Are You Overpaying for Web Hosting?

A lot of web designers will offer to handle your web hosting as a convenience to you (or themselves). This is fine but beware: some of them will attempt to fatten their pockets here at your expense. Do you have a simple brochure website with no streaming audio/video, databases, e-commerce or other advanced applications? Then, you shouldn’t be paying over $25/month for web hosting – and that’s even throwing in an extra $10-15/month for your web designer's trouble! Be careful not to go too cheap on web hosting, though – price isn’t everything when it comes to web hosting - reliability, support and options are most important. But even with a solid, reputable hosting company, a 300-page brochure website complete with Flash, dynamic menus, PDF downloads, and web-to-email forms costs next to nothing to host – usually under $10.

Find out more about what to look for in a web hosting company.

What You Need to Know About Your Own Website

Make sure you're well-informed about EVERYTHING related to the creation and maintenance of your website. That way, you'll be prepared if you need to modify your website and your web designer seems to have dropped off the face of the earth. With the right information, you or another web designer will be able to pick up where your old designer left off.

Immediately following completion of your website, be sure to request:

1. Copies of all website graphics including LAYERED (that’s important!) graphics files (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.) and any stock photos the designer purchased on your behalf.
   
   
2. All access information (username, password, website, phone number, etc.) for your:
   
   
   
   • domain name registrar
   
   
   • hosting company
   
   
   • email
   
   
   • stats
   
   
   • shopping cart
   
   
   • any special applications needed to maintain elements of your site (like your menu or search application).

When your business needs to make an urgent change to the website, you will NOT want to be wasting days, weeks or months trying to track down the above information from a web designer who might be Missing in Action. And when you do get the information, remember to keep it in a safe place!

Web Design Contracts

I’ve heard enough web designer horror stories to emphatically tell you to ALWAYS sign a web design contract. Verbal agreements are for sucker wanna-bes, whether you're the client or designer.

What Should Be In Your Web Design Contract

I’m not a lawyer, so do NOT take this as legal advice. But, based on my professional experience, a good web design contract should at least specify:

• Estimated project cost (in terms of hours or dollars)
• Payment terms
• Estimated project completion date (or something related to timely progress towards project completion)
• Cancellation policy
• Who owns the completed design and related graphics (logo, stock photos, etc)
• Who owns the domain name (make sure it's YOU, not the designer!)
• Non-disclosure terms (so your competitor down the block doesn’t see the final site before you do!)

Even if the web designer or client is a close friend or relative, you'd be wise to have a signed web design contract. That way everyone is starting on the same page -- literally!

Protect Your Domain Name

I can't blog about it enough. There are still web designers out there who will steal your domain name and try to sell it back to you. Basically, what they do is register the domain name for you but put themselves as the owner, not you. I personally know several small business owners that this has happened to, right here in the Inland Empire, and they can’t afford the legal costs of a resolution.

Make sure you are the “Owner” and/or “Registrant” of your domain name. The best way to ensure this is to go to a domain registrar website and register it yourself -- even if you’ve been promised a “free” domain name from your web designer. You can get a “.com”, “.net” or “.org” name for less than $10 these days. If you do register the name yourself, don’t get seduced into buying additional domain-related products that you may not want or need (email accounts, hosting, SSL, privacy, etc.) and make SURE the registrar website allows easy access to a control panel that lets you modify your nameservers – sounds a little techie but that is crucial to the ability to host your website anywhere you choose.

I've been registering domain names through Christian Web Site for years with no problems and I've also been registering at iPower for the last year or so. Both sites offer domain names for under $10 and give control panel access to modify your nameservers. You can also try Yahoo and GoDaddy.

And, don’t forget the name of the website where you registered the name! Save your confirmation email in a safe place -- you'll need it later!

Cheap Web Hosting Companies

Cheap web hosting companies offer you the moon and stars for less than $6/month. Are they worth it for your business?

More of What You DON'T Need and Less of What You DO Need
With cheap web hosting companies, what you gain in email addresses and disk space that you'll never use, you often lose in flexibility, support and your own valuable time. Beware: they know most people are impressed by the word "unlimited" and will try to exploit the value seeker in you.

Support? Well...
At the cheap hosting companies, their support teams seem to be good for reading straight out of their handbook or referring customers to their online doc. Sometimes that solves the problem. When it doesn’t, I can hear their mouths hanging open and I never get a callback. I once spent a lot of time trying to get a cheap web hosting company's "free" poll application to work. Their support team only had a dumb answer for the problem and never fixed it. A complete waste of my time!

Learn More
Read my full article to learn:

• what else to look out for with cheap web hosting
• what you should look for in a web hosting company
• why Alentus is the web hosting company I recommend
• a few cases where a cheap web hosting company might be a good choice

Full article on cheap web hosting companies >

Say Buh-Bye to Boring Email Addresses

One of the great things about owning the domain name for your small business website is that you have the freedom to create any email address you want.

Tired of boring, old "info" or "sales" or "customerservice" or "joesmith" @yourcompany.com? Come up with something creative and memorable that also delivers a marketing message:

• fastsales@joesrealestate.com
• getanswers@janeslegal.com
• lookgreat@janesbeauty.com
• luxuryrides@joeslimo.com

Didn't get the domain name you were coveting? Make up for it with your business email address. Let's say you own a restaurant and want the domain name "greatfood.com". Well, you can try to battle 1-800-Flowers for it, but you'd do better to find a domain name that is available—hopefully one with more brand appeal than "greatfood.com"—and then create the email address greatfood@yourrestaurant.com.

I know what you're thinking: your email address won't get as much exposure as your website address. Maybe not, but your business email address does get a LOT of exposure. And it should be displayed almost everywhere your website address and business phone number are displayed.

Stop Promoting Your Free Email Proivder

I run into many Inland Empire business people still using their Yahoo!, Verizon, SBC, Google, Earthlink, or other free-account email address on their business cards and in other business communication. Instead, start calling attention to your own business.

1) Using your business email address (i.e., info@yourbusiness.com) builds recognition for your own company name and website address every time you use it.

2) It just looks more professional. Period. These days, a free-account email address on your business card or (yikes!) listed on your website is like an office with only file cabinets and no computers - it gives the impression you're either very small-time or technically out-of-date.

How to make the transition? Read my full article for common concerns and solutions.