Author Websites 101: Add-On Products and Services in Hosting

This article series is for authors and writers beginning their journey into building a website and who need help understanding the complexities involved. Today we want to talk about all of the add-on products and services that are available when you sign up for a website hosting service.

There are six main add-ons you will encounter when signing up for your hosting package:

• Submit to search engines
• Domain privacy
• Dedicated IP
• Private SSL certificate
• Site builders
• Daily backup

Search Engine Submission

This is, by far, the most utilized add-on service. It usually costs around $50 (per year!) and claims to "submit" your site to the major search engines: Google, Yahoo! and MSN/Bing. Do they do this? Of course. However, it's not necessary. People will find your site if it is properly optimized and you do the right things to help them find it. Submitting to search engines is no guarantee of getting web traffic.

Another point to consider is that you can actually do this yourself with a little time and effort on your part. There are also some free site submitters available on the Internet if you look. The key is to already have your site optimized for key words and metadata, which we will discuss in a separate article. If it isn't optimized, you may not get the results you expect.

Domain Privacy

There are several companies that publish ownership information for website domain names (WhoIs & Nominet). This publishes your contact information to the public. This may or may not bother you. If you are a fiction writer publishing under a pen name, you may not want this information available. Domain privacy usually runs around $20 per year, so it's not terribly expensive.

Dedicated IP

Having a dedicated IP means that your website is the only one on the Internet using that particular Internet protocol number. Normally, this is not necessary. For bloggers, it is completely unnecessary. However, if you run a business (product or service) website where you sell and accept payments over the Internet, you are usually required to have a dedicated IP in order to set up merchant accounts and things of that nature. The dedicated IP helps protect your information and your customers.

Private SSL certificate

Again, this is not truly relevant to authors and writers who are not selling through their website. A private SSL certificate is expensive - around $70 per year. You must also have a dedicated IP to go along with it. However, it is a must-have for protecting sensitive customer data.

Site Builders

Hosting companies usually partner with site-building software companies to help customers build their own websites for free. I've tried a number of these and some are definitely better than others. We will talk more in depth about this add-on in a later article. Suffice it to say these usually are built into the Control Panel of your hosting account and you should feel free to play around to get the feel of how websites work.

Daily Backup

This is one of those add-ons that isn't really necessary until something goes wrong - and then you wish you had it. Daily backup helps to restore your site to its original look in case something goes wrong or you are hacked. This is something you can do manually, but most people new to the world of websites don't take it into account or don't have the time or experience to do it manually. When I first got involved in web design, there were a few times I had to start all over because I changed or deleted something I should never have touched. If you are like me, spend the extra money (about $25 per year) and take advantage of this helpful add-on.

Darcie Carsner Torres is a professional writer and editor with over 20 years of experience. She provides editing and critiquing services through CanAm Author Services, http://www.canamauthorservices.com, and editing and ghostwriting services through Pen & Pestle, http://www.penandpestle.com. Her mission is to help budding authors improve their writing and get published.