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If you find yourself in the position of having to manage multiple web hosting accounts at once, there are some things you can do to make the task more manageable, as well as ensure that your sites cooperate as planned. You may have done this in an attempt to create a network of sites to increase search engine rankings, or you simply may have a number of sites in different niches or markets. Whatever the reason, let’s look at ways to help you keep things humming along smoothly.
Once you have more than a few websites, it becomes problematical to keep track of everything associated with them. You need to have logins, passwords, FTP access, and a host of other details at your fingertips, as it will be impossible to remember this information. Also, you don’t ever want to make the mistake of using the same logins and passwords for all your sites, thinking this will simplify things. What it will do is enable disaster! Get hacked once, and all your sites are now vulnerable.
Keeping track of website and web hosting details can be as simple as having spreadsheet where you enter your sites information, or there are several software applications out there that will do the trick for you as well. The advantage to the software apps is that they are already formatted to handle everything you need. You can customize your own spreadsheet easily, and some people prefer to do this, but it’s nice to have options.
Make sure you have hard copies of this information as well as online backups. This will ensure that your data will survive when your hard drive crashes, as they eventually do. There’s little worse than being unable to access your site, or having to ask your host to help you recreate your account.
For those of you who are managing networks of sites for search engine rankings, it’s important to maintain a certain virtual distance between your sites. You may have heard of the importance of using different IP addresses for your sites in the network, and this is a good idea. While it’s sometimes possible to get a few different IP addresses from your host, chances are they will all still be on the same class C number, and thus discoverable. Better to have different web hosting arrangements entirely, preferably in different geographical locations.
It’s also important to keep other identifiable details out of the mix. This would include names, email addresses, and links. In other words, be judicious about the information you put on your network or feeder sites. It could lead to the discovery and de-indexing of your network.
The question always comes up of how many sites should you host with any one web host. That varies, according to your purposes. While it’s always a good idea to make sure all your sites aren’t in one basket, there’s no harm in putting a good number of sites on any one host. Just make sure you are using care what is where, and that sites that are part of any network you have are on separate hosts.
The primary concern is that you take care to ensure you are keeping track of your information right from the beginning. Having to go back after the fact and re-do all this is far too hard, and a large waste of time. Take the time to document your sites details from the start; you’ll be glad you did!
