Not everyone who is new to the internet knows what hosting is so I will assume no knowledge of hosting on your part. Bear with me if you have some experience in this area.

Hosting is usually renting an area on a server or large computer or rack of computers on a hard drive. Most hosting is shared or sharing space on a single hard drive. Dedicated hosting is where a whole drive or computer is dedicated to one customer’s website and files.

Everyone of the websites you see on the internet is stored somewhere on a host computer and it is displayed using html and CSS so that a person’s browser will display the page you see.

Choosing a good host is one of the most important things you need to do.

I could write a separate article on choosing a domain name but I think the two are so related in nature as to be better dealt with together in this article.

Choosing a domain name is nothing more than picking a name by which your URL or web address is known by on the internet. For example, one of my sites is called www.healyourselfnow.net. This is a domain name. I could say that the domain name is important, and so it is, but you need to know more than that.

You should normally choose a domain name that is a keyword for your site. For example, if you are targeting computers as your main keyword, you could use Cheapcomputers.com or Greatcomputers.com. This is just an example, but you get the general idea. Many people use hyphens in the name, but I don’t recommend them as the search engines don’t like them.

Security is another issue. How secure is your site? If you are selling the host should offer SSL certificates at a reasonable price of less than 30.00 so that your transactions are secure. Also, do you have a virus scanner and does your host offer leech protection to protect your images and to prevent other members from giving out passwords to restricted areas of your site.

Does your host support Fantastico or one click access to important scripts like a CMS or content management system like JOOMLA or MAMBO that allows editing or updating of your web site content with the ease of using a word processor. No knowledge of html or css is needed. So anyone in your office can contribute to website content with minimal training! Also, you can add a learning managment system like Moodle, or a live chat program or forum and instantly make your website interactive.

An interactive website is considered “sticky” or a site that will attract and keep visitors coming back to, over and over again.

The last and most important issue in choosing a good web host is customer support. Does your host offer 24 live chat support? There are things that can affect your site and you need the security and peace of mind that comes from knowing that you get competent friendly advice even at 3 am. Live chat is interactive like using Microsoft Messenger except that you are talking on a secure line for the express purpose of customer support. Live ticketed support uses a ticket and email based support system that is not as interactive as live chat but sometimes is necessary to solve a more complex problem with your site.

So to summarize, does your host offer tutorials on your site for cpanel or whm if you are hosting more than one site? Does your host offer scripts with one click installation?

Does your host offer excellent chat based and ticket based customer support? How fast is their turn around time on that support? After all, it does you no good to have 24 hour support if no one answers your call. Does your web host offer competitive prices? I would be remiss if I did not mention that bargain prices are not at all important if your host offers web design with your hosting or some other extras that are not available at other hosts. If you are new to the net, and don’t have much experience you will need a lot of support at first to help you get to know that you are doing.

For example ebooks, templates, and software that you can re sell for money with master resale rights. It is acceptable for your host to charge up to 30.00 per month if they offer web design assistance and offer ebooks, software, and templates, and a template based site builder that can put up a decent site in less than an hour. Economy hosting does not measure up for newbies.

If your host can answer “yes!” to all of these questions then you can rest assured that you have chosen a good host.

Your host determines your success on the internet as much as your efforts do, so choose wisely.

Bluehost is a web hosting company founded by Matt Heaton and it is based in Provo, Utah. They run large data center which is based in Orem but their offices have moved south a mile to Provo. Bluehost has grown rapidly and is now one of the biggest providers of shared web hosting. They have a no frills one plan fits all offering. Bluehost is just about shared hosting as Matt Heaton has often explained. They want to just focus on this one offering and do that well. Depending on the period for which you decide to order web hosting from Bluehost you pay between 9.95 monthly or 6.95 depending on the ordering cycle you enter. The longer the duration of your hosting contract the cheaper the monthly rate you have to pay.  The standard shared hosting package comes with all the features you would expect from such a plan including cpanel. You can login easily into your cpanel from the bluehost main page and start your web venture from scratch in there. If you are familiar with this control panel it is no different from other hosts although Bluehost does allow a more liberal scripting environment. For instance you can edit your php.ini at the account level and they also support more programming languages than other shared web hosting plans like Python and Ruby on Rails.  Installing new scripts is no problem because their cpanel features the fantastico script installer package and it is by and large pretty up to date with the latest versions. Some of the most popular scripts in this package include wordpress, phpbb, phplist, drupal, and joomla.  Support at Bluehost is provided via phone, email and live chat. The two I have relied on were email and live chat. With both live chat and email if you bump into a level 1 technician it may be wise if he can’t resolve your query straight away to try again and get a higher level engineer as they are usually very good. All in all Bluehost is a host that provides a very good shared hosting package at a fair price and offers good support.

Bluehost is a web hosting company founded by Matt Heaton and it is based in Provo, Utah. They run large data center which is based in Orem but their offices have moved south a mile to Provo. Bluehost has grown rapidly and is now one of the biggest providers of shared web hosting. They have a no frills one plan fits all offering. Bluehost is just about shared hosting as Matt Heaton has often explained. They want to just focus on this one offering and do that well. Depending on the period for which you decide to order web hosting from Bluehost you pay between 9.95 monthly or 6.95 depending on the ordering cycle you enter. The longer the duration of your hosting contract the cheaper the monthly rate you have to pay. 

The standard shared hosting package comes with all the features you would expect from such a plan including cpanel. You can login easily into your cpanel from the bluehost main page and start your web venture from scratch in there. If you are familiar with this control panel it is no different from other hosts although Bluehost does allow a more liberal scripting environment. For instance you can edit your php.ini at the account level and they also support more programming languages than other shared web hosting plans like Python and Ruby on Rails. 

Installing new scripts is no problem because their cpanel features the fantastico script installer package and it is by and large pretty up to date with the latest versions. Some of the most popular scripts in this package include wordpress, phpbb, phplist, drupal, and joomla. 

Support at Bluehost is provided via phone, email and live chat. The two I have relied on were email and live chat. With both live chat and email if you bump into a level 1 technician it may be wise if he can’t resolve your query straight away to try again and get a higher level engineer as they are usually very good. All in all Bluehost is a host that provides a very good shared hosting package at a fair price and offers good support.

I remember way back when I would have a separate chat program on my computer that would link me up to all kinds of chat servers. Lately, though, I’ve just been using Yahoo or one of the portals. I want to meet some new people. Do those old chat programs still exist? What chat programs can link you up with the widest possible community?

Many of my friends laptops ( reg. HPs and Macs) for graduation presents and i want to be have a web chat set up before i leave for college. What should i use?

Today I’m sharing some important aspect of great customer support which helps your business grow online. These days market is customer-oriented and we can not afford to loose our customers. Customer service is one of the most important factors in determining industry success in the fierce competition. We should adopt new techniques to grow our business.

Communication plays a vital role in growing a business and live chat software helps in many ways. In order to enhance communication with your customers, it is very wise to make full use of all the on-line communication solutions. Your clients can contact you anytime by sending an e-mail or filling out a contact form. They no longer have to bother themselves with pushy phone consultants, waiting in lines or recording messages. You can respond to these e-mails whenever you want.

Live Chat customer support software is economical and advantageous. A phone operator can handle only one customer at a time, which can drive away those customers who make several, unsuccessful attempts to call. If there is another customer on phone line, he have to wait and there is a chance that customer change his mind.  With the help of live chat software you never loose your customer; you can handle more than one customer at a time. There are so many features available in live chat software which is not available in the phone. You can see the referral pages from where your customer  come, you can also see the old chat with a particular customer, it means no need to write any thing regarding your customer, just save the chat and see when you want.

If you request information from your customers via phone you have to write on paper and store it, you can now do that from your website. This will save both yours and their time and money. You can easily receive the feedback from your customer about your services and this will definitely helpful in resolving the problems. Live chat software support is 24*7, so there is no restriction of time. You can easily convert visitors to customer which is not possible without having live chat software support.

There are many software companies which are providing live chat software for many languages, so there is no boundary of language and no loss of business. You will get informed when someone visits your website and in which page he shows interest. You can also see off line message.

Most of the companies providing live chat software are having almost same feature, but I must say few of them are very good .They are having few good features which are not available in many software. There is no specific requirement for live chat software, only you must have a computer and internet connection. No need to install this software on your computer, it works online. Just apply for an account in website, get code and paste it onto your site, and then your site is ready for live chat.

Enterprises can upload their own branding logo in live chat, as well as customize the chat button, chat window, sound alert, auto-invitation, invitation button, pre-chat question form, offline message form and so on. With the full chat, offline message and navigation history, Enterprises can have a 360 degree view of their website visitors. The navigation history includes the complete history of how many times a visitor has been to the site, when and which page visited.

This is how you can increase traffic for your online business and boost up your online sales. Hope you find my article useful and have a great success in your online store.

I am trying to find a chat software I can put on my site where chatters need to be registered and guest are welcome, but can’t chat unless they are registered any suggestions. Thanks