IAHP Members - Free Web Site Hosting

The internet can be a powerful tool. It is like a silent salesman that can greatly expand your business. It is an opportunity to show off your work and to tell the world about your services. Because the IAHP realizes how important a website is and how much it can contribute to the success of our members we want to do all we can to help all our members have an affordable website. All contractor members are eligible for FREE website hosting. If you have a website now you are welcome to use our hosting for free and typically you can save yourself nearly the cost of membership. If you don’t have a website the IAHP will do our best to make it economical and painless. If you don’t know much about web sites, here are the basics.

Web Site Basics

There are three parts to getting a web site up and running:

1. Domain Name: The website name also called a URL (Uniform Resource Locator). This is the address you type in a browser to go to a web site. You buy this from a Domain Registration company. The cost is about $ 10.00 a year. The company we recommend is GoDaddy. You can go to their website and try out names until you find the one you like and just sign up there. Every year you will pay them $10.00 to keep your name active and to ensure that no one else can get your name. This is the main continuing cost for your web site but as far as most business expenses go this is a cheap one.


2. Hosting: There are many hosting companies. A hosting company will basically have many computers that are hooked to the Internet all the time and you are buying storage space on their computers. The cost for hosting is usually around $ 100.00 a year but can range from about $ 50.00 to thousands of dollars or even more with a very complex site. This is what the IAHP provides to it's members for free. The only thing we ask is that you display an IAHP logo which you would probably want to do anyway and a link to our site. Basically this service we provide will pretty much save you in continuing costs what your membership costs you so it is a nice free bonus.


3. Content: These are the words, photos and layout that appear when someone types in your domain address (URL). To make the photos and words appear in your browser the web sites are usually coded or written in a programming language called HTML (hypertext markup language) and often they also use something called CSS (Cascading Style Sheets.) HTML is not a very complex coding language to learn and most people can learn it themselves in a few months spare time and do their own website.

There are probably lots of better things you can do with your time than to learn HTML. We have a standard template and have made arrangements with an HTML developer to add your content to this template and customize it for your business for a onetime fee of $ 99.00. You don't even have to pay the $ 99.00 until your website is up and you are happy with it. Currently we only have one template available but have another in the works and hope to have about 3 to choose from before long. The one we have looks very good, creates a professional appearance and comes out great in search engines.

Here are two examples of our template:
- Click on the image to open in a new browser window -
• Non Customized Standard Template: http://www.lawn-seeding.com    




• Customized Standard Template: http://www.girgentilandscaping.com    

We would love to help you take advantage of our free website hosting and to prepare for you a professional looking web site that will help your business. The first thing you need to do is to buy your domain name which is usually your business name but can be almost anything you can think of. Once you have the name contact us and we can guide you through the rest of the process. We do need your help in developing the web site as you are the only one who can tell us what to say about your business.