One of the services that makes 2020Media special is performing migrations of existing websites from other web hosts. We’ll help with anything from a static HTML site to complex database driven CMS websites. Website migrations are not always needed – sometimes the customer has a full copy of their website and it’s straightforward for them to upload it and get going straight away.
But it’s not unusual for a customer to find themselves with a problem – their developer is no longer around or puts barriers up to the move, or the existing web host does everything in their power to hold their customer to ransom.
Often customers have been told by everyone they’ve spoken to that their web site can only be hosted or maintained by their current provider, and if they wish to move, they’ll have to start again from scratch. Put simply, this is not true in the majority of cases. Talk to 2020Media about your move, and we’ll give you free advice on what is and isn’t possible.
There are any number of ways of adding an online shop to a website – we looked at 3 extensions for Joomla here if you’d like to know more. But in the posting, we will look at payment methods – once your customer has chosen to buy something, how are they going to pay for it? It’s at this point of the sales process that a lot of sales are lost, so it’s crucial to get it right.
The Easy Option
Paypal and more recently Google Checkout are the most common payment methods found on e-commerce websites. Why? Because they are so easy to set up, require nothing more than an email address, credit card and bank account. The registration process is very easy for the shop owner, and they support all credit card types at the same rates. The integration process is typically straightforward with lots of examples and pre-built buttons provided.
But from the customer point of view are Paypal and Google Checkout ideal? Perhaps not. Usually the customer will have to leave your website entirely so they may be wondering where did the e-shop go? They may also face additional advertising and “become a member” links on the payment processors site.
For the business owner, use of these processors can be frustrating. If you are selling downloadable products it’s highly unlikely that PayPal or Google Checkout will accept some proof of purchase, even a commercial invoice, as a valid argument not to refund the customer.
The Alternatives
There are of course a number of alternatives to Google and Paypal. These include credit card processors, off-line payments and even payment on delivery.
Taking payments online can help increase your sales
If you do support a number of payment methods, it’s a good idea to give the customers a choice during checkout – but don’t go overboard. Too much choice can confuse – the customer just wants to complete the purchase, not read through 10 different payment options.
For online payment with a credit or debit card the process involved requesting a Merchant Number from your bank – these are normally only provided for businesses, so you’d need to be a limited company or sole trader. Once you have the merchant account set up (for which you’ll be paying the bank a monthly fee), you can go shopping for a payment processor. These charge by different methods but typically you might pay a fixed monthly fee plus a percentage or small fixed fee of each sale. Providers include Paypoint, WorldPay, SagePay.
Benefits over Paypal and Google Checkout include your name on the customer’s statement, control over the process, negotiable fees, transparent checkout process and lower costs for high volumes.
2020Media can help you with adding ecommerce to your website.
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Drupal is used on many thousands of websites, but a recent convert to Drupal is The Economist. The Economist is now using Drupal 6 to serve the vast majority of content pages to its primary web site, economist.com. Drupal powers the homepage, along with all articles, channels, comments, and more.
The site is incredibly busy – over 100,000 stories and a Posting rate exceeding a comment per minute. It also boasts 20-30 million page views per month with 3-4 millon unique visitors over the same period.
The Economist has a large varied dataset and moving from the previous system (based on ColdFusion and Oracle) was no easy task. They hired a specialist company called Cyrve who’ve written and open-sourced a Drupal module to enable migrations of existing complex databases to Drupal. Read more about the migration, or check out Drupal Hosting from 2020Media.
The IPv6 Matrix project, proudly supported and hosted by 2020Media, was featured in a presentation at London INET this week. The ISOC project looks at the entire internet for take up of next generation IPv6 addresses. IPv4 addresses are due to run out in under a year so adoption of IPv6 addresses is crucial to the future growth of the internet.
INET London
INET is a worldwide set of conferences looking at the future of the internet. Opportunities, threats and challenges to business were examined and discussed by the participants. Matthew Ford, technology program manager from the Internet Society spoke about the current state of internet penetration and how ISPs are constantly increasing capacity to keep up with demand. The big 6 ISPs who account for 94% of UK broadband services now use an arsenal of technological techniques to manage, control, and limit their users internet use. These include traffic shaping, deep packet inspection, acceptable use policies (AUP) and limits hidden deep in their terms and conditions.
2020Media’s broadband has clear up-front quotas on bandwidth use, no deep packet inspection or traffic shaping, and a clear indication of the line speed you can expect. View our broadband site for more information.
Other comments of interest included one likening the internet to the large banks – “too big to fail”. The internet is now such a essential part of the way services are delivered to the public that it is now considered essential infrastructure. ISOC warned that in the future the freedoms and accessability of the entire internet we have now, may not exist. Their Future Scenarios videos demonstrate some of the problems we are internet users and providers may face.
One of the hardest choices is who to host your lovingly crafted Joomla site.
Whilst there are certain hosts that you should avoid at all costs (see ‘unlimited hosting’), professionals would be advised to skip the generic hosts and use a specialised hosting company instead
Joomla hosting requires a certain environment on the server and a host that is geared up to meeting these requirements is obviously a good thing. They will check that all the necessary components and versions meet the published specification by Joomla so that each Joomla installation is seamless.
Customer service
Regardless of how nice a generic hosting company might be, at heart they have only 2 major concerns
keep the server running (regardless of performance).
make sure you’re paying your bill on time.
While the second rule applies to every hosting company (although smaller hosting companies are likely to be more flexible on this), if you are having issues with your Joomla site, chances are you’re on your own for support (as they are not liable for your software).
A specialized host will be concerned with performance issues, and will have experts available to help fix your site or give you advice on how to improve performance.
Do your research
You wouldn’t take on a member of staff without checking them out, so take a few minutes to do the same for a prospective host. Have they had bad reviews? What sort of uptime* have they had?
Read through their support status pages, if they publish them publicly. I recently looked at http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/ from DreamHost, a large US webhost.I was quite surprised to see almost daily problems reported, and the length of time if took for some to be resolved: “The server is currently being restored via backups and could take a few days for this to complete.” * Are they sending the backups via carrier pigeon? The flippant style also grates – if this was my data, this sort of comment wouldn’t help me explain it to my boss:
” Bad memory has been replaced with thoughts candy and double rainbows. Austin is back up and running. Sorry for the downtime.”
Buy 'unlimited' and your website could be restricted without notice if it gets flooded with visitors
It’s a promise we’ve all heard time and again. Web hosting companies are offering “unlimited” hosting for mere pennies a month.
The truth about “unlimited” hosting is that it is actually very limited. If you read the fine print on any unlimited contract, you’ll find that a variety of restrictions are placed on the account, including, in many cases, bans on providing streaming media, image hosting or other bandwidth/storage-intense activities.
“we do not support the use of our hosting services for personal file storage or back-up purposes and the use of your hosting account for that purpose is prohibited.”*. Because the limits are ‘soft’ limits it means the host can apply them at any time, without warning. http://randydeluxe.com/just-yappin/an-open-letter-to-bluehost/
In short, your use of the server is only “unlimited” as long as it doesn’t cause a problem and, if it does, you may find that your site goes dark.
Choosing a Host Summary
Even though choosing a specialized host is on average more expensive than a generic host, you will find the environment and support superior to the average hosting company. Of course this does not just apply to Joomla. 2020Media also supports content managements systems like Drupal and WordPress with the same fanatical attention to detail. Please Contact Us if you’d like to find out more.
News, tips and reviews from one of Britain's leading web hosting companies
There are any number of ways of adding an online shop to a website – we looked at 3 extensions for Joomla 
Read through their support status pages, if they publish them publicly. I recently looked at 