Magnificent 7seven.com
web hosting reviews
Steven Robert Heine is an American poet and author. He has spent much of his life supporting poetry projects and events. He is the author of 8 volumes of poetry. In 2011 he was seriously injured in a fall that left him in great pain and almost unable to walk. He suffered a stroke in 2023. Heine receives no disability and relies on a small pension and retirement income. He is no longer able to make public appearances.
We hope you will consider donating to this site as we try to get it updated. Also purchase some of the original tee-shirts and merchandise created by Steven Robert Heine.
Thank you!
Web Host Provider Reviews
1) Bluehost. Bluehost offers pretty much all services. Design is through Wordpress. Plans: ‘Basic’, $7.99 per month. Allows one website and one included domain. ‘Plus’ $10.99. Allows unlimited number of websites. ‘Choice Plus’, $14.99 per month. Allows unlimited number of domain and some extra services, such as domain privacy. For an ecommerce site, you will want to use ‘Woocommerce’, plans run from $13.99 (for one store) to $17.99 (for unlimited stores.
Bluehost is a full-service provider with all the tools you could ask for and good support. They even sell domain names. I have used Bluehost for several years.
2) Strikingly for one-page websites. Allows ecommerce. Plans: ‘Limited’ $8.00 per month, allows two websites. ‘Pro’ $16.00 allows 3 sites. ‘VIP’ $49.00 per month, allows 5 websites. Provides a free domain with yearly accounts. Provides e-commerce on all plans. Cloud hosting.3) Siteground. Wordpress hosting. Plans include: Startup, $3.95 per month, allows one website, GrowBig, $5.95 per month, allows unlimited websites, and GoGeek, $11.95 per month, unlimited websites and more features. (no free domain with account).4) Dreamhost. Wordpress hosting. Plans include: ‘Shared – Starter’ plan starts at $2.59 per month. Includes 1 domain name and unlimited bandwidth. ‘VPS Basic plan at $13.75 per month’ allows unlimited domains. Wordpress. No cPanel. E-commerce is through Woocommerce, which is a free plugin for Wordpress.5) 3dcart is a site built especially for online stores. Choose from over 100 payment processors. $19.00 per month for a ‘startup store’. $29.00 per month for a basic store. $79.00 per month for a ‘Plus Store’ Provides standard store features. One domain per account. Includes shopping cart and many ecommerce features.6) A2 Hosting uses a drag and drop platform for building with A2 software. Plans include ‘Startup’ $2.99 per month (one website), ‘Drive’ $4.99 (unlimited websites), and ‘Turbo-boost’ for $9.99 per month, (unlimited sites).7) Webflow: I’ve included Webflow in this list because it uses a unique interface. It is not a Wordpress site. It may take some time to learn and get used to the Webflow user design tool. Keep in mind that ALL website designers are an interface to move the web programming around. If you like gadgets and controls, Webflow may be for you! Tutorials available to get you up and running. Plans include ‘Basic’, $12.00 per month, ‘CMS’ $16.00 per month and ‘Business’ for $36.00 per month.8) i Page uses Wordpress hosting. ‘WP Starter’ $9.49 per month (billed yearly). ‘WP Essential’ $12.49 per month. Good for selling online. Provides a number of choices of shopping carts.9) Hostinger is one of the biggest webhosting companies on the internet. They provide ‘drag and drop’ as well as cloud hosting and Wordpress. Plans include: ‘Single Shared’ $2.15 per month (allows one website, ‘Premium’ $3.49 per month (allows unlimited websites), and ‘Business Shared’ $7.95 per month (allows unlimited websites and many other features. Premium and Business plans also come with a fee domain name. It is easy to see why Hostinger is so popular.10) WIX uses a drag and drop for ease of design. Plans include: ‘Combo’ $13.00 per month, ‘Unlimited’ for $17.00 per month, and ‘Pro’ for $22.00 per month. (There are other plans for ecommerce).Domain names: this is VERY important, when purchasing a domain name, pay little attention to the initial price of the domain name. What is important is the renewal cost. I have seen domain registers that charge very little for the initial price but upwards of $30.00 per year to renew. Most paid hosting plans give you one free domain name with the purchase of a plan. Beyond that, you will need to go to the market to buy additional names.Here are some inexpensive domain registers:1) ** NameCheap**. Dot.coms start at $8.88 per year. Hosting plans are $2.88 per month to $8.88 per month. NameCheap has their own ‘drag and drop’ builder.2) Porkbun. Dot.coms start at $8.56 per year. Renew at $8.56 per year. Porkbun also offers hosting at prices ranging from $3.00 per month to $38.00 per month through Weebly, Wordpress sites.Other sites of interest include:1) Grammarly. Grammarly is an excellent resource for grammar checking and making sure the mechanics of content is correct. You may want to check out the products Grammarly can provide.
Web Hosting Basics
You may be looking at creating a website and don’t know where to start. OR you may have a product or book and don’t know how to create a website to sell it. Then this blog is a great place to start! I have reviewed many webhosts from CARRD to Zyro. I think you will find the following suggestions useful. Some are affiliates, which means I get paid a little if you click on the links and use the products. But there is no additional cost to you (beyond the normal hosting costs) and the proceeds help pay for the costs of publishing the above poetry information.As recently as a few years ago, most sites provided access to the programming language’ of the website, or html. This allowed you to make changes to the programming and see how that reflected on your website. Fortunately, knowledge of html is no longer necessary. (You may still find it helpful to learn what the basic elements of html are, in case you need to insert a link in your site or see the code for your site.).
Please note: I was not paid by any of the companies listed below to promote their sites. I did find it interesting to research what they have to offer and list some of the main points to consider. And yes, these are affiliate links but they have all been researched.
1. What is the cost of a website? Many hosts can get you started for free! OR with a very monthly rate for the 1st year. Cost is usually listed as a ‘monthly cost’ provided you pay for a whole year at a time. IE: if the cost is $20.00 per month, you may be required to pay $240.00. Make sure you get a plan that fits your needs. Usually you can upgrade to a more expensive plan as your needs grow.
2. What is the platform the ecommerce site uses? Generally, sites use either Wordpress or what I call, a ‘House’ software. Wordpress is in my experience a platform that requires an intermediate level of computer savvy. You will do better when you put some time into working with it and develop a ‘feel for it’. ‘House’ software is unique to the webhost site you are using. Most are ‘plug and play’. Like any application, you just have to get comfortable moving around in them. Each has some unique features. When you go to the webhost, you will see samples of web pages. When you like the look... go for it!
3. If you are going to be selling products through your site, you will need to know what bank does the ecommerce site use? This is extremely important. It is great you made a sale on your website, but how do you get the customer’s payment into your bank account? You want banking tools that your customer will feel comfortable ordering with, AND you want banking tools that will give you access to your money. While many sites use PAYPAL, some use other financial tools.
4. How many domains can I use on one account? If you have several domains, you will want to host them all in the same place. If you have different stores selling different products, you may want to use more than one site. Ecommerce sites vary from one domain per account to ‘unlimited’ domains.
5. What kind of stats will this ecommerce site provide? You may want to look around to see how much traffic you are getting and where people are seeing your site. (You may be surprised to note how many people in other countries are viewing your site).
6. How good is the technical support from this ecommerce site? You don’t want to wait days for a question to be answered. A good test or response time is to ask the Web host a question as ‘a potential client’ to measure response time.
7. Does this vendor sell domain names and for how much? And will they provide me with a free domain name with my order?
8. What is the difference between shared web hosting and a dedicated server?’ The answer is, that a dedicated server is a server used by no other sites and thus those sites can’t impact the server or slow it down. Dedicated servers are quite a bit more expensive per month. Most websites should be fine running on shared hosting.
We will try to answer those questions. You can click on the link provided to get Common Website Terms you should know:
Html: hypertext markup language. This is the actual programming code. No matter which programming tool you are using, whether it be **Wordpress ** a sitebuilder, that interface is adjusting the html as you move and change features.
CSS: cascading style sheets. This refers to how you website is presented in the programming.
Domain Forwarding: when you have purchased hosting and are ready to build a website on the hosting server, you must put your domain on that hosts server. You do this by putting in the code numbers for that server into your domain names. Both the hosting provider and your domain seller will explain to you how to do this.
VPS Hosting: virtual private server hosting. VPS hosting acts similar to a private server with more flexibility than shared hosting. Most new users will only need shared hosting.
Contact Native Publishing Company.
I hope this site will save you time and money in your own effort to build a website. This site and many other poetry sites are supported by the above affiliate links.