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ke sure I did everything correctly!

Please do note that you can only link your site as http://yoursite.com or http://www.yoursite.com. Not both. It just doesn't work that way. My advice is to use the www prefix, and if you can make a simple redirect page in your host root, as I'll explain later.

I followed Blogger's advice to the letter, and everything works fine. Here are the basics of their tutorial, or you can read the whole thing yourself on this page.

Buy your chosen domain name and create your account.

Once your domain has been registered, log in to your control panel, and choose to "manage domains".

Click on the area marked Total DNS Control, and then on Total DNS Control And MX Records.

Look for a record prefixed "WWW". If there isn't one, add a new CNAME record; if there is one, you'll need to edit this record instead.

Insert these settings exactly as they are described! For the "Name" type "www" (as in www.yoursite.com). For the Host Name, you need to enter "ghs.google.com". Don't change or enter anything else except for these two functions. If this is a new CNAME, click "add". If you are editing an existing CNAME, click "update" and "continue".

Before you link this domain to your Blogspot blog, you may well want to check that all the settings are correct. To do this, you'll need to "ping" your new domain and ensure the host points to ghs.google.com.

If you're a Windows user, this is quite simple to do using the "command" feature. Windows 98 and ME have a "command prompt" program in the start menu; Windows XP has the "run..." feature, which brings up a box; simply type in CMD, hit enter and you'll get your command prompt.

Then all you need to do is enter the following:

ping www.yourdomainname.com

substituting yourdomain.com for your domain name and suffix. Hit enter, and see what happens. It should look something like this:

Pinging ghs.1.google.com [72.14.207.121] with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 72.14.207.121: bytes=32 time=85ms TTL=247 Reply from 72.14.207.121: bytes=32 time=89ms TTL=247 Reply from 72.14.207.121: bytes=32 time=86ms TTL=247 Reply from 72.14.207.121: bytes=32 time=86ms TTL=247 Ping statistics for 72.14.207.121: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 85ms, Maximum = 89ms, Average = 86ms

Notice that the ping recognises that my site is hosted with ghs.1.google.com. This means that I can (and indeed, have) followed the next step in telling Blogspot my new domain name. If you don't notice the host is registered as Google, wait a little longer before following the next step.

Log in to your Blogger control panel. In the settings section, click on the publishing tab. Near the top of this page, you'll notice "publish to a custom domain". This is what you want to do.

When prompted, enter the domain name you have directed to the ghs.google.com host, including the www prefix! Continue, and you should see that your new settings have been saved.

View your blog to ensure everything works and looks okay. Don't worry if at first you get a "404 file not found" page: it can take a few days for DNS settings to propogate across the whole internet. You can always switch back to Blogspot hosting and try again in a day or two. When this does work okay, you'll see your blog exactly how it is normally seen, with the exception that your new domain name is in the address bar. Blogger takes care of all the inter-blog links, page titles and such for you, and even redirects traffic from your old name.blogspot.com address to your new www.yoursite.com address! This is great as it means it's unlikely you'll lose traffic or page ranking stats.

Now here's the awkward part: as I mentioned earlier, you can only have http://www.yourblog.com or http://yourblog.com. Not both. Blogger/Google simply haven't recognised that this may be important, and only offer the function of linking one address to your blog. But in a strange way, this is good: you don't have to worry about having two seperate blogs listed in Technorati, for example.

I advised that you use the www prefix for a good reason. Many domain providers offer a single page (often called a "holding page") with each domain name. This will show when you type http://yourblog.com, even though www.yourblog.com will link to your Blogger blog.

So make use of it!

If you are able to edit the HTML, you could create a redirect page to automatically redirect visitors to your www address. That way, you won't lose any visitors at all. To make the page redirect to your www address, you need to insert this code between the head tags, substituting "mysite.com" for your domain name. You can do this using an HTML editor (I prefer Notepad).

The part content="0; means that there is no pause before the browser is redirected. You can change this to "5" for example, to give a 5 second pause if you also want to include an explanation for the redirect in the body of the page. It is also a good idea to include a hyperlink to your www address in the body of the page, just in case the visitor's browser doesn't recognise the redirect command.

BLOGGER TO GODADDY FTP Publishing: Instructions

Originally I was hosting my blogs at blogspot. I decided, wow, I'm really into this blogging thing. I had posted 196 posts at my thaipulse.blogspot.com blog and my girlfriend had put 130 at her trythaifood.blogspot.com blog. I had another 150 posts at 2 of my other blogs there.

I thought - wow, this is serious. I need to move these things OFF Blogger and get them to their own domain for better monetization down the road - and more control over everything. Also, if I ever wanted to sell the blogs - much easier if hosted at my own domain, difficult if at Blogger because you don't own anything.

The next step I chose - and I should have eliminated this step - was to move them to Blogger's "Custom Domain" choice in Settings tab and Publishing link of Blogger's program to manage your blogs.

So, I moved them. All 5 of them.

This was a rather insidious process as I had to do some domain name switching and it was all hocus pocus really. The site stayed hosted at Blogger. I only bought the domain name and told Blogger to tell the DNS that I was hosting my blogs at my site - when actually they were all on-site at Blogger as they always were. Someone could now find my site by going to my subdomain on the domain I owned (example: http://trythaifood.thaipulse.com).


Hosting at their Custom Domains solution seems ok at first glance, until you want to look at getting a sitemap for your domain and also when you start considering that all those links pointing to the blogspot domain - like trythaifood.blogspot.com - everyone that linked to there wouldn't change their links because they still work. So, even though the proper domain name for her site was trythaifood.thaipulse.com - the search engine sees links to trythaifood.blogspot.com and thinks that site is still valid too.

I then created a sitemap for two of my sites listing out every html
file I had in one huge list - realizing only later that an xml or txt
sitemap cannot be added to your Custom Domain at Blogger because you
don't have access to the root level domain to drop a file in there! When I tried to do a sitemap for the sites and place it in my directory at trythaifood.thaipulse.com - it wasn't found... Apparently Google's webmaster tools can't read the directory because it's virtual. If that makes sense.

I then added the ATOM feed as my site map as some of you might know - we can do this for our blogs - no need to make a huge sitemap of every single file. Just copy the link url to your ATOM FEED from your blog's home page - and you can paste that in as your sitemap in Google Webmaster Tools. For instance, mine was: http://thaipulse.blogspot.com/atom.xml

However, that solves next to nothing as it only gives Google your last 10 posts at your blog. The other 186 of mine - were not registered by using the feed as the sitemap! BLAST IT!

AUGGGHHH!


To me, having a valid sitemap is everything. It means Google KNOWS which pages to index, so there's no excuse for not indexing them. I really like to have one as it makes me feel better about the whole Google spider process even though I still don't trust it.


I then decided - I'm going to move everything to my domain - physically put them there in subdomains and use the FTP function Google has to publish all my posts by FTP to my domain.

This way - nothing resides on Google (photos do I believe), but pages - that count for the search engines reside on my domain in my subfolder where they should be.

Moving to FTP takes some skill - not for the process which is fairly easy, but for the after-effects because now you are stuck with a classic template - of which there are about 15 maybe, but you don't have the easy widget functionality to put Google Adsense and all the other cool widgets all over your blog. It's cut and paste into the code time -and if you're NOT competent with code - don't move to FTP publishing - please.


So, moving on...

I killed the previous DNS magic that told people my site was hosted at my domain when really it was at Blogger and I moved all my blogs by FTP to my domain.

Now I have a valid sitemap for each blog - and all pages are listed. In the end I know this was the right move.

I've yet to move this blogsimply.blogspot.com blog though!


Ok, steps for moving to FTP from Blogger to Godaddy.

1. Create subdomains at Godaddy by logging into your hosting account. Choose Domain management. Choose OPEN control panel.

2. Choose Settings tab.

3. Choose Domain management. Create subdomains for each blog you want to put at that domain. For me- I had a whole site hosted at www.thaipulse.com so I put my blogs in these subdomains:

trythaifood.thaipulse.com
blog.thaipulse.com
kosamui.thaipulse.com
shrimprecipes.thaipulse.com
thairestaurants.thaipulse.com

don't list out the whole url - just add a subdomain like "trythaifood"

That's it.

4. Exit out of there because you're done. Nothing else to do in Godaddy because by default they point your subdomain to a folder on your path - they create the folder for you on your ftp path.


5. Login to Blogger's dashboard.

6. In the Template Tab go to HTML settings. Check the box for expand widget templates. Copy all of the template with Control and C and then paste that into a Notepad file and save it someplace with the name: blog-name-code-backup.txt.

Do that for each blog all at once so you don't forget and skip that. You'll lose the way your blog was originally if you don't save this complete template.

After you copy and save each template's code - scroll to the bottom of the page and choose "CLASSIC TEMPLATE".

This will change your template to a boring classic template - but you can pick from 14 other boring ones that are better than this one later.

7. Go back to your blog's SETTINGS tab, and Publishing link. If you need to set blog readers to "anybody" or "Everbody" then do so or FTP publishing won't work.

8. Choose FTP publishing.

9. Fill out the FTP publishing form carefully.

10. Your godaddy FTP server is just your domain name.

thaipulse.com was mine, don't put anything else - just this format.

PHP Web Hosting: What to look for

So what should you look for when it comes to PHP web hosting? Although a lot of this has to do with what your website is calling for, there are some basic features that most webmasters do not want to overlook; not even if you are a newbie.

First off, take a look at what your PHP web hosting provider is offering in the way of disk space. You need to make sure that you get enough space to suit the type of website you are building. For most people, anywhere from 15 to 30 GB of disk space should do the job. But of course, this is solely up to you based on your needs.

Of course, bandwidth transfer is also important when shopping for PHP web hosting. You may be overdoing it with anything more than 500 GB, but you will never know until you actually have your site up and running.

When shopping for PHP web hosting you should also consider some of the smaller details as well. For instance, how many domains can you host on the same account? If you have more than one website, you may need to the ability to host them all in the same place.

You should now have a better idea of what to look for from a PHP web hosting provider

Dealing with managed web hosting service

Managed hosting service can be considered as an upgraded version of web hosting. The managed hosting provider takes the responsibility of hosting the clients website in a well managed way. The managed hosting provider offers customized solution than other pre-packaged basic web hosting solutions. The fee charged for such a good quality service is obviously a bit high when compared to an ordinary type of web hosting service. The uptime guarantee of the managed hosting network service is close to 100 per cent. The managed hosting service also includes a managed disaster recovery and backup, security and network service. It also monitors all your firm’s computer systems.

A managed hosting vendor provides load balancing solution to firms who have large volume of online traffic. Through the concept of load balancing solution, the managed hosting vendor improves the performance of the network by efficiently distributing the site traffic. If the balance on the server load is maintained, then the fault tolerance and clustering factors can be prevented easily. A managed hosting provides dedicated servers that are custom built to the firm’s specifications or configurations with multiple servers. The managed hosting service also deals with firewalls and crucial security arrangements. All unauthorized access to the servers as well as from it is prevented by the managed hosting service. In other words the message that leave or enter the server or the business network, will have to pass through this managed hosting firewall and those messages which don’t pass the security, gets blocked. Managed hosting vendors also offer backup facility. It provides reliable and consistent data protection and recovery too.

A managed hosting vendor can also help business firms to change their network and systems, undertake up gradation, add options and also extend solutions. Firms can also enjoy the benefit of port monitoring package which is provided by the managed hosting vendor. This port monitoring service allows business clients to configure the host system in order to monitor the client’s server and also its ports. It is the client’s responsibility to deal with the configuration and maintenance issues. All the alerts are sent directly to the clients firm. There is also a managed hosting up gradation package which allows a firm to upgrade the port monitoring service.

In a managed hosting environment, your web hosting provider owns the equipment, licenses software and is also responsible for nearly all aspects of the solution, excluding customer-specific application. These days, the words, “managed hosting” has got a new meaning for itself because more and more providers use it to describe different aspects of their services. Before anyone makes a final decision to select a website hosting provider, he should enquire and verify the web hosting services and its reliability. This is applicable to even those website hosting providers who claim to have experience in managed dedicated servers and e-commerce web hosting service. If a website is dealing with highly sensitive confidential information, then in that case, a dedicated web hosting environment is the right choice. Mostly, companies who opt for dedicated web hosting service, will usually decide to go for a managed web hosting solution because the hosting company will handle most of the task associated with managing the dedicated host.

What Is A Domain Name?

A domain name is a word or word sequences that are entered into the address bar of an internet navigator to visit a particular website. In simple terms, a domain name is an online identity of a web owner.

A domain name helps to translate IP addresses to words. A domain name is a name that identifies one or more IP addresses, for instance the domain name microsoft.com represents about a dozen IP addresses.

Internet is based on IP addresses, not domain names, so every Web server requires a Domain Name System (DNS) server to translate domain names into IP addresses. Domain Name System stores and associates many types of information with domain names and helps to translate domain names to IP addresses.

Internet users use domain names as the URLs, ‘Uniform Resource Locators’. Domain names are used in URLs to identify particular Web pages. Take the URL http://www.pcworld.com/index.html, in the URL pcworld.com is domain name.

Every domain name has a suffix, which is termed as top level domain (TLD). The top level domain indicates the category to which a domain name belongs to. There are a limited number of top level domains, such as .gov (government agencies), .edu (educational institutions), .org (organizations, .mil (military), .com (commercial business), .net (network organizations), .ca (Canada), .uk (United Kingdom), .de (Germany or Deutschland), .us (United States) etc.

Technically, domain names are host names. Oftentimes domain names are referred to as “web addresses” that is technically incorrect and often domain names and hostnames are used interchangeably, but there are subtle technical differences between the two.

On the Internet, a hostname is a domain name assigned to the host. It is usually a combination of the host’s local name with its parent domain’s name. For instance in URL “fr.wikipedia.org,” the host name is “fr” and the domain name is ‘wikipedia.org’. The host names are translated to IP addresses via the local hosts file, or DNS. A single may possibly have several host names. A domain name is not a host name, if it doesn’t have an IP address. Thus all hostnames are domain names, but not all domain names are hostnames.

How to register your domain

When you launch a new website you must register a unique domain name with an authorized registrar. When the internet was first starting, all domain names and IP addresses were registered through one organization, Internic. Eventually Network Solutions took over the role as "keeper" of the internet domain names. Today, there are hundreds of websites where you can register your domain name but Network Solutions still maintains the main database of domain names. Some websites charge as little as $2.95 per year for your domain name while others charge as much as $35 per year for the exact same service. Some even offer one year free if you register your domain name with them and host your website on their servers. Why pay $35 when you can register your domain name for much less at another website?

So why does Network Solutions charge $35 a year if they are the keeper of the database and their resellers charge a fraction or even nothing? Who knows and who cares! Register your domain with one of the cheaper providers and you'll be fine. A word caution - be care that you choose to host your website. Getting a free year of your domain name isn't worth it if your webhost is unreliable and your website is down more than it's up.

You pay for your domain name on a yearly basis. It's a separate charge from your webhosting bill. When you register your domain name choose the autorenewal option if it's available. This way your domain name will not expire if you forget to renew it. If your domain name expires, it's free for anyone else to register so you need to stay on top of when it's expiring. Also registering your domain name for a 3 to 5 year term will often save you money. For example, godaddy.com charges $8.95 a year for your domain name but only $7.25 a year if you register for a 5 year term.

When you register your domain you can create different contact names. The three contacts are Administrator, Technical and Billing. Most of the time the same person is all 3 contacts. If you web designer registers your domain name for you, make sure you are designated as the Administrative contact. This gives you control over the domain name and you must be notified if someone is trying to make changes to your record. If you aren't one of the contacts then someone can transfer ownership of the domain name without your permission.

To see a record of your domain name, go to www.networksolutions.com and use their WHOIS utility which is located in the bottom left corner of their home page. Simply enter your domain name and click Search. You'll see the complete record of your domain name, where it's registered and where your website is hosted. For a complete video of how to use WHOIS, visit www.valiss.com/video/whois/whois.html.

When you register your domain name you'll have to the option of making it a private registration. I highly recommend paying the additional fee to make your information private. If you leave your registration public anyone can look up your domain information which includes your home or business address and your email address. Many spammers scan public domain registration records to find valid email addresses to spam.

I always use a yahoo or hotmail email account when registering my domains. This way if spammers to find my email address, I can just get a new "throwaway" email address and I won't receive spam at my primary email address.

Always make sure your domain record remains locked. Locking your domain name is a feature implemented a few years ago. When you want to transfer your domain name to a different registrar you must unlock it. Once it's unlocked the new registrar can "pull" your domain name from your current registrar. Once the transfer is complete, the domain name will be locked to prevent anyone else from "pulling" your domain away from you

An Introduction to Web Hostingdfasd

If you are planning ahead to prosper your business through web hosting services, then the selection of a reliable and reputed web hosting provider is of top most importance.

If you are planning ahead to prosper your business through web hosting services, then the selection of a reliable and reputed web hosting provider is of top most importance.
The overall fate of your website depends on the efficiency of the web host. So take all possible measures to execute an unprejudiced comparison of the services offered by several web hosting companies in the market.

The web hosting market is on a great high. With the escalating hosting service demands the price quotes of the web hosting providers also fluctuate remarkably. However, it cannot be denied that a cheap web hosting solution may appear pleasant and worthwhile in the very beginning but in the long run, you might end up paying almost double its actual worth. Whenever you find yourself hooked to such low-priced web hosting services, always look upon web hosting review sites for the accurate evaluation. These review sites specialize in carrying out the exact evaluation of the hosting services conferred by several companies in the market.

Not only this, they also provide rankings to all web hosts on the basis of the data gathered from user surveys. Additionally, such sites will further bestow you with more relevant information pertaining to current handy packages accessible in the market. One of the most superlative ways to access a domain name without a hassle is through the free domain registration facility made available by various web hosting companies of Delhi.

The long list of top ranked web hosting companies includes Blue Host, Lunar Pages, Start Logic, etc. In general, the ranking of a web hosting company is determined on the basis of its reputation, prices and other hosting plan features offered to the customers including setup, bandwidth and disk space.

So, these are few crucial guidelines that should not be overlooked if you want to be guarded from poor web hosting providers.