Many ways you can save money on your web hosting needs

Tips on How You can Save Yourself Money

No matter whether money is not a big issue for you, or you're operating on a shoestring budget, there are lots of great ways to save yourself money on web hosting needs that surprisingly gets little or no mention. I discovered most of it by doing lots of Google searches, and some via word-of-mouth.

Domains
Domain names have gotten really cheap in recent years, so there's no reason to spend a lot of money on one. At one time, at $27/year, Network Solutions "The Original Dot Com People" was the only domain registrar in town, but now that nobody has the monopoly on domains, there's no reason to spend that kind of money on a domain. You can buy or renew a domain for about $8.00/year! I personally use and recommend GoDaddy Software - http://www.godaddy.com. Also if your domain is currently parked at one of those expensive registrars, you can transfer it over to somebody else who has a cheaper price.

Low-cost Webhosting
Unless you're running an enormous site, those expensive webhosting companies who charge $30.00 or $40.00 / month, are usually a waste of money, and very often, webmasters have discovered that the low-cost webhosts actually give much higher quality service and support than the overpriced hyped webhosting companies. I myself use and personally recommend webstrikesolutions. They offer both Windows 2000 and Linux Redhat (Unix), but I always highly recommend going with Linux, as it is unparalleled for reliability and security.

Freeware scripts
There are lots of great cgi scripts online that are free. http://www.cgi-resources.com is a great place to start. One free script in particular I use and highly recommend is AXS Tracking http://www.xav.com/scripts/axs. This is the only tracking tool I use and would recommend over anything else. It's free, and extremely easy to install. You can usually use SSI tags on 99% of Unix webservers. HOT Tip! Most webhosts will tell you that SSI calls will only work for shtml pages, but there is an easy solution around that problem. On any Unix-based server, you can get it to work with both htm and html pages! Simply create a file named .htaccess if this file does not already exist, the put in the following line: AddType text/x-server-parsed-html .shtml .html .htm, then simply upload it to your site (root directory). You can also use .htaccess to get bad links to redirect back to your homepage instead of the usual generic "404 Not Found" page, by adding this line: ErrorDocument 404 /index.html.

Autoresponders
There are basically 2 types of autoresponders. Autoresponder services and autoresponder scripts. Autoresponder services in my opinion are way too overpriced, charging steep monthly fees. Many of them do offer a free service, but they are hardly worth it, because your outgoing messages are filled with their advertising. The best way to go is your own autoresponder script or program, installed on your web server. Unfortunately there are no good freeware autoresponder scripts. One great low-cost autoresponder I use and highly recommend is Auto Followup by Intelliscript. For $29.00 you will not find a better deal.

How to Save Money on Software
You might be surprised to know that there are many great sources of useful free software available, that can save you a pile of money! Nevermind Tucows, download.com, there are a couple excellent peer-to-peer networks that anyone can join for free that are excellent sources, in addition to free music for your entertainment needs. You will first need to download and install their free software, then pick a username & password. The only drawback of some of these is you may have to put up with a little adware, or "spyware" but that's how they stay in business. Top picks today are Kazaa/Grokster http://www.kazaalite.nl/en http://www.cleanclients.tk and WinMX http://www.winmx.com (WinMX has no adware).

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