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A Primer:
Getting Your Web Presence
There are a lot of parts to getting the internet to work for your company. People who are new to the internet get confused about all that has to happen to get on the internet, and to get a company onto the internet.
- Optional, but Recommended If you are borrowing a friend's computer or overlooking a colleagues shoulder to check out the internet, because you are not on the internet yourself, one of your first steps must be to get some kind of online service that gives you the capability to see what's on the web, and to send and receive e-mail. That service is called an ISP (Internet Service Provider), and is usually available to you by subscription as a monthly fee.
In each area of the world, for example, there are many ISP's available. Explore ISP's in your area using this list.
It is possible to get a free e-mail service (through groups like juno.com who sell your names and send you advertising with your mail), but these services often have limitations. For example, some limit you to e-mail without attachments (which you will find becomes very handy if you want to send a non-e-mail file to somebody). Not only that, but if you get free e-mail only, you're not likely to have an "on-ramp" to the web (which means you wouldn't be seeing this right now). In this day and age, anybody who values easy access to information, would not want to be without access to the web. We strongly recommend you spend the money to get the full service, that allows you both e-mail and web access. Interactive By Design does not provide ISP access.
- Optional, but Also Recommended Your next (or simultaneous) step is to make sure you have the hardware and software on the computer you plan to use, so that the ISP services you purchase are accessible. For example, you need a modem (faster is better, given the graphics-intensive, and media-rich sites you'll want to see) and a web browser (typically Netscape or Internet Explorer, although there are others).
- Essential Next, you have to decide where you want your web site to live. In other words, the files that make up your web pages have to physically exist on the hard drive of a computer that exists on the internet pretty much 24 hours a day. Now, you're thinking, I just got my computer hooked up on the internet. True, but it's not the same thing. Your computer dials the Internet Service Provider who then turns around and sets you loose on the internet. The ISP's computer is on the internet -- part of the web of computers that all together make up the internet. But if you are an individual, or an employee in a company behind a firewall, for all intents and purposes, your computer just accesses the internet, but isn't part of the internet web of computers that millions of people access all over the world to provide information.
Okay, so you have to pick somebody to host your web pages. Often your ISP will provide you a little space on their computers for your web pages for free, as part of your ISP package. Then, if your web pages (and graphics, etc.) grow too big, you have to start paying. At that point (or even when you get started) you can go anywhere in the world to select a company or computer to host your pages.
Interactive By Design has several hosting packages available:
- Super Package: (See right column.) $40/month. No setup fees.
- Premium Package: $75/month. $1650 setup. (Payments can be arranged.) Includes all of the Super Package, plus the Interactive Web Presence Success Suite, which includes four mission-critical self-publishing tools for your own:
- Frequently Asked Questions
- News and Articles Engine
- Survey and Poll Managing Engine
- Multiple Mailing List Manager
... all to be managed and updated from an ordinary web browser, without any programming experience at all. The value of this Interactive Success Suite cannot be underestimated. Research shows that there must be frequent updating, content, value, and interactivity to make your web presence attractive and generate repeat traffic.
These tools are designed to accomplish that, and to do so very effectively, making it possible for an administrative assistant, for example to do much of the updating of your website, and to manage mailings to prospective customers, sales staffs, vendors, ... as needed, while content "keepers" on your company teams can independently be responsible for updating various parts of the site, using the same tools. In the highly competitive business world which demands agility and responsiveness, this suite could pay for itself within a month or a week, and be generating an impressive ROI soon after, if you understand how to "work the web."
- Next, you have to decide if it is important to you to have a unique "domain name." Most businesses will want to make it easy for their customers to find them, and leverage any name recognition they have.
The internet domain situation is a lot like a land rush; the sooner you can squat on a name you like, the better off you will be. You can try to reserve a domain name without doing any of the other steps on this list, except you must have a place established who is going to host your website, even if you want to move it elsewhere, later. The process is done through Internic at this time, and there are a lot of people peddling their wares as intermediaries. Some of the intermediaries have been caught taking the domain name you search on, and reserving it in their own name, and then when you request the name, trying to sell it to you for a premium.
For me, I think it is wiser to go straight to the source, which charges you $70 for the name, with a $35 renewal fee annually. Many "hosts" charge you additional fees to track these guys down, help you find a name, and then fill out all the online forms to apply to reserve it. Interactive By Design will complete the forms for you at no charge, for any customers who choose to select us for their hosting.
Of course, one of the funnest parts of picking a domain name is helping you pick a name that will have a positive impact or mind association to your customers, and which can help your company strategically and tactically.
Additionally, Interactive By Design owns a domain name called "business-district.com" and some customers may find that having a website associated with that name has significant appeal. You could have an address such as www.yourname.business-district.com, or www.business-district.com/yourname/. If this option is of interest to you, please e-mail bizdistrict@ibydesign.com and tell us you are interested in finding out more about hosting your site at that address.
- Finally, you have to decide who is going to design and build your site. Sometimes you may want to design it with one set of pros, and build it with another set of pros or somebody in-house. You also need to decide who you want to maintain it. Interactive By Design obviously designs, builds and maintains sites for clients, and we also will work to help clients (who want to) learn to maintain and update their own site. We'd like to earn your business showing you how to make a web site work well with your business and internal objectives.
In any case, that's the process. If you are interested in having us host your website, please e-mail us here or send us any questions you might have.
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Most Popular:
"Super Package" for
Web Hosting
The machines you will be hosted on currently have a configuration which includes :
- Linux Kernel 2.0.36
- Apache Web server Software
- 512 MB Ram
- 400Mhz Pent II
- 12 GB HD
The machines reside in an environment on three networks, and include 24/7 onsite support. On each machine, there is a central cgi bin with various utilities, and then those who want a domain account also get their own personal cgi bin, for whatever variety of scripts you want to program and run. We have the latest version of perl, etc.
Basically, with us you get
- Your own IP address
- Includes 20MB storage, 1GB traffic/month
- (Additional storage $5/mo per 5 MB, Addl traffic $5/mo per 100 MB)
- Anonymous ftp (ftp.yourname.com)
- 10 POP accounts
- Fully functional cgi bin
- Unlimited, configurable autoresponders
- Unlimited, configurable email aliasing
- Email configurable forwarding
- Unlimited ftp and telnet access to update site
- Real audio/video server support
- Optional free SSL support
- Daily hits report emailed to you
- No setup charges
- No required time period. You can move your site any month you want. but we've never had anyone want to leave yet :~).
In addition to that, if you are fairly technical and want to do a lot of hands-on site maintenance, you may want more control, and you will find that our really powerful browser-based control panel will save you literally hundreds of hours setting up and managing password protected directories, autoresponders, email redirects, etc. (Take a peek here at the demo, using the logon "checkit" and "out".)
The master control panel is *browser-based* which is a HUGE time saver in our experience for some of the most technically burdensome/hoop-jumping challenges of managing a website. Things that used to take hours can now take under a minute. This control panel allows:
- File Control: browser based FTP client to manage/update your files. Includes : modify, delete, rename, upload, set permissions and password protect directories. This makes it possible for example to set up a customer-only or investors-only directory that you can make password-protected in literally seconds. Change the password every month, etc.
- E-mail Aliasing And Forwarding: Control your E-mail addresses/aliases easily. Either send mail to an external POP account (with your ISP) or to the mailbox for a user under your account. That means that sales@yourdomain.com can be redirected to betty67@aol.com, and techsupport@yourdomain.com can be redirected to chuck@webdweeb.com, and so on, including redirecting several different email aliases to the same person, who might wear many hats in your organization.
- AutoResponders: AutoResponders allow you to automatically send information via E-mail, upon request. You can draft one of these emails that will automatically be sent to a customer, say after they fill out a certain form, from your browser, and then also make modifications and deletions, as needed, on the spot.
- Daily Stats: You can activate or disable daily stats, with the click of a button using your browser.
- Custom Error: You can customize the default server error pages from the browser.
- Graphical Counters: Install and manage graphical counters on your web pages to show the world how many people have visited those pages, if you happen to like that sort of thing.
- Install FormMail Script, so forms results can be emailed to you.
- Guestbook Script... creating the necessary guestbook files, including all the mechanisms necessary to manage the guestbook -- again, with the click of a button in your browser.
- WWWBoard Script: Creates the files necessary for a Bulletin Board tool to provide a discussion area on your site.
- Shopping Cart Script: Use this script for traditional shopping cart sites or entire malls (multi-merchant). Merchant settings and product databases are easily managed via a browser.
- SimpleSearch Script: Allow visitors to search your site by entering a few keywords.
- URL Jumper Script: This script makes it easy to create a drop down menu to jump to another url or site destination.
- Sliding Puzzle Game Script: This game can be used for entertainment or to display a product or service in a playful manner. The game is an online version of the popular sliding puzzle game.
- Memory Card Game Script: This game can be used for entertainement or to display products or services in a playful manner. Turn over cards to find matches until all cards are matched.
- And probably most powerfully of all, the Mini Control Panel: Install this software on a specific directory. This allows you to give people access to managing a specific directory only. They would use a minimized copy of 'File Control' to manage their files for that directory (using the browser, of course), without having access to changing any other directories which is in this main control panel.
- Upgrade the control panel: This feature allows you to check for and install upgrades for the control panel software, as we add and tweak here and there.
Anyway, the price for all of this Super Package is only $40 a month! with no commitment to go beyond a month-to-month arrangement. We have a lot of very happy customers, for obvious reasons. People who bring us more than one site for hosting, may negotiate a volume rate across all sites for the same package.
See the Left Column for Other Packages.
If you have questions, please email hosting@ibydesign.com
If you would like to get started, please e-mail hostme@ibydesign.com and specify which package you are interested in.
Don't forget that if you don't want your own domain name, we could host you at www.yourname.business-district.com, or www.business-district.com/yourname/.
(Please note: we do not accept sites with "adult" or pornographic material, whatsoever.)
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