Hard Headed Hosting

Thanks to dogwelder for this image

I will document this project development from a number of different angles. This makes the development time slightly longer, but allows me to save time on future projects, by keeping all the management and technical issues recorded.

More importantly, it helps you to plan your web hosting projects better.

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Visitor satisfaction must run through all aspects of your website. Much is commonsense:

• Encourage customer feedback
• Prompt response to feedback
• Clear site policies
• Consistent navigation

Most of all, you have to overdeliver in every department. There are a couple of essential tools which I have added to my WordPress Installation pack.

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Blog style websites have long been the easiest to promote, and blog promotion just got easier. And better.

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I have called the first part Essential Plug-ins. These are ones that any self-respecting WordPress web business needs. Some may have alternatives. I have selected ones that I know work. If you know of alternatives that you think are better, please let me know.

I noticed one or two that I rely on, but haven’t mentioned in this blog, so I will mention them now.

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Contact Pages are important for any web site, but crucial for a credible web business site. My current method works fine on standard contact forms, but to build a business web site, you also need surveys, polls, and all manner of related feedback mechanisms.

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Standard WordPress does not have tags, but there are many plug-ins to help you apply them. Those that I have seen were born in the days when all webmasters looked to keywords to boost their rankings in search engines.

I discuss the merits, or otherwise, of SEO on my web business site. Keywords for SEO are generally recognized as being unimportant, to the extent that free WordPress.com sites do not have them. However, there is an alternative, Read the rest of this entry »

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Creating a blogroll of business web hosting links is the final step in my initial content package.

My installation wizard will package all the starting content, customized for the intended site concept. Doing this manually takes a few hours - the wizard will do it in minutes.

After this step, you can simply continue building content, but the Internet would be a boring place if all WordPress sites used the default theme. I will discuss themes later, along with some more plug-ins that are crucial (or at least helpful) in hosting your web business.

Before that, a few short notes about links.

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My web service hosting email policy is simple - I do not publish an email address.

But communication is vital to a thriving web business, so how can I keep in touch with visitors.

The answer is my contact page. A vital early page for any website. Just a few details, and a form so you can get in touch with me.

I love to receive questions and opinions from all my readers. Standard WordPress allows comments by default, but sometimes Read the rest of this entry »

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Invest a few seconds now to protect your blog from spam, and you will save thousands in future, not to mention protecting your reputation.

Most spam is automatically generated, and you can automatically stop it with WordPress hosting anti-spam plug-ins. A small amount, typically human generated, might creep through. But if you protect yourself against the worst excesses - leaving you time to edit or filter the odd bad comment.

More importantly, it leaves you free to interact with your genuine visitors.

Most importantly, it stops new visitors from ever seeing the, often offensive spam, leaving your reputation intact.

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Following on from last post about installing the business web hosting site, this post looks at WordPress options.

I already mentioned the General options. Here are the rest.

WordPress Writing Options

I just change edit box to make a bit bigger. 15-20 lines is enough.

I used to add extra pinging services, but don’t bother now, as I can’t see any extra benefit to justify the risk of duplicate pinging. If you know different, please let me know.

WordPress Writing Options

Left as defaults. Might be a good idea to increase number of blogs if you blog frequently and use Read the rest of this entry »

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