- Frequently Asked Questions
- Popular Articles
How do I get listed on the search engines?
This is known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It is a constantly changing and very inexact science. Basically you place key words and phrases on your website pages and in their meta tags, then register your website with the various search engines. You then monitor your results and refine your pages until you get the results that you want. The whole process can take from six to eight weeks and, by the time your website begins to show up the rules will change and you must start the process all over again. We can relieve you of this headache for a small fee, Ask Us for a quote for the keywords that you want to be found with.
I already have a website, how do I move it to 4yourwebsite.com?
This is really quite simple. To move your site without any interruption please follow these instructions:
1. Order web hosting from us.
2. Upload your web site to the temporary address we give you.
3. Contact the company you registered your domain name through and ask them to change the name servers to: ns5.4yourwebsite.com, ns6.4yourwebsite.com. ns7.4yourwebsite.com and ns8.4yourwebsite.com
4. Once the name servers are changed it takes about 48 hours for the domain to move over to point to your new 4yourwebsite.com account.
5. We recommend waiting about a week after this is complete before contacting your previous web host to cancel your account.
If all of this sounds too complicated, just order your hosting from us, give us your old website access information and we will take care of the transfer for you. We will transfer your basic, static website for free. There is a fee for transfer of databases associated with dynamic, database-driven websites.
Tip: To know when the move is complete, add something new to the version of the site that you upload to your 4yourwebsite.com server. That way you can tell if the domain is pointing to our server or to the old one.
What is a meta tag?
Meta Tags are invisible parts of the web page, placed between the head tags that will help the search engines find your website. The main ones involved in search engine optimization are title, description, keywords and robots meta tags. If this sounds too technical, we can do your search-engine optimization and registration for you, for a small fee.
Do I need to backup my website if it is hosted on 4yourwebsite.com?
Daily, weekly and monthly backups of each website we host are created and stored at the server data center. Our web servers also have hot-swappable, redundant disk drives installed so that, in the event of a hard disk failure, all websites remain online while the repair is being done.
However, you can never have too many backups! We suggest that you maintain your own backups in addition to all of the precautions that we take for you.
How do I know which plan to choose? How much web space is enough?
Many web hosting companies will try to dazzle you with numbers like 1,000 to 2,000 megabytes (1GB to 2GB). They offer this much storage because they know that most sites will never use even a fraction of it. 1 Megabyte to 500 Megabytes of storage is sufficient for almost any website. If you figure that the average page, with graphics, is 10K - 20K, then 5 to 10 Megabytes of web space would accommodate 500 to 1,000 web pages including their image files.
Very few websites exceed 100 Megabytes, in fact, most smaller sites do not even come close to 10 Megabytes. A well-designed database-driven website with, literally; thousands, or even tens of thousands, of pages can fit into 350 Megabytes. This includes the dynamic pages (about 1/2 Megabyte) some graphics on every page (which use most of the 350MB of space) and the database (under 5 Megabytes). The exception would be a website with lots of video (.mpg) and/or audio (.mp3) files. We can create a custom website hosting package for you, if you need lots of space for audio and video files in order to accommodate them economically and in a way that will not bog down your server.
Usually, starting with our 20MB plan is plenty, or the 50MB plan if you need a dynamic, database-driven website. As your site grows you can always upgrade to more storage space when, and if, it is needed.
If all of this still confuses you, just call 423-521-0244, or use our Ask Us and we will figure it all out for you.
How do I know which plan to choose? How much bandwidth do I need?
To estimate your bandwidth usage multiply the size of your average page, including the size of images included in the page, by the number of times that page will be viewed in a given month. Multiply that number by the number of pages in your website. This will give you an overestimate of actual use.
If the average page on your site was 20,000 bytes (20K), and was viewed 500 times and you had 50 pages, your bandwidth usage for the month would be around 500,000,000 bytes or 0.5 G. This is only a rough estimate.
Your actual measurements can be determined by looking at your website stats at the end of each month.
Our hosting plans offer generous traffic allowances and, by the time you ever exceed them, you will have a very successful website that will be able to support any associated extra charges for bandwidth use.
Why do you not offer unlimited bandwidth or unlimited disk space?
When we set up 4yourwebsite.com we wanted it to be the most reliable and honest web hosting company on the Internet. Many companies quote "unlimited" or "unmetered" bandwidth and/or disk space allocations, but in the small print you will find that they have the right to remove your site without warning if you are using too much bandwidth or disk space. Put simply, this means they have a limit but they are not prepared to tell you what it is, or that they limit you in other ways that will even prevent visitors from being able to access your site. They need to have this clause because bandwidth (or data transfer) and disk space both cost money. The telecom companies that provide Internet connectivity charge for every GB of transfer on their networks and many "unlimited companies" have found that they cannot sustain their service without regularly removing accounts.
4yourwebsite.com has a proper, sustainable, business model which offers high bandwidth allocations to all our customers with no automatic removal of sites for exceeding their allocations. We tell you how much bandwidth you have and give you a meter (in your control panel) to monitor your use of it.
I've heard that the connection to the Internet is important. What kind of connections do you have?
Our data centers are located in the richest Internet traffic distribution points in the United States. Proximity to these interchanges has a direct effect on access and transfer speeds -- which are measurably higher for our servers.
Our network delivers world-class speed, redundancy and capacity with Bandwidth from multiple Tier 1 providers on multiple redundant fiber connections with tremendous scalability and physical and geographic provider redundancy.
What type of DNS servers do you have? Are they reliable?
Our servers use a distributed DNS system with primary name servers on enterprise-level computer systems in geographically separate data centers. It is as reliable a system as we have seen on any hosting company servers.
Many hosting companies run two name servers on the same server as your website. This is insecure, and unreliable because if the web server goes down the DNS needs to propagate out when the system comes back online. Our DNS system continues to work regardless of any issues with your website. Some hosting companies will put two name servers on different physical servers in the same data center. This is not sufficient because if they have servers in more than one data center and the line to the first location goes down, all the sites that they host will disappear from the Internet.
In the unlikely event that our master DNS server fails we have a backup DNS server running in parallel. Some of our competitors think this system is overkill, but you should take this as an indication of how seriously we treat the business of hosting your website.
After I place my web hosting order, how long will it be before my web server is activated?
Our goal is to activate all new sites within 48 hours (or sooner). However, your .com/.net/.org domain will not work until it is pointed to our name servers by your domain registrar (hopefully us). This process takes several days to complete, depending on your registrar, and your ISP’s DNS update schedule. If your site has not been activated within 24 hours time, please call us at 423-521-0244 to let us know.
How do I set up my website before the domain is pointing to it?
When you register a new domain (or change an existing domain to point to our name servers) it can take up to 72 hours for the domain name to start working. While you are waiting, you can use a temporary address to upload and test your website.
1. To use your site's temporary address: To upload your website before the domain has moved over to it, use your username and password and set the FTP server to your IP address that was in your welcome email and the host directory to /public_html
2. To view your pages, first let us know that you need temporary "~" access, then go to your IP address followed by "/~" followed by your account's user name e.g. http://111.11.1.11/~username/
What type of software do I need to upload my site to your servers?
You can use any FTP program, our web-based File Manager, any version of DreamWeaver and many others with built-in FTP capability. We recommend getting familiar with using Filezilla even if your web editing software has built-in FTP.
When should I set up for Credit Card Processing in addition to PayPal?
Eventually processing cards directly in addition to via PayPal will help to increase your website sales.
We've found that some people, who do not have PayPal accounts, get frustrated with the hoops that PayPal sometimes makes them jump through to pay with a Credit Card (vs with a PayPal account). Others may have had a bad experience with PayPal and refuse to use them (rare, but has happened). Then there are those that would rather trust their credit card info to PayPal than to you and will only use PayPal, even if you offer them the option to use Credit Cards.
So it can, ultimately, increase sales to offer both PayPal AND direct credit card processing. We recommend that, once you reach a level of at least 5 - 7 orders per week, you look at setting up direct credit card processing. Prior to that volume level the cost is usually more than it is worth.
To accept credit cards on your website will require a dedicated IP address, SSL certificate and credit card merchant account.
We've found that some people, who do not have PayPal accounts, get frustrated with the hoops that PayPal sometimes makes them jump through to pay with a Credit Card (vs with a PayPal account). Others may have had a bad experience with PayPal and refuse to use them (rare, but has happened). Then there are those that would rather trust their credit card info to PayPal than to you and will only use PayPal, even if you offer them the option to use Credit Cards.
So it can, ultimately, increase sales to offer both PayPal AND direct credit card processing. We recommend that, once you reach a level of at least 5 - 7 orders per week, you look at setting up direct credit card processing. Prior to that volume level the cost is usually more than it is worth.
To accept credit cards on your website will require a dedicated IP address, SSL certificate and credit card merchant account.
Is 4yourwebsite.com PayPal Verified?
Our parent company, Data Management
Solutions LLC, has been PayPal Verified since 2001.
Do my buyers have to have a PayPal account to buy my goods and services with PayPal?
No. It does make the process easier if they have a PayPal account but if you turn the PayPal Optional feature on, your buyer will not be required to create a PayPal Account to complete a purchase.