Getting Started with Web Hosting Business

Platform and Control Panel Choice

The platform on which you are going to base your first reseller hosting package or server is an important choice, since it can affect the final choice of prospective customers because of their needs; the control panel which you choose to provide your customers with can also affect your ability to gain customers - this is because some might be more familiar with one control panel which they have used in the past rather than the one that you have chosen to provide them with. In terms of the platform which you choose to base your web hosting packages on, you are limited to two options which are used by most of the main players within the website hosting industry - these are Windows and Linux; Windows is a commercial operating system which you can only use upon the purchase of a license from its manufacturer, Microsoft - Linux on the other hand is an open source operating system which requires no paid for license to allow you to run it, which means you are able to install it on as many computer as you want without the need to pay for any licenses what-so-ever. Platforms and operating systems you should check out include:

• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and 2008 - http://www.microsoft.com/servers/default.mspx
• CentOS Linux - http://www.centos.org/
• Ubuntu Linux - http://www.ubuntu.org/

There are many different web hosting control panels out there on the market for you to choose from, although your final choice normally boils down to what your web host is able to provide you with since their prices are normally a lot cheaper than if you were to buy a license for a piece of control panel software direct from the supplier; this means that although there may be many different control panels for you to choose from, you are in a sense limited by your web host since they will most likely be unable to provide you with every control panel. When choosing a control panel on which you are going to base your web hosting packages, you should check out all features of the control panels which you are testing - this means that you should always check out the client and reseller panels as well as the administration panel to ensure that you get a good idea of how easy the control panel will be for your customers to use, as well as for the customers of customers to use in terms of resellers; you should also get other people who aren’t so computer ’savvy’ to test out the same control panels as you, since this ensures that the control panel which you choose to base your web hosting packages on is usable for all people. In most cases, the control panel which you choose to base your web hosting packages upon is chosen in relation to the operating system on which you want to base your web hosting packages, since some control panels are only able to work with one operating system whereas others come in multiple versions so that they can be run on most well known operating systems; for example cPanel has been designed for use on Linux distributions only, although a version for Microsoft Windows 2008 is currently in development, and Plesk is a control panel that has been designed for use on both Microsoft Windows and Linux website hosting platforms - this means that you can use the control panel for either operating system. There are many different web hosting control panels on the market, although the main ones which you should take a look at include:

• cPanel - http://www.cpanel.net/
• Parallels (Formally SWSoft) Plesk - http://www.parallels.com/en/products/plesk/
• LXAdmin - http://lxlabs.com/software/lxadmin-sse/

The actual choice of operating system on which you are going to base your web hosting packages can be affected by the skills which you have to administrate a server, in the case that you have opted to go for either a virtual private server or a dedicated server; this is because administering a server can be a complicated task at the best of times, which means that if you don’t have the necessary skills to administrate the server which you have purchased, you might not be able to provide your customers with good service, since it means that if a problem does occur with the server, you won’t be able to fix it. Although your web host might provide support for their virtual private server and dedicated server hosting packages, the support provided might not cover all issues - this might be because it is limited to upgrading third party software that is provided, and that the support staff are not obliged to fix any internal problems with the server; this means that you should try and get your server administration skills up to scratch before embarking on purchasing a hosting package which would provide you with a dedicated environment.

Billing Systems

One of the main components of a successful web hosting business is a web based billing and account management system, so that your customers are able to pay their web hosting bills online and so that you are able to manage and view your customers details as well as packages that they have purchased through a web interface with ease; this means that if you have a numerous amount of customers, you can easily manage them online and contact them quickly and easily as appropriate, if needs be.

Most web host billing systems are not just billing systems, for example some have help desk systems built into them, and as mentioned before, you can also use them to easily manage your customers - even if you happen to have millions of them; this means that you can have an all in one system where you can meet your customers needs in both the areas of support and management. A support help desk system within a billing system allows your customers to open ‘support tickets‘ which are then assigned a unique id so that you are able to manage them easily, and are able to refer to tickets quickly if a customer was to quote you the ticket’s unique id via some other method of communication, such as over the telephone. Most support ticket systems allow correspondence for any ticket via 2 methods - email and a web interface; most systems employ a technology known as ‘email piping‘ which collects the emails from a specified email inbox and them processes them to be displayed within the web interface which should be provided - ticket replies from staff members are emailed back to the email address of the person who opened the ticket and replies from the customer are piped through to the web interface, the web interface itself shows the correspondence between the two parties in order so that you can quickly read through the correspondence if you have the need to.

All good web host billing systems incorporate a large range of payment gateways, so that you can are able to use the payment gateway of your choice to receive payments from your customers for the web hosting services that they have purchased from you - this process is a lot quicker than having to process old fashioned types of payment such as personal cheque; when looking for billing systems, you might also discover API systems for third part fraud detection systems - these are in place to safe guard the security of both your business, and the potential victims - these systems normally mark certain orders as fraud if they are believed to be fraud.

If you are starting out in the web hosting market, then you should always consider buying a license for a piece of billing software that you are able to pay for on a monthly lease, since this means that you are not loosing any money on your billing system if your web hosting business was to fail for some reason or another - if funds do not allow for a monthly lease then you can easily consider a free alternative, although the features of these can be relatively limited when compared to those of their commercial counterparts. As is the case with control panels, you and others should always test both the client and administration side of any web host billing system before you purchase anything; this is because it will allow you to gain the feedback of others apart from yourself which you can then use to help you make your final decision about which web hosting billing system you are going to use for your new web hosting company. You should also consider the installation service for your chosen application which is most probably provided by the company from which you purchased the application; this is because you can ensure that a full and secure installation of the application concerned has been done, to give you peace of mind - it also means that you can have the application installed for you in the situation that you don’t have the necessary knowledge to carry out the task. Although there are many different web hosting billing systems, the main ones which one should have a look at include:

• WHMCS - http://www.whmcs.com/
• ModernBill - http://www.modernbill.com/
• PHPCoin - http://www.phpcoin.com/

Marketing Your Web Hosting Business

Once you have the basics of your new web hosting business laid out and operational, you need to start promoting it where possible so that you can start receiving new customer sign ups, which in turn will help boost your business’s income and customer base. There are many different ways in which you can market and promote your new business in the beginning - some of these options being ones which you have to pay for, and others which are free but require your hard work and will power to ensure that they produce the results that you want; an example of a paid for method which you could use to help promote and market your new web hosting business would be you buying an SEO package from either your web host or from another specialist to ensure that your business’s website gets listed and indexed by all the major search engines on the internet, an example of a free method would be you optimizing your own website so that search engines will give it a higher page rank, and in turn send more visitors to your website through the use of key word searches.

If you have the necessary funds to do so, then you can consider using certain PPC (pay per click) programs to help get adverts for your new business placed on participating publisher websites; most PPC programs deploy adverts on publisher websites based on keywords which you enter when creating the advert, as well as the category which the webmaster of the publishing site has decided to place their website in - this means that your advert will be targeted at people who are on websites most likely looking for web hosting, which ensures that the right people will be sent to your website and will hopefully in turn purchase a web hosting package off you. SEO can play a big roll in the amount of visitors which you receive to your website, this is because the more SEO friendly your website is, the higher the page rank search engines will give you. A higher page rank means in the terms of most search engines that your website will appear higher in the results for certain key word searches. Main different companies run PPC programs, although the main ones which are used by many include:

• Google Adwords - http://www.google.com/adwords/
• Yahoo Overture - http://www.overture.com/
• AdBrite - http://www.adbrite.com/

Basic SEO involves the editing of content on your website to ensure that it is as keyword rich as possible - the more common key words which you decide to use within your content, the more subjects and searches that search engines will link your website to; other basic SEO techniques including the building up of back links to your website from other websites of a similar subject - this will help since it will mean that people who are looking at web hosting related websites might actually be looking for web hosting - and when they see a link to your website, they will most likely click and if they like the look of your packages and prices, will buy their web hosting off you. In some cases you can also do link exchanging with websites of a similar subject to yours; this process involves the placing of a link to your website on that of another website, and then you will link back to the other website involved. Although you might be tempted to purchase a program or plan from another web host which claims to increase the amount of traffic to your website, you should always be cautious when looking at these plans and should never spend too much money on things such as this; this is because all these plans do in most cases is submit your website to other search engines which it might not already be in - although this may sound good at first, it might not give the increased amount in visitors which it claims to provide. If you don’t have the necessary knowledge for SEO, nor the funds to splash out on a special package then you could always hire a professional who might be able to do it for you at a cut rate.

Conclusion

In conclusion, with the use of the correct domain name you can help make your business’s name memorable for your customers; this in itself can help you out since it means that if your name is memorable, then it will be easier for your customers to refer their friends and colleagues who need web hosting to your business. You should also now know to consider the client side of a control panel when you are testing it and deciding whether to use as part of your web hosting business or not; by putting yourself in the customer’s shoes and getting the opinions of others on certain things can help produce the best results for your business, and can make your customers happier with the service which they are receiving.

Even though you might be putting yourself in the customer’s shoes, you should still consider how usable the administration side of an application or control panel is for you; this is because you will be using the administration panels day in and day out if your business is to be successful, and it is because of this that you should ensure that you can easily familiarize yourself with the applications and control panels which you will be using. Marketing your web hosting business is one of the most important tasks that you will ever carry out; this is because the amount of customer which you receive to your business will depend on how well you market your website, and whether you carry out a good level of SEO - this will mean making sure that your content is keyword rich, and that you have a large amount of back links so that people can find your business from other websites, and so that search engines give you a higher page rank.

Many people want to start a web hosting business in this modern technical age, in most cases because people see it as a cheap and easy way to make a quick bit of money - but for those who want to make a success out of their hosting business in the long term, time, hard work and dedicated are needed to ensure that their business turns out to be the success that they want it to be; however, establishing yourself in the web hosting market these days is becoming ever more difficult since most people have had the same idea and also because the main companies within this market are offering good quality hosting at dirt cheap prices - although this might sound daunting, a more competitive market means that you have the opportunity to make the most of your business by trying to promote it and get it out there in front of the consumer as much as possible. For most people, starting a web hosting business is a process which needn’t require any large amount of money, since most existing web hosts are able to provide cheap reseller package which allow you to resell the web space that you are assigned to your customers; some reseller packages also include useful tools which are there to help you get your web hosting business off the ground - for example your reseller package might include a license for a web hosting billing system so that you are able to bill your customers who have purchased your hosting automatically online without the need for any complicated and frustrating paper work. You should only start a web hosting business if you are dedicated to making your business successful, and are able to provide your customers with the necessary support so that they are satisfied with the experience that they have with you, and not if you are in it purely for the money and plan to just abandon your customers after a certain amount of time; this is because great frustration can be caused to customers if the web host that they have signed up with decides to cease existance after a certain amount of time since in most cases it means that the data they have stored within their shared website hosting space that they have purchased is wiped meaning that they are unlikely to retrieve it - on the other hand, if you want to make your business successful then it is important that you provide your customers with a good level of support since it means that they are then highly likely to refer you to their friends and colleagues who might need hosting, and it is commonly known that ‘word of mouth’ can easily help make a success out of any business. If you are completely new to the world of web hosting and web design, then it is important that you do a good amount of research before embarking on setting up your own web hosting business; this is because you will most likely require server administration skills amongst other skills as your business starts to grow - these skills will most probably not be needed at the establishment of your business since you will probably be using a reseller hosting package, which means that the administration of the server on which you are hosted is taken care of by the trained technicians who are employed by your web host. Website design skills would also be a big bonus for you if you were to start a web hosting business; this is because you will need a website on which you can show case your products, although you can eaily purchase a template to use on your website, these are known to turn customers away from web hosting businesses since they interpret it as saying ‘we can’t be bothered to build our own website, so why should we be bothered with anything else’. In terms of money to start a web hosting business, domains and reseller packages are cheap these days which means that you should be easily able to start a small web hosting business for under $50; although that price only covers the basics such as a domain and a reasonable specification reseller package, free or cheap alternatives of other expensive components of a website hosting business such as a billing system or help desk can be easily picked up.

Domains and Business Names

The first thing you need if you are to start a web hosting business is a domain name, so that people are able to find your business and website easily via the use of a search engine; a domain is used so that people can easily access your website from any web browser, at any internet connected location in the world. When choosing a domain that you are planning to use for your web hosting business, you should make sure that it is one which is linked to the subject, so that prospective customers get an idea of the purpose of the business before they actually reach your website; by using a domain name which is relevant to the subject of the actual website, you ensure that customers are able to easily recall your business’s name and its sole purpose - even if they do forget the purpose of the business, they can easily work it out again through the meaning of the name of the business. You should also make the domain which you want to use for your web hosting business short in length, as well as easy to spell; this means that it is easier both clients current and prospective to remember - for example, the sort length means that the word ordering won’t be forgotten easily, and the fact that it is easy to spell means that your current customers can easily refer their friends and colleagues who need web hosting to your business. As is the case with a domain for any purpose, you should always try and make your domain name as individual as possible; this is because it can help your customers prospective and current to remember your website’s address as well as your business’s name - an individual name also means that you are less likely to end up using the name of an existing company or finding that the domain name which you want has been taken for use by somebody else. It is highly important that the name which you have chosen to use for your business is not being used by another person or company which is already in existance, its for this reason that you should always make the necessary checks within your country to ensure that no one else is using the desired name; if someone does find that you have started to trade under their name, and have owned the name or have been trading longer than you, they have the right to sue you to ensure that you stop using the name in question if a dispute over the name does break out or if you refuse the original owners calls t stop using the name or brand. When purchasing a domain from any good domain regsitrar, they will ask the TLD which you want the domain have - the TLD is the ‘Top Level Domain Name’ which in most cases is relevant to the country which you want to aim the website in question towards, for example the TLD for the United Kingdom is ‘.uk’ with variations being ‘.co.uk’ and ‘.me.uk’; you should always ensure that the TLD which you choose to use for your business is relevant to the country at which you want your hosting to be purchased from, if you have no target country in question then you should use the ‘.com’ domain extension. One thing to note is that you can pick up domains cheaply from any good domain registrar on the internet; it is advise that you buy domains from an American registrar since in most cases they work out cheaper than UK based or other foreign domain registrars. Once you have chosen your business name and domain name, as long as it has not already been done so by someone else who is using the same brand, you should register your company name as a trademark to ensure that no one else is allowed to trade under that name; this means that if someone else does try to setup a business which has the same name as yours, they will not be able to since you will be able to sue them since a registered trademark is basically means that you own the name in question and that no one else is able to use it without your prior permission or consent - this is especially important if you are planning to make your business last and if you want to start earning a good income out of your investment - if you don’t then someone could easily come along and start trading roguely under your name, and even ruin your company’s reputation.

Reseller Package, VPS or Dedicated Server

Before you start taking on customers for your web hosting business, you need to have something on which you can host them; there are three choices for you to choose from when you are starting your web hosting business, these are: reseller hosting packages, virtual private servers or dedicated servers. Reseller hosting packages are packages which you buy from an established web host which allow you to sell on the disk space and bandwidth that it assigned to you to your customers - your customers in turn will have their own client accounts which they can then use to manage the domains and websites which they have chosen to host with you; the good thing with reseller packages is that the server administration is taken care of by your web host, which means although you aren’t allowed direct root or administrator access to the server to install the programs that you want to, you don’t have to have any advanced server administration skills since all that work is carried out by the trained technicians who are employed by your web host. Virtual private servers are not real servers in terms of them being physical, but they still provide you with a dedicated environment similar to that which is provided by a dedicated server when you are using it - this means that you can get the same control as you would have with a dedicated server, but at a fraction of the cost; the thing with virtual private servers that sets them apart from dedicated servers is the fact that you are still sharing a server with other people, since there are normally multiple virtual private servers hosted on one physical node - although you are assigned your own guaranteed bandwidth, disk space and RAM, the CPU of the physical node is normally shared between all the VPS hosted on a single node but not equally, but in some cases web hosts will split the CPU between the VPS so that each gets a fair share. Dedicated servers are the most expensive solution for any web host who is starting out in the industry; this is because what you are paying for is a physical server which is not shared with anyone else in any way what-so-ever. Dedicated servers, like virtual private servers provide you with a dedicated environment in which you are able to install any program of your choice, which in turn means that you are able to customize the server to work in the way that you want it to; this means that if you want to focus on a specific type of web hosting which requires for a special program to be installed on the hosting server, then you can - an example of this would be if you wanted to provide ShoutCast radio hosting for your customers via the cPanel control panel, in this case you would have to install ShoutCast and the necessary cPanel add-on which is required to allow your customers to manage their ShoutCast accounts through the cPanel control panel. Your choice of package should reflect which stage you are with your web hosting business; this means that if you are just starting out with your business then you should consider a reseller hosting package since they are fairly cheap and give you lots of room to allow you to expand over time - once you have outgrown your reseller hosting account you can then decide to move up to a virtual private server if you feel the need to and if your funds allow you to, if you have been running your business for a while and have built up a small customer base then you should consider a virtual private server - the same is applicable if you have a large customer base or if you want to provide your customers with a different type of hosting which means that you will need a certain program installed on the server which wouldn’t be available if you had a standard shared or reseller hosting package. If you have a relatively large customer base, but don’t have the funds to purchase either a virtual private server or a dedicated server then you could easily go with a higher end reseller package; this means that as your business starts to grow you can then upgrade through the various reseller plans that are provided by your web host, and as time and money allows you can then upgrade to either a virtual private server or dedicated server as you see fit. If you are starting out with a dedicated server of a virtual private server, then you should consider the resources that have been assigned to you; this is because you might have a server with a large amount of disk space which will allow you to host many websites, but you might not have a high enough specification processor or enough bandwidth to match the amount of disk space that you have been provided with.

When searching for a third party application of any type which you are wanting to use within your website, you will often come across applications which can be categorized fairly easy; these two categories are commercial and open source applications - commercial applications being ones which you have to purchase a license for so that you have proof of permission that allow you to use them, and open source applications being ones which are ‘free’ which means that you don’t have to purchase anything to be able to use them within your website. The choice of either an open source or commercial application can be a big one, since it can affect your ability to be able to accept any more visitors to your website, especially the part where you have chosen to use the third party application in the future; this is because some applications are only able to handle a certain amount of members or visitors that are able to use it, meaning that if this limit is crossed then the application in question will most likely be slow to use and might cause quite a bit of frustration for both you and your website visitors since the application will be more or less unusable - one further thing to add is that commercial applications can generally handle more visitors or members than their open source counterparts. Commercial applications generally come with guaranteed support, which makes them perfect for you if you are a webmaster who is in control of a website which has a fairly large user base, since in some situations you might require the expertise of someone who knows the application inside out, and who is more or less guaranteed able to help you solve the problem; open source applications on the other hand don’t come with any guaranteed or official support, which means that you will have to rely on the official documentation of the application concerned if you happen to run into a problem with it for some reason or another - in some cases there might be dedicated forums or message boards where you might be able to receive a good level of support and advice from experienced developers who have been using the application in question for a long time - however, both methods of support for open source applications are not guaranteed to help you solve your problem. Although open source applications are always available free of charge, it is recommended that you donate a small amount of money (if a donation scheme is being run for the application concerned) to the developers of the application, if you find it useful and good to use and that you don’t think that there are any major problems with it; this is because the developers of open source applications are normally giving up their free time to develop the application in question, and normally spend their own money where appropriate, but since the application is free, they never normally receive any money in return - only thanks from the community which chooses to use the application.

Scalability

Scalability is normally referred to as how many visitors or members a certain application is able to hold before it starts slowing up or before it becomes completely unusable; for example, commercial applications are more scalable than open source applications which means that they are able to cope with a large visitor or member demand and in most cases will never slow down or become completely unusable since they have built in mechanisms to help them cope if a sudden surge in demand. If you run a small website which doesn’t receive many visitors, and don’t expect the amount of visitors which you receive to rise by a large margin, then you should be fine with an open source application - this is because that although open source application aren’t as scalable as commercial ones, they are still scalable to a reasonable amount of visitors or members which should be above what you currently receive to your small website; commercial applications on the other hand are more tailored towards larger websites who receive thousands of visitors daily, which mean that they are highly scalable and able to cope with an increase in demand; this means that if you run a large website which receives thousands of visitors daily, then you should consider a commercial application since if your website was to experience a surge in demand then the third party application which you are using would be able to keep up with demand and wouldn’t slow down or become usable in any sense. In some cases, you might have originally chosen an open source application to use for your website, because at the time your website didn’t receive many visitors which means that you didn’t have the need for a commercial application since it wouldn’t have been any benefit to you - you might have then found that the amount of visitors to your website was starting to increase slightly, but over time the application which you had chosen to use wasn’t starting to slow down as it wasn’t able to keep up with the visitor demand; in this situation you would have to upgrade to a commercial application which was able to keep up with the demand of your website’s visitors, and wouldn’t slow down if there was a sudden surge in demand - if you were using an application such as a forum which contained large portions of content which couldn’t be manually ported over then you could utilize a third party migration tool that should be able to export and convert your database for use by the commercial application which you have chosen to use in place of the open source application that you were using to ensure that your visitors can still access the application concerned in times of high demand. One other thing about scalability is that you should always see how scalable the application which you have chosen to use is; this is because you might end up choosing a commercial application which isn’t scalable to the amount that you need it to be which might leave you at a dead end.

Support

If you are new to the web development world, and the idea of using third party applications to expand your website and the interactivity that your visitors are able to have with it, then you should always choose an open source application, since they are free and you can mess around with them and change them to your hearts content, although the amount of support available for them is relatively limited; on the other hand if you are an experienced person with a well established website who wants to expand it professionally, then you should consider a commercial application - this is because they are relatively scalable and normally come with official support which is provided by the company from which you purchased the application. Support is big thing for experienced web developers, since in some cases the source code of the application that they have purchased is encrypted, which means that they are unable to view and in turn change it for themselves; this means that if there is a problem with the code itself then they are unable to solve it since they don’t have access to the source of it so that they are able to change it for themselves - in this case they would have to source support from the company from which the application was purchased, and in turn notify them of the problem and receive the necessary support to ensure that they are able to solve the problem. On the other hand, if you are new the world of web development and like to solve problems yourself, then you should consider an open source application; this is because they are free and normally allow you access to their source code so that you can change the program to work the way that you want it to - this means that if there is a problem then you can easily solve it yourself, which is good since their is normally little to no support available for open source applications - the fact that there is more or less no support available for open source applications means that you should have a good amount of knowledge before deploying an open source application into a live environment where it is going to be used since you will need the necessary technical knowledge to fix the application if something was to go wrong with it. One thing to note is that the support available for commercial applications is only available at an extra cost in some cases; for example most commercial applications come with a years worth of unlimited free support via phone and email, but after that year you have to have a small amount to renew your right to have access to the support which is provided. On the other hand with support for open source applications, you should always ensure that the documentation for your chosen application is of high quality to ensure that you are able to familiarize yourself with the application without the need for trial and error; you should also check out the quality of the forum support which might be available for the applications which you are looking at before making a final decision.

Conclusion

In conclusion, your choice of whether to use either a commercial or open source third party application for your website is dependent on your need for support as well as on the size of your website, and whether or not you expect the amount of visitors that you receive to your website to increase or not; this means that if you are new to the world of web development, then you should consider an open source application that suits your needs appropriately, and if you are an experienced website developer who is running a well established website, you should consider a commercial third a party application which suits your needs appropriately. With the use of this article you should have learnt that if your website receives a large amount of visitors, or you plan on receiving a surge in the amount of visitors that you receive then you should consider a commercial application for your needs since they are a lot more scalable in terms of the amount of visitors or members that they are able to handle and process; you should have also learnt that if you run a small website that doesn’t receive many visitors, you should consider an open source application for you needs since they are free which means that you don’t have to fork out for something that most likely won’t be used much by either you or your website’s visitors. If you do choose to use a commercial application, then you should be prepared to pay at least $100 per year each year after you have purchased the application to ensure that you can still access the official support which is provided as well as to ensure that you are able to receive the necessary security updates to ensure that your install of the commercial application concerned is secure against hackers or any other malicious attackers. In terms of open source application support, you should be prepared to read the long documentation to ensure that you know your chosen application inside out; this then means that you should be able to customize the application to the way that you want it to be, and even fix any problems that you find with it if necessary - you should also check out the forum support that might be available for your chosen open source application to ensure that if the information that is provided in the documentation is not enough, you still have another source of support that is able to help you out in the case that you run into some sort of problem, you should also consider tutorials for the application concerned which might be able to set you in the right direction to fix a problem.

When you are setting up your a blog - whether it be your first or another one to add to your collection, one of the main factors that you will end up considering is the blog application which you are going to install within your web space to allow you to write the blog articles that you want others to be able to openly view and comment on if they wish; there are many smaller factors which can affect your decision in relation to the blog application which you choose to base either your blog or website - and in some cases, both - this article should help you in the decision making process since the main factors affecting your decision will be discussed in depth. Blogs are in most cases special websites where people write articles or posts on any subject, although some blogs are dedicated to specific subjects which means that the posts which they contain are normally much more specialized than those which are contained on other blogs which are located on the internet; blogs also let visitors and readers comment on the articles in most cases, this means that a reader can easily suggest an improvement for the article or post a comment arguing a point which had been made by the author or ‘blogger’ who wrote the post for their blog or for the blog that they work for, or post their articles on. You can also use blog software to build your website on, since a blog application will allow you to manage the content of your website with ease on the fly from any internet computer or location - this means that you can use the blog application which you choose to use in the same way as you would use a CMS system, you are also able to add add-ons to your blog application of choice in most cases which means that you can easily extend its features and usability; this also means that you can use the blog application which you choose to use to create a dynamic website to which you can allow your visitors to have more interactivity with - this means features such as the ability to comment on the individual pages with which you have populated your website with, this in turn means that your visitors can see each others comments and respond to each other with their own opinions without the need for a forum - which can help create a sense of community within your website. Other factors which can affect your choice of blog software can include the price of it if you choose to go with a commercial application, the required environment to ensure that the chosen application is able to function without any ill effects - if you are new to this area of web hosting/web design then you should also consider the type and amount of support which is available for your chosen application - this is because if you need help installing the application, then you might not be able to get the necessary helpful support if you choose to go with a lesser known application, but if you go with a better known application then you should be able to receive the support that you need to ensure that you are able to get your new blog started up successfully.

Administration Features

The first and main feature that you should consider when choosing a blog application to use is how far the administration settings in the administration panel of the application concerned stretch; these features include the WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) editor as well as other settings which let you configure how the application which your blog is based on manages certain things as well as how advanced other administration features of the application which you have chosen to use are. The WYSIWYG editor which should be supplied with your chosen blog application is what you use to write posts and articles which you will then post onto your blog for your visitors and readers to read - and if you have the facility enabled, your visitors and readers should be able to comment on your content; the WYSIWYG editor is an important administration feature of your chosen application since the features between the different editors can differ, and the more features that are available within a WYSIWYG editor the more content and wider range of content that you can add to your posts - for example some WYSIWYG editors allow you to add flash content and images to your posts which means that you can create multimedia posts and articles alongside your regular text based articles, this itself can help distinguish your blog or website amongst others which might be using the same application or design. Other administration features of any basic blog application should allow you to manage and install add-ons to your application, which means that with the use of add-ons you can easily expand the capabilities of your chosen application both in terms of the general front end which your users and visitors will see as well as the administration area which you will use to manage your blog as well as where you will be able to create new posts and articles from; with the use of add-ons you can also make your blog much more interactive and usable for the visitors and readers that you receive to your blog - this means that your existing visitors and readers are more likely to refer others to your website which in turn means that your visitor numbers will easily rise as time goes on. Some blogs contain administration features that can determine how you post your posts or articles that will then be displayed on the front page of your blog for your visitors and readers to view; for example, in most cases you can configure your chosen blog application to pull emails from a certain email account and them automatically post them to the blog as if they were articles - this means that if you’re not at a computer to write you’re article, you can easily use a portable device with email capabilities such as a mobile phone to email through what you want to post, it will then be automatically processed by your blog application and posted into your blog so that your visitors and readers can see it - this is perfect for you if you have a job such as a journalist who need to keep their blog or website updated regularly but doesn’t have constant internet access but always has some sort of mobile device with them.

Add-Ons

Add-ons can help extend the default capabilities, as well as give the ability to create new abilities for the blog application which you choose to use for either your blog or your website; this means that you should always make sure that the blog application which you choose to use has the ability to accept third party add-ons, and that it has a good repository of third party add-ons since you might want to take advantage of this feature, and because of this you want to make sure that there is a good selection of add-ons for you to choose from. The fact that add-ons are able to expand the capabilities, and in turn the possibilities of what you could use your install of your chosen blog application mean that you can use your install for a mass of activities, which means that you are able to create a highly interactive environment for your readers, or if you choose to use you chosen blog application as a CMS system, website for your visitors so that they are able to search and view content much more easily; this means that you might be able to increase the number of visitors which you receive to your website. However, add-ons don’t have to be about increasing the interactivity that readers or visitors can have with your blog or website, nor do they have to be about making the administration area much better for you as the webmaster, or increasing the look of your blog or website in general, as most people tend to think they are; for example, in most cases you are able to get add-ons for blog applications which are known as ‘SEO add-ons’ - these have the power to help increase your search engine ranking, and in turn increasing your visitor count since more people will be able to find your website through search engine keyword searches.

Commercial or Open Source

One main factor that can affect your choice of blog software is the fact of whether the pieces of software that you have been looking at are open source or commercial; commercial piece of blog software are ones which will cost you to have the ability to use them since you will have to buy a license in order for you to be allowed to use them, open source pieces of blog software on the other hand are completely free meaning that you can even download the source code for them so that you can construct your own add-ons based around their infrastructure so that the piece of blog software which you have chosen to use functions in the way that you want it to - this wouldn’t be possible with commercial blog applications since in most cases, you aren’t given access to their source code. In terms of support, you are normally given phone support with commercial applications, since you have paid them money and in turn will provide you with one to one professional support - in most cases this will only last a year meaning that you will have to renew your cover for it when you’re six months is up; there is no official support for open source blog applications since you are not paying anyone for the right to use it, meaning that there isn’t the money there to pay people to provide telephone support for the piece of blog software concerned - however, there are normally dedicated blogs which are normally able to provide you with a good level of support if you are new to the world of blog software, and have come across some sort of problem - whether it be not being able to install the application correctly or forgetting the administrator account’s password and not being able to reset by yourself for whatever reason. In most cases you will find that commercial pieces of blog software are much more secure than their open source counterparts - this is because you are paying for a license which means that there are paid developers who are there developing the product day in and day out, which means that if a security flaw is found in the application then it can be rectified by the paid developers more or less immediately; open source pieces of blog software on the other hand are usually much less secure than their commercial counterparts, this is because there is nothing to pay for a team of developers to develop the application day in and day out, which goes along with the idea that these applications are normally developed by a few developers within their spare time - this means that is a security flaw is found within a piece of open source blog software, then it isn’t going to be rectified immediately since the developers don’t have the time to stop their paid job to correct the problem concerned.

When setting up a forum for your website, you will have to make a choice on the piece of software that you want to use to ensure that a forum can be easily run and accessed on your website; there are many different pieces of forum software out there, so it is important that you make the right choice when you setup one for your website so that your visitors are able to discuss topics with each other, and should help create a sense of community for all the visitors that you receive to your website at the moment, as well as new visitors who might discover your website through a search engine keyword search. There are many different factors that you should consider when looking for a piece of forum software to use for your website; this is because forum packages normally contain many different features - some which you might find are surplus to your requirements, or you might find that the software you have chosen doesn’t contain features that you need it to have. You should also consider the factors which might be affect the visitors that you receive to your website, since after all, the visitor is the most important asset to your website; if your forum isn’t accessible to the visitors of your website, this might mean that they will go to some other website or forum community to discuss or view what they might already be using your website for. You should also take on board the technical side of the forum software that you are looking at, in relation to the specifications and features of the web hosting package on which your current website resides; this is because you might end up with a piece of forum software that is unable to function within your shared website hosting environment because it is designed to run under one environment, which is not the same as what you have. If you are webmaster who likes to be able to find their way around with the administration areas of applications, then you should take on board the design and functionality of the administration interface of the applications which you have decided to look at in your hunt for a piece of forum software; in this case you should consider the placing of links and other important items since these play an important part in your ability to be able to adjust to a new administration panel with ease. Other things that you should consider when looking for a piece of forum software which you can incorporate into your website include the level of skill that may be needed to incorporate the chosen program into the design of your existing website, as well as how far you are able to customize the program - for example, you might be able to complete incorporate it into the existing design of your website, but are unable to remove the copyright and trademark footers from the bottom of all the pages which are contained within the forum software - this will be in the case in most situations since the piece of forum software being used is open source, which means that it is being used freely and does not have to be paid for.

Theming

One of the most important things for webmasters who are using third party applications within their website structures is the ability to skin/theme the applications which they are using; this is because they, like anyone want the designs of these third party applications to try and blend in with those of their main websites as much as possible, since it looks more professional and in some cases such as where the data being entered into the third party application is of high confidentiality, can also boost the trust that visitors and customers have in you and your website. With the ability to theme an application so that the design of it suits your main website more, you are able to customize it in a way so that you can make it look and in some cases function in the way that you want it to; this means that you can build a highly functional and interactive website for your visitors, without the need for you to put in any hard work to make it function in the complicated way that it does, since all you have done is taken a third party application which has all the functionality there for you already, and added a design of your own choice so that it looks and feels the way that you want it to be for yourself and your visitors. With the using of skinning and theming, you can also give the third party application that you have chosen to use a unique identity from the default identity which is provided with it, and is most probably used by many other websites who have chosen to use the same piece of software as you but haven’t chosen to skin or theme it in any way; this means that your installation of the third party application will be much more distinguished than the other installs of it there are since you will be using your own design, whereas others will most likely be using the default skin/theme which was already applied to the application concerned when they installed within their website hosting space. When using a piece of forum software along side your main website, you should always skin/theme it to ensure that it blends in with the design that you have chosen and applied to your main website which is separate from the piece of forum software that you chosen to create a community within your website; this is because it should hopefully become a community point for all the visitors that you receive to your website where they can all discuss topics related to any subject that you or they want, which means that it should have some sort of custom design since you don’t want such an important part of your website to look ugly and ’standard’. The design of the piece of forum software which you are using can also denote the amount of visitors that it actually receives, and whether your existing visitors choose to stay or not; this is because that if you use your own design which looks rather nice, then people are going to want to stay on your website, but if you haven’t used such a nice design then people won’t be as willing to return to your website in the future.

Features

Because of their nature, many piece of forum software contain many different features that main allow for members of the forum concerned to communicate with each other both privately and publicly; this means that the features which are built into the piece of forum software which you choose to use will help you build a stable community for your website which your visitors can then join if they want to - this should then build up over time meaning that your website will be more attractive to first time visitors who might have reached your website through a search engine keyword search. The most basic features that most piece of forum software include are private messaging for members, the ability to see who is online in your forum at one time as well as the main feature which is their purpose - allowing members to communicate with each other through the means of topics which they can create and respond to within the forums/message boards that you have set up and configured; these features put together mean that you are able to monitor the people or search engine robots who are visiting your forum at any time, and also mean that your forum members can easily communicate with each other in public via the means of forum topics which they can create and respond to - if they feel the need to, then they should also have the ability to communicate with one another privately via the means of the private messaging system which she be provided as standard with the piece of forum software which you have chosen to use as part of your website to help create a community for your visitors. Most pieces of forum software allow you to download third party add-ons for them which you can then install within your install of the forum application which you have chosen to use in your website; this means that you can easily extend the functionality of the piece of forum software that you are using quickly and freely - in most cases the functions which are carried out by these third party add-ons are ones which are not normally handled by the application itself, which means that the new features that you are adding to your forum can help make it more interactive for both your website’s visitors as well as the members of your website’s forum. You should also look at the management features that are provided by forum software packages when you are looking to choose one which you are going to be using within your website to help create a sense of community; this is because you might need to delete and edit threads and posts which are created within your forum effectively and quickly, this idea is reinforced by the fact that forums can easily attract spammers and hackers since they see them as places where they can easily paste up what they want to with the likelihood of them going unnoticed for a while which means that many people are likely to see the adverts of text that they have posted up on the piece of forum software which you have chosen to use.

Add-Ons

Almost all the major players within the forum software industry have websites at which you are able to download third party add-ons that allow you to extend the functionality of your install of the piece of forum software which you have chosen to use; this means that you can easily expand a basic piece of forum software so that you can give your website’s visitors an interactive community where they are able to communicate with each other both publicly on certain subjects, and privately on any subject that they wish to discuss between themselves. Most add-ons that are available for pieces of forum software allow you to extend the functionality of the basic features which come integrated with your chosen piece of forum software once you have installed either on your dedicated or VPS server or within your shared website hosting space; this means that these features give you the ability to create an amazing forum which is much more enhanced than those of others websites who happen to be using the same piece of forum software as you - this is because the basic features of the piece of forum software have been changed and enhanced within your forum so that your website’s visitors and forum members are given much higher quality features that they can utilize when using your forum. However, add-ons don’t always have to be about enhancing the user expierience which you give your website’s visitors and forum members; in some cases you can get add-ons which can enhance the experience for you as the webmaster who looks after the day to day running of the forum concerned - this means that you can normally get add-ons for the administration panel of the piece of forum software which you have chosen to use, these add-ons can make managing your forum much easier for you since they normally extend management capabilities such as the editing of posts and the removing and banning of trouble members who might be spoiling the community atmosphere that you have created within your website for the visitors that you receive to discuss topics which are related to the main subject of your website. Other add-ons give you the ability to manage the and view the traffic/visitors which you receive to your forum, and not your main website; this is because the add-ons concerned are only set up to monitor the pages within the forum package which you have chosen to use - however, this does mean that you can monitor the activity of your forum and see where you might be succeeding and in some cases, failing. When choosing a piece of forum software, you should always consider its ability to accept add-ons when you are wanting to expand its abilities so that you can make the most of the piece of forum software which you choose to use as part of your website to help create a community; you should also make a note of the types of and number of add-ons which are available for the chosen package since these two factors can affect your ability to expand the piece of forum software concerned.

Commercial or Open Source

One main factor that can affect your choice of forum software is the fact of whether the pieces of software that you have been looking at are open source or commercial; commercial piece of forum software are ones which will cost you to have the ability to use them since you will have to buy a license in order for you to be allowed to use them, open source pieces of forum software on the other hand are completely free meaning that you can even download the source code for them so that you can construct your own add-ons based around their infrastructure so that the piece of forum software which you have chosen to use functions in the way that you want it to - this wouldn’t be possible with commercial forum applications since in most cases, you aren’t given access to their source code. In terms of support, you are normally given phone support with commercial applications, since you have paid them money and in turn will provide you with one to one professional support - in most cases this will only last a year meaning that you will have to renew your cover for it when you’re six months is up; there is no official support for open source forum applications since you are not paying anyone for the right to use it, meaning that there isn’t the money there to pay people to provide telephone support for the piece of forum software concerned - however, there are normally dedicated forums which are normally able to provide you with a good level of support if you are new to the world of forum software, and have come across some sort of problem - whether it be not being able to install the application correctly or forgetting the administrator account’s password and not being able to reset by yourself for whatever reason. In most cases you will find that commercial pieces of forum software are much more secure than their open source counterparts - this is because you are paying for a license which means that there are paid developers who are there developing the product day in and day out, which means that if a security flaw is found in the application then it can be rectified by the paid developers more or less immediately; open source pieces of forum software on the other hand are usually much less secure than their commercial counterparts, this is because there is nothing to pay for a team of developers to develop the application day in and day out, which goes along with the idea that these applications are normally developed by a few developers within their spare time - this means that is a security flaw is found within a piece of open source forum software, then it isn’t going to be rectified immediately since the developers don’t have the time to stop their paid job to correct the problem concerned.

Conclusion

In conclusion, when choosing a piece of forum software which you want to use so that you are able to create a sense of community for your website you should always consider the most important points such as the availability of support for the applications which you are considering to use, as well as the option for using add-ons to expand its capabilities at a later date; you should also take into consideration the level of support received in relation to the amount that you are paying for a license to use the piece of forum software concerned if you happen to choose a commercial piece of forum software in the case that you have the money to pay for it. Other things which you should take into consideration also include the basic features provided by the pieces of forum software which you are considering to use for your website; this might be because you don’t have the appropriate knowledge to allow you to install add-ons to extend the capabilities of your chosen piece of forum software - although this process may be simple, it may still be quite complicated for some people who aren’t computer literate. In the end, the piece of forum software which do choose to use your website can affect the success of the forum which you are trying to set up on your wesbite; this is because if you choose a rubbish piece of software which doesn’t contain many features then people won’t want to be visiting your website or forum since they can be easily put off by your choice of software, surprisingly. If you are starting out with your forum, and your website doesn’t receive many visitors, then you should consider an open source forum solution for your website - this is because the piece of forum software that you choose to use is free, and although official support isn’t provided, you can still get pretty good support from dedicated forums and from the documentation which should be provided; on the other hand, if you require a scalable enterprise solution then you should consider a commercial solution since these are much better maintained by the creators, and you can normally get official support via telephone and email.

What is RAM?

Random Access Memory or RAM, is the place where the computer stores its programs that are currently in use and being worked upon. RAM is the polar opposite of a hard-disk in the sense that a hard-disk stores all the programs and data irrespective of the computer being switched on or off. However, unlike the disks, the contents of the RAM are erased the moment you switch off the computer.

How much do I need?

You can never have enough of money, you would never have enough of RAM, especially if your computer uses a lot of memory intensive work, gaming or streaming. Next to the CPU itself, RAM is the most important factor in computer performance. If you don’t have enough, adding RAM can make more of a difference than getting a new CPU! As for the exact need of RAM, it depends on the kind of actual work you intend to carry out on the on the computer. If it is going to be “light” operations like browsing, MS-Office, emails and flow charts etc, you will not need too much of it. However, the moment computer aided design, dream-weaver, FTP and stuff like that comes in, your RAM requirement shoots up.

Why do I need to upgrade, does it work?

If your system responds slowly or accesses the hard drive constantly, then you need to add more RAM. Upgrading your RAM is often the first thing which you can do to speed up your computer. If insufficient RAM is available in your computer, modern operating systems will copy data from RAM to the hard disk. Your hard drive is much slower than RAM, so your entire computer will slow down.

The Virtual Memory Manager or VMM is a component which gives the RAM high importance. To a certain extent, upgrading your RAM will help your computer to run faster on a select few types of operations and functionalities. Everytime you run a program or a web browser, the processor of your computer identifies the executable file for the program on the hard-disk and then loads it into the RAM. The amount of RAM consumed depends on the size of the program’s executable file. The processor also calls all the DLL’s which would be required for that program(s) to run. These DLL’s take up more RAM memory. Thereafter, the processor loads the data files which would be required for the applications to run . Again, these files too occupy RAM space. After all these, when the actual application runs, it again asks for RAM, the more instances, the greater RAM you need. Big applications can easily take up 100MB of RAM. Multiple instances of tapped browsers are known to be “RAM intensive.

Moreover, the operating system also requires RAM space to work. All these things put together, the RAM which you have on your machine may not prove to be sufficient. Have you ever thought about how is the extra RAM which is needed come from? How does the RAM you have on the computer manage all these requests for space? Well, all this is done by the virtual memory manager. The VMM system scans the RAM and searches for sectors which are emtpy or not needed in the current operations of applications. This additional space which has been acquired is then put in a place we call “Swap” on the hard-disk. For instance, if you are working on a specific task which requires multiple browsers to be open and at the same time, and/or a couple of MS-Excel sheets open, but have not used it for about 30 minutes; the VMM will remove all the space occupied by Excel, its DLL’s and the data to the hard-disk. The next time you want Excel, the VMM will remove some other unused or idle process and load excel back into the RAM memory. This is called swapping of programs. But this process sometimes takes time and you can actually “feel” the swap happening because the hard-disk is slower compared to a RAM.

If you have a very small amount of RAM (say, 256 megabytes), then the VMM is always swapping things in and out to get anything done. In that case, your computer feels like it is crawling. As you add more RAM, you get to a point where you only notice the swapping when you load a new program or change windows. If you were to put 2 gigabytes of RAM in your computer, the VMM would have plenty of room and you would never see it swapping anything. That is as fast as things get. If you then added more RAM, it would have no effect.

If the RAM you have is indeed very low (say 512MB), then the Virtual Memory Manager is constantly swapping data to facilitate functioning of the different programs and applications. This is when you feel like the computer is slower than a snail and will lose a sprint race to a turtle. When you add more RAM, more often that not, you only see the swapping whenever a new application or program is loaded and / or you change windows. However, in this case, if you upgrade your RAM to about 1GB or 2GB, the VMM would have a lot of space and one would not feel or see the swapping of data happening. If, after this, you add more RAM, it would not be of much use. Its then time for you to upgrade your processor - rather the computer itself.