W8 Hosting Solutions‘ motto is to provide customers an affordable, customer-focused, quality web hosting solutions. While not as brandable as Hostgator or Bluehost, they indeed delivered on their promises.

What can I say - We are honoured and would like to thank you, our valued customers for making this possible.

Read the full review here.

However, fret not. No matter how unsettling the market, the online industry is still holding its’ ground. Google have recently just enhanced its search-indexing algorithms. This is good news for all of us who practise good SEO techniques.

If you want to check how well you rank on your SERP (Search Engine Rank Position), try this little tool from 4neurons.com >> Download File

Link Popularity
Focus more on your inbound links rather than your outbound links.

Domain Age
The older the domain is, the better authority it has. Or so it is stated by Google. So, for you to rank amongst the top 10, the age of your domain name comes into factor.

Page Rank
This is an indicator on how popular your website is in terms of the amount of inbound links you are getting from external websites. Therefore translating to better authority and search ranks.

The factors above are already well known among fellow SEO, but just so happens Google updated it to have more impact overall.

Not only are the domains affordable, but you get to choose from a wide variety of domain TLDs such as .com, .net, .org, .us, .biz, .info, .name and premium ccTLDs (country-specific domains) like .co.in, za.com, se.com, se.net, and us.com.

I particularly like the “.se.com” extension; it sounds just like the Japanese security company selling anti-theft devices. Just imagine the possibilities! - security.se.com, protectme.se.com, solid.se.com…

So, what are you waiting for? Signup for your favourite domain names now before someone else do. Prices starts from a low $12.95 a year. Use our special discount coupon, DOMAINOFFER, to further reduce your savings to a whopping $8.95 per domain (save $4.00).

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What is Heat Map?

Scientifically, it is a graphical representation of data where the values taken by a variable in a two-dimensional map are represented as colors (You’ve gotta love Wikipedia).

In terms of your webpage or site as a whole, it is the visual representation of mouse clicks on a single HTML page. It looks something like the following image below:

A very bright red colour means a lot of visitors are clicking on that particular portion of the page, while blue means lesser clicks and no clicks shown with no colours.

So, What does Heat Mapping Your Website got to do with Increasing Sales?

It is a very useful tool to help you analyze your website design structure. Heat mapping your webpages allows you to know and understand what and where your visitors click. You can use the information to properly design product placements or banner locations with a higher click ratios (in this case, locations with bright red markings) within. Sales is all about the numbers; therefore, a higher click ratio is equal to a higher sales conversion rate.

Here’s a simple 3-step design checklist:

1. Are your important information being seen by visitors?
2. Are your visitors clicking on the navigation and action items?
3. Are visitors being directed to call-to-action pages in a logical manner?

Of course, the point of this article is to show you what tools you can use to heat map your websites. These tools are going to help you increase your conversion rates by 35% or even more.

There are a number of good heat mapping tools out there; some are paid, while others are provided free-of-charge. The following below are two tools I recommend:

Crazy Egg

One of the best I have seen so far is from CrazyEgg. They have a myriad of analytical tools to help you visualize what visitors are doing.

It includes features like: Confetti - which allows you to see what people are clicking on based on certain factors such as their operating system and where they came from, Overlay - providing you with tons of data about particular links, and Report sharing - enabling you to share the data with team members and clients.

They do offer an array of pricing structure, including a free 4 page per website version with up to 5000/site hits.

ClickHeat

If you are not into a paid subscription yet, don’t fret. Although it is not comparable in terms of features, I guarantee that you will not lose out in terms of analytical data intepretation. ClickHeat is an open source visual tool for showing “hot” and “cold” zones of a web page. It allows you to see which spots users click on most, and which spots are being ignored.

Easy to implement too. Just insert a JavaScript into your webpage and the application will track all your visitors’ clicks. Check it out here.

Test, Test and Test Some More

Last but not least, test it out. There is no tried and true method. If you initially thought and placed a banner within a “hot” zone only to find it didn’t live up to your expectations, do not give up. You need to test out your newly designed webpages before hitting the correct spot. Just move the banner or signup box to a different position that is equally hot, but will grab your visitors’ attention.

You just have to love WordPress. The most common use for wordpress is for you to keep entries online, or blog. However, through time and constant development, plus there are so many plugins made for it, WordPress usage has become limitless. Today I am going to show you what WordPress can do other than keeping your journals - that is using it to create your own website!

Get Yourself a Web Hosting Account

Before you start, you will need a web hosting account. Most Web Hosting plans you find will have a one-click script installation module such as Fanstastico. This module helps you install your WordPress software with just a single click of the button. You don’t even need to get your hands dirty in configuring the database.

After you have setup your WordPress the way you liked it, it is time to find some nice WordPress themes. There are tons of great themes in the internet. One such sites is Smashing Magazine. Here, you can find a collection of beautiful themes, all for the cost of nothing.

Upload your new theme into the “/wp-content/themes/” folder. Activate it via the administrative panel. Here is where the fun begins.

Modifying Your WordPress Theme

Note: Before making changes to your theme, make sure to back it up, just in case you need a fresh start.

Like any website structure, your theme is divided into parts. Each part is a single page is intended to perform a certain function. The “header.php” file for instance, holds your <head>…</head> segment. The “footer.php” will have the codes carrying the very end of your webpage; copyrights and disclaimer stuff. This is called Server Side Includes. For more information, click here.

You can modify any part of the theme by opening up the files and changing the appropriate tag values. Most are in HTML tags and should be easy to tweak around. Some are PHP server tags, but even that is not at all difficult. For example, if you do not want the comments and the “posted by… on…” displayed from your blog entry, you can remove:

<?php the_time(’F jS, Y’) ?><?php edit_post_link(’, Edit’); ?>
<div class=”comm”><?php comments_popup_link(’Post Comment’, ‘Comments (1)’, ‘Comments (%)’); ?>

Play around with the codes. If you need help with PHP, you can always reference www.php.net.

Create Some Useful Pages

Add some nice pages to your website. It can be the About Us or Weclome pages. Whatever it is, be creative. You might have noticed by now that whenever you create you page, it will indefinitely be listed on the WordPress navigation menu. Sometimes, you just don’t what the page to appear on the navigation menu. So how do you do that?

Easy, after creating the page as usual, save it but do not publish it. Also don’t make it private. Just save it in an unpublished state. It will not appear on any navigation menus (including sub-menus), but if you access it directly using the URL, you will still reach it.

This is extremely useful if you want to create a page where you will link to it from the main page.

Install Useful Plugins

You might want to add plugins like Google XML Site Map, All-in-One SEO Pack, WP Super Cache, WordPress Stats and many more.

All these plugins will allow you to make your website provide you with vital statistics, improve search engine rankings and feel more complete overall.

Lastly, you can set your website to look even more like one, by changing the index page to display a webpage instead of your blog entries. You can do that from the “Settings > Reading” option.

Just like the example figure, choose “A static page” from the Front page displays option.

Front page: is what will be display when visitors first enter your site, “http://www.yourdomain.com/”.

Post Page: is where your blog entries will be shown. For this to work, you will need to create a blank page and publish it first.

That is all to it. If you need a web hosting plan to get started, you can signup for one here.

The Hardware Setup

To begin with, we have to look at a typical web hosting infrastructure. There are the domain name server or DNS, web (http) server, database server, mail server and backup server. They are all interconnected and are the things needed to keep your website up and running 24/7, all year round. Some setups can take up more servers per cluster, while others need only a minimum number to be functional.

When you access your website, the browser locates and retrieves your site’s DNS from the server, where it then connects to your web, database and mail servers to display the necessary files on the browser. Most of your web files are located on the web server and anything you store will be in that particular server.

Sounds simple, isn’t it?

It is simple, until maybe, when the server box runs out of space within its structural casing to house additional storage media. You see, a server is just like your desktop computer. Just like it, you can keep on adding hard-drives until the casing has no more room for you to add anything.

So, with this simple fact, we know that there is no such thing as unlimited storage.

However, that is an overly simplistic view of a web hosting architecture setup. There are other setups, and an alternative is the storage area network. This setup gives you the possibility of having unlimited storage.

The Storage Area Network

Or SAN for short. A typical SAN setup looks something like the diagram below:

What it does is actually connects an array of storage media to form a single server fabric, allowing you to access these array of virtual drives as if it is a single large hard-drive. You get to find where you store your files from within using a special SAN controller switch. Anytime you run out of storage space, all you need to do is plug in another drive and your hard-drive instantly increases its capacity.

Excellent. Which means the conclusion we draw up earlier just becomes false. To a certain extend, yes.

The Dilemma

Here is where it gets interesting. Although it is possible to setup the architecture into a SAN system, it is business-logically unwise. You see, a SAN setup is not cheap. It could setback the web hosting company hundreds of thousand dollars. Whereas, your web hosting account is only $5 monthly. Even with a large customer-base, at $60 ($5 x 12 months) yearly per customer, it is unlikely the company returned its investments within 5 years.

Also, with other operational, advertising and marketing costs to bear, the company will not see profits for years to come, resulting in a chain reaction, from getting support from cheap unqualified personnel, to the inability of the company to replace malfunctioning hardware. Eventually as the customer, you suffer from poor service.

Maybe in the near future when storage area network has become a commodity, we can all enjoy unlimited web hosting at a quality service level we can agree on, but for now, unlimited web hosting is just not a business-wise decision.

STOP! Do not even try to ever try to register anything with them. It is a scam! I know this because I had my fair share of experiences in a number of occassions over the past six months.

Their sample letter can look something like this:

Dear CEO,

Hello!

We are a domain name registration service company in asia, which mainly deal with international company’s in Asia. We have something important need to confirm with your company.

On the Jul 21,2008, we received an application formally. One company named “Xinei international  ltd” applied for the internet trademark :

” W8hostnetwork”

and the domain names:

“w8hostnetwork.asia, w8hostnetwork.tw, w8hostnetwork.com.tw, w8hostnetwork.net.cn, w8hostnetwork.org.cn, w8hostnetwork.hk” etc…

These days we are dealing with it, After our initial examination, we found that the internet trademark and domain names applied for registration are as same as your company’s name and trademark. hope to get the affirmation of your company because that may relate to your intellectual property on internet. Now we have not finished the registration of  Xinei international ltd yet, in order to deal with this issue better, please let someone who is responsible for trademark or domain name contact me as soon as possible.Have a nice day!

Best Regards,
Linda

Sponsoring Registrar:
SK Net Service Company Ltd
Tel:00852- 30759838
Fax:00852-31771510  ;  00852-31771520
E-mail:  linda@cnsknet.cn
Website:  www.sknetservice.hk

Sounds fair enough. A company, Xinei International Ltd, is trying to register a list of domain names using our domain, “w8hostnetwork”. The question is, why would Xinei would want our domain name?

Of course, when someone wants to buy your domain, the first thing you need to do is check out the company, but a quick check in google holds no record for “Xinei International Ltd”. Sounds fishy. In this case, neither does the domain registrar’s website ever existed.

How to detect it?

A closer inspection on their email reveals a copy that is poorly written and has so many inconsistencies. For example:

On the Jul 21,2008, we received an application formally. One company named “Xinei international  ltd” applied for the internet trademark :

There is no mention of the other company’s website, nor business address. If they have chose to expose the other company’s trade name, then why not their website or business location? Then we also have inconsistent registrar domain name and email in the signature:

E-mail:  linda@cnsknet.cn
Website:  www.sknetservice.hk

Why in the world would a company have a business website, but uses a different domain for their email? This lead me to think and using a widely available WHOIS database search, I digged out more inconsistencies.

The domain “sknetservices.hk” has a registrant and administrator email that is different from sknetservices.hk itself. Checking those too bring even more different TLDs used as their administrator emails. Until, eventually it leads to “now.net.cn”. Even this was redirected to “now.cn”, another chinese domain registrar, which in turn leads to another administrative address. It goes on and on forever to no end.

The point being - it is not likely that a legitimate domain registrar would bury its real contactable email so deep inside other domains.

What can you do to prevent getting scammed?

The first thing is not to buy your domains from them. You will only end up losing your money and domain names to them. The next best thing is, to register the mentioned domains from your favourite trusted domain registrar before they can. Thirdly, report them to ICANN (the International Corporations for Assigned Names and Numbers). Any legitimate domain registrar will have the company listed on ICANN’s accredited registrars list - to be found easily on its website.

So, whatever you do, stay smart and not be taken in by their kinds.

Calculating the Gigabytes
First of all, you have to find out the total GB of data a single T1 connection can transfer, assuming that there’s no overhead or packet loss. (If you have stats for your packet loss or overhead, just subtract the overhead from the amount of data that can be transferred and continue with the equation.)

Assuming the optimal, a T1 connection can transmit data at 1.536 Mbps. To translate that to Bytes per second you divide by 8 (since there are 8 bits in every byte), and you find that a T1 can transfer data at 192 KBps. Multiply that by 60 seconds in a minute, times 60 minutes in an hour, and you will find that a T1 can transfer 691.2 MB (or 691,200 KB) of data per hour. Multiply that number by 24 to get to 16.589 GB per day.You need to multiply it by 30 days to get 497.664 GB monthly transfer.

Your cost per GB of data transferred—if a T1 connection costs $100/month—is 6 cents.

Here’s the Math:

• 1.536 Mbps / 8 = 192 KBps (or 0.192 MBps)
• 0.192 MB * (60sec * 60min) = 691.2 MB/hour
• 691.2 MB * (24hours * 30days) = 497,664 MB (or 497.664 GB)/month
• Hence, if a T1 connection costs $100/month, therefore:
• $100 / 497.664GB = $0.20/GB

Note: To actually get the bandwidth cost, you need to find out how much your web hosting provider is paying for their bandwidth. Alternatively, you can use what your provider is charging you and mark it down 30% to get an estimate on how much the actual cost is.

Now, let us see you if you can apply it to your business metrics.