Every year as school starts web hosts see an up tick in orders as entrepreneurs and stay at home parents have more free time and the vacation summer season winds down to the shorter days of winter. Many hosting companies plan special fall campaigns designed for these small business startups. But lately there has been another wave around this time of year and it comes as specialized hosting packages for students and parents. Increasingly we are seeing websites for bloggers, online photos, resumes, family forums, podcasting, and web cams. This variety of new technologies has spawned a larger need for web hosting. Someone has to host all of this content and information. And in some cases like web cameras, photos, and podcasting the hosting needs are pretty large.
Seniors and juniors in college are using simple resume websites with "their name".name to help promote their skills and give potential employees a place to research them. These websites can give a lot more information and if designed well are a tribute to the professionalism you are trying to portray. This is an easy thing to use on job hunting websites and to include in your email signature. You can usually find a website like this for around $40/year with tools to help you easily create it.
Blogs, blogs, blogs. This is certainly one that we here about all of the time. But students, teachers, and even parents love to blog about their education experience from college down to elementary school. Blog websites have become extremely easy to setup and many very full featured ones are free! These websites give anyone a forum to express their views and experiences, and education seems to be a topic people love to talk about.
The next buzzword after blogging is Podcasting. This is the art of taking a blog to the spoken level. People can record whatever they want and upload it to a pod casting website for the whole world to hear. It is very popular for people to create virtual tours of museums and universities for people to download and walk around with in their ipod. Or it can simply be a recording of your personal views for the whole world to hear.
What do parents who like to see their child's classroom and voyeuristic college kids have in common? Web cams. Another step up from blogging and podcasting your thoughts and voice, is actually filming yourself. Web cams are finding their way in to all sorts of places and the back to school season seems to spur an extra boost. Web cams are being used by schools to allow parents to view their child, they are being used around campuses and neighborhoods for security, and also by parents and children separated by distance to see each other.
Another smaller type of website that we have even heard of is Family forum boards. As a family gets spread out with multiple kids in multiple colleges across the country, a forum board offers a convenient way for everyone to communicate on their own time and keep up with all of the conversations of the family. Most hosting companies offer free forum boards with their hosting plans and these are very easy to install and setup. If you look for a web hosting company with an auto-installer script, such as Fantastico, you will be amazed at how easy it is to get started.
The final type of back to school website are online photo albums. With the proliferation of digital cameras people are now turning to online photo albums as a place to store their family treasures. This also allows your far away college student to post pictures of his dorm room for the extended family to see as well as for the family to post pictures of the good times they are having. A picture is worth a thousand words. There has been the creation of web hosting companies specifically designed for this task. This is called Image hosting. Type "image web hosting" into any major search engine and you will find all of the companies you need to choose from. Also, most web hosting offer free online photo album scripts that you can install. And as mentioned previously, if they advertise an auto installer like Fantastico, then the install and setup is done for you.
The fall months historically offer increased web hosting demand, but with the advent of recent technology trends we are now seeing an increased demand in specialty hosting during the fall that caters to students, parents, and friends. These are just 6 specialty hosting needs but I'm sure there are other ways people are using the internet to enhance their educational experience and reduce the distant that it sometimes puts between family and friends.
About the Author: Rodney Ringler is President of Advantage1 Web Services, Inc., which owns a network of Web Hosting Informational Websites including HostChart.com, ResellerConnection.com, FoundHost.com, ResellerForums.com, and HostingKnowledge.net. Rodney has over 15 years industry experience from programming to internet marketing.