How important is your domain name?

Domain names are sold from just £7.95 (+ VAT) for 2 years. With such a small cost, some may overlook the importunacy of a registered domain name.

It’s more than just a name.

The name represents your website, infact the domain name will actually represent your entire company. Domain names are always the customer responsibility, so its important to know how to go about protecting a domain name and ensuring any issues do not arise in the future as company owners and employees come and go.

Keep it safe, keep up-to-date

A whois search will tell you the current owner of any domain name in the world. Take a look at some domain search tools which includes whois at domain white pages.

The registrant always refers to the actual owner of a domain name; always ensure the registrant is updated with contact details when an ownership changes.

Administrator contact

On TLD .com, .net and .org domains include various different types of contact details for different persons connected to a domain name. Generally the most important refers to the admin contact. The admin contact needs to always be updated with a valid email address for a person responsible for the domain. Domain transfers, and in some cases domain renewals could potentially fail if this information is not updated to the correct email contact. Be safe and keep all records updated.

Who to contact?

The domain name registration company is usually the first point of contact when details need to be updated on a particular domain. Information relating to the registration company can usually be gathered from a whois search.

In some cases, the company who hold the domain name may have ceased trading. Or, for whatever reason will not transfer or update records on your domain name. In this case, the registrar or Internet registry will need to be contacted to resolve the issue and necessary steps will need to be taken to prove ownership. Common domain registrars and Internet registries are as follows:

http://www.nominet.org.uk (.uk domains)
http://opensrs.com (Tucows)
http://www.melbourneit.com.au
http://www.networksolutions.com

Your domain name is your responsibility; there have been many cases where domain names have been lost or un-recovered due to details on the domain name not being kept up-to-date.

For information relating to domain names or web hosting, contact us for further assistance or information

If you are interested in starting a web hosting company but are unsure where to begin the following tips might help point you in the right direction.

Web hosting is a product that can be either very complex or very simple, but a good fact to remember is that all of the big hosting companies started out as resellers or another hosting company around at the time. The reason for this is that a reseller package gives you the freedom to sell hosting products without the overhead of managing a data centre or server hardware.
Once you get in to buying server hardware it starts to become more complex as you have to put more factors into your ROI, to make sure you make money, as after all it is a business you want to run.

A reseller package would give you the flexibility to sell hosting space to your customers with very little time to setup and get going. When starting your web hosting company you should think about some of the following:

Decide what it is you are going to sell.

Look around at other hosting companies to see what is being sold, and use them as a model for your own packages. Create a spreadsheet showing the company, services offered (Hosting space, Bandwidth etc) and the cost, do this for about 10 different companies to then give you a good idea of what to offer and at what price.

Create your business website.

Once you have decided on your products you should start to design your website, when doing so keep in mind that this is what potential customers will judge you on, and you have to capture someone’s attention within 8 seconds otherwise they will move to another website. With such a fickle viewing audience keep the website clean of clutter and straight to the point with out pushing your product too far.

Tip: the first page of your site should only contain your company name, along with some sample products from your product range, then link the products to page with more information about the products.

Pick your company name.

Many people would have done this straight away, and then worked their business around the name of the company, this however may restrict your design flow, finding that the name you picked initially doesn’t fit around your idea of how the website should look. Once you have picked your name update your website.

Create emails for Customers.

Spend some time writing the emails customers will receive when they Sign up, Purchase a Product, send in a support request, Sales email and Billing Email. You should use a standard template for your emails so that people can instantly recognise your brand once it hits their inbox.

Create a Support Area.

Many new companies forget about this section, however it can really help you sell your products by showing what excellent support you offer. Go back to your product list and write down some tutorials and general questions people may face when starting, such as „How do I upload my website“, „What are my login details“, „How do I create an email account“ etc. These should give you some good articles to start with and later branch out.

Tip: Invite some friends who do not know about web hosting to test your website and products for you, these will give you the best questions and ideas on creating a user friendly website and support area.

The biggest question is what reseller should you use? CWCS offer a number of products which will allow you to start hosting your own web hosting company. We offer both Linux and Windows hosting packages with customisable control panels to allow you to put your brand on the site.

Take a look at what we can offer to get you on your way to becoming a leading web hosting company with our reseller web hosting packages.

When choosing which Linux distribution you which to install on your server there are several factors which may influence your decision. Some distributions have newer versions of software, some are easy to install / upgrade software.

For example Debian/Ubuntu have far more ready made packages than any other distribution and has the easiest way of installing software, however some people prefer the RPM method, Redhat based systems have been popular in the server world for sometime.

Debian based systems have a mechanism to upgrade to the newer version which other systems lack (this is not possible with a Plesk install) . Certain distributions have a better reputation of stability (Debian/Centos)

Below are the 4 main distributions we use, it is possible to have 32bit or 64bit systems . 64Bit is generally recommended if your server has more than 4GB RAM or are using a standalone Database server.

You can request any other present distribution for your server, however you will have to pay the license if the distribution you require needs one (I.e redhat enterprise). Also not all distributions support Plesk.

If you need a custom version of PHP/MySQL for your linux server (I.e compiled in a certain way or later version that the distribution supports please contact sales@cwcs.co.uk

Ubuntu:

Packages: The latest version is always very up to date – the LTS versions (5 year support) are generally older. Ubuntu has access to Debian packages also making it have the largest software base

Support life-cycle : 5 years (LTS versions) / 3 years for non LTS

Package Manager : Deb / apt-get

Latest version that Plesk supports : Intrepid (8.10) – we recommend Hardy (8.04) due to LTS

Fedora:

Packages : Very up to date packages – the latest version of Fedora will usually have the very latest packages (I.e latest apache, kernel, php, etc) – not as many packages as Debian/Ubuntu

Support life-cycle : short support life-cycle official OS updates finish after 18 months (Plesk do support out of date versions however) – Also Plesk generally only support versions that have ran out of official support

Package Manager : Yum/RPM

Latest version that Plesk supports : Fedora Core 8

Centos:

Based on Redhat enterprise source code (but does not require a license)

Packages: Older than Fedora/Ubuntu – similar number of packages to fedora – stability is more important to this distro rather than having the latest software (I.e older versions of PHP/MySQL)

Support life-cycle : 5 – 7 years

Package Manager : Yum/RPM

Latest version that Plesk supports : Centos5.2

Debian:

Packages : Has the largest software base, stability is more important to this distro rather than having the latest software (I.e older versions of PHP/MySQL)

Support life-cycle : 3 – 5 years

Package Manager : Deb / apt-get

Latest version that Plesk supports : Etch (4.0)

In my last Blog I covered the importance the hosting account has on optimising your search engine rankings. The next stage in optimising your website to become search engine friendly is down to the actual design and setup. Read on to discover how to gain search engine ranks by following a few basic rules…

Allow your website to be seen…

No matter how good of a design your website is, you should never forget the intended purpose of the actual website. In most cases websites are used to reach out to a larger audience and market your products or services. Ensure your website is searchable by not complicating the design and following strict web standards, details of such standards can be found at the the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Take full advantage of Meta TAG use

Meta tags were created to specify a specific set of keywords search engines use to index your website within the search engine database. Meta tags are defined within the HEAD tag in your HTML page. When choosing your Meta Tags you should think carefully about the type of keywords customers choose when searching across a large amount of similar websites. With an open mind and careful research you can gather a good set of keywords and use them as searchable content by the search engines, take at look at a more in depth guide on Meta tags at SearchEngineWatch.

It’s all about the keywords

Search engines have changed over the years, content within a website is now used by the search engines as a determining factor on indexing the search results. Search engine spiders pick up on common keywords and determine what type of information the website provides. This helps the search engines create a priority list of websites that appear first when a particular topic is searched. With this in mind, you can imagine how important keywords are. A good usage of keywords could be as follows:

- Ensure keywords are in plain text
- Ensure they are “searchable” common words
- Ensure Flash, images or other website technologies don’t prevent keywords from being displayed in the simplest format.
- Use correct headers for strong keywords
- Name your pages correctly

There’s actually a tool you can use to determine the percentage a keyword should be mentioned within a page, take a look at the link below: http://www.googlerankings.com/ultimate_seo_tool.php

Search engines react to updates

Not everything has changed over the years with the new search engine techniques; old logic is still being used. Websites that do not have continued fresh content will slowly move back through the search index, being replaced by more popular pages with regular updates. A good example of a website receiving regular updates could be http://www.digg.com

This website relies on user interaction and is community based, regular input from users has created a community. Search engines has recognised the popularity and indexed accordingly with a high search ranking.

We’re all in it together…

Community websites are often seen within top search results. User interaction creates fresh content along with external website links. The Internet is a network and websites rely on one another to gain popularity. A Blog, forum, RSS feed or any form or text based interaction tool could possibly help with search engine results. Even a link exchange service may add towards the popularity of your website. Take at look at the following website for details: http://www.uklinkexchange.co.uk/

Time

It’s completely unrealistic to think your website will slot it in Google’s first page after a matter of weeks. The sooner your website is submitted the better. Its good practise to evaluate your websites progress using tools, search rankings should always increase over time. Keep track of your rankings, the hard work will pay off as you slowly see your website climbing the popularity ladder. Right now, Google is the leading the search engine don’t forget to take a look at information they provide for Optimising your website…
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291

I hope you find success in your research…

http://www.cwcs.co.uk

Optimising a website to ensure it is search engine friendly is as important, if not more important than the actual design of the website.

A combination of using good website design practises and keywords will ensure your website remains found by the common search engines.

Many people have different methods of increasing search engine rankings, a major determining factor on how searchable your website is actually boils down to the web hosting server your website is physically sitting on.

Dedicated IP

Having a dedicated IP address could help increase the search engine ranking of your website. It’s said that the search engine ranks websites differently with shared IP addresses, prioritising hosting with a dedicated IP address.

Everyone has there own view on SEO, only the actual search truly knows what methods they use to determine which websites appear before others within there search results.

Location

One of the most important SEO determining factors is said to be the location of the hosted server. Ensure your hosting provider is located in the country your target audience is based. The search Engine can determine where your physical website is stored and will rank the website based on the location.

Uptime

Search engine spiders on constantly indexing 24/7, should you experience regular downtime your search engine results could be affected. Having a reliable hosting provider offering uptime guarantees will ensure your websites remain online.

At CWCS Managed Hosting we know exactly what’s important to ensure your website search engine rankings are maintained and improved.

Contact us to find out more information on how our packages can improve your search engine ranks.

http://www.cwcs.co.uk/
Tel: 0845 203 1000

We are waiting for your call…

CWCS offers many different types of packages that are suitable for a wide user base with varying requirements. A blog is a very common thing to host on your web space and CWCS will have a package available that is equipped to handle hosting a blog.

While you probably won’t need a dedicated server for your blog (well you may do depending on how popular it may get) you can’t simply rush in and buy the cheapest package. There is an abundance of blog software available out there and they all vary in features and requirements. Choose the blog software that most closely matches your required feature set. Once chosen you will need to take a note of it’s requirements, which will be provided on the blog software’s homepage, usually under their support or F.A.Q section.

You can now simply match those requirements with an available package from the following selection on our web hosting page. Some of our hosting packages also contain blog software built in, like out Linux Business Hosting account, which means you won’t need to install or configure anything, it’s a one-click setup.

The usual requirements to keep an eye out for will be the PHP and MySQL versions. 95% of all blog software will be compatible with the latest technologies CWCS uses today, but some older blog software may require specific component versions. That’s really all there is to it.

So to summarise, choose the blog software that matches the feature set you are after, match the requirements with a hosting package and start blogging.

Feel assured your server is powerful and redundant for your business critical hosting requirements. Switch to Colocation hosting and use your own hardware!

Owning your own equipment can sometimes be enough for that extra reassurance you need in ensuring you have a reliable hosting setup. Colocation will ensure a hosting provider looks after your servers with redundancy, reliability, connectivity and support all taken care of.

Professionals within the IT sector may well benefit largely from Colocating equipment. Choice and availability is one obvious advantage, no matter how complex your setup is, you’re freely able to Colocate any type of hardware within your designated rack space. Rack space can be available to you as soon as you need it. This eliminates long setup times allowing you to configure and bring in your own equipment as soon as required.

Colocation is generally suitable for customers within the IT sector or with a dedicated IT support team. Knowledge will be required to maintain your own hardware and configure your server. A good way to view Colocation could be a service offering the critical web hosting necessities without the added costs of management and leasing the hardware.

Give your server a home… Choose Colocation Hosting today!