The truth falls somewhere in middle: Online business will never replace brick-and-mortar, but an online presence will be integral to business model of any successful business. Already, e-commerce revenues are in billions, and experiencing exponential growth. Any business that wishes to be competitive in this new marketplace--including your business--cannot ignore power of e-commerce.

Many of you have taken that first step in putting your business online: You have done your research, identified your brand, and chosen and registered a domain name that speaks to your brand. That was easy part. If you haven't yet registered your domain name, don't fret! You can easily do it at:

http://www.virtualis.com/vr/lschmeck/domain.html

After domain registration, what follows next may be one of most important decisions you make for your e-business...finding right hosting company. This is as important to quality of your business as finding right partner, and many people--even experienced webmasters-- find experience daunting. I would like to share my hosting experience with you-perhaps it will make your decision-making process a little easier.

RELIABILITY

Reliability. Hosting isn't glamorous, but as you know, it is backbone of your web-based business. That is why I refer to it as "silent partner." A good hosting company is dependable, with a steady "up-time" track record. After all, what good is a web site if it's down? A good hosting company should operate like electric company--every day you wake up, it's there, working. However, even most reliable companies need to periodically take system down for maintenance. Your hosting company should inform its customers in advance, and perform that maintenance at off-peak hours--so as not to unduly burden your web business.

The next things to look for I call "Four S's:" Service, Software, Support, and Space.

SERVICE

An extremely important (and often overlooked) factor is Service. Unfortunately, many hosting companies end their relationship with you moment server sale is made. This leaves unanswered crucial question, "Okay, I've got a server--now what?" This is critical when you consider that some companies are so controlling that web masters are discouraged from customizing and/or managing sites for their clients! Other hosting companies give you space on a server, but nothing more--you have to configure server and set up all back-end functionality manually!

As you have probably done this before, I don't need to tell you what a time-consuming and laborious task this is. My best service experience has been with Virtualis. So much so that I've spent last 2 years with them! If you have questions, they are on-call 24/7 to answer them--they even have discussion boards where fellow customers can offer advice and helpful tips. Good service means providing a community of resources throughout life of your e-business.

SOFTWARE

Does that look familiar? If you've ever accidentally tried to access a page that doesn't exist, possibly by following an outdated link or by misspelling name of page, you've probably seen something like above appear on your screen. You might have attempted to correct error by checking URL for mistakes, but it is even more likely that you just clicked "Back" and returned where you came from, never visiting site again.

For a surfer, encountering a "404 page" is a nuisance. For a webmaster, they can be far more problematic, causing a reduction in traffic which in turn means losing a part of precious advertising revenues or sales site's life depends on. You can minimize amount of 404 errors by periodically checking your pages for broken links, but it is impossible to get completely rid of them. So, what can you do?

The solution - Custom 404 pages ===============================

The best way to avoid losing visitors to 404's is to replace standard and unfriendly error message with a custom page. Fortunately task is relatively simple and can be performed by anyone who owns a site that has its own domain name.

As different server softwares handle things in their own ways, there is no single method of creating a custom error page that works with every system. The following instructions can be applied by those who have sites hosted under Apache, which is a very widely used program. If you don't know what software your host is running, contact them and ask.

To start process, use an FTP program such as CuteFTP to connect to your server. Search for a file named ".htaccess". Should you find it, download file to your home computer for editing. If file is not there, don't worry, you'll just have to create it yourself.