My Web Minder offers all of its services from one place, here.
You can get website design and development, web or mobile applications, domain names registrations, website or email hosting, search engine optimisation, search marketing, backups/restores, patching/upgrades, vulnerability scanning, security auditing, email marketing and help with social media marketing.
Have a look at the sections below and if you can’t find what you are looking for please feel free to contact us.
Looking for a domain name or have one or more to transfer?
We offer domain name search (or research), transfer, registration and renewals. Pricing starts from just £15 a year.
Want to know more about domain names?
A domain name is an online address and makes it easier to remember than a set of numbers. For example, www.example.com is easier to remember than 10.120.30.140:80.
You pick a domain name, pay a fee and then you own it for a period of time and no-one else can register that same name. At the end of the period, you get first option to renew the registration by paying a similar fee again. If you do not renew, the domain name will become available for anyone else to purchase on a first-come-first-served basis. You will continue to own and be able to use that domain name until you decide not to renew.
When choosing a domain name, you need the name itself and the suffix (top level domain or extension). Some of the more popular Top Level Domains (TLD) and their intended purpose are:
- .com (commercial)
- .net (internet business)
- .org (organisation)
- .info (information)
- .biz (business)
- .me (personal)
- .uk (UK general purpose)
- .co.uk (UK commercial)
- .org.uk (UK organisation)
- .me.uk (UK personal)
The intended purpose has mostly been forgotten over time as domain names run out people and businesses use whatever name they can buy to suit their own purpose. The TLD is also largely irrelevant to search engines who base their categorisation on the websites content rather than the original purpose. However, the name part of the domain name is important as part of search engine optimisation.
The above TLDs are not the only ones available. For many years there were only a small number but there are now thousands. I stopped keeping a list on this site or even on my blog but can provide one upon request. You can see a couple of examples on the features and pricing page.
We offer many website hosting packages which are served through third-party cloud environments. The advantage of using cloud hosting is that a lot of the web server settings have been taken care of and your website is always running (with traditional hosting if something goes wrong with a server or hard disk then your site goes down unless you have an expensive recovery environment).
See below to compare our three most popular great value website hosting packages in the cloud. Use the definitions to work out the package that suits you and then contact us and we’ll set it up. We can also offer traditional dedicated servers or virtual server environments where you manage the settings/software yourself and if you are interested in those, just contact us for a free no obligation quote.
Linux Basic
Simple web or email hosting-
Web Space 2,000 Mb
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Data Transfer 20,000 Mb/p.m.
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10 Mail Boxes
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10 Autoresponders
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10 Email Forwarders
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10 Sub Domains
Linux Deluxe
Web application hosting-
Web Space 5,000 Mb
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Data Transfer 50,000 Mb/p.m.
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100 Mail Boxes
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100 Responders/Forwarders
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2 MySQL Databases
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100 Sub Domains
Linux Ultimate
Almost unlimited hosting power-
Web Space 20,000 Mb
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Unlimited Data Transfer
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10,000 Mail Boxes
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10,000 Responders/Forwarders
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1,000 MySQL Databases
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10,000 Sub Domains
Each package has many other features and you can see a better side by side comparison on our features and pricing page. There are also add-ons to the hosting packages that you can purchase to get what you need out of it. Such as 10 Gb mail boxes, secure certificates, daily snapshot backups and many more.
Hosting and and add-ons are paid for in advance but you do not need to decide everything up front as you can easily switch packages part way through the year or purchase say a larger mailbox when the need arises.
Web hosting definitions
The My Web Minder control panel with hundreds of easy to use features. We have listed below some descriptions of My Web Minder hosting packages but if there are any others that you would like explained then please let me know and we will add a definition here.
- Autoresponders, Distribution Lists and Forwarding These refer to things you can do with email hosting as part of your web hosting package. Forwarding will allow you to forward one email address to another or several, distribution lists lets you set up a group of email addresses to communicate with together and autoresponders allow you to set up an automatic response on an email account so that the sender will always get a message (an example might look like “Thank you for your enquiry, we are looking into it and will get back to your shortly.”).
- CGI/PHP Scripts – These are installation scripts that help you to setup one of the many popular web applications. Quite a few of these scripts will require an available database or require a certain operating system so they are not all offered with every package. As an example, if you have a free database, you can click on the Joomla link within your control panel, answer a couple of setting questions and it automatically installs.
- Control Panel – This is the place where you control everything that happens with your hosting account. It’s very easy to use and you can modify files, create databases or email accounts, unlock FTP access, install website applications and much more…
- Data Transfer This refers to the bandwidth used by the connections to your web hosting package. It’s best to start with a low amount and keep an eye on your traffic statistics (through the control panel) to see how much you are using. When you start to get towards your limit in a month then it will be worth upgrading to another package.
- FTP Accounts You will have a main FTP (File Transfer Protocol) account but you may need to give others FTP access such as to a sub domain or maybe with folder restrictions and you will be able to create these from your hosting package. However, it is recommended that you lock FTP access (through the Control Panel) whenever you are not using it.
- Hosting Costs – Pricing is per year in advance. You can quit at any time but there are no refunds or partial refunds for unused time. You can upgrade or downgrade your package at any time by paying the difference (there is no refund for downgrading but you will renew at the lower price).
- Hosting FeaturesThese are the features of the hosting package that are available to you. The more you pay for your package, the greater the feature set. You will need to establish the level that you need but you can change your package at any time (see Hosting Costs).
- Linux or Windows – These are the operating systems that will host your website. If you chose Linux then your web server will be Apache whereas if you chose Windows it will have Internet Information Services (IIS) running. Both support MySQL by default but Microsoft SQL Server is also available on a Windows environment for an extra £100 a year. Programming languages on Linux are typically Perl or PHP whereas on Windows you have PHP, ASP or ASP.NET.
- Mail Boxes These are the number of email accounts you can have registered on your package. When you have a domain name pointing to your hosting package (and there are not many cases where you wouldn’t), you can use the domain name in email addresses. For example, the domain is example.com and you have email addresses bob@example.com or sue.smith@example.com.
- MySQL Databases Your hosting package may or may not have MySQL databases. If you intend to run a Content Management System such as WordPress or a website application then you will more than likely need a database. MySQL works very well with PHP and other languages. MySQL should be able to handle the needs of most people but if you require Microsoft SQL Server then you will need a Windows hosting package and it will cost more.
- Sub Domains These are the areas set aside on your web hosting that have slightly different web addresses that your main domain. For example, your main domain might be www.example.com (or just example.com) but you might have a sub domain called uat.example.com or blog.example.com.
- Web Space This refers to the amount of space you will need on a server for everything. Web files are quite small but things like video can be quite large so how much you need will depend on your file types and number of files.
- Web Tools This refers to a list of tools that are available to your through the My Web Minder Control Panel. Some of the more important web tools are File Manager which allows you to modify files on your website without using FTP, Website Builder allows you to create a website following simple steps and Scheduled Tasks allow you to automate tasks at a specific time on your website.
Web minding service – looking after your website
My Web Minder offers a complete website minding service where we look after the routine things so you don’t have to.
You can take out as many of the following services as you like.
Backup and restore service – gives you the peace of mind that your site will be able to be restored in the event of a disaster. This applies to both the website files and any databases used. We recommend the monthly backup service but if your site is updated more regularly then perhaps a weekly or daily service would be better. Taking on the backup service also covers the recovery of the website files and databases to the previous backup (or an earlier one up to a year earlier). We take care of the point in time recovery so you don’t have to deal with the technical details.
Website vulnerability monitoring – is a service that flags up changes to website files. This will detect any files that have been altered and provide early warning against hackers or viruses. Sometimes you website might look like its unaffected after an attack but there are many ways a hacker can use your website or your websites hosting environment so it’s a good idea to have this warning system in place. The main way that files are manipulated is via FTP but FTP access can be locked, which is the default on all My Web Minder hosting packages.
Registration and renewal service – applies to domain names, website hosting and secure certificates. We can auto-renew any of those for you so you don’t have to keep an eye on the expiry dates, which are quite often varied throughout the year.
Annual maintenance service – includes patching, updates and upgrades wherever necessary. These depend on the software and environment you use; patching is required on servers, updates are usually applied to software packages and are trivial whereas upgrades can apply to software or hardware. Examples might be that you have a dedicated server and want CPanel to be kept up-to-date as well as any security patching on Apache, PHP or MySQL or an update agreement on WordPress to keep it up-to-date for security reasons (minor version changes) but might exclude or include upgrades (major version changes).
Payments are made annually in advance. Just contact us with your requirements and we’ll give you a free quote without any obligation on your part.
We have a wide variety of design and development services.
We design in a number of ways. For print, such as flyers, booklets, posters or business cards, it involves designing a layout usually in one of the Adobe products or QuarkXPress format that a printer can use.
Website design can include the physical structure of the site or just the imagery and layout. For application design, this is generally the physical structure when looking at the user experience. You might want a Twitter, Facebook or YouTube design and we can help with that too.
It might not seem like a design but the architecture of a database needs to be designed in a way that suits your application in a very efficient manner. A poorly designed database can result in slow or unpredictable results for your application.
Read more about design, development and our processes.
We develop a wide range of solutions and not just websites. The development of a website will be the structural development based on a design (putting a conceptual design on the internet in real pages).
A secure online application or database will involve writing code on the server side together with elements to display to the user. We write code in a number of programming languages across multiple platforms.
We will create plugins or themes or make modifications to existing content management systems such as WordPress, Joomla or Drupal.
We also develop offline applications or services on the Windows platform in a variety of languages.
Development of native mobile apps have recently been added to our portfolio too.
Read more about design, development and our processes.
There are many services offered by My Web Minder including site administration, search engine friendly optimisation, search campaigns, quality assurance, code peer review, email marketing, vulnerability scanning, design and development.
Site administration
Unlike web minding, which involves some administration, we can also administer your site. Our site administration service is about keeping your website up to date. You provide the content or description of the website content you want changed on your website and we will perform that action for you. This can be a static website or using a content management system such as WordPress or Joomla. Site administration only includes content changes although that can include graphical content as well; it does not include design or development changes.
Each site will require a different level of content administration over time and so the number and frequency of changes will affect how much you pay. Payments can be made annually in advance, monthly by direct debit or we can work on a pay as you go basis for sites that have infrequent modifications. Just contact us with your requirements and we’ll give you a free no obligation quote with the various options.
We have also expanded to cater for other types of administrative activities. If you are interested then please contact us to find out what we can help you with.
Search engine friendly optimisation
Optimising your site so that it is friendly for both humans and search engines is quite hard to do. Unlike search engine optimisation (SEO) that other companies offer, we take great care in balancing what a search engine needs to rank your site high up on its search results and the needs of the human visitor to your website.
Our search engine friendly optimisation (SEFO) service takes place over a minimum of three months where we look at your site from a customer’s experience right down to what search engines most value. We never engage in any bad practices so there is no need to worry when search engines change their ranking algorithms.
SEFO (or SEO) aims to improve your result in the organic search engine rankings (that is the normal unpaid for service that search engines operate). If you want us to we can also manage your search campaigns (the paid for rankings). The cost of search engine marketing (SEM) will depend on the type of campaign, your target audience and your budget. SEM does not require SEO/SEFO although well-structured pages will definitely help increase your quality score and lower the costs in a pay-per-click campaign. You set an amount as a cap on spending and all payments are monthly in advance.
Email marketing
We offer an email marketing self-service. Use our email marketer application to prepare your email campaigns, send them and monitor their success. Full management statistics, subscribe/unsubscribes forms and even event registrations or surveys all in one package.
Before you send any mail you should spam check it. Our software provides a comprehensive spam checker as we’ll as mail client design checking so you can see how your email appears to others. If you just want to do a quick and crude check against the top 1,000 spammy words then use paste your text into the box below and see whether your email is likely to be identified as spam.
Quality assurance
If you have a new website or application (either online of offline) built for you then you might want to take advantage of our quality assurance testing. This will give you peace of mind that your application/website has been thoroughly tested before you go into production.
Quality assurance testing is based on a test plan that usually comes from the set of requirements that you gave the developer of the site/application. If you don’t already have a test plan then we can create one for you.
There are many different types of testing (feature testing, load testing, boundary testing, failure testing and regression testing) and we’ll include the right mix to suit the application/website being checked.
If you would like us to, we also offer a code peer review service where we can rate the quality of the code based on best working practices and its future maintainability.
Vulnerability scanning
We offer a security vulnerability audit of your website which includes a vulnerability report with recommendations. If any remediation work is required then as long as you have undertaken the work within 30 days of the initial report, we will do a retest of your site for free as part of the service.
If you have purchased our vulnerability scanning and it had uncovered website security vulnerabilities then we can offer an additional service to help you fix the problems on your website or within your hosting environment. This work is based on how long it takes to fix. Details will be provided with your report.
We now also have introduced an optional security add-on to WordPress to include security vulnerability monitoring and malware protection. We set that up with the appropriate site lockdown options but you can change or relax the security at anytime. See add-on services for more information if you have or intend to have a WordPress site in the future.