Web Hosting: How much should a web host cost?

Posted by Nicolette Tallmadge on February 18th, 2010

I haven’t done an Ask a Question post in a while…so here’s a question a reader wrote in about web hosting.

I’m looking to set up my own website, but I don’t know how much it should cost per month or who I should set me website up with. Any ideas?

M. Ferrer

I answered a question similar to thisin the Etsy forums yesterday, so here’s what I had to say.

Hi there,

The price of web hosting varies from company to company and it also depends on how big your website is and what extra services comes with your host. On average, if you’re planning on putting up a plain old website or Wordpress blog, or maybe a web store using Zen Cart or OScommerce, you should pay no more than $15 per month for hosting. Any good web host should offer a package for this price that gives you more than what you would need. I use two hosting companies for all of my websites: Hostgator and Bluehost. I’ve been using them for a couple of years now and I haven’t had any issues with them. They both run about $10 per month.

If you’re looking for a web host that will also include ecommerce capabilities, say they also give you an easy way to build your website without knowing HTML or provide shopping cart services, you can expect the monthly price to be higher. A service like Big Cartel will run you anywhere between $10 to $20 per month depending on how many items you’re selling. If you’re going to use a service like that, be sure to shop around for the best features and price.

You should also avoid web hosts that are too cheap, like in the $2 to $5 range. These hosting services tend to be rather unreliable and you run the risk of your website running very slow or not at all. So beware!

Hope this helps!
Nicolette

Do you have a burning question about websites or promoting yourself online? Click on the “Ask a Question” tab at the top of the page and send me your question. I’ll send you an answer to your question personally.

Web Design: Are there fonts you should avoid on your blog or store banner?

Posted by Nicolette Tallmadge on February 17th, 2010

I’ve been spending some time on the Etsy forums for the past couple weeks and have been monitoring a thread arguing against using the Papyrus and Comic Sans fonts in your shop banners. The main argument is that these fonts make your banner and your store by extension cheap and unprofessional looking. There were of course some rebuttals by the Papyrus and Comic Sans font lovers and general fur flying and pleas of “Please, can’t we and all of our fonts just get along?

While I’m not a big fan of Comic Sans or Curlz for that matter, I’ve always found a place for them and Papyrus in my font archive. If you’ve seen the movie Avatar or the trailer or at least the movie poster, you’ve seen what looks to be a close cousin of Papyrus being used in the logo…so it can’t be all bad.



Where do I stand on the debate? I’ve designed a number of banners and logos throughout the years and while there are some fonts that I use more than others, there are very few that I would absolutely refuse to consider. When it comes to designing a logo or a web banners, here are some the “rules” that I use:

1. The font you use should fit your brand- This is THE biggest consideration when it comes to designing something for your brand. Whatever you use, must fit the kind of image that you’re trying to portray. In many cases, that might not be Comic Sans or Papyrus, but I’ve seen some pretty good work that have used those fonts. And the reason why those fonts worked in those particular cases is that those fonts were used in a way that fit the brand.

2. It’s not always “what” you use, but “how” you use it- The mark of a great designer is the ability to take just about any material and transform it into something great. If you’re a Project Runway fan, then you’ve probably seen this season’s second challenge where the designers took potato sacks and transformed them from this:



To this:



If you’re designing a banner or logo on a budget, take a look as some of the free font sites like dafont.com. There are literally hundreds of free fonts that you can browse through and experiment with. Download what you like, what appears to fit the image you’re trying to project and play around with them.

Remember to use what you have in fun and different ways. Play around with color, shading, and size. Combine different elements like illustrations, photographs, and special effects to make your plain old simple font into something great.

3. In some cases you might have to consider paying for a font- You have to pay for certain fonts for a reason…it’s because they are usually a higher quality than those that you get for free. The characters are are finely formed, most come with full character choices, including punctuation and other special characters. And many of the paid fonts also have true bold and true italic version instead of the “faux bold” and “faux italic” options you have to use in Microsoft and Photoshop. Therefore your logo or banner looks a bit more professional. There are many projects in which I had to bite the bullet and buy a font because it fit the needs of a project perfectly.

4. Keep it simple- Just like you can take a plain old free font and do something spectacular with it, you can also take a nice paid font and make your banner look like a hot mess. In most cases simple will do much better than something that’s overly worked and complicated. This is especially true if the font itself is fancy or have complicated looking elements. In that case, balance out a heavy or complicated looking font with simple elements, layouts or colors.

5. Keep it readable- This should go without saying, but if you’re making a banner or a logo that contains the name of your business, anyone looking at it should be able to actually read it. Don’t sacrifice readability for style.

6. Keep an eye on what everyone else is using- Just like everything else, fonts seem to go in and out of popularity. So keep your eyes peeled as to what kind of fonts designers seem to be using. If you see a font that you love, then you can find out what it is by going to What the Font! If you want to seem trendy and up to date, keeping up with the trends might be good for you. On the other hand, if you want to be unique and want to stand out a bit, you might want to do the opposite and pull an old but perfectly great font out of the mothballs.

7. When in doubt…take it to a professional- If you don’t know what you’re doing, it doesn’t matter what font you’re using. Some artists can easily take their design expertise and make some perfectly beautiful logos and banners. Some can’t. If you’re in the latter group and nothing you try looks right, then get a graphic designer to help you. Getting a professionally designed Etsy or blog banner shouldn’t set you back too much. I typically charge between $40 to $50 for a blog banner. So you can look for folks in that price range and you’ll get something that looks nicer and less stress inducing.

So where do you stand on the great font debate? Is there a font you love or one that you love to hate? Drop me a comment and let me know!

Links for Artists [Feb 7 - 13]

Posted by Nicolette Tallmadge on February 14th, 2010

Throughout the week, I like to share interesting links for artists on my Twitter profile. Here is a list of the links I tweeted about last week:

Like this link list? Visit my Twitter profile and follow me to get these links daily!

Online Tools: Why Link Shorteners Stink

Posted by Nicolette Tallmadge on February 11th, 2010

Link shortening services has been around for quite a while, but their use has positively exploded since social networking services like Twitter and Facebook has become popular.

If you’re not familiar with what a link shortening service does, essentially they make a long link short…so if I’m using Twurl as my link shortening service, it will change my long link like this:

http://www.craftedweb.com/website-marketing/email-marketing-are-you-collecting-email-addressses-offline/

Into a shortened link like this:

http://twurl.nl/vd68h3

And person that clicks on the link will end up in the same place.

Links shortening services are great if you’re using a tool like Twitter where character count and space are at a premium. They’re also good if you have to send long links around in emails. Very long links often get broken up in emails so that when your recipient receives their email, the link is no longer usable. This is especially handy if you’re sending out newsletters that have links to your blog which have notoriously long links or links to your website.

So if link shorteners are so great, why did I title this post, “Why Link Shorteners Stink”? Well, it’s because as great as link shorteners are, they’re only great if they stick around. If the service you use to shorten your links suddenly decides to fold up shop or change things around then there goes your link. That’s a problem if you’ve emailed that link to someone or have that link in archives of your newsletters or someone runs across an old tweet of yours. Because when they click on that link…it goes to nowhere.

This has happened to me….recently. This week as a matter of fact.

I suddenly started getting emails from people who subscribed to my newsletter or requested one of my free ebooks complaining that download links and the links to resources and websites I’ve included aren’t working anymore. When I went to investigate, I found that SnipURL the service that I have been using to shorten links for my newsletters and emails has suddenly changed up their domain name…without warning…without a “Hey we’re changing things around and it might disable your links…so just a head up in case this matters to you” alert. So now all of those links I have in my emails are suddenly broken.

Sigh

So now, I’m chasing dead links and dealing with email from confused subscribers. And I’m temporarily switching my links over to a new service…not a quick task. I’m also seriously considering doing my own link shortening directly from my website so that something like this won’t happen again. Another benefit to doing this is that my links will get all of the link love from Goggle as opposed to it going to the linking service…which is great for SEO. Plus, my shortened links will reference my website domain instead of Owly or Bitly or whatever, which is always cool. They’ll look like this:

http://www.craftedweb.com/shortenedlink

Instead of

http://wkelk.li/shortenlink

So what can you do to avoid a scenario like this? Well, if you want to go the completely geeky route like I’m thinking about doing and running your shortened links through your own website, this post by Lifehacker can get you started. I realize that this route is probably way too geeky or time consuming for most of you, but if you or someone you know have the technical chops to do this or you want to just try it, it’s something to think about.

If you have a self-hosted Wordpress blog that runs on your own web server (not the kind on Wordpress.com), there’s a plugin that you can install called Twitter Friendly Links that allow you to automatically create shortened links to all of your blog posts. If you’re already using Twitter Tools to automatically tweet out your links when you write a new blog post, then Twitter Friendly Links will work well with it by automatically shortening and including the link to your blog post in your tweet. And as these links are based on the domain name of your blog…there’s little chance of experiencing an unexpected shutdown.

And the only other options you have for now is to not use a link shortener for critical links…say if you’re emailing a gallery a link to your website or online store. Actually you shouldn’t be doing that anyway, part of the value of having your own domain name is the branding. A shortened link by Owly or Twurl doesn’t look as impressive.

And finally…just to be very careful…and keep an eye on your shortened links.

Social Networking: The buzz on Google Buzz

Posted by Nicolette Tallmadge on February 10th, 2010

If you’re a Gmail user, you might have seen a new option pop up under your Inbox. Google Buzz appears to be Google’s next entry into the social networking arena. Like the social networking website, FriendFeed, Google Buzz allows you to share photos, websites, video, and more with people you email using Gmail or friends made on other Google apps.

Is this yet another social networking tool that you have to learn about and get familiar with? Well, I can’t say for sure yet. Google hasn’t rolled it out to everyone on Gmail yet, soI haven’t gotten a chance to play with it. I will say that it looks interesting. And since Google also owns, YouTube (video), Picassa (photos), Blogger (blogging), Google Reader (blog reading and sharing), and Wave (social collaboration), they are definitely positioning themselves to compete with the likes of Facebook and Twitter. Might be something to keep an eye on. Stay tuned, I’ll report back when I’ve had a chance to experiment.

Here’s the official video about Buzz from Google:




Update: Google’s ears must have been burning because, just as I was about to post this, I got a notice that Google has added Buzz to my Gmail…so I’ll getting back to you pretty soon! :)


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