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| In our efforts to make the very
most of your experience with 4yourwebsite, we have
generated a list of questions you may have that can
be easily answered. However, if your question does
not appear on the page, or if our answer does not
fully address your needs, feel free to contact us
and we will be happy to assist you with any additional
information that you may need. |
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| Q: How do I get listed on the search engines? |
| A:
This is known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It is a constantly changing and very inexact science. Basically you place key words and phrases on your website pages and in their meta tags, then register your website with the various search engines. You then monitor your results and refine your pages until you get the results that you want. The whole process can take from six to eight weeks and, by the time your website begins to show up the rules will change and you must start the process all over again. We can relieve you of this headache for a small fee, Ask Us for a quote for the keywords that you want to be found with. |
| Q: What is a meta tag? |
| A:
These are invisible parts of the web page, placed between the head tags that will help the search engines find your website. The main ones involved in search engine optimization are title, description, keywords and robots meta tags. If this sounds too technical, we can do your search-engine optimization and registration for you, for a small fee. |
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Q: Do I have to register my domain name with you in order to host it with you? |
| A:
No. You can register your domain name with any registrar you wish and still host with us. |
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Q: Does the price of the hosting plan include domain registration fees? |
| A:
No. You will need to register domain names yourself. You can use any registrar you like but we will be happy to register domains for you, just use our domain manager. Prices are as low as $29.62 for 2 years. We occasionally run specials that include a free domain registration with two full years of hosting. |
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Q: Do I have to host my website with you if I register my domain through your website? |
| A:
No. You can host your website elsewhere and still keep your domain registration with us. |
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Q: I've thought of a great domain name for my website, and it is available, but I'm not ready to start my website yet. What should I do? |
| A:
We strongly suggest that if you think of a name that you want, and it is available, that you register it immediately. You can leave it with the standard "Coming Soon, Under Construction" page if you want to, but we can design and host a one page site with your logo and a brief description of your business very economically. So, although you can park your domain, it makes a lot more sense to create a mini-site and start putting your new web identity on all of your printed materials right away. |
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Q: How do I know which plan to choose? How much web space is enough? |
A:
Many web hosting companies will try to dazzle you with numbers like 1,000 to 2,000 megabytes (1GB to 2GB). They offer this much storage because they know that most sites will never use even a fraction of it. 1 Megabyte to 500 Megabytes of storage is sufficient for almost any website. If you figure that the average page, with graphics, is 10K - 20K, then 5 to 10 Megabytes of web space would accomodate 500 to 1,000 web pages including their image files.
Very few websites exceed 100 Megabytes, in fact, most smaller sites do not even come close to 10 Megabytes. A well-designed database-driven website with, literally; thousands, or even tens of thousands, of pages can fit into 350 Megabytes. This includes the dynamic pages (about 1/2 Megabyte) some graphics on every page (which use most of the 350MB of space) and the database (under 5 Megabytes) Usually, starting with our 20MB plan is plenty, or the 50MB plan if you need a dynamic, database-driven website. As your site grows you can always upgrade to more storage space when, and if, it is needed.
If all of this still confuses you, just call 828-280-3282, use our live, online support or use our Ask Us button and we will figure it all out for you. |
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Q: How do I know which plan to choose? How much bandwidth do I need? |
A:
To estimate your bandwidth usage multiply the size of your average page, including the size of images included in the page, by the number of times that page will be viewed in a given month. Multiply that number by the number of pages in your website. This will give you an overestimate of actual use.
If the average page on your site was 20,000 bytes (20K), and was viewed 500 times and you had 50 pages, your bandwidth usage for the month would be around 500,000,000 bytes or 0.5 G. This is only a rough estimate.
Your actual measurements can be determined by looking at your website stats at the end of each month.
Our hosting plans offer generous traffic allowances and, by the time you ever exceed them, you will have a very successful website that will be able to support any associated extra charges for bandwidth use. |
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Q: Why do you not offer unlimited bandwidth? |
A:
When we set up 4yourwebsite.com we wanted it to be the most reliable and honest web hosting company on the Internet. Many companies quote "unlimited" or "unmetered" bandwidth allocations, but in the small print you will find that they have the right to remove your site without warning if you are using too much bandwidth. Put simply, this means they have a limit but they are not prepared to tell you what it is, or that they limit you in other ways that will even prevent visitors from being able to access your site. They need to have this clause because bandwidth (or data transfer) costs money. The telecom companies that provide Internet connectivity charge for every GB of transfer on their networks and many "unlimited companies" have found that they cannot sustain their service without regularly removing accounts.
4yourwebsite.com has a proper, sustainable, business model which offers high bandwidth allocations to all our customers with no automatic removal of sites for exceeding their allocations. We tell you how much bandwidth you have and give you a meter (in your control panel) to monitor your use of it.
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Q: You say you are my best choice for web hosting in Asheville, NC. What if I'm not in Asheville? |
| A:
Although we are in Asheville, our clients are in and around: Asheville, NC; Skyland, NC, Arden, NC; Hendersonville, NC; Weaverville, NC; Memphis, TN, and even overseas in Hamilton, Bermuda. We are a great choice for hosting your website, and give great personal service, no matter where you are located. |
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Q: I already have a website, how do I move it to 4yourwebsite.com? |
A:
This is really quite simple. To move your site without any interruption please follow these instructions:
- Order web hosting from us.
- Upload your web site to the temporary address we give you.
- Contact the company you registered your domain name through and ask them to change the name servers to: ns1.4yourwebsite.com and ns2.4yourwebsite.com
- Once the name servers are changed it takes about 48 hours for the domain to move over to point to your new 4yourwebsite.com account.
- We recommend waiting about a week after this is complete, then contact your previous web host and cancel your account.
If all of this sounds too complicated, just order your hosting from us, give us your old website access information and we will take care of the transfer for you.
Tip: To know when the move is complete, add something new to the version of the site uploaded to your 4yourwebsite.com. That way you can tell if the domain is pointing to our server or to the old one. |
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Q: Do I need to backup my website if it is hosted on 4yourwebsite.com? |
A:
Daily, weekly and monthly backups of each website we host are created and stored at the server center. These servers also have spare disk drives installed so that, in the event of a hard disk failure, all sites can be restored quickly.
However, you can never have too many backups! We suggest that you maintain your own backups in addition to all of the precautions that we take for you. |
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Q: I've heard that the connection to the Internet is important. What kind of connections do you have? |
| A:
Our state of the art rack-mounted servers are located in major data centers in the USA, Canada and UK (McLean, VA Houston, TX Toronto, Canada London - UK). The USA data centers feature multiple connections to at least three OC-3 bandwidth-on-demand Optical Fiber connections to the Internet via different carriers. This provides a high level of reliability, redundancy and speed for your website. |
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Q: What type of DNS servers do you have? Are they reliable? |
A:
The hosting company that we use for your website uses a distributed DNS system with primary name servers in the USA and UK. It is as reliable a system as we have seen on any hosting company servers.
Many hosting companies run two name servers on the same server as your website. This is insecure, because if the web server goes down the DNS needs to propagate out when the system comes back on line. Our DNS system continues to work regardless of any issues with your website.
Some hosting companies will put two name servers on different physical servers in the same data center. This is not sufficient because if they have servers in more than one data center and the line to the first location goes down, all the sites they host will disappear from the Internet.
Even having two name servers in different countries is not always enough, if both are set to update from each other. When one goes down there is the risk that the other will update incorrectly. By updating from one central server we avoid this problem. The master DNS server is protected by a firewall and sends updates to the servers that broadcast the DNS information to the Internet. This prevents the master zone file information being corrupted by worms, trojans or other exploits. In the event that the master DNS server fails we have a backup machine running in parallel.
Some of our competitors think this system is overkill, but you should take this as an indication of how seriously we treat the business of hosting your web site. |
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Q: Why is 4yourwebsite.com the best choice for hosting my website? |
| A:
We contract our hosting services through large companies and buy in bulk from them. This allows you to have the benefits, reliability and speed of the large web hosting companies with small company, local, personal service. There are thousands of web hosting companies to choose from. Choosing 4yourwebsite.com will give you the best combination of big national company features, speed and reliability, all uniquely combined with small-town (Asheville, NC) down-home service. This wide range of choices and advantages is available to you from 4yourwebsite.com at extremely competitive prices. |
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Q: After I place my web hosting order, how long will it be before my web server is activated? |
| A:
Our goal is to activate all new sites within 24 hours (or sooner). However, your .com/.net/.org domain will not work until it is pointed to our name servers by your domain registrar (hopefully us). This process takes several days to complete, depending on your registrar, and your ISPs DNS update schedule. If your site has not been activated within 24 hours time, please call us at 828-280-3282 to let us know. |
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Q: How do I set up my website before the domain is pointing to it? |
A:
When you register a new domain (or change an existing domain to point to our name servers) it will take up to three days for the domain name to start working. While you are waiting, you can use a temporary address to upload and test your website. (This does not work for FrontPage users FrontPage requires that the domain be totally functional before it can successfully publish your site).
To use your site’s temporary address:
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To upload your website before the domain has moved over to it, use your username and password and set the FTP server to ftp.4yourwebsite.com and the host directory to /public_html
- To view your pages go to www.4yourwebsite.com followed by "/~" followed by your account’s user name
e.g. http://www.4yourwebsite.com/~username/
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Q: What type of software do I need to upload my site to your servers? |
| A:
You can use any FTP program, our web-based File Manager, any version of Microsoft FrontPage, DreamWeaver, NetObjects Fusion, Adobe GoLive and many others. |
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Q: How do I avoid getting lots of spam if I want to include an eMail link on my Website? |
A:
We address this challenge in all of our Web designs in two ways:
- All eMail links are cloaked so that the address is not revealed when looking at the source code (where the spam robots look)
- Use forms so that eMail address is not revealed
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Q: What is PayPal? |
| A:
With more than 40 million member accounts in over 45 countries worldwide, PayPal is the world's largest online payment service. PayPal makes sending money as easy as sending email! Any PayPal member can instantly and securely send money to anyone in the U.S. with an email address. |
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Q: Do my buyers have to have a PayPal account to buy my goods and services with PayPal? |
| A:
No. It does make the process easier if they have a PayPal account but if you turn the PayPal Optional feature on, your buyer will not be required to create a PayPal Account to complete a purchase. |
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Q: You said that a buyer does not have to be a PayPal member to buy with PayPal, why do I have to be a member to purchase a hosting plan from 4yourwebsite? |
| A:
For normal purchases no PayPal membership is required to pay for goods or services but subscription services do require a PayPal membership. PayPal subscriptions allow us to reduce overhead (and prices) by handling all of our billing automatically. If you prefer not to join PayPal, we will figure out a way to accomodate. |
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Q:
What does it mean to be PayPal Verified? |
| A:
To be Verified, a PayPal merchant must provide proof that they have opened an account at a bank or other financial institution. Because these institutions are required by law to screen account holders, PayPal's verification process increases security when you pay parties you do not know. |
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Q: Are you PayPal Verified? |
A:
Our parent company, Data Management Solutions, Ltd., has been PayPal Verified since 2001. If you are a PayPal member, you can click on the verification seal to go to our verification page on the PayPal site.
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