Example for an inefficient hosting company is “Operating a web hosting company without specific strategy for BLOG HOSTING”. Weblog applications are the most installed web-apps in web hosting environment. Among them wordpress is the No:1. In his recent post on “WordPress Here to say Adapt” mark iterated many strategies for web hosts.

A must have for Blog Hosting provider is:

• Easy to use web application installer – Fantastico de luxe is am example, It has been widely used in many web hosting environments. Not having a script installed will affect on more with support ticket. Service seekers will find a new one instead of struggling with you.
• Address the Security – A web hosting company which does not have dedicated security administrators in not fit to be called as “web hosts”. Take preventive measure in every possible way
• Engage with community – Blog is so popular not just cos it is easy to write and publish. It is easy to find a solution for every problem you may/will face. Are you ready to help the community in turn improve your business prospect. Web hosting providers should be very active in sharing information to communities
• Blog Experts in Support – It is not a bad idea to have dedicated blog experts in your help desk. Your web host seekers will appreciate more if you have one. Do you have support person who can talk about which plugin is good which is bad, which theme is good, Where will you get good theme
• Offers from you – Start offering free themes, create your own plugin, and help in improving readership
• Offer best backup – Blog platforms are managed by amateurs, probabilities are very high for a blog to show empty posts after new plugin or with update. Adopt best backup strategies

Hexahost, A true blog hosting provider has been serving well with above mentioned strategies. I will be glad to hear from you on any new things that can be adopted. We at hexahost believe customer is a king, Internet is information and blogging is the way to go forward.

Looking forward to have you in our web hosting environment.

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Soon after connecting to internet, Do a google search on your own blog name ? Do a google search about your domain name? Do a search about your own post in search engines? If you have been doing this for some time. Then your are attacked by a bad virus called “N1TB” – Not even 1 Traffic to Blog site.  This virus attacks your passion towards writing, Your eagerness in creating more value added posts, and ultimately Blogging habit slowly moves away from you.

Every blogger have to go through this while starting a blog. Allowing this virus to sustain for long time will kill you as well as your blog site. The Cure is, expert guideline, well known small steps, well controlled strategies and few link exchanges here and there. You will see traffic coming through.

My first and fore most advice is, Decide your platform (Free Blogger OR Free WordPress.com OR self hosted WordPress OR self hosted MVT etc). Self hosted blogging is very cheap than before. With just $20 per year you can own a domain name as well as hosting space per year. This $20 is only the seed fund, once you reach considerable amount of post $20 is nothing when compared to add revenue. Choose your domain name either general OR target a particular keyword OR area of blogging.

Blogging Tips for Beginners

STEP1: Engage yourself in places where blogging community meet. The base line of blogging is read as much blogs you can, blogging community as a whole love to read. Try to engage them, and let them interact about your blog or blog post. There are many popular forum available like blogcatalog, Mybloglog, Blogged,  and indiblogger. Feedback from such a huge community will help you grow rich with blogs. Collate your blogs in Technorati, and blog pulse) but also through different blog directories (eg blogtopsites) and blogging communities (eg blogcritics).

STEP2: Get your blog listed in best directories. Try to place your blog in Dmoz. There are quite a few free directories available for free listing against reciprocal link one such site is http://internetdir.in/. Internetdir.in also accepts free article more number of article pointing to your site from directories are good way of attracting Search Engines.

STEP3: Configure automatic rpc ping tools. These tools will help you in updating new posts, posts changes and comments to blog search and aggregators.  Almost all weblog platforms have provisions to insert rpc ping urls.

List of BLOG PING SITES FYR:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://www.blogoole.com/ping/

http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php

http://www.wasalive.com/ping/

http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://ping.amagle.com/

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/

http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2

http://rpc.newsgator.com/

http://www.blogoon.net/ping/

http://www.blogsnow.com/ping

http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi

http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/

http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud

http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2

STEP4: Social Networking Sites will help you to get identified among your contacts and peers. Have your blog URL in status message, change it frequently as and when you create a new post. Digg, Delicio.us, Twitter, Facebook, hi5, Orkut are the best ways to express your blog site to others.

STEP5: Strictly follow the steps from 1 to 4 meticulously N1TB will never even come close to you. You will receive both organic and in-organic traffic and hence more users to your blog. Last but not the least It is the content that attract the readers neither listing nor presence is SNS. Think of niche idea and express your posts on your own.

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There are about 50,000 web hosting providers to serve 50 Million registered domain names. Almost half of them are resellers, and web site developers. Rather than searching for the Best one choosing a right one to host your web site is a smart deal. Big providers like Godaddy, Blue host, hostgator, host monster, uk2webhost and etc do business in big volumes. Identifying the best from them understanding about how they work is so easy. Simple search on “hosting provider+review” will fetch enough results to follow. They will confuse you with both +ve and -ve results.

Follow my advice to choose a provider based merits and your need.

1. If you are new to web hosting, all you need is personalized support. Can big players offer this ? Will they get in to your site after few months and provide suggestions like features x,y,z will give better appeal. Ask yourself.
2. If you are a Blogger concentrate on writing than maintaining. Choose new entrants who can help you with personalized support. Who can suggest a platform, Theme, widget, plug-in and most importantly SEO.
3. Do they have one click application installer utilities like fantastico ? A new entrant will have tough time without this.
4. Do they have proper control panel to support your hosting, domain names, sub-domain, email, database, backup. Cpanel is the best.
5. Do they have a easy site building tool, This will be very useful for people who do not want to use CMS. RV site builder and RVskins will be handy to have.
6. Test the speed of a host’s network to your location by clicking start > run > type in “command” enter, and then type “ping hostdomainname.com” wait for it to finish and look for the average ping. The lower the number the better, and chances are the faster your site will load. Any number averaging around an 80 would be good. Anything over 100 is very bad except, of course, if the host is based in another country.
7. Get e-mail through the domain name of your website. It’s best to go with a host that provides unlimited auto responders, pop mailboxes, email aliases etc. These services are needed to stay in touch with your visitors, potential customers and indeed your past customers in the hope of back end sales. Using your_name@your_website_name.com also looks more professional and official.
8. Reliability. How reliable is a web hosting company? Most claim 99.9% uptime, but due to the nature of computers and communications equipment, outages will and do occur occasionally. You can contact a company and ask, but they will tell you they’re very reliable. Instead, ask for a couple of sites they currently host, that you can check out for yourself.
   Not only will you see that the site is available, it gives you the opportunity to see how well they perform during peak periods too.
9. Make transactions with a secure server with https:// capability because your potential customers will expect it. Security is of paramount importance to your customer. Visitors who are concerned about the insecurity to their plastic will never become customers.
10. Read TOS, and other policies. Look for assurances like 30 Day Money back guarantee, Uptime guarantee, resolution time

NOTE: Do not get in to Reseller hosting and suffer. Go to a proper hosting provider who talks about his infrastructure.

In my view use 30 Day money back guarantee offered by hosting providers. Test as much as youcan before deciding upton the long term relation. Do take plans for more than 1 Year. hosting is all about short tem option. look before you leap. I trust Hexahost.

Hosting provider i suggest are Hexahost, Godaddy, hostgator and blue host.

HAPPY HOSTING!

OTHER ARTICLES YOU MUST READ:

http://hexablogs.com/hosting/where-is-my-webhosting-provider/

http://hexablogs.com/internet/internet-speed-is-not-a-rocket-science/

http://hexablogs.com/hosting/your-web-presence-need-more-than-freebies/

http://www.hexahost.com/blog_hosting.htm

http://www.hexahost.com/hexablogs.htm

http://www.webhost2go.com/

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“Weblog” a webpage used by an individual to post content of his interest for the intended readers. A good blog is a one which has attractive/quality content for the intended readers. Blogging tools play an essential role to keep regular readers and to attract new readers. Natural growth for weblogs takes the writer to create his identity in the form of domain name and weblog platform. Following are the few essential blogging tools one must use in his weblogs.

1. Subscription tools and News aggregation service – A very important route  to reach your regular readers and update them on latest posts.
   1. FeedBlitz
      • Zookoda
      • Aweber
      • Yutter
      • RssFwd
      • Feedburner’s Email Subscription Service
2. Updater to attract your contacts
   1.  Google Reader - Although I still prefer reading blogs directly, there’s no doubt that a RSS reader helps manage all the news happening around the blogosphere. If you want to stay on top of the game, it’s an essential tool in your blogging arsenal.
   2. Tweet this in every post, and Twitter update for every post
   3. Status updates in IMs like Gtalk, MSN, ICQ, and AOL
   4. Link in your signature
3. Blog promotion through social networking sites, in places were bloggers meet and interact, for example blogcatalog, mybloglog, blogger forum
4. Visit other bloggers websites and comment about their posts. Contribute to blogger community by writing one or two posts related to blogging.
5. Feature rich widgets to felicitate the visitors, like Google friends connect, blogcatalog visitors gallery, country from the visitor widgets etc
6. Site visitor statistics and metric tools
   1. Google analytics
   2. site meter
   3. AWstat
   4. webalizer
   5. stat counter
   6. mint and web-analyze

Other Blog Tools

1. • Pingoat – pinging service
   • Pingomatic – another pinging service
   • BlogRolling – a service to manage your blog roll
   • TalkDigger – ‘find, follow and join conversations evolving on the Internet.’
   • Blog Flux – Stats, Pinging and Directory 

   • coComment – Keep track of the comments you leave on different blogs in a central place
   • co.mments – Similar name to coComment but not to be confused with it – a way of bookmarking and following comment threads via RSS
   • Digg – Another major Social Bookmarking site
   • TagCloud – produces Tag Clouds for your blog from RSS feeds
   • Tiny URL – Turns long URLs into tiny manageable ones
   • YouTube – a tool for putting video on your blog
   
   

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