WebHosting For Small Business – Hostgator saves you money!

I just got off the phone with a small business owner that had his website shut down by his own webdesigner. As absurd as this may seem, the story is not unusual amongst offline entrepreneurs:

They pay a bunch of money for the design and then the webdesigner sticks a small “maintenance fee” on them that includes web hosting. This gentleman that was on the phone with me had been paying $35/month for over 5 years!

What really kills me is that the maintenance fee didnt include anything – He told me that once he wanted to change the pictures on the site, and the guy sent him an extra bill for $150.

Small business owner, take charge of your hosting!

Let me make something extremely clear to everybody  - as I explained on this post (stuff to want on a hosting) and then discussed on the unlimited bandwidth hosting post – small businesses dont need to pay a ton of money for hosting.

What you need is a reliable, efficient, and secure hosting like Hostgator – one that has free 24 hours customer support and that will fix any problems WITHOUT extra charges.

Wanna know what happened to this friend of mine?

I told him to get his FTP info from the webdesigner, get an account with Hostgator, and use their FREE DOMAIN TRANSFER SERVICE to get his websites up.

Now – he’s going to pay less than $100 PER YEAR, instead of the $420 he was paying. How does that sound?

Sign up for Hostgator today – and start saving money immediately!

(use coupon code “wordpress” to get your first month for $0.01!)

What can Hostgator’s unlimited bandwidth do for you?

So yesterday we spoke about what things you want from your hosting company, such as unlimited bandwidth and unlimited addon domains.

I just realized that we never really talked about what those things really mean – such as how much traffic will take 1 gb of bandwidth, and where to see it.

First of all, you dont need to understand any of this. I sure dont, but since I want you to know how good Hostgator is, we’ll venture into this topic.

Bandwidth goes right along your average daily traffic. Every piece of information on your site is stored somewhere, and everytime somebody visits your site, that information is retrieved and loaded into that visitor’s browser.

The traffic between the servers and the visitor’s browser is what determines your bandwidth usage. The volume of transfer can increase your decrease depending not only on your traffic, but on the content of your page.

For example, if you have a JPEG picture of about 50kb, plus a small FLash animation of 600kb, the bandwidth it will take to load your site will be bigger than the one necessary to load a site with just plain text.

How does bandwidth influence your site’s performance?

CNN’s homepage is about 200kb. That means everytime a single visitor comes in, 200kb of bandwidth is used to load the page  - since they get well over 500,000 visits/day, they require a minimum of 100GB of bandwidth for their homepage alone.

Your page wouldnt need nearly as much, but account for that occasional viral traffic – better safe than sorry.

So that’s bandwidth for dummies – arent you glad Hostgator offers unlimited amounts of this stuff?

That means you dont even have to pretend you know what you’re talking about

Sign up for Hostgator NOW!

(get your first month for $0.01 – use coupon code wordpress)

What do you want from your Hosting?

First – do you know what you want from your Hosting?

People tend to think of hosting as an expense – therefore they look for the cheapest one, which often leads to a disappointing experience.

You need to consider the impact of having your website(s) down for even an hour – how much would that cost your company?

Once you realize how crucial a reliable Hosting server is, you start to think more careful about which one to choose.

1. What’s the Uptime Percentage?

Pretty self-explanatory – how often is the server up, or how steady are their services?

There are no perfect servers – but there are those with guaranteed 99.9% uptime. Hostgator was one of the first ones to achieve that percentage, and has won many best hosting awards because of it.

2. How much bandwidth do you need?

This is ridiculously hard to calculate because you may not use a lot of bandwidth right now – remember that bandwidth = traffic volume to your site. But chances are that for 99% of businesses that have a website, more traffic is always welcome.

The way the internet works, you have plenty of opportunities to go Viral – and what happens if a sudden spike in traffic collapses your website?

Hostgator offers UNLIMITED BANDWIDTH even on their most basic packages. You may not need it, but you definitely WANT IT.

3. How many domains per account?

Let’s say you run a gym – and you want a domain for fitness, one domain for bodybuilding, and one for martial arts.

Usually, you’d need to get a hosting account for each one of those domains. That means one monthly bill is now 3x bigger.

With Hostgator, you get unlimited addon domains – you can have a multitude of domains on the same account, without compromising the bandwidth, because – yes, it’s UNLIMITED.

Those are the most basic and fundamental features you want from a hosting company. I make it clear that those are things you WANT – not necessarily what you need.

Hostgator’s features cover way more than your needs – they focus on taking care of your wants.

Sign up now and get your first month for $0.01! (use coupon code hgc25)

How To Transfer Your Blogspot Blogger To A Hostgator Domain

If you have a blogspost (Blogger) domain and you’re tired of the long, unprofessional urls, and the limited flexibility, this quick tutorial will show you how easy it is to transfer all of your blog posts into a new Hostgator hosting account.

First, you need to SIGN UP FOR HOSTGATOR (it’s $0.01 with coupon code wordpress)

Once you receive the welcome email from Hostgator, record your new FTP address and the exact location where you want your blog to go.

OK. We’re ready to roll – on your Blogger account:

1. Go To Settings/Publishings

Your current connection method shows that “You’re publishing on blogspot.com”.

Change that to FTP

2. Enter Your FTP settings from Hostgator

ftp server = yournewwebsite.com

blog url = http://yournewwebsite.com/blog

FTP path = public_html/blog/

(the FTP path must already exist on your new hosting account – just ask a Hostgator support agent to create it for you)

Blog Filename = index.html

Click SAVE SETTINGS

3. Republish your blogger

Go to Posting > Status

And you’re give two options – you can republish just the home page:

Or you can republish the entire blog, with all of its pages and posts:

4. WAIT…

And You’re Done!

Now you’ve got a professionally set up blog hosted on your domain, safely guarded by Hostgator’s servers.

If this helped you, leave a comment  - if it didnt, why? Did i forget something?

You can also use Hostgator’s free domain transfer feature

What To Expect From Hostgator’s Wordpress Hosting

If you haven’t figured out how to install wordpress using Fantastico, I’m going to quickly get you up to date and then move on to explaining why a solid hosting service is crucial when installing Wordpress blogs.

First off, you absolutely need a cPanel hosting package to have immediate access to things like Apache or MySQL (and Fantastico too). You dont need to know what to do with it, but you better have’em.

1. Fantastico

This wonderful service allows you to install Wordpress on any of the domains listed in your account (see addon domains for more) in less than a minute.

It will also keep track of all the domains that have WP installed and suggest updates when necessary. The other option?

You’d have to download the WP package, FTP it to your domain, and then go to wordpress.com to get a username/password. If you know what you’re doing, it’ll take you 20 minutes – if not, well, it can take a whole day.

2. MySQL databases

I’m adventuring myself in unchartered territory, but here’s my attempt to explain why this is important when using Wordpress.

Everytime you install WP, they create a new database where your configurations are stored. This way, there’s something to save you in case of a crash or invasion (Hostgator saved me from one of those).

So mark MySQL in the list of things you DONT need to know what it does but you DO need to have on your hosting package.

Got the picture?

Tomorrow I’m going to attempt to explain why these two services are CRUCIAL when you’re trying to perform trivial things like loading a new theme or installing a plugin to your WP blog. (You wont EVER have to worry about FTP!)

But before we get there, you need the most reliable wordpress hosting service -

Sign up for Hostgator today and get your first month for $0.01 (coupon code: wordpress)

Should You Be A Hosting Reseller To Make Money Selling Hosting?

On a previous post I exposed Hostgator’s best selling hosting package, and we’ve also talked about how to become a hosting reseller.

But we never talked about the responsibilities that come when you become a fully functional webhosting company.

First off, how much do you know about hosting?

Do you understand DNS? Namerservers? Registrar?

If you’re handling emails, do you know what an MX-Record is or even what your POP3 address looks like?

Second – think about how angry you’d feel if your website went blank for an hour – or a day – or 2 days.

Or if you couldn’t send or receive emails for the same time period – how much money would your company lose?

Before I had signed up for Hostgator, my company experienced some server breakdowns that made me REALLY lose control, to the point that if I was able to get my hands on any of tech support people, I’d be in jail by now.

Can you imagine being in that position?

So, do you really need to be a hosting reseller?

If you want to make money selling hosting packages, your best option is to become an affiliate.

This blog has affiliate links to Hostgator because they offer the best hosting solutions today. But I’d NOT want to be reselling Hostgator packages – because I wouldnt be able to provide the technical excellency I’d expect out of my hosting company.

If you’re a free lance webdesigner, or you handle client’s accounts, you dont need to set up shop as a full hosting server – simply direct them to Hostgator, and collect your commission. Hostgator pays up to $125 per sale, up front!

This way, you save your time and energy by letting their support team take all that heat – after all, they’re more than well trained at it.

Sign up for Hostgator now, forget about hosting headaches, and start making money today!

How to add a domain to your Hostgator account (addon domains)

This quick tutorial will show how to add multiple domains to the same Hostgator hosting account without paying any extra money. And it will only take 30 seconds.

Of course, we’re going to use the gator’s free Cpanel, a major life-saver when it comes to the “behind the scenes” of webhosting.

And here’s the kick – Hostgator will let you add as many domains as you want. Seriously – they offer unlimited addon domains (which is how they call these secondary domains on your account).

So, let’s get to the tutorial:

1. Log Into cPanel

It’s simple: just type in yourdomain.com/cpanel

2. Find the “Domains” Tab

Click on “Addon Domains”

This is how it looks like:

3. Enter the new Domain info

You’ll fill the domain name WITHOUT http://

Then, you can either leave everything as is (recommended) or pick a simpler name to become the new FTP username and Root folder.

Like so:

That’s it!

Now you’ve got a brand new domain that is using the same hosting account – you dont need to pay for another one.

And since Hostgator offer unlimited bandwidth, there’s no need to worry about crashes – you can have over 50K visits/day and everything will flow just peachy.

Just a quick note: whenever you need to upload something to that new domain, you ftp continues to be the same:

ftp.PRIMARYdomainname.com

All you need to change is the FTP username to whatever you chose during the addition process.

If you have any questions, or anything you’d like to learn, post them in the comments!

If not, go ahead and SIGN UP FOR HOSTGATOR FOR $0.01!

A true story of Hostgator’s support effectiveness (hacked wordpress)

About a month ago, several of the domains on my primary Hostgator account suddenly went blank.

On my primary account, there are several client’s pages that run on PPC traffic, so even a single hour that the pages are down means a lot of $$ down the drain.

I honestly dont know how long they were down before one of my clients called me asking what was up with the blank page – but I – freaking out – immediately started a live support chat on Hostgator.

Of course, when something like this happens, my first instinct is to punch somebody – it’s like when you’re trying to get something done over the phone with At&t – but the support agent was right on the money.

My Super Hosting Save

When I told the agent that several of my sites were down, he quickly browsed over them and sent me a couple of lines of PHP code that he thought looked weird.

To me, it looked even WEIRDER because I dont use PHP (except when hosting wordpress) and when  I told him, he quickly identified signs of an invasion.

Yeah, it sounds unreal, but hackers do attack us.

As I started freaking out, my agent logged in to cPanel and started to remove alien .PHP files that were placed throughout my sites.

Honestly, I have no idea how it happened – but within less than 15 min, he had it all taken care of for me. He instructed me to change all my FTP passwords and cPanel, and gave me the special email address for the Hostgator security team.

After he fixed everything, the security team went in and double checked my account, worked their magic, and recommended I upgraded my wordpress suites.

At the end of the day, the entire process took less 1/2 hour!

That’s how effective the Gators are!

Sign up today and get Hostgator for $0.01 (coupon code: hgc25)

Hostgator & Watermelons – How The Best Hosting Ever Was Born

So I stumbled upon the a great post by Hostgator’s creator where the entire history of how the service came to life is fully exposed.

It turns out everything started with a good-old childhood fruit stand:

“I’ve been an entrepreneur since I was a kid. In sixth grade, I sold candy at school and had all the kids in my neighborhood working for me. When I was 14, my cousins and I had a business where we sold watermelons from a truck on the side of a road. The deal we offered was simple, but effective: “2 for $5.”

It doesnt seem anything like the beginning of a world surrounded by ultra-geek terms like MySQL, ASP, or DNS. But from this humble beginning a passion for making money online came to life – thus the background on Hostgator’s generous approach to affiliate marketing.

From the original post:

“I decided to create real web sites and sell my own advertising inventory. The network that I created was called The Freak Network and consisted of scfreak.com, dfreak.com, and wcfreak.com, all of which were named after best selling Blizzard Entertainment games (Starcraft, Diablo, and Warcraft, respectively).

My network was making me about $40 a day, which was impressive given that all of my pimple covered friends had to get real jobs and make less money.”

The whole thing seems right out of the internet entrepreneur book, right?

A good-old rag to riches story seemed on the way – but NO.

Apparently, the gaming traffic was tagged as “malicious” and Freak Web Hosting went down in flames – the server called it quits, forcing a major refund to be issued to customers and the last straw on on a stranded, over worked entrepreneur.

(it still sounds like a Rag-to-Riches story)

After getting back to the normal rat-race world and back into College, the dream was then revived by a friend – who suggested a partnership where one would be technical, other would be sales. They managed to get everybody back on board, but needed a new name:

Hostgator was born in its earliest stage:

Soon after, college life came to an abrupt end too -

“I was a 24/7 one-man operation. I was being woken up numerous times a night with phone calls and there wasn’t a single class I would make it through without having to leave at least a few times to take a business call. I knew I was on path to be making more than the average college graduate in about six months. I also knew it would have been impossible to finish another year of college while running HostGator, so I decided to drop out of school and follow my dream of growing HostGator into the world’s largest hosting company.”

And now it is: over 2 million websites hosted , a fully green hosting company, and the best darn uptime in the industry. To top it off, free cpanel hosting, unlimited asp.net hosting support, fantastico wordpress hosting, and the trademarked best-selling Hostagtor’s hosting package.

No reason they rock – they really focus on giving the best possible service, and that’s why I strongly recommend them:

Sign up now for Hostgator (use coupon code hgc25 to get 1st month for $0.01!)

Love Hostgator Super Hosting Super Recap

This blog is only a week old and already we’re causing a stir around the stiff web hosting industry with our ultra cool ways to talk about all of Hostgator’s amazing hosting services. Some folks have pointed out that we’re so cool that they dont mind all of the geek talk we have here.

Though he admitted that the amount of geek talk is here is minimal when compared to other hosting-related sites. And yes, I dont talk as much about technical aspects because honestly, I care more about how effectively Hostgator works than WHY it works so darn well.

But we’ve addressed some pretty technical issues here already – specifically when we discussed ASP.NET hosting with Hostgator and when I explained how cool having a free cpanel hosting account is.

We also taked some geeky when I exposed their best seller hosting package and how reseller hosting accounts work. But the coolest thing was the video tutorial.

I had a blast trying to make a video tutorial on Hostgator’s free domain transfers – I thought I should teach folks how to transfer your site to a new host, but the fact is that HG does all the work.

So I shot a 4-minute tutorial that shows you how to get your old IP address and paste it over to their free transfer form.

Seriously, how easy is that? And why did I take 4 minutes to finish the video? Good question!

Before I wrap this up, I just want to point out that the $0.01 Hostgator coupon has limited availability and you will be unable to use when HG pulls it off their list.

It’s been a pleasure writing this blog and we have lost more coming up – so stay tuned and enjoy your gifts!

Sign up to Hostgator NOW!

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  • A true story of Hostgator’s support effectiveness (hacked wordpress)
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