What is a domain name?
 

• A name that identifies a computer or computers on the internet. These names appear as a component of a Web site's URL, e.g. www.yourdomain.com. This type of domain name is also called a hostname.
• The product that Domain name registrars provide to their customers. These names are often called registered domain names.
• Names used for other purposes in the Domain Name System (DNS), for example the special name which follows the @ sign in an email address, or the Top-level domains like .com, or the names used by the Session Initiation Protocol (VoIP), or Domain Keys.

They are sometimes colloquially (and incorrectly) referred to by marketers as "web addresses".

The domain name generally consists of two parts. The top level domains are .com, .net, .edu, .org ... 'Yourdomain' is the unique name or second level domain.

Additional domain name extensions include : biz, bz, info, tv, name, etc. Currently, most domain registrars offer cheap domain registration of .biz and .info domains.
 

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How to choose a domain name for your Website

Getting a Website on the Internet.  One of your very first steps is securing the perfect domain name., also called your “URL” or your “Web address”. Note that you do not have to be a company or organization to register a domain name. Any individual can do it too.

More than 50 million domain names have been registered worldwide and thousands new ones are added per day. It might be hard for you then to get the name that you really like for your website. Do not get discouraged from that fact, but rather try to be creative.

Here are some tips how to choose a successful domain name:

  1) A domain name may contain letters, numbers and the dash (-). The length of a domain name can vary, but generally speaking it should be a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 67 characters.  They cannot begin or end with a dash.

  2) Don’t make your primary domain too long. short,  memorable, not easily confused, hard to misspell, relate to the core of the business, sound solid to the core of your business.

  3) Avoid using hyphens in your domain. Domains containing hyphens are difficult to remember, spell and pronounce. I have a client who registered “Homes-AtoZ.com,” which I advised against. I told them they would get tired of telling people about the dash. However, they do seem to be doing okay with it anyway. If you register a domain containing hyphens, make sure that you also register the corresponding domain without the hyphens. Once you do that, you can simply redirect visitors from the domain without the hyphens to the domain with the hyphens.

  4) Try to register a domain which contains a popular keyword applicable for your industry.  If you get a domain name that describes your company's business or name, people can remember the name easily and can return to your site without having to consult their documents. In fact, if you get a good name that describe your product or service, you might even get people who were trying their luck by typing "www.yourproductname.com" in their browser. If you want good sponsors (advertisers) for your website, a domain name is usually helpful. It tends to give your website an aura of respectability.

  5) Don’t register a domain containing the digit “0” in it, unless it is going to be part of a recognizable word (like 1000 or 2000). This is because the digit “0” is often confused with the vowel “O.”  If you feel that you must register a domain with the digit “0,” make sure that you also register the corresponding domain containing the vowel “O.”

  6) Try to avoid using domains that contain ‘2’ for “to,” ‘4’ for ‘for,’ ‘u’ for ‘you.’ Your customers will easily get confused. However, if you must register such a domain, register the expanded form of the domain as well, i.e. if you are registering only4you.com also you can register onlyforyou.com.

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How to Choose a Web Host and Sign Up for an Account

What are some of the things you should look for when choosing a web host? The criteria for choosing a free web host and a commercial web hosting solution are different. Commercial web hosting solution is suggested

1) Choosing a Free Web Host

Advertising. Most free web hosts impose advertising on your website. This is done to cover the costs of providing your site the free web space and associated services. Some hosts require you to place a banner on your pages, others display a window that pops up every time a page on your site loads, while still others impose an advertising frame on your site. Some people hate a pop-up window, other webmasters dislike having to stuff banner codes onto their pages, and many people cannot stand an advertising frame (which may cause problems when you submit your website to search engines). Whichever method is used, check that you're comfortable with the method.

 Amount of web space. Does it have enough space for your needs? If you envisage that you will expand your site eventually, you might want to cater for future expansion. Most free host is less than 5MB of web space. Amount of web space you need depending on how many pictures your website use, whether you need sound files, video clips, etc.

FTP access. Some free hosting providers only allow you to design your page with their online builder. While this is useful for beginners, do you have the option to expand later when you become experienced and their online page builder does not have the facility you need? FTP access, or at the very least, the ability to upload your pages by email or browser.

File type and size limitations. Watch out for these. Some free hosts impose a maximum size on each of the files you upload (including one with a low of 200KB). Other sites restrict the file types you can upload to HTML and GIF/JPG files. If your needs are different, e.g., if you want to distribute your own programs on your pages, you will have to look elsewhere.

Reliability and speed of access. This is extremely important. A site that is frequently down will lose a lot of visitors. If someone finds your site on the search engine, and he tries to access it but find that it is down, he'll simply go down the list to find another site. Slow access is also very frustrating for visitors (and for you too, when you upload your site). How do you know if a host is reliable or fast? If you can't get feedback from anyone, one way is to try it out yourself over a period of time, both during peak as well as non-peak hours. After all, it is free, so you can always experiment with it.

CGI-BIN access / PHP. This is not particularly crucial nowadays for a free web host, since there are so many free CGI hosting services available that provide counters, search engines, forms, polls, mailing lists, etc, without requiring you to dabble with Perl or PHP scripts.

However if you really want to do it yourself, with the minimum of advertising banners from these free providers, you will need either PHP or CGI-BIN access. Note that it is not enough to know they provide PHP or CGI-BIN access: you need to know the kind of environment your scripts run under: is it so restrictive that they are of no earthly use? For PHP scripts, does your web host allow you to use the mail() function? For Perl CGI scripts, do you have access to sendmail or its workalike?

Bandwidth allotment. Nowadays, many free web hosts impose a limit on the amount of traffic your website can use per day and per month. This means that if the pages (and graphic images) on your site is loaded by visitors beyond a certain number of times per day (or per month), the web host will disable your web site (or perhaps send you a bill). It is difficult to recommend a specific minimum amount of bandwidth, since it depends on how you design your site, your target audience, and the number of visitors you're able to attract to your site. In general, 100MB traffic per month is too little for anything other than your personal home page and 1-3GB traffic per month is usually adequate for a simple site just starting out. Your mileage, however, will vary.

2) Choosing a Commercial Web Host

Reliability and speed of access. Not only should the web host be reliable and fast, it should guarantee its uptime (the time when it is functional). Look for a minimum uptime of 99%. In fact, even 99% is actually too low - it really should be 99.5% or higher. The host should provide some sort of refund (eg prorated refund or discount) if it falls below that figure. Note though that guarantees are often hard to enforce from your end - the host usually requires all sorts of documentation. However, without that guarantee, the web host will have little incentive to ensure that its servers are running all the time.

Data Transfer (Traffic/Bandwidth). Data transfer (sometimes loosely referred to as "traffic" or "bandwidth") is the amount of bytes transferred from your site to visitors when they browse your site.

Don't believe any commercial web host that advertises "unlimited bandwidth". The host has to pay for the bandwidth, and if you consume a lot of it, they will not silently bear your costs. Many high bandwidth websites have found this out the hard way when they suddenly receive an exorbitant bill for having "exceeded" the "unlimited bandwidth". Always look for details on how much traffic the package allows. I personally always stay clear of any host that advertises "unlimited transfer", even if the exact amount is specified somewhere else (sometimes buried in their policy statements). Usually you will find that they redefine "unlimited" to be limited in some way.

To give you a rough idea of the typical traffic requirements of a website, most new sites that are not software archives or the like use less than 3GB of bandwidth per month. Your traffic requirements will grow over time, as your site becomes more well-known (and well-linked), so you will need to also check their policy for overages: is there a published charge per GB over the allowed bandwidth? Is the charge made according to actual usage or are you expected to pre-pay for a potential overage? It is better not to go for hosts that expect you to prepay for overages, since it is very hard to foresee when your site will exceed its bandwidth and by how much.

Disk space. For the same reason as bandwidth, watch out also for those "unlimited disk space" schemes. Most sites need less than 5MB of web space, so even if you are provided with a host that tempts you with 200MB or 500MB (or "unlimited space"), be aware that you are unlikely to use that space, so don't let the 500MB space be too big a factor in your consideration when comparing with other web hosts. The hosting company is also aware of that, which is why they feel free to offer you that as a means of enticing you to host there.

Technical support. Does its technical support function 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (often abbreviated 24/7), all year around? Note that I will not accept a host which does not have staff working on weekends or public holidays. You will be surprised at how often things go wrong at the most inconvenient of times. Incidentally, just because a host advertises that it has 24/7 support does not necessarily mean that it really has that kind of support. Test them out by emailing at midnight and on Saturday nights, Sunday mornings, etc. Check out how long they take to respond. Besides speed of responses, check to see if they are technically competent. You wouldn't want to sign up for a host that is run by a bunch of salesmen who only know how to sell and not fix problems.

FTP, PHP, Perl CGI-BIN access, SSI, .htaccess, telnet, SSH crontabs. If you are paying for a site, you really should make sure you have all of these. Note that some commercial hosts do not allow you to install PHP or CGI scripts without their approval. This is not desirable since it means that you have to wait for them before you can implement a feature on your site. ".htaccess" is needed if you are to customize your error pages (pages that display when, say, a user requests for a non-existent page on your site) or to protect your site in various ways (such as to prevent bandwidth theft and hot linking, etc). Telnet or SSH access is useful for certain things, including testing CGI scripts, maintaining databases, etc. Cron jobs may be needed for programs that you need to be run periodically (e.g. once a day). Check to see if these facilities are provided.

SSL (secure server), MySQL, Shopping Cart. If you are planning on doing any sort of business through your website, you might want to look out to see if the host provides these facilities. These facilities normally involve a higher priced package or additional charges. The main thing is to check to see if they are available at all before you commit to the host. You will definitely need SSL if you plan to collect credit card information on your site.

Email, Auto-responders, POP3, Mail Forwarding. If you have your own site, you would probably want to have email addresses at your own domain, like sales@yourdomain.com, etc. Does the host provide this with the package? Does it allow you to have a catch-all email account that allows anyname@yourdomain.com to wind up being routed to you? Can you set an email address to automatically reply to the sender with a preset message (called an auto-responder)? Can you retrieve your mail with your email software? Can it be automatically forwarded to your current email address?

Control Panel. This is called various names by different hosts, but essentially, they all allow you to manage different aspects of your web account yourself. Typically, and at the very minimum, it should allow you to do things like add, delete, and manage your email addresses, and change passwords for your account. I would not go for a host where I have to go through their technical support each time I want to change a password or add/delete an email account. Such chores are common maintenance chores that every webmaster performs time and time again, and it would be a great hassle if you had to wait for their technical support to make the changes for you.

Subdomains, virtual hosting. For those who are thinking of selling web space or having multiple domains or subdomains hosted in your account, you should look to see if they provide this, and the amount extra that they charge for this (whether it is a one-time or monthly charge, etc).

Server. Is the type of operating system and server important? Whether you think so or not on the theoretical level, there are a few practical reasons for looking out for the type of server.

In general, if you want to use things like ASP, you have no choice but to look for a Windows NT/2000/XP machine for your server.

Otherwise my preference is to sign up for accounts using the often cheaper, more stable and feature-laden Unix systems running the Apache server. In fact, if dynamically generated pages that can access databases (etc) is what you want, you can always use the more portable (and popular) PHP instead of tying yourself down to ASP. Another reason to prefer Unix-based web hosts (which include web hosts using systems like Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, etc) using the Apache web server is that these servers allow you to configure a lot of facilities that you typically need on your site (error pages, protecting your images, blocking email harvesters, blocking IP addresses, etc) without having to ask your web host to implement them.

Price. While price is always a factor, you should realize that you often get what you pay for, although it's not necessarily true that the most expensive hosts are the best.

Monthly/Quarterly/Annual Payment Plans. Most web hosts allow you to select an annual payment plan that gives you a cheaper rate than if you were to pay monthly. Some of people preference is to pay monthly with all new web hosts until they are assured of their reliability and honesty. Paying monthly allows to switch web hosts quickly once find that the current host does not meet my requirements: this way, they are not tied down to a bad web host because they have prepaid for an entire year. To do this even if the new web host guarantees that they will refund the balance if they are dissatisfied, since at the point they sign up, they have no assurance that they will honor their guarantee. Later (usually after many months or even more than a year) if they are satisfied with the host.

International. If you don't stay in the USA, you have the option of hosting your site with some local provider. The advantage here is the ease of dealing with them (they are after all easily accessible by phone call or a visit), your familiarity with the local laws and easy recourse to those laws should it be necessary. It should be your choice if your target audience is local (eg a local fast food delivery service). On the other hand, hosting it in USA has the advantage of faster access for what is probably the largest number of your overseas visitors (particularly if you have an English-speaking audience). You also have a large number of hosting companies to choose from, and as a result, cheaper prices too.

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Accepting Credit Cards on Your Website, Making Money

If you are selling products or services, you will need some way in which you can accept credit cards on your site

Methods of Accepting Credit Card Payments

There are actually two ways in which you can accept credit cards on your site.

1. Using Your Own Merchant Account. To do this, you will need a bank that will allow you to open a merchant account. Requirements for this will vary from country to country, and you should check with your local banks for more information on this.

2. Through a Third Party Merchant. There are numerous companies around that are willing to accept credit cards payments on your behalf in exchange for various fees and percentages.

Which Method Should You Use?

The initial costs of opening your own merchant account is usually higher than when you use a third party merchant. Indeed, some third party merchants have no setup fee at all.

However, the transaction fee (which is what you pay the bank or third party merchant for each sale) is much higher when you use a third party as compared to when using your own merchant account.

A third party merchant is usually convenient to use when you don't know if you can actually make much out of your product or service. If you just want to test the water to see how things are, this is usually a good way to start. It is also convenient in that the merchant takes care of everything for you. You just get a coequal at the end of each payment period (if you have earned enough) and concentrate on your products, services and customers.

Having your own merchant account accords your business with a certain amount of professionalism. And, as mentioned earlier, your transaction costs are usually much lower. However you have to be careful to minimize your credit card risks since you'll be processing the credit card payments yourself. This is not to say that there are no risks attendant in using a third party merchant.

Some Third Party Merchants

Here's a list of some third party merchants that you might want to consider if you're looking for ways to accept credit card payments. I have not tried any of them myself (as a vendor) so I cannot vouch for any of them. Check them out carefully and use them at your own risk.

Note that rates and stuff that I publish below were correct at the time I investigated these vendors. It may have changed by the time you read this since I investigated them quite a while back.

The list is arranged alphabetically.

CCBill: There are no setup fees. Transaction fees vary (I can't find the schedule though) depending on the volume of sales in each accounting period. According to their website, "these fees are never more than 13.5% of revenues charged during this one-week period for CWIE hosting clients and 14.5% for non-hosting clients".

CCNow: This is only for people who ship tangible, physical products. There is no setup fee, and they charge 9% per transaction except in the November and December where the fees are 8% per transaction (yes, lower).

Clickbank: There is a one time setup fee (US$49.95) and a transaction fee of US$1 plus 7.5% of sale price. There are no other monthly fees. This is only for people who sell services or deliver products over the internet (not for those who need to ship physical products).

Digibuy: This service is intended for software authors only. They charge 13.9% per transaction. I'm not sure if there are any other charges.

IBill: This is a very expensive merchant. They charge 15% of each transaction or lesser if you sell US$10,000 or above. It is a big and (I think) reputable company, so if you are willing to part with such a huge margin of your earnings, you might also want to check them out.

Kagi: There are no setup or monthly fees with this merchant. Kagi imposes a charge per transaction depending on the monthly volume.

PayPal: If you are a Premier or Business account user, you get charged US$0.25 for transactions of US$15 and below, 1.9% plus US$0.25 for transactions above US$15 when your customers pay by credit card. They require your customers to sign up for their services before they can pay you. This can be a deterrent for your customers.

ProPay: A new competitor to PayPal (see elsewhere on this page) that currently only caters to US residents. Depending on the type of account you sign up for, you have to pay an annual fee (starting from $34.95) as well as transaction fees.

RegNow: Designed for software authors to sell their ware, this merchant deducts 20% of your sale price with a minimum of US$2.00 for their commission. There are also other charges for sales generated by your affiliates, etc.

Share-It: This service is for shareware authors. They charge US$2.95 plus 4% per order, and US$1.95 plus 4% for the 1000th order of the month and above. There are also charges for mailing you your cheque in some instances.

V-Share: This service is only for people selling shareware. There is a range of charges depending on the number of transactions and your sale price. I'm not sure I understand their charge schedule completely, so I'm not going to list it here. Check it out yourself if you are a shareware author.

Trying It Out

Whichever you choose, if you are selling things on the Internet, you really have not much choice but to accept credit cards. You probably don't know what you missed until you try it out.

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What is Professional Web Design?

Simply put, professional web design is a highly creative career where you are (or your company is) selling your web design skills as a professional. For this the quality of your design and programming work determines weather you are truly a professional web designer. Apart from hard work and dedication to your work, which is a common requirement for most careers, this career requires a high level of inborn creativity plus learn-and-apply intelligence. To become a skilled professional these qualities need to be advanced and worked on over a period of at least 2-3 years. Thus these skills cannot be learnt overnight. In this profession, there is no stopping to the improvement you can make to your work quality as there is always something to learn as technology constantly advances.

 Professional Web Designer Tips

* To become a high level Professional Web Designer you need to set a standard for yourself that is on par with the best web designers in the global market.
* 'See, learn, practice' should be your mantra when you see better designs than what you can produce.
* Your site graphics (colors, shapes, textures, effects) should always been neat and impressive. There should not be a hint of gaudiness or impatience in the design. Symmetry should be maintained wherever possible (between curves, distances between buttons, links, etc).
* Learn CSS and HTML Programming well - This is the single most important tip we can give you. You cannot be a complete web designer without knowing CSS and HTML in and out. If you don't have an aptitude for this make sure you have someone working with you who does.
* Learn how to design for all screen resolutions - this is to do with CSS & HTML programming and not with just Fireworks or Photoshop layout design.
* Always check if your site pages comply to W3C standards. Check out your site URL in W3C CSS Validator and W3C Markup Validator.
* Help out people around you and in the design community. Teaching is the best way to gain more knowledge.

 A Effective Website Should Achieve

Websites have become an essential marketing tool for any small business. However people can still be confused quite what they should aim to achieve from their site.

For small businesses this could be to build faith in a viewer's belief in your offerings, to gain some contact details, to start a sales dialogue or even to sell directly through the website.

Most of the noise surrounding the Internet boom was about companies coming from nowhere and selling millions in the first year. Now people view the uses of the Internet differently. For most small businesses it will in the first instance be an online brochure with company descriptions, contact details, references etc. The challenge is to get more from the viewers and push further towards a sale.

Your initial aim is to create a good impression of your business and try to open a sales dialogue with the viewer. The easiest way to start a lasting dialogue is to capture an email address for use in an email campaign. A simple mailing list box can achieve this. (This is easy with the Clever Websites Service). If you are selling directly through your site you want to close the sale in one viewing if possible but also make the viewer remember you whether they purchase or not.

You must make the ability to get in contact with you evident and what it is your company actually does. After that you want people to build 'trust' and interest in what you are doing. At this stage it is worth considering who is going to visit your site and more importantly who do you want to visit your site. Ideally you want to please both but you want people who will bring you business to be most impressed. Think about your language, look and access to the right information.

Website Design --- things NOT to do

Here are some things can undermine all your efforts in your Website Design
Some things will turn your viewers off so fast that it is almost criminal to commit these offences!!!

• Excessive Pop-ups - Now in fact being blocked in Windows XP these are hated by many viewers so only use if really necessary.
• Long to Load - If your site takes as long or longer that 30 seconds to load people may well think your site is broken or just get fed up and move on.
• Never scroll left and right - Remember that people use different screen sizes. It is probably fair enough to expect people to have a Screen 800 wide but if your site is wider than that it is too wide!!
• Never Ignore other browsers - 90% of the internet community use Internet Explorer but if your site is for the whole community don't forget the other browsers, Netscape and Firefox!! Doing so could lose you 10% of your viewers easily. Most sites will look very similar but checking can spot very simple mistakes.
• Applets that crash a browser - Not checking that an installed component on a site will not crash the browser could cause some people to not be able to view your site. It is unreasonable to try and code for every version of every browser ever made but checking IE versions 5+ and Netscape 6+ is important. Also think about newer security measures being put in by Windows and Anti-Virus type packages.
• Under Construction Pages - Under no circumstances put these in your site. One page with basic details is actually perfectly acceptable to most viewers. Under construction pages create an unprofessional image and waste people's time when navigating your site. With the Clever Websites service you can turn pages on and off, never turn a page on until it is ready

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There are other occasional expenses you should expect: if you don't own your domain name - the "yourcompany.com" - it might cost you $20 or $40. To conduct e-commerce on your site you'll need an SSL certificate, which guarantees the security of credit card numbers and other sensitive information, and they cost $125 per year. Flash animation may cost $30 to $75 per hour.

None of these charges should come as a surprise - make sure they're spelled out in your contract. Professional web site design can vary quite a bit in cost - so make sure you know what you're getting.

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