We wanted to tell all our customers and blog readers about the latest change happening in the domain name world. The company, which provides the world with .com names is raising the .com cost.   This clearly indicates that the .com domain name price will shoot up all across the world.

We have already increased the price for the new .Com domain to $9.99.

But for all existing LimeDomains customers, we are offering .com renewal at an older price of $8.99.

It might be a good time for you to renew your .com domain for a longer period as the renewal at older price may be offered only till the month of June. Post June, even the renewal rate might be normalized to $9.99

Even though recession gripped the entire economy in its clutches, one sector that still showed an increasing trend was e-commerce. In US alone, the E-Commerce sales in Q4 2009, went up by3% as reported by comScore . It is thus evident that online retail spending continues to gain share of consumers’ wallets.

So, if you are one of those who are planning to set-up an e-commerce store, here are certain points that you must keep in mind.

Setting up an E-commerce store

These are some of the steps involved in getting your store up and running.

• Domain name is the first thing you’ll need for your online store. You may choose a domain name that reflects the essence of your business and best reflects your product or service.

• Once, you finalize a domain name, you may ensure that your e-commerce store has the support of a reliable e-commerce web hosting service, which will make your e-commerce website accessible to your target audiences round the clock. It will also help your business by listing its products and services, handling shopping carts, and tracking customer orders.

• Selecting shopping cart software is extremely important while setting up your e-commerce business. You may consider the number of credit card processors and shipping services, the shopping cart supports. You may also ensure that it is easy to add products to your shopping cart so that users have a great shopping experience.

• Setting up payments is yet another essential requirement of an online store. For this you need a merchant account that would help you accept online payments. Now there has to be some link that hooks your merchant account with that of your customer’s credit card. This link is an online processor called payment gateway. It also helps in ratification of information, authorization of credit cards etc.

• Yet another integral component of an e-commerce site is Secure Socket layer (SSL). If your website has SSL certificate then the message reflected to the customers is that the site they have used for online shopping & input their credit card information is reliable, and that the transactions they’ve made are quite secure.

Management of your E-commerce store

You can easily manage your e-commerce store with the help of online store management software. Online store management software would help you in managing & tracking the orders placed by your customers via payment authorization.

You can also keep a constant vigil on the progress of your web store by integrating in-built reporting tools & Google Analytics into your website. This will help your website get a clear picture of the website traffic &  store sales. Using these tools, you can view best selling products by category in your store; most used keywords, top-rated customers, geography-specific website traffic etc.

Now, since you are aware of the steps for setting-up and managing your e-commerce store, you know that selecting the right web hosting service provider who is able to provide you with all the above mentioned services would be the key to your success.

We, at LimeDomains, provide web hosting, domain name registration and domain transfer services. We also help you build your own online store with our open source ecommerce applications, osCommerce and Zencart. You can install these applications and get started with selling your products/services directly from you site, processing of payments, building & managing shopping carts, customizing your store with help from a robust pool of support resources etc.

Get started now!

Creation of website is easy but choosing a web hosting provider & a suitable web hosting package for your website can be  quite a challenging task, especially for someone new. This critical decision is inclusive of multiple tenets, which must certainly be kept in mind while choosing an apt web hosting package.  Bandwidth is one of these important factors.

The concept of bandwidth is quite simple to understand. Bandwidth can be understood as the volume of data, which is transferred per unit of time. In fact, bandwidth is the rate of data transfer. It can be easily understood with the help of an analogy.

Here’s a quick analogy–Take for instance, a highway & cars. The broader the highway, the more is the number of cars passing through it. Similarly the greater the bandwidth, more is the rate of data transfer. How much bandwidth you consume depends on the content your website has. So if your website has a good number of videos, audio & multimedia files etc. obviously it would be seeking more bandwidth.

Bandwidth requirement is also determined by the number of visitors performing some actions on your website. The more is the number of visitors, the more is the amount of data transferred from your website, and so more will be the data transfer and hence more will be the bandwidth consumption.

Bandwidth requirement is driven by consumption such as uploads, downloads, transferals  etc. The more these actions are performed, more is the bandwidth needed. Hence, you must purchase a web hosting plan that meets your bandwidth requirements most efficiently & effectively.

Now you must be wondering ‘How much bandwidth does your website need?’ It can be easily figured out.

Bandwidth needed = Average Page Views × Average Page Size × Average Daily Visitors × Number of days in a month (30) × Redundant Factor

•    Average Daily Visitors: The total number of monthly visitors/30
•    Average Page Size: The average size of your web page.
•    Average Page Views: The average page viewed per visitors
•    Redundant Factor: A safety factor ranging from 1.3 – 1.8

(Note: Redundant factor signifies extra unused bandwidth. The greater the redundant factor, more capable your web server is for coping up with sudden peaks in traffic.)

Once you’ve your bandwidth figures with you, you can then decide easily which plan you should sign up for. It’s recommended that you don’t pick a cheap web hosting package since you can’t afford to compromise with the performance of your website for few bucks.

At LimeDomains, we offer three web hosting plans namely, Basic Plan–free with every domain purchase/transfer (Bandwidth offered: 1 GB), Standard Plan–for beginners & growing needs (Bandwidth offered: 100 GB) and Premium Hosting Plan–for high-traffic websites (Bandwidth offered: Unlimited).

Get your Hosting plan (satisfying your bandwidth needs) today!

You can handle the complexity of projects easily by using Management Applications, which streamline the execution of your projects & enhance the efficiency of your project team and organization as a whole.

These full featured project management applications enable you to identify and analyze even the minutest details related to your project, along with the ticketing systems. This helps you resolve customer queries adequately besides enabling your developers to find out & fix project bugs.

These management applications help you to:

• Organize project better and beat deadlines
• Prioritize deliverables- for teams and individuals
• Stay focused on the job at hand
• Eliminate task management hassle
• Add dynamic wiki functionality to your website quickly

Now, let us have a glance together at the management applications on our platform.

Bugzilla

Bugzilla, a Web-based open source Defect/Bug tracking system, enables users like you or groups of developers to effectively monitor bugs in the product. It’s a top-rated bug tracking/testing tool and its system requirements entail a compatible database management system, apt release of Perl 5, compatible web server, suitable mail transfer agent etc. It can be easily integrated with systems like CVS, Bonsai, or Perforce SCM, and also provides a documented workflow & extrapolates milestones. LimeDomains currently supports version 3.2.3 of Bugzilla.

Its main benefits include:

• Better communication
• Enhanced product quality
• Improved customer satisfaction
• Complete accountability
• Augmented productivity
• Adaptable to multiple situations

MediaWiki

MediaWiki, an open source server-based software designed for high-traffic websites, lays strong emphasis on multilingualism, and is available in over 100 languages. It offers advanced media file intelligence, which entails rich functionalities for images/thumbnails, and is inclusive of factors such as editing pages by subsection. It also offers free-links support for pages versus CamelCase. LimeDomains currently supports version 1.14.0 of MediaWiki.

Its main benefits include:

• It’s open source and is available for free.
• Easy online editing of your Web pages.
• On-spot checking of results so there is no need to upload FTP.
• Excellent collaboration tool enabling multiple users to work simultaneously on a project

PHProjekt

PHProjekt, a modular application for the coordination of group activities and Web-based information and document sharing, is a great streamlined software devoid of all such features that contribute in the wastage of time & memory. Its components are inclusive of features such as group calendar, project management tools, a time card system, file management, a contact manager, a powerful mail client and many other modules. It’s available in 38 languages & 9 databases. LimeDomains currently supports version 5.2 of PHProjekt.

Its main benefits include:

• Many protocols like ldap, xml/soap and webdav are supported.
• User friendly online application for planning and managing group activities.
• It can be accessed from anywhere in the world.
• Information sharing process easier than ever.

TaskFreak

TaskFreak, a simple but efficient open source Web-based task manager, organize tasks per project, priority, deadline and context, and is quite easy to install and use. It emphasizes on an intuitive design & usability. It offers color-based complete project status & priority level. LimeDomains currently supports version 0.6.2 of TaskFreak.

Its main benefits include:

• GTD compliant.
• Easily compatible with MySQL or SQLite (PHP4 and PHP5 compatible).
• User friendly application.
• Prioritizes tasks & sets deadlines.

Get started with using management applications at LimeDomains to streamline your process workflow and enhance your organization productivity & efficiency!