rfresh
06-29-2007, 06:34 PM
My tip for this week is: Free Web Hosting
Many people are tempted to host their first web site with a free hosting provider. While this sounds good there are several good reasons work-at-home businesses should not do that:
1. Who owns your domain name? When you register your domain name, chances are that you won't be named as the owner of the domain, the free web hosting company will usually name themselves. This does make sense, after all, you're not paying a domain name registeration fee so why would you expect the domain name to belong to you?
At some later date when you discover it's time to move your web site (more on why this will come sooner rather than later) you'll be surprised when the free web hosting company refuses to unlock 'your' domain name and move it for you. It's not your domain! There are only two solutions to this: pay a high fee and buy the name - which they knew all along would happen or give up the name and register a new one somewhere else. Changing your web site name after launching your business is a very bad thing to say the least.
2. Free web sites are not really free. We've all heard it before: there is no such thing as a free lunch. This is true in the so-called 'free' web hosting business. The provider has to pay for providing you with a free web server so how do they do that? Simple. They can put advertisments on your web site to help pay the bills. There is nothing more unprofessional looking than going to a business web site only to be blasted by popup window after popup window after popup window. Not exactly the message you want to give to your customers.
3. The other thing they can do is sell your email addresses that you have setup on your web site (sales@ info@ support@ etc.) - welcome to spam city.
4. Crowded servers. While most hosting companies (free and fee) won't say how many web sites they put on one server, you can bet the free ones cram more web sites on a server - this results in longer page loading times.
5.When you use a free web hosting service, the support you get us usally what you pay for. Not very good if you get any at all.
6. Even if you do find a web site that doesn't use advertising popups there is the question of how long will they let you use them for free? You don't have to search too hard to find stories on the internet about businesses who were using free web sites that have disappeared overnight - they just vanished!
This is especially troublesome for those who had customer data in a database which is now gone. Never ever use a free web hosting service if you intend to keep customer data in a database on your web site - especially sales order data, etc.
In summary:
There are many pitfalls with using free web hosting providers. With decent paid web hosting as low as $5.00 a month, there really is no reason to use a free hosing service.
And regardless of who you end up using to host your web site, when you go to register your domain name, make sure you have full and complete control of your domain. Make sure you have a control center so that you can manage it yourself - there are many reasons why you want to have that capability. I get at least one email each week from someone who can't remember who they registered their domain name with and when I show them how to find out, they discover they have no management capability.
That's my tip for this week!
Many people are tempted to host their first web site with a free hosting provider. While this sounds good there are several good reasons work-at-home businesses should not do that:
1. Who owns your domain name? When you register your domain name, chances are that you won't be named as the owner of the domain, the free web hosting company will usually name themselves. This does make sense, after all, you're not paying a domain name registeration fee so why would you expect the domain name to belong to you?
At some later date when you discover it's time to move your web site (more on why this will come sooner rather than later) you'll be surprised when the free web hosting company refuses to unlock 'your' domain name and move it for you. It's not your domain! There are only two solutions to this: pay a high fee and buy the name - which they knew all along would happen or give up the name and register a new one somewhere else. Changing your web site name after launching your business is a very bad thing to say the least.
2. Free web sites are not really free. We've all heard it before: there is no such thing as a free lunch. This is true in the so-called 'free' web hosting business. The provider has to pay for providing you with a free web server so how do they do that? Simple. They can put advertisments on your web site to help pay the bills. There is nothing more unprofessional looking than going to a business web site only to be blasted by popup window after popup window after popup window. Not exactly the message you want to give to your customers.
3. The other thing they can do is sell your email addresses that you have setup on your web site (sales@ info@ support@ etc.) - welcome to spam city.
4. Crowded servers. While most hosting companies (free and fee) won't say how many web sites they put on one server, you can bet the free ones cram more web sites on a server - this results in longer page loading times.
5.When you use a free web hosting service, the support you get us usally what you pay for. Not very good if you get any at all.
6. Even if you do find a web site that doesn't use advertising popups there is the question of how long will they let you use them for free? You don't have to search too hard to find stories on the internet about businesses who were using free web sites that have disappeared overnight - they just vanished!
This is especially troublesome for those who had customer data in a database which is now gone. Never ever use a free web hosting service if you intend to keep customer data in a database on your web site - especially sales order data, etc.
In summary:
There are many pitfalls with using free web hosting providers. With decent paid web hosting as low as $5.00 a month, there really is no reason to use a free hosing service.
And regardless of who you end up using to host your web site, when you go to register your domain name, make sure you have full and complete control of your domain. Make sure you have a control center so that you can manage it yourself - there are many reasons why you want to have that capability. I get at least one email each week from someone who can't remember who they registered their domain name with and when I show them how to find out, they discover they have no management capability.
That's my tip for this week!