Archive for the ‘Web Business Hosting Roadmap’ Category

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Bad Web Hosting Behavior

February 19th, 2008 by Keith from shrewdies | 2 Comments | Filed in Phase 1, WordPress Hosting
Bad Behavior
Thanks to dogwelder for this image
After a short break from developing my web hosting business, I have a new exciting project.

I’ll use the project to describe the technical steps you need to consider when hosting a new website, and take the opportunity of developing my webhosting wizard.

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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2 Essential Visitor Management Tools

September 21st, 2007 by Keith from shrewdies | 1 Comment | Filed in Phase 1, Web Business Promotion, WordPress Hosting
Visitor management is crucial to all but the unfriendliest of business websites.

It’s no use putting on a friendly face, and hoping that your visitors will be happy – you have to work to keep them happy.

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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Small Business Web Site Promotion

September 16th, 2007 by Keith from shrewdies | No Comments | Filed in Phase 1, Web Business Promotion
October 2008 Update: BlogRush is sadly no longer with us. See Bye Bye BlogRush
The latest small business web site promotion looks set to be the best.

I believe any serious small business website needs to include a substantial blogging element. It is the easiest way to generate content for your visitors, and the easiest way to keep your customers informed.

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

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Business Website Builder

September 10th, 2007 by Keith from shrewdies | No Comments | Filed in Phase 1, WordPress Hosting
My main activity, currently, is developing my business website builder wizard. I’ve added a new page to keep track of development. Though it is a long way from finished, I hope you find some of the development information useful.

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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Build A Business Web Site

September 6th, 2007 by Keith from shrewdies | No Comments | Filed in Phase 1, Web Business Publishing, WordPress Hosting
As I build a business web site at Shrewdies.com, it acts as a great reinforcing exercise to test and improve the plug-ins collection for my WordPress installation wizard.

Today I found a better forms handler, reminded myself about the importance of backups, and found a potential method for making plug-in management much easier.

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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WordPress Tags

August 21st, 2007 by Keith from shrewdies | No Comments | Filed in Phase 1, Web Business Publishing, WordPress Hosting

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, (more…)

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Business Web Hosting Links

August 16th, 2007 by Keith from shrewdies | No Comments | Filed in Phase 1, WordPress Hosting

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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Business Web Hosting Categories

August 15th, 2007 by Keith from shrewdies | No Comments | Filed in Phase 3, Web Business Design, Web Business Publishing

I have already created 4 posts, but all these are labeled ‘Uncategorized’. This is a complete waste of time. At the very least we want a catchall category that reflects the key site concept.

In this case, the key site concept is Business Web Hosting. You should change the default category to your key site concept. In WordPress, this is in Manage Categories, and my installation wizard will automatically pick this up and change it.

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Web Service Hosting Email Policy

August 14th, 2007 by Keith from shrewdies | No Comments | Filed in Old Web Business Posts, Phase 1, WordPress Hosting

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 (more…)

WordPress Hosting Anti-Spam Plug-ins

August 14th, 2007 by Keith from shrewdies | No Comments | Filed in Old Web Business Posts, Phase 1, WordPress Hosting

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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