SSL (Selling Stamps on Line?)
Sunday, August 17th, 2008Do the letters SSL mean something to you? Do you understand what a VPS web hosting pack is? I didn’t until recently when I launched myself into the often confusing, mostly incomprehensible but sometimes interesting world of websites and website hosting.
I have a rather large stamp collection (20 albums and several million individual stamps!) and have kilos of surplus stamps to sell in bulk but also some very nice individual stamps that I don’t require. Although some of the bigger lots I sell through a big auction site, some of the individual stamps don’t always sell easily so I thought I’d advertise them on my own website.
I don’t know much about the Internet, I buy a few DVD’s online as well as my stamps but that’s about it but I felt no trepidation whatsoever as I took a big step forward by first creating my website. After a little research I found and downloaded a web editor supposedly easy for beginners. It was pretty easy actually, in fact I had more trouble creating buttons with a graphic editor. My select tool kept selecting and discarding the wrong bit ! Eventually I just settled for text links ! I was already used to scanning my stamp photos so that wasn’t a problem. Finally my pages were ready, my home page, contact page and three pages of stamps. They weren’t a work of art but they looked OK.
Onto the next step…
Just try searching for a web hosting service online, have you any idea how many there are on the Internet? 1,380,000,000 when I did it and I didn’t understand a word of what the packs they were selling consisted of when I started clicking my way through them. Searching for Web hosting is not for the faint hearted innocent I found. It takes courage, inner strength and amazing patience. I discovered combinations of letters that I didn’t know existed and normal words in strange contexts; VPS web hosting, SSL certificates, PHP and Perl, CGI scripts and Sugar. I got pretty adept at finding the online chat button and gradually things became clear. Some people were helpful but a lot seemed surprised and disdainful at my lack of knowledge. One woman kept trying to sell me a business hosting pack with 300 emails, 10,000mb web space, 3 databases and 50 sub-domains! I explained I had a total of 5 pages but she wasn’t listening.
I eventually found a web hosting service with a company that actually listened to me and answered my questions. I don’t have a vps hosting or business web hosting pack, I have a Lite pack without databases or SSL’s, I do have CGI and I’m still trying to set up a formail with it and I’ve no doubt with time I’ll manage it. I can be found on the search engines now and I’ve even received a few emails from people about my stamps so it’s looking good. I’m glad I did it, it was worth the problems but why can’t it be made easier to understand?
