| BigBiz Resale & Shared Domain Programs |
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Our accounts are open for you to resell to your own customers. There are many ways to resell your web space, we take a look at some of them and point out their advantages.
Independent Account
The most obvious way to host another web site is simply open another account. Each account is completely independent, has its own IP address, its own domain name, its own set of ftp/telnet and access passwords, its own web directory, its own POP and ExpressMail accounts, its own traffic and disk allocations, etc.., all the features of a standard account.
The advantages to going this way are
- Complete independence between accounts, may be a consideration for security reasons.
- Separate telnet and ftp passwords. If someone else will eventually maintain the site you prefer to have separate ftp/telnet passwords.
- Independent e-mail addresses - the account will have its own domain's worth of email addresses without having to share namespace.
- Its own traffic and disk allocations - a full 100 Mb of disk space and 4 Gb/mo. of traffic. This is the best way to go for "large" sites.
- Works for ALL browsers - the shared domain methods may not work well for older browsers.
BigBiz does offer quantity discounts, free accounts, and other perks. Check HERE for details.
Shared Domain (Secondary Domains)
In this method, we register additional domains and set them up to point to different subdirectories of your primary account. When a user goes to the URL of the secondary domain, they get a different opening page than if they went to the primary domain. There is only one underlying account, but there are many domain names registered to it.
As an example, suppose you are a web designer specializing in car companies (www.car.com), and in addition to your web site (which highlights your design business), you maintain web sites for 2 customers (www.toyota.com and www.ford.com). You can set up your web directory as follows:
www.car.com
~/html index.html, etc... for Car Designs, Inc.
www.toyota.com
~/html/toyota index.html, etc... for Toyota Automobiles
www.ford.com
~/html/ford index.html, etc... for Ford Motor Company
With your single ftp/telnet password, you can upload all of the files for the different web sites. Your primary domain is car.com, and secondary domains are toyota.com and ford.com.
Since there is only one underlying account everything except web directories are shared among all the domains: e-mail addresses, disk space, traffic allowance, ftp/telnet and access passwords, etc... We charge $20 to setup each secondary domain name, and $10/month for service.
The advantage of shared domain accounts are
- Easy to maintain - one password, one directory tree.
- Can share some files, exaple: common images, cgi-scripts, etc...
- Lower cost than independent accounts
Some issues you need to be aware of when deciding on using shared domains:
- Disk and traffic allowance is totalled for the entire account. This may not be an issue if you have many "small" sites, 50 Mb. disk and 4 Gb/mo. of traffic goes a long way.
- There is only one ftp and telnet password, so this may not be appropriate if you are not the maintainer for all the sites.
- You can setup e-mail addresses at any of the domains, example: joe@car.com, jane@toyota.com, jeff@ford.com; however all addresses are shared, you cannot have both joe@car.com AND joe@toyota.com. Mail for the same username is treated the same way. To set up different mail addresses across shared domains means you need to set different usernames for different users, example: joesmith@car.com AND joeyoung@toyota.com.
- There is only one ExpressMail and POP account (that comes with the primary account) which has access to all the mailboxes. If you need to deliver e-mail to many users at different companies, you may have to order additional ExpressMail or POP accounts, or setup the mail addresses to forward to their ISP.
- You can setup the domains as 3rd level domains, examples: ford.car.com and toyota.car.com, which point to their respective web directories. You save the InterNIC fee.
- If you use FrontPage to publish your web site(s), you can create subwebs for each of the secondary directories. You can also assign different adminstrative and authoring users for each subweb - so it is possible to delegate web site maintenance priveledges to other webmasters who use FrontPage without giving them the account passwords.
- Some older browsers (older Mosaic, AOL) may not work properly when going to the secondary domains, they will bring up the primary domain home page. The reason is they use the IP address to select the web site rather than the URL. Although these browsers are rarely used nowadays, your design may have to accomodate them.
Aliased Domains
This is a good time to mention Aliased Domains, having more than one domain point to the SAME web site. You may want to grab a bunch of related domain names, maybe for business/advertising/competitive advantage or perhaps you operate under different company names, and have them all point to your web site. Example: you run a perfume shop (www.perfume.com) but also register www.scents.com and www.cologne.com to point to the same web site.
As with shared domains, we charge the $20 setup fee for the secondary domains (scents.com and cologne.com), but we DONT CHARGE the $10 monthly fee for aliased domains (they point to the same directory).
Subdirectories
You are welcome to populate your account with whatever content you like (within reason), including web sites for different organizations in different subdirectories, example: suppose your domain is beach.com, you can create subdirectories daytona, miami, venice, etc... and have corresponding URLs http://www.beach.com/daytona, http://www.beach.com/miami, http://www.beach.com/venice, etc.... This is your space and you can do with it what you will, resell it, whatever. We dont have restrictions on subdirectories as some other web hosting companies have. Create as many subdirectories as you want to (with FrontPage these are called sub-webs).
Advantages:
- There is no additional cost to subhost web sites, as long as they all go through your primary domain name.
Disadvantages:
- The URL is not as easy to remember as a registered domain.
Referral
BigBiz Internet Services also has a referral program which may be of interest to you. If you have many contacts, perhaps know other web designers, pass on the word of our web hosting services. If they open accounts with us, we will credit you with a referral bonus as a thank you. You can read additional details about our Referral Plan.