Tryangled Solutions web designing tips tricks

Introduction

This page contains a testimonial of my extremely poor experiences with a particular web host, drawing upon these experiences to highlight ten basic rules for choosing a web host. The aim of the page is to help prevent you from making the same mistakes I did.

So what is a web host? A web host is a company which provides a valuable service on the Internet: the physical storage and distribution of website pages on behalf of website owners. Basically they provide the hardware and software, and website owners provide the information. For a certain fee, the web host agrees to rent website owners space on their server, and the accompanying bandwidth they provide for Internet users the world over to download web pages from their server.

I threw this page together as another resource on TweakGuides.com to help out potential webmasters in perhaps choosing a web host more wisely than I first did. A wrong choice can have terrible consequences for your website and its reputation. Keep the following in mind if you’re considering purchasing web hosting services on the Net.

Ten Basic Rules

Suffice it to say, Oktagone.net is the web hosting company which kicked off the creation of this page. Their absolute lack of professionalism, and the (almost irreparable) damage they did to TweakGuides.com still makes me angry, and it’s been quite a while since I escaped their clutches! We will use Oktagone to neatly demonstrate what makes a truly terrible web host.

The basic story goes like this: I was looking for a web host in April 2004 for my new site TweakGuides.com. As with most websites, things start out small, so I didn’t want to invest in a dedicated server package costing hundreds of dollars per month. I just wanted some cheap but reliable shared web hosting (that is my site would be on the same server as many other websites, lowering costs). Oktagone was recommended to me because they were cheap and supposedly reliable. Basic Rule Number One - Never rely on one or two pieces of advice when purchasing hosting services. Aside from the fact that people may not really know what they’re talking about, nothing replaces decent research when choosing a web host. Some unscrupulous hosting companies even resort to joining forums under pseudonyms and then giving their own services glowing testimonials to con unsuspecting potential customers (though I am not suggesting Oktagone.net did this).

So I joined Oktagone in April 2004 and instantly noticed the unprofessional setup - they had no formal billing system. You had to PayPal your monthly fee to them, without any way of checking your account balance, the actual service you had purchased, when your next bill was due (or overdue) etc. In fact at one point I upgraded my service (and paid extra) yet still got the old service for a month or two until I noticed the difference in my bandwidth allowance. Basic Rule Number Two: - Never rely on a web host which can’t even automate or administer the most important aspect of a business: billing and payments!

Then there were the outages…long and short. Sometimes only a couple of hours, sometimes a day or two. Basic Rule Number Three: - Never ever rely on a web host which has “mysterious” outages frequently, always promising that it is “just a glitch”. Your website relies on a smooth and consistent presence on the Internet to be successful. Would you frequent a supermarket or a bookstore which had odd trading hours and/or which regularly closed down without any word of why? Unreliable web hosts can cause irreparable damage to your website’s traffic. Of course if you actually earn revenue from your site, this can be even worse - you will lose income, sometimes for days a time, and you won’t be able to do a thing about it since the web hosting company controls if and when your site comes back online.

After many months of problems with Oktagone, there was a relatively stable period during which my site flourished. I topped 200,000 unique visitors a month, millions of hits and a reputable presence on the Internet. I thought things were good because I didn’t have any hosting problems to damage my growing reputation. I now know this was the calm before the storm. Oktagone had a final blow lined up for my site: Oktagone was actually a reseller - that means they bought services from another company, and resold it at a profit. It turns out Oktagone did not pay their own bills for two months in a row, so the main company simply shut down all their servers. I suddenly found my site was offline and inaccessible without a single word of warning, without any explanations. It remained offline for around two days, until which time I found this thread on the WebHostingTalk Forums, detailing the debacle which had befallen all of Oktagone’s US-based customers. Within a day of the thread appearing, Oktagone sent out an official email saying that the problem was due to a “power outage in New York”, and that a technician was on the way to resolve problems within 36 hours. Needless to say this was a blatant lie, and Oktagone’s owner later admitted - when confronted with the facts by the reseller on WebHostingTalk Forums - that he had simply not paid his bills and the servers had been shut down.

So some more things to note: Basic Rule Number Four: - If your host goes down for more than 24 hours, start getting very worried. This is not normal, and if you have had no warning, and no explanation, it is even worse. At this point start shopping for another webhost immediately. That is precisely what I did on the 2nd day. Basic Rule Number Five: - If you do receive a story about why your site is down, try to corroborate it with other people on the same host. Use the WebHostingTalk Forums for example to search for and/or post a question on whether the web host is down and why. Don’t trust the web host to tell you the truth about the situation, and don’t just sit and wait. Basic Rule Number Six: - Once your site is down for several or more days, don’t wait - switch your host. Simply put, if your web host hasn’t taken steps to protect against long outages by having appropriate emergency backup systems, then you need to get away from them ASAP. In Oktagone’s situation, their outright lying was bad enough, but the fact that they left some of their customers offline for over two weeks (!) means that I will never trust them again, especially given they still maintain the same owner.

I was very lucky to get away from the situation relatively unscathed. I shopped around for, and quickly found another cheap (but more reliable) host called HostingOnNet.com. I was able to do so thanks to some simple precautions: Basic Rule Number Seven: - Always back up your website regularly to your own PC. I made daily backups of every page, picture and file I uploaded to my site onto my hard drive, so my backup was literally up-to-date and readily accessible. Others hosted on Oktagone were not so lucky, and had to rely on the generosity of the reseller to turn the servers back on for a while so they could backup their data. Incredibly, during this period Oktagone actually went out of their way to prevent customers backing up their data, which was thwarted by the reseller which owns the servers.

However one of the most important tips is a common mistake made by people new to web hosting: Basic Rule Number Eight: - Never register your domain name through your web host. This is the single biggest problem Oktagone customers ran into. Those that had also purchased their domain name through Oktagone couldn’t switch to another web host with their existing domain names. Why? Because the Oktagone Domain Name Servers were offline, meaning that the addresses to which the domain names pointed to couldn’t be changed! This meant that some sites were down for a week or two or more with no recourse whatsoever. Luckily I had registered TweakGuides.com through another domain name seller than my web host (Godaddy.com), a very smart thing to do and strongly recommended.

Ok so what happened in this situation. What was the permanent damage through all this melodrama? For starters I had a lot of concerned people trying to contact me during what was a peak period in my site’s usage wondering what had happened. Yet of course because my site was physically offline, they couldn’t email me. I couldn’t put up any form of notice to tell them why TweakGuides.com was now inaccessible. Two days of this was bad enough, but two weeks would have broken my site’s back. Some unscrupulous people had already tried during earlier outages to rip off my guides and host them on their own sites with the explanation “TweakGuides.com is no longer online, so we are ‘archiving’ their guides.” Gee, how generous of them - all without my permission of course. I lost a few dollars as well because I’d paid in advanced, and despite assurances of getting a refund, to date Oktagone has not returned a cent, nor responded to my emails politely requesting a refund. This is despite the fact that I did not use one day of the months’ hosting I paid for, and that they had already said they would pay me a refund (in principle) on the WebHostingTalk forums. Another telling sign of what kind of people run these sort of businesses, and my Basic Rule Number Nine: - Never pay in advance for hosting, even if it entails a large discount. You may find you lose all your money if/when the host goes down forever, and/or if they decide simply not to refund you. Consumer protection agencies may help you recover your money, but for small sums below a few hundred dollars you’re going to spend more money trying than the amount you’d ever get back. Pay for your hosting by the month, and do it through a Credit Card so you can always cancel the payment if need be, or turn to the Credit Card company’s fraud protection mechanisms to prevent losing large amounts of money.

The whole experience was very unpleasant, and for a site like TweakGuides.com which is still firming its reputation around the Net, one which I would have gladly done without. I hope the information above helps you decide on an appropriate web host. I personally did a fair bit of research before finding another host after Oktagone, although being placed in a pressure situation (i.e. my site was already down for two days) didn’t help. My final rule is simple Basic Rule Number Ten: - Don’t wait until something bad happens - if you’re not happy with your current host, start researching for a better host straight away. Even if you decide to stay with your current host, at least you will have some options in case some emergency comes up and you have to switch at short notice. Never make the decision in a pressure situation as you’re likely to just switch to another poor quality host.

Well, that’s pretty much it from me. I got to tell my story, and hopefully provide ten basic tips at the same time! Hope you found it handy.

Putting your keyword phrase in your domain name is a great way to optimize for that phrase.

Domain names figure into the ranking with some search engines. If you do not already have a domain name picked, then from an optimization standpoint it is a good idea to pick a domain name that says what your business is and has your main keyword as part of your domain name.

For instance, if you sell automobile tires online, from a keyword standpoint, you would want to purchase a domain name such as shellytires.com or shelly-tires.com instead of just shelly.com. The “tires” portion of you domain name, with all things being equal with your competition, will help you achieve a higher search engine ranking with some search engines.

If you do a Google search for a certain keyword or keyword phrase you will see your keyword/s highlighted if the different websites in the search results. If you have a keyword or keyword phrase in your URL, then this too will be highlighted which leads one to believe that Google gives some weight to keywords in the domain names.

If you already have a domain name that you are using that tells what your business is about but has no keywords in it, then don’t despair since this is only a minor consideration with most search engines in their ranking algorithms. But if you have a choice of building a website from the ground up, then choosing a domain name with your main keyword embedded, may give you a slight edge in the search engine ranking wars.

Before rushing off and registering your domain make sure it has the appropriate meta and title tags and that the web site has been optimised.

Choosing the correct domain name for a business is vital to its success on the Internet. If your business is called “Intoweb Design” and your core product is “web design”, the domain name “intoweb.co.za” could work. However a better domain name would be the core business product, “blog.tryangled.com”. The reason being search engines read keyword rich domains and rank the domain higher if it contains a main keyword.

Once you start posting on your blog, stick with the same domain or you could end up losing a lot of your traffic and regular readers.

Also stick with the topic you selected for your blog. If it’s about pets don’t suddenly switch to another topic such as Gadget’s because you will loose traffic.

The first thing to do is to ensure that your blogs URL contains the primary keyword you want to optimize for. Using the targeted keyword in subdomains also helps.

For example, if you want to start a HTML tutorial site then the primary keyword you want your URL to contain is html.

Before getting a web site on line you need to have a domain name. These are the familiar web addresses such as mywebsite.com that most browsers use to find a particular web site. Domain names, in fact, are pointers to a particular IP address and we use them because they are easier to remember than a series of numbers.

All websites have an IP address in the form 123.456.78.9. The domain name system translates these numbers into names such as mywebsite.com. All domain names are registered in a central registry maintained by InterNIC, a subsidiary of ICANN — the organization which certifies domain name registrars. Domain names are filtered through Domain Name Servers (DNS) which link IP addresses with domain names. Each web site usually has a primary and a secondary DNS – duplicates that increase reliability.

The first step in registering a domain name is to choose it. The name can be almost anything you want, but to be most effective it should reflect the nature of your website. If you are selling watches, for example, it helps to have a domain name that has some reference to watches – A1-Watches.com for example.

The rules for domain names are simple – only letters, numbers or hyphens are allowed. Other than that, a domain name is limited to 70 characters, but you are advised to keep it as short as possible. Domain names can be upper or lower case – case is ignored by DNS but you can use a combination to make the name more recognizable. MyWebSite.com is easier to read than mywebsite.com, but both are identical to the DNS.

There are several extensions available. The most common is .com — it has even entered common vocabulary as a way to express Internet activity – (I own a dot com business). Other extensions include .biz (for commercial sites), .org (for non-commercial organisations), .net (for organisations involved in Internet infrastructure) and .name (for personal names). There are also extensions with more specialized uses such as .museum, .aero, and .coop and are used exclusively by members of certain organizations. In addition to these common extensions, there can also be a country code extension such as .us (United States) or .de (Germany). The rules for using country extensions vary, so you need to check with your registrar to see if they are available to you.

All domains must be registered with a registrar that has been certified by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). There are hundreds of registrars and their prices vary considerably. The full list of registrars is available at the InterNIC website (http://www.internic.net/regist.html). Although registrars are closely regulated, they are permitted to offer their services through third parties, so many web hosts offer a domain name registration service even if they are not a registrar. The price of a domain name will usually be higher when dealing with these third-party services.

Domain names are usually registered for a minimum of one year, although you are permitted to buy up to a 10-year registration contract. Usually the longer the registration contract, the lower the price, so if you are sure you will be on the web for a considerable length of time you can benefit from a longer registration period. Most registrars also offer a discount on bulk purchases. If you own a number of domain names you can save money by transferring them all to the same registrar.

You have selected a domain name, registered it and signed up with a web host. What’s next? Your web host has to provide you with details about how to get your site up and running. This information includes passwords to get into your account, paths to directories where your files should be uploaded, and most importantly, what your domain name servers are.

Domain name servers (DNS) provide the link between your domain name (mywebsite.com) and your Internet Protocol (IP) address. The IP address is a series of numbers like this: 123.456.78.9. Every web server has a unique IP address which, in the case of dedicated servers hosting a single domain, is equivalent to the domain name. A site hosted on a dedicated server will respond to either 123.456.78.9 or mywebsite.com by serving the requested webpage.

Most websites, though, are hosted on shared servers. This means that one server is home to many different websites, but they each have the same IP address. If you type in a shared IP address you will get an error page or will be redirected to the web hosting company’s web site. So DNS is necessary for websites on shared servers. Domain names are the only way to request these websites – they cannot be requested by IP address.
Configuring DNS

When you first purchase a domain name, it will be registered on the DNS of the registrar. Until you arrange for a web host, the registrar company will usually redirect requests for your domain name to an error page or an ‘Under Construction’ page. Note that there is no time limit between buying a domain name and finding a host. Some people purchase domain names without ever intending to build a website on them. Most people, though, buy a domain name with the intention of using it. To do that, you need to open an account with a web host and prepare to transfer your site to their server. Part of the process of preparing your site for publication on the World Wide Web is to alert your domain name registrar of the DNS of your new server.

A DNS configuration looks something like this:

Primary Name Server: NSA.NEWDAYDNS.COM (204.50.14.2)
Secondary Name Server: NSB.NEWDAYDNS.COM (204.50.22.2)

This information is available from your hosting company either in their informational package that they email to you, or on their website. If you can’t find the DNS it’s best to contact your web host and ask for it. Once you have the DNS information you can usually enter it into your account on the website of your registrar. If you have purchased your domain name from the hosting company, they will usually make the necessary changes for you when they set up your account.

When the DNS is registered or modified (when changing web hosts) it can take up to 24 hours for your site to be accessible from everywhere in the world. This is because domain names are registered in a distributed data base that is maintained on thousands of computers around the world. Each computer has a small part of the database in cache, and if they receive a request for an unknown domain that request has to be forwarded to another computer until the information is found.

After you have opened an account with a web host and set the DNS you can start uploading your web pages. The most common way to do this is to use FTP (File Transfer Protocol) software but there are also some other options.

FTP is an Internet Protocol (like HTTP) that allows data files to be transferred from one computer to another. Your web host will provide information about how to connect to your site using FTP. Usually you use FTP software such as WS_FTP or FileZilla to connect to the FTP server on your website. The address of the FTP server is usually ftp.mywebsite.com (where mywebsite.com is the domain name).

Your host will also tell you the location where files should be uploaded. Your account will probably have two main folders in the root directory – public_html and www. Your web pages should be uploaded to the public_html folder. The www folder is a mirror folder which allows people to find your site by using either www.mysite.com or mysite.com.

You may have to adjust a few settings in your FTP software to upload files correctly. For example, if you are using a firewall on your computer you should set the transfer method to passive. If you are using a proxy you will have to adjust the proxy settings.

Files can be sent or received in either binary or ASCII mode. If they are transferred using the incorrect mode they may end up with errors on completion of the transfer. Your FTP software may try to determine which mode to use by examining the contents of the files, or you may have to manually specify the transfer mode. Files that should be sent in ASCII mode include HTML (and variants like HTM, SHTML, DHTML, etc.) TXT, CGI, C, ASP, JS etc. Basically, any file that can be viewed in a text editor should be transferred in ASCII mode. Binary mode, on the other hand, is used to transfer everything else – graphics, compiled programs, and media files.

Using the FTP software, make a connection to your web server. Browse to the folder where you want to upload files (usually by clicking on the folder icons) and then find the local files you wish to upload. Whole directories or individual files may be uploaded.

You can name most of the pages of your website anything you like, but there is one essential file in each directory – index.html or a variant (index.htm, index.shtml etc). This means that your home page has to use this name. The home page can be viewed by typing http://mywebsite.com or http://mywebsite.com/index.htm. In the first case, if there is no file named index.htm the contents of your root directory will be shown. Without an index file in each directory, anybody who browses to that directory can see all the files there. This presents an enormous security risk as well as exposing private information to public view.

FTP is the most common way to upload files to your website but is by no means the only way. Some web authoring packages have built in transfer methods to automatically upload your entire site or individual pages. Microsoft FrontPage is an example of this type of transfer method. In order to take advantage of it you need to have FrontPage extensions installed on your website. You can request this feature from your web host. Other authoring packages have built-in FTP software so that you can build your site and upload with one familiar interface.

You can also build sites online. Some web hosts give you access to browser controlled software that allows you to lay out web pages. Once you are finished the page is automatically saved to the proper location on your server. This type of web builder is usually available through the control panel of your hosting account.

Thanks to the low cost of domain names and hosting fees it is possible to own several websites without breaking the bank. There are several ways to manage multiple domains so it is important to know what your options are and the advantages and disadvantages of each method.

The most basic choice when administering multiple domains is whether or not to do so with the same host. Most hosts offer packages which can be set up to allow several sites on one account, or allow individual sites to be operated under separate accounts.

You may have an existing website and are happy with the services your host provides. If you decide to start a new website using the same host, you will have the reassurance of dealing with a company you are familiar with and trust. You may also get a discount for each additional account you open with the same host. On the other hand, using a new host for a second (or third or fourth) website can allow you to compare the quality of hosting offered by different companies. In addition, separate hosts will provide each of your web sites with a different IP address.

Having different IP addresses can be an important factor if you plan to link the sites together to aid in search engine optimization. Incoming links are an important indicator of the importance of a website, so a site with a lot of incoming links can get a higher position in search engines like Google. If all the links are coming from the same IP address, however, their value may be discounted. Hosting your various sites with different hosting companies guarantees that each site has a different IP address. Individual IP addresses, however, are available as an extra from most web hosts. For a yearly fee each website can have its own unique IP address. This can help with search engine ranking and is also needed if you want to have a secure connection (https) on your site.

If you decide to host all your sites with the same company, there are three basic ways to go. Each site could have its own account; you could sign up for a re-seller account; or you could get a dedicated server account.

As a re-seller you are acting as an agent for the hosting company. You are allocated a certain amount of disk space and bandwidth and you are free to use them as you please. There may be a limit to the number of websites you can host with your re-seller account, but if there is space left over after using this account for your own sites you could earn some extra income by selling accounts to other people. The advantage of a re-seller account is that all the technical details are taken care of by the hosting company. Some will even provide gateways for billing your customers.

A dedicated server account gives you control of all the resources of an entire server. You are free to setup as many websites as you wish and allocate disk space and bandwidth as you see fit. The downside to this type of account is that you are responsible for maintaining the server. This can require a significant level of technical know-how so if you don’t have that knowledge or don’t feel like learning about it, dedicated servers are not for you. You can, of course, go with a managed dedicated server. The downside of this is the higher cost involved.

Hosting all your sites with one host can offer lots of advantages but there is one major disadvantage – if your server goes down, all your sites go down. If you are depending on your sites for income this can be a disastrous situation. For this reason, it is a good idea to have at least one of your sites with a different host. If your sites are essential for your livelihood and you can’t afford any down time whatsoever, you would be advised to host everything with (at least) two hosts.

Whether you purchase a separate domain (recommended) for your blog, or host it on a blogging service or a subdomain of your own site, try to ensure that your URL contains the primary keyword you want to optimize for.

For example, if you want your blog to get found for the keyword “rss” get a domain with the keyword “rss”, or use the keyword in a subdomain as in

Getting a domain name with your own name might make for good branding, especially if yours is a personal blog.

But if you’re doing it for business and want the targeted traffic to flow your way, keywords in the domain or subdomain are a move in the right direction.