Website Building Biz

Dreamhost - green hosting for eco-friendly sites

People are thinking green these days - no not just money, but about the environment too. People are analyzing how behaviors and activities they take for granted might affect the planet and this includes anything using a lot of energy like computers, web hosts, and even your personal environmental blog or chat forum. Dreamhost is thinking about this unintended environmental consequence of their business, and they’re putting their money where their beliefs are.

Dreamhost is totally green - and they have been since 2007. Part of this was accomplished by analyzing the efficiency of their systems and optimizing to use less resources and generate less waste. The other part was accomplished through the purchase of high quality carbon credits and re-usable energy credits.

Now, if you’ve seen my politics website you know that I’m pretty much a libertarian and I’m skeptical of anthropomorphic climate change. I don’t doubt that humans are messing up the planet, I’m just not convinced that we understand exactly what we’re doing to it or how we’re going to effect the weather 10 years from now since no one can even tell me if it will rain this weekend.

What I specifically object to in a political sense is mandates and financial subsidies for questionable programs. What Dreamhost is doing - using private money and private industry to make the world a cleaner place - is the exact type of solution I would hope for and expect to lead the way.

Ok, I’ve gone off on a little rant but what I mean to say is that I totally support environmental initiatives that don’t involve the government!

I’ve tried to do my own part, too. Since I’ve started working online, I can work at home so I have taken my car completely off the road. Since I’m not always on the go, I have time to cook my own food from whole ingredients - drastically cutting down on manufacturing, processing, and packaging. Single-serving-sized food and drinks don’t make environmental sense ever, but they don’t even make economic sense because they don’t provide any extra convenience when my own kitchen is just a few steps away.

So recently I discovered that half of my websites are also green! I had not really paid attention to this fact at the time I was setting them up but I’m glad to know now Anyway, if you’re setting up an environmentally themed blog or forum, make sure you find some green hosting for your site! My environmental side says its the right thing to do, and the capitalist side of me agrees because a site advocating eco-friendly policies should demonstrate that sort of credibility and personal commitment to the cause.

I still think all these little things can add up, because if we all changed our behaviors then the “big picture planners” would have to adjust to the new demands in society.

Internet Business News - July 19, 2008

I was just surfing through some of Google’s internet news and there are a few topics of interest I’d like to share.

Despite 30%+ revenue growth, Google shares “plummet:” Google is a great company with strong earnings and profit growth. They’ve proven year after year that they can expand their business model and successfully incorporate more online services in a profitable way.

Despite this bullish outlook, even a great company can have its stock overvalued - and this is the case with Google shares when they were selling for $700 or even $500 a piece. After the Friday fall, Google shares are at about a 25 price to earnings ratio - a good, solid number considering their annualized growth rate. If you’re buying at the current price, its a fair risk. A slowdown in online advertising could cause stock prices to drop further, but if they stay on the current course there should be marginal stockholder gains by this time next year. If you want to flip these stocks you are on your own, but I’ll be tempted to buy & hold if the price drops again before it starts ticking back up.

Yahoo grabs a bigger piece of growing search volume: While fighting off takeover threats from Microsoft, Yahoo did manage to grab a bigger piece of the online searches conducted in June. Of course, traffic isn’t always the same as income and there are big doubts going forward if Yahoo has the leadership necessary to pull off a successful online business model. I think the Yahoo shareholders probably would have gotten a good deal from Microsoft, and I think the deal was sabotaged so Yahoo’s CEOs could keep their own jobs and save face amongst their peers. The key to that will be to bring some new revenue to the table, or find a better way to convert the traffic they already have. We’ll have to see if they benefit from this recent Google advertising deal or if they’re stuck playing junior partner forever.

Internet Coupons - because we can! I thought this was interesting since I spend a good bit of my time promoting Dreamhost coupon codes: “11 percent of households obtain coupons via the Internet, a number that has risen 83 percent since 2005.”

Obviously, 11% isn’t a lot of people - and its not even close to everyone who is online and has potential access to these coupons. There’s a huge market wide open to get these coupons and discounts into the screens and printers of customers who would actually use them. Affiliate coupon programs allow marketers to share some of the profit when a coupon gets used - so its like free advertising for the company, an income for the advertiser, and a great deal for the end-consumer. I’m predicting massive growth in this field, a niche within many niches that has been mostly undeveloped.

That’s the weekend online businesses wrap-up. If you found an interesting story that we missed, please feel welcome to add it in the comments and get a discussion started up. Otherwise, good luck and happy publishing!

Internet grows despite slowing economy

Prices are up and sales are down.  All across the globe, the story seems the same and there isn’t much good news to be found.

That is, unless you’re working with online advertising and sales.  The best place to be bullish right now (other than perhaps commodities) is online marketing.  Through a combination of factors, the internet economy continues to grow and shows signs of strength building up for many more years.

Google released its 2nd quarter revenue and profit report today - the results showed continued growth in online advertising and overall online traffic.  Here are the major factors contributing to increased revenues in the internet economy:

Technology costs: While the price of commodities like gas and fuel is rising due to scarcity, the costs of technology and electronic goods is still decreasing thanks to improvements in available methods and materials.  Website and hosting prices have stayed flat, yet the providers have been able to offer more resources, better software, and more support.  Coupons and promotional deals keep prices even lower for would-be webmasters.

Consumer efficiency: People still need to make purchases, but since its time to cut back on costs one way to save money is to compare prices and buy products online.  Not only does it save consumers gasoline and miles on the car, it can save time:  all of which are things in short supply these days.  Logging on and making a few web searches can save a whole day of shopping around - and low-cost shipping deals can even save a trip to the cheapest store.

Advertiser efficiency: Perhaps the number one reason why internet sales continue to dominate and expand despite an overall economic slowdown.  Online, advertising is specifically targeted for what consumers want, based on the type of searches they make and websites they visit.  Sellers know that this type of advertising has high conversion rates, and this type of targeted marketing connects sellers and buyers better than other forms of advertising like tv or radio.

Growth and more future growth, too: The other big thing about the internet is that each year, more people log on for the first time.  Yes, even in 2008 there are a lot of people who aren’t regularly online so total traffic is only going up.  Internet growth and sales growth is truly global, and economic slowdowns in one nation don’t necessarily effect the overall trend of more people going online with more total money to spend.

If you’re thinking about building a website for financial purposes, whether you have a product for sale or just ideas you want to share, there are a lot of advertising opportunities available and there’s still plenty of money to be had online.  Next year, there’s probably going to be even more.

Dreamhost one-click software choices

Ready to install a website on Dreamhost with the one-click install feature but not sure which program is right for your plans? Here are the available software packages that can be used on a Dreamhost account with absolutely no code or technical experience.

Wordpress - The ideal blogging software for news and SEO experts alike. Wordpress allows anyone to write content, include images, and produce pages that are optimized for search engines and your users, too. Wordpress incorporates user comments by default and supports more functionality with optional addons.

Gallery - Gallery is a fairly straightforward solution to building a picture gallery - online! Templates and optional addons can help you customize the way the software works, without getting too deeply involved in the coding aspects.

Zencart - E-commerce solution supporting multiple languages and currencies. You can create a coupon and manage a customer newsletter. Product categories can be as extensive and specific as you like - a powerful open-source solution for some more advanced sales-driven websites.

PhpGedView - Want to start a genealogy website? This is what PhpGedView was made for. It allows collaboration with family and filtering from the general public. As new information becomes available, the dynamic scripts allow quick changes to be imported across the entire database.

OpenX - Management software for online advertising gurus or just anyone who wants to get the most out of their visitors and ads. OpenX allows you to manage campaigns, set up conditions for ad displays, and basically control who sees what. Dreamhost makes this software available with a quick installation so you can get started with maximum control on revenue streams.

Pligg - Pligg is a personal favorite of mine, both as a website to run and as a website to visit. Basically, its an open-source version of social network / bookmarking website software and it allows site members to submit links, vote on other submissions, and join a discussion regarding the links presented. The most popular sites automatically go to the front page, and the site is mostly self-regulating because uninteresting stories don’t stay visible for long. I’ve been using Pligg at my education bookmarking website and I’m becoming quite the fan

DotProject - A free project management software that allows users to collaborate around any type of project. Set up to do lists, submit bug reports, and keep a record of problems, changes, and possible solutions.

Moodle - This software is designed with teachers and educators in mind. Moodle allows education professionals to set up online courses, register students into class discussions, and other ways to re-create the classroom on your website server account. Right now, more than 14,000,000 (yes million!) students are enrolled in some class or another with Moodle, so this is a big deal and a powerful tool for education.

Joomla - Joomla is an advanced content management system that can be set up like a blog or a newspaper website. There are also a ton of community features and the software could also be incorporated to work with forums and chats. Its a little bit of an advanced project, and sometimes it doesn’t have the streamlined efficiency that Wordpress offers. It does offer a huge amount of addons and premium templates, but sometimes these cost a little extra money.

phpbb - PHPBB is a great software solution for running forums on your web server. the PHP bulletin board is easily set up and the configuration sections are quite intuitive. A lot of advanced options are available in the program and installed by default. A lot of popular forum websites use this software as it is definitely one of the best free forum solutions around.

Mediawiki - I’m sure you’ve used Mediawiki, its the open-source software that Wikipedia is built on. Yup, that’s right. Forget the long, confusing installation process. You can have a website like Wikipedia in just a few minutes. Of course, finding the users and filling up the useful content is still up to you…

Short and simple:

Web Calendar - The web calendar does exactly what it says. It allows you to create a public calendar of events, or you can create a space for users to create their own calendars.

Advanced Poll - Want to set up a polling website? Advanced Poll 2.03 and Dreamhost will have you up and running in no time. Multiple polls, multiple languages, and multiple users give administrators the chance to customize a polling site with depth.

Don’t see what you want?

Feel free to install any other software or hand-code a website using HTML, CSS, Flash, and/or PHP. These Dreamhost installation packages are just a way for new users to get started quickly with some of the most popular website software on the internet.

One click installs on Dreamhost - Advanced mode with no code

Dreamhost offers its users a great easy to use interface for quickly installing server-side software. Here’s a visual guide for setting up any of the included CMS packages in the advanced mode:

From the user control panel main menu on the left side, select the “Goodies” section of commands.

Under “Goodies” you’ll find the option for One-Click installs. So far there’s not much to it - and I promise it doesn’t get much more complicated than this.

The one-click system allows beginner and advanced mode installations. If you choose advanced mode, you’ll have more options for customization and addons down the road. I recommend taking the few extra steps to take charge of your website and I’ll even help you through those options:

Don’t worry - Even if you’re going for the “advanced install,” you won’t need to know any code. However, it will allow you to learn some code as you go to fully customize your sites.

This is a good way for newbies like me to learn, because we can get started publishing content right away, and pick up the more advanced techniques over time, as they become necessary.

#1: Pick the domain to install to and/or the directory: The domain choice offers a scroll-down option. If you want to install the software in a directory other than the root, you’ll need to specify that in the second box.

#2 New Database Name: Select a name for the SQL database the software will be installed to. Use your domain name here, it will be easy to remember and it probably won’t be in use already.

#3 Create a New Hostname: Where it says “Use existing hostname” scroll down to the option to create a new hostname. Under new hostname, select the domain you’re using.

For the “First User,” scroll down to the option in the box that says “New User”

In the New Username field, choose a unique username for your database. Then, enter your new password twice.

Write these down in a safe place!

When you hit install, all you’ll have to do then is wait for a few minutes. When the installation is completed, Dreamhost will email you to notify you of the success. This email will send you a link to the installation PHP file address, and you’ll be able to set an account up to administer the software. Make sure to write this login and password information also! This is different account information than the database user-name and password created on the Dreamhost side of the install.

There you go! A ton of easily installed website software choices courtesy of Dreamhost, no code required.