Hosting & C-Panel Got You Freaked?

Setting up hosting for your website or blog and integrating all the ‘moving parts’ required to be sure emails get delivered and images display (ever seen those goofy boxes with a red X or the image/photo icon in them – well that’s a broken link meaning the files are not where they should be for the image to display) and are where they need to be when traffic comes-a-callin’ so that your site dishes up in all its glory, all this can be such fun to the average basement dwelling web dweeb. For the rest of us, we may want to get a little help with that…

You’ll want all your website’s tech tools and toys to integrate and play nice with each other.

Unfortunately, they often act more like a bunch of unsupervised kids in the sandbox, with plugins invoking the toddler’s creed (you know, the one that says ‘everything is mine’) in relation to function scripts.

Why It Matters:

That means when you have multiple plugins or functions accessing the same script to make them ‘work’ – one of them is holding it (the script) hostage like the latest Tonka Toy or Tickle Me Elmo and none of the other kids (plugins) can play with it until he let’s go with the death grip. Meanwhile visitors to your site are seeing the playroom AFTER the cup-cake party and BEFORE the parents get home to clean up.

None of this stuff is nearly as scary as it seems, but for a first timer it is equally as nerve wracking as your first day of high school, where all the sophomores, juniors and seniors know exactly where everything is and how it works, but they won’t tell you! Once you find your own ‘goth club crowd’ or even just one friendly face to help you C-Panel, Email account management and even FTP can be as much fun as prom is when you’re in with the ‘IT’ crowd.

What You Need to Know How to Do:

Let’s get back to your website though. You’ll need to be able to set up a hosting account (pretty easy), register your domain (don’t EVER use the same service for hosting and registration – but the why’s of that are another post entirely), point your DNS (Domain Name Servers – yet another post) to your hosting servers, set up domain redirects (if needed – say to send .Net traffic to your .Com site), and typically you’ll want to set up multiple email accounts to help you flag and sort email by subject, then funnel it all to one primary (non published) email account that you check regularly and respond from.

Who We Host With:

We host with A2Hosting for a number of reasons, they’re not the cheapest but they do have the best US based support team I’ve come across. They offer a good variety of hosting packages to meet the needs of most businesses. Their servers are well maintained and they keep the server side of things running fast and secure.

I do have to say, cheap hosting is a false economy! High-quality hosting is the equivalent of securing a high-street location (as opposed to a dingy-back-alley) for your online business, then you just need to stock the store and dress the windows to attract traffic and attention 🙂

Once you’ve had a web based business or blog for any length of time, you may find yourself wanting or needing to switch your hosting service provider. Although your new hosting company will typically migrate your primary or one domain for free, it can end up costing quite a bit in site down-time if you don’t have a solid plan and know what you’re doing.

If you buy or sell a site or blog you may only want to move part or some of your domain portfolio leaving the rest in place. You can easily do that (but again another post to cover in detail) and it does need to be done in a very specific order to avoid site down time.

None of this is rocket science but it sure can feel like it when you first start, and for a while afterwards too!

So this is an area where a few bucks invested wisely into having an expert do it for you, can save you a space program’s worth of time and money as it gets you and your business or blog on your merry way to the moon way before the monkey even thinks about how you go to the bathroom in a space suit.

We have a whole basement full of dweebs – both designer and tech types (we treat them well, we even occasionally let them out to attend Star Trek conventions and such) but basically we keep them fed, watered and happy, so they’re willing and eager to do any or all of these techy tasks for you.

If you’re more of an R2D2 type than a Hans Solo, we can have one of our tame tech geeks teach you how to do it for yourself. Whichever way it works well for you, just let us know and we’ll get right on it for ya!

So What Can We Help You With Today?

It’s the same mantra as always from us too…Hire Us THEN Fire Us (but only if you want to), we look forward to working with you as much or as little as you want and need us to.