a selection being Dual- 1 Ghz Pentium IV Servers, Custom Red Hat Server OS and Apache Server Software. There are also other products offered and these can include 10-T1, 5-DS3, and 1-OC3 Network Connectivity and Uninterruptible Power.

Advanced Features - Many of the startup package these days come with the advanced features which includes CGI Bin, Custom MIME Types, Unix Shells: bash, csh, tsh, Perl, C, C++, Java JDK, Python & TCL Compilers, Emacs 20.4, Pine, vi, elm, Joe, Pico & Cron Tab, .htaccess, Custom Error Documents and 30-day Money Back Service Guarantee.

Vital information that Startups need to know:

Before embarking on anything new, people should be aware of what goals they want to achieve and this is true for those starting a new business and who are looking to create a website. There is only the possibility to store and archive so much on their website so people must be aware of what they want to do in advance. Having a pre-advances clarification of their aims is vitally important to anyone looking to create a website. The following tips will be able to help someone focus their mind on what they want their website to do.

* Many website visitors have short attention spans so a website needs to grab them quickly. The more attractive the site the easier it will be to do this. Asking questions of yourself in what you like to see can help the design process to be more attractive to customers.

* Good use of search engine optimization facilities can be vital for any startup website and these should compliment the existing content on the site.

* Any new web owner should be aware of how they want their company or products promoted on the internet.

* Being attractive to search engines is good but a firm needs to provide engaging content to keep customers coming back to the site.

With so many internet-based businesses sprouting throughout the world, ensure that your website is not just one among the crowd.

* The promises offered by shared web hosting services may sound brilliant but be careful as they are unable to offer any strict guarantees.

* Fast connections are important to your site so make sure that the web host company is able to provide them.

Find out whether or not they have a back-up system in place to protect your data in case there is a power outage

* Be sure to ask questions of their customer support service.

* There are other issues that you should ask your web host provider if they offer before deciding to go with them. These can include do they provide access to a secure server in order to enable order processing and if they do is it free? Do they have an online Web Site Manager and do they have an online support manual.

While starting a new website, there are various pitfalls that one needs to avoid. A well structured and search engine optimized website can bring the right traffic and growth for the company. It is recommended to seek the help from the professional Web hosts who can tactfully recognize the requirements of the startups and provide the most efficient services.




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