Branding livestock goes back to around 2700 B.C. Even paintings in the tombs of Egyptians show hieroglyphs of people branding oxen. This branding confirmed the ownership of the livestock. You may not be branding livestock, but this certainly applies to your website. It needs to be brandable so people will connect your website with a product, service, or other type of value.

Do you know how many people call HostGator and refer to us as GatorHost? A good number of people, but its our logo that people will never forget, this is just another part of branding yourself. If you surf the internet on any given day you will see the HostGator logo at some point. I can almost guarantee you that because it has been established across the internet. There are many aspects to branding your business besides the obvious sometimes. With that in mind, the following 5 tips will help you get on the right track to branding yourself better on the internet.

1. Branding With A Domain

   Have a domain which describes the name of your business as best as possible. Shorter domains are easier to remember. People can return to your website if the name is catchy and memorable. Avoid long domain names if possible, which detracts from the professionalism of your business.

2. Create A Logo Thats Memorable

   Make or have someone create a logo for you. This is also key for branding yourself. Remember, A picture is worth a thousand words. A logo, or image on your website will help connect customers, as well as potential customers with what your website is selling or promoting. You want to brand an image in peoples minds so they think of your business first when there is a service or product they need, or that their friends need.

3. Have A User Friendly Website

   Make your navigation simple and easy to use. A lot of people don’t realize that the user friendliness of a site is a part of branding. When you go to a website that is disorderly as well as looking and feeling complicated, would you rather stay and figure it out or find another resource that is simple and user friendly? If your website is simple and easy to use to purchase something, then people will come to you first over your competitors.

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Here at HostGator, we run across some pretty sad looking websites that could use some help sometimes. As I thought about how some people build and even sell horrible looking websites as a business, I thought it would be fun if we had a competition of who could build the ugliest website. The best part is we will be giving away a prize for it. The winner will receive a Free 1 year Swamp web hosting account.

Do you have what it takes to design something that strains the eyeballs, is disproportioned, or is absolutely user unfriendly? If you do, then read the list of rules and get started. Keep in mind that there will be one winner, so don’t be upset after its all said and done if you don’t win. The plus side however of this competition is that it gives you a good chance to get some traffic and exposure. We will be leaving the voting up to everyone that reads and comments on this blog as well as HostGator employees.

Website Contest Rules

• You may use a previously built website as long as it is yours.
• You MUST copy the code below and put it on the main page of your site.
• No site with any type of illegal content or questionable material will be accepted.
• Once your site is ready, you need to comment on this post with the web address to your site, so people can see.
• HostGator Staff will then judge based on viewing and your comments. More Comments can be found on the HostGator Forums. The winner will be announced on January 4th.

The <a href="http://blog.hostgator.com">HostGator</a> Ugliest Website Competition.

We want to thank those of you who checked into different funds on Donorschoose.org. Especially those of you that gave us direct links to a particular fund. As you will recall, several posts back we gave you the readers, the opportunity to choose which would be the best school project to fund. We also agreed from several comments to the post, that we would match the $100 dollar donation. This means a total of $200 will be donated to the specific cause. …

As you remember, we had a day where anyone who wanted could play paintball. It was a blast, and we have some pictures to show you. Brent likes to have these gatherings once in a while to let everyone from the office unwind and have a good time together. This office gathering was about shooting your fellow coworkers, and your boss. What a great time for payback! All in good fun of course. In the end, the man with the cleanest gear got drenched with paint. Enjoy the images, and click to enlarge.

WordPress is one of the greatest and simplest tools for bloggers today. WordPress uses PHP and thats great, but can at times not so great too. Why so? Receiving a lot of traffic over the period of a day is generally not an issue, however it can be an issue when you start getting a huge amount of traffic that is coming all at once. Unlike normal html webpages, PHP pages are dynamically generated. This means the server frequently re-compiles each page before displaying it to each visitor. This consumes more CPU than a standard webpage, so very popular blogs can quickly consume all available processor time.

Making Things Better

One of the best ways to combat against unnecessary recompiling of php pages (and thus greatly reduce cpu use) is to install and activate the WordPress Super Cache plugin. A cache is a temporary storage place for frequently or recently accessed data, and this is exactly what this plugin is designed to do. It takes the dynamic content in the form of php pages, and presents the results using low-overhead, generally static pages.

I think anyone that installs WordPress should always get this plugin no matter who you are. For the simple fact that when blogging, you may hit a subject or post something that catches on rather fast with social media based websites. The Super Cache plugin is based on the original cache plugin which was created by Ricardo Granada, and is just an overall solid wordpress plugin that is in my top ten favorites. Whats so great about the new over the old?

Difference Between Old and New

The larger difference between the original WordPress Cache plugin and the WP Super Cache is that the original, required manual work for whichever page you wanted to be cached, whereas the Super Cache is automatic. Keep in mind this plugin is not the solution to all your WordPress problems, but it will make a major difference when you are receiving larger amounts of traffic, especially in a shorter period of time than normal. …

Blogs have in more recent times gained a ridiculous popularity. A lot of people previously thought that blogging was just for kids or for people that wanted to just talk about the goings on in their lives, but not so anymore. Businesses as well as people creating niche websites are using blogs more than ever. WordPress being the popular choice. So why should you use a blog if you have a E-Commerce website or just a simple site promoting your business? The following list covers these points.

1. Announce new products or Services to your customers.

One of the best things about a blog is the announcing of new products which will be available for purchase, or bring attention to new services that you will be providing. This can be good especially if you do not plan to update your website as frequently, and want to make a simple blog post about it to inform current and potential customers.

2. Mention upcoming sales or special events.

What better way than to announce on your blog that you will be having an upcoming sale. If the content of your blog is good quality articles, then adding in a special sale that your E-Commerce site will be having in the near future can be a nice touch. This can lead to people coming back to your website more often to check on deals you may be offering. The more you get someone to come back to a site, the the greater potential for a sale increases.

3. Get on a more personal level.

Your blog gives you a great opportunity to build relationships with customers on a more personal level. It helps to give you more credibility and shows customers what you are about. This is especially important when it comes to repeat customers, and those who really do want to know who you are.

4. Help guide public image.

The fact that people have an image defined of who you are from looking at your website, or from what others say is Big. A blog will allow you to not only clear up possible misconceptions, but guide persons view of what your company is all about. This helps you in the branding of your business and making a name for it. …

I’m sure you might be expecting a USB drive made of Gold with inlay diamonds sparkling away, but all that glitters isn’t gold, and as a matter of fact, you won’t find anything at all that is absolutely stunning. We merely want to show you what you could expect if you were to lay down about 500 big ones for Google advertising. We received the annual gift from Google and just wanted to show you what its all about.

The presentation was nice and Google does a good job of customizing their gifts while incorporating a touch of advertising. The video below shows us opening the gift, and you can see by our excitement that when you get something from Google, it’s special. This is the video of what we like to call the $500,000 Google USB Drive.

You choose where it goes

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