It is very important to offer a good user experience and keep improving the user interface continously.

Why? Simple - the members will not change the free hosting services you offer for another free web host. They will recommend you and you will get more human users and not just tons of automaticly created users by bots.

Strive to add more value to your control panel and spice it up with free eduational articles, web development tools, freebies, etc. Try to educate your members in the webmastering field. Make your control panel stand out.

And bellow are a few screenshots with what we’ve created lately:

Most of the webmasters in the free web hosting field focus all their efforts on developing only one free web host site, others have several sites but keep them apart without implementing the same style on all of them.

Here is a example of how two web hosting servers from the same network can be different and at the same time have the same “feel”, which it a good thing for the user, because the members that got used to one interface, easily switch on another.

We are talking about d0m.us and c0n.us free host websites, that we’ve redesigned these days. Check them out and convince yourself that they are different in terms of color and design, but not in terms of usability and layout. And that inspires trust to the members that had the chance to use both sites, which on long term gives a competitive advantage.

Choosing a domain name for your free hosting site is quite tricky, because you think first to buy a domain that is composed from keywords, such as getyourfreehostingnow.com. Or, the second option would be just choosing something simple and easy to remember.

Well, this is really an interesting decision to make. Why? Because you might think that you’ll have priority on search engines with a search engine friendly domain name.

Who knows - maybe. But the truth is that the majority of visits comes from sites such as free webhosts directory and other freebie sites in this business. And there are several cases when free web hosts do not even survive for a couple of months.

Better for the user and maybe for you as a owner of a free hosting service provider, is to choose a small and brandable domain name. And in this case your site will be easy to remember and its members won’t have to write user.andadomainthatdoesntendcauseithastonsofkeywords.com domain name types when sharing their website with their friends or family.

So, in our opinion a good domain name choice has several points to take into account:

1. Shortness - how short the domain name is and here every symbol matters. A 4 or 5 letter domain name would be great.
2. How catchy it is and it sounds
3. To be easy to remember - how easy your free hosting website name can be remembered. If users should redo a google search in order to find you again, then this is not a good sign for you, as your domain name is not memorable.
4. Simple and maybe even fun to pronounce (if you are really thinking to survive a lot on the market).

And after choosing your great domain - time to get a great unique, custom and professional design in order to have your free web host branded and ready to satisfy its members.

Let’s imagine the following scenario - you enter this business with huge expectations, income planning, visitors, etc. You buy your domain name, order your VPS or Dedicated server and get a Layered Panel license and you think you are ready to start.

But an idea of getting a custom Layered Panel design appears immediately because you don’t know how many just like you already did the exact steps you did. And now all it makes the difference is the branding and the image you give to your fresh new web host. But all these are not new things - everybody is aware of that.

The reason I am writting this post is that when I’ve started my LP based free web host, I’ve found myself dealing with tickets for a good part of my time. I’ve received tons of tickets and there were a lot of them similar. And to make things easier for me I did the following things:

• 1. If there were questions that are not included in the standard FAQ file, I was constantly updating the file (you can find it in /home/your_domain_name/runtime_layeredpanel/var/wkscript/www/templates/faq.jsp) and at the same time I’ve put a condition on the Support Tickets page saying that before submitting a ticket the member should read the FAQs attentively and find the answer there.
• 2. Directly on the Control Panel index page (user_index.jsp) I’ve put the “top asked” questions with links to the answers from the FAQs page.
• 3. A forum is great to have, as it serves as a knowledge base. Once you reply to somebody’s question, the next won’t ask you again, but just read the answer you have to the first person.
• 4. Publish in a place the allowed files extensions list and you won’t receive tons of questions regarding “why I can’t upload my .exe file?”

And that’s all for this post. Hope you found it useful, as for me personally, these actions spared a lot of my time.

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These days we’ve created and integrated into the Layered Panel ver. 2.x script the template.

We’ve implemented something interesting - the way the sign up button reacts when pressed from the frontpage - it loads using AJAX the registration form. The check all features button is made using the same method.

Check out the site at www.hostse.com

We’ve decided to rebuild the concept of this website making it a great resource for all webmasters that own a Layered Panel based free web host.

With the launching of the second version of the website - we’ve discontinued the sales of the stock templates, as we believe that a successful Layered Panel based free webhost should have his own branding, personality and identity in order to attract visitors, members and generate high income from affiliate programs.

We’ll publish here a lot of goodies that you can implement in your free web host to make it more attractive to your members.