All of them are valid.

The biggest cost of WordPress is the time it takes you to create a site and make it what you want it to be. The biggest downside to using a free service is lack of control.

I suggest that you try out a free site, (after all, it’s free), and learn the ropes.

When you are ready for a “real” web site, then get your own web host and install WordPress. You can point everything on the free site at the new site.

With your very own web site, you have complete control of everything! Sell stuff! Publish what you want. Make it professional and compete with other businesses. Rock the world.

Final thoughts.

13 reasons why you should NOT have a free wordpress.com web site.

So basically what I’m saying is that it’s not a good idea to have a free website as your main home online. Whether you’re an individual or a business, get your own domain and pay for your own hosting.

If you already have a free WordPress site, and it is your only blog/website, I suggest one of two things. 1) Buy a domain, install wordpress and start fresh. You can always direct people to your new blog from your old blog, or 2) Export all your content from your free site into a paid site, then you’ll have everything in one place. The sooner you do this the better in my opinion.

That said, blogging communities are great and should not be ignored. Having a free blog within a blogging community however, is very different than having a website all your own. Of all the free blogging communities around, I like Tumblr the best. Here is a list of some of the most popular blogging communities.

WordPress is a blog application found at WordPress.org
Wordpress is free to use. It’s called open source.
Wordpress is awesome. Smart people use it.
Wordpress.com is a place to be part of a blogging community.
A free WordPress blog doesn’t make sense as your only blog.
A free WordPress blog is a great way to learn the ropes.

Read the entire article at:
http://www.socialmediatherapy.com/2009/07/03/a-free-wordpress-blog-can-really-cost-you/

How much control do you want?

It’s a balance of simple and no control against difficult and total control.

Being the control freak that I am, I always choose control. I want you, as my client, to have as much control as you can. I can make the total control of your own web site a little bit simpler, and be there when you have questions.

Which do you choose?

Hosting: Self or Other

The biggest major difference between the two WordPresses is that the dot com version is hosted for you for free on Automattic’s servers, while the dot org version is software you install on your own web server. Automattic is the parent company of WordPress. Hosting with WordPress.com means you save a lot of money, because it’s free, and you never have to worry about your server crashing. You never have to worry about upgrades, because they’re automatic. Everything just works.

To receive those benefits requires you to give up something very important to a business: sovereignty. You don’t control the software or the server. There are incredible extras and freedoms unavailable to you if you go with the dot com version of WordPress. If you install WordPress on your own web server, we call that self-hosted WordPress to quickly tell which flavor of WordPress we’re talking about.

Self-hosted is a double-edged sword. With great freedom comes great responsibility. You have access to scads of themes and plugins that will let you do amazing things with WordPress that you can’t do on the dot com version—it’s like getting the keys to the kingdom. But you’re responsible for managing everything and keeping it updated. Plugins, themes, and WordPress itself require constant upgrading and backing up. Sometimes there are glitches that can only be solved by people who really know what they’re doing. If that’s not you, then you must have access to a qualified person.

Read the entire article at:
http://remarkablogger.com/2009/11/19/wordpress-com-vs-wordpress-org-the-definitive-overview-for-business

They said they were about to update their web site. Their spouse had created it and they wanted to add some features and update the look. I suggested that they use WordPress. I sounded like the fan boy that I am.

They were pleasant, but said they already had hosting with GoDaddy and they would just use the web blog application that they provided as part of the hosting package. They had heard of WordPress and that it was good, but they would use what they had.

I continued on about how cool WordPress is. They were very nice, but had decided that they didn’t want to pay anything extra when they already had a blogging application included in their hosting package.

I checked it out on my own GoDaddy account. It sucked! It had a tenth of the functionality and the interface was horrible.

Did I mention that it's free?

Oh. That’s quite different. It’s free you say? You don’t have to buy it?

No! It’s FREE. You can download it, install it, pick a theme, put in some plug ins and have a complete, professional web site FOR FREE.

They said they would check it out. They thanked me profusely. Told me that I had motivated them to get going on their web site.

I have no idea if they will do anything on it at all, but I guess I was shocked that not everyone has the same understanding and knowledge and beliefs that I do. Silly me.

People seem to think that to get cool software, you have to spend money. If you don’t spend money, then you can have cool software. People can’t wrap their heads around the whole “open source” thing.

If you happen to not be aware, WordPress is free. There is no cost. You can download it and install it on any web server that’s running MySQL and Apache (which is almost every web server these days). You can control all aspects of it. You can build your own theme if you want. You can do anything with it.

Did I mention that it’s free?

Network Solutions is waiting for you to search for an available domain name using their site.

With that as background, I got a comment or two from Jack Carlson, who, again, I really appreciate for commenting. He defended NetSol and I had to question if I was right about their practices or not. I know what happened to me and a client of mine. Maybe they saw the error of their ways and changed their practices. I needed to reevaluate.

I checked Wikipedia (and since it’s on the Internet, it must be right of course,) and they also had references that all seem to check out. I think this section below is probably true. It matches my experiences and my client’s. Please click through and read the whole thing.

What do you think? Have you ever had a good or a bad experience with NetSol? Please leave a comment and we’ll all battle it out in the never ending search for the truth.

Network Solutions – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Controversy over domain name front running

There is evidence that there are parties subscribing to this information which are buying some of these domains within milliseconds of them being de-registered.

Network Solutions Inc offer a search engine which permits users to find out if a domain name is available for purchase.[18] Unregistered domain names entered into this search engine are then speculatively reserved by Network Solutions. [18] It should be noted this “reservation” can be removed by anyone immediately by contacting Network Solutions customer service hotline, or it will automatically unreserve within 4 days, allowing the domain to be freely registered anywhere. Also, visitors searching for domain names on their website allow the reservation when they click “OK” on the Reservation Confirmation dialog box. Clicking cancel will prevent the domain name from being reserved.

On January 8, 2008 Domain Name Wire published a story alleging that Network Solutions practices domain name front running.[18] “If you try to register a domain at Network Solutions, but decide not to register it, you won’t be able to register it anywhere else,” the article says.[18] “Network Solutions registers the domain in its company name with the words ‘This Domain is available at NetworkSolutions.com’.”[18] Circle ID reported on January 8, 2008 that Jonathon Nevett, Vice President of Policy at Network Solutions and one of the seven members of the ICANN community who was consulted by the ICANN committee looking at domain tasting abuse,[19] had offered a response to the news story stating Network Solution’s policy.[20] The policy was “a security measure to protect our customers,” said Nevett.[20] “When a customer searches for an available domain name at our website, but decides not to purchase the name immediately after conducting the search,” Nevett added, “after the search ends, we will put the domain name on reserve.”[20] Nevett said that if the domain was “not purchased within 4 days, it will be released back to the registry and will be generally available for registration.”[18]

Jay Westerdal, one of the seven members of the ICANN community who was consulted by the ICANN committee looking at domain tasting abuse,[19] published an article on Domain Tools on January 8, 2008 stating that Network Solutions is exposing the domains to domain tasters.[21] The domain tasters “will snipe those domain up milliseconds after Network Solutions deletes them,” says Westerdal.[21] “It is a deplorable action that Network Solution would announce potential domain names to the entire world,” Westerdal added.[21] On January 8, 2008, Tucows, the largest publicly traded domain name registrar, published an article on their company web site titled “Registrar Reputation and Trust” criticizing Network Solutions policy.[22] “Potential Registrants are effectively forced to purchase the domain from Network Solutions for a period of four days at which point the domain is dropped,” wrote Tucows employee James Koole.[22] Koole says that Tucows has found a way to address the issue of domain tasting and have policies in place that uphold the rights of Registrants.[22] “Tucows works to prevent domain name tasting by charging our Resellers a monetary fee on domain name registrations that are cancelled within the five-day Add Grace Period (AGP),” Koole said.[22] “Tucows doesn’t use WHOIS query data or search data from our API to front-run domain names,” Koole added.[22]

On January 9, 2008, Cnet reported that Network Solutions will soon not register domains when people search for domains from the company’s Whois search page, will offer only an “under construction” page for sites that it has reserved, and newly reserved pages won’t be linked to the numerical Internet addresses that allow Web browsers to locate the pages.[23] Network Solutions will continue to register domains when people search for domains from the company’s home page.[23]

There is evidence that there are parties subscribing to this information which are buying some of these domains within milliseconds of them being de-registered.[19][21] This occurs for thousands upon thousands of domains, with a certain percentage then eventually being bought by the original party, providing a profit. [19][21]

Read the entire article at Network Solutions – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

They haven’t quite released WordPress 2.7 yet, so I’m still rocking the RC1 version of it. They say they will release the final version tomorrow. A few more screenshots today and it should be good to go.

Web Site Starter Kit should be released by the end of the week.

You should set up addresses like support@ and sales@ and information@, just to look professional.

Set up your email application to log into that account, then use it to send and receive email.

You should also have a “catch all” account that will probably get filled with spam, but you’ll also get those emails with misspelled email addresses that you might otherwise miss.

You should set up addresses like “support@” and “sales@” and “information@”, just to look professional. You, or someone, should be able to log in and send and receive email at each of your custom addresses.

Also, don’t let any address lay dormant. Make sure that someone is logging into every account, every 10 minutes. “I sent you an email last week. Did you get it?” is not the question you want to hear.

Unlimited bandwidth and server space are not that critical. Don’t be swayed by those claims. Price and support. Again, I recommend Powweb. Click the button on the right to get more info about them.

The Shared Hosting Checklist | Web Hosting Articles & Tutorials – © Web Hosting Rating

Support

Customer service is a critical element of web hosting, especially if you are creating your first website.  To make sure you get the benefit of quality support, you should find out if the company has a phone number, email address or live chat.  You can take this one step further by making contact before signing up to judge their response time.  If they take days to reply or blow you off completely, there is no need to waste your time.

Reviews

One way to find yourself a good shared host is to read reviews online.  This should give you a good idea about who you will be dealing with and what to expect.  At the same time, you shouldn’t rely solely on web hosting reviews.  Some could be written by internal sources at a particular company while others could be written by competitors.  If you want helpful reviews, try to get them from somebody you can trust to provide honest opinions.

Status

Every web host had to start somewhere, but it’s always a good idea to sign up with a company that has been in the business for a while.  Several providers have crumbled despite seeming as if they were off to a good start.  By doing business with trusted names with documentation to back up their claims, you can better assure that your experience with shared hosting will be a positive one.

Read the entire article at The Shared Hosting Checklist | Web Hosting Articles & Tutorials – © Web Hosting Rating

If you want a Ferrari, then buy a Ferrari, but know that it's a Ferrari.

Advantages of Managed Web Hosting | What It Is

The reasons why to opt a managed web hosting account compare to unmanaged cheaper web hosting service are as follows:

No Downtime: Your online website works as official brand of your company presence over the internet thus it’s a must for you to make your site alive 24*7 hrs for the world wide web visitors so that they can access your website without any such issues like downtime. Major online web hosting providers gives you 99.9% uptime guarantee while the fact is this that its too insufficient to the practical need for better presence in front of your customers thus you need a web hosting company which can ensure you 100% optimal uptime as there are a lot of managed web hosting providers which offer 100% uptime in real due to their multi-home bandwidth network lines.

When you are a newbie webmaster even it’s a must for you to ensure that your web hosting provider gives you 100% uptime guarantee in this manner you can cut off a lot of hassles and frustration sort of unwanted things in your daily business role with your website.

Better Equipments: There are a lot of managed web hosting providers over the internet world which gives you 30 minutes or even 15 minutes hardware replacement guarantee sort of unmatchable performance for your website as when your hardware by chance goes failed this is a must as nobody knows what’s going on when as everybody just know either the past of the presence nothing can be predicated for future reference point of view when you are dealing practically over any such technical things as web servers.

Better Support: When you go to search any web hosting company you shall check their Support SLA things to let you know that how good they are to the support needs as there are a lot of managed web hosting providers which offer you maximum 30 minutes guaranteed response over your any trouble with your website so it’s always better to keep your eyes on their detailed SLA agreement too so you can secure yourself that you are working with the best supporting team for your web hosting needs.

Remote backups: Proper planning for backups shall be always carried when you host your website anywhere on internet and if you have a properly planned remote backup that makes you 200% more secure to what you are doing on internet.

Read the entire article at Advantages of Managed Web Hosting | What It Is

This is a server that is shared by multiple web sites.

This is your own personal piece of hardware that you drive down to the hosting company

You get the entire machine, usually with more access to it than with a shared server.

The hosting company will all monitor the server for you and fix things if they go wrong.

If your site has little traffic, you won’t need the power of a dedicated server. If you are not a geek, then you probably don’t need to collocate your own server. If you are not running a huge commercial site, you probably don’t need a dedicated server.

I use these guys and they give me enough bandwidth and customer service to make me happy. I don’t promote anyone else, just Powweb.

I always start with a planning document. It can be formal or informal. It just needs to have all of the information you need in a way that makes sense to you.

It's always best to plan out what you need to do before you do anything.

Once you have a handle on the technical issues, which will take way more time to explore, the next step is a site map. This might be called the site architecture or site plan. There are various names for it.

You need to have a list of every page on the site and a description of the content for every page. You also need to know the relationships of each page, which will be defined with the menus.

Most sites have a list of things that are exactly the same on each page, so we call this the template. These things would be the header and footer, the sidebars, and the logo. Whatever else you might have can be put into the template.

If your site has nothing common on each page, then you’re better off creating them individually. You still need to make the site map.

You can make this list as a text outline or as a graphic with little boxes and lines running between them. Use whatever tools you have that make sense to you.