Golden Country

There is a debate among web design experts as to who is responsible for procuring content for the website. Many professionals want the content to be the responsibility of the site owner. The reasoning is simple – the site owner should have a better understanding of the site products or services than the web designer.

The other side to the argument is that the web designer needs to assist the site owner in obtaining original knowledge-based articles to compliment the site. In this scenario the web designer also works with freelance writers to develop all site content. This includes everything from “How To” articles to the “About Us” and “Home Page” sections.

Many web designers are interested in developing the ‘look’ of the website without being responsible for what the content says. However, more and more web design experts are beginning to offer full content services as part of their monthly or annual contracts. Obviously the customer bears all costs related to the content, but many entrepreneurs enjoy less work in site management.

One element to this that you should consider is that the web designer will charge you a content fee. The content request is assigned and purchased from a third party freelance writer at a lesser amount. You could pay 100% more than you might if you had worked with a freelance writer on your own.

From this standpoint it makes sense for web design professionals to provide the service because it provides an added revenue stream for them.

If, as an ecommerce business, you can write or have someone write original content you may actually have greater options you can consider when it comes to web design.

One of the most readily available forms of content is free-to-use article directories. These articles can be used provided you make sure to place all content on your site. This will likely include a brief author biography along with a link to the author’s website. In most cases this is a reasonable exchange for the use of the article.

A secondary source could be adaptable content from a supplier. This information is generally provided at no cost due to your partnership with the supplier.

A third source is to go directly to a freelance writing source to gain your own original articles.

If one or more of these options is workable you may find a template rich web design/host is an alternative that is cost effective and empowering.

You’ll notice I said empowering. This comment was made because of the satisfaction of being able to immediately addressing and altering multiple aspects of the site on your own and without the need for knowledge in html or other coding language can help you take ownership of your own site.

Perhaps it all comes down to your budget and to your willingness and ability to manage the content requirements of your website.

Web site hosting is when there is any type of hosting service for a web page on the internet. People, companies and organizations can create web pages to be available online. The company allows space on their servers for the internet site. There is the connectivity that is needed as well that can be provided, as well as data centers too. How large of a company and what the service provides will vary a lot. Some of the most basic services allow file hosting and the page itself. There are also ISPs that offer file hosting free to subscribers too. Keep in mind too that personal web pages may be free, have sponsors on it or very inexpensive, while business sites do cost more. Typically a personal page only need ones page, while companies usually need multiple pages and there may be database packages too. These can include Java, Cold Fusion, PHP and similar programming so the company can create forums or content management pages. There may also be a control panel as well that helps with managing the web server too.

The different types of web site hosting available, include:

Free services that have limited features and may have advertisements as well to pay for it.

Shared hosting services have the page placed on the same server as hundreds or even thousands of other sites.

Reseller services let the person or company become their own web host.

Virtual dedicated server services or VPS has breaks the resources up on to multiple virtual servers, so that the underlying hardware is reflected.

Dedicated services allow the user to have their own server and they are able to control it through the root access.

Managed service does give the user their own server, but they do not have control over it.

Colocation services allows the user a colo server that the company gives them the space and the company takes care of the server.

Cloud hosting services are scalable hosting services that are reliable and use clusters of balanced servers.

Clustered hosting services is when there are multiple servers that host the some content.

Grid hosting services is when the server is set up like a grid of information.

Home services when a private residence has the server in the home and there are multiple web sites on it and they use the consumer broadband connection for it.

Web site hosting companies may also provide:

File hosting

Blog hosting

Email hosting

Image hosting

Video hosting

Shopping cart software

Paste bin

When obtaining web site hosting, the data base used, the scripting software that is available and the type of operating system that is being used needs to be considered before making a choice of which company to go with. Typically companies use Linux based web hosting, that has a range of different types of software available too. These can use LAMP, Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHO/Perl/Python. Then a person or company can choose to have email, data bases or other services added to the page. Windows can also be used too when it comes to the operating system. However, no matter what is used, you need to make sure that the company will be providing you with the features and services that you want and need. There are many options and going over all the choices available is important to ensure that you will be able to do with the web page what you want without any problems or issues. Not to mention the cost too of the company you will use to host the site you want to check thoroughly as well so that it falls into the price range you are looking for.

There are myriad methods to promote a website. An online entrepreneur is faced with so many choices that it’s hard to commit to a decision that will result in an effective and informative campaign. There are so many factors to take into consideration: target market, startup costs, budget, minimum and maximum traffic capabilities, and more.

And whoever said that any publicity is good publicity clearly wasn’t in the business of online business. Bad word-of-mouth is to good word-of-mouth what the hare was to the tortoise…except bad word-of-mouth ensures your site will never see the end of the race. Determining which method of site promotion will best fit your business takes experimentation, diligence, and patience.

There are three great ways to start exploring site promotion methods:

1 Article submission. Articles are a great way to put your business out there in a positive light. They’ll allow for re-distribution to many publishing sites, as well as provide name recognition in the experts’ circles of your target audience. Articles give you a forum to display your knowledge without seeing pushy about your product.

2 Social networking. You started your business because you thought it would be a great idea; find other people who would identify with that and network with them. You’ll be able to reach people with a common mindset and shared interests. Internet social networking categorizes the participants for you, so you know right away that your time will be worth it.

3 Think outside the net. Your potential customers aren’t just online, they’re everywhere. You can distribute flyers, brochures, and leaflets with your web address on them. This will encourage your audience to purposely go to your site and not get sidetracked along the way. Manual marketing can generate great feedback, and it will give you a break to get out from behind your screen for a while.