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by: MattHedges
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There are many things that one must keep in mind while venturing into the World Wide Web for the first time with the purpose of hosting a website for a new business or just with the intention of sharing knowledge. With the boom of the web world in today's era, one cannot think of starting a business without a website. A proper infrastructure, sales, marketing and product promotion are some of the things that one has to invest into when starting a new business. Startup companies operate on shoe string budgets and hence need to develop and host websites that are efficient as well as very cost-effective.

Website of a company plays a major role in creating awareness among the customers, making the presence of the company felt in the competitive market, getting traffic and creating a niche in the web world. If your business is Internet-based then your first priority becomes to host your website in the web world.

There are many web hosting companies that offer special packages for the startups. The web hosting packages offered by them are designed keeping in mind the requirements of a new business and of those wanting to share knowledge. The SEO experts of these companies are specially to provide you with potentially strong techniques to drive traffic into your website

Steps for Web Hosting for startups:

It isn't necessarily easy for a first time website host but there are some guidelines that can be followed to make the startup process simpler. These tips should be followed to make the process of selecting a web host company easier.

First browse the internet and ask for the free quotes from the various Web Hosting companies offering Web Hosting services for the startups.

* Choose the one that best meets your budget and your requirements. Undertake a full search of what they offer, what their background is and if there are any other features. Compare this to some of the other sites you have seen.

Apply online - fill up the online form and provide it with all the required information like Name, Address, Country, Credit Card details etc.

* Wait for the approval which should arrive in a matter of days.

* Wait for the official confirmation and having a hosting account set up for you and then go about hosting your very own website on the World Wide Web.

What is a Web Hosting Startup package?

Many companies provide special Web Hosting Startup package for those wanting to host a website for the first time. These are mostly those starting a new business or starting a website to share their knowledge and experiences with blogs etc. The requirements of new business are not too farfetched and the budget is also low. Keeping this in mind, most of the website developing and hosting companies offer special packages for them.

Features in a Web Hosting Startup package:

Although each firm will offer their own individual package the following issues will be common amongst many providers:

Web Management system - This includes a minimum of 20MB - 50MB disk storage space, at least 10GB monthly data transfer, full FTP Access and Anonymous FTP, Static IP Address and Secure Server (SSL) Transaction Encryption .

* Email Features - Every web hosting package should feature email facilities. The majority of packages for startup firms have roughly 10 email accounts, which are commonly POP/Web accounts. There should also be the facility for email aliases and forwarding, the opportunity to have PGP Email Encryption, Personal SMTP Mail Server and lastly be equipped to provide an auto response facility within the email.

* E-Commerce - With so many firms offering services like PH4 Server-Side Scripting, SSH - Secure Shell or Server Sides,these are all common additions to any startup package. Many firms may also offer Pssword Protected Directories.

Technical Support - Many companies provide 24-hour Trouble Ticket Support and 99.9% Uptime guaranteed per year

Website Monitoring - It includes the Daily Data Backups, Downloadable Raw Access Logs and Wusage 7.0 Graphical Statistics

* Additional Software - Other software that may make up the package can include the ability to have a web based control panel and an extended level of support for FrontPage Extensions.

Hardware & Network - Many of the startup packages include Dual- 1 Ghz Pentium IV Servers, Custom Red Hat Server OS, Apache Server Software, 10-T1, 5-DS3, and 1-OC3 Network Connectivity and Uninterruptible Power

Advanced Features - Many of the startup package these days come with the advanced features which includes CGI Bin, Custom MIME Types, Unix Shells: bash, csh, tsh, Perl, C, C++, Java JDK, Python & TCL Compilers, Emacs 20.4, Pine, vi, elm, Joe, Pico & Cron Tab, .htaccess, Custom Error Documents and 30-day Money Back Service Guarantee.

Important tips for the Startups:

Before embarking on anything new, people should be aware of what goals they want to achieve and this is true for those starting a new business and who are looking to create a website. There is only the possibility to store and archive so much on their website so people must be aware of what they want to do in advance. Having a pre-advances clarification of their aims is vitally important to anyone looking to create a website. The following tips will be able to help someone focus their mind on what they want their website to do.

* Many visitors to websites have short attention spans so the start-up website needs to be attractive and able to grab peoples attention very quickly. Thinking about what will bring people to the website will help the owner make the website more attractive to visitors.

* The benefits that search engine factors and taking advantage of usual SEO guidelines will work well with the existing website content to make the site more popular, so it is important to use SEO.

* You should have an idea of how you want your site, company or products to be promoted on the internet.

* Being attractive to search engines is good but a firm needs to provide engaging content to keep customers coming back to the site.

* Think of how many other sites are starting up just now. You need to ensure your firm stands out from the rest of them.

* The promises offered by shared web hosting services may sound brilliant but be careful as they are unable to offer any strict guarantees.

Ensure that the company that is hosting your website has fast connections

* Determine if your web host company has a Plan Bin case there is a power outage.

* Contact the customer support service and ask questions of them.

* There are other issues that you should ask your web host provider if they offer before deciding to go with them. These can include do they provide access to a secure server in order to enable order processing and if they do is it free? Do they have an online Web Site Manager and do they have an online support manual.

While starting a new website, there are various pitfalls that one needs to avoid. A well structured and search engine optimized website can bring the right traffic and growth for the company. It is recommended to seek the help from the professional Web hosts who can tactfully recognize the requirements of the startups and provide the most efficient services.

About the Author

This article is published with permission from http://www.webhostingmadness.com, a provider of hosting company ratings, comparisons and detailed articles about web hosting.

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