Marketing Your Website With vDeck

As the popularity of this control panel has continued to rise, many of its users are saying that it may replace cPanel as the most popular control panel within the next 5 years. While this may or may not be true, it certainly seems that it is just as capable as cPanel.  Unlike cPanel however, vDeck focuses equally on the marketing aspect of website management, as well as the administrative aspect. Users have access to a variety of analytical traffic tools that aid in their SEO efforts. vDeck also makes it simple to install third party social bookmarking and video posting applications that increase the popularity of your website.

A Solution for All Sizes

Although its competitor cPanel is known primarily as a solution for small businesses, vDeck is different in that it can accommodate the needs of virtually any size business, including large corporations.  vDeck is also an optimal solution for a variety of  server environments, including virtual, private, dedicated and shared hosting environments. Whether you own a small retail shop, or an online empire, vDeck can accommodate your needs. In fact, it’s multi-tiered administrative interface makes it easy to control multiple domains within a singular user-friendly interface. Users can log in and out of their website’s with ease, without every exiting the vDeck control panel.

vDeck’s Expandability

The power of vDeck is literally unlimited, as it is a fully expandable and customizable control panel.  You can add third party applications that enhance the productivity of your website in a variety of ways. You can even hire a programmer to create a program that is specifically designed to meet your needs, as the software is compatible with almost every programming language. vDecks expandability make it a solution that is capable of handling a plethora of complex tasks with ease. Users can create custom cron jobs that automatically handle daily work such as uploading content, posting to site blog’s, changing themes and any other administrative task you can imagine.

Learning to Use vDeck

Learnign to use vDeck is also extremely simple, as there is a wealth of documented informaiton on the software that can be accessed directly from the control panel. On top of the provided information, users can find video tutorials online, and can chat with other vDeck users in the vDeck help forums. With all of the resources available for vDeck, the learning curve for vDeck is nearly non-existent. In fact, many users are able to use the software without ever reading a single tutorial.

Updating Content

The most important function of a CMS is by far it’s ability to facilitate content updating and organization, as this is the core function of a content management system. A CMS makes uploading content to various sections of the website quick and easy. Users can create accounts within the content management systems and assign privileges to their employees, giving them the ability to upload content as it is created, which saves the website owner time and frustration.  Users can also create new  web pages with unique title tags, meta tags and search engine optimized URLs. The administrator can also upload large amounts of content and then schedule a certain amount to be posted each day, while also controlling what area of the site the content is posted to. This allows users to turn daily tasks into monthly or weekly tasks, making website management as simple as the administrator had originally envisioned.

Improving Website Design

Aside from facilitating basic content management, a CMS will also improve the overall look of your website by making changing templates and site themes simple and risk free. Since a content management system separates the content from the design, you’ll be able to try out several templates without having to worry about making the wrong decision. In fact, in some content management systems you can even schedule template changes automatically, to improve the look of your website on a regular basis without completing repetitive tasks.

Generating Traffic

By assisting in the above functions the CMS improves website performance and appearance. This attracts traffic and keeps visitors returning. However, the CMS also provides other functions that aid in creating a solid traffic flow. Users can create surveys and polls to find out what their visitors like. By knowing the minds of your visitors you’ll be able to upload content that will keep them interested. A content management system will also aid you in creating a search engine optimized website, by giving you the ability to easily create web pages that are keyword optimized and properly indexed. Another feature that helps you gain residual traffic is the usage of RSS feeds. RSS feeds let your visitors keep track of recent posts on your website, and they can also post your RSS feed on their website for their visitors to see. This is a great way to generate traffic and build networks of sites.

Indeed the internet offers a marketplace of guilt free crime, where thieves can have their fun without ever seeing the face of their victims. However, just as these cyber criminals are oblivious to the lives of their victims, so are the victims oblivious to the existence of the hackers. Some business owners are not oblivious, they’d just rather not think about it. Putting your website’s security aside can have seriously dire consequences.

Ensuring Customer Safety

One of the primary concerns web host’s have in regards to website security is customer safety. Maintaining trust within the online shopping format is crucial towards building a successful business. There have been cases where the customer was defrauded and the website owner was blamed for this fraud, and cases like this have even resulted in the loss of business and even unjust incarceration.  To avoid such a drastic mishap, it is important to select a web host that is serious about their commitment to security.  Make sure you have an active SSL certificate for your site at all times, and you may even want to post the certificate seal on your website to instill trust in your customers and to deter hackers.

Quality Data Encryption

A common security issue online is identity theft. With all of the important information that is floating around in cyber space, this type of crime is inevitable, yet entirely preventable. All that is needed to prevent the interception of crucial information is quality data encryption. Every web host includes a certain level of data encryption with their hosting plans, but if you’re running a business then you may want to consider the strongest form of encryption available. Talk with you web hosting provider to find out about the strongest data encryption service they offer.

Minimizing Vulnerability

You may notice that your web hosting plan comes with a control panel that has an integrated application installation utility. It is important that you don’t get carried away installing third party applications. It is a well known fact that a lot of these applications leave your site extremely vulnerable to attack, and therefore the use of these applications should be limited. You should also make sure all of your passwords are strong and contain a mixture of numbers and letters. If you use a simple password, a hacker can us a brute force program to guess the password systematically. A good program can crack a simple password within an hour or so, leaving the entire back end of your website open to intrusion.

Finding the “Time – Wasters”

The main problem with mastering search engine optimization is that it really can’t be done on a universal scale. Every project is different, as every niche and every market is different. What works with one SEO project may prove to be a disaster in another.  Thus, how do you determine what will work for your project? The answer  is rather simple; the first thing that any good SEO expert will do is research. While the process of search engine optimization is partly trial and error, the remaining aspects of successful SEO are attributed to research. Why make unnecessary mistakes? Therefore it is best to find the time wasting techniques, before they waste any of your time! One prime example of a time wasting technique would be targeting the wrong keywords. Using keyword research tools such as Google Analytics is a good way to avoid wasting time on a useless keyword.

Finding the “Traffic – Winners”

Of course research can prevent mistakes form happening, but success can only be achieved through trial and error. How are you supposed to know what works if you don’t actually try it? After you’ve conducted a thorough amount of research, begin your search engine optimization efforts by promoting your keyword. Keywords are always the building blocks of the first SEO efforts. Learning how to effectively place and use keywords is the first step towards becoming an SEO master. Once you’ve begun promoting your keyword, you’ll need to immediately begin analyzing traffic. It is crucial to find out where your traffic is coming from, so you can continue to target this audience.

Using the Traffic to Generate More Traffic

Once you have traffic coming in, you can use it to raise your site’s page ranking even further. Many people don’t realize that Google records how long each referred visitor stays at the website. The longer the visitor stays, the more useful your site appears to be, which will obviously result in a higher page ranking. Placing useful content on your site is a great way to keep your visitors interested long enough to impact your search engine rankings. Useful content will also make visitors link to your site, which will in turn improve the popularity of your site.

The Dangers of Ecommerce

The world of ecommerce an extremely competitive one that is teeming with cut-throat business minded individuals that would do anything to get ahead of the competition. Many times the brand of a business is capitalized upon by it’s competitor, and the hard-earned popularity of the business is literally stolen by the opportunist competitor. Protecting your online brand means protecting your domain name, and any of the items that make comprise your brand, including logos, slogans, artwork, and any other idea that is unique to your business. Using the following two methods alone will help you secure your online identity to prevent the loss of thousands of dollars in business.

Register All Similar Domains

The main method unscrupulous competitors will use to steal the popularity of your brand is name cloning. This is when domains with names that are similar to your domain’s name are bought and used to attract customers that would otherwise be yours. A good example of basic name cloning would be someone buying and publishing a .net domain with the same name as a popular .com domain. For example, there may be an extremely popular website that goes by the name of “popularwebsite.com;” the perpetrator will then register a domain with the name “popularwebsite.net” in hope of stealing some of it’s competitors traffic. They will also try to purchase domain names that have close spellings, such as “popular-website.com”.To prevent this form happening make sure you purchase all extensions and all close spellings that pertain to your domain name.

Trademark Your Name

The above method can prevent competitors form registering a domain that is similar to yours, but it will not keep them from stealing your brand name or using a similar name to promote their business. Competitors will do anything to capitalize and minimize the success of another business owner, including stealing log ideas, slogan ideas, brand names, and any other intellectual property that is fair game. To prevent your hard work from falling into the hands of your competitors, you’ll need to trademark every idea you plan on using as soon as you conceptualize it.

Owning a premium domain name is like having a piece of prime real estate right now, and as we approach the middle of the 21^st century, eventually all of the shorter names will be taken. This means that now is as good a time as ever to begin investing in domain names. The problem is, many people don’t know what to do with their domain name once they’ve acquired it. There are two ways to make money with a domain; you can monetize it for personal use or you can sell it and let someone else monetize it. Either way the goal is to produce a profit as quick as possible.

Set Milestones

Although a lot of a domain’s value lies within the name itself, the majority of it’s measurable value lies within it’s traffic attributes. The name may be priceless, but there is no way to tell how much it is worth based on the name alone. Instead of relying on the name alone, you’ll need to build the value of the website b generating traffic and improving it’s search engine ranking. Sites that have high search engines rankings generally sell for more money, but since we are trying to flip the domain as quickly as possible, this will not be our primary focus. Instead, we’ll want to set a time limit, get as much done as possible, and then put the domain on the market.

Focus on Organic Traffic

While you may not be able to reach the top of the search engine within your desired time limit, you can still generate a phenomenal amount of backlinks, which in turn will boost the value of your site. Aside from general page ranking, potential buyers want to know there are a lot of incoming links pointing towards the domain. This will mean instant popularity and little work on their part, which of course boosts the value of the domain. Generating organic repetitive traffic is the best way to boost the value of the domain.

Selling the Domain

Once you have built up the domain’s value, it’s time to find your clients. There are many ways to sell a domain, but since time is of the essence we’ll need to rule out a couple of options. For example, you can’t squat on the domain and wait for a buyer to come along and make a proposal, as this could take years. While this may be wise for long term investors, it is not suitable for our purpose. Instead, we’ll need to take a more proactive approach and go after the clients. One way we can do this is by signing up to multiple domain auction sites or forums and listing the domain for sale. When listing the domain make sure you list all of the important attributes, including how many incoming links you’ve amassed, how much daily traffic the domain generates, and how much revenue (if any) is generated on a daily basis. If you are new to the domain name game, then you may want to start your price at an undisclosed amount and wait for buyers to make offers. Once you have a pool of offers, pick the highest bidder, sell the domain, and then move onto the next.

Designing Your Website

Of course the first thing you will need to do is develop and build your own website. If you have experience in web design then this will not be a problem for you, and you can manually program everything in an FTP editor such as DreamWeaver. If you do not have experience in web design, then you may want to use a certain platform to create your website. You can find a free website building platform at wordpress.org. WordPress provides a plethora of templates, themes, plugins and “widgets” that can be used to enhance the quality of your website. You even have the option to create your won custom WordPress theme. You can also use a web building platform known as Joomla. Joomla makes the entire site creation process automated and it also makes the administration of your website a lot easier. While these platforms make things easier and can be very useful, they are not absolutely necessary as most web hosts include site building software within their packages.

Purchase Web Hosting For Your Domain

Next you will need a web host to show your domain to the rest of the world. All hosting packages include server space and also domain name registration. Your decision regarding which hosting package you purchase will largely depend on how big you want your website to be. Of course a larger and busier website will need more bandwidth, server space and features. If you are only interested in starting a blog, then I would recommend you find a hosting company that offers full blog support. Many hosting companies will also provide tools that can make blogging a lot easier for you.

Publishing Your Website

To add information to your website you will need to upload files to the root folder of your hosting account using an FTP server.  Of course you also have the option of using the integrated file uploader that comes with your hosting account, but this is not as fast or easy as using an FTP client. There are many FTP clients available and you can obtain a free one called FileZilla.  If you are new to web design and development, then there is no better way to learn than by getting hands on experience.  It is recommended that you start slowly using free services and tool, this way you are not paying to learn. Once you have become comfortable with the freeware, you can then move up to paid services that are more beneficial.

After you have acquired the basics of website design and web hosting, you’ll be able to create a new website or blog within a matter of minutes. Don’t forget to continuously update your arsenal of applications and tools that will make your job ten times easier.

Switching Servers

A common problem that many webmasters have when changing servers is data loss during transfer. This happens because the TTL (Time to Live) is not instant, and therefore some of the data is lost in transition, or at the very least delayed. To prevent this you’ll need to change a few settings at least 24 hours before the relocation of your website. Login to Plesk in your current hosting account and click on Domains. Locate the domain that you’re about to move and click on the DNS settings.  Then select the SOA record. You’ll need to change the Default TTL to 15 minutes or 900 secs. Once you’ve done this click on SET to finish the process. Now any changes that take place will be final within 15 minutes of the change, thereby minimizing downtime and data loss.

Restoring Your Site’s Backup

After about a day, login into the Plesk admin of your new domain and locate the Backup Manager.   Then click on Personal FTP repository settings.  Enter the required information, and type in httpdocs in the directory for backups field. Finally click on OK to activate the change.

Now go back to the main backup manager module, and click on backup. Create a backup name, then click on Personal FTP repository. Click on Domain configuration and content then select Backup. Depending on the size of your website, the backup process should finish within 5 minutes for a small website, to one day for a tremendously large website. The connection speed will also cause time variations as well.  Once the back up is made, you may easily download it through the backup module.

Finalizing the Process

Now you’ll need to contact the new host’s support company and let them know that you need to restore the backup of your old website. Give them the name of the directory, in this case httpdocs. You can also ask them for assistance in restoring your domain using the backup file, and they should be able to walk you through the rest of the process with ease. Once you’ve contacted the hosting company, there re literally 2-3 steps left until you have your entire site running exactly the same as it was prior to the web hosting move.

Key Features

DirectAdmin is renowned as one of the simplest control panels to use, however this simplicity does not sacrifice it’s functionality. Aside from easy navigation, it also offers stability, speed and efficiency. DirectAdmin’s reliability stems from it’s ability to automatically recover from errors that cause system crashes. Perhaps most impressive is that even with all of these benefits, DirectAdmin is still half the price of cPanel and other similar control panels!

DirectAdmin also supports in-depth user administration. The webmaster has the ability to setup and administrate the accounts of new administrators/users and even has the rights to delegate server space to resellers. DirectAdmin administrators can even setup multiple packages for resellers that follow a predesignated set of rules. Webmasters can also control IP addresses by using the IP menu that is included in the control panel.

Reselling Benefits

DirectAdmin also serves many benefits to the reseller as well.  Resellers have the power to create, modify or delete accounts.  Similar to a website administrator, the reseller can select from predefined hosting packages and distribute them to clients.  They can also view the resource usages of their clients to monitor bandwidth and storage.  DirectAdmin allows resellers to interact with clients via a built-in support ticket system.  It also includes a feature that enables the creation of personalized name servers for the benefit of end-users.

Account Creation in DirectAdmin

Domain owners can also use the administrative interface of DirectAdmin to set up and manage multiple POP3 email accounts. You can also set up FTP accounts and access a DNS menu that provides complete control. Domain owners can also view website statistics through DirectAdmin, to improve their traffic techniques. You’ll also have access to tools that enhance your site designing abilities and an easy backup utility that let’s you backup your entire site with a few clicks.

In the end, DirectAdmin is a worthy opponent to cPanel and Plesk, in fact it is a superior solution for those using the VPS hosting environment.

Increasing the Popularity of Your Website With Video

As I’m sure you know, the popularity of your website has a great impact on it’s search engine ranking. The more popular your site is, there people will link to it, and the more incoming links your site has, the more popular it is perceived to be by the search engines. It is almost like a snowball effect. The great aspect about video content is that people are more likely to link their friends to a video, than to a text page. Not only will the viewers of the videos bring you traffic, but the popularity of your site that is generated by the video will in turn generate more popularity within the search engines.

Make Your Video Content Easy to Index

The problem most people have with video content is that they embed it on their site in the Flash format, and then they wonder why their attempts are not successful. The fact is, search engines still cannot index Flash content effectively. Therefore if you’re going to embed video content on your site, try to use a different video format. The best way to do this is to host the video on YouTube, and then link to the video or embed the video on your site. The beauty of YouTube is that it is displayed at the top of many Google search results, so if you get good at keyword placement in YouTube, you may be able to dominate a particular keyword in Google, with very little effort.

Another way to make your video content easier to access is to create video map for your site, and then submit it to the search engines.

Keeping Your Visitors Entertained

Many people do not know that Google also use an algorithm that judges how long each visitor stays at your site. The longer your visitors stay, the higher your page rank gets. To keep your visitors at your site for longer periods of time, it is recommend that you embed videos on your site’s landing page. This will keep your visitors entertained long enough to impact the page ranking of your website. If your video is entertaining enough, then it will also prompt them to return, and maybe even post a link to your website.