Ten Star Web Hosting Reviews

The owner of Ten Star was looking for a way to promote web hosting companies based on the recommendations of users who have actually used the web hosting service, as opposed to a review that may be biased by whoever pays the site editor the highest affiliate commission, as is the case with most web hosting review sites.

Design Goals

First and foremost was the desire to make the rating system as unbiased as possible.

Second was the goal of making the site a resource for people to educate themselves about web hosting through articles and other resources.

Another goal was to have the site generate revenue through affiliate marketing and AdSense revenue.

Technical Requirements

The primary technical requirement was the voting system. It was necessary to allow people to vote on each web hosting company, but also ensure the voting was as fair as possible.

Another requirement was to categorize each web hosting company by the services they provide, and by geographical location. Web hosting companies would then be ranked according to user rating.

Implementation

This site was implemented using a content management system with a number of customizations. Custom content types were developed to represent a web hosting company, and a web hosting review. A voting system was implemented to enable reviews to be completed by site visitors and to compile the results to determine an overall rating for each web host.

To maintain integrity of the voting results, a number of features were implemented. For example, the voting system only allows a person to vote on each web hosting company once. If someone were allowed to review a web hosting company multiple times they would be able to skew the results.

In order to generate revenue the site takes advantage of web hosting company affiliate programs, but it was important that the ratings were not in any way influenced by the commissions paid.

Next Steps

WebFire Designs hosts the site, and provides maintenance and tech support for the content management system.

Services: graphic design, CMS configuration and customization, SEO, web promotion, web hosting, domain registration