It’s allows computers throughout the internet to identify one another. Each computer has a unique IP address assigned by your internet service provider (ISP) or by your router in your local network at home. You can learn more extensively about the IP address by doing a quick search on the web.

Ok, back to the domain name server setup.

When you open an account with a web hosting company, the web server where you web site is hosted is associated by at least 2 name servers. Generally that information is sent to you by email once your web hosting account is ready to use.  The domain name servers’ information is generally in the format ns1.nameserver.com and ns2.nameserver.com. You might encounter web hosting name servers starting with dns1 and dns2.

If your domain name is registered with a different company than your web hosting, then you will have to manually setup the DNS information. Just log into your domain name registration account to locate the section where you can update the domain name servers’ information.

Fill out the information required then commit your changes. Once the DNS information is saved it generally takes from a few minutes to 24 hours for the new domain name servers’ information to propagate throughout all domain name servers on the internet. Yes domain name servers are actually computer servers just like web hosting servers.

A domain name server’s purpose is to store all registered domain names in the internet and match each to an IP address that points to the web host server. So here is in a summary how things works when you click or enter a web site address in your web browser:

• Your web browser connects to a name server to retrieve the IP address associated with that domain name. This process is done just once the first page you visit on that web site
• Once that IP address is retrieved, your web browser will store for subsequent web requests when you are surfing that web site.

So in reality a domain name server is a directory/database for domain names where each domain is matched with a hosting server IP address of that website.

If on the other hand your web site is hosted by the same company your domain name registered with then they is no need on your part to setup the name servers. It’s done automatically for you when your web hosting account is opened. You can therefore start transferring your website files in no time.

Updating name servers is a very simple process that does not really require any technical knowledge. You just take the information given to you by your web hosting company then go to your domain name registration account to change those parameters.

Google Sitemap

This sitemap intended for the Search Engines is an XML file (Extensible Markup Language) . It has  a preset structure defining the URL, update frequency and crawl priority of each web page you would like to add in the search engine index.

That XML file format and structure is supported by all major Search Engines: Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask. In a nutshell an XML sitemap looks like this:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<?xml-stylesheet type=”text/xsl” href=”gss.xsl”?>
<urlset xmlns=”http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9″
xmlns:xsi=”http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance”
xsi:schemaLocation=”http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84 http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9/sitemap.xsd”>
<url>
<loc>http://www.web-hosting-reference.com</loc>
<lastmod>2010-04-13T01:38:06+00:00</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>1.00</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.web-hosting-reference.com/category/domain-name</loc>
<lastmod>2010-03-25T16:48:23+00:00</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>0.5</priority>
</url>
…
…
</urlset>

For those familiar with XML documents structure, you will notice:

As you just learned, you can manually create a sitemap for search engines that is if your website contains just a few pages. All you have to is to keep adding <url>…</ul> nodes following the markup shown above until you include all your web pages.

However for larger web sites, you are better of  having this chore done by a  sitemap generator. It’s software program designed specifically for creating sitemaps. The advantages of using a sitemap generator are:
- real time saving
-  guarantee that you won’t miss any web page
- and error-free XML markup.

Sitemap Generator

You can find a free sitemap generator online by just typing “google sitemap generator” in your favorite Search Engine. All you need is to specify your website address (e.g. http://www.web-hosting-reference.com) and the program will handle the rest. Within a minute or two, you will have your sitemap file you can upload to your website then just point the Search Engines to it.

My favorite sitemap generator however  is “gsitecrawler”. It’s a desktop application by SOFTplus that allows you to create a Google sitemap (all search engines included) for a website of any size. The best part is it’s FREE. You can find the download link by just looking for it using the name above in your favorite Search Engine.

You can choose to exclude certain web pages you do not wish the search engines to index. You can also  exclude entire folders or let the program read your “robots.txt” file to determine which files/folders to exclude. This software even reports broken links and pages it cannot access for whatever reason, so you can investigate and fix the issue.

You can  automate the process so the software can recreate your sitemap at schedule dates then upload the file to your web hosting server. Did I also mention you can setup as many websites as you want in this software. It can be a very valuable tool for all of you webmasters out there.

Creating and submitting a sitemap to search engines should be part of your SEO and SEM campaign. On an upcoming article, I will show you how to submit your sitemap to Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask Search Engines.

You are no longer limited by the geographical location to expand your market. And unlike a brick-and-mortar business, online business requires less startup costs. Some of those minimal startup fees are related to your web site design, shopping cart setup, domain name registration and web hosting.

Thanks to the power of automation you can setup a shop that does not require your physical presence at all time. The possibilities are endless, the market is huge and your online store stays open 24/7 with no overtime to pay to any employee.

So how do one go about starting an e-commerce?

1. Pick a niche you would like to venture in
2. Determine whether there is already a substantial market of potential buyers for your products/services
3. Build a website with all the features required
4. Advertise your web site using various online channels to reach your target audience
5. Put in place a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) to help you get repeated business from your customers
6. Offer more products and improve existing ones
7. Improve processes that are working and get rid what’s not.

In the upcoming posts, we’ll break down each point underlined above to give you more insights into starting an e-commerce.

True, the online market is huge but the competition is also proportionally tougher. So be prepared to roll-up your sleeves and work hard before you reap a bountiful harvest.

Are you looking for an opportunity to make extra cash?
There are literally tons of business opportunities online ranging from data entry, affiliate marketing, selling widgets on E-Bay, using Google AdSense, starting an e-commerce website and the list goes on.  Most online ventures require little to no startup cost compared to a traditional offline business.

For instance if you master a given craft, you can post an ad on craigslist and within an hour get response from propectice clients. If you have items to sell you can list them on E-Bay or place an ad on Craigslist in the “For Sale” category.

You can also start an e-commerce site to sell your very own products. Create a custom web site with a shopping cart and credit card payment processing. You can then start advertising your new site to bring traffic and convert those visitors into buyers.

Even if you do not have your own products/services to offer, you can still signup as an affiliate to advertise those products on behalf of the owner in exchange for a commission. Fortunes has been made this way and continue to be made to this day online using affiliate marketing. Aren’t we all the middle-man at any give time during a business transaction?

If you are an expert on a given field and like to write, you can start a blog to share your insights then sell advertisement space to companies offering products/services your blog readers might be interested in.
Not matter which business opportunity you venture into your financial reward will depend on your commitment to succeed. Your online business needs nurturing, working hard to stay ahead of the competition, continuous advertising to get fresh leads and new customers.

Unlike offline business where the location determines how much traffic a store owner can expect, you need to advertise your web site in order to get traffic.
However you should not loose perspective on the fact that it’s not the traffic that you are ultimately after but converting your site visitors into buyers or customers.

There are countless marketing channels you can use to attract traffic to your website. You can for instance use Google Adwords to buy a placement spot in the paid listing of Google search results. The same can be done with Yahoo and Microsoft AdCenter. You can also tap into the huge traffic in social networks such as MySpace, Twitter and Facebook.

To take advantage of the FREE traffic you could get from a high placement in organic search engines results, some SEO work to increase your site relevance to your target keywords and a good strategy to get quality inbound links to your website will do the trick.

You can start a blog to share some insights, start discussions and slowly build your very own online community. Not only does your blog posts bring more visitors but they also add fresh content to your web site. Search engines will reward you for that.

There are no hard rules for web site marketing because the right strategy depends on your target market.

No matter what your motives are, you should start the relocation process before your lease with the current web hosting company expires. Give yourself at least 72 hours to transfer your website. That leaves you enough time “to patch things up” should you forget something at your current web host.

Just like with a brick-and-mortar business, you need to look for a new location convenient to your business. For an online business, the real estate is defined in terms of disc space in a web hosting server.

Shop around for a web hosting company that provides a package that suits your e-business needs. If are not sure what to watch out for, please take a look at our checklist on Choosing The Right Web Hosting.You can then rent a web hosting space with you new web hosting company.

Are you now ready to move your web site?

Well, not quite yet!

Just like with any move, you need to fold and pack your stuff before parking the U-haul or moving truck on your driveway.

1. First make sure you have a backup copy of all the your web site files. You should already have a copy of your web site anyway whether you are planning to move or not. In any cases, make a new backup copy of your website as it is now on the web by just downloading those files from your current web hosting server to your computer hard-drive using an FTP program: Filezilla, SmartFTP, CuteFTP, WS_FTP or Fetch (Mac)
2. If your website is database-driven, you also need to make a backup copy of your database (structure and data) to save offline in your computer. If you are using a MySQL database instance, your web hosting control panel certainly has a phpmyadmin feature that allows you to access and export your database as a zip file.
3. Download your messages from all your email accounts to keep a record of communications with your customers and other prospects: MS Outlook or any other destop email client application can help with that. Otherwise forward all your messages to your HOTMAIL, GMAIL or YAHOO free account. Write down the list of all your email accounts associated with that website on a pad. No need to keep the passwords. I would even recommend using different passwords after moving to your new web host.

Once you subscribe to a new web hosting account, you should be given all the FTP information after your account is setup. Using one of the FTP client programs mentioned above, you should be able to transfer all your web site files to your new account just by using the IP address or temporary URL given to you by your new host.

For a database-driven web site, you should be able to create a database (name, user, password) from your new web hosting control panel.
Then use phpmyadmin to upload the backup data to recreate all tables structure and insert the data.

Go on now and create various email accounts using then list you jotted down in your pad. Allow me to repeat myself, do recycle the same passords you had it on your previous web hosting account. You can sure find by yourself several reasons not to do so.

If you are like me, then your web hsoting company should be separate from your domain name registrar. In that case, you can now take note of the DOMAIN NAME SERVERS (ns1.- – -, ns2.- – - or dns1.- – - , dns2.- – -) of your new web hosting server. Now log into your domain name registration

account, look for the name servers setting then change them to match the new DNS values. The new name servers should propagate within 24 hours.

You can then go to your old web hosting account control panel and do some final cleanup (files, database, email addresses,…).

The domain name tranfer is a 4 steps process:

1. Transfer intiation
2. Authorization of Transfer
3. Accept/Decline the transfer
4. Transfer Completion

The domain name transfer is generally initiated by the domain name owner or the technical person on behalf of the owner.

An email is then sent to the current domain owner at the address specified in the domain registration information. The message will pretty much  keep you in the loop and is also a security measure to ensure anyone else is not trying to take over your domain name by moving it to another registar.
This authorization email contains a transaction ID and a password you will have to retrieve in order for the transfer to proceed.

At that point you need to log into your current registar web site to acces the Registry records and unlock your domain name . You will be then given an authorization secret code to provide to your new registrar for the transfer to take place.

Within a couple of days, the transfer should be effective and done. After you receive a confirmation email, please log into your account at your new registrar web site, to make sure theDomain  Name Servers (DNS) are setup properly and still point to the server hosting your web site.

The necessity to transfer your domain name(s) from one registrar to another can stem from various reasons.

In my personal experience, my old registrar lost his accreditation with ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) for failing to comply with some of their strict security guidelines. Afterwards, all domain names regsitered with that company were transfered to another company which won a bid through ICANN to take over all the clients of the loosing registrar.

The registrars switch was done smoothly. However after all the frustration I had with my previous registar over the last week preceding that switch, I decide to find a domain registration company on my own by transferring all my domain names to the registrar of my choosing.

Once you have a clear picture about the services or products you are going to offer through your web site, you should then register a domain name for your e-business before someone else snatches it away from you.

For those of you who already started doing business offline, the right domain name is your current business’ name. If your business is named “XYX Widgets”, it makes more sense to get the domain name “xyz-widgets.com” or “xyzwidgets.com”. That helps you consolidate and preserve your business identity both offline and online. Besides your current customers might have already typed xyzwidgets.com or xyz-widgets.com in their web browser address bar to locate your web site.

For the rest of us who are just starting out and do not yet choose a name for our new venture, now is the time to do so.
In order to register a domain name, you need to make sure it is not already taken.

The best place to start is at Godaddy.com.
You can check your domain name availability for free. The best part is, Godaddy will actually give you suggestions for other domain names related to the domain name you are looking for. In my opinion, that Godaddy.com is the grand-daddy of domain name registation.

What should you consider when registering a domain name?
The whole purpose of a domain name is to identify your website and branding your e-business. So choosing a domain name is one more wise business decision you would have to make.
Here are a few pointers when choosing a domain name:

1. Domain named after your current business
2. Domain name related to your products and services
3. Domain name must be short (less than 64 characters)
4. Domain name easy to remember
5. Domain name easy to type in the web browser address box

Do you have to register your domain name and host your website with the same company?
Not necessarily!
I for one, do not like to “keep my eggs in the same basket” should anything unfortunate happens!
You can register your domain name with Godaddy.com then rent a web hosting space with BlueHost.com, Hostmonster.com, JustHost.com or any other web hosting company that matches your e-business needs.

The only advantage of having a domain name and web hosting on the same spot is not having to manually setup the Domain Name Servers (DNS) for your website. It is automatically done on your behalf once you register your domain name.