Web Hosting and Membership Sites
Filed under Search Engine Optimization
Having a successful membership website is impossibility unless you have a hosting company that offers you the right tools to conduct the day to day operations of your site. Does the prospective hosting company provide you with tools such as the ability to create forums, set up an ecommerce site, consult, develop content, community development tools, recurring billing modules, and access level controls? These may be necessary depending on your needs, but that’s not all you will need to build and run a membership site.
While browsing through the prospective hosting company’s site, look for a few additional necessary tools such as MySQL, PERL, CGI, SSI, CRON, Curl, FrontPage, PHP scripting tools, Python, GD and ImageMagik, which allows you to create streaming videos and music.
Everyone needs email – and especially membership sites. You will need one for the admin, support, information, etc. So don’t overlook your email needs. Your hosting package should also come with auto responders, mailing lists, mail forwarding, web mail, Spam control, POP3, IMAP, and SMTP.
Does the hosting company provide you with a control panel? These control panels (often referred to as cpanels) usually offer you many tools and features such as hotlink protection, Fantastico, management of Search Engine submittals, and error pages. If Fantastico is provided you have at your fingertips access to instant blogging software, portals, PHP, Nuke, Instant Chat, Forums, counters, FTP, and so on.
You simply must have the ability to password protect for your folders – especially when you are running a membership site. Check to make sure the hosting company’s cpanel package has password protection; additionally, you will want .htaccess privileges.
Also make sure you have tracking statistics available. Tracking statistics often include raw log or other access such as Awstats. Error logs and analogs are provided as well. While this feature will not make your site run any better, it will help you to improve it when you know what’s going on “behind the scenes.”
If you plan to start running a membership site, you really should consider purchasing the plan that offers ecommerce features, as well as Shared SSL or Private SSL, Agora Shopping Carts, Instant OS Commerce, and Cube Carts. Joomla and other membership scripts are usually available.
In addition to the basic tools listed above, you will also need to consider a few marketing tools for your web site once you get setup. These will vary depending on they type of site you are building, and are not usually provided by the web hosting company. In fact, there will be lots of things you will need, but you won’t even know what they are until you run into a problem or two. Don’t spend time fretting about it – just head on over to the search engine and start searching.
Are you ready? It all started when you dared to dream of owning and running a membership site. You are now armed with knowledge of how to find a good hosting company for your site. Now its time to “just do it” – find a good host and get that membership site online!
