MaconMacGuy.com:

Putting the tech pieces together
for Macon & Middle Georgia
for "a good while now"

If you have a website, your hosting account probably already has email accounts – so DON’T USE gmail or hotmail or yahoo etc. for your primary business account. Use an account tied to your domain – this will seriously boost your brand awareness and make you seem more official in the eyes of potential clients/customers.

For example, all of the hosting accounts – from the very cheapest all the way to the most expensive Dedicated hosting package – available at MidGaHosting.com come with multiple email accounts. You can access your email via the traditional route – using an email client like outlook or Thunderbird – or you can use Webmail.

The advantage here is that using you@yourbiz.com as your business email is that is reminds people of our business, of your domain, of your website – thus boosting your brand.

While we’re on the subject of boosting your business through small changes, here’s another tip: Make sure your email signature is worth reading. It should include a link to your webpage, your email address, and your basic contact info. Why? Again – to boost your brand.

This has the side effect of making you look more professional and more businesslike.

But what do you do if you just can’t let go of gmail/yahoo/hotmail/etc.?

I have one client who just loves using Gmail – so we set his Gmail account to fetch lal of the mail from the biz account so that he receives all of his mail in one spot. Yet people are emailing him at HIS domain, so this still reinforces the brand.

So start using your domain to the fullest! You paid for it!

…and if your hosting account doesn’t have sufficient email options to suit you, check out the packages over at MidGaHosting.com – [it's another MaconMacGuy.com production!]

If you need more advanced hosting for a heavy duty website, MidGaHosting. also offers Virtual Private Servers as well a fully Dedicated Hosting. Watch the video to see an overview, then click for VPS or DEDICATED SERVERS options and pricing.

Here’s a short video that gives a quick overview on why you should host with MidGaHosting.com [a division of MaconMacGuy.com!]

I had an interesting conversation with a student who wanted to start a website – but he was very confused about domains and website and such.

Domains

A Domain in just a name given to a particular computer/IP address. [IP address = a numeric address that every box connected to the internet has to have]. MaconMacGuy.com, for example, actually behind the scenes gets pointed to a particular IP address and a particular areas of that particular machine.

When you “purchase” a domain you are essentially “renting” that domain so you can use it. That’s why you have to re-up your subscription every so often, and why it’s a per-year charge.

Hosting

Hosting, on the other hand, is renting space on a webserver where your website live – i.e. where the files that make up your site are stashed. The computer is accessible via the Web, so anyone looking for your site can see it on the web.

DNS

The DNS system is essentially a big phone directory that ties the domain and the IP addresses together – MaconMacGuy.com and 66.40.34.135, for example. This way you can type in the easily remembered MaconMacGuy.com instead of 66.40.34.135.

The Domain purchase and the Hosting purchase are really two separate transactions – which means you can purchase the domain from one place and the webhosting from another. I have had several clients go ahead and purchase a domain – so they already “own” it – before they know what they will do with it. Later, they’ll purchase hosting from MidGaHosting.com, and we’ll have to do a bit of extra work to get the two tied together.

It’s usually easier – and better – to go ahead and purchase the domain and the hosting at the same time, from the same company. You’ll have ONE company to deal with, ONE account, ONE place to go and renew your website or domain, ONE user interface, etc.

I – for biased reasons, mind you! – recommend my company MidGaHosting.com for both. The prices are competitive, and the Control panel is easy to navigate through. It really doesn’t take long to figure out how to get something done [as opposed to the one in GoDaddy, which I find incredibly arcane and annoying to navigate. I frankly don't have that kind of time to waste!]

The self-serve hosting option now has some very powerful hosting options unavailable before. The nice thing about this is that it is entirely self-serve. You can surf over to a website and set it all up yourself.

But now we offer hosting options with a semi-dedicated server, virtual private server, and a dedicated server.

“Regular” hosting has dozens if not hundreds of website being served on ONE computer. This is generally not a problem – and is MUCH cheaper for the client. However, if the website has some heavy traffic, or some serious database stuff going on, an upgrade may be in order.

In practical terms the additional options mean that your site will be sharing the hardware with either far fewer sites (in the case of the semi-dedicated and virtual private server options) or with NO ONE else (in the case of the dedicated server).

As usual, our pricing is VERY competitive. Click the links for more info:

Hosting with a Dedicated Server

Hosting with a semi-dedicated server

Hosting with a Virtual Private Server [VPS]

A friend has begun using a PR person for his music activities. I noticed the PR guy is using a cs.com email account for his business email contact (in the “internet olden days” cs.com was a sign of distinction – it meant you had a CompuServe account. Nowadays it’s really dying out).

In the interest of helping him out I sent the following email – which has been edited to suit my purposes here.

Another of the things I do is web hosting (at http://www.midgahosting.com ) and design and online presences and such for some of my clients – and I noticed you’re using a cs email account. Just wanted to mention that you’d really get some brand boost if you had your own domain, and use that as your email “base of operations”.

I’ve got a couple of real estate people who are doing that – they’ve bought their domain and hosting (under $4/month) and they’ve never done anything with the hosting part.

In your case I’d suggest getting the domain, and then setting up a wordpress blog (which is EASY using midgahosting) – use a couple of “pages” for company info, but use your posts for the releases you send out. This would amplify the search engine affect for each release.

[What they look like depends on the template chosen for the blog, but often pages show up as tabs at the top of the blog, and posts are the main part. Over at http://www.maconmacguy.com, for instance, pages are the tabs at the tops, but posts are the entries on the right under "news".]

Just thought I’d throw this idea into your bucket! I feel strongly that receiving emails from whatever@mycompany.com is stronger than getting it from whatever@cs.com.

–

The process:  head over to http://www.midgahosting.com.
Click on the “sign up” link, at the top.
Fill out the form. Decisions to make:

1. what username you want – for logging into your control panel area
2. Which data center (I suggest California, but there isn’t much speed difference between California and London from Georgia)
3. Which plan – for your purposes I suggest the cheapest! Easily upgradeable later if needed.
4. Pre-installed script – Select wordpress here. No charge – this just saves you a step later.
5. Your desired domain…. then the usual contact and payment info

==============================================
Tom Rule
The MaconMacGuy
Computer help, training, Websites, Processes

http://www.MaconMacGuy.com

Web Hosting under $4 a month

http://www.MidGaHosting.com

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I see ads everywhere for inexpensive web hosting. So why pick MidGaHositng.com for your webhosting – and when should you opt for something more powerful?

Plans start at less than $5 a month (US). This includes a whole slew of features – plenty of email accounts, alias email accounts, file storage, bandwidth, stats, and auto-install of many different open source packages (like WordPress, Movable Type for blogs, classified ads, guestbooks, photo albums, etc). These are all accessible via an easy to use control panel – you just login and click to select what you want to do!

>More details can be had at MidGaHosting.com

So when would you need something more powerful?

A lot of the cheaper hosting systems woudl have you believe they can handle anything. Short answer: NOPE!

That’s why I offer a second option for my clients. It is more expensive – around $120 a year – but is hosted on a more powerful server, in a datacenter with a closer tie to the internet’s backbone.

(In laymans’ terms, those servers are a few layers closer to the absolute fastest segments of the whole internet – well, except for Internet2, which isn’t publicly available.)

I generally suggest my clients host on the more powerful options when they will have a LOT of traffic, are going to do heavy ecommerce, need industrial strength Spam filtering, would like to share calendars/address books/etc via Outlook AND Webmail company-wide, or will want to upgrade to a VPS or hosted server in the future.

I have an article HERE that looks at the differences between the hosting plans I offer. Take a look – and feel free to contact me for more info, or an opinion on what you should do!