Something big is on the horizon… Something expanding so fast that it’s shadow is starting to cover most of the fields, the virtual fields of the big players in the online market. Twitter is so rapidly expanding that one can hardly imagine what is happening behind the curtains.
The initial idea of Jack Dorsey that resulted in the development of Twitter is available on Flickr. This idea dates back to 2000, when Jack Dorsey signed up to Livejournal. The current wikipedia article on Twitter states that Twitter began as a research project in March 2006 at Odeo, a podcasting company. Now twitter works like microblog, social media, network, news distribution platform… well to be honest it is just Twitter! It works so well for 4 main reasons:
- It’s fast.
- It’s open.
- It’s easy.
- It’s two way.
Taking in consideration that recently Twitter signed a deal with Bing and Google to supplement data for live search results based in the tweets, we can predict a bright, extremely bright future for Twitter co. According to Alexa.com, Twitter is the 13th most visited website in the world. The description under it’s name in the Alexa Top Sites rating reads: Social networking and microblogging service utilizing instant messaging, SMS or a web interface.
At the time of this post Twitter has 86,322,844.00 accounts registered. Well it still has a long way till it catches up with Facebook with it’s 300+ million users but considering the fact that twitter only provides you with the ability to micro blog – i.e. update your status. It is far fetched that all of those accounts actually belong to real people. A lot of online marketers register hundreds even thousands of accounts in order to get better exposure and more visitors for their advertisements, still we have to calculate those accounts in the equation.
It will be exiting to see how Twitter will evolve, but one thing is for sure – the new generations will remember this name, and it is something that everyone who wants to do business online has to take into consideration when developing their future plans! You can find us @awpsace
The Domain Name is a unique, case-insensitive, name, consisting of a string made up of alphanumeric characters and dashes separated by periods, that the Domain Name System maps to IP numbers and other information; an identifier of a computer or site on the Internet; a domain — that part of a domain name which … (taken from Wikipedia). Long story short that is your online property – the address of your virtual office – your website. That is what people type in the address bar of their browser to get your website…
Domains are an important part of the decisions that we have to take when starting a website. Not that we cannot change it afterwards and move our website to another domain name or redirect one to the other but it is always better to think first then act.. this way we will not have to deal with all the problems that may arise later. Even though you can use a 301 redirect and use some of the options that the Google webmaster tools provide, in order to go through changing your domain name as easy as possible, but that will be a topic of one of our next blog posts.
Pick your name wisely. Most of the domains are already taken and to be honest the problem when picking a domain for your company is that chances are you will have to go for variations in order to make it sound close to the company name. That is one of the reasons many people pick their company name while researching domain names, the available domain names give them a basis to use when taking the final decision for your company’s name.
Picking a domain name for a personal website or just an informative blog you want to start is a different story. If you just want to write around a topic you feel passionate about you can go for keyword rich domain names. Having you primary keywords in your domain name can help you significantly in the long run success of your online venture, especially if you have serious intentions for developing it as a income source. If that sounds too alien to you we will develop that too in a series of posts in the near future, so make sure you follow us and stay up-to-date.
There are some websites that you can use in order to check for available domains:
NameBoy – doesn’t give you too many options but you can make combinations with secondary words
DomainsBot – nice tool, gives you the option to search for expiring and “for sale” domains
MakeWords - probably the best tool out there, gives you a lot of options. Highly recommended tool!
Oh, and by the way, if you haven’t noticed you can get a Free Domain Name for Life with our Web Pro Plus and Max Pack Plus hosting plans. You can compare them HERE
A website can really kick start your business, and give you that credibility that most people lack when starting a new business, especially if it a small business or if you are a professional of some kind – lawyer, accountant, dentist, vet.. Having a website can do marvels for you. But most of the time during this period, when you’re starting your business, most of us lack the resources to invest and all those related expenses become a burden. One of the expenses we face when we decide to go online is the hosting.
One way to deal with this issue is to use a free hosting service provider. Usually people don’t recommend that as an option because in most cases FREE is a synonym of lousy, causing lots of problems and hassles that may eat up your time and you may end up losing time and money.
But it doesn’t have to be like that. Free does not mean that it will not deliver, well at least we don’t think like that. We see our free service as an opportunity for webmasters, business owners, or individuals to start their venture in the online world. We are here to help them, by providing them with a free service that they can use to kick start their website and their online presence. Our flexible, reliable services are ready for you when your business starts growing and you need more out of your website. But for now try the Free plan ( Easy Starter Hosting Plan ) look around play with it and let us know what you think.
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One of the most ignored topics is the backup. Most of the webmasters take care of everything and they leave the backup aside. We know it’s not one of the most pleasant tasks but by making that effort today you could save yourself a lot of stress and hassle later. Before you lose all your website files stop for a minute, read this article and think about it.
EXPECT – We all had those moments where we think nothing can happen to us. As they say- expect the unexpected. It is always better to do so. With the proper mindset, you are insuring the continuity of your online endeavor in any eventualities. No matter how big and resourceful your hosting company is everyone and anyone can experience problems, after all when working with computers you can never be 100% sure. The best thing you can do is – to be ready.
SCHEDULE – Make sure you pick a time where you will have time, and when the website/ server is not overloaded. It’s is not a good idea to start the backup process when your website is most crowded, after all you don’t want to ruin the user experience and load times.
STICK with it – Most of the time backing up means being patient. So be patient and do it regularly. You don’t want to be left without some vital data just because you decided you can cut backing up for couple of days, or couple of weeks – depending on how often you update your website.
EVALUATE – test your backups. Find a place where you can make a recover copy and test if everything you would need is backed up. Backing up just for the sake of it without knowing if it will save you in time of need is useless. You do need a good and working backup so make sure you have one.
NO Complacency – Don’t be lazy. Don’t skip backing up :) Simple as that.
TRASH – Make sure you backup the things you need. Don’t backup things you won’t need as that slows down the process and it will take more hard disk space. Keep the things you need, the vital files and the files you will need in order to recover everything in a working way.
FRIENDSHIP – Have faith and know it’s your friend. Backing up is the friend you can rely on and when things get messy it will make you smile. Keep that in mind while putting the time and effort to backup.
AUTOMATE – There are software and scripts that can ease your life. You will not need to do everything yourself. Depending on what CMS system you use for your website you can do a search and find a solution there should be at least one to take some of the work off your back. If you are using a custom solution for your website, ask your webmaster about it.
LIBERATE – You will be able to feel liberated. When looking at your website from business perspective – as an income source, you will want to feel liberated by knowing your cash flow is secured. In order to do that – just backup! The feeling of being liberated from the worries of “What if..?” is a wonderful feeling use it a s motivator.
SECURITY – Keep your backups at couple of places – hard disks, flash drives, online storage. This way you will really be safe and sound. Back up and be safe, forget about the stress and be smart – start today.
