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Making Money With a Membership Site with the Right Web Host

Having a successful membership website is impossibility unless you have a hosting company that offers you the right tools to conduct the day to day operations of your site. Does the prospective hosting company provide you with tools such as the ability to create forums, set up an ecommerce site, consult, develop content, community development tools, recurring billing modules, and access level controls? These may be necessary depending on your needs, but that's not all you will need to build and run a membership site.
MySQL, PERL, CGI, SSI, CRON, Curl, FrontPage, PHP scripting tools, Python, GD and ImageMagik, which allows you to create streaming videos and music are a few basic programs that come with most webhosting packages. If these are not listed on the hosting company's sales page, either move on to another company or send an email asking for clarification.
Everyone needs email - and especially membership sites. You will need one for the admin, support, information, etc. So don't overlook your email needs. Your hosting package should also come with auto responders, mailing lists, mail forwarding, web mail, Spam control, POP3, IMAP, and SMTP.
Does the hosting company provide you with a control panel? For most of us a hosting account without a control panel would be like opening your personal computer without the Windows interface! Unthinkable! Cpanels usually offer you multiple features such as hotlink protection, Fantastico, Search Engine submission and error pages. Fantastico is a commercial script library that automates installation of about 50 scripts including instant blogging software, portals, PHP, Nuke, Instant Chat, Forums, counters, FTP, and so on.
Password protection is a must. After all, if you are running a membership site you don't want just anyone to be able to access it! Make sure the host you are looking at offers password protection of folders via the cpanel and via .htaccess.
Want to know what pages your customers are viewing, how many requests are returning an error code or where your visitors are coming from? Make sure you have tracking statistics available. Tracking statistics often include raw log or other access such as Awstats. Error logs and analogs are provided as well.
If you plan to start running a membership web site, you really should consider purchasing the plan that offers ecommerce features, as well as Shared SSL or Private SSL, Agora Shopping Carts, Instant OS Commerce, and Cube Carts. Joomla, Mambo and other membership scripts are usually also available.
In addition to the basic tools listed above, you will also need to consider a few marketing tools for your web site once you get setup. These will vary depending on they type of site you are building, and are not usually provided by the web hosting company. In fact, there will be lots of things you will need, but you won't even know what they are until you run into a problem or two. Don't spend time fretting about it - just head on over to the search engine and start searching.
So, here you are: poised and ready to dive in. It all started when you dared to dream of owning and running a membership site. Now you know how to find a good webhosting company. The time for hesitation is over. Just step into the water and start swimming with the giants!

Article Source: http://articles.yournetguru.com

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