Bid for PR

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? Cpanels usually offer you Hotlink protection, Fantastico, management of Search Engine submittals, and error pages. Fantastico is a commercial script library that automates installation of about 50 scripts including instant blogging software, portals, PHP, Nuke, Instant Chat, Forums, counters, FTP, and so on.

Membership sites are private, so you simply must have password protection for your folders. Check to see if the hosting company’s cpanel package has password protection; additionally, you will want .htaccess privileges.

Want to know what pages your customers are viewing, how many requests are returning an error code or where your visitors are coming from? 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.

If you plan to start running a membership web 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, Mambo and other membership scripts are usually also available.

In addition to the basic tools listed above, you will also need to consider some marketing tools for your site when you get it set up. These will vary depending on they type of site you are building. In fact, there will be things you will need, but you won’t even know what they are until you run into a problem or two. Just head on over to the search engine and start searching.

Whatever you do, don’t give up your dream of owning a membership site. With the tips in this article you know how to find a good webhosting company. The time for hesitation is over. Just build it.

Tags: domain names, host, hosting, internet, Internet Business, internet business ideas, internet business opportunities, internet business opportunity, internet marketing, membership sites, SEO, web, web hosting, webhosting, webhosting services, www

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