A basic fact of doing business in this modern technological age is that you must have a web site. Whether you are a corporate leader, looking to promote your own personal brand, or just plan a family reunion establishing your online presence is important, both personally and professionally. In order to have a web site that projects your own personal identity you must start with selecting the right web host; but with so many options available today, where do you begin and how do you know if you are selecting the best web host for your needs? In this guide to selecting the right web host for your web site we will look at ways to select the best host and a review of some of the top choices available to you in order to help you find the best hosting solution.

To begin the process your first step is to take a look at what your web hosting needs actually are. Do you need to help customers find your business? Are you wanting to establish a community with interactive features for your members or site visitors? Or do you need a great way to showcase your portfolio that lets you sell your talents to potential clients or buyers? Finding a web host that offers a ton of great features is not going to be very helpful to you if you do not know what you actually need or how you can incorporate those features in your web hosting needs. To get you started thinking about what you need and how you can incorporate some of the more popular web hosting features into your online identity, here is a quick over view of the more common features offered by a number of web hosting providers.

Site Builder:  This is one of the important areas that you need to deal with at the very beginning; how will you design your web site? If you already have web design software that you want to use to create your new masterpiece or will be hiring a designer to take care of that aspect of your web site for you then using a host that offers easy FTP access or an easy editor to give your design team room to create will be very important.  You can also find a professionally designed template that you can purchase then customize and upload to your web host.

But what if you are not a web design guru and you do not have a budget large enough to afford the luxury of hiring a design pro? This is where selecting a hosting provider that offers an easy site builder will be very important. Most site builders are WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) drag and drop editors which mean that all you have to do is choose from a selection of predesigned templates and plug in the information and options that you want to add to your page.

Who Is It For: This is perfect for those who do not have a lot of time to put into designing the look and feel of their web site or for those who do not have the design software or know how to create their own web sites.

Blog: Blogs are being used today for everything from personal journaling to full blown magazines but are they an essential component for your web site needs? Blogs can help you to easily update information on your site and communicate with your web site visitors or customers. There are many blog hosts available and most hosting packages include easy to install blogging platforms such as WordPress that allows you to easily customize your blog’s look by choosing for a variety of themes or uploading your own. 
Who Is It For?: A blog is great for web site owners who want to offer regularly updated information or online newsletters for their customers or members on a daily or weekly basis and for those who will be offering more detailed information that they want to use to draw more visitors to their websites. A blog can easily be used to supplement your current needs; for example, a bridal shop could use a blog to display how to articles and feature on selecting the right dress, etc.

Community Features: If you want to engage your site visitors and have them returning to your web site frequently, adding community features can be a great way to go. Community features can range from a simple discussions forum to a full scale content management system that allows users to post articles and comment on content. Adding polls or a guest book is also another simple way to get your customers or visitors engaged with your site.

Who Is It For?: If you want to keep your customers on your site, get a lot of feedback from them, or encourage users to help grow your content then community features will be important to you. You will need to decide what level of visitor interaction will suit your needs in order to determine which community features you need. Those who only want to get basic feedback on a particular issue or two may make due with a simple poll where as web masters who are looking to create a full, robust community will need to find hosting that offers a forum and content management features that allow you to assign users the ability to add content to your site.

Email: If you want to communicate under your own brand, such as Your Name@YourDomain.com then finding a host that provides email services will be important. This is an area where you may want to think long term as well. If you want to offer email services to your site members with your domain then you will need to locate a host that provides larger email services that can be accessed by others. If ; however, you only want email for yourself or other key members of your company or organization then basic email services should work fine for you.

Also, you should consider how you want to access your email. Do you prefer web based email that can be accessed from anywhere or do you want the flexibility of using POP email services that allow you to use an email reading program such as IncrediMail or Microsoft’s Outlook? Knowing which options you prefer will help you to choose the best web hosting solution.

Top Recommendations:
To help you in your search, here is a quick review of some of my favorite options for web hosting.

Site 5 Hosting: This is one of my top picks for hosting with tons of options, great features, and an easy to use control panel that allows you to host single or multiple sites from one easy account. Site 5 has unlimited space and unlimited bandwidth plus they offer tons of preinstalled scripts including blogging platforms such as WordPress, forums, and CMS (Content Management Systems) including phpNuke, Joomla, and others. They have an easy to use site builder for chooser from a series of predesigned templates or you can easily use the ftp option to upload your site designed with software elsewhere. With free unlimited email and easy to manage domain tools, Site 5 is top rate choice that you can also feel good about because Site 5 is a green host and they plant a tree for every new account. With a 30 day free trial and money back guarantee you can not go wrong with this hosting option which is great for all levels of expertise, even those new to web hosting. They also offer Moodle for those needing to add educational elements to their sites or communities.
Who is it Best for? New users and professonals alike, Site 5 is great for anyone looking for a great all in one solution that is easy to use, especially those looking for professional WordPress hosting or need the great educational tools offered by Moodle.
Costs: Rages from $4.95 per month to $13.95 per month depending on package and term with no set up fee.
Cons: You do not get as much control over the design elements offered online; however, you are free to use any design software that you want and upload using ftp.

Homestead: If you do not have a lot of technical ability and you just want easy to use web hosting without a large learning curve, then Homestead is a great choice. You can choose from hundreds of predesigned templates or have complete control with true drag and drop features that allow you to put any element anywhere on your page without predesigned restrictions. You can also easily add a customized web form or predefined guest book to your site with just a click.
Cons: No community features available such as blogs or forums, and no member management to allow visitors or customers to log into your site.
Who is It Best for? Individuals or Businesses who want basic hosting features without a complicated user panel or want complete real time control over the look and feel of their site.
Costs: Packages range from $4.99 a month for a simple 5 page site to $49.99 a month for an unlimited number of sites and pages.

Pro-Stores: If you just need an e-commerce solution instead of a full blown web site then Pro-stores may be a good option for you. You can choose from professional templates, edit customizeable options including html, and even run coupon offers or generate logos for your online store. If you want to establish a full featured, professional online store front, then this is the perfect solution.
Who is it Best for? Retail businesses looking to put their entire product line online in an easy to use, professional store format.
Costs: They offer two packages, $29.95 for up to 5,000 products or $59.95 per month for up to 100,000 products; both with a 0.5% transaction fee.
Cons: Designed for large retail businesses, if you only have one or two items to sell this may not be the best option and a standard web site with PayPal integration may work better for your needs.

In addition to my top picks, you may also want to check out a couple of these other great options:  

• 1&1 Hosting
• Lunar Pages
• Host Gator
• Fat Cow Hosting
• Start Logic

Ed Note: All links above are affiliate links. Clicking on them for your purchase helps support Niki and her great writing.

This site, and millions of others are powered by WordPress, a powerful blogging tool that continues to make waves in the industry due to the wide range of themes and plugins available to be used to personalize or extend the platform. Recently, a new plugin was released called Gravity Forms, and I am a huge fan of it, and so I want to take some time to talk about it.

First, some disclosure. I first saw Gravity Forms long before it was even released in Beta and was able to give some thoughts, opinions and ideas on shaping the plugin. I like to think that some of my advice helped Rocket Genius, the company behind the plugin, but because of this, I also feel like I have invested interest in seeing it do well. Secondly, Gravity Forms powers all the submission and contact forms on this site, and most sites that I run. Lastly, I am part of their affiliate program. If you don’t want to buy through my affiliate link, just head on over to GravityForms.com rather than clicking any links, banners or other “links” in this post.

What is Gravity Forms?

Gravity Forms is really an extension for WordPress, one of the first of its kind. It is a highly complex data acquisition and management plugin that will allow you to create any form needed to collect data from your visitors. The most simplistic version of this is the generic contact form. Everyone adds a contact form to their blog so that they don’t have to give out their e-mail address. Gravity Forms makes creating such a contact form very easy.

Beyond that, Gravity Forms could be used for any type of data collection. Some examples are as follows:

Example 1: Guest Posts – You want to collect guest posts on your blog. Using Gravity Forms, you create a form that allows the visitor to create the post title, put in the post text, and even upload an image to be used with their post. If you set up Gravity Forms correctly, the submitted information will become a post on your blog, usually in draft format. You change it from Draft to Published, and you’ve added user submitted content to your blog.

Example 2: Basic Help Desk – Customer having a problem with something? Create a form with all the details you need to collect and from within the WordPress administration panel, you can see the “tickets” created by users, add notes, star them for importance, edit them, and delete them as they are closed. You can even have admin only fields so you can mark tickets with a status of Closed.

Example 3: Image Hosting Site – Create a form with an upload element, and a few other fields, and quickly you could create an image hosting website, where each image uploaded becomes a WordPress post with that single image as the element displayed. You could even give submitters the power to tag their images to make them easier to find in the future.

Example 4: Visitor Survey – Create a single, long page visitor survey, and collect details regarding their location, ages, and approximate salary levels for use in selling advertising and honing in on the type of content they’d be interested in. Export the data to CSV, open it in Excel or another spreadsheet application and begin to create charts and graphs to visually interpret the data you collect.

Example 5: Limited Time Offer – Want to collect e-mail addresses for a contest or giveaway, but only want the submissions to be open from noon until midnight on one single day? With Gravity Forms, you can set scheduling on the form to do this. You could even limit it to one hundred entries if you so chose.

All of this and much, much more are possible through the use of Gravity Forms on your self-hosted WordPress site.

How Much Does Gravity Forms Cost?

While many of you might be used to getting everything for WordPress for free, Gravity Forms is one of the few Premium WordPress plugins. This “Premium” label means a few things.

• Number One: There are Developers working on improvements and fixes constantly
• Number Two: It includes useful and helpful support.
• Number Three: It costs money.

If you contacted a WordPress developer and asked him or her to replicate Gravity Forms as it currently exists for you, the budget they’d quote you on would be in the thousands. Even some of the cheapest programmers in the world would probably ask for a few hundred. Gravity Forms ranges in licensing costs starting at $39 for a Single Site license, moving up to $99 for a Multi-site license, and capping out at $199 for a Developer’s license.

What Does Each License Type Include?
With a Single Site License, you get to install Gravity Forms on your one site and use it as you see fit, for as many forms and pieces of data you want. Want to create one hundred different forms to collect information on your single blog? The Single Site License will allow you to do that.

With a Multi-site License, you are allowed to use Gravity Forms on up to five of your own sites, otherwise it is the same as the Single Site License.

With the Developer’s License, you are allowed to use Gravity Forms on an Unlimited number of sites, gain access to priority support, and will have access to all of the Gravity Forms add-ons that Rocket Genius has planned to release. They haven’t released any as of yet, but I’ll explain the importance of this soon.

What is it Like to Own Gravity Forms?

One of the early worries people had was, “how can Rocket Genius afford to focus their attention on both updating the plugin and supporting their users when they are making a maximum of $199 per sale?”

When the final version of Gravity Forms came out, I was offered a free copy for my continued input and excitement regarding Gravity Forms, but I ended up buying a Developer’s license anyways. A company I work for felt the passion that I had for Gravity Forms and bought a developer license for themselves. That’s how much I believe in this product.

Since day one, there has always been one of the main team on the forum answering questions as quickly as possible. They are helpful, friendly, and open to both criticism and ideas. I’ve never come across a problem that they couldn’t help me resolve. Also, after less than three months, we are already on version 1.2.1 of Gravity Forms. Each major revision adding new, highly useful features.

Version 1.2 of Gravity Forms added Dynamic Field Population, Bulk Add Predefined Choices, Form Scheduling, Limit Form Entries, Respond to Entries from within WordPress and Role Management Integration. If those don’t mean anything to you, then you need to check out Gravity Forms and see what all of them do. Once you understand what they’ve added, you’ll see your current contact form system looking like the old and rusty jalopy.

Then there is the talk of add-ons for Gravity Forms that would allow it to be used specifically to suit certain needs. Add-ons are things that not everyone would need, and as such shouldn’t be in the core of the plugin. Maybe they want to change Gravity Forms into a new and improved Comment Management solution, or a better Customer Record Manager, or a building block for a new e-commerce tool? These could all be possible with future add-ons.

Isn’t Upgrading Plugins a Pain?

The last few versions of WordPress have been making upgrading plugins easier than ever by allowing you to easily upgrade plugins within the WordPress repository. Unfortunately, WordPress doesn’t allow Premium plugins to be part of the repository, and as such, most Premium plugins can only be upgraded through FTP or other complex, old fashioned means. Thankfully, the folks at Rocket Genius figured out how to hook into this upgrading system, and you can upgrade Gravity Forms from within WordPress, just like it was in the WordPress repository. It is a very slick process and reduces the burden on purchasers to continue coming back to Gravity Forms’ website to download updates.

Bought It, Love It, Want to Be an Affiliate?

Rocket Genius has seen the wisdom in helping pay the people that love their product and spread the good word. I didn’t write this review because I could make some money. I wrote all this because I love what they are doing and hope that every WordPress user buys Gravity Forms and finds some new way to use it or that it makes their lives better when it comes to managing forms and user input on their site.

Gravity Forms is using E-Junkie for their Affiliate management, and it is easy to sign up and get started. For each sale of Gravity Forms, you’ll earn 20% commission. If you love Gravity Forms, it doesn’t hurt to sign up. If you purchase the one site license, and then help sell one Developer and one Single site license, you’ll have paid for your purchase.

Others Love Gravity Forms Too

I hate doing sales pitches, and even more so when it isn’t my own product, and so I thought I’d better have some opinions from others on here as well.

Joost de Valk, WordPress guru, plugin author and WordPress podcaster said, ” I have my own contact form plugin, and yet, I have decided to go with Gravity Forms for all the contact forms on this site, and it’s now the only contact form we use for all our client projects.”

Jason Schuller said, “Gravity Forms was designed with WordPress users in mind. Basically, if you know how to use WordPress, getting started with Gravity Forms will be like second nature.”

Jeremy from Papertree Design said, “I did a quick review shot this particular client a link to the demos and we both decided that it couldn’t get much easier than that. In fact he was sold in less than five minutes.”

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