|
|
 It’s encouraging to see companies moving forward, improving services, etc. and Host Gator – the hosting service we use and recommend – is no exception. For the non-Host Gator (HG) clients out there, thought you might find it interesting to read about some of the enhanced HG features and services we were notified of in a recent email.
Online Credit Card Payments
One of the most interesting was iPayment which is a method to receive credit card payments online. In the past if you wanted to take credit card payments via your web site, you either had to have your own credit card account – which can be pretty expensive if you’re not generating a lot of income – or sign up for and use PayPal. Now, you have another choice – iPayment – offered through Host Gator. The iPayment program has no application fee, no set-up fee, no contract term and instant approval.
Website Development
If you’re putting together your own web site, blog or perhaps doing either of these for others, then you may find that ‘Trendy Site Builder’ is just what you need.
“Trendy Site Builder is a stunning Flash Site Building tool that helps users build websites with a “Wow!” factor. The site builder includes features like image galleries, Mp3/Video player, Paypal integrated Online Store, Contact form, Online Greetings, and much more. One of the stand out features is an absolutely stunning iPhone optimized website that is generated automatically for easy accessibility on iPhone and other smart phones. Ranking on Google and other search engines becomes a breeze with the inbuilt SEO optimization. Install it now to experience the amazing ease with which you can build a stunning website and find out why it is the World’s Favorite Website Builder!”
Of all the available features offered by Trendy Site Builder, we found the one that allows you to create iPhone websites the ‘grabber’ here since everything is moving in the ‘mobile’ direction.
If you’re proficient or even semi-proficient in HTML, you may be interested in one of the following:
- Over 800 Word Press themes
- Over 5,000 web site templates
Both of the above can be purchased (at a nominal cost) through HG and downloaded. However, if you’re wanting a website but would rather have someone else to do the work for you, get a free web design quote from Host Gator and let them do all the work.
Is Your Site Safe?
Site security is the last element we want to bring to your attention. Security is available through Site Lock Security in three (3) reasonably priced, yearly plans – available at up to 80% off . . . only for Host Gator customers. Use this program to keep not only your website secure but also your customer’s information safe.
Conclusion
Keeping up with the times is important and we hope this brief overview of what’s new at Host Gator will help you make a decision if you’re in the market for an excellent hosting provider. Don’t forget Host Gator also has multiple programs and services – simple installations, stat programs, email, shopping carts, word press, and much more – that make having an online business, website or blog easy and efficient.
Final note: We want to stress that it is the responsibility of each individual to investigate these features beforehand to see if they might be of benefit to their overall business plan as well as fit their budget constraints. When making business decisions, due diligence is imperative – especially in these tough economic times.
If you want to have a marquee on your page without using JAVA, try using the following HTML code to insert a scrolling marquee anywhere on your web page. Your marquee can be words, sentences, or even images. The information contained in your marquee code will start at one point (on the screen) and float across much like the advertising marquees you see at some businesses.
Marquee Code for our sample text:
<marquee width=”85%” height=”15″ scrolldelay=”175″ behavior=”scroll” direction=”left” loop=”infinite> This is a sample marquee scroll </marquee>
To see this code in action, visit this link…. Marquee
For our sample, we’ve coded our text to scroll across 85% of the screen with a height of 15 (pixels). We’ve set our delay at 175 milliseconds; our direction to scroll is ‘left‘ and we want our loop to be ‘infinite‘. Note: You can use marquee code inside of tables also.
Marquee Attributes
Width and Height – you can assign width and height to your marquee area as either a percentage of the area where the marquee is to display or in pixels. In our sample we’ve used a percentage for the width and a pixel designation for the height.
Scroll Delay – use this attribute to control the amount of time (in milliseconds) that passes before the text scrolls again.
Behavior – allows you to select the type of movement you want to use:
Scroll – use this for text that starts at one side of the screen and disappears off the other side.
Slide – use this for text that starts at one side and stops when it reaches the other side.
Alternate – use this for text that starts at one side and bounces back when it reaches the other side.
Direction – this determines the direction the text starts from (left or right).
Loop – allows you to select the number of times the marquee is to pass across the screen. You can also make the text appear continuously by using ‘infinite’ in place of a number.
Other – additional placement and attributes of the marquee can also be controlled by using the following attributes as well. This information is contained in the first <marquee> tag.
HSPACE (Horizontal space)
VSPACE (Vertical Space)
ALIGN (Align – left, right, center)
BGCOLOR (Background color)
Marquee Content
This code is placed between the beginning and ending marquee tags <marquee> HTML Code for Content Goes Here </marquee>
Images – If you want to use images inside the scroll, keep them as small and as few as possible.
Font – color, face and size: use the same code you would use anywhere else in your HTML docuement to control how the text displays.
A scrolling marquee can be used to highlight a specific section of a page, draw attention to a special offer or display a larger quantity of information that you might think you have space for. Hope you have fun using this bit of code.
While having a successful Internet business depends on your knowledge of
- Site Layout
- HTML
- Graphic design
- SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
- ROI (Return on Investment)
- Social Networking, etc . . .
 there are also other aspects to consider that can make your business page stand out and give your company ‘implied’ size, value and authority as well as offering customer convenience.
One of these is to have an ’800′ or toll-free number from Kall 8 for your company. And before you say, “yes, but everyone has cell phones”, let’s look at some of the advantages when you have an ’800′ number.
Size – How big is your company?
Having an ’800′ number for your company that you can also display on your web page, implies your company is large enough to ‘afford’ such services. It also allows people to contact you from their home or from a ’click’ on your web page without incurring any phone charges. Most people when given a choice will call the ’800′ number before they will call a traditional number – even from their cell phone.
Value – Where can you use your toll-free number?
When you have an ’800′ or toll-free number not only can you can use it on your web page but also anywhere else you want to take advantage of advertising.
- Business Cards
- Invoices
- Letterhead
- Newspaper ads
- Flyers
- Brochures
- Coupons
Included Features From Kall 8
In addition to being able to choose your toll-free number from Kall 8, there are 10 included features we think you’re going to like. *. (I might add that the basic service starts as low as $2.00 a month for basic service.)
For the small business owner, having access to these services are invaluable. The services available are:
1. Voice Mail & Fax – set your mailbox to receive both or either; record a personal message; set number of seconds before voice mail answers; set length of caller’s message; and more.
2. Web Call Button- receive calls directly from your web page with the click of a button.
3. Virtual Calling Card – make calls using your Kall8 number by dialing any one of the Voice Mail access numbers to make outbound calls. (Some fees apply)
4. Conference Calling – connect with up to 25 participants, any time, for as long as you like. (Some fees apply)
5. Call Blocking – customize the in-coming call area and block or allow calls by state, area code, area code + prefix or even specific phone numbers. Have the blocked calls directed to either a busy signal, continuous ringing, error message or directly to voice mail.
6. Custom Call Forwarding – schedule your calls to forward automatically to different numbers based on time of day, area code, specific number or state of origin.
7. Call Notification Emails – receive an instant email notice every time your ’800′ number is called.
8. Maximum Call Length - set the maximum time allowed that an answered call can stay connected; can also be used with Voice Mail if that feature is enabled.
9. Called ID - choose whether to display the caller’s number on incoming calls. This is useful if you have multiple ’800′ numbers ringing on the same phone as this will identify which ’800′ number was called and answer accordingly.
10. Online Management – Kall8 has online account management that includes a variety of tools to help you track your calls with regard to call detail and campaign analysis.
If getting a toll free telephone number is in your business plans, take a moment and review what Kall8 has to offer ….we think you’ll be surprised and pleased at all the features Kall8 has to offer – we were.
* These features were available when this post was uploaded. For more detailed information on Kall8, cost and services available please visit Kall8 website.
In our last post we reviewed how we could use Who.is to find out who ‘owns’ a domain. Also, we covered how information associated with the domain can be found. To briefly recap our previous post, we found we could discover the following by using who.is:
- determine domain registrar
- domain status
- expiration date
- name servers
- locate both administrative & technical contacts
- locate IP addresses
- and more
But there are other uses for Who.is that you may find useful… most of them dealing with expanding your domain search or usage.
Expiring Domains & Domain Name Recommendations
You may not be aware but there are hundreds of excellent quality domain names expiring everyday either because they have been forgotten to be renewed or have been simply let go. To check on these domains, you can use the Who.is tool that lets you identify and register expiring or recently expired domains. Who.is will let you view up to six Top Level Domains (TLD), i.e, .com, .net, .org, .info, .us and .biz. You can perform the search by keyword or keyword phrase and once you’ve found a good name you can even go so far as to view the domain’s backlinks.
Want to ‘do your own thing’ but think all the ‘good’ domain names are taken? Then try the Who.is domain suggestion tool that makes it easy to view closely related domain names that are available. This tool bases the search on one of your relevant keywords and then fine tunes your search to get the best domain name available.
Website Information
If you’re thinking of advertising your site on another website, then you want to select the best site out there based on its Alexa ranking and traffic data. And, this same information can also be used to monitor your own site or your competitor’s site if you want to see what the competitions doing. Another perk is that historical information is available anywhere from one day to three months.
This information tool also give you data relevant to…
- domain contact info
- how site compares in speed to other sites
- keywords
- traffic data
- subdomains
- and more
Different TDL’s (Top Level Domains)
We’ll briefly cover the different types of domains and what the name means here. Aside from the .com, .net, .edu, .gov and the like being classified as generic TLDs, there are also ‘country code’ TLD (ccTLD) names available. You may recognize some of the country code domains on sites you have visited but not known that they were in fact representative of other countries.
For example, www.who.is has the ‘is’ extension which is the ccTLD of Iceland – while some of the television and video sites like to use the ccTLD from Tuvalu which is .tv. Innovative way to ‘brand’ a site if you’re niche is video or television.
What TLD Parts Mean
So what do the different parts of a domain name mean? There are three parts to the name as defined below and shown in red . . .
Top level – this is the extension (.com, .net, .gov, and so on) - www.domain.com
Second level – is the name that refers to or identifies the website – www.domain.com
Third level – is at the beginning of the name and identifies where the site can be found - www.domain.com
Understanding what a domain name is, how it works and why you want to maintain control will go a long way to maintaining control of your domain as well as having a successful Internet business.
 Some things bear repeating and I think avoiding a ‘hostage’ situation where your domain is concerned falls into this category. As a quick reminder, your site becomes a hostage when you hire someone else to register your .com and they maintain control by using their own personal information rather than yours, or you register your .com through a secondary registrant site and they in turn purchase your domain from a primary register like GoDaddy but retain control by using their business contact information – not yours.
If you have hired someone to build your site or if you have used someone other than one of the better known domain registers – GoDaddy, Network Solutions, etc. – there is a way to verify you are in fact registered as the owner of your domain. You can go to the website www.who.is and search for the registering information. This is quick and easy to do.
We’ve placed a series of images below taking you through the process. Please note that while we’ve used an actual domain that is in a hostage situation, we’ve changed the information referencing the domain name and the company that did the registering to maintain both parties privacy. We have noted all replaced information in red to show where you would look for either your domain name or the registering party.
In the first graphic, we show you where you would type in the domain name in question. You then click on the small black arrow next to ‘whois’ and select from the drop-down menu the search you want to perform. In our case we want ‘whois’. Once you’ve selected this click on the ‘Who.is.Search’ button.
You will then see a screen that displays the registering information for that domain. In this case you can see that the domain is through GoDaddy.
However, if you continue down the page you will see who has control. In this case, our dummy company ‘Other, Inc’ has control even though it was registered through GoDaddy…. by them.
If you continue to scroll down, you will see a line of code that reads something like….
For complete domain details go to:
http://who.godaddy.com/whoischeck.aspx?Domain=THEDOMAIN.COM
Copy and paste that link into your browser’s address bar. This will take you to the rest of the information available. Once there you will see the information that has been registered for this domain and can verify if you are the registrant …. or not. You will also find out who are the Administrative and Technical contacts as well as finding out where the registrant is located, if it’s not you.
Continue down this page and you also find out about the registry status. In other words whether or not you have access to Delete, Renew, Transfer or Update the domain. If your website has been ‘hijacked’, you’ll probably find all of these actions have been blocked as in our actual domain who.is search below.
Should you find yourself in this situation what do you do? I’ll leave you with some thoughts:
- Ask the registering party to release your domain… they may be honest and do it
- If they want a fee of some sort, depending on your situation, you may be willing to pay the price to get your domain name transferred to you from those in control
- Get a new domain name (you may think about using the same name but with hyphens) and put up a new website
- Wait for the domain name to become available, if the wait is short, and try to buy it yourself before they renew it
It’s a shame that there are some that would take advantage of unsuspecting clients and do this, but if you go into a business meeting fore-warned and with some basic knowledge about how domain registrations work… you’re less likely to be taken advantage of and find yourself retaining control of your Internet business.
Don’t miss next week’s post when we’ll talk about some of the other things you can do using who.is.
|
Sponsored Ads
|
