Posts Tagged ‘vodahost’

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Introduction to Domain Names

Monday, January 28th, 2008

Simply put, a domain name is a “front” – they are word sequences users enter in their browsers location bar to visit your site, but are not a Web site’s true address. Domain names are attached to DNS (Domain Naming System) servers, which are used to translate numeric addresses (known as IP, or Internet Protocol, addresses) into words. Each site you visit on the net has a numeric IP address behind its name, which represents the site’s true address on the Internet.

Domain names are typically categorized by their extension, which is their identifying code. The three most popular types of Top Level Domains (TLDs), which are domains that are not associated with a country, are:

.COM: Short for .commercial. Domain names with the .com extension are by far the most popular, and can be purchased by any individual or business. .

.NET: Short for .network, this domain extension was originally designed to be used by technical Web sites. However, domains using this extension can be registered by anyone.

.ORG: Short for .organization. Originally designated for non-profit firms and any other organizations that did not fit under the .com or .net extension, any individual or business may now register a .org domain name.

COUNTRY LEVEL DOMAINS

Domain names can also be assigned using country extensions. Each country has its own domain extension; Canada, for example, is .ca, while Japan has been assigned .jp. Most countries have specific rules surrounding exactly who can register domains using their extension and for what purpose; it’s therefore important to look before you leap.

ALTERNATIVE DOMAIN NAMES

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the organization responsible for the administration of TLDs worldwide, recently approved several new extensions that are not specific to any country. These are:

# .areo
# .biz
# .coop
# .info
# .museum
# .name
# .pro

Each has been designed for a specific use, and is accompanied by certain restrictions. You can find more information about these TLDs here: http://www.icann.org/tlds/

OTHER DOMAIN EXTENSIONS

In searching for your domain name, you may encounter Web sites offering extensions like .xxx, .free and .mp3. These are not true extensions endorsed by ICANN; rather, they rely on software solutions to guarantee their accessibility to users. Because ICANN has not approved any of these extensions, however, users that do not have the correct website builder software cannot access sites using these names; therefore, they should be used for supplemental purposes only.

Although .com, .net and .org are typically the most visible and talked-about extensions, they are not the only ones available for use. From a functional perspective, country-level domains work just as well as any TLDs, and alternative extensions work just as well. Therefore, do not necessarily settle for a mediocre TLD when you can get a better one using a different extension.

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Brigadier General RoyB

Monday, January 28th, 2008

Congratulations to RoyB on his promotion to VodaHost web hosting Brigadier General…

We salute him

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Reseller Hosting

Wednesday, September 27th, 2006

Reseller hosting means that not only can you find great web hosting for your site(s), but you can also provide it for others as an extra source of income. Web hosting reseller programs let you act as middleman (or woman) between existing web hosting providers and new clients that you find for them. Income is derived in the form of commissions paid directly by the provider and/or profits based on reselling discounted packages at a higher price.

Web hosting companies that offer a web host reseller program find it to be an extremely popular tool for them to market and sell their services to new clients in untapped markets with minimal overhead. As a participant in a web hosting reseller program, you would be a hot commodity to these companies, who will often compete to obtain your reseller hosting services almost more than they might to get new clients. When you think about it, it makes perfect sense; one client is just one client, but any one person doing reseller hosting represents limitless new clients.

The benefit to setting up a reseller hosting service, rather than, say, running your own server and starting a web hosting services from scratch, is that you get the support and resources of an established firm. You get to sell and possibly manage a small portion of an already successful enterprise rather than having to scrimp and save, sweat and toil to insert a new player onto an already inundated field of competitors.

There are a number of ways you can sell web space on another company’s server:

You can act as the web host’s agent, similar to other affiliate marketing programs where a link from your sites and advertisements may take the potential customers directly to the company’s own site, or the customer may simply mention you to the provider as their referrer. Either way, the customer would purchase service directly from the web hosting company, and you would then get a percentage.

But besides merely marketing another host’s services, you might also choose to personally sell their services directly to the clients. All future contact would then take place directly between the web hosting company and the customer, but because you did not only the marketing but the actual selling, your cut would be greater.

Or you could act as the host yourself, marketing, selling, and then managing the web space that you provide, having purchased it from the actual provider for a discounted price. It would appear to the customer as though you actually owned your own web hosting company, rather than just being an affiliate in a web host reseller program, though your hosting services would actually be a “skin” of the parent company. In this scenario and the following one, customers would call you for support rather than the provider itself.

Alternately, you could buy a bunch of web space and bandwidth yourself and parse it out as you see fit to provide whatever packages you wish to your customers. This, probably the most comprehensive reseller hosting program, offers you maximum control over your business and potentially the greatest returns, but it also requires significantly more attention, responsibility, and risk.

If you do decide to explore the wonderful world of reseller hosting, you’ll want to figure out which services to offer. You could offer store fronts, search engine optimization tools, dedicated server accounts, domain names, and on and on. While you definitely want to offer your customer as much in one place as they might need – as most customers won’t want to purchase their packages a la carte from a handful of web hosting (and reseller hosting) companies if they can avoid it – you also don’t want to overextend yourself. It’s advisable to consider specializing your services to a degree, especially if you’re just one person. Decide who your target market is, where specifically you’ll be advertising to find them, and what the predominant needs of those clients might be, and then cater your reseller hosting packages to their specific needs.

Whichever method of reseller hosting you choose, if you do it right, you can host your own websites for next to nothing.

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Adult Web Hosting Legalities

Wednesday, September 27th, 2006

Adult web hosting is not without its inherent risks. In fact, probably the most significant issue one should consider before embarking on an adult hosting enterprise is the law. It’s crucial you be aware of the possibilities before deciding to get into the adult web hosting business.

Laws on adult web hosting vary from locality to locality, which is a big problem with an internet enterprise that, by its very nature, is global. The most you, as webmaster can do, is make every good faith effort to stay within the confines of the law. This means avoiding content that can be considered obscene or harmful to minors – quite a tall undertaking when you consider the diverse and disparate reactions people have to pornography.

What is even meant by obscene? Quite a large number of people consider adult web hosting in general obscene. They find any form of pornography objectionable. And while that’s not what’s meant by “obscene” as used above, if an angry parent is determined to press charges against you because their 12 year old son snuck a peek at the girl on girl action on your website, you’ll still need the protection of a good lawyer to get you off the hook – and even then there’s no guarantee.

So, the word “obscene” in the context of adult web hosting refers to things like child pornography, bestiality, rape, and incest. Now you’ll see plenty of sites claiming that they contain scenes of “rape” and “incest”. 99 times out of 100, these are fake, play-acted scenes. If they are real, the webmaster is signing up for a whole world of trouble. Don’t you follow their lead just to get the extra flow of cash from any of those niche markets.

There is a popular test for determining, according to the law, the obscenity of a site (or a magazine, etc.). According to this test, called the “Miller Test”, if your product (your site) when taken as a whole is considered without any artistic, literary, scientific, or cultural merit according to the mores of the local community, it is considered obscene. By including non-adult content in your adult site (just like adult magazines that have articles on politics, cars, etc.), you significantly reduce your risk of having an obscenity charge stick.

For all webmasters, of adult hosting sites or otherwise, legal statute 18 U.S.C. § 2257 states that records must be kept of documents proving legal age verification for every model depicted on the site in a sexual explicit manner. You must hire no models under the age of 18, nor can you hire any models over the age of 18 if you can’t obtain copies for your records of documents proving such. This also means you should use no stock footage either without having first verified the age of any models depicted. Just because a jpeg appears on one adult website, do not assume that its webmasters did their due diligence.

The best way to start an adult website is with your own personal lawyer on board to walk you through the sticky legal steps. While a lawyer can help you avoid the legal pitfalls and reduce your risk of prosecution, there are no guarantees in the adult web hosting industry and you need to be aware of that from the beginning.

You will need to have on your site, a “Warning Page”, a start page that site visitors come to first before getting to view any of your adult content. The Warning Page can be as simple as a disclaimer against a plain background stating that your site contains adult material and should not be viewed by anyone under 21 years of age. It should also mention that if, perchance, viewing such material is illegal in the visitor’s area, then they must not enter your site.

The Warning Page does not relieve you of the responsibility of keeping minors from viewing your adult material. It merely shows a good faith effort on your part to keep them away. Nonetheless, you could still get prosecuted, and your Warning Page alone would make for an extremely weak defense.

You must also use some sort of Age Verification System (AVS) as a gateway for visitors to enter your site. Though it is far from perfect, the concept behind an AVS is that if someone has a credit card in their name, there is a good chance that cardholder is at least over 18 years old. You see how flimsy this argument really is. Therefore, an AVS, while an absolute necessity in an adult web hosting environment, is no real protection against a minor entering your site anyway.

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