If you get one – Do not pay.

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The letter looks like a bill and tries to convince you that the best thing you could possibly do is to send them money. If you do, you will be paying 2-4 times what you should be, and you will be transferring the registrar account for your domain to them.

Domain Registry of America purposefully sends these letters out so they will be received before your actual registrar sends out a renewal notice.

Domain Registry of America sends out millions of these domain expiration notices. Each year thousands of people pay these “false bills”. Don’t be one of them.

Have you forgotten when you last renewed, the expiration date or even with what company you registered your domain? You can easily get information about your domain, that is: if you didn’t opt for private registration. Go to Network Solutions’ Who Is page and type in your domain name.

FAQ:

Do you have to renew your domain name?:

Yes you do.

Are there other obligations as a domain name owner?:

Yes, each year you must verify the contact information listed by your registrar. You will be sent an email from your registrar with a link where you can verify your information.

Domain Name Registrar defined:

A company you buy a domain name from and renew it each year. These companies are accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) or by a national country code top-level domain (ccTLD) authority, to manage the reservation of Internet domain names in accordance with the guidelines of the designated domain name registries and to offer such services to the public.

2011 saw the greatest number of website security incident investigations ever. As the internet becomes more and more prevalent in our lives so do the security risks and website hack attempts

We know you take your website seriously and trust us with keeping it online, updated , compatible, available 24/7 and secure.

I do want to assure all current and future clients that none of the websites hosted with Elegant Eagle Web Design have been hacked nor have any hack attempts been noted or reported. Even so, I believe it is important to be proactive and offer even more protection from security risks.

Immediate security enhancement:

Password Lock-Down

After 5 failed attempts to access the admin area of your website the access portal will be locked down for 30 minutes.

By May 1st 2012 all websites hosted with us will have a password lock-down system in place.

As we expand and roll out the features of what we will eventually comprise the “Peace of Mind and Security Assurance Package”, the entire full range of security enhancements will be 100% free.

On January 1st 2013 it is anticipated that the various services will be divided into 2 or 3 tiers, the first tier being free and providing basic security. Additional features will be provided for a nominal fee. The reason for this is simply not all websites require daily malware and virus scans, daily off site backups, security breach attempts reporting, etc…

Even the free level will provide more security then most websites currently have and will offer protection that is adequate for most website owners.

This roll out of enhancements will be done in phases and will not disrupt your website or work flow. Most of you will notice no difference in how you are interacting with your website. All of the security enhancements will occur in the background. If you would like additional information or have any questions please call Joe directly: 910-502-0568

Brute Force &  Dictionary Attacks

The most used hacking methods in 2011 were brute force and dictionary attacks.
Brute Force: Unleashing a program that will automatically try every possible key combination until the correct security key is found.
Dictionary Attacks: Similar to brute force but will try every word in a dictionary until the security key is found.

Settings:

• Password attempts before lockdown: 5
• Time before new attempts may be tried: 30 minutes

This means that if you attempt 5 times and still do not use the correct password you will not be able to try again for 30 minutes.
The setting are default values only and can be simply modified.

Feel free to download and use as you like.  Enjoy.

So, you want a website for your business. The variety of what you can do online is amazing and at a fraction of the cost compared just a few years ago.

Options are good, so you want to know:

• what you can do
• what you want to do
• what you should do
• but most importantly what you need to do to fulfill your business’s strategic objectives.

A website is not like a stand alone add in the yellow pages or a flyer it is a dynamic, engaging, current and relevant promoter, informer, and sales mechanism for your business 24/7.

1. Why?

How does a website fit into your overall business strategy? Knowing what you want to accomplish with a website will have a major impact on the next 5 points, and if you haven’t answered this question then you do not yet have a strategy and it will be impossible to strategically think about the following considerations.

People will often come up to me and say. “Hey Joe, I need a website.” The first thing I respond with is “Why?”. And that usually gets a good conversation started.

• What do you want your website do for you (specific results)
• What experience do you want your visitors to have?
• Are you selling items and/or downloadable content?
• Are you providing information?
• Do you want a website for credibility?
• Is building relationships a consideration?
• Do you want your website to produce new business?
• Do you want your website to generate leads?
• Do you want to advertise online?

2. Content

Where is your content going to come from? Good, fresh, valuable, well written content can keep visitors on your site, coming back, generate email sign ups, and establish yourself as an expert. Content will also help your search engine rankings. So how are you going to get content to your site?

• self generated
• freelance copywriter
• PLR Articles (Public Label Rights)
• user generated

3. Social Engagement

Social Engagement. It’s all the rage right now…and for a good reason. Many marketing strategies are integrating social media marketing with website marketing. I have a client whose customers where posting good things to their facebook page and she wanted that “positive content” to also benefit her very simple website. One solution would have been to upgrade her website involving design and cost issues. Instead, for the price of a few beers I created a link to her facebook page right from her home page.   Below is a brief list on ways you might engage your visitors:

• facebook integration, twitter integration, Google Plus etc…
• forums
• blog comments
• polls
• contact forms
• email capture
• private members only area
• multiple content providers

 4. Design

How important is design?  Its not hard to spend thousands and have a beautiful website, but beauty doesn’t always translate into function.  The best websites today are a combination of simplicity and elegance.  The idea being to provide a pleasing positive experience (consider what your target market considers pleasing) that quickly engages and directs the visitor to take action.  Just because you can have auto play music, auto start videos, flashing pictures, falling snow, and text that changes colors, flashes and shoots fireworks….well, you get the idea, doesn’t mean you should.

And here is the key: What action do you want your visitors to take?   Is it signing up for an email list, purchasing products, joining, downloading an ebook at the same time signing up for an email list?

 5. Traffic

Where will your traffic come from?  How will people find you on the web?  Typically, a combination of the following will be employed.

•  Search engine results
• Do you want/need to show up on the first page of google?
• Social media
• traditional marketing
• pay per click advertising
• traditional advertising
• brick and mortar clients

6.  Designing and Hosting

There are basically three choices for design:

1. Do it yourself
   • There are even free options, but, although you can save some money you will spend between 8 & 80 hours depending on how much knowledge you are starting with and how sophisticated you want your website to be.
2. Get some assistance but be involved in building it
   • This can be a good option as a webmaster can create a layout and add your content and even create a format in which you can continue to add content. They may even make How to videos, and use a format that can make the process of adding content extremely easy.
3. Hire someone for everything
• This can be the fastest, and easiest option. You can even hire copy writers to create content, but even so it is a good idea to have the overall strategy and objectives well defined so that your time and money will be invested to get the results you have decided to go after.

If you are beginning to think you want/need a website we’d be happy to talk with you about how a website can fit into your overall business strategy. Contact me

Please also see: Building a Website is like Building a House

1. Analysis
1. Purpose of website
2. What do you want the website to do for you?
3. What experience do you want to create for the visitor?
2. Specifications
   1. What specific features do you want?
   2. SEO requirements
3. Design Parameters
   1. How many pages
   2. What “look & feel” do you want
   3. Basic hierarchy of content and menu structure
4. Design & Development
   1. The 40% build
   2. Review, modify, define colors etc..
5. Finalizing content (concurrently with step 4.2)
   1. Text and media (pictures, sound, videos etc…)
   2. Key word rich
6. Coding and Design Completion
   1. Polishing and finishing
   2. Final client approval
7. Text & Launch
   1. Text all links, functions, and addons
   2. Deploy to live server
8. Promote
   1. Social media
   2. SEO
9. Maintain
   1. Updating / adding content
   2. Back ups
   3. Updating addons, ensuring integration compatibility, and core program updates

Not all steps are necessary in every project it depends on the size and complexity of the website.  There are also clients who want to add, update and modify content themselves so we might add a training and/or “how to videos” component to the process.

Questions or comments?  Don’t hesitate to contact us.

Experience has shown that when building a custom website for a client, it is best to do it in steps. And to let the client know what those steps are and what responsibilities they have along the way. It is important that the client know what they can expect from me and they know what is needed from them to move the process along.

Like Building a House

Building a website is a bit like building a house. A builder friend of mine told me that it takes approximately 40% of the time and resources to lay the foundation, put up the frame, and 2x4s to divide up the interior to separate rooms and such. Its not pretty at that point and none of the finishing work is done, but the buyer can walk through and get a feel for the space, the window placement, the hall widths, the doors and cabinet layout. Changes at this point are relatively easy; ie, move a door down 3 feet, make a window larger. Once the drywall is up, the windows framed, the molding and painting done, changes can involve major expense and project delays.

The 40% Build

The same is true in building a custom website. Therefor, I will send a link to the client and they can follow along as I build the website. In the beginning the colors won’t be exactly what the clients wants, a few corners may be rounded and the client would like them square, pictures may be generic low quality fillers and text may be nonsense, just to see what it looks like. What this does do though, is give the client a chance to get a feel for the website and browse through some of the ideas we had talked about and see how it looks on the actual website.

We may want to try different colors, picture sizes,/placement and module configurations. All easy to do at the “40%” stage. We can even bring in other people at this stage to get more eyes on it. When we are satisfied then I’ll work on making it smooth and elegant, with quality images and colors that work together.

For more see the 9 Step Process to building a website

What can you do with a WordPress website?

• Simple blog site
• Scalable webdesign  - start small and build as your business builds
• Social media integration
• Advanced SEO  -  Get found on the web
• Tables                 
• Shopping carts
• Members only areas
• Forums – Full blown feature rich forums
• Email capture
• Custom forms for all kinds of use
• Online appointment scheduler
• Provide documents to download – free or for a fee
• Much more….

WordPress Statistics 2011

• 14.7% of the top million websites use WordPress
• In every 100 new websites started 22 run WordPress
• The average hourly rate charged by WordPress webmasters is $50
• WordPress has over 15,000 plugins available online
• There have been over 200 million plugin downloads

Source: http://wpstatistics.com/   ← opens in new window

We would love to talk with you about making WordPress work for you.  click here

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