They had no idea that WordPress would allow them to update their own site themselves. They thought that a web site is just a web site. Only web developers could make changes to them. They had no control of their own site.

The old school way of building a web site, the way I did it since 1994, is to manually write out static HTML files and put them on a web server. Each page lived on it’s own, like having a bunch of pieces of paper laid out on the living room floor. You have to change each one individually.

Smart people got the idea to develop a “Content Management System”, CMS, to take care of the hard, repetitive stuff. There are now many of them. Drupal and Joomla are the primary competitors to WordPress these days.

The idea of a CMS is that some of the elements on a web page are the same from page to page. Generally there’s a header, a sidebar, and a footer, with the content in the middle somewhere. The content changes, but the template stays the same.

If you had an automated system that would just add the same header to every page, then you only have to update the header in one place, one time. If you can have a system that manages the static stuff and lets you play with the changing stuff, life would be easier.

Using WordPress allows me to build that template, all the hard stuff, the common stuff, as a web developer, then allows my clients to manage all the stuff in the middle, the content.

I haven’t built a web site without using WordPress in years.

Why WordPress? Control.

In any CMS, there are “admin” pages, a section of the site that is password protected. Those pages control the images, the posts, the pages, the content of the site to be updated easily.

Want a new page? Log into the admin and add a new page. Want to write a blog post? Log in and write a new post. Find a typo that someone else did? Log in and fix it. Add an image and put it in your blog post.

WordPress puts the control of the content back in your hands. You don’t need a web developer to write HTML every time you want to change something. You don’t need to know how an internal combustion engine works to drive a car. You just drive.

WordPress takes all of the technical, hard stuff and handles it for you. You just create the web site. Type some stuff. Click a button. It’s a piece of pie.

You do need to know how to move the shift lever and turn on the engine. You need to know how to turn the steering wheel. The level of technical knowledge required is like driving a car.

If you are still paying someone else to update your web site, or if you don’t have a web site yet, now is the time to use WordPress. It’s cheap. It’s easy. It’s available.

Take control. The road is waiting.

If you use WordPress, what do you think about it? If you don’t, why not? Leave a comment.

The problem is that the current hosting company controls the DNS. We have to give them a one day notice to make the change. Instead of going live Friday night, we have to wait until Monday.

The moral of the story is that if you own your own domain name, you need to understand the technical issues involved and you need to know enough that you have control of it.

Maybe you don’t like keys and you’re not a locksmith, but you have a key to the front door of your house, right? Maybe you’re not a mechanic, but you like to drive your car, don’t you?

King of My Castle, Master Of My Domain Name

Here’s an overview of how it all works, in simple language.

A web server is just a computer that responds to requests for web pages.

It can also be referred to as a “web host”. You rent space on a web hosting company’s servers to put your web site on.

Each web server/computer has an IP address. That’s a technical number that uniquely identifies it among all the computers in the universe.

Every computer on the Internet has an IP address assigned to it. You may not know this, but your computer has an IP address associated with it.

IP addresses are the actual way that computers, servers, talk to each other on the Internet. It is the language of the Internet for computers.

Problem is that humans don’t remember those IP addresses very easily. We developed domain names to be easier for people to read and remember.

Domain names are just a convenience for people.

The next problem is tying the domain name to the IP address. We need something like a phone book. I know I want Joe’s Pizza, but what is their phone number?

Let’s look it up in the phone book. If the phone book says it’s 555-1234, then everyone calls 555-1234. If Joe’s Pizza were to move and get a new phone number, then the phone book would have to change to reflect that, right? If they change the phone book so it says that it’s 555-5678, then everyone calls 555-5678.

That’s easy, right?

Well, the system that manages these pointers or associations with domain names and IP addresses is called a DNS, domain name server. The “name server” is actually a computer, a server, that will tell you what IP address is associated with what domain name. You can ask it where is “www.walton.com” and it will tell you it’s at “76.246.231.1″, which happens to be the IP address of my web server/computer.

It’s just like a phone book for web sites.

How DNS Works

From all of this, you see the whoever owns the DNS, owns the world, or at least your web site. It’s all about control.

Log into where you registered your domain name and see if there is a place to make changes to the DNS. If you have a hosting company manage it for you, see if there’s a place in the admin pages to make changes.

You don’t have to know all the details about how to do it, but you should have access to it.

I’m a nice guy and I’ve registered domain names for clients in my own name just to save them the technical difficulties. They just wanted to pay me and have it done with. That’s fine. I’ll do everything I can for my clients.

I’ve heard of other people having trouble with having access and control.

I know it’s a convenience/knowledge vs access/control issue. I know you just don’t want to deal with it. But you should at least know how to do it.

The more you rely on other people, the less control you have.

You should at least be able to log in and make changes yourself if you want to.

If you can’t do that, then you don’t have control of your domain name or your web site.

The most important, and first, thing for you to do is to figure out a strategy for SEO, search engine optimization. Going through the exercise will get you thinking about your site and how it fits into your overall business model.

What is the goal of your site? I asked that of a potential new client last week and it stopped him. He didn’t really know and said he’d have to think about it. I assume that the goal of your site is to sell stuff. That means that people have to find it through search engines. It might be to only add credibility when you talk to people in other sales venues. It might be to make yourself feel good about yourself because you have a place to tell the world whatever it is in your head.

If you want to sell stuff, who will you sell it to? What will they be searching for when they find you? What are you selling? Exactly? How specific is your product?

This will all boil down to “keywords”. You need to decide what keywords you want to be found for. The more general the keyword, the more results will match it, which means more competition for that keyword. You want to be as specific as you possibly can, to narrow the results enough that you can beat your competition, but wide enough that you can actually get some traffic. It’s a balancing act.

It's a balancing act.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordTool

Put in a keyword that makes sense for your site. Take a guess, if nothing else. Do a search for related keywords. You can sort the results by clicking on the column headers. We want to see how many searches for a keyword there are, on average, for a month.

Look at the “additional keywords to consider” at the bottom of the page. Look at the number of searches for these. Are there any that are relevant? Feel free to slice and dice these results, adding keywords to search for and sorting on the results, until you get a feel for what the best keyword(s) are for your site.

Make a list of the top 5 to 10 keywords. You’ll know which ones seem to mean the most in your niche. Write down the number of monthly searches for each one.

We want to compare the number of searches for each keyword, per month, with the number of competitors out there with web sites for those searches. Do a normal Google search for each of your top 5-10 keywords. Look at the number of total pages out there that use that phrase. At the top of the page, it will say, to the right, “Results 1-10 of about NNNNNNNN”. Write down that number of other pages next to that keyword.

You now have a list of keywords, the number of searches per month and the number of other pages that contain that keyword. If anything jumps out at you, you might have a good idea which keywords to target. If nothing jumps out, do the math. Divide the number of pages by the number of searches. This gives you a ratio. Compare the ratios. Pick the top 3-5 keywords that you think you have the best chance of beating, that is, the most searches compared to the least number of pages for that search.

Does that make sense? You’re trying to find out what keywords you want to try to rank for. Everything else we do for SEO depends on picking these keywords well. You can always readjust later, but pick good ones to start with.

Now that you have your list of keywords, we’ll move on to what to do with them in the next part.

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/

The most important, and first, thing for you to do is to figure out a strategy for SEO, search engine optimization. Going through the exercise will get you thinking about your site and how it fits into your overall business model.

What is the goal of your site? I asked that of a potential new client last week and it stopped him. He didn’t really know and said he’d have to think about it. I assume that the goal of your site is to sell stuff. That means that people have to find it through search engines. It might be to only add credibility when you talk to people in other sales venues. It might be to make yourself feel good about yourself because you have a place to tell the world whatever it is in your head.

If you want to sell stuff, who will you sell it to? What will they be searching for when they find you? What are you selling? Exactly? How specific is your product?

This will all boil down to “keywords”. You need to decide what keywords you want to be found for. The more general the keyword, the more results will match it, which means more competition for that keyword. You want to be as specific as you possibly can, to narrow the results enough that you can beat your competition, but wide enough that you can actually get some traffic. It’s a balancing act.

It's a balancing act.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordTool

Put in a keyword that makes sense for your site. Take a guess, if nothing else. Do a search for related keywords. You can sort the results by clicking on the column headers. We want to see how many searches for a keyword there are, on average, for a month.

Look at the “additional keywords to consider” at the bottom of the page. Look at the number of searches for these. Are there any that are relevant? Feel free to slice and dice these results, adding keywords to search for and sorting on the results, until you get a feel for what the best keyword(s) are for your site.

Make a list of the top 5 to 10 keywords. You’ll know which ones seem to mean the most in your niche. Write down the number of monthly searches for each one.

We want to compare the number of searches for each keyword, per month, with the number of competitors out there with web sites for those searches. Do a normal Google search for each of your top 5-10 keywords. Look at the number of total pages out there that use that phrase. At the top of the page, it will say, to the right, “Results 1-10 of about NNNNNNNN”. Write down that number of other pages next to that keyword.

You now have a list of keywords, the number of searches per month and the number of other pages that contain that keyword. If anything jumps out at you, you might have a good idea which keywords to target. If nothing jumps out, do the math. Divide the number of pages by the number of searches. This gives you a ratio. Compare the ratios. Pick the top 3-5 keywords that you think you have the best chance of beating, that is, the most searches compared to the least number of pages for that search.

Does that make sense? You’re trying to find out what keywords you want to try to rank for. Everything else we do for SEO depends on picking these keywords well. You can always readjust later, but pick good ones to start with.

Now that you have your list of keywords, we’ll move on to what to do with them in the next part.

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?

JumpDomain Whois

The easiest thing to do is go to an old registrar that quit answering my emails so I moved all of my domain names away from them. They had non-existant customer support, so I’m sure they won’t mind us using their tools.

https://domains.jumpdomain.com/whois/whois.cgi

Go to the URL above and put in your domain name. Hit Submit Query. It will also return all of the DNS info. Bookmark that page. I use it all the time. It’s by far the easiest and fastest way to look up available domain names without getting into trouble.

Whois?

First, if you are a Mac user (and I won’t get into that religious debate now), if you go into your utilities folder, there is an application called “Network Utility”. If you open that up, you’ll see all of the tools listed across the top. Click on “Whois”.

You can type in the domain name you want to check on and click on the “Whois” button. It will return all of the DNS info for that domain name or it will say “No match for…” the domain name you are looking for.

Terminal Whois on a Mac

If you are brave, you can open the Terminal application and type in “whois” followed by the domain name. That will also give you the DNS info.

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

The easiest and quickest budget item fora small business to cut back on is marketing. There’s no immediate affect felt, so you think it might be safe to cut, but nothing could be worse for your business. The Harvard Business Review said:

It is well documented that brands that increase (marketing) during a recession, when competitors are cutting back, can improve market share and return on investment at lower cost than during good economic times.

The best time to take advantage of your place in the market is in an economic downturn. Because other people are quick to cut marketing, you will have the perfect opportunity to reach even more prospective customers. In a downturn, aggressive PR and Communications strategy is the solution.

Building or updating your web site is one of the cheapest and easiest ways to reach those prospective customers. Now is the time to put some time into reviewing your web site. Does it say everything it needs to say about your small business? Can you add features that allow more customer involvement or at least feedback? Maybe it’s time to have a professional review your site and give you suggestions on how it can be improved.

Now is the time to spend more on advertising, not less.

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