How To Choose The Right Web Hosting Plan For Your Business

Any business, whether they’re brick and mortar establishment or an online business, needs a website.  A website needs a host. A web host stores all the pages of your website and makes them available to computers connected to the Internet.  Like most internet services, there are a lot of options.  Web hosting is no different.  When it comes to choosing a web host, you have two basic options, do it yourself or choose a hosting plan. 

For the small to medium-sized business, hosting your own website quite likely has too many hurdles to be worth the effort.  The initial costs for purchasing, setting up and organizing all the necessary hardware, licensing the software can be overwhelming and time consuming.  Not to mention the recurring costs of a stable and reliable Internet connection.  For most companies, except the very largest of firms, hosting your own website just doesn’t make sense.  That leaves the second alternative, finding a hosting company and choosing a plan.  Let’s begin by taking a look at choosing a hosting company.

Choosing Your Hosting Company

There are literally thousands of web hosting companies to choose from and evaluating them can be difficult.  The first question you will want to ask a potential hosting company is what types of hosting plans they offer.  There are likely to be several choices from starter type packages to the platinum version with all the bells and whistles. 

Here are a few basic criteria to examine:

Service and Support:

Money Back Guarantee – Finding a web host is an investment but you don’t want it to be a risky one.  Look for a host that offers a guarantee. 

24/7 Technical Support – This is important.  What happens to your business if your web host crashes?  If you have an online business, you’re dead in the water.  Know that not all technical support is created equal and just because someone offers 24/7 customer service doesn’t mean they’re actively available.  It may mean that you get to leave a voicemail or stay on hold for hours and they’ll get to you when they can.  

Testimonials and references can be extremely useful.  Find out if other customers are happy with the hosting service and

Ease of use:

A Control Panel is your central hub of information.  It is where you find all of your statistics and are able to manage all of your account features.  If your host’s control panel is too difficult to navigate or doesn’t offer the tools your business needs, then it is best to look elsewhere.  Your website is your business and your control panel needs to be easy for you to use.  You don’t have time to spend searching for the information and tools you need. 

You will probably want to upload scripts for message boards, email forums, set cookies, and the like.  .  If this is the case, you will want a web host that allows you to install and run scripts.  Most hosting companies offer CGI, Common Gateway Interface, a protocol that allows web pages to interact with scripts on a server.

You will want to have email accounts for your website.  For example, admin@ yourcompany.com and sales @ yourcompany.com, etc…A POP (Post Office Protocol) Email Account is an email account hosted on your site and you will probably want more than one.  Most hosting companies offer packages with different levels.  For example, a beginner or starter package will have 1-5 email accounts, a middle of the road type account may offer up to 50 and a full business package may have unlimited email accounts available.

Website construction tools and/or Microsoft FrontPage extensions.  You need to be able to design and develop your website.  Many hosting companies offer templates and design tools.  In addition they may offer FrontPage Extensions.  FrontPage is a website design software program that is fairly easy to use and if your host allows you to upload your website onto the server. 

Features:

Do you want to know who is visiting your website?  What about what pages they visit or how long they stay online?  What about click through rates?  Any effective marketing plan or website plan needs to evaluate these statistics.  This means you must find a hosting company that not only tracks this information for you but makes it easy for you to access and understand. 

Marketing features like autoresponders and mailing list management are a fantastic feature but not all web hosting companies offer them.  Take a good look at what your business needs before you sign on with a company.  Sometimes a hosting company includes marketing features in your package and sometimes they are offered ala carte. 

Security is important too.  Look for a SSL, Secure Socket Layer, Secure Server.  SSL is a protocol that allows for encrypted transmissions online.  If you are collecting private information from your visitors, you will want this and you can include it in your privacy policy.  

Some hosting plans offer shopping cart software integrated right into your account.  This isn’t a must but it will save you a step if you offer products for purchase on your website

Members only areas require passwords but not all hosting companies offer this feature. 

Choosing Your Hosting Plan

Nearly all hosting companies offer different types of hosting plans, including “shared” hosting and “dedicated” hosting.  In addition, some hosts also offer a “virtual private” hosting option. 

Here are the details and benefits of each. 

Shared Hosting:

Shared hosting or “virtual” hosting (which is different from “virtual private” hosting described below) is when the hosting company hosts your website on its own physical servers for a monthly fee.  In this type of arrangement, the hosting company will also be serving other companies’ websites from the same physical server.  The hosting company is responsible for the technical details relating to keeping your site up and running, including server setup, bandwidth management, backups, and security.

Price is perhaps the primary advantage of shared hosting.  Since you’re only using a portion of a single server, your costs are less than those for dedicated hosting.  Also, since you are not directly responsible for management of the servers, you don’t need to commit as many resources to routine maintenance of your website.  This also means your hosting company will handle many of the security matters for your website; you don’t need to make any direct investment in the software and hardware needed to secure the site.

However, because your website is on the same server as other clients, you have no direct control over the server as a whole, and certain site administration tasks may be more time consuming as compared to a site that is on a dedicated server.

Dedicated Hosting:

Dedicated hosting means your Web server is sitting on its own box, owned and managed by the service provider.  Dedicated hosting means you will have more direct access to make different types of changes to your site compared to a shared hosting plan.  The degree of host management depends on what exactly is offered by the service provider.  Most providers offer special managed dedicated server programs that ensure continuous monitoring of server performance as well as routine tasks like data backups.

When you have a dedicated hosting solution, your website resides on its own server.  This means that your company can directly control the machine and determine which Web applications are running on it.  This also means that it is less likely that activities of other websites on the same physical server will negatively impact yours. 

In addition, because the server only responds to client requests for information from your own website, there is likely to be a faster response time for the same amount of traffic across the server.  If your server has a dedicated IP address, it will likely be easier to handle certain anonymous FTP and SSL encryption activities.  Dedicated hosting arrangements are generally favored for high-traffic businesses.  Because your website is the only one on the server, however, dedicated hosting costs are generally higher than with a shared hosting plan.

Virtual Private Hosting:

Virtual private hosting means that the server software is “virtualized” to permit the hosting of multiple websites on a single physical server (as with shared hosting), but each has its own copy of the operating system and permits greater customer access to the server (as with dedicated hosting).  Virtual Private Hosting is generally available at a lower overall cost than traditional dedicated hosting, but provides the customer with much greater control and access to the website.

Is Your Business Website Ready For CSS?

What is CSS ?

CSS or Cascading Style Sheets is a great tool to add a unique look to your web pages.  CSS enhances fonts, colors, and even the spacing of your web pages.  It is a useful tool to let you separate your HTML content from your style. For example, you can use your HTML file to create and organize the content, but all of the visual presentation including the background, fonts, colors, link effects, text formatting, and spacing are created with a CSS file.

Benefits of CSS

As discussed, CSS makes it easy for you to separate the style and layout of your HTML files from their informational content.  This means you can determine the look of your site in one file, and change the whole site by modifying that single file. It also means you can make your HTML changes by accessing one file. 

This structure provided by CSS also means that you can work with your web pages so that they look good on any browser.  For example, a page on Mozilla can look very different than a page seen on internet explorer.  CSS eliminates that difference.

CSS gives you more control over how your pages look because it is a more detailed mechanism than HTML.  HTML wasn’t designed for style, it was designed for document structure.  CSS was designed for style.  This means it is easier for you as a business owner seeking brand development and recognition to define your “look” and give it a unique and consistent feel.

Users say that CSS also prints better than HTML documents.  Important if visitors are accessing your content, which they hopefully are, printing it, and taking it with them or better yet – sharing it with their friends and associates.  Additionally, the pages allow visitors to print the entire page as opposed to the partial pages that HTML often prints. 

CSS decreases your page size significantly, making it easier for your visitors to load your site and all relevant graphics and copy.  It also means that your web pages can be seen quickly and clearly with handheld browsers.  This is huge because many people are now surfing the internet on their cell phones, smart phones, and PDAs.  If your site doesn’t load quickly, chances are people are going to leave.  If your site is quickly and clearly accessible – you may have a new customer!  Additionally, it will take up less space on your server if you’re running close to your limit – and save you less money if you’re being charge by bandwidth.  This is because CSS requires less code. 

CSS enables you to position the code for your content at the top making your page search engine friendly. Properly marked up, HTML pages can easily found and properly categorized by search engines.

It is also fairly easy for anyone to learn because CSS already uses well-known coding elements and principals.

The benefits of CSS include making your web site:
• Faster to create
• Easier to maintain or change
• More adaptable to fit new and emerging technologies
• Compact
• Neater and cleaner in the HTML code

How do I use CSS ?

Cascading Style Sheets can be used in two ways - internally or externally. When used internally the CSS code is placed within the ‘head’ tags of each HTML file. The HTML code basically looks just like this:
<head>
<title></title>
<style type=”text/css”>
Place your CSS CONTENT HERE
</style>
</head>
<body>

Externally, your CSS code that would be placed in the HTML file is now placed in a separate file and linked to the location. The file type for the CSS code can be created with any text or HTML editor such as Notepad. Once created there are two ways you can link to your CSS file:

1. In the head section of every (X)HTML file, appearing as:

<head>
<title></title>
<link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css”href=”style.css” mce_href=”style.css” />
</head>
<body>
2. Using the @import method, appearing as:

<head>
<title></title>
<style type=”text/css”> @import url(Path to stylesheet.css) </style>
</head>
<body>

So what method do you choose?  That depends on what you need.  For example, internal is used when a designer needs to style only one page, or different pages with different styles.  Web page designers tend to prefer an external cascading style sheet. This is because, as noted earlier in the benefits list, you will only need to edit one CSS file to change the entire website. Webmasters also find external is better because they are easier to maintain, they’re more compact, and generally the appearance is easier to control and stylize. 

Potential Concerns

Not all browsers can read CSS.  This is a real concern; however, the percentage has decreased to the point where less than 1% of browsers are affected.  What sites are affected?  Older browser versions, created before CSS was standard, including Netscape 4.0.  Because the vast majority of browsers are significantly newer than this, and because the World Wide Web Consortium has recommended the use of CSS, making it a widely acceptable and recognizable mechanism around the world, all concerns about using CSS are negligible. 

Bottom Line

CSS is a tool that will make your web pages easier to organize and maintain, your website easier to change, your brand potentially stronger, your website more compact and easier to load, your search engine optimization will improve, oh and your pages will just look better.  There really isn’t a reason to not experiment with CSS and integrate it into your web site.  Once you begin using and designing with  CSS, you’ll likely find building sites is more fun, faster, and they look amazing. 

Tips and Strategies to Setting Up Your Company

Choosing the Business Entity

Once you’ve decided to start a business, you’ll need to decide whether to form your business as a separate legal entity, and if so, what that entity will be, and what are some of the other steps you’ll need to take to get up and running. This article is meant to be general business advice, though, so you should still obtain specific legal advice for your particular situation.

Sole Proprietorship

Single owner businesses sometimes choose to operate as a sole proprietorship. In this situation, the business essentially operates as an extension of the owner. The profits and losses of the businesses will be accounted for on the individual tax return of the owner. This form of business has the obvious advantage of simplicity in that there are no separate corporate or partnership formalities to be followed.

However, all liabilities of the business will also flow directly through to the business owner. This means, for example, that if a customer is injured on the business premises, or the business incurs debts beyond its ability to pay, then the personal assets of the business owner are legally available to satisfy those claims.

General Partnership

Two or more individuals who own a business may elect to form a General Partnership. In a general partnership, the general partners determine how they will share profits and losses of the business, and enter into a written partnership agreement documenting these shares. The profits and losses of the general partnership then flow to the tax returns of the individual partners in accordance with the ownership percentages that are set forth in the partnership agreement. The partnership itself is not subject to any separate income tax.

However, despite the agreement between the partners in how to share profits and losses, each and every partner is exposed to the full amount of all liabilities of the business. This means that a creditor or plaintiff can collect the full amount of any claim or judgment from any of the general partners.

Limited Partnership

The Limited Partnership form of business is similar to the General Partnership in that profits and losses are distributed to the partners and flow through to the tax returns of all partners in accordance with the percentages the partners determine in the partnership agreement.

However, some of the partners can be “limited” partners, meaning that they would not be subject to any personal liability for any of the debts or judgments against the partnership. There must be at least one general partner in the Limited Partnership, and this general partner will have unlimited personal liability. The general partner(s), but not the limited partner(s), will be responsible for management of the business.

Limited Liability Company

A Limited Liability Company (or “LLC”) is comprised of one or more “members.” The ownership percentages, profit and loss distributions, and voting powers of each LLC member are determined by an agreement between the parties, which is generally reduced to writing. When the LLC is formed, it elects whether to be taxed like a partnership with profits and losses flowing through to the owners’ tax returns (as discussed above), or taxed like a corporation (as discussed below). The members of the LLC are protected from the liabilities of the LLC.

Corporation

A corporation (perhaps the most well-known form of legal business organization) is owned by one or more “stockholders” and managed by a Board of Directors elected by the stockholders. The Board appoints officers who run the actual day-to-day business of the corporation. The stockholders, directors and officers of the company are generally protected from the liabilities of the company.

For tax purposes, there are two types of corporations: “C” Corporations and “S” Corporations. In a “C” corporation, the corporation is a separate tax entity, so the profits and losses of the corporation are taxed directly at the corporate level, and do not flow through to the tax returns of the stockholders. The “C” corporation may also be subject to a separate level of “franchise” tax at the state level. If the stockholders elect to be treated as an “S” corporation for tax purposes, then the corporation will be taxed as a partnership. This means that the profits and losses of the corporation will flow directly to the stockholders in accordance with their stock ownership.

There are also other differences between “C” corporations and “S” corporations, including the permissible number of stockholders for each.

How to Form

In many situations, it will make the most sense to form your entity (if you decide to form a separate legal entity and not operate as a sole proprietorship) in the state in which you will primarily operate. Since partnerships, LLCs and corporations are separate legal entities, they can generally be formed in any state, regardless of where the business actually operates. However, organizing under the laws of the state in which you primarily operate will save you the cost and administrative burden of maintaining a “registered agent” in the state of formation.

The websites of many Secretaries of State contain a great deal of additional information on how to form in their state. In some cases, downloadable forms are available to assist, and sometimes entities can be formed directly through an online interface.

Other Considerations

Depending on the type of business you’ll be operating, your state may require that you obtain and maintain certain additional licenses. Examples of these types of businesses can include daycare facilities, healthcare-related business, restaurants and catering businesses.

As your business grows, and you expand your operations into other states (including having employees in other states), you may need to “qualify” your business on those other states. This process is generally easier (and less costly) than forming the company, but you need to take care to do so correctly.

The Bottom Line

As you start your business, make sure to take the time to consider how your choice in business form will affect your personal tax situation. Consider seeking professional legal and tax guidance so that you are comfortable making the correct decision based on your needs and concerns.