Tag Archive for: hosting

Dan Benton

Facelift for Dogsbody Hosting

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It’s been over 7 years since we launched Dogsbody Hosting to the masses.  Things have changed a lot in that time so we’re happy to have now completed a facelift for the site and are re-launching our new site today.

Dogsbody Hosting started out being a hobby that paid for itself and slowly turned into a business.  We are really proud of our roots and how we have had to do very little marketing over the years.  100% of our sales have come via referrals and 98% of the customers we had after year one are still with us to this day.

Our old site was looking rather dated though.  Back in 2003 the biggest browsers were Internet Explorer (IE6, IE5.5 & IE4), Netscape Navigator & Opera.  The modern markup that we have today was a twinkle in the eye of Tim Berners-Lee, and Javascript was used for web apps such as games on websites instead of one of the key tools in website development that it is now.

Our original site was written using the Mambo CMS.  As this CMS forked and grew into the Joomla! project we migrated our site a number of times.  When looking to redevelop our site we looked hard at sticking with Joomla! by utilising the new code and templates available today but as the site was so old (in Internet terms) there was too much of the old Mambo and old Joomla files around that would break things.

It became obvious we had to start from first principals again which meant that we were free to look at the other CMS systems around.  After much testing we settled on WordPress, an excellent CMS that has grown from strength to strength in recent years.  In fact over 70% of the new hosting customer this year are using our space to run a WordPress site.

During the years we amassed quite a collection of FAQ entries and pages for help and support.  While these were full of useful information we didn’t think that they were being used by our customers who can pick up the phone and speak to a person any time they want.  Why would they spend time crawling through a Knowledge Base when they could get an answer that was personal to them and their setup just by calling us.  We have therefore archived our FAQ pages.  They may come back in the future, but only if you need them.

The new website has given us a great opportunity to tidy up and publicise some of the great products we now have.  We have created a number of hosting packages for standard setups as well as launching a Secondary DNS service for companies that run their own servers but need independent redundancy.

We hope you enjoy our site and here’s looking forward to seeing it grow more in the future.

 

Dan Benton

It doesn’t always have to be .com

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In some ways the internet is very crowded (100 million active websites) and in other ways very quiet (most web traffic is caused by few sites) but it’s important to remember that the internet is pretty much limitless and there is more than one way to claim your acre of land online.

When first creating a website it’s easy to instantly think that you need a .com web address or that you are just in the UK so can go with a cheaper .uk address.  There is nothing wrong with that but with .com being the busiest of all the top level domains (TLDs) and .uk now being the 2nd largest country code top-level domain (ccTLD) it’s quite hard to get the name you want.

Two is better than one

It’s always a good idea to own more than one domain.  You may only need one domain to run your site but you have to ask yourself how you or your company would feel if you owned the .com address and then someone else went and bought the .co.uk?  Remember that they can use the domain for whatever they like which may be something you don’t want associated with your name and brand.

Having multiple domains can act as a backup too, if you can receive email on more than one address then should something happen it can allow you to carry on running, at least while things are sorted out.  And before you ask what can happen to domain names that you own… they can be stolen/hijacked, taken offline by authorities or even forget to be renewed… although we would never do that!

Another advantage to owning several domains, they can be utilised for different areas of your business.  .tv domains are a great example of this allowing it to point to video content.  Instead of hiding tutorials or a video blog deep on your website or on YouTube why not point your customers straight there.

Speciality domains

Speciality domains are domain extensions with a specific meaning that is well known to Internet users.  These domain extensions provide a clue to visitors that tells them the type of content to expect or what form that content will take.

.me – Not many think about Montenegro when they see a .me domain.  The use is obvious, .me means it’s about me.  Visitors to the site will expect content about the person who owns the domain.  Recommended for blogs, a CV or resume, photo sharing, anything personal.

.tv – “If you have a play button on your website you should have a .tv”.  Visitors to a .tv site know what to expect, video content.  Recommended for tutorials, family video sharing, screencasts, live streams & YouTube channels.

.mobi – Specifically designed to host mobile content.  Most CMS driven sites such as WordPress and Joomla can seamlessly offer a mobile formatted page and it’s a good way to advertise this to mobile visitors.

.co – A great alternative to the .com TLD.  Also has additional meanings such as co-op.

Other domains

You don’t always need a speciality domain, there are the standard ones too.

.com – The original and still has its place.  Recognized globally as the biggest.

.net – You can’t get more tech than a .net domain. Perfect for Internet companies or groups that work in the online world.  Many companies also have a .net version of their domain which is used by the IT group to name and manage machines used by the company, this separates the IT “tinkering” from the marketing “sales”.

.org – Always intended to be used for personal sites .org has now lost that moniker and is deemed by some as just for non-profits.  Some companies like to have a commercial presence on .com and their organisational details on .org.

.info – Of the seven new TLDs introduced in 2000 .info has become the most successful.  “Info” is a recognized term in over 30 languages which makes this TLD a truly global domain.

.biz – A popular alternative for companies whose business name is already taken as a .com.

.eu – For a UK company branching out from our small island it can get expensive to start registering and promoting domains in every country.  The .eu allows for a pan European look.

.uk – Not to be belittled.  You may be a sports club or local group, even if you do leave the UK you still want to promote yourself as a UK team or company.  What could be better than having it in your name.

Whatever you choose you can see that there are plenty of options.  Perhaps Dogsbody Technology or Dogsbody Hosting can help you with your decision.

Let us know what you think too.  There are many many more TLD and ccTLDs, which ones do you like?