Duck hunting, fishing and bird watching in Hyde County, North Carolina

Digital Business Services recently completed a site upgrade for Carawan's Motel and Cabins in Hyde County, North Carolina (www.carawans.com). Owners Lisa and Mark Carawan needed to increase their internet traffic and web site "user-friendliness" for their visitors.

We did some strategic keyword research first to determine the best words and phrases to help Carawans market their excellent selection of cabins and their motel near Lake Mattamuskeet, one of the more beautiful, serene regions along the North Carolina coastal waterways.



Our new design makes it not only easier to find Carawan's Motel on the internet, but navigate through the website and see photos of their cabins.

The site is popular with outdoor types who live North Carolina's fishing, duck and bear hunting and wildlife areas.

DBS enjoyed working on this project as it was a nice departure from our usual "business-to-business" web site work and gave an opportunity to enjoy North Carolina's beautiful coastal area.

How to move your website between hosting services

You've decided you need a new company to host your website. Maybe you are unhappy with your current host company's service or perhaps you are just getting a better deal somewhere else. What to do first?

IMPORTANT STEPS

You need to make sure you can access all your web pages, forms, scripts, and images from the previous web hosting company’s server. You need:

• Your current FTP login.


• Your current FTP password. See above if you don't know it


• FTP software so you can connect to the server and download all your web folders (www.coffeecup.com or "google" Filezilla and download that.)


• A list of all current email addresses and passwords so you can recreate them on your new web server

If you do not have your login and passwords handy, contact your tech support at your current hosting company and get this information first before doing anything. Once you change companies, your old hosting company will lock you out of their servers and not return calls. Heartless.

After you sign up with your new hosting service, put this information in a safe place:

• Your administrative account number


• Your administrative login/password


• Your company contact name on the account


• Your POP3 server name -IMPORTANT. You need this for your email.


• Your SMTP server name-IMPORTANT. Ditto.


• Their tech support number.

Wait, there's more.

• The names of the DNS servers that your domain name (www.mycompany.com) will be transferred to on your new hosting company's servers


• Your FTP login


• Your FTP password

And still more!

• Obtain from your Domain Registration Company (this is the company you originally used to license your web site name)


• Your account login


• Your account password


• Procedures for changing DNS servers (online form or tech contact)

You will have to login into the Domain Registration Company’s account management screen and change the name of the DNS servers to the addresses given to you by your new hosting company. The change will take 2-48 hours to take affect.

Once you have done this, contact tech support of your new hosting service and tell them you changed the DNS servers on your account and ask them to “park” your domain (web name) on their server. This can also take 2-48 hours. Your site will be “up” when you see a generic welcome page when you open your website.

Once you see your generic home page, now you can upload your web pages, forms, scripts, and graphics. You’ll replace their index.htm or index.html file and your site will be active again.

A word about email accounts:

An ISP provides internet access and may or may not offer web hosting. Your ISP email will look like: joed@myispname.com (ex. joed@alltel.com).:

These are generic email addresses that are sometimes used for login names into your account. Do not lose this information.:

Your web hosting service, which could also be your ISP or a separate company, supplies email addresses that are associated with your web domain name. (ex: joed@mycompany.com ). If you have a web site or want your employees to use your web address on their corporate accounts, you will be given a web-based administrator’s page into which you will logon and enter your company email addresses and passwords. Generally, companies provide 25 addresses or more with their hosting plans. :

So to summarize, you can end up with 2 version of your email address::

• Your ISP address, which you should record and may or may not use


• Your web address, which includes your website name as part of its address.

Both of these addresses can be set up in your email software, such as Outlook Express and used to suit your needs.

Well, this certainly is a lot of technical information. If you feel overwhelmed, contact Digital Business Services and we'd be glad to assist you. Our support fees are very reasonable and we have the experience to help you move to a new hosting company without losing your valuable website or email information.