web hosting information

WEB HOSTING AND DOMAIN REGISTRATION
If you are planning on registering a domain, you can either have your Web hosting company register the name for you -- or you can register through an independent registrar like Network Solutions . Otherwise, you can take advantage of the various free Web hosts (albeit with a longer URL), like Tripod, Dotster (formerly Fortune City, and Angelfire. You can also have your domain hosted by these same Web space providers -- for a fee, of course.

As for contracting with a hosting company, I would recommend Dreamhost. Their Control Panel is user-friendly and they have some very affordable hosting plans. Dreamhost has email and online chat tech support only, but they will send a reply usually with a 24-hour period -- sometimes on the weekend. It's really important to contract with a hosting company which has longevity; you don't want your cheapie hosting company folding overnight without telling you! Believe me, I've seen that happen -- and it's no fun losing all of your files (assuming you've not backed up your files) and are forced to reconstruct your website using the WayBackMachine.

Dreamhost Web Hosting

SHOPPING CARTS AND E-COMMERCE
For e-commerce, you must have an SSL (Secure Socket Layer) server included with your hosting plan if you plan on having a custom shopping cart actually on your site. This ensures secure credit card transactions through your site. Another (cheaper) alternative is to register with PayPal. With a PayPal Premier account (which is free), I can set up a simple shopping cart for single-item purchases. PayPal is fast and very secure -- in fact, Paypal utilizes the same encryption as the major banks. PayPal will process credit card transactions, taking a small fee from each purchase. If you are able to process credit card transactions manually, then Mals-e can provide a (free) and secure gateway to retrieve sensitive credit card information from your customers and send it directly to you. For a small monthy fee, Mals-e can link your shopping cart to a separate online merchant account which will process your credit card transactions (this requires another monthy fee from the merchant account provider). You can find a complete list of merchant account providers HERE.

For e-commerce WordPress sites I use the WooCommerce shopping cart, which can be integrated with a number of online payment processors including PayPal.

Mal's E-commerce