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Web Hosting
In the last issue we talked about
choosing your domain name. The next step is hosting. In
the most basic terms, hosting determines how each page of your
website is physically delivered to your visitors and
customers. I promise that this is the last article of boring
technical stuff - in the next article we will be working with
farm web design!
Hosting is a transparent, but very
important aspect of running a successful website. The decision
you make during this step effects all the rest of the process
and can limit you in the future if you are not careful. If I
may make a farming analogy, it is akin to choosing a tractor:
the type and power of tractor you choose dictates the
implements you can utilize later.
There are free web
hosting options, though like anything else in life you have to
ask, where is the money coming from? Most, if not all, of the
free web hosting options will include advertisements on the
pages you serve out to your visitors. You will also likely not
get your own domain name -- your URL might be:
http://mymarketfarm.free-hosting-service.com. You can do a
search on your favorite search engine for "free web hosting"
to begin to see the options. I advise you to steer away from
these services because paid, reliable hosting service is so
affordable. I think any serious business that relies on free
hosting is starting their web marketing on shaky ground and
setting themselves up for failure.
Inexpensive,
reliable hosts abound that will serve your website to visitors
for $5-15/month:
- UpLinkEarth
- GoDaddy
- Lunar Pages
Some services provide rudimentary design tools that you
can use to easily create a basic website:
- Yahoo! Small Business
- HostGator's Site Studio software
For any of
these packages, you may want to inquire with them about
supporting any advanced features that you want to use: forums,
blogs, email mailing lists, and more. Many of these hosts will
offer fairly easy integration, but if you are not very
tech-savvy it is good to ask how to move forward.
There
are many other sub-options in hosting that I haven't covered
in this article. If you just want a listing of your
farm; you can use LocalHarvest or the
New Farm Farm Locator or some of the alpaca
specific sites such as Alpaca Street or
Alpaca Aficionado. Alpaca
Nation is a very well known alpaca marketing site
that receives a lot of traffic. None of these
services will provide a full website or domain name for your
farm, but they could be a good option for you.
Next
article is this series: Planting the seed: farm web
design basics.
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