What is Web Hosting?
Web hosting is provided by a web hosting service, this service allows organizations and individuals to have their websites accessible on the internet or World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide their clients with space on their various types of servers so that the information stored on a website can be accessed from anywhere in the world at any time of day.
Types of Web Hosting
Free Hosting - free hosts provide clients with a limited amount of web space, bandwidth and features. Most free hosts will show banners, pop ups and other kinds on advertising on the website hosted for free.
Shared Hosting - multiple websites are hosted one one single web server and share the resources of that server such as CPU, disk space and RAM.
Dedicated Host - Clients are given full control over their sever and has all administrative and root access rights. They can install, uninstall and customize their server to their needs and clients are responsible for the security and maintenance of his/her own server.
Virtual Dedicated Host - one server is virtually “split” into multiple servers but unlike shared hosting each owner of a virtual space is given full access rights over than space and can use it however they please.
There are many other types of Web Hosting available, these will be looked at in future articles as well as more in depth features related to web hosting.
Visualscope Studios
Visualscope Studios is a top notch web design and development firm specializes in advanced web development, website design, e-commerce and search engine optimization. The Seattle web design company has many years of experience under its belt and its capable web professionals will help you to maximize the potential of your website by giving and attractive and optimized web presence, which might be the edge you need over your competitors.
Visualscope’s comprehensive list of web design articles coverage topics such as search engine optimization, business and web development just to name a few goes a far way in helping web savvy site owners to get the most of their websites. Although based in Seattle Visualscope’s services are available globally so be sure to visit their webpage to view previous projects and get even more information on how this web development studio can help you.
How does your website look on a Mobile Phone?
In 2008 over one billion users are expected to access the internet via a mobile phone. Ever wonder how your website(s) display on a mobile device? The dotMobi has a very useful online JAVA emulator that allows website owners to see how their site would display on a cell phone. With such a large and growing market, it’s not a bad idea to register the .MOBI extension of your website(s) for future use.
Caribwebdev.com displayed on a Mobile Phone
Google Webmaster Tools Simple Tutorial
Google Webmaster Tools is a free online toolkit provided by Google to website owners. It provides important information to website owners related to their website(s) which allows them to better optimize their websites to attract traffic from search engines.
Registration and Verification
Anybody with a website can sign up for and use Google’s webmaster tools. After signing up users will have to verify each website they add to their account by added a generated html file to their web server or by adding a special meta tag to one of their pages. Once verified users can configure many options related to their site such as how often they want Google’s bots to index their pages, stop certain pages from being indexed, set a preferred format to represent their domain and so on.
Diagnostics, Statistics and Linkage
After registration and verification it will take a few weeks for sufficient data to be collected about your domain but after this waiting period you will be able to access detailed information about your domain. Web crawl errors will point you to troublesome pages which are missing, unreachable, timing out, or returning errors to Google’s crawlers. Top search queries and clicks for domains are displayed so that website owners can track their SEO progress and optimize their content. The Index Stats display the various pages already indexed by Google while the Crawl Stats display average pagerank of your pages while noting the page with the highest rank. Subscriber Stats show a link to any RSS feed or any other form of syndicated content found on your pages by the crawler and the amount of users subscribed to them through Google’s services such as Google reader. The very important links tab allows you to view links within your site as well as links from other sites that point to pages within your website.
Screen shots of Help Page, Homepage and Dashboard
Sitemaps
A sitemap is a file which lists links that are available for crawling on a domain. Some websites have a special page where all links on a site are listed where users can go to better navigate the pages available on a domain, but technically such pages are not sitemaps although they do allow easier access to domain links by site users and search engine bots. Google Webmaster Tool’s supports the adding of text, XML and even RSS sitemaps to a domain listed as long as it is verified and the sitemap file is listed in the root area of the domain. For Example:
http://www.sitename.com/sitemap.xml - correct placement of sitemap
http://www.sitename.com/sitemap.xml - incorrect placement of sitemap that will return an error
Help Centre
Visit the excellent Webmaster Help Centre to find help any issues related to Google Webmaster Tools, adding sitemaps or getting your site listed in Google’s search engine.
How to Register a Domain Name
Over the years the process of registering a domain name has become cheaper and easier. There are many licensed domain name registrars in operation today that are there to help and guide you through the process of selecting, registering and managing your domain name.
What is a domain name registrar?
A domain name registrar is a company authorized by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and/or by a national Country Code Top-Level Domains (ccTLD) authority to register Internet domain names. ICANN has control over Generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs). Examples of Generic Top Level Domains include .com, .net and .org. ICANN does not have authority over Country Code Top-Level Domains, though it is quite common for domain name registrars to provide ccTLD registration services as well.
The domain registration process
Popular domain registrars such as GoDaddy.com, Register.com and NetworkSolutions.com offer a search feature where you can check to see if the domain name you are interested in is available or already taken by another person or company. Domains may be up to 63 characters long and must contain only alphanumeric characters, underscores and dashes. If your domain name is available registering it should be a simple process cost effective process as a .com (dot com) name should cost less than us$10 per year and should be available minutes after it is registered.
Depending on your registrar you name should be parked and ready for use, now all you need is a host right? More info on web hosts in a future article.
