Content Management Systems (CMS) are great tools for maximising the full potential of your web hosting.  This blog post will look at the various web hosting scripts and web hosting tools we provide at Websoftnet with your web hosting to help you simplify your web publishing. We have included the blogging scripts that come free with our web hosting as the line between the two is becoming increasingly blurred.

WordPress
WordPress is arguably the most popular blogging software available today! It’s easy to install and use with our web hosting one click install script and will allow you to have a great looking blog in minutes. WordPress is the most popular blog software in use today

Joomla
Joomla! is one of the most powerful Open Source Content Management Systems on the planet. It is used all over the world for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications. Ready to be installed in your web hosting control panel, Joomla! is easy to install, simple to manage, and reliable.

Mambo
Mambo is a fully featured content management system that can be used for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications.

Geeklog
Geeklog allows you to create your own virtual community area, complete with user administration, story posting, messaging, comments, polls, calendar, web links, and more

Nucleus
Nucleus offers you the building blocks when you need your web hosting to create a memorable web presence. Whether you want to create a personal blog, a family page, or an online business site, Nucleus CMS can help you achieve your goals.

Drupal
Drupal is a free and open source content management system (CMS) that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website through their web hosting control panel. Drupal is easy to install, simple to manage, and reliable.

Typo3
TYPO3 is a content management system for enterprise purposes on the web and in intranets. It offers full flexibility and extendability while featuring an accomplished set of ready-made interfaces, functions and modules. Using a graphical user interface which interacts with your web hosting, authors can simply create text, insert images and multimedia files, schedule content (and much more) to build and maintain a dynamic website. This is especially true if you take advantage of TYPO3’s server-side graphics generation for making image menus, graphical headlines, etc.

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A domain name is an identification address that people use to find you or your company online. When we talk about domains, it’s  important to mention top-level domain names (TLDs). A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System (DNS) on the Internet.

There are several types of TLDs within the DNS. TLDs with two letters (such as .au – Australia, .ca – Canada, and .de – Germany) are referred to as “country-code while most TLDs with three or more characters are referred to as “generic” TLDs (such as .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz, .pro and .name).

As the Internet grew, it became desirable to create additional generic top-level domains. Some of the initial domains’ purposes were also generalized, modified, or assigned for maintenance to special organizations .

.Com

The king of TLDs continues to be .com. The intended use of .com for commercial purposes has never been fully followed. Nearly everyone, from individuals to big corporate houses, who steps on the Web wishes to grab a ‘.com’ TLD at the first instance since it stands for ‘Commercial’.  It reflects that the site is for commercial purpose. However, this domain extension  is now used by almost everyone.

.Net

.Net stands for Network. This is an extension designed for use by groups with networking technologies. It’s the one of the most coveted domain extensions after ‘.com’.

.Org

The Organization extension .org is for non-profit or non-commercial character sites. Although .org was recommended for non-commercial entities, there are no restrictions to registration.

.Info

.Info stands for Information or Informative Internet resources. This TLD is mostly used by information & resource-based websites, which are not involved in commercial activities. You can use this TLD for providing information to reinforce your brand.

.Biz

The ‘.biz’ TLD stands for Business. It is intended for registration of domains to be used by businesses. Info is an unrestricted domain, meaning that anyone can obtain a second-level domain under .info for any purpose, similar to the com, net or org domains.

.Pro

The domain name .pro is a generic top-level domain in the Domain Name System of the Internet. Its name is derived from Professional, indicating its intended use by qualified professionals such as lawyers, accountants, physicians and engineers.

.Name

It is intended for use by Individuals for representation of their real names, nicknames, screen names, pseudonyms, or other personal or fictional names. These days, this domain extension is being popularly used as a web address for Digital Identity applications.

.Mobi

Its name is derived from Mobile, indicating its use by mobile devices for accessing Internet resources via the Mobile Web. This TLD is financially backed and sponsored by company’s such as   Google, Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung, Ericsson, Vodafone, T-Mobile.

.Tv

.tv is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the islands of Tuvalu. Its intended use is for all entities related to Tuvalu, whereas it’s promoted commercially for television/video sites. Tuvalu negotiated a contract leasing its Internet domain name “.tv” for $50 million in royalties over a 12-year period. It can be registered for any purpose by anyone.

.Me

The ‘.me’ TLD is yet again a country code top level domain (ccTLD) introduced in 2007 for Montenegro. This domain extension is being promoted adequately for its global use, and become more like a personal name space. It’s being marketed on the Web by the registrars as ‘.ME domains for registration by anyone’.

. Cc

A top level domain for Cocos Islands, Australia. It was introduced in 1997, and administered by VeriSign as the ‘the next .com’. This domain extension is put to different assortment of sites, some of them especially referring to Cocos Islands. The .cc domain is also preferred by many churches and Christian organizations as “CC” also happens to be the acronym for “Christian Church.”

Click here for domain name registration

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Building a website that looks pretty good and has working (and secure) scripts can be a strenuous task. Below is a list of resources for you to take advantage of if you need an element for your website but creating it yourself is beyond your skill set.

Edit content with minimal knowledge of HTML

If you are a Websoftnet Premium web hosting customer you can install Content Management Systems (CMS) such as WordPress (yes its officially for blogs but it is being used more and more as a CMS), Joomla, Drupal or Mambo with just one click. Once these are set up you need never edit an HTML file again (although you can if you still want to!). To get started log in to your eXtend web hosting control panel.

Create attractive looking website without HTML/ CSS or Illustrator

I can hold a paint brush but that doesn’t mean I can paint and just because you know how to use the software that doesn’t mean you can design a beautiful website. To get yourself started or even to use it as it is “out of the box” here are some great websites to download readymade designs. Some are free, others require payment.

• http://www.onedollartemplates.com/
• http://www.freecsstemplates.org/
• http://www.free-css.com/
• http://www.woothemes.com (WordPress themes)
• http://www.styleshout.com/
• http://www.rockettheme.com/ (Joomla templates plus WordPress themes)
• http://joomla2u.net/ (Joomla templates)
• http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/ (free WordPress themes)

Edit images without Photoshop

Admittedly you’ll never be able to hit the dizzy heights of those that can use the likes of Photoshop but you don’t need to for most sites. Being able to rotate, re-size and crop an image is enough for the majority of editing requirements and you can do it all online with these programs:

• http://www.picnik.com/
• http://pixlr.com/
• http://fotoflexer.com/
• http://aviary.com/

Deploying scripts without understanding the code

It may sound odd that anyone could so this, but as the majority of free scripts come with nice clear step by step installation instructions, with only a little bit of knowledge you can add advanced scripts to your site quickly and relatively easily. For example, if faced with a blank text editor I wouldn’t be able to write a secure “contact us” form, but I can certainly copy & paste one in to my site or click ‘install’ on a WordPress plug-in!

• http://www.hotscripts.com/
• http://www.phpjunkyard.com/
• http://www.codango.com
• http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ (WordPress plug-ins)
• http://extensions.joomla.org/ (Joomla extensions)

Still not enough? if you don’t want to have to do any of the work, you can always buy a readymade website: http://flippa.com

Often described as one big process, good search engine optimization involves a number of different steps.  The intricacies of these steps is what leads many website owners to hire professional SEO firms that claim to have the magic formula. Going it alone could seem very daunting and unrewarding even after months of hard work. If you truly want to get the most out of search engine optimization, the following mistakes must be avoided at all costs.

Watch Out for SEO Gurantee Scams

The web waters are infested with companies looking to bank off the prevalence of SEO.  These firms often guarantee services that will put you on the first page of Google in the number one spot.  What you should know is that no company can guarantee such rankings.  The fact that most of the top ranked sites report to having no dealings with SEO firms should be enough for you not to rely on such claims.

Cloaking

The term cloaking refers to a black hat search engine optimization (SEO) technique in which the content presented to the search engine spider is different to that presented to the user’s browser.

While this may seem like a viable strategy, cloaking should be avoided if you want to remain on favorable terms with the search engines.  It might have worked a few years ago, but today’s search engine’s are sophisticated enough to detect this and other unethical forms of SEO.

Multiple Search Engine Submissions

Contrary to popular belief, submitting your website to search engines regularly can be a mistake.  There are some companies that offer services utilizing special software that will automatically submit your site on a regular basis.  Don’t buy into this as it can actually get you penalized and hinder your efforts.

Don’t Overuse Flash and Rich Graphics

If at all possible, Flash is a technology you want to do without.  Though nice from a visual aspect, Flash can leave your site heavy and difficult to process, making it nearly impossible for search engine spiders to interpret.  The best technologies are integrated with HTML as this the language embraced by all search engines. Whenever you put important information in a graphic form make sure to have it a text version of it for the search engines to index.

Moving Too Fast

SEO is an ongoing process., not something you can do just once and put to the side.  Reaching a top search engine position in two days or even two weeks is virtually impossible.  So, even though an SEO firm may claim to get you there in a short amount of time, stay away from the these bogus claims and keep your money. Generally speaking, some changes can take less than a week to take effect, while many take 3-6 months or more for measurable changes to be observed.

These are the basic no-go principles of SEO. If you follow these simple guidelines you’ll save yourself from a lot of trouble and unnecessary expenses.