iPage Review

iPage is one of the most well-known green hosts around, but being well-known and actually being good are two different things. Before you even think of using the iPage hosting, read my review and see if it’s really something you want, or a host you should avoid.

At the most basic level, iPage is an unlimited host (read my post on unlimited hosts) with a simple interface. They offer low-priced hosting, at less than $4 a month, and a website builder if you don’t know anything about HTML and CSS.

iPage also offers plugin management to install blog programs like WordPress and PixelPost. They also have FrontPage support, and scripting support for Perl, PHP and Server Side Includes (SSI).

And of course, the fit the green agenda, iPage runs on 100% wind energy, so unlike other hosts, this host is joining the green revolution.

All that’s great, but let’s see how it works.

The iPage website generator has a lot of good looking templates, and runs off of the Weebly website generator (a free host). Some are alright, but a lot are actually professional looking. However, if you have your own website CSS, it can take you a while to find out how to insert your own coding because there is no straight forward way of using your own coding.

To insert coding, go to “Templates,” “Blank Template” and begin typing in your code.

However, when I used the generator, either for a custom website or a template, I found the drag-and-drop interface to be clunky. If I wrote an article in Word and copy/paste it into the page, the paragraph spacing gets messed up and I have to go back and fix it.

You have to click the components several times before you can really work with them, and sometimes the toolbar gets in the way and you can’t see what you’re typing.

I also noted that in some instances (such as when building a table) with the HTML component, the spacing and padding looks fine from the preview window, but when you publish the page, the table (or any HTML element) will look different.

In my example, I built a simple table with blue and white alternating rows and a padding of 5. In preview this looked fine. When I clicked “Publish” and looked at the page, the padding was gone. Now I could understand there being a problem if I looked at the page in two different browsers, but this is not the case.

Overall the iPage host isn’t bad. It has a simplified website management tool that beginners will probably find easier. However, if you are used to the cPanel interface and know how to manage a website, this simplified interface will end up annoying you.

Visit iPage

Wix Review

If you need a website fast that is both functional and displays your content without overpowering the page, you should check out the Wix website. They offer a free website builder that can make a website in less than two minutes (check out the movie from their main page to find out more).

It sounded like a lot of hype, so I tried it out real quick, and you really can make a professional looking website in a few minutes. When I say professional I don’t mean “professional.” I mean they actually look good.

The generator is also easy to navigate and use. If you can move a mouse and click buttons on your keyboard, you can make a website.

Now I am usually an advocate of building a website on your own after learning the basic codings of HTML and CSS, but at the same time there is nothing wrong with using a template. Using a template will help you get your website up and running now, instead of waiting to learn and understand the programming languages.

After making your template, you can also use Wix free hosting. You will be registered as a subdomain (mywebsite.wix.com) and Wix does place it’s own ads on your page in the sidebar and the footer.

If you want to get rid of the ads and use a proper domain, Wix offers real hosting as well. For about $5 to $20 a month (depending on your plan) you can use a real domain and get better hosting with higher bandwidth and memory caches. All of the plans, except the cheapest one, also get rid of the Wix advertising.

The gripes I have about this website is that they place advertising on your websites, but in the free hosting world this is pretty commonplace. I also don’t like how you have to pay about $20 a month for the ecommerce package which really only gives you a shopping cart. Aside from that addition, the package is worthless compared to the $15/month unlimited package which gives you all the same features except the shopping cart.

If you need a website fast, Wix will help you out. If you already know how to design, Wix really won’t offer you anything you can’t already get with better hosts.

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Constant Contact Review

The Constant Contact company is an email marketing business that helps you reach customers and increase your business, without having to throw away thousands in marketing expenses. Unlike the old philosophy of sending out postcards and printed materials, Constant Contact is run by the modern philosophy of digital marketing to greater efficacy.

When you sign up for Constant Contact, you have to pay a monthly fee (unless you use their 60-day free trial) in accordance with how many email addresses you want to purchase. You can email them everyday without increasing your fees.

The fee ranges monthly from $15 (for 500 email addresses) up to $150 (for 25,000 email addresses).

While email marketing is their primary product, they also help setup online surveys and event marketing to help you gather business intelligence and make your event a success. They also offer email templates, so even if you are terrible at designing you can send a professional marketing email.

With the intro out of the way, let’s examine the website. The design is nice and modern, using only a few colors and is straight-forward. I had no problems at all navigating through their features, reading up on what they do and how everything works.

Speaking about working, does Constant Contact work? The short answer is yes, but of course you need to offer the people you are emailing something, so be sure to write an email that will bring them to you. Even the best design falls flat if the content is boring and unappealing.

There is also tracking tools so you can see your results and find out if the world of email marketing will help you thrive, or if you’re better off with the old postcard philosophy.

The only thing I can say as a con for Constant Contact is that, without marketing information, you will be swamped from this website. If you don’t already know how to use blogs and social marketing effectively, then you will get lost in all the information Constant Contact offers. I suggest you read up on marketing before you try email marketing.

However, if you are already well-versed in the digital marketing world, then there really aren’t any problems starting up your marketing venture with them.

Visit Constant Contact

JustHost Review

If you’re starting out with your website and need a host, you may wanna check out JustHost. They are an unlimited host, so they function best for small websites or websites that are memory hungry. If you don’t know what unlimited hosting is read about it here.

Pricing ranges from about $6.95 a month to $3.45 a month, depending on what plan you choose. The more hosting you pay for upfront, the less the overall price will be per month.

But price isn’t everything, you need a good host, not a cheap one that won’t offer you any uptime or features. JustHost has a 99.9% guaranteed uptime percentage, so their servers very rarely leave you flat.

They also come with the “Fantastico” program, so almost any CMS you need (Joomla, Drupal or WordPress) can be installed just with a simple click. You won’t have to worry about any manual installations or forgetting to upload a file, everything is done for you.

Another great feature is their domain policy. You can host unlimited domains, but that’s not the good part. When you sign up, the first domain you register is free for life. There are no registration fees after the first year. As long as you stay with JustHost, they will cover the annual fees for you.

Along with being FTP enabled and using the advanced cPanel website management tool, JustHost also supports a variety of scripts. PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, JavaScript, Flash and more, so no matter what coding you use, JustHost will support it.

Now there’s isn’t much bad to say about this host, but just a few minor things. One, I don’t like how you have to pay for hosting six months, a year or two years upfront. While this makes it cheaper, I usually prefer to pay month-to-month, as paying all upfront increases the startup costs sligthly.

However, because of this, the overall charges I will be paying for hosting are significantly less, so this is more of a preference than something bad about the company.

There is also the fact that they are an unlimited host. But if you know what to expect from an unlimited host and don’t overstep your boundaries, you will find JustHost is one of the most reliable and best priced hosts online in the unlimited realm.

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Vistaprint Review

Vistaprint is a small-volume printing service that has been online since 2001. They offer most of the printing necessities, along with other products and services to help you market your business and propel your marketing.

In my Vistaprint review I found a few good things about Vistaprint, but overall the company is overrated.

On the good side, Vistaprint offers a lot of products that you expect a print shop to offer. However, they also sell non-standard item likes websites, phone numbers and email marketing campaigns.

They also include many, many different templates for business cards, letterhead and so on so you don’t have to worry about making your own custom design. Along with this, there are free printing options (like free business cards), but Vistaprint prints their logo on the back of the card.

This is where the good ends. I found many aspects about Vistaprint that I found irritating, annoying and down right bad. As someone who has been in the printing industry for four years (as a print supervisor) I see a lot of things I don’t like about their printing.

But first, let’s talk about design. I find the Vistaprint homepage to be cluttered and confusing. Even when I know what I am looking for, I get dizzy trying to find the item. There are so many items that most people wouldn’t need (how often am I going to get caricature products?) that it clutters the list of what people do need.

Let’s get onto the printing. I am fond of business cards, they have always been my favorite printing and marketing material. The standard paper thickness for a business card is “12pt” paper. Vistaprint, however, offers 10pt paper as their standard option. This paper is thin and not durable.

You can get 12pt paper, but you have to pay extra. So you have to pay more money, just to get real business card paper.

The next thing I don’t like is the ordering process. I know I want business cards, and after pushing the “Order” button I expect to order my business cards. However, Vistaprint has to offer me other products.

I don’t mind being offered a business card holder, but it seems a little pushy that with each order you have to go through four or five different products which may have nothing to do with what you ordered. It’s irritating and takes forever to go through. By the time I’m really at the order page I’m ready to drop the order and leave.

Overall, Vistaprint does have its place in the printing world. If you aren’t too worried about paper quality and want cheap printing with some pretty good templates (I have to admit, they offer some of the best free templates), then Vistaprint will help you out.

If you are looking to get good printing and thick paper, then Vistaprint really isn’t for you.

Making a Good Domain

Domain names are one of the lifeblood aspects of your website. It is your street address on the Internet and people need to remember it. While many Webmasters name their website after their domain, there are a surprising amount of Webmasters that do not do this.

Think for a moment. Your domain is “mycompany.com.” If your brand is “Computer Parts” people aren’t going to search for your domain name, but your brand. Aligning your brand and domain is paramount to online success, both for a business or a content website.

In the realm of domains, there is a debate about what type of domain is better. A long or short one, or a generic or specific one. Each one has their own strengths and weaknesses.

When it comes to length, both can be good. Let’s look at two content websites. “Ehow.com” is a short domain that gets millions of unique visitors. However, “AssociatedContent.com” is a long domain that also gets millions of unique visitors. What really matters isn’t length, but the domain itself.

If you can manage a shorter domain, it can be easier for people to remember, but if you need a long one, make sure it makes sense. Put words together that make sense. If you make a nonsense domain, no one will find it.

Now, what about generic or specific domain names? A generic name like “Computers.com” will probably do great. Many people will search it out of curiosity and it will get a good search engine ranking. Here’s the problem: you’ll have a hell of a time finding any generic domains still around.

If you want one of these domains, you will have to either find an obscure word or pay hundreds, thousands or more to purchase the domain from someone selling it.

Specific names have their own power as well. If you have built your brand up outside the Internet, then a domain named after your business will have inherent value as it will already be well searched online, and it will probably be easier to find.

If you are new to building websites and getting online, you may wonder where you can get a domain. Most hosting companies offer domain registration, and it is a prerequisite before you can even get hosting.

There are also many different domain extensions at your disposal. “.com” is the most popular and stands for “commercial.” Other common extensions are “.org” for “organization,” “.info” for “information” and “.net” for “networking.”

When you search for your domain, think about your business and what domain model will fit it best. Doing this before searching will make it much easier to find a domain when it comes time to buy one.

What is Unlimited Hosting?

Unlimited hosting, it sounds amazing. For less than $10 a month you can get all the bandwidth and memory you would ever need. Why bother buying expensive dedicated hosting (which can go for $50 to $70 a month) when you can get unlimited storage?

If it’s starting to sound too good, then you’re right.

Let’s say it right now, unlimited hosting is not unlimited. There are heavy restrictions on the amount of hosting space you get and on what your website can and cannot have. Now, if you follow these rules, it is very unlikely that you will surpass your alloted server space, but you should still watch out. If your website grows too large your host just may cut it from their servers.

So, what restrictions are placed on your website? Do you like music? Do you like movies? Do you like games? I hope you don’t plan to add them to your page, because adding such memory-heavy files will get you banned from your host.

What these unlimited hosts are planning on is that you use very little memory or bandwidth. For most websites, this will be the truth. Most websites use very little memory until they start expanding or gain a loyal fanbase.

Does this mean you should avoid unlimited hosts like the plague? No, it doesn’t. Unlimited hosts have their place in the digital world, you just have to plan yourself, and your website, accordingly.

Unlimited hosts are meant mostly for smaller websites. If your website is starting up, or if you are planning to make a website that doesn’t require much resources, using unlimited hosts will help you out. It’s a waste to get dedicated hosting if you are just beginning.

However, if you plan to make a large website with memory-heavy files, then you can’t use unlimited hosting. You will quickly eat up your ambiguous storage space and will lose your hosted status.

When looking for an unlimited host, look for all the same things you would with any other host. You still need FTP access, scripting support and reliability. Unlimited hosts can supply this, as long as you research your host appropriately.

How to Choose a Web Host

You’re thinking about pioneering the digital landscape and making your own website. Good for you, and I mean that. One of the first steps you’ll come across is choosing the right host. What makes a good host? What should you look for in your host? Well, that’s why we’re both here. Let me clear up some confusion and help you select the right host.

The most basic aspect of a host is providing you with both memory and bandwidth. The more memory, the more you can place online. Also, the more memory, the more you will be paying. Assess your needs. If you are planning to run a simple content website with some pure CSS design, your memory needs will be sparse.

However, if you want to use detailed images, a hefty design and expect a lot of visitors (like with an online store) go for larger memory caches like 10 to 20GB of memory.

When you visit a lot of hosts, it has become popular to give you “unlimited” memory and “unlimited” bandwidth. While I’m not knocking the unlimited thing, you should know what it really means. Read this post to learn more.

Along with memory, your host needs to offer uptime. Uptime means how often the servers are online. It doesn’t matter if you get 100TB of memory and bandwidth if the servers are never online.

Most servers flaunt their 99% uptime, and 99% sounds great. But really you should search for a host that offers at least 99.5% uptime. Anything else is actually low (yes, the 0.5% really matters).

Now that we’ve talked about the basic components of a host, let’s delve deeper.

FTP (file transfer protocol) access is a must if you plan to upload anything on your website, especially large PHP scripts. Without FTP access, you will have to upload every file one at a time. With FTP, you can set 1,000s of files to upload automatically.

What about script support? Every host has HTML and CSS support, but what about PHP or Perl? You may never plan to use these scripts, but if you want to install any components on your website (like a content management system) you will need the support.

Lastly, does your host provide Fantastico? This nifty application lets you install CMS systems like WordPress with just a click.

The world of Web hosts can be hard to navigate, but once you know what to look for, finding the right host isn’t that hard at all.

Pro and Con of Free Hosting

It’s a very tempting idea to get a free website. The word “FREE” rings in the ears of many as a great deal, and depending on your needs it just may be. However, as with anything, free really comes at a price. In this pro and con comparison, you will find what makes free websites good, and what makes them bad.

Let’s start with the pros:
-they’re free (obviously)
-provide a testing environment
-help you understand websites
-can potentially make money

When I say “testing environment” what I mean is that you can implement your HTML, CSS, PHP and so on without worrying about destroying your website. Since the website is free, there is nothing financially at stake. All you are doing is testing your knowledge and seeing what certain coding does.

This also functions as a way for you to see a website template before you post it on your real site (if you are using paid hosting at the same time).

The next point is for newcomers in the hosting and website world. It’s a poor decision to spend money, get software and not know what to do with it. If you are unfamiliar with cPanel (the most used website management tool) it would be a good idea to use a free host with the cPanel tool to see how everything works before wasting cash.

Making money with a free website is possible. I will explain some of the difficulties later in the con section, but to focus on the benefits of a free website, if you build the website correctly with affiliate ads or other revenue machines, with the proper amount of marketing your free website can start to make you cash.

Now, the cons:
-you get a subdomain
-may have ads on the page
-low bandwidth and memory
-unreliable service

A subdomain is SEO hell. Instead of your own URL, you get your domain forcefully married to the host’s domain. Instead of “www.thiswebsiteismine.com” you get “www.thiswebsiteismine.freehosting.com.” An extra word may not seem like much to you, but it is much harder to get these websites seen on search engines than a regular domain would be.

Another downer is some free hosts place ads on your website. While these ads give the host revenue and keeps them (and your website) alive, the ads tend to look unattractive and sometimes may not even fit your website.

The low bandwidth and memory problem should be obvious. If you aren’t paying anything, you can’t expect to receive gigabytes of memory in return. However, as long as you sparingly use pictures and rely on text and content, then you shouldn’t have any problems in this regard.

Lastly, unreliable service. Just like with the ads, this can only be said about some hosts. Some have very reliable servers, but since they are not getting the same financial compensation paid hosts are, there is less urgency in fixing servers and less of a need to provide you with quality service.

If you are a beginner and need some practice, and you want to know what it feels like to own a website, go with free hosting. If you plan on running a small information website without getting compensation, free hosting is still viable. But if you are planning to make a giant website with pictures, movies, music and ad revenue, go with paid hosting.

No one wants to pay for anything, but it will help you in the long run.

How to Make a Successful Website

If you’re looking to make a successful website and money with your website, no matter if your website is a content site or a business, you need to follow certain rules to make a successful website. Creating an unappealing, boring website will not only drive people away, it will keep you from making any money and will eat up money from your Web hosts. Making a successful website, on the other hand, will keep visitors flocking to your page and will make you long-term earnings.

Design
Before words go on the page, before advertising and information, the first thing you have to consider is design. All too often, people go and purchase a designer website because it looks good.

Here’s the problem with designer websites though: only the visuals are important. Most designers only consider the aesthetic appeal and not the clarity of the content or how cluttered all the graphics will look. You need a website that shows off your content, not a graphic or logo.

Using a website full of images and graphic is bad for two main reasons:

-You can’t sell anything without talking.

-Search engines can’t read images. They see the images, but they are more concerned with the words.

If you can’t design the website yourself and need to download a template, use one that will showcase the articles, not the design itself.

If you do end up designing the website yourself, DON’T CLUTTER. And don’t use blinking images with seizure-inducing colors. If you have to squint to see your website--and I mean any part--then you have a poor design on your hands.

Clear Information
Nothing is more annoying than a website that has articles that looks like it is written only for a search engine and not people. Another sin is repurposed articles that have such terrible English that you wonder if any human really wrote those articles and thought they were good.

Write for people, and write clearly. This does not mean to dumb down your information, or to write in a condescending manner. Write to people with respect, with clarity, and give them something to read that won’t leave them scratching their head, wondering what you are trying to convey.

Content
Another part of a successful website is content. No website can live without it. The minimum amount you want is 10 pages/articles, but having more is always better. However, don’t subscribe to the “quantity over quality” philosophy, cause that will get you nothing but a large website with few readers.

Listen to the above point and write clearly and write quality information people want to read. Give quality information to your readers, and you will obtain a loyal fanbase.

Consistent Updates
Always update your website. If not in articles, keep the design fresh. Every few months, change the design. This makes your website look alive, because a static website, especially if you are not updating the content, just looks dead and lifeless.

If design isn’t your thing, and you really want those search engines to find you, I suggest you bulk up on your articles. Having more quality articles can always help you, and again it makes you look alive.



Making a successful website isn’t hard, it’s really about considering the needs of the reader--who is looking for an easy to see website with information--and always working to make your website better and better. As long as you strive forward and keep yourself fresh and never boring, you will definitely build a number of fans who will flock to your website every time you make an update.